Mar 31 • 💬 General Discussion
Motivation Mondays-Play Doh Started As Wallpaper Cleaner
Play-Doh started as wallpaper cleaner. The company was going bankrupt. The man who saved it was 25 and had just been told he had cancer. A kindergarten teacher showed him the product everyone else was ready to throw away was actually one of the greatest toys ever made. Over 2 billion cans later, she was right.
Joe McVicker was 25 years old.
The year was 1955. He was sitting in a factory in Cincinnati, Ohio, surrounded by tubs of soft, doughy putty that nobody wanted to buy anymore.
The putty was supposed to clean wallpaper. That's all it had ever been designed to do.
But the wallpaper cleaning business was dying.
For decades, American homes were heated by coal. Coal left a layer of black soot on everything — including the wallpaper that covered most living room walls.
You couldn't wash wallpaper. You needed a soft, nontoxic compound that could lift soot without damaging the paper.
That compound was Kutol Products' entire business.
Cleo McVicker had saved Kutol from bankruptcy once before. In 1933, the worst year of the Great Depression, Cleo had been sent to liquidate the failing soap company.
He was 21.
Instead of shutting it down, he negotiated a contract with Kroger grocery stores to manufacture wallpaper cleaner. His brother Noah created the formula.
Kutol became the largest wallpaper cleaner manufacturer in the world.
Then tragedy struck.
In 1949, Cleo McVicker was killed in a plane crash.
His widow took over. She brought in Joe McVicker and Bill Rhodenbaugh to help run the company.
Joe was barely out of college.
And then the real crisis hit.
After World War II, American homes started switching from coal to oil and gas heating. No more coal. No more soot. No more dirty wallpaper.
On top of that, manufacturers started making vinyl wallpaper that could be washed with soap and water.
Kutol's only product was becoming obsolete overnight.
By 1954, the Christmas orders that usually sustained the company didn't materialize. Kutol was headed for bankruptcy.
The wallpaper cleaning business was over.
And then Joe McVicker got the worst news of his life.
He was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease at 25 years old. In the 1950s, it was essentially a death sentence.
Doctors told him he wouldn't survive.
Everyone said the company was finished.
"Wallpaper cleaner is dead. Close the factory."
"The heating industry has changed. Coal is over."
"You're 25 and you have cancer. Focus on yourself, not a dying business."
"There's nothing you can do with a tub of cleaning putty."
He didn't listen.
Here's what happened next that changed everything: a nursery school teacher named Kay Zufall saved both the company and an entire generation of childhoods.
Kay was Joe's sister-in-law. She ran a small nursery school in New Jersey.
Before Christmas 1954, she needed cheap materials for her students to make holiday ornaments. She'd read an article about using wallpaper cleaner as modeling clay for children.
She tried Kutol's putty with her students.
They loved it.
The kids molded it into shapes. Animals. Ornaments. Faces.
The putty was soft enough for small hands. Nontoxic. Didn't stain. Didn't crumble.
It was better than any modeling clay on the market.
Kay called Joe. She told him what her students had done.
Stop trying to save the wallpaper cleaning business. You're sitting on a children's toy.
Joe flew to New Jersey. He watched the kids play with the putty.
He saw the future.
He went back to Cincinnati and started reformulating. Removed the cleaning detergent. Added color. Added an almond scent.
The same heavy-duty equipment that made wallpaper cleaner now produced a children's toy.
Joe and his uncle Noah wanted to call it "Kutol's Rainbow Modeling Compound."
Kay told them that was a terrible name.
She and her husband Bob brainstormed. Kay came up with two syllables that would become one of the most recognizable brand names in toy history.
Play-Doh.
In 1956, Joe and Noah formed the Rainbow Crafts Company. They started selling to schools through connections Joe had made selling soap.
A department store in Washington, D.C. called Woodward & Lothrop became the first retail account. Then Macy's. Then Marshall Field's.
But the company had almost no advertising budget. Play-Doh was growing slowly.
It needed something bigger.
That's when everything changed.
Joe McVicker talked his way into a meeting with Bob Keeshan. Better known as Captain Kangaroo. The most popular children's television host in America.
Captain Kangaroo agreed to feature Play-Doh on his show twice a week.
The deal was simple: 2% of sales.
The partnership ran for years.
Play-Doh appeared on Captain Kangaroo, Ding Dong School, and Romper Room. Suddenly, every child in America knew what Play-Doh was.
Sales hit $3 million by 1958. That's $29 million in today's dollars.
The factory couldn't keep up with demand.
In 1960, they introduced the Fun Factory.
In 1964, Rainbow Crafts was shipping more than one million cans per year.
In 1965, General Mills purchased the company.
In 1991, Hasbro acquired the brand.
Today, Play-Doh has sold over 2 billion cans worldwide. Available in more than 80 countries. Dozens of playsets and accessories. A fixture in classrooms and homes for seven decades.
The wallpaper cleaner that nobody wanted to buy became one of the most successful toys in history.
And Joe McVicker? The doctors were wrong.
The experimental radiation treatment worked. He survived Hodgkin's disease and lived until 1992.
Long enough to see his dying wallpaper cleaning company become a global phenomenon.
All because a 25-year-old man facing cancer and bankruptcy had a sister-in-law who saw a children's toy inside a tub of obsolete cleaning putty.
He turned wallpaper cleaner into one of the most beloved brands in the world.
He proved that the product that's dying in one market might be the product that dominates another.
What product are YOU about to give up on that might have a completely different purpose?
What dying business are you running that could be transformed by looking at it through someone else's eyes?
McVicker lost the man who ran the company to a plane crash. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer at 25. His company's only product was becoming obsolete.
His sister-in-law's kindergartners showed him the future.
Captain Kangaroo made it famous.
Because he understood something most people don't.
The product isn't dead. You're just selling it to the wrong customer.
Your wallpaper cleaner might be someone's favorite toy.
Your bankruptcy might be one pivot away from billions.
The person who saves your company might be a kindergarten teacher, not an MBA.
Stop trying to revive the old business. Start seeing what the old product could become.
Look at what you already have with fresh eyes. Ask the people closest to the problem what they see. And move before the window closes.
And never let anyone tell you that a dying product can't have a second life.
Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs are hiding inside the thing everyone else is ready to throw away.
Sometimes the answer isn't a new idea. It's a new customer for the old one.
Because when you stop trying to save what was and start building what could be, you find out the thing that was killing you was actually the thing that saves you.
Don't quit.
Credit to Suneet Agarwal
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Motivation Mondays-Play Doh Started As Wallpaper Cleaner
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