Happy National Play-Doh Day! Play-Doh started as a wallpaper cleaner, made by a Cincinnati soap manufacturer, Kutol Products. It was made by request for Kroger Grocery, which wanted a product that could clean coal residue from wallpaper.
Once the largest wallpaper cleaner manufacturer in the world, Kutol Products’ fortunes began to change after World War II. With the transition from coal to natural gas heating and the introduction of washable vinyl-based wallpaper, the market for their product decreased substantially. An executive’s sister-in-law was a nursery school teacher and read about doing art projects with wallpaper-cleaning putty. She tried it out with her students, who loved it, so she persuaded the company to manufacture it as a child’s toy.
Play-Doh was reworked and marketed to Cincinnati schools in the 1950s. It was demonstrated at an educational convention in 1956 and soon after, major department stores like Macy’s and Marshall Feild’s opened retail accounts. It was originally available in just white, but when it hit store shelves, red, blue, and yellow were added to the product line.
Play-Doh was featured heavily on Captain Kangaroo, which helped sales grow. By 1958, sales reached nearly $3 million. The company started selling accessories in 1960. They hired 2 engineers who created the hugely popular Fun Factory that would extrude Play-Doh into various shapes and sizes. By 1964, the company was shipping more than a million cans of Play-Doh every year.
In honor of Play-Doh’s 50th anniversary, Demeter Fragrance Library created a limited-edition fragrance inspired by Play-Doh’s distinctive scent. Hasbro registered Play-Doh’s distinct smell with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It’s described as a “combination of a sweet, slightly musky, vanilla-like fragrance, with slight overtones of cherry, and the natural smell of a salted, wheat-based dough.”
It’s estimated that more than 3 billion cans of Play-Doh have been sold since 1956. It was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1998.
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