How the need to clean wallpaper led to an iconic plaything.
According to playdoh.hasbro.com, more than 950 million pounds --or, 2 billion cans -- of Play-Doh have been "squished and squashed since 1956."
And, this modeling clay, which children have played with for generations, was the brainchild of a nursery school teacher from Dover. The teacher, Kay Zufall, found her inspiration in a hardware store.
The story goes this way:
In the 1930s, two men from Cincinnati, Joe McVicker and Bill Rhodenbaugh, developed a compound to clean wallpaper called "Kutol."
Demand for the product diminished in the 1950s with the introduction of vinyl wallpaper, which could be cleaned with soap and water. So, the partners stopped manufacturing the compound.
Well, sort of.
Writing in "Inventing in New Jersey," Linda Barth notes that Zufall read about using wallpaper cleaner for art projects. She was confident the compound was safe for children to play with; she knew the doughy substance's composition -- flour, water, salt, boric acid and mineral oil - was non-toxic.
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Play-Doh was originally marketed in this canister in the 1950s. Courtesy of therapyfunzone.net So, after finding a can of the cleaner in her local hardware store, she introduced it to her pupils. The children loved it. They rolled it, kneaded it and used cookie cutters to make shapes with it.
Zufall convinced the men to once again manufacture the product, only this time as a child's toy. The rest is history.
Play-Doh was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1998. Zufall, who died on Jan. 18, 2014, could easily be called the inventor of Play-Doh.
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Kay Zufall But this teacher can be credited with far more. She and her husband, urologist Robert Zufall, founded the Zufall Health Center, which provides affordable medical treatment to the working poor, uninsured and underserved residents of Dover.
Greg Hatala may be reached at ghatala@starledger.com. Follow him on Twitter @GregHatala. Find Greg Hatala on Facebook.
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