THE DISCRAFT SKY-STYLER
Once upon a time in the early days of flying disc sports, Flying Disc Freestyle was king. It was the attraction to the sport. It started for almost everyone as a game of throw and catch and then people started creating things. The most prominent creativity came through the basic throw and catch game. Trick catches and trick throws were the first thing that players thought of. And the crowd loved it. There were 33 Frisbee World Magazine covers throughout the 70's and early 80's and over 80% of them were of Freestyle play.
There's a lot to be said about the history of freestyle frisbee but we'll get back to that. Discraft Products started in London, Ontario Canada by Jim Kenner and Gail McColl. In 1978 they created their first disc, The Sky-Pro. Somewhat designed around the 40 Mold from Wham-O or an early CPI All-Star. These were thought at the time to be the definitive "sport discs". Discraft was all about disc play being a sport. The Sky-Pro was marginally successful but Discraft had begun their penetration into the market.
Freestyle was just starting to change. In 1977 Wham-O Introduced the 80 Mold towards the end of the year. One was given to upstarts Joey Hudoklin & Richie Smits who where starting to change the world of throw and catch into an art form. The "nail delay" was brand new and players were starting to take the quick throw and catch sequences and slow them down into more technically advanced moves. At 175 grams the 80 mold was large and heavy but it was clearly the direction things were going. Discraft thought it best to follow that trend and in 1979 they molded their first Sky-Styler in Westland, Michigan. Being in the heart of the auto industry, molding and plastics were a mainstay industry.
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STYLE 1 -
The fist production model had a wide indent on the top of the disc and a flat center. There was also no tooling (raised letters) on the underside of the disc. This was common practice for Wham-O manufacturing as that was how they would indentify their tradmarks and mold information as raised letters that were part of the mold (tooling).