Play-Doh’s True Purpose Was for the Most Boring Task Ever

Play-Doh occupies rarefied air, along with Lego and the like, as timeless playthings. Open-ended, mind-stimulating, safe-to-eat, all things that make a toy perfect for children. Adults, too, if they’re being honest, would have a hard time convincing me that 30 minutes with a ball of Play-Doh wouldn’t reduce their stress levels. 

But like many other products that end up as toys, Play-Doh didn’t start its journey that way. What is unique about it, though, is how completely, mind-numbingly boring the task it was meant to complete is.

Before it was piped into technicolor tubs and handed to kids to squeeze (and sometimes eat), Play-Doh was sold by a company called Kutol, which was founded in 1912 and rose to not-quite-prominence as “the largest wallpaper cleaner manufacturer in the world.” That’s the sort of business a spy tells people they’re in to completely shut down further questions. 

Play-Doh, not yet known by that name, was their flagship product, used to remove soot from wallpaper — an activity that not only sounds like one step above watching paint dry, but also a task that you wouldn’t want CPS to walk in on your kids doing. It’s the sort of thing Oliver Twist would be punished with.

Kutol, expectedly, wasn’t doing well. Wallpaper had become easier to clean, and most houses weren’t running on coal anymore. Joseph McVicker, who had inherited Kutol from his father, could see the writing on the wall, and it read, “NO ONE NEEDS TO CLEAN THIS ANYMORE.” Luckily, his sister-in-law had already found another use for the cleaner: She ran a nursery school, and let kids make Christmas ornaments out of it every year. Letting kids play with cleaning compounds usually doesn’t end well, but in this case, it saved the company.

McVicker renamed the company Rainbow Crafts Company, Inc., and their wallpaper cleaner was officially rebranded as a modeling material. They also expanded from the original off-white color to the rainbow of options offered in miniature buckets that most people know and love today. 

It’s a delightful story of a substance finding a second life entertaining children, and it worked out a lot better for Play-Doh than it did for asbestos or mercury.