Michael GirdleyGirdley Enterprises, Girdley Enterprises, Inc. · Business builder and investor

The Invention of Play-Doh

Name: The Invention of Play-Doh
Uploaded: 2024-09-10T15:00:09+00:00
Duration: 48 s
Channel: Michael Girdley
Description: The video narrates the unexpected history of Play‑Doh. In the 1930s, Cut‑All Products created a dough‑like soap called Cut‑All Wall Cleaner to remove…

10 Sept 2024 · 1 min

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0:48

The video narrates the unexpected history of Play‑Doh. In the 1930s, Cut‑All Products created a dough‑like soap called Cut‑All Wall Cleaner to remove coal soot from wallpaper in homes heated by coal. When coal heating fell out of favor in the 1950s, the product became obsolete until the company owner's sister introduced it to a nursery school, where children loved its soft, pliable texture. Recognizing its potential, she urged her brother to rebrand the product, leading to the name Play‑Doh. The rebranded toy exploded in popularity, eventually selling over 3 billion cans worldwide.

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You know this stuff and you love it, but did you know Play-Doh is supposed to be wallpaper cleaner? It all starts in the 1930s with a massive problem. Houses are heated by big black dusty coal and the soot is destroying the wallpaper. So in comes a soap company called Cut-All Products, and they've come up with this weird doughy stuff, and when you rub it on your walls, all the coal soot and stuff sticks to it and it works great. But by the 1950s, the world changes and nobody is using coal heating anymore, so nobody needs the dough and it's just sitting around doing nothing until one day the company's owner's sister takes some into her nursery school. It turns out it's softer than modeling clay, and the kids go absolutely nuts for it. And she tells her brother, "This dough, it's a gold mine, but there's got to be a better name than Cut-All Wall Cleaner Non-Crumbly Type." And since then, they renamed it to Play-Doh, and more than 3 billion cans of the stuff have been sold.