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.”
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