Play-Doh®
Play-Doh modeling compound started out as wallpaper cleaner. Joe McVicker learned from a teacher that kids usually found modeling clay too hard to manipulate. Discovering that the squishy cleaning product he manufactured could substitute, McVicker shipped some to the school. After teachers and kids raved, he offered to supply the product to all Cincinnati schools. More rave reviews followed. McVicker showcased the modeling clay at a national education convention in 1955, and word spread to Macy's and Marshall Field's. By 1956, the wallpaper cleaner had become Play-Doh. A year later, the manufacturer offered a softer Play-Doh in primary colors. Kids mixed these to make other colors, ending inevitably in brown. Captain Kangaroo endorsed Play-Doh, and so did Miss Frances from Ding Dong School. Play-Doh Pete appeared on product cans in 1960. The Fun Factory let kids extrude the material into interesting shapes, making mock hair, colorful spaghetti, and pretend ice cream that wouldn't melt. In the 1980s, Play-Doh expanded its palette to eight colors. Later versions sparkled with glitter, glowed in the dark, or smelled like shaving cream. Recent estimates say that kids have played with 700 million pounds of Play-Doh.
Radio Flyer® Wagon
Sixteen-year-old Italian immigrant Antonio Pasin arrived in New York in 1914 carrying little else than the carpentry skills he had learned from his father and grandfather. His parents had sold the family mule to pay for passage. Working in Chicago as a manual laborer, Pasin bought used woodworking equipment and set up shop in a rented room. Building little red wagons at night and peddling them during the day, he saved enough money to found the Liberty Coaster Company in 1923, naming it after the statue he had admired in New York harbor. In 1930, he began mass-producing the toys out of stamped metal. He called his new wagon the "Radio Flyer," another patriotic reference to his homeland, this one after a famous Italian invention, the radio. Intended "for every girl and boy," the wagons sold for less than $3 each. Even in the depths of the Great Depression, they sold at the rate of 1,500 a day. Radio Flyer designers added high sides for carting kids in the 1950s, borrowed bright colors and slick tires from muscle cars in the 1970s, and even created an all-terrain version, the Quad Shock Wagon, to match the SUVs in the 1990s.
Raggedy Ann™
Johnny Gruelle's daughter Marcella brought him an old rag doll one day, and he drew a face on the worn fabric. Pulling a book off the shelf, he noticed two James Witcomb Riley poems, "The Raggedy Man" and "Little Orphan Annie." "Why don't we call her Raggedy Ann?," he said. Or so the story goes. Gruelle's family made the original doll by hand, and he gave Raggedy Ann life in 1915. She became a children's book character in 1918, and Gruelle's publisher P.F. Volland arranged to sell Raggedy Ann dolls as well. The tie-in between Gruelle's Raggedy Ann Stories and the dolls proved a great marketing success. Gruelle averaged one new book a year for twenty years. Reprinted many times, the books renew the character for every generation. In the stories kindly Raggedy Ann comes to life when humans aren't looking and embarks on adventures with her brave brother Andy. Marcella Gruelle died at age 13 from an infected smallpox vaccination, just as Raggedy Ann debuted. But she showed up as a tender remembrance in Marcella: A Raggedy Ann Story (1929). In 2002, Simon and Schuster owns the Raggedy Ann story rights, and the doll sells under the Hasbro name.