Slinky

The Slinky was invented by Richard James, a naval engineer, and first sold at Gimbels in Philadelphia at Christmas 1945. His wife Betty named it and ran the company, James Industries, for decades. She moved production to her home region of Blair County, Pennsylvania, and Slinkys have been made in a Hollidaysburg factory since 1964. The brand has changed hands several times since 1998. The previous owner, Alex Brands, closed the plant in the spring of 2020. Just Play, a Florida toy company, bought the brand at auction that May and reopened the same factory with its old workers in time for Christmas.

The metal Slinky is the reason for the mark. A 2026 report from WPVI in Philadelphia found it still coming off the original 1945 machines in Hollidaysburg, at about three million a year. The steel wire comes from York, Pennsylvania. Just Play’s own Amazon listing for the Giant Slinky says “Made in the USA”. Just Play’s own website says nothing about origin either way.

That silence is the caveat. Just Play also sells plastic Slinkys, and Slinky-branded licensed goods such as a Toy Story Slinky Dog. No source found here says where those are made. The products listed below are the metal Slinkys only, and the mark should be read as a statement about them.

This was considered for the split-line migration in #175 and left where it is, because a split line needs a good the brand itself places abroad and there is none. Just Play’s entire web presence for Slinky is a single brand page listing two products with no origin statement; poof-slinky.com now redirects to it; the Extreme Rainbow Slinky and Original Metal Slinky pages say nothing either way; and the company’s about and customer-care pages say nothing about manufacturing at all. Its own Amazon listings for the plastic Giant, the Extreme Rainbow and the Toy Story Slinky Dog carry no country-of-origin field and no made-in claim. What is here is an evidence gap, not a disclosed import, and the paragraph above is the honest way to state it.