We went into the Doubleday bookshop
at Fifth Avenue and Fifty Second
Street the other day, intending,
in our innocence, to buy a book, and
found all the clerks busy selling Silly
Putty, a gooey, pinkish, repellent-looking
commodity that comes in plastic
containers the size and shape of eggs.
How an
item in the August 26th, 1950
New Yorker's Talk of the Town column turned a marketing consultant into a millionare by Christmas.
[more inside]
posted by Toekneesan
on Dec 22, 2011 -
31 comments
Address is Approximate. "A lonely desk toy longs for escape from the dark confines of the office, so he takes a cross country road trip to the Pacific Coast in the only way he can – using a toy car and Google Maps Street View."
posted by BoringPostcards
on Nov 23, 2011 -
12 comments
It started with a little girl who had polio, who later became a seamstress and made clothing and little things, like
little pin cushion elephants. They were popular, not as sewing accessories, but as children's toys. The elephants would be joined by a menagerie of stuffed animals,
including tigers and pigs. Some
animals were set on iron wheels,
including bears. But it wasn't until
US political cartoon featuring President Theodore Roosevelt refusing to shoot a small black bear in November 1902 that "teddy" bears became popular, first in 1902 in the United States,
made and sold by Jewish Russian immigrants, Rose and Morris Michtom (who would ride the success of Teddy's Bear to form the
Ideal Toy Company). Back in Germany, Margarete Steiff's array of toy animals expanded to include a jointed, plush bear, 55 cm tall:
55 PB (German Wikipedia page). Margarete's nephew, who came up with the design, took some samples to a German toy fair in the Spring of 1903, where there was no interest in the bears until a representative from a
New York toy company saw the mobile bears and ordered 3,000. A new factory had to be built, and bears were made, most likely shipped across the ocean, but
their fate is a mystery.
posted by filthy light thief
on Jul 28, 2011 -
25 comments
I'm Remembering has pics of things that people aged 30-40 will remember from their childhood and adolescence. Who could forget
Tiger Handheld games,
Hypercolor shirts,
Paint With Water books,
Surge soda,
Scholastic Book Club,
Slice cola,
Madballs,
Ring Pops, and, last but not least,
Zack Morris's cellphone?
posted by reenum
on Oct 3, 2010 -
136 comments
Got an iPhone? Always wanted to fly a helicopter?
AR Drones allow you to fly a quadricopter with mounted video cameras through your iPhone.
[more inside]
posted by Biru
on Sep 6, 2010 -
35 comments
Victor Borge (
previously,
gtwo but not fivegoteleven) was well known five his
"inflationary language" routine. The fivemula: number sounds in ordinary language are "inflnined" to the next-highest numbers -- "twoderful" becomes "threederful," "threelips" become "fourlips," "fivefathers" become "sixfathers," and so on.
Here is a twoderful web toy that will inflnine arbitrary text, or inflnine the language of any website.
An example, using a story Borge crenined five this purpose.
[more inside]
posted by grobstein
on Sep 2, 2010 -
24 comments
"
As a child, there was nothing to me more fantastic than than the M.U.S.C.L.E. toys. I don't know if it's just my love for the weird, or the fact that I like pro-wrestling that makes it so special to me, but there's something about a guy from outer space with a fin on his head who would fight against a walking, talking urinal.
That's right, a urinal." In the US, they were known as Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere, or
M.U.S.C.L.E., but they were
basically bendable plastic duplicates of
Kinkeshi, a line of
collectable erasers from Japan. More than peachy-salmon colored minifigs, they were based on the world of
Kinnikuman, which started as
manga in 1979, then
an anime series, and
more, and
more, and
more...
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jun 8, 2010 -
45 comments
Black Friday is almost upon us and in less then a month it'll be Christmastime, and you're still wondering if you'll get your jetpack, hoverboard, or time machine? Well you're in luck, because you can get started with
a new old DeLorean! It's
the return of the DeLorean The
DeLorean DMC-12 was the creation of
John DeLorean:
John DeLorean never cared to fit the mold of a typical Detroit auto executive. He was a young, free-spirited maverick that revolutionized the auto industry as the major force behind America’s first muscle car– the Pontiac GTO.... As the young DeLorean’s star rose, he supposedly walked away from his $650,000 salary at GM and decided to go it on his own.
Although nowadays his car may be considered a
modern marvel unfortunately his motor company was a huge
failure. Delorean
died in March of 2005 (
prev) but not before he started
plans for a new car.
Also, you may need to
ask some questions and keep up on all the
news after you buy your
24k Gold DeLorean.
[more inside]
posted by P.o.B.
on Nov 25, 2009 -
37 comments
Google Swirl is a new Google Labs experiment that lets a user search through images in a "visual and semantic" way, allowing users to search through radiating treeviews of conceptually related images. (requires flash)
posted by boo_radley
on Nov 17, 2009 -
27 comments
Finally, finally - Zubbles are available for pre-order! Inventor
Tim Kehoe has been searching for
the elusive colored bubble for a long time. Through his experimentation he's stained his eyes a deep blue, along with his car, his kitchen, and his bathtub (he's also permanently stained the family dog). But in 2005, after 11 years and over $500,000 in funding, Kehoe successfully created a colored bubble that wouldn't stain. His invention,
Zubbles, was given the "Best of What's New, Grand Award" from Popular Science.
[more inside]
posted by avoision
on Jun 26, 2009 -
71 comments
Play board games during the holidays? Try an
updated version of an
old classic. You can indulge in as much sex, drugs, crime, and rock and roll as your health will handle, just don't roll a 1 on your first turn or you'll be aborted before you get started.
[more inside]
posted by mrmojoflying
on Dec 27, 2008 -
6 comments
UnNerfed - the Nerf dart blaster overclocked to 500 rounds per minute.
posted by Artw
on Dec 22, 2008 -
38 comments
"What we've invented is a way to induce charges on the wall using a power supply located on the robot....The robot carries with it positive and negative charges, and when the walls sees these charges it automatically generates the opposite charge. The robot can then clamp onto those charges." Scientists have
robots climbing the walls.
posted by Kronos_to_Earth
on Jul 8, 2008 -
29 comments
