Toy inventors of the fifties have many lessons to teach in creativity, marketing and perseverance. The toys they created are world famous still today.
Top Ten Toys of Yesterday: 1950s:
1. Barbie
The world’s most famous doll made her debut in 1959 at the American Toy Fair in New York City. Ruth Handler, co-founder of Mattel, invented Barbie, said to have been named after her daughter. Barbie was an instant hit, changing the focus of Mattel from photo frames to toy making.
Over the years, Barbie has held hundreds of jobs, over gone dozens of make-overs, experienced Countries and cultures around the globe and made several friends along the way.
2. Play-Doh
Noah and Joseph McVicker created a non-toxic reusable wallpaper cleaner in 1955. That same year, a relative and school teacher asked about a safe modeling clay substitute. Joseph sent her a sample of the clay wallpaper cleaner he co-invented. The kids loved it. The next year, the brothers created Rainbow Crafts Company to manufacture the product. They named it Play-Doh. Due to the instant success of the clay, the Fun Factory accessory playset was introduced in 1960.
Initially offered only in white, today Play-Doh is sold in a vast array of colors and it is still a favorite non-toxic arts and crafts toy for young children.
3. Frisbee
Frisbees come with a fun and interesting history of two vastly different ideas coming into one great product.
Idea 1:
In 1870, a Connecticut pie baker, William Russel Frisbie, came up with a fantastic marketing plan. He had his family’s name impressed on the bottom of the reusable tin plates his company sold their pies in. The plan was that each time the pie pan was about to be used, the housewife would see the name Frisbie and think how much easier it would be to simply buy a pie. The family business spread throughout that State over the course of many years. In the 1940s, students at Yale were the first to began sailing the tins through the air and catching them.
Idea 2:
In the 1950s, Walter Frederick Morrison designed a saucer disc out of his enthusiasm for flying saucers. He sold his idea of playing catch with these flying discs to Wham-O who began marketing the product.
They Join Into One Great Product:
The President of Wham-O was doing a promotional marketing tour of college campuses where he encountered the pie tin tossing at Yale. Upon returning to California, he renamed the California flying saucer after the Connecticut pie plate. The second “i” in Frisbie was changed to an “e” to avoid potential legal difficulties.
4. Tonka Trucks
Tonka trucks are the result of turning a failure around. A group of teachers from Minnesota failed when attempting to make and sell garden tools. Upon that failure, they decided to use the left over materials to make toys. The toy truck they made was named after the lake Minnetonka. The success of those toy trucks was phenomenal.
Over thirty million Tonka trucks have been sold in the United States. The signature yellow Tonka truck is still an outstanding success.
5. Matchbox Cars
Matchbox Cars are a result of Show and Tell. Creator, Jack Odell, made a miniature brass model of a Road Roller for his daughter to take to school. He placed the car into a matchbox when he sent her to school with it and the matchbox made the toy a huge hit. Every child wanted a miniature car that was small enough it would fit inside a matchbox.
Today, over one hundred million Matchbox Cars are sold each and every year.
6. Yahtzee
A wealthy Canadian couple created The Yacht Game for their friends to enjoy during cruises on their private yacht. The couple’s friends loved the game so much that they each wanted their own copy. This prompted the couple to approach a toy maker, Edwin Lowe, to commission copies to give as gifts. Lowe loved the game upon seeing it and bought the rights. In 1956, the couple, who have chosen to remain unknown, received the first one thousand game sets in exchange for the rights to their creation. That year, Lowe changed the name from The Yacht Game to Yahtzee.
7. Skateboards
Taking an idea that had been around for twenty years, the modern skateboard was first manufactured in 1958. Skateboards were created as a way to surf outside of the water and kids began attaching roller skates to flat boards in the 1930s.
Today, skateboarding is as much a sport as surfing.
8. Hula Hoops
Hula Hoops have been around for over a thousand years in one form or another. Legend tends to point to Egypt as the origin of the toy.
Modern Hula Hoops were born from a trip to Australia by a friend of the founders of Wham-O. Arthur Melin and Richard Knerr’s friend told them about seeing children twirling bamboo hoops around their waist for exercise during school. An Australian company had just begun selling those wooden hoops in stores when their friend visited the Country.
Melin and Knerr manufactured a plastic hoop in a several bright colors the following year. During the first year of production, 1958, fifteen million Hula Hoops were sold!
9. Mr. Potato Head
Mr. Potato Head is a lesson in perseverance. Creator, George Lerner, designed and produced a set of plastic face pieces that acted as push pins for children to push into fruits and vegetables. His idea was that children enjoy playing with food and his reusable pieces would allow for endless creativity. Toy companies declined because they felt that parents would not be interested in wasting a piece of food as a toy, especially with the post World War II resource conservation attitudes still prevalent.
Finally, Lerner decided to sell the toy for five thousand dollars to a cereal company. The cereal company wanted to use the pieces as giveaways in their cereal boxes.
Lerner was not willing to give up on his idea and he kept looking, in spite of selling the rights. His perseverance paid off when he was given an opportunity by the small manufacturer, Hasbro, to give his idea a real try. He bought back his rights from the cereal company for seven thousand dollars.
Hasbro introduced Mr. Potato Head in 1952 through television advertising. The original Mr. Potato Head was a collection of parts with which children would use real potatoes to make countless faces. It was eight years before the plastic potato body was included.
Mr. Potato Head became the spokespud for the American Cancer Society’s annual Great American Smokeout campaign, turning over his pipe to US Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop in 1987.
10. PEZ
Originally created as a mint dispenser in 1927, PEZ was designed by the Austrian candy maker, Edward Haas. An employee of PEZ, Oskar Uxa, changed the design of the dispenser to look more like a cigarette lighter. It was not until 1955 that the company decided to place heads on the dispensers and market them to children.
Today, PEZ dispensers are a huge collectible item with new designs coming out all the time.
