Let's celebrate Play-Doh! - Florida Union Free School District

There seems to be a day commemorating just about everything. On Sept. 16, we celebrate Play-Doh. That’s right, this malleable, colorful, multi-generational play thing is celebrated each year on Sept. 16.

A girl with long dark blonde hair, wearing a pink jacket and pink mask, holds a pencil with a ring of blue play-doh on the table. She is looking at the camera.

A small boy wearing a black tshirt rolls brown play-doh on a table

Our students here at Golden Hill certainly had lots of fun with it: molding it and folding it, creating and imagining with it. A big thank you to our wonderful PTA for providing our students with their very own Play-Doh!

An elementary age boy with brown hair wearing a blue tshirt wearing a white mask holds up an orange man made of play-doh

A girl with light, long hair wearing a black t shirt and white mask, holds a flattened round of blue play-doh.

But did you know that Play-Doh actually was created for a much different purpose – a wallpaper cleaner?

In 1933, Cleo McVicker was working for an Ohio-based soap company and negotiated a contract with Kroger grocery stores to make a ready-made wallpaper cleaner. At the time, people used coal to heat their homes, which left a dirty residue on the walls. His brother Noah, a product developer, came up with the formula – a non-toxic, malleable clay-like material made simply from water, salt and flour.

A girl with dark hair white shirt and black mask very delicately puts a bit of play-doh on a light pink figure she made. A boy with blonde hair, wearing a blue shirt and mask, holds up a round of blue play-doh in a smiley face shape.

For 20 years, this product was used just to clean wallpaper. Then people converted to oil and gas to heat their homes, drastically reducing the amount of soot on their walls and therefore the need for the cleaner. By now, Joseph McVicker was running the business after his father, Cleo, passed away. In 1955, Joseph’s sister-in-law, Kay Zufall, a teacher, convinced him to repurpose the product as a toy. Her students loved to work with the “clay” and create. Joseph visited her classroom to see the students and he loved what he saw.

A young girl wearing glasses and a blue mask, red shirt with the word feeling repeated on the shirt, puts her pointer finger on a little pink figure made of play-doh

A little girl with sandy colored long hair, wearing a white mask and gray shirt that says Love Love in pink, molds pink play-doh on a table

He reformulated the product and started producing it on the same equipment as his wallpaper cleaner. This time, the end product was a child’s toy.

In 1956, Joseph established the Rainbow Crafts Company, Inc., which repackaged the product, now known as Play-Doh, and marketed it to elementary schools in the Cincinnati area. By 1957, Play-Doh was produced in three new colors: red, yellow and blue.

Not many had heard of Play-Doh outside of Cincinnati until Joseph introduced it to Bob Keeshan, known to television audiences as Captain Kangaroo. Captain Kangaroo loved it and agreed to use it once a week on his show, which was one of the most popular children’s television shows of its time. Play-Doh became a national sensation with sales skyrocketing. Rainbow Crafts couldn’t keep up with the demand!

In 1998, Play-Doh was inducted into the Strong’s National Toy Hall of Fame.

It is estimated that since Play-Doh was introduced in 1955, more than two billion cans of it have been sold worldwide.

(Information from www.museumofplay.org)