Super Soaker Inventor Wins Royalties

American inventor and aerospace engineer Lonnie Johnson first conceived the Super Soaker while developing a heat-pump system during his service with the U.S. Air Force. The toy reached stores in 1990 as the Power Drencher, later became the Super Soaker, and generated $200 million in sales during 1991 alone. In February 2013, Johnson sued Hasbro after discovering that the company had underpaid royalties on the Super Soaker and several Nerf toy lines. An arbitrator awarded him nearly $73 million in unpaid royalties that November, by which time Super Soaker sales had approached $1 billion.

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