Wooly Willy – Nostalgia Central

Brothers Donald and James Herzog developed Wooly Willy in 1955 while working at their father’s toy factory (the Smethport Specialty Company in Smethport, Pennsylvania).

The toy – a smiling face of a bald man encased under vacuum-formed clear plastic with a large number of magnetic shavings in it which are manipulated by a magnetic “wand” to create hair, beards, moustache, eyebrows etc – was designed as a use for the magnetic filings that resulted from creating other toys.

Priced at 29 cents, Wooly Willy was initially unsuccessful. One retailer described it as the worst toy he had ever seen.

Eventually, a buyer for the GC Murphy dime store chain initially purchased six dozen of the toy for their Indianapolis store, expecting it would take a year to sell them.

Two days later, he ordered a further 12,000 units for nationwide distribution. More than 75 million units have since been sold.

Similar toys have since been made (some by the same company), such as the larger “Dapper Dan The Magnetic Man.”

There have been official Simpsons versions, not-particularly-official-looking Beatles versions, and mentions everywhere from Family Guy to That ‘70s Show, and Wooly Willy has been named as one of the “100 most influential toys of the 20th century” by the Toy Industry Association in the USA.

The Smethport Specialty Company was bought by the Wisconsin-based company PlayMonster (formerly known as Patch Products) in 2008.  They now own the Woolly Willy trademark.

Donald Herzog died on 13 August 2013. James Reese Herzog died on Wednesday 29 September 2021. He was 93.