JEAN HOOPER - HOOP’N WITH HOOPER,
NAMED OFFICIAL “HOOP” SPOKESPERSON FOR MAUI TOYS
(LOS ANGELES, Jan. 28, 2008) -- Jean Hooper has been named the official Hoop spokesperson for Maui Toys, the world’s largest manufacturer of spring toys. Ms. Hooper, better known as Hoop’n with Hooper, is renowned for her “Fitness made Fun” program that teaches kids and adults how to get fit and be active with her “easy to learn” dance routines using the Wave Hoop®, a revolutionary water weighted hoop made by Maui Toys.
Hooper began her relationship with Maui Toys in 2001 when she asked them to help support the burst of interest in her hooping classes. At the time, she had too many hoopers and not enough hoops. Maui Toys was impressed by her enthusiasm and agreed to provide Hooper with Wave Hoops. In return, Hooper attended Maui Toys’ annual Las Vegas sales meeting to involve their sales associates in the fun and great benefits of hooping. Hooper’s unique mastery of the hoop prompted Maui Toys to name her their official Hoop spokesperson in Jan. 2008.
According to Hooper, “Wave Hooping is an amazing form of exercise, and is so much fun you don't even realize that you're working out! Based on the principles of fluid dynamics and centrifugal force, the Wave Hoop® is integrated with water inside the hoop which works as a counter balance, causing the hoop to stay up in motion longer with little to no effort. This makes hooping easier than ever, and allows me to teach people who could never hoop before,” Hooper explains.
To date, Hooper has successfully taught over 200,000 elementary, junior high and high school students, in all eight districts of Los Angeles, through the Los Angeles LAUSD Nutrition Network Program, a Non-profit organization that promotes a healthy active lifestyle for kids in the underserved communities. “It is my life's passion and dream to get everyone in America up off the couch and hooping, in effort to help combat the ever growing childhood obesity epidemic,” Hooper says.
Hooper recently lead a brigade of “Happy Hoopers” Kid Cadet” students in the 31st “Occasional” Pasadena Doo Dah Parade. She has appeared on CNN, ABC, CBS, KCAL and more and has been written about in magazines such as Cosmo Girl and Photographic.
About Maui Toys
Maui Toys, Inc. was founded in 1988 by Brian D. Kessler who sought to bring vibrant fashion, versatile function and evolving style together to set a standard for unique toys in a competitive market. Maui Toys catapulted into the toy industry spotlight with the worldwide patented Wave Hoop®. Integrated with water to make hooping easier than ever before and covered in striking colors and eye-catching designs, the Wave Hoop® broke Maui into the forefront of the toy market. As a manufacturer and distributor of spring and summer activity toys worldwide, their core business is outdoor sports related toys that encourage children to be active.
Maui Toys leads the competitors with a wide range of Impulse Toys that add the magic of light and sound to a variety of nostalgic toys from our past. With an innovative design, tenacious sales and creative marketing team, Maui Toys continually endeavors to stay one step ahead of the competitors. While Maui Toys accomplishes making the life of a child as childlike as possible, spinning Wave Hoops® forever around their hips, the company also finds a way to make the child feel as cool as a grownup 'tricking out their ride' with sweet, new ways to be the talk of the block. Maui Toys corporate headquarters are located in Youngstown, Ohio with sales in Los Angeles, California, and an office in Hong Kong.
MAUI TOYS CELEBRATES 50 YEARS OF HOOPING
by Brian Kessler, President, Maui Toys
In 1958 Art Linkletter and his partner Reuben Klamer contacted my father Milton Kessler because they wanted to use the plastic hoop that my father had invented years earlier for a purpose he had never envisioned. Their idea was to place my father’s plastic polyethylene hoop around a person’s waist and dance with it. We had tried unsuccessfully over the years to use the hoop my father designed in 1950. We had family pictures of us throwing it at each other, diving through it in a pool, and even dragging it behind a boat, but none of these activities resulted in a practical use. So the hoop sat undeployed for eight years until that fateful phone call.
Mr. Linkletter had recently booked an aboriginal tribeswoman on his TV show where she danced with a bamboo hoop. The next day, the show received over 10,000 phone calls asking where they could buy a hoop. The problem was that the hoop was made of bamboo from the backlands of Australia and was not very safe for kids to use. But Mr. Klamer had gone to college with my Uncle Gerald Kessler at Ohio State and had seen my father’s hoop, so he gave him a call and invited him out to California. Mr. Klamer and my uncle set up a company and introduced the first “hula dancing” hoop called the “Spin Hoop,” which triggered the number one fad of all time.
Between 1958 and 1959 over 100 million hoops were sold. Companies like Wham-O jumped on the bandwagon and numerous people made “hula” hoops that took the country by storm. As history reveals, people could not get enough of them. There were massive hoop contests and people took them everywhere -- to the beach, school, football games, you just had to have a hoop. By the early 60s the fad died down, but in the subsequent years, hoops became firmly entrenched as a staple product.
In 1988, 30 years after the hoop craze, I started Maui Toys Inc. One of the goals was to bring back hooping, but in a way that today’s kids could relate to, not just the same product my father had invented in the 50s. Today I am proud to say Maui Toys produces over 90 percent of the hoops made and sold in the United States. We have brought back the original fun and excitement of the hoop, but made it fresh and hip for contemporary kids.
Today, the Wave Hoop, which we invented and patented in 2000, is the industry standard. The Wave Hoop has a liquid core that keeps the hoop in the air much longer. By suspending itself in air the Wave Hoop allows a lot more people to get the “feel” of hooping. Wave Hoops now make up close to 50 percent of all hoops sold and were the top selling spring summer toy for the last five years. But Maui just continues to innovate hoops. Last year we launched a “Cosmic” line of Hoops that create a light show while you dance and now they look to be the next big hoop of the future.
After all these years, people still love to hoop. Maybe it’s a throw back to the nostalgia of the 50s and 60s, or maybe hooping is just fun to do! With all the bells and whistles that Maui adds to the product, the hoop continues to catch the imagination of today’s society. Just this past year alone, two top blockbuster movies use hoops as the key toy that kids want for Christmas: Alvin in “Alvin and the Chipmunks” sings, “all I want for Christmas is my Hula Hoop” and in “Fred Clause,” Santa and his brother are seen making and delivering hoops for little boys and girls around the world.
My father, passed away a few years ago, but I think he would be amazed to see that the plastic hoop he couldn’t give away so many years ago still lives on and grows today. It will be interesting to see if my Dad’s great grand children will continue our obsession with hoops. Maybe they will be designing hoops for the 100th anniversary that fly!!!
Websites:
For more information about Jean Hooper visit http://www.hoopngroove.com
For more information about Maui Toys visit http://www.mauitoys.com
