August 25, 2025

— Betty James

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Walks down stairs, alone

It looked like a bad gamble: out $500.

But for Betty James and her husband Richard, just after World War II, and with six children at home, losing $500 wasn't just a weekend wager.

It was food, mortgage, clothing—probably $8,000 in today's money, enough to sink them.

Richard James had been a mechanical engineer at the Philadelphia Navy Yard during the war, trying to find a way to keep shipboard instruments stable during rough seas.

His solution involved tension springs, but the Navy wasn't interested.

Then came the accident that changed everything.

He dropped one of his springs and watched, enthralled, as it moved across the floor. As an MIT history later described it, the spring "stepped in a series of arcs, from the shelf, to a stack of books, to a tabletop, to the floor, where it re-coiled itself and stood upright."

Gamble once more

Even if the Navy didn't want this spring contraption, Betty James thought, maybe it could make a toy.

She even coined the name: "Slinky."

So the Jameses borrowed $500 to finance a run of 400 units at a local machine shop, but the toys didn't sell--not one. Complete dud.

For months, it looked as if they'd thrown time and money out the window, their house stacked with unsold inventory.

This was their moment of maximum risk: broke, with worthless stock cluttering their home, forced to decide whether to cut their losses or gamble once more.

The Turning Point

The end of the war in 1945 heralded what would be the first peacetime holiday shopping in years, and department stores were hungry for novelty—looking for anything that might become a hit.

Big ideas, small ideas—they were willing to try anything.

Gimbels department store agreed to let the Jameses set up a Slinky display in their flagship store on August 30. They built an incline, gathered a crowd, and demonstrated their walking spring.

This time, magic: 90 minutes, 400 units sold.

Slinky became a sensation—the Cabbage Patch doll, Ninja Turtles, or Xbox of its era.

Within two years, they had sold 100 million toys at a dollar each. (Quick math: That's um, $100 million, in 1940s dollars.) By the late 1950s, the Jameses were wealthy, and their toy had become an American icon.

The Unraveling

But this wasn't a storybook ending. The marriage didn't survive success.

In 1960, Richard James suffered what can only be called a breakdown. He abruptly abandoned Betty and their six children, leaving behind a nearly bankrupt company buried in debt. He fled to Bolivia to join an evangelical religious group and never returned, dying there in 1974.

For his family, it was abandonment masquerading as business failure. Actually, lets let Betty James describe the situation herself, as she did in 1996:

Betty took control of the wreckage and ran it for the next 38 years.

She proved to be the brand's true savior, slashing costs, renegotiating debts, and creating the marketing campaigns that made Slinky immortal—including that unforgettable jingle:

"What walks downstairs, alone or in pairs, and makes a slinkety sound?"

By the time Betty died in 2008, she had sold more than 300 million units nearly one toy for every modern American. She'd seen it earn induction into the National Toy Hall of Fame. Slinky even traveled to space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery.

The Real Story

When people tell stories like this, they usually focus on those final numbers—the millions sold, the fame achieved. But the part that captivates me most comes much earlier.

It's that moment in late August 1945, when everything seemed lost. When Betty James had to decide whether to keep going with Richard, surrounded by boxes of toys nobody wanted, had to decide whether to keep going or give up.

It's when they were still gamblers, weighing whether to play one more hand.

What if they hadn't spent that day at Gimbels? What if they had surrendered to failure?

We can't know their exact state of mind in that crucial moment—the fears, the hopes, the desperate calculations that led them to risk everything one final time.

For that matter, what if she had been unable to take on the Herculean task of running and building the company after he left?

What we do know is this: sometimes the difference between failure and legend comes down to a single decision to keep trying.

And yes, you'll probably have that jingle stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

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7 other things to know this week ...

• Sunday, August 24: "We choose our own path, and no power will stop us." — Leonid Kravchuk, first democratically elected president of Ukraine, which declared independence from the Soviet Union on this day in 1991.
• Monday, August 25: ""We have been cautious because we're dealing with one of the most important milestones in the history of exploration." — Ed Stone, project lead on NASA's Voyager 1 mission, confirming on this date in 2012 that the probe had become the first manmade object to leave the Solar System and enter intersteller space.
• Tuesday, August 26: "Paris! Paris outraged! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But Paris liberated!" — General Charles de Gaulle on this date in 1944, leading a triumphant march through Paris following its liberation from Nazi occupation.
• Wednesday, August 27: "We have flown the future’s silhouette into the sky." — captain of the USS Los Angeles, a 658-foot-long Zeppelin built by Germany as reparations, which made its maiden flight on this date in 1924. By comparison, that's more than 2.5 times as big as a 747.
• Thursday, August 28: "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." — Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., speaking on this day in 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
• Friday, August 29: "No child shall toil in shadows while others learn in light."— Sir Robert Peel, who was instrumental in crafting the British Factory Act, which passed on 1833 and improved working conditions and restricted child labor.
• Saturday, August 30: "THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOG'S BACK 1234567890" —first message sent from the U.S. to Russia via the Moscow–Washington hotline, intended to allow immediate communications between the two countries in the event of a crisis, on this date in 1963. The first non-test message came three months later, after the assassination of President Kennedy.