The Slinky

Of all the toys I'll likely cover on this blog, The Slinky has to be the absolute weirdest, by far.

If there's two toys that we can claim are examples for a human beings capability to love literally anything, it's The Slinky and the Pet Rock, and I'd be hard pressed to pit the two against one another because I'm not sure which one would come out on top, quite frankly. The Pet Rock is the easier of the two to anthropomorphize simply because it has the word "pet" in the title. That's the one benefit it has over The Slinky, in netting a persons love and affection. Hard to turn down anything with the word "pet" attached to it. And if you wanna fight me on this theory, allow me to present you with this reasoning for why I'm correct.

Say you have two toys, The Pet Rock and The Slinky. You love both, but aren't sure which you feel more attached to. Well, here's an easy way to figure that out. Throw each one down the stairs. That's right, you can't throw a Pet Rock down the stairs, can you? Because what kind of fucking monster throws their pet down the stairs. Yeah, exactly.

Humorously enough, that's exactly what The Slinky was designed for, so you'd really be doing him a favor by treating him like a rich husband you're trying to get rid of for the life insurance policy. Designed by a man named Richard James, a man I don't trust right off the bat because who has two first names - that's right, nobody trustworthy, that's who - he was born in Delware in 1914 and was a naval engineer. The fact that he somehow wound up dying in Bolivia is just something I'm going to ignore. I'm not going to bother typing up what's written on the Wikipedia, I'm just gonna screenshot it and show it to you, because it's weird as hell and I'd rather not type it all myself.

Let's just focus on the fact that a quarter of a million Slinkys are still sold every year around the world, to this day. That's a ridiculous number for a toy that, quite honestly, is about as fun as...I don't know...math homework, or something. I mean, sure, when you're 5 or so, and the first time you see a Slinky go down the stairs, it's neat, but it's not something you're running home to play with every day, you feel me? But more confusing is the fact that Richard went to Bolivia to join the Wycliffe Bible Translators, while his wife took over as CEO for the Slinky company, who eventually created the famous ad campaign and was inducted into the Toy Industry Hall of Fame in 2001. Not the guy who made it, his wife. What happened to Richard? Why'd he decide to bail and move to Bolivia to help Bible Translators? I feel like we're missing a big chunk of the story here. Is there a Slinky biopic that I need to see?

Apparently, from what I could scrounge up, he and his wife filed for divorce and he became an evangelical missionary. Odd that a man who worked in a rather scientific field would eventually turn to the church. They seem to frown on that.

It's likely the only toy with a wikipedia page as well that will have sections on such topics as "equilibrium", "period of oscillation", "flight of stairs" and "levitation". For god sakes, you need a goddamned degree in engineering and physics just to play with the fuckin' thing. I mean, just take a look at the section I'm referring to for what is quite possibly the most scientific toy analysis you'll ever come across.

This is some serious math just to play with a piece of metal. Next we're going to find out we need a job in the aerospace industry just to throw a fuckin' Frisby. Perhaps the Frisby is the next toy I should cover, actually. The Slinky also has some seriously strange connections with the world, overall, in its legacy. In 1999, the USPS issued a postal stamp featuring the toy, a bill to nominate the Slinky as the state toy of Pennsylvania was written up in 2001 (which makes me wonder what the state toy for other states would be? Is that even a thing?), meanwhile high school teachers and college professors have used the toy to simulate the properties of waves while troops in the Vietnam war used them as mobile radio antennas. This imagery makes me laugh, just the thought of a really buff guy, with a huge gun strapped to his back and his tiny little slinky in his hand. Even NASA has used them in zero gravity physics experiments in the space shuttle. The fucking Slinky has been to space. This tiny piece of bent metal has achieved more than I will ever dream of achieving, and now I'm just mad. I'm mad at this toy. It's lived a hell of a life, it's done way more than I'll ever do, and that isn't very fair. It's not very far that it's hard to compete with a nonsentient toy from the 40s or whenever.

How am I supposed to feel about myself when The Slinky has accomplished so much more than I could ever dream of? How can I sleep at night, now? This toy with a goofy ass name is way more respected than I'll ever be! For fucks sake, you can make music on it! The Slinky is a fucking musical instrument! There's a goddamned album featuring a Slinky! That's right, you read that correctly. In 1959, John Cage composed an avant garde work called "Sounds of Venice" scored for a piano, a slab of marble, a venetian broom, a birdcage of canaries and an amplified Slinky. And fret not, this isn't the Slinkys only foray into the musical world, no no. Because in 1992, the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii, hosted an interactive traveling exhibit developed by the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia called "What Makes Music?" which allowed people to make musical sounds on by creating waves on an eight foot long Slinky.

At this point, why don't we just give the Slinky a fucking Grammy? We've given them to less deserving artists, lord knows. Why not? Just another notch in the belt of the worlds most accomplished toy.

The Slinky is, by and large, the single most confusing success in toy history, as far as I'm concerned. Look, I know back in, I don't know, 1850 or whenever the fuck this thing was made, that kids didn't have a lot of options. You always hear the joke "back in my day we played with a stick" and that's not a joke, people played with sticks. It's well documented. So I get the appeal when something like a Slinky comes to town, why the fuck would you ever play with a stick again? But even then, it's just a piece of curved metal. How did it achieve such fame and glory? And, more importantly, how can I achieve the same fame and glory, because now I feel pretty bad about myself after writing this when comparing my meager accomplishments in life to those of The Slinky.

You know what? That test I mentioned earlier, about which one would be easier to throw down the stairs? I wasn't wrong, as it turns out. It really is easier to throw a Slinky down the stairs, if only out of pure frustration and rage towards it for having done more with its existence than I'll ever dream of doing with mine. I'm gonna go buy a Slinky right now, find a giant staircase and chuck that bastard down with gusto, just to relieve some anger.

Sometimes I come out of these blog posts happy that I've learned the history of something. This time I just feel bad about myself.

Fuck you, Slinky, you overachieving bastard.