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Silly Putty®
When the Japanese invasion of Asia threatened America's rubber supply during World War II, chemists at General Electric began looking for a synthetic substitute. James Wright stumbled upon an odd concoction: a stretchy material that withstood decay and bounced 25% higher than rubber. When left untouched, this "solid liquid" flowed in slow motion and when struck sharply, it broke into pieces. Wright failed to find a wartime use for the goofy goo. Afterward, this "bouncing putty" or "nutty putty" amused guests at parties but did little else until toy marketer Peter Hodgson decided to list it as a novelty in his catalog. Hodgson hired Yale students to fill colorful plastic eggs with one-ounce blobs of "Silly Putty." These he sold for a dollar, just in time for Easter. After a New Yorker article featured Silly Putty in 1950, orders topped 250,000 in three days. Millions have sold every year since. More colors appeared in 1990, including a glow-in-the-dark version in 1991. Useless originally, people have since bounced it, used it to lift images off the comic pages, and cleaned typewriter keys with it. Astronauts even took it aboard Apollo 8 to stick down tools in zero gravity!
Slinky®
Mechanical engineer Richard James invented the Slinky by accident. In 1943, he was working to devise springs that could keep sensitive ship equipment steady at sea. After accidentally knocking some samples off a shelf, he watched in amazement as they gracefully "walked" down instead of falling. Along with his wife Betty, James developed a plan to turn his invention into the next big novelty toy. Betty combed the dictionary for an appropriate name and came up with "Slinky." James designed a machine to coil 80-feet of wire into a two-inch spiral. The couple borrowed $500 to manufacture the first Slinkys. Initial sales proved sluggish but soared after Gimbels Department Store in Philadelphia allowed demonstrations for Christmas 1945. The first 400 Slinkys sold within minutes. An advertisement with a memorable jingle familiarized a national customer base. "What walks down stairs alone or in pairs/ and makes a slinkety sound? A spring a spring, a marvelous thing/ Everyone knows it's Slinky!" Slinkys glided effortlessly down stairs on television, but alas most household steps proved too tall and wide for long descents. Still, at the end of the 20th century and 250 million Slinkys later, people continued to buy them.
Teddy Bear
In 1902 on an unsuccessful Southern hunting trip, President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear that expedition trackers had caught and tied to a tree. The incident struck a chord with the American sense of fair play. Political cartoonist Clifford Berryman immortalized the incident in "Drawing the Line in Mississippi." Tugging at American heartstrings, Berryman drew the old, injured female bear as a helpless cub. With Roosevelt's permission, Morris Michtom, a Russian immigrant and Brooklyn toy-shop owner, sewed a cuddly stuffed toy and dubbed it Teddy's Bear. With its big head and ears, and eyes as appealing as the future Mickey Mouse, the bear became a hit. German toy manufacturer Margarete Steiff created a stuffed bear, too, and began mass-producing copies in 1903. The stuffed bears became a hit with adults and children. Visitors who flocked to the boardwalks in New Jersey's seaside resorts took home teddy bears as prizes and souvenirs. Women's magazines featured ads for bear accessories and offered up-to-date patterns for sewing bear clothes. Books, songs, and even a 1907 feature film marked the rising popularity of teddy bears. This fascination has persisted ever since, making Teddy Bears the most popular plush toy in history.
Tinkertoy®
Stonemason Charles Pajeau and partner Robert Petit dreamed up the "Thousand Wonder Toy" in the early 1910s after watching children create endless abstract shapes with sticks, pencils, and old spools of thread. Adding holes on all sides of a round wooden wheel sized for sticks included in the set, they named their creation Tinkertoys. Shop owners successfully promoted the toy with elaborate store displays. Tinkertoys joined a host of other construction toys in the early 20th century, including Lincoln Logs and Erector Sets, helping kids to learn by exercising what we now think of as "spatial intelligence." Originally intended for younger boys, after 1919 Tinkertoys attracted budding engineers through the addition of an electric motor. The toys even came with instructions for creating elaborate mechanical "tools," such as printing presses, lathes, airplanes, and power saws. The postwar boom years of the 1950s finally brought color to the classic wooden toy. Playskool acquired Tinkertoy in 1985 and redesigned the toy in 1992 in honor of its 80th anniversary. No longer the wooden rods and spools of old, the new version featured brightly colored plastic parts, with each set designed to create particular objects.