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 would n't have been simpler if I had n'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 .
The Pet Rock creator has died from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease . He was diagnosed with the lung condition in 2008 and had been taking medication for it since then.