Few toys are as simple as the Slinky. It's just a coil of metal, with no batteries, no buttons, and no instructions. Yet generations of kids have spent happy hours sending it tumbling down the stairs. And it all started with a spring that fell where it wasn't supposed to.
Here's the story. In 1943, naval engineer Richard T. James was working with springs while trying to find a way to keep sensitive instruments steady aboard Navy ships in rough seas. When one of those springs fell, it didn't just drop and lie there. It kept moving, flipping end over end. James realized it could make a great toy. So yes, the Slinky really did begin with a happy accident.
Making a Spring Walk
James was working at a shipyard in Philadelphia when he saw the spring stepping along. His wife, Betty, later remembered him coming home and saying that if he got the right kind of steel and the right tension, he could make it walk.
It wasn't instant. He spent about a year experimenting with different types of steel wire until he found a spring that would truly walk. Betty was skeptical at first, but she changed her mind when neighborhood kids got excited about it.
Betty also gave the toy its name. She leafed through a dictionary and landed on 'slinky,' a word she felt captured the way the spring moved.
Ninety Minutes at Gimbels
The Jameses struggled to get toy stores interested at first. Then, in 1945, the Gimbels department store in Philadelphia let them set up an inclined ramp in the toy section to show the Slinky in action, on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.
According to one account, the Slinkys sat still on display at first and none sold. Then Richard stepped up and showed one walking down the ramp. Once people saw it in action, the first 400 Slinkys sold in about 90 minutes, at $1 each. The original toy was about two and a half inches tall and made from 98 coils of high-grade blue-black Swedish steel.
Betty Takes Over
Sales boomed for years, then began to slip by the late 1950s. Richard's interest in the business faded, and in 1960 he left for Bolivia to become a missionary, leaving Betty with their six children and a struggling company.
Betty decided to keep it going. She took over as president, moved the company to Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, and launched an advertising campaign. That campaign included the famous Slinky jingle, created in 1962, which became the longest-running jingle in advertising history. Betty kept the toy affordable because she cared about children from less well-off families being able to buy one. She ran the company until 1998.
More Than a Toy
The Slinky turned out to be useful, too. Teachers have used it as a classroom teaching tool. During the Vietnam War, soldiers even used Slinkys as portable radio antennas that could be stretched out when needed.
The honors followed. The Slinky got its own U.S. postage stamp in 1999 and was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2000. About 300 million Slinkys were sold in its first 60 years.
So the next time you see a Slinky tumbling down a staircase, remember that it began with one spring falling in a wartime shipyard, and an engineer curious enough to watch where it went.
