Creator of original foam finger blasts Miley Cyrus for 'degrading an honorable icon’ in her VMAs performance

• Steve Chmelar first used a homemade finger to cheer on his high school basketball team in 1971
• He was not impressed by Miley Cyrus' use of the 'icon' in her VMAs performance
• Cyrus allegedly took the foam finger home with her after the infamous performance

The originator of the now-ubiquitous foam finger is disappointed at his creation being 'degraded' by Miley Cyrus in her controversial performance with Robin Thicke at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday.

Steve Chmelar, 59, created the first finger back in 1971 when he was a 16-year-old looking for a way to cheer on his school basketball team in the Iowa state championships.

Chmelar never imagined his homage to school sports would eventually find its way on-stage with a 20-year-old pop-star clad in a skin-colored latex bikini doing unspeakable things to it.

Cyrus' thrusting, grinding, twerking and inability to keep her tongue inside her head has been much-remarked since the performance but for Chmelar, it was particularly distasteful.

'She took an honorable icon that is seen in sporting venues everywhere and degraded it. Fortunately, the foam finger has been around long enough that it will survive this incident,' Chmelar told Fox Sports.

Cyrus' antics aside, the foam finger first found fame when an Associated Press photographer took a picture of the teenaged Chmelar with a large hand with pointing finger that Fox Sports reports he made from 'galvanized hardware cloth, paper mache, spray paint and a red marker over the course of a few days.'

He was snapped at one of the two games he used the finger to cheer on his team - the state semifinal and the championship game in Des Moines.

'It was pretty popular at the game,' Chmelar told Fox Sports.

'Nobody had ever seen anything like that before, so it got some attention. And then when the team made its trip back to Ottumwa from Des Moines, I recall being on the bus with the team, holding the finger out the window.'

A few years later, the first foam fingers began making their appearance at sports games after Geral Fauss began selling them at the 1978 Cotton Bowl game. 

Chmelar and Fauss have never met, but Chmelar thinks it was his homemade finger that was the inspiration for the famous foam finger. 

'I don’t have evidence of newspaper clippings from around the country, but I do recall people from other states saying that they had seen the picture,' Chmelar said. 

As for the actual finger defiled by Cyrus onstage, it was originally made by stylist Lisa Katnic for a fashion shoot last year. It didn't make the cut but when styling the video for Robin Thicke's Blurred 

Lines, she decided to bring it along as a prop.

It featured in the video and then went on to become part of Cyrus' performance. And according to Yahoo Music, the pop star took it home with her without even buying it dinner first. 

As Cyrus furiously twerked and fondled Robin Thicke onstage, Chmelar was otherwise occupied. He only saw a clip of the performance after a family member showed him on YouTube. 

'For people that like that kind of entertainment, I’m sure that it met their needs,' Chmelar said. 

'If I had a choice between Julie Andrews singing The Sound of Music and Miley Cyrus doing Can’t Stop, I’d go the Julie Andrews route,' he said.