15 Facts About Silly Putty

Kristin Fawcett and Mental_Floss present 15 Facts About Silly Putty.  I loved playing with Silly Putty when I was a little kid (for about 10 minutes).  Here are three of my favorites…

3. SILLY PUTTY WAS FIRST MARKETED TOWARD ADULTS.
Silly Putty wasn’t a hit at the 1950 International Toy Fair. Still, buyers at Neiman-Marcus and Doubleday bookstores picked it up, and before long, the novelty item had received a shout-out in the New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town” section. Thanks to the New Yorker, Hodgson received more than 250,000 orders in three days.

But Silly Putty really took off once the savvy marketing man identified a more lucrative customer base: children. Hodgson created a TV ad campaign for Silly Putty that’s today credited as one of the first commercials for kids. The strategy paid off; when Hodgson died in 1976, his estate was worth $140 million. Today, it would be worth close to $590 million.

7. IT ONCE LIFTED INK OFF NEWSPRINT.
Before Photoshop, crafty kids could digitally manipulate and distort images by placing Silly Putty over newspaper, lifting it off, and transferring the ink onto a new surface. Sadly, this is no longer the case; today’s newspapers are printed using nontransferable ink. [This is what was fun for me.  Copying comic strip panels onto the Silly Putty. – Craig]

14. ITS PRICE HAS NEVER CHANGED.
Silly Putty was first sold in 1950 for $1. Today, it retails for the same price—but don’t think you’re scoring the same deal as your parents or grandparents. Silly Putty eggs used to contain 1-ounce lumps. Now, they hold less than .5 ounces.