Yesteryear World: It's Slinky! :)

For a lot of us, our inspiration for asking Santa Claus for certain toys came from commercials that played on Saturday morning during cartoons. :) One of the most popular toys was called the Slinky. Slinky was nothing more than a simple metal spring that provided plenty of entertainment as we tried to make it "walk down the stairs" like the advertisement showed, or other tricks. The toy was developed in the early 1940's by Richard James, a naval engineer and it was demonstrated in Gimbel's Department Store in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1945.

Slinkys were also used in a musical composition called "Sounds of Venice" by composer John Cage. This piece of music included an amplified Slinky, a slab of marble, a Venecian broom, a birdcage of canaries and piano.

NASA has used Slinkys in zero-gravity physics experiments in the Space Shuttle. During the War in Vietnam, United States troops used them as mobile radio antennas and high school and college professors have used the toy to simulate the properties of waves.

Looking for an original metal slinky that you had as a kid? Click on the links below and get one for yourself or for someone as a stocking stuffer this holiday season! :)