Foam Fingers - History of Foam Fingers

The foam fingers people wave at sports games were invented by an American high school teacher named Geral Fauss in 1978. Mr. Fauss was an industrial arts teacher in Cypress, Texas. He made the first oversize #1 hands out of poster board for a football game at his high school. In 1979, he made a batch of 400 oversize hands for a Cotton Bowl game between the University of Texas and Notre Dame. He used Masonite, which is hard board made of pressed wood fiber. He sold them all in only half an hour.

Mr. Fauss decided that Masonite was a bit too hard to be used in a crowd with a lot of rowdy fans, and so he looked for a new material to use for his next batch. Polyurethane foam was soft, and it was easy to cut a hole in the bottom for a person's hand to go in. He brought 5000 to the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, and sold out again. After that, Geral Fauss quit as a high school teacher, and has been making foam fingers for sports games ever since.