Today in 1992, it's said the first picture book featuring a sock monkey was published. But where did the sock monkey itself show up? That was decades earlier, in the Illinois city of Rockford - or, as it's sometimes called, Sockford.
Today in 1879, the birthday of S.S. Adams. If you don’t know the name, you know the products: joy buzzers, sneezing powder, the dribble glass and hundreds of other novelties known all over the world all started with the S.S. Adams Company.
Today in 1956, the US issued a patent for Play-Doh. Millions of kids have built bazillions of things with this colorful stuff, but in its first life, Play-Doh had a very different job: cleaning soot off wallpaper.
Tomorrow in Las Vegas, the 2023 AArrow Sign Spinners competition begins, with elite-level sign spinners showing off their best moves.
It was around this time in 1975 that Gary Dahl dropped by a gift show in San Francisco with the idea for the pet rock. It would make him a millionaire.
A project out of a Saudi university has built a cooling system that uses salt, water and heat from sunlight, but not electricity.
Today in 1963 the Hula Hoop was patented, although by that point it had already become a worldwide phenomenon. And toy hoops go way, way back even before the toys we know today first became popular. Plus: how a very unusual photographer won the Ocean Art Underwater Photo Competition.
Today is the day the Slinky first became a phenomenon, even though it was invented by accident.
The Rubik's Cube first came to a toy fair in London 40 years ago today. I have never finished one, but the enthusiasts known as speedcubers can now solve an entire cube in seconds.
Today's the birthday of one of the great toys of our time: the Frisbee. Though if the man who put that toy into millions of hands had his way, it would’ve been called the Pluto Platter.
