From Wallpaper Cleaner to
Kid's Toy- The Origin of Play-Doh
The story of Play-Doh began
when Kutol, a Cincinnati based soap company, was about to go under in the late
1920s. Cleo McVicker, just 21 years old, was tasked with selling off the
company’s remaining assets, which at the time comprised mainly of powdered hand
soap. Once that was done, the company would be too. Cleo, however,
managed to turn a nice profit in performing his task, the result of which was
that the company managed to barely stay afloat. Cleo then hired his
brother, Noah, and they set about trying to make the company viable again.
This
brings us to 1933 when Cleo was at a meeting with Kroger grocery store
representatives when they asked him if he made wallpaper cleaner.
Wallpaper cleaner was a hot commodity as, at the time, coal was the leading way
to heat one’s home, being much more efficient and cheaper than wood. This
had the negative side effect of leaving a layer of soot everywhere that was
difficult to clean off of wallpaper as you couldn’t get it wet. (This was
before vinyl wallpaper.)
In a
bold move, Cleo told them he could make the wallpaper cleaner for them (even
though no-one at Kutol knew how just then). Kroger subsequently ordered
15,000 cases of wallpaper cleaner from Kutol with a $5,000 penalty (about
$90,000 today) if Kutol didn’t deliver on time. This penalty was more than
Kutol had available to pay if they failed. Luckily for the brothers, Noah
McVicker was able to figure out how to make wallpaper cleaner using a version
of a then common formula for it.
Unfortunately
for the brothers, though, while this provided the staple income for their
company for about a decade, after WWII, sales began to dwindle with coal heat
slowly being replaced by oil and gas furnaces. These furnaces obviously didn’t
produce the same type of soot issue that burning coal did, so cleaning
wallpaper regularly wasn’t something that was needed anymore. Sales
further dissipated shortly thereafter when vinyl wallpaper became available.
This type of wallpaper could be cleaned with nothing but soap and water, so the
McVicker’s product was now virtually obsolete.
To make
matters worse, Cleo McVicker died in a plane crash in 1949 and Joe McVicker,
Noah McVicker’s nephew who was hired to replace Cleo, found out he had a
rare form of cancer at the age of 25 and wasn’t expected to survive.
However,
he did, in fact, survive thanks to a new experimental radiation
treatment. Although, even after treatment, the doctors deemed it unsuccessful
and told him he would die shortly (in reality he didn’t die until 1992).
In any
event, enter Kay Zufall in 1954, the unsung hero of Play-Doh history and the
sister-in-law to Joe McVicker. Kay was running a nursery school and
needed cheap materials to have her kids make Christmas decorations. In
the process of searching for said cheap decoration materials, she read in a
magazine that you could use wallpaper cleaner for this task. Knowing the
trouble her brother-in-law’s company was in, she went out and bought a bunch of
Kutol’s wallpaper cleaner, to see if it would work for this application.
After not only observing that it worked, but that the kids had a blast playing
with it, she called Joe and told him they needed to make their now obsolete
wallpaper cleaner into a toy. Joe took a look at the Christmas ornaments made
by the kids and agreed it was a great idea. To facilitate this, they
simply removed the detergent from the dough and added an almond scent and some
coloring. (It was originally white.)
Joe
decided to re-christen the compound which would now be a toy: “Kutol’s Rainbow
Modeling Compound”. Enter Kay Zufall to once again save the day, assuring
him that this was a horrible name for their product. She and her husband,
Bob, then set about trying to think up a better one. In the course of
their discussions, Kay came up with “Play-Doh”, which they both loved and
suggested the name to Joe, who also liked it.
Thanks
to some connections to school board members formed from selling soap, the company
initially sold their new product to schools all throughout Cincinnati.
They then began trying to market it to stores, with only a marginal amount of
success locally.
While
at this point it had saved the company, without money for major advertising, Play-Doh
seemed to be destined for very slow growth- at least until Joe McVicker managed
to talk his way into an audience with Bob Keeshan, better known as Captain
Kangaroo.
He
showed Keeshan the Play-Doh and explained to him that Kutol had no money for a
national advertising campaign nor money to have the product put on the
show. However, if Keeshan would agree to use the product once a week on
Captain Kangaroo, they’d give the Captain Kangaroo production company 2% of the
sales generated, so long as he continued to show it. The Captain agreed
and Play-Doh quickly became a national hit, even appearing on other children’s
shows thanks to the Captain Kangaroo exposure.
Further,
even though they still sold the wallpaper compound for 34 cents per can, they
were able to get $1.50 per can of Play-Doh despite the fact that the cans
contained the same amount of the compound and the two products were virtually
identical, save the cleaning compound was white and had a small amount of
detergent added.
I FOUND
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