[Deathwatch] Betty James, toy executive, namer of "slinky", 90

[Deathwatch Central]

Betty James dies at 90; namer of Slinky kept the toy brand alive

She saved the business after her husband left her, and expanded the
line to include Slinky Jr., plastic and neon-colored versions and the
Slinky Dog, among other products

By Valerie J. Nelson

November 24, 2008

Betty James, who named the toy her husband invented -- the Slinky --
and rebuilt the toy company he abandoned, making the springy plaything
a pervasive part of American culture, has died. She was 90.

James, who served as chief executive of the family-run business for
almost 40 years, died Thursday at the Hospital of the University of
Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, a hospital spokeswoman said. No cause of
death was given.

In 1943, Richard James was a Navy engineer trying to figure out a way
to stabilize instruments on ships at sea when a spring fell off a
shelf. He watched it bounce end over end and went home to tell his
wife, Betty, he thought he could make it into a toy that "walks."

When he asked her to name it, she turned to the dictionary and found
"slinky," which means stealthy, sleek and sinuous.

Richard James tinkered with different types of steel and tension before
debuting the coiled Slinky at a Gimbels department store on a snowy day
in 1945 in Philadelphia.

"A Slinky just sitting there isn't very exciting. It has to move,"
Betty James told CNN.com in 2001. "It if hadn't been for Gimbels giving
us the end of a counter to demonstrate, I don't know what would have
happened."

The couple sold 400 of the toys in 90 minutes for $1 apiece.

The same year they introduced the Slinky, they borrowed $500 to form a
company that was eventually known as James Industries to mass-produce
the toy in the Philadelphia area.

By the late 1950s, the couple had a 12-acre estate near Bryn Mawr, Pa.,
but Richard James seemed uncomfortable with material success, according
to biographical references.

He left his family in 1960 to join a religious cult in Bolivia and died
there in 1974. He left behind six children between the ages of 2 and 18
and a business in shambles.

"These religious people always had their hands out. He had given so
much away that I was almost bankrupt," Betty James said in 1996 in the
Austin, Texas, American-Statesman.

She later recalled 1961 as her toughest year: She moved her children
near her hometown of Altoona, Pa., and made a 450-mile weekly
round-trip commute to the factory while a caregiver stayed with her
children Monday through Thursday.

By 1965, she had moved the Slinky plant to Hollidaysburg, near her
home, where it remains today.

Using a mortgage taken out on her house, James "gambled everything she
had" and went to a New York toy show in 1963 -- and orders once again
came pouring in, said her son, Tom James, in 2005 in the Philadelphia
Inquirer.

More than 300 million Slinkys have been sold, according to a company
history. The toys now sell for about $4 to $5.

James also was credited with expanding the Slinky line to include the
Slinky Jr., plastic and neon-colored versions, the Slinky Dog -- made
newly popular by 1995's "Toy Story" -- and Slinky Pets, among other
products.

The "grzzzzzink" sound that the rolled-steel Slinky makes while in
motion is but one aural memory of childhood for many baby boomers and
their offspring.

The other is the catchy commercial jingle, which debuted on television
in 1963 and includes this refrain:

Ev'ryone knows it's Slinky

It's Slinky, it's Slinky,

For fun, it's a wonderful toy

It's fun for a girl and a boy.

"The reason everyone knows the jingle," her son told the Philadelphia
Inquirer, "is that we were too broke to buy a new one. We burned it
into the mentality of the country."

Betty Mattas was born Feb. 13, 1918, in Altoona and met Richard James
while attending Pennsylvania State University.

Upon retiring in 1998, she sold James Industries to Michigan-based Poof
Products.

She never remarried.

"I had my family, and that was the center of my existence and still
is," James said in 1995 in USA Today. "And I had Slinky."

In 2001, she became one of the few women inducted into the Toy Industry
Hall of Fame, which praised her "leadership, foresight and business
acumen" for turning around a struggling company to "produce what would
become one of the country's true classic toys."

The success of Slinky was simple, she often said: "No batteries,
nothing to wind up. These new toys on the market are lovely, but not
everyone has $40, $50, $60 to spend on a child."

Among her survivors are three daughters and three sons.


Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary