PHILADELPHIA -- Now in middle age, Silly Putty isn't just for silly kiddies.
The bouncy, pink-colored substance sold in the plastic egg has endured a half-century in the changing American toy scene. Yet adults also continue to find novel uses for the stuff.The failed rubber substitute is being used to clean ink off keyboards, to strengthen hand muscles in physical therapy and to relieve stress at the office.
Geologists use it to model geographic events; doctors put it over the eyes of patients during CAT scans, and Silly Putty secured tools during the Apollo 8 moon launch.
Not bad for something initially viewed as a failure.
Although Silly Putty was born in 1950, it actually had its roots a decade earlier. During World War II, the Japanese invasion of rubber-producing countries forced Americans to find rubber substitutes.
Combining boric acid and silicone oil in a test tube turned out to be little use, but it did unexpected things -- it bounces and, for a solid, flows like a liquid.
Peter Hodgson, an advertising copywriter, borrowed $147 to buy a batch, packed wads of it in plastic eggs and included it in a toy store catalog. It soon outsold everything in the catalog except a 50-cent box of Crayola Crayons. Silly Putty would eventually make $140 million over the next 50 years.
"If you tried to tell somebody what it was, you'd be hard-pressed . . . because it doesn't look like a toy," said Peter Hodgson Jr., son of its first marketer. "So Americans have seized on it, and it has maintained its fascination, precisely because it doesn't fit in any category."
About 6 million containers of Silly Putty were sold last year, though perhaps its most famous use -- transferring images from the Sunday comics -- often doesn't work now because of new inks and printing processes.
The goofy goo has even gone high-tech, marking its birthday with a new Web site, a display of materials and artifacts in the Smithsonian, and a contest to find "The Silliest Uses" for Silly Putty.