Do you remember the Wooly Willy toy? I don’t. That’s probably why I passed right by the balding man on a simple cardboard backing lying on the auction table.
My auction buddy Janet recognized it immediately. “Those were in five-and-dimes for years,” she remembered. Said they contained metal shavings that you moved around with a magic wand to create Willy’s beard. This one was missing its shavings but had its wand.
I guess it didn’t take much to keep us “Baby Boomer” kids sitting quietly and occupied for a few hours. The allure apparently was in the ability to make Wooly Willy look like and be anyone you wanted – With a beard or without. With pointed hair or without. With bushy eyebrows or trimmed ones.
Wooly Willy was not part of my childhood, though. But after looking him over at auction, I decided to look him up. By Googling, I find a ton of websites devoted to this toy, which was immensely popular (some sites said that 75 million have been sold).
It seemed to have been as ubiquitous as dolls for girls and cap guns for boys in those childhood years. And it was fondly remembered: Hours spent playing with him on long road trips with the family, one person wrote. Sitting around for hours making up silly or creative faces on him, others said.
Wooly Willy was born in a factory in Smethport in northwest Pennsylvania. James Herzog got the idea for it while working with dust magnets in his father’s factory, the Smethport Specialty Company.
“I came in and ground the magnets one day and all of a sudden it came to me,” he said in a 2009 interview in American Profile magazine. “I put a pile of dust on a piece of cardboard and used magnets to play around with it.”
His brother Don suggested encasing it in plastic to keep the shavings in. The airtight plastic container also kept water and moisture out. The card itself was designed by a local artist named Leonard Mackowski, who wrote his name on them, a bit hidden away.
Persuading the five-and-dime stores to sell the 29-cent toy (also called a magnetic drawing set) wasn’t easy. It won’t sell, the brothers were told. Finally, a buyer for the chain G.C. Murphy ordered about six dozen and they sold out. The venerable F.W. Woolworth and H.L. Green – the five-and-dime I grew up with – and others like them started selling the toy. Wooly Willy was followed by other magnetic toys made by Smethport, including Dapper Dan and Hair-do Harriet.
The toy has endured: The Toy Industry Association named it to its top toys of the 20th century in 2003. The company became a part of Patch Products in 2008 and is now based in Wisconsin.
Today, you can buy Wooly Willy online from the company and other sites. You can even play with it online or watch someone else play around with it. You can buy an iPhone and iPad app. And you can attend its summer festival in Smethport.
I didn’t find many original Wooly Willy toys for sale on the web (one from 1955 sold for $7.50 on eBay and mini party favors sold for $14.95).
When the toy came up for bids, an auction staffer recalled it from her childhood, and turning to the auctioneer asked if he had played with one. “I don’t remember Wooly Willy,” the auctioneer said. “I’m not sure I can even say the name.” It is something of a tongue-twister.
The toy was not popular among this group of bidders. It sold for only $5, the lowest bid.
