by Patrice Downing, Contributing Writer
Would you believe me if I told you that legendary toy company Wham-O was founded by Richard Knerr and Arthur “Spud” Melin during their stint as falconers? Like leather-gloved, trained birds of prey, hunting vermin falconers. While working on improving the delivery method of shooting meatballs into the air to train their ravenous raptors to be reliable, they inadvertently developed a pretty badass slingshot. They cut a sturdy handle out of ash and after adding some tight quality rubber banding and a leather pouch, the Wham-O Sportsman was born. Both powerful and accurate, the Sportsman was an instant hit for the newly founded toy company who would go on to have a string of future successes with other childhood favorites like the Hula-Hoop, Slip-N-Slide, and Super Bouncy Ball.
By now you may be wondering what flinging wads of meat into the air to train a playful Peregrine has to do with M. Night Shyamalan’s newest thriller Trap. Well that’s easy: nothing. However, the journey I took through the endless avenues in the streaming landscape to find that fact is. After watching the Netflix original movie Unfrosted back in March, I followed up by watching the Marc Summers-hosted episode of Unwrapped covering PopTarts, which led to a binge of the History Channel docuseries The Food That Built America. Having already leaped down the docuseries rabbit hole at that point, I started watching sister series The Toys That Built America, and faster than you can form a meatball, I was edified about the Sportman’s origins. And that, dear readers, is why we’re here. To dig up the details, sift through the superfluous, and sort through the silly to find the facts on recently released fiction because the truth is so often wilder than anything we can make up. Welcome to Fact on Fiction.
This time around, to pair with the psychological nail-biter, Trap, we are going to be discussing a documentary covering Operation Flagship. You may have seen articles popping up online here and there since Trap’s release talking about how it is inspired by real life events. Operation Flagship is just such a real life event. I first heard about this clandestine task force sting a few years back as part of a compilation of weird laws/things that are bizarre but legal. As regular readers of this series may have already guessed, that’s when I started down the research rabbit hole to find out more about how such an elaborate undercover op took place.
Believe it or not, not one but two football-centric production companies have put out documentary shorts on this bizarre warrant round up. Originally, I was going to be recommending one ESPN 30 for 30 short from the 2017 season titled Strike Team. Unfortunately it has become impossible to stream without having a subscription to ESPN+, so I went with the next best thing, NFL Films Presents: How Free Redskins Tickets Led to the Biggest Surprise In NFL History.
Clocking in at just over 12 minutes, this edition of NFL Films Presents, quickly and concisely covers one of the most elaborate, well-orchestrated, and fiscally responsible criminal roundups the U.S. Marshals Service has pulled off to date. Costing about $22,000 in 1985 (just under $65,000 today) the Marshals Service, with the help of the local police department, were able to make 101 arrests in a single day by pulling off the masquerade of a lifetime. Posing as everyone from event staff and phone operators to cheerleaders and janitorial staff, law enforcement was able to lure over 200 of the 3000 wanted criminals they invited to a convention center under the guise of winning free tickets to see the Washington Redskins play the Cincinnati Bengals. While technological advancements would make a ruse of this scale significantly harder to pull off today, the creativity of F.I.S.T ( Fugitive Investigative Strike Team of the Marshals Service) is pretty impressive. Having quite a few contingencies to account for, the team had to find a way to keep the public safe, keep the invitees safe during processing, and keep themselves safe with somewhat limited resources of the time. Metal detectors weren’t exactly adorning public entryways, and even video cameras were not terribly good quality at the time. To combat this, the team had officers disguised as cheerleaders patting down “winners” as they arrived, and were taking pictures on their way in to “register.” They set up a fake office with banks of telephone operators to answer calls and questions from “winners,” as well as letters sent from the fictitious firm Flagship International Sports Television (well, look at that… it also abbreviated to F.I.S.T). Due to the brevity of the film, I’m not going to divulge any further details of the operation, but I will say the creativity and thoroughness of the preparations involved puts destination wedding planners to shame.
And with that we’ve reached the end of another docu-journey down endless avenues of the streaming landscape. Join me again soon as I continue on my quest to dig through the detritus, sort out the superfluous, and ultimately find the Fact on Fiction.
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