Free THE STORY OF MONOPOLY, SlLLY PUTTY, BINGO, TWISTER, FRISSBEE, SCRABBLE, ETCETERA by Marvin Kaye

With One Moving Part
    It started by mistake in a New Haven laboratory, and turned into a bonanza by sheer chance on New York’s Fifth Avenue. There has never been a more accidental toy.
    Maybe it had to be. Who could have sat down and deliberately designed a piece of pink goo that stretches like taffy, shatters when struck sharply with a hammer, picks up newsprint and photos in color, molds like clay, flows like molasses, and—when rolled into a ball—bounces like mad?
    It’s the ultimate plaything: unstructured, nontoxic, fascinating to all ages, harmless to child and furniture alike, with more play value built into it by nature than countless re-search-and-development engineers have been able to pack into myriads of high-price toys.
    The prodigy is Silly Putty, still as unique and popular today as it was almost twenty-five years ago, when it was accidentally developed in a General Electric research lab.
    “There were a lot of little toy companies like us in the old days,” reminisced Peter Hodgson, the goateed president of Silly Putty. “We were all scramblers and could only afford to rent a small room to show our wares at the Toy Fair.” When Hodgson first introduced the stuff, many buyers tried to talk him out of selling it, predicting that the firm wouldn’t last a year. But twelve months later, at the next Toy Fair, the same buyers would walk back into the Silly Putty showroom and wonder that Hodgson and his crazy product were back for another season. Then they’d ask whether the toy was still being sold for only a dollar.
    “Well,” grinned Hodgson, “it’s nearly a quarter of a century later, and we’re still around, and we still sell for only a buck ... so / think we’ve got hold of something good.”
    The publisher of a leading toy trade publication laughs at Hodgson’s understatement. “Something good! Pete adores Silly Putty. He’s fascinated to death by it. Can you think of any other toy company that, after two decades, still makes only one item?”
    Silly Putty did try to introduce a new toy a few seasons back. It was called “Moonshine” and it stretched like taffy, broke when struck, picked up newsprint, molded and flowed and bounced. The only difference between it and regular Silly Putty was that Moonshine was lunar green, rather than pink, had a slightly heavier consistency, and glowed in the dark. But after some unexciting preliminary test-marketing, Moonshine was discontinued.
    Such conservatism of line development is unique in the American toy industry, where most companies create hordes of new items each year. Others will put almost anything in a box, but not Hodgson. Caution and conservatism are his watchwords when it comes to marketing Silly Putty and expanding the product line. “We may not be Mattel,” Hodgson explained, “but we do have our peace of mind.”
    The firm could still become a multiline operation, but if that ever happens, it will be only after Hodgson conducts exhaustive marketing tests and utilizes other sophisticated procedures. He feels his first responsibility is to get Silly Putty into as many homes as he can; and even after all the years it’s been around, there is still room for new sales.
    It is generally recognized that the moldable goo is unique in the way it works. While there have been numerous imitations, none of them has solved the technical bugs which Silly Putty engineers ironed out long ago.
    How does it work? The company’s chief engineer. Hubert “Dixie” Dean, calls it a self-contradiction. Chemically it is a liquid, but it resembles a solid. The molecular structure will stretch if the substance is slowly pulled. But if tugged, it snaps apart. The toy has a rebound capacity of 75 to 80 percent (a rubber ball has only about a 50 percent bounce-back). On top of all that, it picks up newsprint, often sharper than the original. A silicon derivative, Silly Putty won’t rot; it can withstand temperatures from —70 degrees Fahrenheit to hundreds