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The 50 Year History of Play-Doh
tanagra writes "50 years ago U.S. Patent No. 3,167,440 was granted to Noah McVicker and Joseph McVicker for a "plastic modeling composition", (which was originally intended to be a wallpaper cleaner) now called Play-Doh. Little did they know that they had created the substance of childhood memories as well as many a childhood meal, unfortunately. Play-Doh persists as one of the most well known and popular children's "toys". As you attempt to clean your children's Play-Doh out of the carpet, the car, and the bathtub; take a look back with us at how it all got started."
D'OH!
First I recall such things, please open some tacks.
...home-made imitation playdoh?
Mom did.
It tasted salty.
You know, if that stuff has really been around that long, the least they could do now is make it taste better.
I'll stick with paste anyday.
khasim (12/9/06): In a blind taste test, more people preferred Coke over the Pepsi that I had previously pissed in.
or you have SO that does.
t ed_colo.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/05/03/playdoh_scen
cologne that smells like playdoh.
I remember quickly getting bored with the default shapes thingee you made by mashing the dough through this big plastic doohickey.
I remember eschewing this tool in favor of jury-rigging my own shapes.
Twenty-five years later, I do the same thing with photoshop.
Progress?
More powerful journalism from slashdot
So what is Play-Doh made of, you may ask? It goes without saying that the top secret formula is a closely guarded secret, so its exact ingredients and their proportions are not known to the average person. However, it is known to contain, among other things, wheat flour, water, salt, and some sort of petroleum distillate.
Sure, the commercial formula may be unknown by the general public, but we always had homemade playdoh that was just as good, and obviously not top-secret... I have the recipe somewhere...1. Create Wallpaper Cleaner 2. ??? 3. Profit!
No, Mr. Green. Communism is just a red herring.
Put the GOD DAMN CAP BACK ON.
In one of my college physics labs we used Play Doh for fine tuning our experiments with small mass additions. COLLEGE level physics class and without fail every student cant put the cap back on, and we all know how that dries out.
So I guess what Im saying is some of us have forgotten basic 5 year old common curtesy, But Play Doh is awesome.
Class Dismissed.
There is truth in humor.
Play-Doh is also one of my bedrock childhood smells, along with mimeographs, white housepaint and creosote. Ahh, new creosoted railroad ties, I can almost see the shadflies...
Sure, they may not have changed it much in 50 years, but just you wait. For the 50th anniversary they'll probably have new flavors: "Original", Barbeque, Zesty. Mmmmm.... Play'doh. :)
(I have never eaten Play'doh. Play'doh is a registered trademark of Hasbro, the same large corporation that rules over D&D. This speculation written to excite the imaginations of Slashdot users as well as give me some Karma points for being funny.)
I had a friend in college once pay me back with 10 cans of playdough. The only problem is that everyone wanted to play with my playdough. Damn roomates.
Home Made 'Play - Doh'
m
Ingredients
* 2 cups plain flour
* 1 cup salt
* 2 cups water
* 4 teaspoons cream of tartar
* 2 tablespoons cooking oil
* food colouring
Method
* Mix ingredients in a pan and stir while heating gently
* When dough is formed tip out and cool on grease proof paper
* When cool kneed until smooth
* Store in airtight container in a cool place
Another recipe. Including Silly Putty recipe. Hmmm
http://k2.kirtland.cc.mi.us/~balbachl/kidrecip.ht
I was just picking up hardened bits of play-doh off my kitchen floor. I was also trying to seperate the colors from the ball of white, red, and blue doh.
Then, there's the ball of brown marbled doh that is hopelessly mixed from all the colors in the play-doh fun pack. Of course, the brown doh works perfectly with the play-doh ground beef grinder and burger press. Mmmmmmm. Now, where's the red doh so I can make some doh tomatoes using the tomatoe slice press...
I've always wondered what goes into making that distinctive smell.
Better even than "that New Car Smell". And a lot cheaper.
To Copy from One is Plagiarism; To Copy from Many is Research.
""50 years ago U.S. Patent No. 3,167,440 was granted to Noah McVicker and Joseph McVicker for a "plastic modeling composition", (which was originally intended to be a wallpaper cleaner) now called Play-Doh."
Let's pretend this patent just appeared on the Slasdot front page. Is it valid?
"So what is Play-Doh made of, you may ask? It goes without saying that the top secret formula is a closely guarded secret, so its exact ingredients and their proportions are not known to the average person."
#1. If it was granted a US patent, then this information *must* be public, or else the patent could have been challenged.
#2. The patent expired in the mid 70s. If a reformulation is a trade secret that's one thing, but saying that the composition of the product was secret in 1956 shows a poor understanding of what a patent is.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I always thought that Japanese udon noodles were he inspiration for Play-Doh. Since the dough for them molds and even smells exactly like the stuff. (Don't taste too much better either.)
I'm sick and tired of all those slashdot articles that extol the virtues of Legos in a child's intellectual development, and how it trained generations of engineers, architects and programmers to think logically, discretely, and modularly.
Finally, we give praise to the medium that created all of us Liberal Arts majors: Play-Doh. Folks, it doesn't get any fuzzier than this stuff. There is no formula, design, or strategy. Anything you make can be anything you want; a bird is a blob is a bunny. Anything goes -- nobody can say you are wrong. Take your masterpiece and pinch it here and there and its totally different. What an exercise in hermeneutical phenomology! It's everything yet nothing at once! Take all the colors, mix them together, and you get a wonderful, muddied brown. Who can argue with that?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
The kid loves the stuff, and it's like $2 for a couple of cans. The "Fun Factory" is still under $5 (and includes a can or two). Great stuff.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
"Some sort of petroleum distillate," apparently.
Mmm... petroleum distillate. How comforting, and assuredly non-carcinogenic.
No, Mr. Green. Communism is just a red herring.
No, actually he was eating flour, water, and salt.
I always thought that Japanese udon noodles were he inspiration for Play-Doh.
Basically you're right. Just add some mineral oil to get Play Doh.
Roll it over your wallpaper. The mineral oil disolves the paste haze and the dough picks it up, just like cleaning a "bread" board used to knead noodle dough on, except for a bread board you'd use a bit of vegetable oil instead of mineral oil.
KFG
It seems like such an odd idea...... I'm curious if it actually works...
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
This must have been when I was 3-4 years old. My sisters and I got the playdoh fun factory pump thingy for the holidays. We pressed out a few odd things, and then I headed to the head. I remember there being some simularities to the stuff later dubbed no-play-doh.
you were either eating Land'o'Lakes cottage cheese, or merengue...man-made merengue.
he was eating what?!??!?!?!?!?
How exactly does one eat a Latin dance style?
He got that way after suffering (as a young child) a very specific brain injury as a result of a disease. No mention of any radioactive poisonous spiders, however.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
...snakes and twigs'n'berries.
How exactly does one eat a Latin dance style?
With flair, of course.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Ponies. Preferrably pink. OMG! Ponies!!!
Good, inexpensive web hosting
The patent, like all patents, is published online. Go to: http://patft1.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm And search for patent 3,167,440. It's four pages long. The ingredients are listed, though the exact proportions are not (several examples are given). Warning: Firefox made me install QuickTime to view the scanned images of the patent.
The McVickers invented it in 1956. Patent 3,167,440 was granted on January 26, 1965.
"Play-Doh celebrates its 50th birthday this year, and Hasbro has teamed up with Demeter to offer a limited edition fragrance to mark the event"
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals...
Article: The 50 Year History of Play-Doh
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't patents 'expire' after 50 years?
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
Or perhaps 'The PIMP' (Plastic Immersive Modeling Product)
Or "PDNC" (Play Doh's Not Clay)
Clearly they needed someone like RMS back in the 50s to help them out.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Oh noooooo. Mr. Sluggo is in charge of the celebration....
OOooooooo
I'm a USian, but my Dad grew up in the UK. He got me plasticine insted of Play-doh growing up, and when I'd go to a friend's house and try to work with Play-doh, I just found it frustrating! Aside from drying out, you can't make sufficient detail because it's too crumbly.
Admittedly you can't dry plasticine at all, so if you want something permanent you're out of luck. But just for pure creativity, I got to give props to plasticine. And it's also cool because it led me into animation, and film.
Cheers.
The stuff at school would last for ages. I always hated when my play doh dried out and I try in vein to add something to bring it back to health.
In my college physics lab we used play-doh as a resistor - figuring out how resistance changed with varying surface areas and the like. Also measured whether there were differences in resistance among different colors of play-doh. Needless to say the play-doh got pretty fried at the points where you connected it to the rest of the circuit. Of course the play-doh was used more for constructing artistic masterpieces than using it as a resistor!
:x :x :x
I had my final earlier tonight too - that was rough - and no mention of play-doh resistors - in fact very little problems dealing with dc circuits at all, the only stuff I was really good at!
Now, why am I paying 40,000 bucks a year for this
I just happened to have some play doh here at my desk, so I started playing with it. I guess to celebrate the 50 years, woopie!
When I was a little man,
Playdoh came in a little can
I was Star Wars' biggest fan
Now I'm stuck without a plan
G. I. Joe was an Action Man
Shaggy drove the mystery van
Devo was my favourite band
Take me back to my happy land!
-- The Aquabats, Playdoh. Available NOW at your local P2P app!
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
You just got to love stuff like this:
So what is Play-Doh made of, you may ask? It goes without saying that the top secret formula is a closely guarded secret
Well, if it was patented, then by definition it's not at all a secret. It's about as public as it can get.
Furthermore, it sounds highly unlikely that a substance that ends up in infants mouths on a regular basis has any ingredients that are secret.
Yeah, okay, I'm nitpickin', still, sounds like a press release to me.
Great to see that link comes from a Michigan school teachers page on craft.
I asked a West Michigan school teacher about this tonight and she said "I have books and books about this stuff but it does not matter anymore."
The No Child Left Behind Act does not allow "play" in classrooms. Harcourt's academic-based learning structure, with a dire emphasis on "rote learning" and "test passing" does not allow time for play... nevermind if it has a Doh, or a Ray or Me after it.
50 years of Play-Doh. Great. We now have a generation of kids growing up who will not even know what it means.
cheers
front
My Dad was in the armed forces and he claims that plastic explosives smell exactly like Play Doh. Does anyone know if something similar to Play Doh is used as a medium for liquid explosives (like nitroglycerine) or is the almond smell just a coincidence?
You can also use it to take Mary Worth's smug sense of self-satisfaction down a peg ;)
Hehe, I remember Play-doh!!! Man, those were the days :) I used to have this 'doll' type thing, and you'd take it's head off, fill it with play-doh, put its head back on and squeeze its hand and play-doh would come oozing out of its head like hair!!! That was cool :)
Chookas,
A number of nitro compounds have an almond like smell. It's a long time since I did organic chemistry but if I recall right, nitrotoluene has just such a smell. Someone better informed please confirm/deny.
Pining for the fjords
When I was young and poor, my Mother made home made play-doh out of flour, salt and food colouring (and probably some other ingredients I've forgotten....), it actually worked better than the real play-doh as well. Unless you got it wet :)
Anyway, I spent 4 hours yesterday making play-doh animals with my own children. It doesn't go beep, it doesn't required batteries and they'll probably be doing the same thing when they have kids of there own just like me. I can't wait until they're both old enough for lego!
And now, let us pause for a moment to be thankful playdoh was patented, rather than copyrighted. That patent has been expired for decades. Had copyright applied to playdoh, the stuff would still be proprietary.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
They were going to take the "ugh" out of "dough", but that left them with "Play Do ", which most of the focus group pronounced "play doo". Ironically, the group subjects didn't mind playing with "play doo" until they brought out the "play doo pumper"...
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The GP posts a link to a play doh cologne site, the parent says it makes him think of pedophiles, and it's off topic? For mods who don't get it, take 3 seconds to think about pedophiles, kids, and cologne that smells like paly doh.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned one of the best uses for Play-Doh, the game Claydonia from Dragon magazine. Details:m l
h tml
http://www.lclark.edu/~gamesoc/games/claydonia.ht
In a recent episode of "How It's Made" on the Science channel they showed how they make a Play-Doh like product called Tutti-Frutti. This clay has various scents added to so it can smell like candy or fruit. It is made by:
http://www.bojeux.com/ANG/Products/section/tutti.
They don't say what it tastes like though.
You can't model a breast with Legos.
I don't know why, but when I was a kid I stuffed playdoh in my ear, I had to go to the doctor to get it all out. I also suffered a middle ear infection in the ear several years later, and then finally losing hearning in that ear when i was 23. I know the hearning loss isnt related (Its nerve damage, the hammer and drum are a-ok). It is just odd that I suffered these things in that ear.
All the big kids are playing with polymer clay now.
You can now buy Play-Doh Cologne I hear it's Micheal Jackson's favorite fragrance...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Seriously. Not trolling here. Play Doh really sucks and I'm amazed it ever became as popular as it has. Maybe it's the fact that a kid can eat it without serious health consequences. But as far as a good product? The stuff was too soft to model anything really good, and dried out.
The best re-usable modelling clay was and always shall be Plastecine.