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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!
...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?
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.
Indeed. I can also recall some other commercial substances that tried to immitate Play-Doh. Unfortunately, most of them did not have the same characteristics and seemed to be harder to handle and aswell more messy.
The hip way to get your IP. No ads, ever.
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.
Shouldn't the original formula be in the patent somewhere? It's not like this is a bogus software patent we're talking about here. Especially when you consider that the stated purpose of patents is to give inventors a temporary monopoly in exchange for publishing how to make the invention (in the patent filing itself).
If not, then the whole system sounds like it (the patent system) was always a scam and society is no worse off by not granting patents since no new knowledge is gained.
When I was a kid, I used to watch ZOOM and in their ZOOM DO segment, they showed us how to make play-doh. I made it and colored it green.
Played with it for a few days, not as pliable as the original stuff but good enough and it got more playtime because we made it.
Put it in its tupperware container in the dark pantry and forgot about it. A couple of days later, it grew out of it's container and made a mess in the pantry.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
"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.
Let's pretend this patent just appeared on the Slasdot front page. Is it valid?
Depends on whether you consider substituting Penzoil for schmaltz in your matzo balls a nonobvious idea.
All I can say is, it never would have occured to me.
KFG
By patenting it, haven't they made the details public? Or do they produce a different "doh" then what they the patented.
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
You've obviously never been to a Jewish NASCAR tailgating party.
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
I'm a vintage open wheel/sporty car nut. We use castor oil in our matzo balls.
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.
Yes, the details should've been made public. In order for that patent to have issued, they couldn't have kept secret the ingredients or even what proportions of combinations they're in, otherwise it'd fail the "best mode" requirement of implementation. A patented item must allow the reasonably skilled person in that field of art to follow the instructions and recreate it. That doesn't stop them from burying the "actual" best mode amongst other feasible modes, however. A very cursory look at the patent shows 22 slightly varying, different composition of matters that would qualify as the invention...
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
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...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't patents 'expire' after 50 years?
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
When Wikipedia updated the /. article to include Ponies, they used my post as an example. I feel an obligation...
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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.
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?
No, the evil bit is a far more fun to make!
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
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,
I read somewhere that the playdoh odor was not added to the formula for until several years after it was introduced, and that it was added due to consumer feedback - I'm not sure why this article doesn't discuss that.
This space available.
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"...
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
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.
"it grew out of it's container"
What?! Did you put yeast in it or some kind of leavening? Flour, water, salt, and food coloring doesn't just grow out of a container.
The parent is not a troll, though our education systems problems are a bit more complex.
One, we need to pay teachers more. Everyone deserves a decent salary, and the guardians of the future deserve one doubly so.
Two, we need more teachers. Stuffing thirty kids into a classroom with a single teacher means the teacher can not give any individualised attention and much of her (or his) time is spent on discipline. Should be about 12 per teacher in grades under 3, 18 for 4-6, and 25 for everything afterwards.
Three, We need to maintain variety, reading, writing , and arithmatic are fine; but we also need art, history, science, music, gym, recess and probably others. Attention span is at most 20 minutes. Change things up and kids will pay attention more and learn more.
Four, parents need to get more involved and support thier kid's teachers. When the teacher says that li'l Johnny is not doing his work, don't make excuses and don't blame the teacher.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
All the big kids are playing with polymer clay now.
That was 30 years ago. I want to say that yeast was added but I honestly don't remember. My next door neighbor (we would watch ZOOM together) also had the same effect.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
It's not like I do it constantly, or even every day. It's just once in a while that the subject seems Just Right for it, as it did with this. As an example, I'd not put a Ponies post into a MS vs Linux discussion, unless there were people wanking about Tux being better than the MS butterfly, and that would just be a reducto ad absurdum. Even if you want to keep the meme alive, there's just not that many places where it fits, and I never put it in unless it does.
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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.