70 Fun Facts About Toy

Which department store hosted the first public demonstration of the Slinky in November 1945?

Richard James set up an inclined plane in the toy department on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and the whole batch sold out.

How many coils did the original Slinky have?

The first ones were two and a half inches tall, made of blue-black Swedish steel and sold for a dollar each.

Who created the Barbie doll?

She named the doll after her daughter Barbara; Ken, introduced two years later, was named after her son Kenneth.

Barbie was based on which German doll that its creator bought on a trip to Europe?

The German original began as a risqué newspaper cartoon character sold to adults in tobacco shops and bars.

In the 1960s Random House novels, what is Barbie's full name?

The books gave her parents George and Margaret and a hometown of Willows, Wisconsin.

The name Lego comes from a Danish phrase meaning what?

Ole Kirk Christiansen adopted the name in 1934, fifteen years before the company moulded its first plastic bricks.

Lego's interlocking bricks were inspired by self-locking bricks patented by which English toymaker?

His Kiddicraft bricks dated from 1939; the Danish company began making its own version a decade later.

In what year did Lego produce its first minifigures?

The little yellow figures arrived nearly thirty years after the brick itself and are now a staple of almost every set.

Play-Doh was first manufactured in the 1930s as what household product?

The soot-scrubbing putty lost its market when homes switched from coal to gas heat, so a Cincinnati soap firm rebranded it for schools.

Which children's TV shows carried Play-Doh commercials that drove sales in 1957?

The compound's salt content was also reduced so models could dry without losing their colour.

What was the original name of the puzzle Ernő Rubik invented in 1974?

It was licensed to Ideal Toy Corp in 1980, sold roughly 500 million units and entered the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2014.

Roughly how many possible arrangements does a standard 3x3 Rubik's Cube have?

The exact figure is 43,252,003,274,489,856,000, and every one of them can be solved in 20 moves or fewer.

The Etch A Sketch was invented by André Cassagnes, an electrician from which country?

He named it L'Écran Magique, the Magic Screen; the Ohio Art Company launched it in America in July 1960 for $2.99.

What substance on the back of an Etch A Sketch screen does the stylus scrape away to draw a line?

The left knob moves the stylus horizontally and the right one vertically, and shaking the toy recoats the glass.

Which toy was the first ever advertised on television?

The 1952 kit was just plastic face parts with pushpins; families supplied their own real potato until a plastic body arrived in 1964.

Why did Hasbro start including a plastic spud body in its face-parts kit in 1964?

Mrs. Potato Head had joined the line back in 1953, along with a car and boat trailer.

Cabbage Patch Kids grew out of the hand-stitched Little People dolls sold by which Georgia art student?

The dolls were never 'sold' but 'adopted', complete with birth certificate, from a converted clinic called Babyland General Hospital.

Which company first mass-produced Cabbage Patch Kids in 1982?

The line set toy-industry sales records three years running, and Christmas 1983 brought scenes of shoppers fighting over them.

Tickle Me Elmo retailed for $28.99 in 1996 but was resold by scalpers for up to how much?

The giggling mechanism began life as a chimp toy, and the project was briefly a Tickle Me Taz until the Sesame Street plush licence came through.

The Furby, released in 1998, starts life speaking only which made-up language?

It gradually swaps in English words, which is why the NSA reportedly banned Furbies from its buildings in 1999.

More than how many Furbies were sold in the first three years of production?

Its speaking abilities were eventually translated into 17 languages, and a colour-LCD-eyed Furby Connect followed in 2016.

The name Tamagotchi is a portmanteau of the Japanese words for egg and what?

The two creators shared the tongue-in-cheek 1997 Ig Nobel Prize for economics for diverting millions of work hours into virtual pet care.

Silly Putty was created during World War II research into a substitute for what material?

Nobody could find a practical use until marketer Peter Hodgson packed one-ounce blobs into plastic eggs and sold them for a dollar.

Silly Putty went into lunar orbit with the crew of which mission in 1968?

The astronauts used it to hold tools in place in zero gravity; today the trademark belongs to Crayola.

Who came up with Hot Wheels after watching his son play with Matchbox cars?

He wanted exaggerated hot-rod styling with fat rear tyres and flame paint; the first car off the line was a dark blue Custom Camaro.

The first batch of Hot Wheels cars released in 1968 is known by collectors as what?

The metallic Spectraflame paint and red-striped tyres of the early cars make them some of the most sought-after diecast in the world.

The 1964 launch of G.I. Joe led to the coining of which now-universal toy term?

The original 12-inch line represented four branches of the U.S. armed forces; the 3.75-inch Cobra-fighting relaunch came in 1982.

In the United Kingdom, the original G.I. Joe line was licensed to Palitoy and sold under what name?

The British figures used the same moulds as the American ones, and later took on the Cobra storyline too.

The teddy bear is named after which U.S. president?

The name came from a 1902 Mississippi hunting trip on which he refused to shoot a bear that had been tied to a tree for him.

Which German firm produced a stuffed bear in 1902, almost the same moment as the American teddy bear?

The bear was shown at the 1903 Leipzig Toy Fair, where a New York buyer ordered 3,000 of them.

Beanie Babies are stuffed with what instead of conventional soft filling?

The under-stuffing lets them pose, and the deliberate 'retirement' of characters turned them into the first internet-fuelled collecting craze.

How many original Beanie Babies were in the 1993 launch line-up?

They included Legs the Frog, Squealer the Pig, Patti the Platypus and Brownie the Bear, who was later renamed Cubbie.

Which California toy company popularised the plastic hula hoop in 1958?

The idea came from Australian children twirling bamboo hoops; the name borrows from the Hawaiian dance.

The Frisbee got its name from a company that made what?

Yale students tossed the empty tins from the Frisbie Pie Company; the disc itself had been sold as the Pluto Platter until 1957.

Who designed the Pluto Platter in 1955, the ancestor of every modern flying disc?

He and his wife had been throwing pie tins on a California beach since 1937 and realised people would pay for something that flew better.

How many 3-D picture pairs are on a standard View-Master reel?

The system launched in 1939 as a grown-up souvenir format for scenic views, and there are more than 4,300 different reels.

The yo-yo is an ancient toy documented since about which year?

Ancient Greek vase paintings show it in use, and in the 18th century it was called a bandalore.

The word yo-yo probably comes from a language of which country?

Filipino immigrant Pedro Flores opened a yo-yo factory in Santa Barbara in 1928, and Duncan bought his company and its name in 1932.

The Nerf ball was named after what?

The inventors' in-house name was rather ruder, and Parker Brothers marketed the 1970 ball as the world's first official indoor ball.

Which Vikings kicker helped bring the future Nerf ball to Parker Brothers in 1969?

The company studied the indoor football game he pitched with inventor Reyn Guyer and kept only the foam ball.

Super Soaker inventor Lonnie Johnson had worked as an engineer for which organisations?

He got the idea while testing a refrigeration system in his bathroom and built the prototype from PVC pipe and a soda bottle.

Under what name did the first Super Soaker go on sale in 1990?

The 1991 rename and a TV ad campaign moved two million water guns, and the brand has since passed a billion dollars in sales.

Where was the memory game Simon launched in 1978?

Its four tones were inspired by the notes of a bugle, and the whole thing was a cleaned-up answer to Atari's arcade game Touch Me.

What is the nickname of the patient on the Operation game board?

Student inventor John Spinello sold the prototype rights to Marvin Glass in 1964 for $500 and a promised job that never materialised.

The answers inside a Magic 8 Ball are printed on a floating die with how many faces?

The icosahedron floats in about 100 ml of alcohol dyed dark blue; the toy began as a 1946 fortune-telling tube called the Syco-Slate.

The Magic 8 Ball got its billiard-ball look in 1950 at the request of which company?

The Chicago firm commissioned it as a promotional item; the ball's inventor had been inspired by his clairvoyant mother's spirit-writing device.

The original 1963 Easy-Bake Oven was heated by what?

The idea came from a sales manager watching New York street vendors bake pretzels; half a million ovens sold in the first year.

Stretch Armstrong is a latex figure filled with a gel similar to which kitchen ingredient?

The 1976 figure stretches from about 15 inches to four or five feet, and the instructions said tears could be patched with an adhesive bandage.

Troll dolls were created in the 1950s by Thomas Dam, a woodcutter from which country?

He carved little figures for his own children when the bakery he ran fell on hard times; DreamWorks bought the brand in 2013.

Lincoln Logs were invented around 1916 by the son of which famous architect?

The interlocking design echoed the earthquake-resistant log foundations of his father's Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.

Radio Flyer wagons were named in tribute to which two famous men of the 1930s?

Founder Antonio Pasin arrived from Italy at 16 and first built wooden wagons to carry his tools around Chicago.

Tonka trucks take their name from a Dakota Sioux word meaning what?

The company began as Mound Metalcraft, a garden-tool maker in Mound, Minnesota, near Lake Minnetonka.

The two boxers in Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots are Red Rocker and who?

The 1964 Marx toy is descended from a 1948 coin-op arcade machine called Silver Gloves.

Kenner won the licence for Star Wars action figures in 1976 after which rival company turned it down?

Kenner could not make figures in time for Christmas 1977 and famously sold an empty-box Early Bird certificate instead.

What was Mattel's first successful toy, in 1947?

It was called the Uke-A-Doodle; the company name itself blends founder Harold Matson's surname with Elliot Handler's first name.

Hasbro is a syllabic abbreviation of what original company name?

Three Polish-Jewish brothers founded it in Providence, Rhode Island in 1923 to sell textile remnants, then pencil cases and school supplies.

The Transformers toy line began in 1984 when Hasbro rebranded robot toys from which Japanese company?

The Diaclone and Micro Change figures got a new backstory written by Hasbro's partners at Marvel Comics.

Since 2002, in which city has the National Toy Hall of Fame been located?

It moved to The Strong museum of play in 2002 after outgrowing its first home in Oregon; 91 toys had been inducted by 2025.

Which was the first electric toy inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame, in 2006?

Lionel began in 1900 as an electrical novelties firm making fans and lights, and at its 1950s peak sold $25 million of trains a year.

How many peg colours does a classic Lite-Brite set contain?

Pushing the pegs through the black paper punches out the template letters, so each sheet can only be used once.

Chatty Cathy, Mattel's 1960 pull-string doll, spoke one of how many random phrases?

Her mouth never moved; the voice belonged to June Foray, better known as Rocky the Flying Squirrel.

A Koosh ball is made of roughly how many soft filaments radiating from its core?

Inventor Scott Stillinger patented it in 1987 and named it after the sound it made landing in his hand.

American Girl dolls were introduced in 1986 by the Pleasant Company, founded in which state?

Founder Pleasant Rowland sold only by catalogue at first; Mattel bought the company for $700 million in 1998.

Polly Pocket's original tiny playsets from 1989 were built into what everyday object?

Bluebird Toys of Swindon, England licensed the concept; loose magnets later forced a recall of millions of sets.

Crayola's first box of wax crayons went on sale in which year?

The name combines the French word for chalk with 'ola' from oleaginous; the company has belonged to Hallmark Cards since 1984.

Matchbox cars were introduced in 1953 by which British die-casting company?

The name came from the match-sized boxes they were sold in; the brand ended up owned by its old rival's parent, Mattel, in 1997.

Erector Sets were patented and first sold in 1913 by A. C. Gilbert of which Connecticut city?

The trademark passed to Meccano in 1990, uniting the two great rival metal construction sets under one owner.

The modern pogo stick was patented in 1920 in which country?

Max Pohlig and Ernst Gottschall called their invention a 'spring end hopping stilt'.

The name of the block-stacking game Jenga comes from a word meaning 'to build' in which language?

Creator Leslie Scott was born in Tanganyika and raised speaking English and Swahili before her family moved to Ghana.

British engineer Denys Fisher built the prototypes of Spirograph using pieces from which construction toy?

He showed it at the 1965 Nuremberg toy fair, and Kenner brought it to the US the following year; it was Toy of the Year in 1967.