Hula Hoops have been around forever in various formats, but the official Wham-O toy was invented in 1958.

The inventors promoted it by going around to playgrounds and parks, giving children samples, and showing them how to use them.

• The Slinky was invented by naval engineer Richard James.
• While he was working to develop springs that could keep ship instruments stable in choppy waters, he knocked a metal coil off a shelf.
• The coil did what a Slinky does: It stepped down to a stack of books, then to the ...

• The sock monkeys that we have come to know and love today—the ones made with Rockford Red Heel socks—are thought to have come about in 1932.
• The distinctive red heel (the monkey's mouth) was given to the socks so customers would know they were getting authentic Rockford socks.
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• The dolls were invented by writer and illustrator Johnny Gruelle.
• Raggedy Ann was created in 1915 for Gruelle's daughter. Gruelle reportedly named the doll after two poems from a book by James Whitcomb Riley: The Raggedy Man and Little Orphan Annie.
• Ann inspired Gruelle to ...

These ugly-cute dolls were created in 1949 by a Danish fisherman who needed a cheap Christmas gift for his daughter. He used sheep's wool for the hair.

Thomas Dam's dolls caught on, which is why the original dolls were called Dam Dolls.

The sculpting clay with the trademarked scent was first sold as a wallpaper cleaner. It was rolled on the walls to remove coal dust.

• A precursor to the familiar LEGO brick, the plastic Self-Locking Building Brick was developed in the late 1930s by the British toy inventor Hilary Fisher Page.
• A decade later, a Danish master carpenter named Ole Kirk Christiansen examined the British bricks and designed a similar to...

These little critters are actual live animals called brine shrimp. They were "invented" in 1957 by Harold von Braunhut, the man who invented X-Ray Specs.

Brine shrimp are ideal for packaging because they enter a natural (shippable) state of suspended animation in certain environments. When...