slinky

Not much is better than reminiscing about childhood toys and trends. It brings back all those warm fuzzies of childhood and irresponsibility. A personal favorite, and one that I only got sick of after the first dozen time was the slinky. The sound it made going back and forth was great and I had one that was rainbow colored.

What walks down stairs, alone or in pairs, and makes a slinkity sound?

A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing! Everyone knows it's Slinky.

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 or a boy.

It's fun for a girl or boy!

• The toy was invented and developed by naval engineer Richard James in the early 1940s
• Its entire inventory of 400 units in was sold in the first ninety minutes
• James Industries in Philadelphia to manufacture Slinky and several related toys such as the Slinky Dog and Suzie, the Slinky Worm
• The slinky was originally $1
• In 2002, Slinky became Pennsylvania's official state toy.
• In 2003, was named to the Toy Industry Association's "Century of Toys List"
• James accidentally knocked one of the springs from a shelf, and watched as the spring "stepped" in a series of banana spilts, 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.'"
• Named slinky by Betty because it was sleek and graceful, after finding the word in the dictionary
• Each was 2 1/2" tall, and included 98 coils of high-grade blue-black Swedish steel
• Betty and James divorced and Betty took over the company, while James was a missionary in Bolivia