Fad Toys & Crazes

Wham-O launched the plastic Hula Hoop in 1958 and sold an astonishing 25 million of them in just four months. It became one of the fastest-selling fad toys in history.

Richard James was working at a Navy shipyard in 1943 when he knocked a tension spring off a shelf and watched it walk end-over-end. His wife Betty named it the Slinky, and it debuted at Gimbels department store in 1945.

General Electric engineer James Wright accidentally created Silly Putty in 1943 while trying to develop a synthetic rubber substitute. It was sold as a novelty toy starting in 1950 and became an instant sensation.

One of Silly Putty's most beloved tricks was pressing it firmly onto a newspaper comic strip — the putty would lift an exact copy of the ink image. Kids spent hours transferring and stretching their favorite comic characters.

Students at Yale and other New England colleges had long been tossing empty pie tins from the Frisbie Pie Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, yelling "Frisbie!" as a warning. Wham-O refined the design into a plastic disc and trademarked the slightly altered name "Frisbee" in 1958.

Gary Dahl launched the Pet Rock in 1975, packaging ordinary smooth stones in a cardboard box with air holes and a whimsical care manual. He sold over 1.5 million rocks at $3.95 each in just a few months.

Mood rings contained liquid crystals that shifted color in response to changes in the wearer's skin temperature, which can subtly reflect emotional states. They were introduced by Joshua Reynolds and Maris Ambats and became a huge craze in 1975.

The Duncan Toy Company, founded by Donald Duncan, turned the yo-yo into an American obsession through clever demonstrations and competitions. The name "yo-yo" itself was trademarked by Duncan for many years.

The Etch A Sketch was invented in France in the late 1950s, where it was called "L'Écran Magique" (The Magic Screen). Ohio Art licensed it, introduced it in the United States in 1960, and it became one of the best-selling toys of all time.

The Magic 8-Ball, originally sold as a novelty item in the late 1940s, became a popular fad toy. It features 20 possible answers — including classics like "Ask again later" and "Outlook not so good" — printed on a 20-sided icosahedron die floating inside the dark blue liquid.

Wham-O sold roughly 25 million Hula Hoops within the first few months of 1958 — a staggering figure that cemented it as one of the greatest fad crazes in American history. At peak production, Wham-O was making tens of thousands of hoops a day.

Ken Hakuta (also known as "Dr. Fad") imported the Wacky Wall Walker from Japan and made it a hit. Kellogg's then included one in specially-marked cereal boxes as a free premium, which drove the toy's massive popularity in the early 1980s; over 240 million were eventually sold.

Duncan's famous slogan — "If it isn't a Duncan, it isn't a yo-yo" — reflected the company's near-total dominance of the market from the 1930s through the 1960s. Duncan even held a trademark on the word "yo-yo" until a 1965 court ruling declared it generic.

The iconic Slinky jingle — "It's Slinky, it's Slinky, for fun it's a wonderful toy / It's Slinky, it's Slinky, it's fun for a girl and a boy!" — first aired in 1962 and is widely considered one of the catchiest toy commercials ever made.

Each Pet Rock came nestled in a gift box with air holes and an official Pet Rock training manual, "The Care and Training of Your Pet Rock," full of humorous instructions for commands like "sit" and "stay" — which, of course, a rock already does perfectly. The manual was a big part of what made the joke so charming.