Something You Should Know
How We Play: They Story of Fun and Games & The Cost of Not Sleeping Well
21 Apr 2025
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I remember reading that there were several toys that became very popular that were really the result of something else. They were kind of accidental discoveries, like the Slinky is one of them. So where did the Slinky come from?
The guy who created it was a naval engineer, and he was working on submarines, actually, and found the Slinky. just like in his development of various engines and other mechanics that had to exist in these submarines, it was just sort of like on his desk and he accidentally knocked it over and suddenly it did its, you know, classic slinky thing. And he's like, I could probably sell this.
And that's a lot of these classic toys kind of come out from that, just like as accidents, like total mistake.
Since we're talking about fun, um, I think Legos have to be part of the conversation because anyone with kids, maybe people without kids, spend hours building Lego things. They're almost addictive. So tell the Lego story.
They started pretty simply. The guy who created Legos in the first place was just kind of making wooden toys. And he kept at that until his toy factory actually burned down. And he decided maybe we'll try this plastic thing. In the 1950s and 60s, he sort of evolved...
his work into including more plastic devices and toys and and came up with this idea of having these kind of bricks that snap together. Unfortunately, his factory burned down again. Separate factory also burned down. He rebuilt again. Thankfully, the next factory actually stuck around for a while and he was able to build this sort of conglomerate of Lego.
And now the fascinating thing about Lego is today The largest manufacturer of tires is Lego. They make the most tires in the world because of those little tiny rubber tires that they put on the cars in Lego boxes.
One toy that escaped me completely, I didn't get the fascination, is the Rubik's Cube. Well, I guess I get the fascination. I just couldn't do it, and I didn't have the patience to keep trying. Who's Rubik?
So Rubik, after the classic Rubik's Cube, is Erno Rubik, who is Hungarian. And in 1974, he kind of created the cube that we know of. He was a toy maker, but he just came up with this idea of these blocks that you can kind of twist and rotate independently of one another. And out of that came this kind of puzzle box that just took the world by storm.
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