Silly Putty Information

Silly Putty is made primarily from silicone and color pigments. Silly Putty was discovered in 1943 by James Wright who mixed boric acid and silicone oil together. Colors are also added to Silly Putty to create a broad array of fun shades. The combination creates a "solid liquid" which can be molded, stretched and bounced. 3. Where did Silly Putty come from? A man-eating flowering plant from the deepest, darkest jungles of the Amazon ... only kidding. Silly Putty was discovered in 1943 by scientist James Wright, who was working on a synthetic rubber substitute for General Electric during World War II. While the mixture of silicone oil and boric acid was a dud as a rubber substitute, the substance did have some unique properties. Wright found that it could be molded, stretched and bounced. No practical use for this "bouncing putty" was found until 1949, when a toy shop owner was handed a piece at a party. Her advertising consultant, Peter Hodgson, convinced her to include one ounce pieces of the strange substance in her Block Shop holiday toy catalog. With only a simple description, bouncing putty outsold the catalog's hundred of items except one - a 50 cent box of Crayola® crayons. Certain of its marketing potential, Hodgson, already $12,000 in debt, borrowed $147 to buy another batch. After studying 15 names he settled on one - Silly Putty. He packaged the pliable plaything in red plastic eggs and debuted Silly Putty at the 1950 International Toy Fair in New York City . The rest, as they say, is history. 4. How much Silly Putty is made each day? Binney & Smith, manufacturer of Silly Putty, make over 20,000 "eggs" a day at its plant in Pennsylvania. That translates into 600 pounds of Silly Putty each day. 5. How many eggs have been made since 1950? More than 300 million Silly Putty or 4500 tons of the real solid liquid - enough to make a wad the size of the Goodyear® blimp have been made since 1950. 6. How many colors does Silly Putty come in? Today, Silly Putty is available in its original pinkish color, a brighter pink, blue, yellow, and orange; four glow-in-the dark colors (green, pink, yellow and blue); three changeable colors (purple to pink, orange to yellow and forest green to bright green); and, for its 50th Anniversary, Silly Putty is available for the first time in commemorative metallic gold. 7. How does color-changing Silly Putty work? Here's the scientific skinny on color-changing Silly Putty: "Silly Putty uses thermochromic (a big word for color change through temperature change) to change color. Changeable Silly Putty is formulated with a base color, to which an additional thermochromic dye is added. When the putty is handled, body heat causes a chemical reaction that makes the thermochromic dye disappear, leaving only the base color. (For example, purple to pink change happens when the base color is pink and the thermochromic dye is blue. Take blue from purple and you get pink.) When the putty cools, the dye "recongeals," returning the color.