What’s stretchy and bouncy and comes in an egg? Silly question. Here’s one of Uncle John’s favorite toy stories: the origin of Silly Putty.
During World War II, Japanese invasions of rubber-producing countries in the Far East vastly reduced the availability of rubber in the U.S. In the early 1940’s, the U.S. War Production Board asked General Electric for help in developing a cheap substitute that could be used in the production of boots and tires.
G.E. hired an engineer named James Wright to head the project.
In 1943 Wright accidentally dropped some boric acid into silicone oil. Result: he created an unusual compound that stretched further and bounced higher than rubber. Not only that, it was impervious to mold, didn’t decay the way rubber did, and stayed stretchy and bouncy in extreme temperatures. The only problem was that neither scientists nor the military could find a good use for the stuff. In 1945, G.E. mailed samples to scientists all over the world, to see if they could figure out what to do with it.
An advertising copyrighter named Paul Hodgson was at a party where one of the samples was being passed around. No one was coming up with any scientific uses for it, but they sure were having fun playing with it. To Hodgson it was clear: This was a toy.
It just happened that Hodgson was in the process of creating a catalog for a local toy store. He convinced the owner of the shop to feature what he dubbed “Bouncing Putty.” It outsold everything else in the catalog (except a 50-cent box of crayons). Still, the store owner wasn’t interested in manufacturing or marketing it, so Hodgson bought the rights and went into business himself. He renamed the product Silly Putty.
In 1950 Hodgson bought 21 pounds of the putty for $147 and hired a Yale college student to cut it up into one-ounce balls and put it into plastic eggs. Sales were slow at first, but Silly Putty’s big break came several months later when it was mentioned in The New Yorker magazine. Hodgson’s phone started ringing off the hook. He received 250,000 orders in only four days. A few years later, Silly Putty was racking up sales of over six million dollars annually—Hodgson was a millionaire.
The average reader can read 275 words per minute.
Today, Binney & Smith, makers of Crayola, own the rights to Silly Putty and produce about 500 pounds of it every day. Over 300 million eggs have been sold since its inception—enough to form a ball of Silly Putty the size of the Goodyear Blimp. It now comes in 16 different colors including glow-in-the-dark, glitter, and hot flourescent colors. In 2000 Metallic Gold Silly Putty was introduced to celebrate the toy’s 50th anniversary. There’s even Silly Putty that changes color depending on the temperature of your hands. In 2001 Silly Putty was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame, taking its place beside such classics as G.I. Joe, Lincoln Logs, and Monopoly.
• In 2000 Binny & Smith sponsored a “Silliest Uses for Silly Putty Contest.” The winner: replace your stockbroker by throwing a ball of Silly Putty at the stock page in the newspaper and investing in whatever stock it lifts from the newsprint. (Second place went to the woman who suggested it could be used to form a fake swollen gland to get out of an unwanted date.)
• One of the original Silly Putty eggs is on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.
• Silly Putty cost a dollar in 1950 when it was first introduced, and still cost a dollar in 1976 when Hodgson died. Price in 2002: still under $2.
• Why did Hodgson pack Silly Putty in eggs? It was Easter.
• In 1968 Apollo 8 astronauts used a new adhesive to fasten down tools during their voyage into weightlessness: Silly Putty.
• In 1989 a grad student at Alfred University wanted to find out what would happen to a ball of Silly Putty dropped from a roof. He dropped a 100-lb. ball from the top of a three-story building. The ball first bounced about eight feet into the air, but it shattered into pieces on the second bounce.
In 2001 Indian railroads cited 14 million people for riding without a ticket.