The encyclopedia · Product & Design · Product decision · 1943-1950
Silly Putty turned a failed wartime rubber substitute into a toy
GE's bouncy silicone waste went nowhere until Peter Hodgson bought the rights, sold it in eggs, and took 250,000 orders in three days.
Silly Putty
the move
During the Second World War, Japan's advance into Asia threatened America's rubber supply, so chemists at General Electric's New Haven laboratory were contracted to find a synthetic substitute. James Wright combined boric acid with silicone oil and stumbled on an odd concoction: a stretchy material that withstood decay, bounced 25 percent higher than rubber, flowed in slow motion when left untouched, and broke into pieces when struck sharply.
The 'bouncing putty' or 'nutty putty' had no wartime use — it was more entertaining than useful — and amused guests at parties. Years later, unemployed copywriter Peter Hodgson saw it and recognised its potential as a children's novelty. He bought the production rights from General Electric, renamed it Silly Putty, and hired Yale students to fill colorful plastic eggs with one-ounce blobs, which he sold for a dollar just in time for Easter.
Hodgson introduced Silly Putty at the International Toy Fair in New York in February 1950, but sales took off only after a New Yorker article mentioned it: orders topped 250,000 in three days. The initial market was 80 percent adult, but by 1955 children aged six to twelve were the core customers, and the toy spread to the Soviet Union and Europe in the 1950s and 60s.
By the time Hodgson died in 1976 the accidental material had made him a multi-millionaire. Silly Putty has sold by the millions every year since, and astronauts even took it aboard Apollo 8 to stick down tools in zero gravity.
why it works
- The material's odd behavior — bounce, stretch, flow, copy — is the entertainment
- GE had already written it off, so the rights were cheap
- Plastic eggs and a dollar price made it a perfect Easter impulse buy
- One New Yorker mention created word-of-mouth demand without ad spend
what transfers
A material with no use for its intended customer can be a product for a different one: rename it, repackage the surprise, and let a single mention in the right outlet do the launch.
what came after
Silly Putty is still sold in its plastic egg, millions of units a year, with more than 4,000 tons produced since 1950. Its uses have ranged from lifting images off comic pages and cleaning typewriter keys to holding tools down in zero gravity on Apollo 8. The material that failed as rubber became one of the most famous accidental products in American toy history.
references
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.