Play-Doh was originally sold as wallpaper cleaner (people would simply roll the wad of goop across the surface).
When it was just a startup company with no advertising budget, inventor Joe McVicker talked his way in to visit Bob Keeshan – Captain Kangaroo. Although the company couldn’t pay the show outright, McVicker offered the show 2% of Play-Doh sales for featuring the product once a week. Keeshan loved the stuff and began featuring it three times per week.
More than 700-million pounds of Play-Doh have been created.
Since 1956, more than 3-billion cans of Play-Doh have been sold. That’s enough to reach the Moon and back three times.
Back when it was still a household product, Play-Doh came in just one color: off-white. When it hit stores as a toy, red, blue, and yellow were added.
Play-Doh was inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame in 1998.
Anyone who has ever popped open a fresh can of Play-Doh knows that there’s something extremely distinctive about the smell. In early 2017, Hasbro filed paperwork to trademark the scent. What exactly does it smell like? According to the company: “It’s a unique scent formed through the combination of a sweet, slightly musky, vanilla-like fragrance, with slight overtones of cherry, and the natural smell of a salted, wheat-based dough.”
Play-Doh was originally sold as wallpaper cleaner (people would simply roll the wad of goop across the surface).
