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In 2003, the Toy Industry Association named Play-Doh as one of the 100 most memorable and most creative toys of the 20th century. Courtesy of ifitshipitshere.blogspot.com
Hey kids! I’ve got an idea – let’s have fun with wallpaper cleaner!
As ... un-fun as that may sound, it’s pretty much what we were and are doing when we play with that squishy, non-toxic generation crosser, Play-Doh.
In the 1930s, a lot of houses had wallpaper, and it was the vintage variety, pre-vinyl. Dirt built up on it pretty easily, and two gentlemen in Cincinnati named Joe McVicker and Bill Rhodenbaugh made good money selling Kutal (pronounced “cut-all”) wallpaper cleaner.
Without Kay Zufall's creativity, we'd have played with Rainbow Modeling Compound. Courtesy of theplaymakers.com
Looks like fun, doesn't it? Courtesy of factfixx.com
Play-Doh was originally marketed in this canister in the 1950s. Courtesy of therapyfunzone.net
But the 1950s came along, and so did vinyl wallpaper. Soap and water did the job of Kutal, and sales plummeted. The partners stopped manufacturing it. Well, sort of.
Back in Dover, there was a nursery school teacher named Kay Zufall. Writing in “Inventing in New Jersey,” Linda Barth notes that Zufall had seen a newspaper article about making art projects with the old wallpaper cleaner. Not being manufactured anymore, it was hard to find, but as invariably happens in these stories, her local hardware store had one can left in stock.
Her students loved it. They rolled it, kneaded it and used cookie cutters to make shapes with it. And before you think Zufall was putting the children at risk (likely the very first thing that would come up these days), she already knew the doughy substance’s composition -- flour, water, salt, boric acid and mineral oil – was non-toxic ...
... because manufacturer McVicker was Zufall’s brother-in-law. Don’t you love how these things work out?
The rest is history. Zufall convinced the men to once again manufacture the product, only this time as a child’s toy. And before you think her only contribution was something someone else “might” have come up with as well, consider that McVicker and Rhodenbaugh’s name for the new toy was going to be “Rainbow Modeling Compound,” until Zufall and her husband, Bob, put their thinking caps on and came up with a more kid-friendly name: Play-Doh.
The Cincinnati partners did come up with an ideal marketing approach, convincing Bob Keeshan – you know him better as Captain Kangaroo – to use Play-Doh on his TV show once a week in return for a percentage of sales. Sales skyrocketed, and remain strong to the present day; Play-Doh was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1998.
Kay Zufall, who could very easily be called the inventor of Play-Doh, died on Jan. 18 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. Though she never made any money from Play-Doh, she and her husband, urologist Robert Zufall, founded the Zufall Health Center which provides affordable and essential medical treatment to the working poor, uninsured and underserved residents of Dover.
Which was more fun – squeezing Play-Doh through the contraptions designed to make shapes with it, or coming up with your own sculptures? On a scale of 1 to 10, what was the disappointment level of opening an old can of Play-Doh and finding it a solid lump?