Silly Putty

Stretch it, bounce it, squish it — and use it to make the Sunday comics look really strange.

Crack open that little plastic egg and pull out a blob of Silly Putty. Stretch it slowly and it keeps stretching. Pull it apart quickly and it snaps. Roll it into a ball and it bounces. Squish it flat, twist it around or just keep squeezing it in your hand. I’m not sure why they called it “silly” putty, it’s more like amazing putty! It can do everything.

If you grew up when newspapers were still printed with the right kind of ink, Silly Putty had another trick up its sleeve - flatten Silly Putty against the comics, peel it off, and the picture transferred right onto the putty. Then you could stretch the putty and contort your favorite comic-strip character into a long, stretched version!

Silly Putty was the result of a search for synthetic rubber during World War II. General Electric engineer James Wright created the material in 1943, but it turned out it wasn't particularly useful as a rubber substitute. But, a few years later, toy marketer Peter Hodgson saw much more potential in it - he packaged one-ounce blobs inside plastic eggs, called it Silly Putty, and started selling them in 1950. After The New Yorker wrote an article about it, orders reportedly topped 250,000 in three days. So, as the old saying goes, “one man’s failed synthetic rubber experiment is another man’s million-dollar toy idea.”

Silly Putty still comes in the familiar egg container although nowadays you'll also find it in different colors and even glow-in-the-dark versions.