The slinky toy was made by accident!

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Sometimes when working in the toy industry you occasionally stop to wonder - what on earth inspired someone think of such a toy?

Well the slinky was not designed as a toy in the first place. It was simply a tension spring which happened to fall on the floor whilst the inventor Richard James was designing a meter that measured the horse-power on Navel battleships!

It could be that children have been playing with metal tensions springs since the bronze age, in its earliest form before it was marketed as a slinky in 1945.

The slinky works on a principle known as Hooke's law.

Metal Slinky Toy


You can buy many versions of the slinky today in plastic or metal in various sizes and designs, and since they first started selling as a toy, over 250 billion have been purchased worldwide.

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