text: Gary Ross Dahl, the creator of the wildly popular and bizarre 1970s fad the Pet Rock, has died aged 78 in southern Oregon. Mr Dahl's wife, Marguerite Dahl, confirmed on Tuesday that her husband of 40 years died March 23 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. His rocks, which formed a brief but remarkably successful craze for several months in 1975, came packed in a cardboard box containing a tongue-in-cheek instruction pamphlet for 'care and feeding' and made him a millionaire. Gary Dahl, the creator of the wildly popular 1970s fad the Pet Rock, has died at age 78 in southern Oregon . Mr Dahl later estimated he had sold 1.5million of them at roughly $4 each by the time the fad fizzled only a few months after it hit the market. In later years, given his success with the Pet Rock, he authored the self help book Advertising for Dummies. Although its popularity was short-lived, the Pet Rock was no more than a standard rock packaged around an amusing marketing strategy. To this day his creation divides opinion among those who look back on it with contempt, and those who admire his ability to sell it. Born December 18, 1936, in Bottineau, North Dakota, Dahl was raised in Spokane, Washington. In 1975, he was a Los Gatos, California, advertising executive when he came up with the Pet Rock idea. The rock - which was simply a common everyday stone - came with a manual which, tongue in cheek, detailed how the owner should take care of it. It also stated how its owners should make it feel comfortable in its new home, how to train it and how it can be used to attack 'adversaries'. The New York Times reported he was later sued by investors after they claimed they received too small a share of the profits and he was forced to pay a six-figure sum. His later inventions included The Original Sand Breeding Kit and Red China Dirt. However, these failed to take off. Gary Dahl's Pet Rock came with a manual which, tongue in cheek, detailed how the owner should take care of it . In 2000, he was a grand prize winner in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for dreadful prose. His winning entry read: 'The heather-encrusted Headlands, veiled in fog as thick as smoke in a crowded pub, hunched precariously over the moors, their rocky elbows slipping off land's end, their bulbous, craggy noses thrust into the thick foam of the North Sea like bearded old men falling asleep in their pints.' He and his wife retired and moved to Jacksonville in 2006. The Pet Rock craze 'was great fun when it happened,' his wife recalled in a telephone interview. Over time, however, 'people would come to him with weird ideas, expecting him to do for them what he had done for himself. And a lot of times they were really, really stupid ideas.' By 1988, Dahl said he had avoided interviews for years because of what he called 'a bunch of wackos' appearing out of nowhere with threats and lawsuits. Of the little rock that became a household name, he said, 'Sometimes I look back and wonder if my life wouldn't have been simpler if I hadn't done it.' Mr Dahl designed and built the Carry Nations Saloon in Los Gatos, his wife said. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a sister, Candace Dahl of Spokane; daughters Chris Nunez and Samantha Leighton; son Eric Dahl; stepdaughter Vicki Pershing and grandchildren. Mr Dahl and his wife were avid sailors on San Francisco Bay, where she plans to sprinkle his ashes in May.
target: The Pet Rock creator has died from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease .
  He made millions from absurd idea to sell a stone in a box as a 'Pet Rock'
  The product came with tongue-in-cheek instructions for 'care and feeding'
  He went on to author the self help book 'Advertising for Dummies'