Overnight Thread and Slinky Post (genghis)

A toy story.

Tragedy: Betty James, co-founder of the Slinky Company passed away last week. It’s old news by now, being last week and all.

The story has a kind of a weird twist though. Seems her husband, co-inventor of the Slinky, ran off to join a religious cult in Bolivia at some point in time, leaving Betty to run the Slinky empire.

Some niblets:

”HOLLIDAYSBURG, Pa. - Betty James, who co-founded the company that made the Slinky and beat the odds as a single mother in the late 1950s to become a successful executive, has died. She was 90.”

“In 1945, James and her husband at the time, Richard, founded the company that would later make Slinky, the toy for which she was inducted into the Toy Industry Hall of Fame in 2001.”

“Hundreds of millions of Slinkys have been sold worldwide. James explained the classic toy's success in a 1995 interview with The Associated Press.”

"I think really it's the simplicity of it," she said. "There's nothing to wind up; it doesn't take batteries. I think also the price helps. More children can play with it than a $40 or $60 toy."

But RIP to Mrs. James anyway. The article doesn’t really tell us about the fate of Mr. James, except that he died in 1974. Probably due to cannibalism.

I was always partial to Lincoln Logs.

But who could forget this?

Add your own toy stories in the comments.

posted by xgenghisx at 07:35 AM

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