The inventor of the iconic Super Soaker water gun, Dr. Lonnie Johnson, has won a long-running legal battle for unpaid royalties, with an arbitrator awarding him nearly $73 million. The settlement was the result of a long-standing dispute with toy giant Hasbro, the parent company of the Super Soaker brand.
The award comes more than three decades after Johnson first created the toy in a moment of accidental inspiration. A former aerospace engineer for NASA, Johnson was working on a heat pump at home in 1982 when he shot a powerful stream of water across his bathroom, sparking the idea for a new kind of water gun.
After years of development, he licensed his invention to Larami Corporation, which would later be acquired by Hasbro. The toy, originally named the “Power Drencher,” was released in 1990 and rebranded a year later as the Super Soaker, becoming a global phenomenon that generated over a billion dollars in sales.
However, Johnson filed a lawsuit against Hasbro in 2013, alleging the company had underpaid royalties on both Super Soaker and several Nerf toy lines from 2007 to 2012. After a lengthy arbitration process, the judge ruled in his favor.
“I am very pleased,” Johnson said following the decision. “In the arbitration, we got everything we asked for. The arbitrator ruled totally in Lonnie’s favor.”
The case highlights the immense challenges inventors can face in protecting their intellectual property, even after creating a product that becomes a pop culture mainstay. For Dr. Johnson, who holds over 100 patents, the settlement is a testament to his determination to ensure he received what he was owed for his world-changing invention.
