Slinky springs from one of the greatest accidents ever

[yortsed snacilbuper]

Get this: Young naval engineer Richard James, working in the Philadelphia shipyards in 1943, knocks a spring from a shelf and watches it walk instead of fall. Fast forward two years and he’s perfected a toy spring in his garage. He takes it to the Philadelphia Gimbels on the Saturday after Thanksgiving 1945 for a demonstration — and sells out all 400 at a buck apiece in 90 minutes.

link

[BumRushDaShow]

1. The Philadelphia Thanksgiving parade

used to end on Market Street (between 8th & 9th) in front of Gimbels, where Santa would climb the ladder of a fire truck and deposit himself on the roof of the department store...



It's Slinky, it's Slinky, a wonderful wonderful toy!

[1monster]

2. One of the James kids was a high school classmate of mine. He was

A very smart and funny young man. In elementary school, a few of the kids had parents who worked at the slinky plant... They ALWAYS had the neatest show and tell toys from the factory.

[cyberswede]

3. One of the coolest toys ever!

[3catwoman3]

4. About 4 years ago, I realized our sons...

...had never had this iconic toy. I put one each of the small and large sizes in their Christmas stockings (the metal ones - the plastic ones are sucky). They were 18 and 20 at the time, and our younger son spent all day "pouring" the Slinky back and forth from hand to hand. There is something rather mesmerizing about that metallic swishing noise it makes.

[freshwest]

5. Thanks for the history of this. Had that... Back when I could do the Hula Hoop all day, too.