Rant #2,493: Bend Me, Shape Me

As a little kid, I was literally into everything.

I have been told my many people that I was a real horror show, the real-life manifestation of Dennis the Menace.

I was Larry the Menace, and roughly until my sister was born two and a half years after me, I was not the most sought after kid in the bunch.

One time, when I was uncontrollably running around a supermarket while my mother was trying to get out of there as fast as she could, a woman turned to my mom--who was obviously very pregnant with my sister--looked at her up and down, looked at me running around, and said to my mother:

"You want another kid after that?" with the emphasis on the word "that."

I played with all the requisite toys that kids played with back then, the balls, the punching bags--mine had The Three Stooges on it--and yes, the toy guns.

And I also played with Play-Doh, and to my mother's consternation, you just knew that it got all over the place into every crevice and nook and cranny in the house, and it had to be picked out when it hardened.

I was no different than any other kid, with the wonders of Play-Doh right in front of me.

You could squeeze it, shape it, make it into a ball, flatten it out … but if you left it out of its protective can, it would harden, and harden on anything it came in contact with.

It also smelled, and once a home was inundated with Play-Doh, it never had the same aroma again.

Much like a house that had pets, no matter how much you would clean and scent your home, you just knew a house where Play-Doh was around … I mean, it had to be this way, because its inventor, Joe McVicker, originally marketed the product as--

Wallpaper cleaner!

The reason I bring all this up today is that every year, on September 16, it is National Play-Doh Day, and the way that you celebrate the day is to get a can of Play-Doh and … well … play with it.

Anyway, the history of Play-Doh is interesting, and again, it shows the power of television to create a need for something that you thought you didn't need.

According to the National Day Calendar.com, the product was created in the mid-1950s as a wallpaper cleaner, but the need for such a product wasn't really there.

So McVicker saw that the product had other qualities that might make it a good molding clay for kids, and the product was marketed that way, and was available that way through the end of the 1950s into the early 1960s.

The potential of Play-Doh was there, but it needed a push.

McVicker still fully owned the product--he tried to patent it in 1958 but the patent was not granted until 1965--and while sales were good in the late 1950s, they were not as good as he had hoped.

Looking for a way to really promote this product to kids all over the country, McVicker entered into an agreement with a nascent television show that was just beginning to fully show off Play-Doh to kids around the nation.

There were many, many local TV shows geared to children on the air back then, but when CBS put "Captain Kangaroo" on its early morning schedule, children's television never looked back.

Tbe Captain, played by Bob Keeshan, promoted Play-Doh to the hilt, and when the product was sold to General Mills in 1965, it had become one of the all-time children's toy successes. Just about every kid in the country had a can of Play-Doh in his or her toy box, whether in the can or outside of it, mangled with other things in that toy box or on furniture, walls or somewhere throughout their homes.

It was around this time that Play-Doh finally obtained its patent, and while there have been many copies of the product over the decades, there is only one Play-Doh.

So how do you actually celebrate National Play-Doh Day?

This holiday, celebrated since 2006 by Hasbro, its current manufacturer, is as simple to celebrate as Play-Doh itself is.

Just play with it. Mold it. Bend it. Shape it. Make whatever you want with Play-Doh, and then, since we are in the electronic age, post your creations to Twitter with the hash tag #NationalPlayDohDay.

Whether you like Play-Doh or not--I obviously loved it as a kid, but as an adult, as a parent, I hated it when my kids got it on everything--I think it is nice that even in the age of social media, computers and now, social distancing, you can still open up a fresh can of Play-Doh, take in that odious aroma, and squish it up any way you like.

In its own way, it kind of shows that kids will be kids no matter when they were born or even how old they are.

Few toys can still bring out the kid in you like Play-Doh does … but I still can't figure out how you get it out of the carpet and off the walls.