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."

May I be the first to say...

D'OH!

Did anyone ever make...

...home-made imitation playdoh?

Mom did.

It tasted salty.

50 years?

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.

Re:50 years?

As a veritable connoisseur of things that should not be eaten, I vouch that Playdoh is pretty high up there for initial taste. It has a bit too much salt, however, and one can only eat so much of it before the after taste becomes perpetual. Most pastes suffer from this problem also. The big problem with pastes is texture: they are hard to chew and hard to get down.

What I recommend most is sillyputty. Granted, is not all that flavorful, but you can consistently eat much more of it than either playdoh or paste and it generally doesn't leave a bad aftertaste.

The new cornstarch based packing peanuts make an excellent side dish. You can wrap them in notebook paper to make a semi-palatable burrito. (Typing paper has bit too much chemical additives. And NEVER EVER EVER EVER eat receipt paper. It's just nasty.)

And if you REALLY love the doh!

or you have SO that does.

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/05/03/playdoh_scent ed_colo.html [boingboing.net]

cologne that smells like playdoh.

shapes

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?

Business Plan:

1. Create Wallpaper Cleaner 2. ??? 3. Profit!

Just remember...

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.

Now with New and Improved Flavor!

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.)

Playdough money

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.

Recipes

Home Made 'Play - Doh'

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.htm [cc.mi.us]

Re:Recipes

You can also take a look at the patent itself at http://patft1.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm [uspto.gov]. Then search for patent US 3167440. Click the images button. They have a terrible viewing system, but it's there!

brown marbled doh...

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...

What makes up the smell

I've always wondered what goes into making that distinctive smell.

Better even than "that New Car Smell". And a lot cheaper.

misinformation

"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.

Re:misinformation

The patent describes several alternatives, and is vague about additives, so I think it is fair to say that the formula isn't published. We know in general what it contains, but the specific formula used for the product aren't necessarily public. It's a long way from knowing the ingredients to knowing the "formula" -- which includes the actual ratios and specifications of ingredients and the process used to combine them.

The ingredients noted in the patent (simplified for readability)
  - wheat flour
  - water
  - salt
  - deodorized kerosene
  - borax
  - an alum, such as aluminum sulfate

Yum!

Glad to see this on slashdot!

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?

Re:Glad to see this on slashdot!

Actually, it was the brain damage sustained from the buildup of toxins accumulated from repeated ingestion of Play Doh that made you liberal arts majors.

(runs and ducks for cover :)

Best darn $2 you can spend...

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.

Re:Best darn $2 you can spend...

Mmmmmmm.... fingernail crud bread... delicious.

Wallpaper cleaner? Anyone tried this?

It seems like such an odd idea...... I'm curious if it actually works...

The shape of things...

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.

Another Use of Play-Doh by The Brain

I saw this show on Discovery about the rare math genius who was also NOT otherwise mentally handicapped. He could calculate Pi to 40,000 decimals or something. He used play-doh to describe how he visualized different numbers. For instance, 637 was a green saddle-shaped thing. (Or whatever, I don't remember.)

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.

w00t! 50 years of...

...snakes and twigs'n'berries.

The best thing to make out of Play-doh.

Ponies. Preferrably pink. OMG! Ponies!!!

The patent is published online

The patent, like all patents, is published online. Go to: http://patft1.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm [uspto.gov] 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.

Get your facts right

The McVickers invented it in 1956 [wikipedia.org]. Patent 3,167,440 was granted on January 26, 1965 [uspto.gov].

and now the smell can stay with you!

"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 [demeterfragrance.com]"

Wait a minute...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't patents 'expire' after 50 years?

If Geeks named Play Doh

'Play Doh', pff. We all know that the Geek Community comes up with MUCH better names for products. I nominate "Play Gnoh".

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.

Mr. Bill ???

Oh noooooo. Mr. Sluggo is in charge of the celebration....

OOooooooo

Anyone else prefer Plasticine?

I'm a USian, but my Dad grew up in the UK. He got me plasticine [wikipedia.org] 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.

am I the only one....

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!

Secret patents don't exist

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.

Re:Secret patents don't exist

As others have pointed out, the ingredients may be public, but the ratio is still secret, etc.

Which points out yet another flaw with the current patent system - the whole intent of patents was to encourage people to make their inventions known, so that once they expire the knowledge becomes public domain. Here, with humble little play-doh, we have an example of that intent not working, being evaded - the patent was granted, and has expired, yet nobody knows the formula... perfect Playdoh making has NOT become something anyone can do, and the stuff has not become a generic commodity as patent law intended. Playdoh got a patent without really truly revealing their invention, and now still gets to maintain its secret.

Play-doh got a 20 year free ride, essentially having ripped off the public.

Play-Doh or Harcourt?

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

Play Doh = Plastic explosive medium

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?

Mary Worth

You can also use it to take Mary Worth's smug sense of self-satisfaction down a peg ;)

Play-doh... the marvels of it all

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 :)

Happy memories...

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!

long since expired

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.

They took the "ug" out of "dough" for the name!

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"...

Claydonia (aka Clay-O-Rama)

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned one of the best uses for Play-Doh, the game Claydonia from Dragon magazine. Details:
http://www.lclark.edu/~gamesoc/games/claydonia.htm l [lclark.edu]

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.h tml [bojeux.com]

They don't say what it tastes like though.

not just for eating

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.

Polymer Clay.

All the big kids are playing with polymer clay [sculpey.com] now.

Sad but true

You can now buy Play-Doh Cologne [demeterfragrance.com] I hear it's Micheal Jackson's favorite fragrance...

Re:ingredients

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.

Re:ingredients

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.

Re:ingredients

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.

Re:New and Innovative?

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

Re:New and Innovative?

You've obviously never been to a Jewish NASCAR tailgating party.

Re:ingredients

By patenting it, haven't they made the details public? Or do they produce a different "doh" then what they the patented.

Re:hmmm

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

Re:Childhood smells

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.