Slinky is celebrating its 70th birthday this year, and August 30th is Slinky Day!
Celebrate by uploading a video of you singing the Slinky Jingle using #SlinkyDay70 to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Details here: www.SlinkyDay70.com
Can you believe that Slinky will be 70 years old?! That means that pretty much everyone reading this right now has either owned a Slinky in their lifetime or knew someone who has. Wow! I remember playing with mine all the time! The dog would chase it down the stairs and I would chase after both of them so I could so it all over again. My kids also had a Slinky, although the cats were the ones chasing after it down the stairs.
The famous jingle for the SLINKY television commercial was created in Columbia, South Carolina in 1962 with Johnny McCullough and Homer Fesperman writing the music and Charles Weagly penning the lyrics. It became the longest-running jingle in advertising history.
Do you remember the jingle? I think we all went around singing it at one point in our lives, if not, check out the video for a refresher.
Slinky History
“In 1943, Richard James, a naval mechanical engineer stationed at the William Cramp and Sonsshipyards in Philadelphia, was developing springs that could support and stabilize sensitive instruments aboard ships in rough seas. James accidentally knocked one of the springs from a shelf, and watched as the spring “stepped” in a series of banana splits, to a stack of books, to a tabletop, to the floor, where it re-coiled itself and stood upright.
James’ wife Betty later recalled, “He came home and said, ‘I think if I got the right property of steel and the right tension, I could make it walk.’” James experimented with different types of steel wire over the next year, and finally found a spring that would walk.
Betty was dubious at first, but changed her mind after the toy was fine-tuned and neighborhood children expressed an excited interest in it. She dubbed the toy Slinky (meaning “sleek and graceful”), after finding the word in a dictionary, and deciding that the word aptly described the sound of a metal spring expanding and collapsing.
In 1945, the couple formed James Industries (originally James Spring & Wire Company), had 400 Slinky units made by a local machine shop, hand wrapped each in yellow paper, and priced them at $1 apiece. Each was 2″ tall, and included 98 coils of high-grade blue-black Swedish steel. The sold out at Philadelphia Gimbels Department Store in 90 minutes!”
