Slinky Founder Still Has Spring In Her Step
The elevator in the Toy Building is packed. The door opens on six and a petite woman dressed in black steps out.
“Did you see who that was?” one man asks another, poking his side. “Betty James.” The other man snorts. “Yeah, I could tell by the diamonds on her finger,” he says.
Now, now, boys. Give the woman a break. She has worked 51 years for those diamonds and has earned every carat. It’s just natural for people inside the toy business to be jealous of the president and chief executive of James Industries, the home of Slinky. To them, along with hundreds of others at the annual Toy Fair recently - with their stained raincoats and pockets full of Tums - that’s the same as winning the lottery.
What they conveniently forget is the work it took to turn the toy into a classic.
Richard James, an engineer, invented Slinky in 1945, after watching a torsion spring fall off a table. His wife chose the name from the dictionary. When the first 400 pieces sold out in 90 minutes at the Gimbels in Philadelphia (at $1 a piece), it was the beginning of an empire. The couple ran their business together, and had six children.
But life did not proceed happily ever after. By 1960, James joined what his wife calls a religious cult (“I didn’t know what it was. A lot of ‘praise be, I’m saved!”’) and left his family for Bolivia. He gave his wife the option of keeping the business or going with him.
“The children then were ages 2, 4, 6, 8, 16 and 18,” she recalls, sitting in the back office of her company’s Toy Fair showroom. “So, no, I wasn’t interested in South America. When we first had Slinky, we got a lot of publicity, made a lot of money, and he just didn’t handle it well. He thought he was big time. And these religious people always had their hands out. He had given so much away that I was almost bankrupt. I sold the factory and decided to move from the Philadelphia area back to Altoona, where I grew up, with the business.” She smiles ruefully. “It was one of those memorable years, 1960.”
As was 1995, but for much better reasons. Slinky celebrated its 50th anniversary, and a redesigned Slinky Dog co-starred in the Disney hit movie “Toy Story.” Slinky was also featured in “Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls.” And even though James Industries had problems producing the Slinky dogs in time for Christmas (they were finally shipped to stores in February), James, 78, is reveling in the toy’s resurgence. She has spent half a century nurturing her product and her devotion is complete. No matter where a conversation is headed, all roads lead quickly back to Slinky.
Her eldest son, Tom, who is her sales manager, is out in the showroom now with eager buyers from Ireland. “Toy Story” is to open in Europe this month.
“Disney had called to tell us about the movie and asked if we’d be interested,” James says. “And I said, ‘Are you kidding?’ “We used to have a Slinky dog, but we discontinued it a few years back,” she continues. “It wasn’t nearly as cute as this one. We are sold out until August. All our production - 825,000.”
Business has been so good, in fact, that James Industries, situated in Hollidaysburg, Pa., right outside Altoona, increased its staff from 80 to 120 employees since last fall.
Jack Trout, a toy analyst for Trout & Partners, a marketing strategy firm in Greenwich, Conn., said the production delay should not hurt the company. “Exporting to Europe particularly is a big future,” he said in a phone interview.
“Even though James Industries is a niche player which normally wouldn’t have the money to drive its product, Disney is all she needs to rejuvenate a specialty toy and keep its legend alive. The toy business is a fad business, and even though her product isn’t Barbie, the fact that it’s still breathing after all these years is something to be said for it. And with these movies, she can probably keep it going another 20 years at least.”