Come and Play With Me

If you are a parent or a grandparent, you know just how wonderful these words are.  I LOVE IT when my grandkids ask me to join them to play.  The “Grandpa, do you want to come play with me?” never gets old!  It doesn’t matter if we’re making pretend food, squishing playdough into balls and snakes, or popping the dome on Trouble, it just never gets old. This also brings back wonderful memories of when my daughters were this age! I love to play a card matching game (usually lose), tic-tac-toe, or checkers.  I’ll admit, I’m not good at all on the hand-held electronics – their little fingers fly across the buttons, while I stumble on the up arrows, jump arrows, and running toggle. Playing together made me think about my wonderful childhood with my parents and brothers and sisters. With 17 in the family, I could always find someone to play with, especially since there is a certain competitive gene that is in all of the Kowalski family. So many of the toys today are carry-overs from time past, as they pack a certain timeless appeal. There are so many – Battleship, Stratego, Shoots & Ladders, GI Joe’s, and more. I thought it would be fun to explore the unique ways some toys came into existence – fascinating how breakthrough experiments, bold innovation, and even bizarre accidents created some enduringly popular classic toys. Thanks to interestingfacts.com, Google, and YouTube for the info. (And when you get time, go find one of the little ones, and play a game with them – I PROMISE you’ll cherish the moments. Enjoy!

By popular demand, we’re now sharing guides for the previous week’s logo contest!

Every Friday, scroll to the bottom of the post to review last week’s guide and see if we managed to stump you. 

Frisbee

Unveiled by the Wham-O toy company in 1957, Frisbees are said to have gotten their unofficial start decades earlier among New England college students who enjoyed tossing pie tins and other containers made by the Frisbie Pie Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut. One young man named Walter Morrison decided to form a business from these flying discs, and by the late 1940s, he and a partner had developed a plastic version that eventually caught the attention of Wham-O founders Arthur “Spud” Melin and Richard Knerr. Originally called the “Pluto Platter,” to capitalize on the UFO craze then sweeping the country, the disc was rebranded to its now-familiar name in 1958 as a nod to the pie company that unintentionally launched the high-flying toy. 

Lincoln Logs

It can be tough following in the footsteps of a famous parent, and while architect John Lloyd Wright never quite emerged from the outsized shadow of his legendary father, Frank Lloyd Wright, he did manage to distinguish himself in a completely different field. Inspired by his dad’s work on Japan’s Imperial Hotel, built on a flexible wooden-beam structure designed to sway but not collapse during an earthquake, the younger Wright set about developing his own mini-version of interlocking building beams that could withstand the rough play of children. After founding the Red Square Toy Company in 1918, John Lloyd Wright obtained a patent for his “toy-cabin construction” in 1920. Wright named his product for the log-cabin-born President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln Logs debuted in 1924 with packaging boasting “Interesting playthings typifying the spirit of America,” Wright sold Lincoln Logs to Playskool in 1943. 

Mr. Potato Head

While most parents would prefer that their kids not play with their food, that was precisely the concept motivating George Lerner’s creation of what became Mr. Potato Head in 1949. After initially scoring a deal to have his three-dimensional plastic facial parts distributed as a cereal-package prize, Lerner found a better opportunity with Hassenfeld Brothers (which later became Hasbro – get it, Has Bro – now you know!!) in 1951. Mr. Potato Head began appearing in stores the following year. Mr. Potato Head pulled in a whopping $4 million in sales after a few months, and his popularity soon fueled the additions of Mrs. Potato Head and children Yam and Spud to the family. 

Silly Putty

It seems the creation of Silly Putty was a happy accident on the part of not one, but two separate chemical engineers. According to the standard story put forth by its manufacturer, Crayola, General Electric’s James Wright was seeking to come up with a rubber substitute during World War II when he mixed boric acid and silicone oil to produce an extremely bouncy and stretchy material. At roughly the same time, Dow Chemical researcher Earl Warrick stumbled upon a similar boric acid-infused polymer. Both men obtained patents, but because there were no practical applications for this substance, it mainly served as a novelty item at parties. The stretchy stuff eventually made its way into a toy store, where it caught the attention of advertising executive Peter Hodgson. Seeking to market it himself, Hodgson secured a small loan, hired Yale University students to separate a batch into 1-ounce balls, and sold the “Silly Putty” in plastic eggs for $1 each. Demand was modest until a favorable review appeared in an August 1950 issue of The New Yorker, after which some 250,000 eggs were sold over three days. Initially marketed toward adults, Silly Putty was rebranded as a children’s toy in the mid-1950s. By the time it made its way onboard Apollo 8 in 1968, the former laboratory curiosity had emerged as an iconic plaything for people of all ages. (I remember using it to lift images from the newspaper) As of 2021, more than 300 million eggs and 4,000 tons of the beloved goo had been sold.

Barbie

In the early 1950s, Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler saw her daughter Barbara playing with paper fashion figurines and mused about the possibility of creating a full-figured adult doll. After a trip to Europe in 1956 brought her into contact with an existing doll of that type named Bild Lilli, Handler set about convincing her reluctant colleagues to develop their own prototype. Making her debut at the National Toy Fair in New York on March 9, 1959, the original 11-inch Barbie cost $3 and scared off most of Mattel’s usual distributors because of the doll’s adult-proportioned body parts. However, Barbie’s popularity began to pick up by summertime, and more than 300,000 dolls were sold before the end of the year. In 1961, she was joined by her longtime companion, Ken. The following year saw the introduction of the Barbie Dreamhouse (yeah, I’ll admit I played with my sisters…).  Over the years, Barbie has been a barometer of social change. Mattel has long sought to prop up a persona of ambition for its flagship figurine, giving her some 250 careers throughout her existence. Altogether, more than 1 billion individual Barbies have been sold since she made her National Toy Fair splash back in 1959.

Slinky

As the famous jingle goes: “What walks down stairs, alone or in pairs, and makes a slinkity sound? A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing! Everyone knows it’s Slinky.” But did you know the beloved toy was created by accident? In 1943, while stationed at a Philadelphia shipyard, U.S. Naval engineer Richard T. James was searching for a way to use springs to help sensitive equipment hold up in turbulent seas. One day, Richard knocked a spring off a shelf and watched as it gracefully “stepped” from a stack of books to a table and then to the floor, where it landed upright. James told the story to his wife, Betty, who wondered if the industrial spring could be transformed into a toy.  Richard soon took that idea and designed a machine to coil 80 feet of wire into a 2-inch spiral, which Betty named “Slinky,” inspired by the flowing movement and distinct sound of the spring in motion. The toy was introduced during the 1945 Christmas season at a Gimbels department store in Philadelphia. Priced at $1, the Slinky was an immediate hit, with 400 Slinkys selling out in just 90 minutes. In 1960, Slinky sales began to decline when Richard left his family to become a missionary in Bolivia. Betty took over the business, even mortgaging her home to keep it afloat. She reintroduced the Slinky at a 1963 New York Toy Show. The Slinky toy line expanded through the decades with plastic Slinkys and Slinky animals. In 1995, the Slinky Dog became a hot ticket item after it was featured in Pixar’s Toy Story, with 800,000 Slinky Dogs selling that year. Today, more than 300 million Slinkys have been sold, enough to circle the globe 150 times if stretched.

Candy Land

Candy Land is one of the top-selling children’s board games of all time, with an average of one million games sold a year. Players began traveling through the Peppermint Stick Forest and the Molasses Swamp in 1948, when retired schoolteacher Eleanor Abbott invented Candy Land in the polio ward of a San Diego, California, hospital. Abbott’s hand-crafted game became a welcome distraction for the sick children during their most difficult moments, inspiring Abbott to bring the game to Milton Bradley. It debuted on shelves in 1949, and Candy Land quickly became Milton Bradley’s highest-selling game. Marketed as the “sweet little game for sweet little folks,” Candy Land’s legacy is even sweeter because Abbot donated all the royalties she received from her invention to children’s charities.

Play-Doh

In the early 20th century, Cincinnati’s Kutol Products was known for its pliable compound used for cleaning coal soot from wallpaper. But by the 1950s, during the transition to cleaner heating fuels, there was far less demand for Kutol’s cleaner.  When Joseph McVicker was tasked with turning the company’s fortunes around, his sister-in-law, Kay Zufall, a nursery school teacher, read that wallpaper cleaner could be used as a type of modeling clay and tested the nontoxic material in her classroom. The children loved it, and Zufall suggested a new name for the product: Play-Doh.  Launched in 1956, the product was only available in white and would harden when left exposed to air. In 1957, chemist Dr. Tien Liu tinkered with the formula, allowing Play-Doh to remain pliable longer and make its color more vibrant. In 1958, sales began to soar when Play-Doh was featured in ads during the hit TV show Captain Kangaroo, and in 1960, the first Play-Doh Fun Factory set hit shelves. In 1965, McVicker sold his Play-Doh company to General Mills, with Hasbro taking the brand in 1991. Today, more than 3 billion cans of Play-Doh have been sold in more than 80 countries.

Nerf Balls

After the incredible success of the game Twister, its Inventor, Reyn Guyer, wanted to create another sensation. In 1968, Guyer and his team began work on a game they called “Caveman,” using “rocks” cut out of mattress foam, which were to be thrown at opponents. During development, Guyer thought the rocks would be better shaped into balls for safer indoor use. The original concept was scrapped in favor of making an indoor game using the newly named Muffball. Parker Brothers acquired Guyer’s ball and, in 1969, introduced the renamed Nerf ball in four colors: yellow, orange, red, and blue. While some think the name is an acronym for “non-expanding recreational foam,” Guyer says it came from the foam-padded roll bars on Jeeps, known as “NERF bars.” With ad copy of “throw it indoors; you can’t damage lamps or break windows. You can’t hurt babies or old people.” 4.5 million Nerf balls were sold in the first year of production.  In 1971, Parker Brothers expanded the product line to include a Super Nerf Ball and Nerf Disk. In 1972, Fred Cox, a former Minnesota Vikings field-goal kicker, came up with the idea of making a football out of foam, using an injection molder to give the soft ball a durable surface that could be gripped. Cox brought the invention to Parker Brothers, where it became the Nerf Football, which further propelled its international fame. Today, NERF is probably best known for its series of foam dart blasters, which debuted in 1992.