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11/28/2004: Christmas Junk ‘04: Silly Putty!

I didn’t grow up in a Christmas stocking kind of household. At least, not at first. I was a spoiled brat, but my parents never got into stuffing stockings.  We had them only for decorative purposes, and it drove me fucking crazy.  Since my family opens gifts at midnight after an eighty course meal on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day itself was never too important to me.  In some ways, it was actually quite depressing — we had nothing to do and more or less atrophied until New Year’s Eve.  I’d usually spend Christmas morning at my best friend’s house across the street — his family opened their shit in the morning, and every year, I’d watch my buddy and his two brothers have multiple orgasms while sorting through their stocking loot. Stocking loot?! What was this?! Where was mine?!I hated having a reason to cry on Christmas morning.

Eventually, I persuaded my parents to make use of our red socks.  Never really wanted anything big outta the arrangement — just some Crayola crayons, miniature Milton Bradley games, stickers, yadda yadda. There’s just something inherently cool about plucking mystery gifts out of a big furry sock. If Christmas is Christ’s big birthday bash, the stocking is the loot bag you get before the drive home. Sometimes, there’s Chapstick inside.

One of the more notable stuffers?  Silly Putty, man. Now out in a holiday two-pack, containing putties of both the red and green varieties.  Neat, but nothing beats the original flesh color, capable of lifting Jeffy right outta The Family Circus.  Oh well — they’re still bouncy, with the same weird odor that makes Silly Putty in all of its many incarnations impossible to put down. Nobody thinks to ask for two Silly Putty eggs for one occasion, but lemma tell ya, it’s terrific. No matter how much you screw up one of the mounds — no matter how much carpet hair, Windex, spit or sand you manage to get on it, there’s still another waiting to be dismantled. This is what Christmas is all about.

Random Putty Facts: Silly Putty been around since the 50s, and its original retail price of a buck hasn’t appreciated much in over half of a century — most stores sell Silly Putty for less than two dollars “an egg” these days. It’s been available with glitter enhancements, in fluorescent shades and with metallic hues. The bouncy wonderful gunk existed without a purpose for quite some time before becoming a toy. Initially, researchers tried to develop a scientific use for it. Never happened, but many years after its debut as a plaything, astronauts found a new use for Silly Putty: as an adhesive to hold down their doodads in zero gravity environments. Perhaps I should’ve done this in bullet point form.

PS: No, I couldn’t resist mashing ‘em together to see what new mutant color would surface. I’m just like you.


Posted by Matt. E-mail me!

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Discussion Thread: 70 comments

And it’s "John Denver"… dagnabit, I even previewed it and I still made typos. :(

Posted by Steve Brandon @ 11/29/2004 12:47 PM EST

You forgot the color changing varieties of Silly Putty. When they change temperature, they change color (I think sort of like the old GI Joe figs). My daughter gets them, and puts them in the fridge to get them to their deepest shades.

Posted by beSharp @ 11/29/2004 2:42 PM EST

Yes, I did. Oops. :O

Incidentally, on my lunch break I went to TRU across the street (news watches will recognize this particular TRU as the one that got pepper-sprayed over the weekend). On one of the cosmetic screens placed on the escalator incline, what was being shown? The original Silly Putty commercial.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT.

Posted by Matt @ 11/29/2004 2:47 PM EST

Matt, do they have that talking Super Mario at Toys R Us yet?, I heard it was supposed to be there sometime soon

Posted by gamersource @ 11/29/2004 3:06 PM EST

I didn’t notice it, if it’s there.

Posted by Matt @ 11/29/2004 3:13 PM EST

silly putty, i remember using it to copy comic book images as a small child. At some point, it became a horrible sin to compromise the ink density of comics by putting silly putty on the paper. I was quite the comic dork…

Posted by bronzechains @ 11/29/2004 4:10 PM EST

I was looking for some pictures of that moxy the dog show and learnt something about bobcat goldthwait, he is engaged to nikki cox from happily ever after? He must have brainwashed her or something, i remember thinking she was the hottest female ever…

Posted by GK @ 11/29/2004 8:01 PM EST

thats the most beautiful silly putty i’ve ever seen.
they should sell the red and green already mixed like that.

Posted by candice @ 11/29/2004 10:54 PM EST

AWESOME!!!!

Posted by sword77 @ 11/30/2004 8:38 AM EST

First off, Playmobil advent calendars….you can get them directly from Playmobil.com (with their shippiing it was about same cost or 2.00 less than ebay…they also have one clearanced out for 7.50, it’s the 1999 one but hey it’s cheap)
target stores, if they have any left.

and I bought this years at this store in Frankenmuth, MI, This store is the AWESOMEST Christmas store EVER. They might do mail orders if you call, and they had past advent calendars and other playmobil christmas toys as well.

http://www.bronners.com

Posted by Usagichan @ 12/01/2004 10:58 AM EST

DOH! I wasn’t done…what I get for being a newbie first timer here. ANYWAY, The stocking tradition has been in my family all my life. My mom goes way out. I’m 31 years old and my mom still stuffs the shit out of my 30 year old hand made sequined stocking. She’s even bought me an "overflow" one and can usually fill that sucker up too. I usually get at least one Whitman’s Sampler with a snoopy ornament attached, various candies, candles, socks, hair shit, lottery tickets, you name it if it can be stuffed, it’s IN THERE.

Posted by Usagichan @ 12/01/2004 11:02 AM EST

Thanks for solving the mystery Steve Brandon. I’ve thankfully got it on tape from 87 as well.

Posted by Jessica @ 12/01/2004 11:18 AM EST

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Posted by yjr @ 12/02/2004 1:18 PM EST

Was it just me or did any one else want to eat that silly putty mix.

MMMMMMMMM taffy

Posted by stinkypants @ 12/02/2004 1:19 PM EST

Uncle John’s Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader has the full story on Silly Putty. Production started during WWII, when Japanese invasions of rubber-producing companies in the Far East made rubber a precious commodity in the U.S. The U.S. War Production Board asked General Electric to create a cheap substitute for making boots and tires. GE hired an engineer names James Wright to head the project.

In 1943, James accidentally dropped some boric acid into silicone oil. The resulting mixture was a compound which stretched further and bounced higher than rubber, was impervious to mold, didn’t decay the way rubber did, and didn’t melt or turn brittle in extreme temperatures. However, neither scientists nor the military could find a practical use for it. In 1945, GE mailed sampled all over the world to see if anyone could think of something.

An advertising agent named Paul Hodgson was at a party were one of the samples was being passed around. Nobody could find a use for it, but they sure were having fun playing with it. For Hodgson, it was a no-brainer to market it at a toy.

In a lucky coincidence, Hodgson happened to be in the process of creating a catalog for a local toy store. He concinced the stores owner to feature what he called "Bouncing Putty." It was an instant success, outselling everything in the store, save for a 50-cent box of crayons. Still, the store owner wasn’t interested in manufacturing for marketing it, so Hodgson bought the rights and went into business himself, renaming the product Silly Putty.

In 1950, Hodgson bought 21 pounds of Silly Putty for $147 and hired a Yale student to cut it into one-ounce balls and put the balls in plastic eggs. Sales were slow for the first few months, until Silly Putty was mentioned in the New Yorker. Over the next four days, Hodgson received 250,000 orders. A few years later, Silly Putty was selling for a total of six million dollars annually.

Today, Silly Putty is owned by Binney & Smith, the makers of Crayola. They produce 500 pounds of it every day. Since its inception, over 300 million eggs of Silly Putty have been sold–enough to form a ball the size of the Goodyear Blimp. Silly Putty is available in 16 different colors, including glow-in-the-dark, glitter, hot fluorescent, metallic gold (introduced in 2000 for the toy’s 50th anniversary), and even color that changes depending on the temperature of your hands. In 2001, Silly Putty was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame, taking its place alongside GI Joe, Lincoln Logs, and Monopoly.

And now, some miscellaneous Silly Putty facts:

-In 2000, Binney & Smith sponsored a "Silliest Uses For Silly Putty" contest. The winning entry: replace your stock broker by throwing a ball of Silly Putty at the stock page in the newspaper and investing in the stock it lifts from the newsprint. Second place went to a woman who suggested using it to form a fake swollen gland to get out of an unwanted date.

-One of the original Silly Putty eggs is on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

-In 1950, Silly Putty cost a dollar. In 1976, when Paul Hodgson died, is still cost a dollar. In 2002: still under $2.

-Why is Silly Putty packed in eggs? It was introduced around Easter.

-In 1989, a grad student at Alfred University wanted to find out what would happed to a giant ball of Silly Putty dropped from a roof. He dropped a 100-pound ball from the roof of a three-story building. The ball bounced eight feet on the first bounce, but shattered into pieces on the second bounce.

Posted by TB Tabby @ 12/03/2004 4:29 AM EST

My favorite silly putty of all time is the Golden Glitter putty which was released for it’s 50th anniversary…or should I say putty-versary.

Posted by Scooter @ 12/03/2004 10:19 AM EST

Talking Mario? I gotta get me some of that.

I think I still have that Muppet special on tape somewhere. I love how about 500 people, Muppets, animals, and other random organisms slip on the ice at the threshold. XD

Posted by Gooper Blooper @ 12/03/2004 11:15 AM EST

oh thank you, my obsessive compulsive disorder was COMMANDING you to mix the two with my mental powers

thank god you did

Posted by spazzamatic @ 12/03/2004 2:00 PM EST

Ahh Silly Putty… I used to eat it! o.o

Wasn’t half bad…. I ate paint chips too.

Posted by Adrastia @ 12/04/2004 2:58 AM EST

i LOVE this site it is soooooooooo cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SILLY PUTTY ROCKS!

Posted by gigi @ 03/23/2009 6:02 PM EST

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This entry was posted on Sunday, November 28th, 2004 at 12:30 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.