Editor’s Note: Today I did something a little different for the podcast version of the story. This time I tell you the story behind the story. In other words, I share with you how I uncovered the story and why I choose to write about it. I think you’ll find it interesting. And the full version of the story is below.
The mixture had a strong, noxious petroleum odor, dominated by the volatile, sharp notes of gasoline.
The overall smell would be intense and downright unpleasant, potentially causing irritation to your nose and throat if inhaled.
Now imagine adding a bit of sand to this home-made concoction that was once used to wash your hands.
Especially the hands of industrial workers who operated heavy machinery, maintaining oil rig equipment and boilers and prepping and painting large commercial buildings.
Not only could it make your nose and throat irritated but could severely damage your skin. That’s because kerosene is a petroleum-based solvent that can dissolve natural oils found in the outermost layer of the skin. This leads to dryness, irritation, and potential dermatitis.
Gasoline is even more aggressive due to its lighter hydrocarbons and additives (e.g., benzene, toluene, or xylene). It acts as a powerful solvent, stripping the skin’s natural oils and causing immediate irritation, redness, and a burning sensation.
Since sand is abrasive, especially when rubbed against the skin, it would act like a harsh exfoliant, causing sore and tender abrasions.
This all sounds nasty but that’s pretty much the way workers washed the grit, grease and oil from their hands in the early late 1800’s to early 1900s. Bars of soap as we know it didn’t exactly exist back then.
Thankfully John T. Robertson figured out how to do away with these homemade hand cleansers and developed a "mineral soap" in Glastonbury, U.K. in 1885.
Mr. Robertson set up a manufacturing business known as the Orford Soap Company that produced the feldspar (a rock-based mineral) based cleaner, which he called “Bon Ami” - the French words for good friend.
Once considered a waste material, feldspar was found to shine the shovels of quarry workers paid to separate it from silica quartz. Silica quartz-based cleaners scratch things clean, while softer feldspar-based Bon Ami polishes clean without scratching.
But John wasn’t the only one creating soap-based products to clean those dirty hands. New types of soaps were being created here in the U.S. too … like powered soaps.
A Soap for You, A Soap for Me
Rowlesburg is quaint small town located in West Virginia, which sits near the Cheat River. There are about 51 commercial buildings with many that are two story, framed and masonry, dating from about 1900 to 1950.
It was a former railroad town. It was where James Rowles, Chief Engineer of the B & O Railroad opened one of the first field offices. In fact the town is named after him.
Besides its railroad history, there’s not much more to the town except for its hiking along the Allegheny Trail that passes through the Allegheny Mountains in West Virginia, and into part of western Virginia.
But it’s here in this town that native born Samuel McVicker set up his little farm along with his wife Susan Ann McVicker. Together they had eight children: Gladys, George, Cleophas, Frankie, Fernie, Rosie, Izetta, and Donald.
Maybe because he had an unusual name that might explain why Cleophas decided he didn’t want to follow his father’s footsteps and be a farmer. Although he did help out on the farm as a child, at age 16, he took up boxing.
I can’t tell you how good of a boxer he might have been, but he did manage to tour the country under the direction of a boxing promoter.
But that’s not what he really wants to do either. After a short-lived boxing career, Cleo moved to Cincinnati Ohio, where he began working with Precision Metal Workers. The company was metal fabrication shop, which typically involves processes like machining, welding, or sheet metal fabrication.
At the time, they happened to own another small company - Kutol Products.
Kutol was originally founded in Louisville, Kentucky in 1912 and of all the things it sold was good old fashioned powdered hand cleaners that were made most likely of flour-based with abrasives like pumice.
However just a few years after opening, the company relocated to Cincinnati, Ohio - at the time considered a major manufacturing hub. This move gave them access to more resources, which helped them improve their manufacturing capacity of heavy duty powered hand cleaning products.
But they weren’t the only ones making cleaners. Several other companies were manufacturing hand cleaners including GOJO Industries founded in 1946 in Akron Ohio. The company is famous for creating Purcell hand sanitizer.
Other well-known brands included Henkel Industries, established in 1876 and famous for Persil. And then of course there’s the giant of them all, Proctor and Gamble famous for what they first called “white soap,” now known as Ivory Soap.
With so many cleaning manufacturers making their way onto the marketplace, it’s inevitable that some will struggle, while others survive. Kutol Products was one of those companies fighting to stay alive.
In fact things were so bad that executives of Precision Metal Workers made the decision to send Cleo McVicker to Ohio to begin the process of liquidating Kutol Products.
Clean Soap, Dirty Walls
But he did something completely opposite … he reorganized the company. And he invited his younger brother Noah to join him in working at Kutol Products.
While Cleo was more of a strategic thinker, Noah leaned toward being an inventor. Together the two brothers concentrated their efforts on developing cleaning products for a new market - households.
Why houses instead of hands? Well, you see back in the late 1920s, houses were mostly heated by coal.
While it kept homes warm, coal heating produced soot that stained delicate, wallpapers that were popular back then. Traditional cleaning methods were inadequate because they caused easily create tear marks in the paper and didn’t thoroughly clean the walls.
But there’s another reason they focused on cleaners for wallpaper. In 1933, during a meeting with Kroger grocery store representatives, Cleo McVicker learned they were seeking a wallpaper cleaner to sell in their stores, as customers were asking about a product to remove coal soot from wallpaper.
Despite the brothers having no prior experience making wallpaper cleaner, Cleo promised Kroger that the company could produce it. So Kutol and Kroger signed a contract, and placed an order for 15,000 cases, with a $5,000 penalty (equivalent to ~$90,000 today) if Kutol failed to deliver on time—a risk that could have bankrupted the company.
Noah McVicker got to work right away developing the cleaner. Using what he knew about powered based hand cleansers, Noah formulated a pliable, putty-like compound using a common recipe of the time - primarily flour, water, salt, and possibly borax. The cleaner he developed could be gently rolled across the wallpaper while lifting the soot without damaging it.
The cleaner was non-toxic, malleable, and off-white, designed especially to absorb grime effectively. And most of it … it worked!
The brothers successfully delivered the required number of cases with no penalty. That single deal “kept the company alive,” providing a much needed financial lifeline.
The brother’s cleaner was sold in Kroger stores, across the Midwest and potentially nationwide, as Kroger’s growing footprint of stores continued to skyrocket. In fact by 1930s, Kroger had over 5,000 locations. This gave Kutol access to a broad consumer base, elevating its brand from a local soap manufacturer to a recognized name in household cleaning.
Things were going well for Kutol Products, so much so that Cleo’s son Joseph joined the company. Looking for a salesman to help the company further expand their business, Joseph asked his good friend Bill Rhodenbaugh to come on board as a salesman.
It was perfect timing because Bill had just returned from the Korean War and was looking for a full-time job. Bill was a critical hire for the Kutol company because he helped it expand their offering from wallpaper cleaner to powdered hand soaps and waterless cleaner for wood.
Kutol became the largest manufacturer of wallpaper cleaning and cleaning products in the world.
Technology Changes Everything
Clayton Christensen popularized the phrase, “disruptive technology reshapes industries,” in his 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma.
And in the late 1940s to early 1950's, coal heating was being replaced by oil, gas, and electricity. So soot on wallpaper form coal burning wasn’t as big of a problem as it had been.
Not only that but advancements in wallpapers were made including washable vinyl wallpapers, which reduced the demand for Kutol’s flagship product - wallpaper cleaner.
As you can guess, this caused severe financial troubles for Kutol, as the company relied heavily on the cleaner’s success from the 1933 Kroger deal. Some sources say that by the early 1950s, Kutol was “on the brink of collapse.”
The brothers must have felt defeated. After all that hard work and success, here they are staring failure in its face.
But Dear Reader sometimes in life, things happen when they are supposed to at the right time and right place. And Kutol was about to experience their “right time and right place” moment.
While the McVickers were desperately looking for a new product to turn sales around, they had no idea that the same product created for cleaning wallpaper would be the one that changed their fortunes and history.
See what they didn’t know was that teachers were buying the cleaner from Kroger stores and then letting the kids in their classrooms play with it during art time. After all it was non-toxic, so it was harmless to the children. It was also pliable, which allowed the children to mold it into different shapes.
Kutol’s pivotal moment came in 1954 when Kay Zufall, a nursery schoolteacher herself and sister-in-law of Joe McVicker read a story in a magazine about how school children were using a flour-based wallpaper cleaner for art projects.
Kay immediately recognized the children were playing with Kutol’s wallpaper cleaner. So she called Joe and suggested that maybe the company should consider reformulating the cleaner into a toy for children.
Joe reformulated the cleaner by removing detergents, adding scent and colors. Now all they had to do was come up with a name for this newly created pliable molding toy made for children.
Since had developed different colors for it, he suggested they call it Rainbow Modeling Compound. But it was rejected by other members of the McVickers family.
Then Kay and her husband Bob started brainstorming for a name. I can’t tell you how many different names they came up with or how long it took, but eventually the settled on one that seemed to encompass everything the modeling compound offered children: play time fun with a dough like substance = Play-Doh.
Kutol then created a subsidiary company named from what Joe had suggested for the modeling clay, Rainbow Crafts. Then they began marketing Play-Doh to schools, starting with Cincinnati-area institutions in 1955.
In 1956, Play-Doh was introduced at the American International Toy Fair in New York and distributed to schools and retailers such as Macy’s and Marshall Field’s.
Since Play-Doh was priced relatively low at $1–$2 per can, it didn’t take long for it to become a best seller. In fact by 1958, Rainbow Crafts reported selling over 900,000 cans annually, with sales reaching $3 million ($30 million today).
And the success continued. Play-Doh expanded internationally in the 1960s, reaching markets in Europe, Canada, and Australia. The company also introduced more colors and accessories like molds and extruders (e.g., the Fun Factory).
By 1964, Rainbow Crafts was shipping more than one million cans of Play-Doh per year. Suffice it to say, Play-Doh became a staple in American households and classrooms, synonymous with childhood creativity and fun.
When Everybody Wants What You Have
When a business is highly successful, they usually get bought out by another highly successful company. And that’s what happened to Rainbow crafts.
Rainbow Crafts was sold to General Mills in 1965 for $3 million. Kutol, while no longer directly managing Play-Doh through Rainbow Crafts, benefited from the sale, which helped stabilized the company post-1950s struggles.
Then in 1967 General Mills bought Kenner Parker Toys, which made action figures for original series such as Star Wars, Batman, and Jurassic Park. After that, General Mills merged Rainbow Crafts into Kenner Toys.
In 1987, The Tonka Corporation purchased Kenner Toys for $555 million. However, the debt incurred from the acquisition, coupled with a lack of new product successes, ultimately led to Tonka being acquired by Hasbro in 1991 for roughly $516 million. The price included the acquisition of all outstanding securities, along with the assumption of Tonka's long-term debt.
As for Play-Doh, it’s still a highly valued and sought after toy for kids. It is estimated that since the product was officially introduced in 1955, more than three billion cans of Play-Doh have been sold worldwide.
While precise annual sales figures are not readily available in the public domain, it's estimated that Play-Doh sells over 100 million cans annually worldwide. Hasbro reports that Play-Doh is one of their most popular brands.
A Lasting Legacy
As for Cleo and Noah … sadly, Cleo McVicker died in a plane crash in 1949. So he never saw the huge success of Play-Doh. Noah eventually retired from the business and living the remaining years of his life at home in Tennessee. He died on June 9, 1980.
Yet their journey from crafting a practical cleaner to unleashing a creative phenomenon shows that challenges can spark unexpected breakthroughs.
This story offers valuable lessons for anyone facing setbacks or shifting markets. First, embrace adaptability: the McVickers didn’t cling to their failing cleaner but reimagined it for a new purpose, much like businesses today must pivot to survive disruption.
Second, they willingly listened to unexpected voices: Kay Zufall, a teacher, not a corporate executive, saw the potential in a struggling product, proving that innovation can come from outside traditional channels.
Finally, sometimes it pays to take calculated risks: Cleo’s gamble on the Kroger deal, despite a $5,000 penalty risk, shows that bold moves can yield transformative rewards.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur, artist, or dreamer, Play-Doh’s story inspires us to find opportunity in adversity, reframe challenges as possibilities, and create something timeless from the simplest ingredients.
Amazing Quotes by Amazing People
“We are all born with a unique genetic blueprint, which lays out the basic characteristics of our personality as well as our physical health and appearance... And yet, we all have the power to shape our own destiny.” - J.K Rowling
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