Betty James, Developer of Slinky, Dies

Betty James died this last Thursday, November 20, 2008. She was 90. The Slinky story does not begin with Betty, but it might have ended prematurely without her.

Betty’s husband Richard James was an engineer hired by the Navy in 1945 to create a system by which sensitive equipment could function on rough seas. Richard thought that suspending the equipment by springs might do the trick. When he accidentally knocked one of his lifeless coils off its perch, the spring became a marvelous thing. James watched it bounce, and then for one brief moment actually appear to walk. The light bulb went off, and then Richard went home, to tell his wife, Betty.

“I think we can make this into a toy,” he said. Betty was skeptical at first. When I interviewed her for my book, Timeless Toys she told me, “I was doubtful it could be a toy until we showed it to some neighborhood children and they absolutely loved it. That’s what convinced me.” Betty was the one who named the toy, settling upon the word slinky in a tattered family dictionary. With $500 in borrowed money, Betty and Richard formed James Industries and had 400 springs made by a local machine shop. They named their new venture James Industries. For 15 years the couple worked together. The toy took off and then, so did its creator.

In 1960, Richard James joined a religious cult in Boliva, leaving Betty with six kids and a company in debt. In the months leading up to his departure, Richard forwarded a considerable amount of money to the cult, leaving both the family and the business in turmoil. “It doesn’t bother me now,” Betty told me. “I think in the early days of Slinky, he was given a lot of press and really felt important. So when the business started to go down and he wasn’t getting the same applause, I think that outfit made him feel important again because he was giving them so much money….He said he was going and asked if I wanted to sell the business or run it,” Betty recalled. “Without any hesitation I said I’d run it.”

She didn’t just run it. She saved it. At first she had to leave her six children with a caregiver as she drove from her hometown of Hollidaysburg, PA to the Slinky factory in Philadelphia, where she oversaw operations for most of her work week. She’d then return home to her role as a single mom for the weekend. “I was scared, I’ll admit that,” she recalled. “I wasn’t sure If I could do it or not, but you know when you have six kids, you do what you have to do and you don’t think too much about it.” She called all the creditors Richard had left behind and negotiated for more time. She sold the Philadelphia factory and moved production to a rented factory/warehouse just outside Hollidaysburg.

In 1962, she commissioned the writing of the toy tune that became one of the longest running jingles in advertising history:

What walks down stairs alone or in pairs and makes a slinkity sound?
A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing, ev’ryone knows it’s SLINKY!
It’s SLINKY, it’s SLINKY, for fun, it’s a wonderful toy.
It’s SLINKY, it’s SLINKY, it’s fun for a girl and a boy.
It’s fun for a girl and a boy.

In 1965, after breaking through the glass ceiling to become one of the first women to run a nationally-known company (thanks in part to the hugely successful jingle and the sales that followed), she moved from her rented facility to a new factory in her hometown of Hollidaysburg.

In the late 1960s, when a steel strike threatened to bankrupt James Industries, she took action. “I didn’t know what to do, so I just called the president of Pittsburgh Steel,” she said. “I told him that I felt he had to know what it was like to struggle, and that he wouldn’t be where he was if he didn’t have some feeling for people. I explained our case and asked him to please ship me the steel. I don’t know if he felt sorry for me or what, but he shipped the steel.”

1998, Betty sold her company to Michigan-based, Poof Products, Inc. “I had been courted by a number of bigger companies over the years, but I always refused to sell because my employees have been so wonderful,” she shared. “This area needed the work and the bigger toy companies would have moved it.”

In 2001, Betty James was inducted into the Toy Industry Association’s Hall of Fame, a fitting tribute to the woman who named Slinky in 1943, saved it in 1960 and marketed it for 55 years.

In 2006, I set out to make a documentary film celebrating toy designers with director Ken Sons. Ken and I had the distinct privilege of spending an entire day with Betty James at her Hollidaysburg home. She chatted with us and made us feel welcome among the piles of Christmas presents she was having wrapped for her 16 grandchildren. After the charming interview, she insisted on treating us to lunch. She guided us to the Hollidaysburg Country Club while riding in the passenger’s seat, joking about her eyesight not being what it used. We eventually got there after a few laughs and a few wrong turns.

As we packed up our lights and camera back at her home, Betty shuffled off, only to return a few minutes later with yet another gift. She handed me a gorgeous green box within which rested a 1988 bottle of Dom Perignon champagne. “For your movie’s premiere,” she said. I accepted the gift, but only on the condition that she come to the premiere and have a toast with us.

That toast will not be the same without her. We will raise a glass this spring when the film debuts.

To Betty James, forever the Mrs. Claus of a town called Hollidaysburg, an icon of the toy industry, and the grand matriarch of a toy named Slinky.