The photos are relative to an earlier post (#9) where I talked about the fact that the neighborhood kids would give charity events to raise money for the Fresh Air Fund in our backyard. These are photos from one such event and show Joey Gaetano, Phillip Chaberry, and Darlene Horner, among others.
(Note: Would be best to read - This is what I know (which is the oldest post) - and then read from 1 to 11.)
In a Forbes Magazine article entitled STAYING POWER, by Paul B. Brown, the author states that the reason for the "slip" in sales after 1976 was that the new "company took Silly Putty for granted". The company's "sales force was selling lots of other products and really wasn't concentrating on it". Brown notes that because of its price Silly Putty is an "impulse purchase" or a "shut up" toy. This is because "a mother gives it to the kid in the store and says "Here, shut up!" ". My father would have loved that quote. In fact, I'm sure he said it to me every now and then.
The book WORLD OF INVENTION calls Silly Putty "one of the most successful toys ever marketed in the United States". That statement makes me want to burst with pride.
It wouldn't be stretching the truth to say that my father lived his life for two things and two things only. Those two things were his family and Silly Putty. Daddy died of a cerebral hemorrhage one month before his fiftieth birthday. Before that, I am told, he had not taken a day off, not even on Sundays, for over seven years.
Citations:
STAYING POWER, Q. WHY WOULD ANYBODY WANT TO BUY JAMES INDUSTRIES? A. BECAUSE IT MAKES SLINKY COMPARED WITH THE CABBAGE PATCH DOLL IS A PARVENU - BY Paul B. Brown, Forbes, March 26, 1984, volume 133, page 186 (2).
HERE TO STAY: DOUBLEDAY SHOP SELLS SILLY PUTTY - New Yorker, August 26, 1950.
EXTRAORDINARY ORIGINS OF EVERYDAY THINGS by Charles Panatti, Harper and Row Publishers, 1987.
WORLD OF INVENTION, Gale Research, Inc. 1994, page 554.
Interviews:
MacGregor Kilpatrick - March 26, 1997
Juanita Haynes - March 25, 1997
Alfred Horner
Alice Haynes Horner
