It seems that children nowadays are preoccupied with television or video games. But it was not so long ago when children had to use their wits and imagination to entertain themselves by playing and having fun. Parents can bring this ideology back into our homes by turning off those dreaded machines, going back to basics, and bringing into our homes the classic toys that have entertained and educated children for decades.

With the advent of the “video age,” there is no question that toy companies feel slighted in the bottom line. However, some toys stand the test of time and never go out of style, still entertaining and exciting children for decades, with no letup in sight. Let’s explore some of these classic toys and icons of the toy industry:

Etch A Sketch

Invented in the late 1950s by a gentleman named Arthur Granjean (he called it “L’Ecran Magique”), meaning the magic screen; in his garage. The Ohio Art Company decided to take a chance on their “drawing toy” and renamed it Etch A Sketch and in 1960 launched a successful television ad campaign to promote it.

The response was so overwhelming that Ohio Art continued to produce them until noon on Christmas Eve, 1960. The toys were then immediately shipped to the West Coast so that people could have the Etch A Sketch in time for Christmas.

Etch A Sketch has entertained over 100 million adults and children in 67 countries around the world. The basic design pretty much stayed the same, although Ohio Art offered pink and blue frames in the 1970s, but found that people preferred the traditional red frame. Additionally, the Etch A Sketch Club was formed in 1978 and has an average of 2,000 members worldwide.

For fun, poll your friends or co-workers and ask them how many of them have ever drawn something with an Etch A Sketch. Your numbers will be staggering; It was and still is one of the most popular toys in the world!

The erector set

AC Gilbert was a brilliant man. At the time of his death in 1962, he was credited with 150 patents for inventions that went into his products. In fact, when he was a child he was a gifted magician and it was that talent that helped pay for his tuition at Yale Medical School. While he was going to school and performing as a magician, he formed Mysto Manufacturing, a company that sold magic kits to children.

Gilbert eventually finished Yale Medical School, but decided to go into the toy business instead of practicing medicine. He was a gifted inventor and something to entertain and educate children. His most popular invention of his? The vintage construction toy: the erector set.

In 1911, on one of his many train rides from New Haven (his home) to New York City, he watched through the window as workmen set and riveted the steel girders of a power line pylon. He decided to create a construction kit for children, with evenly spaced holes for bolts to go through and included nuts, pulleys, gears, and eventually motors. Although a British company called Meccano was selling a similar toy, Gilbert thought his “assembly set” would be more realistic. Their assembly had further technical advantages, notably steel beams that were not flat, but instead bent lengthwise to produce a ninety degree angle, so that, four of them joined side by side, they formed a square support beam. and resistant.

Backed by the first major American advertising campaign for a toy, Gilbert began selling the “Mysto Erector Structural Steel Builder” in 1913 (later to be called simply a “construction set”) and the toy became one of the most popular construction toys of all times. It was not unusual for living rooms across the country to be filled with small skyscrapers and buildings that young minds had carefully designed. It is estimated that AC Gilbert Company has sold over 30 million sets.

In 1943, a naval engineer accidentally knocked some springs off a rack while working on a meter designed to monitor horsepower on battleships. He marveled at the way they “walked” instead of falling over and the strange motion of these springs gave Richard James an idea and an instant toy was born. that toy:

the poacher

Richard James then spent the next two years testing and refining the best gauge and coil of steel to use in his new toy. His wife, Betty, appropriately found the perfect name for this new toy: a Slinky; which is the Swedish word meaning spiral or graceful.

The couple borrowed five hundred dollars, and James designed a machine to wind eighty feet of wire into a two-inch coil to make his new toy. Sales were slow at first, but skyrocketed after the Slinky was demonstrated at Gimbel’s Department Store in Philadelphia for the 1945 Christmas season. The first 400 were sold in the ninety-minute demo, and a new craze had started.

Around 1960, Richard James suffered what some called a mid-life crisis and left his wife, six children, and joined a Bolivian religious cult. He also abandoned the Slinky toy that he worked so hard to produce and left the company in debt and broke. Betty James took over as CEO of James Industries and introduced other toys to the “Slinky lineup” including: Slinky pets, Slinky crazy eyes (glasses with extended fake Slinky eyeballs), neon Slinky, and also replaced the original black-blue. Swedish steel with American steel. In addition, she moved the company’s headquarters from Philadelphia to Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, and began an aggressive advertising campaign, complete with the now-famous Slinky jingle:

“What comes downstairs, just in pairs, and makes a Slinky sound? A spring, a spring, a wonderful thing, Everybody knows it’s Slinky… It’s Slinky, it’s Slinky, for fun it’s a wonderful toy It’s Slinky , it’s Slinky , it’s fun for a girl or a boy”

However, the Slinky is not just an entertaining toy for children. It is used in schools in physics classes to demonstrate the properties of waves, forces, and states of energy. The Slinky is still being sold (250 million have been sold to date) and is still manufactured in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, using original equipment designed by Richard James.

We’ve retraced the history of three classic toys that continue to entertain children around the world. There is a clear concept that follows: classic toys equals classic fun.