Original subtitles

(dramatic music)

André Cassagnes was working for a company

south of the heart of Paris.

He's an electrician.

He's got a modest life.

Electrician may be a bit of an overstatement.

He was kind of a handyman.

He was supposed to work in his family's bakery,

but he's allergic to flour.

[Narrator] Instead, Cassagnes spends his days

surrounded by a different ingredient,

one used to make textured wallpaper.

The entire factory is covered in a layer

of this incredibly fine aluminum dust.

He was changing out a light switch,

and the plate around the light switch was a brand new one.

And so André took a writing instrument,

and wrote a note on it.

(soft music)

(dramatic music)

André had this magic moment.

He picked up this translucent decal.

He realizes that the very things he had been writing

were etched in this fine little dust.

[Narrator] Cassagnes doesn't know it yet,

but he's just stumbled upon the inspiration

for the most popular drawing toy of all time.

Etch A Sketch will go on to sell

over 175 million units worldwide.

Playing with the Etch A Sketch

was like playing with magic.

This was a futuristic toy.

[Narrator] And it's not the only classic toy

discovered by accident.

♪ Play-Doh Play-Doh in your fun factory ♪

Play-Doh, kids loved it, teachers it, parents loved it.

It gave three-dimensional creativity possibilities

where none had existed before.

That smell is childhood.

[Narrator] Both game-changers

are conceived by novice toy makers.

It wasn't what he had set out to do.

We can't go on TV with that.

[Narrator] And take the industry by storm.

It is a phenomenon.

The orders are backed up for months.

[Narrator] To become pop culture institutions.

The deal with Captain Kangaroo

really put Play-Doh on the map almost immediately.

[Narrator] But not everyone.

I'll take care of the patent.

Thank you so much, sir.

[Narrator] Will reap the rewards.

Not only did they take his money they took all the credit.

(dramatic music)

(soft music)

Right after World War II,

America is in the midst of the Baby Boom.

There was this appetite for new and exciting toys

that will allow children

to expand their imagination and creativity.

But we've been seeing the same categories of toys

over and over, dolls, board games, stuffed animals,

and it was kind of boring.

This was a time where there really were not a lot of

toy categories and especially a lot of artistic toys.

This is an opportunity for true visionaries

to stand out from the pack.

(soft music)

[Narrator] One such visionary is André Cassagnes

who believes he stumbled upon an innovative idea.

He thought, well, maybe if I could get a stylist

on the powder side

it could be turned into some sort of a drawing toy.

He wants to support his young family,

but he's a handyman, he's not a toy maker.

[Narrator] Despite his inexperience,

Cassagnes continues working on his toy,

but he quickly hits a wall.

André's major issue was what would the writing surface be?

He has to first find a surface

that the aluminum powder will stick to,

but what surface is it going to take?

Nothing like this has ever existed.

The basic concept is known as static electricity.

When two materials come into contact with each other

they make an electrical charge,

which indicates how well two materials will stick together.

Cassagnes is trying to find that strongest bond.

[Narrator] He starts with a new wonder material, plastic.

(dramatic music)

It doesn't have the adhesion he needs

to create that smooth screen

that he can then etch the design out of.

[Narrator] Unfortunately for Cassagnes

it's back to the drawing board.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. 25-year-old, Joe McVicker,

is also feeling stuck.

He was at Brown University,

and his father who was a pilot was coming to see him,

and, unfortunately, crashed his plane and died.

His father has a company called Kutol

where they are creating a kind of putty

to clean soot off of wallpaper.

From 1885 to about 1950 we heated our homes with coal,

but the problem was soot got everywhere.

Companies like Kutol started making a doughy mixture

of Borax, salt, water, flour.

They would roll it down the wallpaper,

and it would pick the soot off of it.

Kutol became the biggest wallpaper cleaner company

in the world.

[Narrator] But now gas and oil furnaces

have started to replace coal,

and easy to clean wallpaper is also hitting the market.

The company is tanking.

McVicker was thrust into this role of running a company.

It wasn't what he had set out to do.

So, this is traditional wallpaper.

You need our stuff to clean it.

Bill Rhodenbaugh was Joe's brother-in-law,

and he was hired to help Joe

sort of try to rescue this company.

[Bill] But these two are vinyl.

All you need is soap and water.

[Joe] And does our stuff work on the vinyl?

[Bill] Yeah, it works,

but why would you pay for it

when you can use soap and water?

So you have a non-businessman running a business

that is going under.

It's a dark time for Joe McVicker.

[Narrator] 600 miles away the mood is much brighter.

[Kay] Uh-hmm, that's a great snowman, I love it.

There is a woman named Kay Zufall

in the garden state of New Jersey,

who runs a small nursery school.

Wow, that's really creative.

Not exactly an ornament though.

My mother came up with a dozen ideas a day.

Well, it was Christmas, the project was to make ornaments.

She reads an article about the dough

that they used to use to clean the wallpaper,

and how it's now being repurposed

to create Christmas ornaments.

And we're like, this is fun to play with.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Let's try to stay on task.

Ornaments, yeah, Christmas ornaments, guys.

This isn't food and it's not a toy.

We're rolling it out and making little things with it.

And I think she began to just watch us having fun with it.

This looks kinda good, hmm.

This episode in a New Jersey preschool

might not have gone anywhere,

but Joe McVicker is her brother-in-law.

Hi, it's Kay.

This is gonna sound crazy,

but you should come out to Jersey.

There's something you need to see.

(soft music)

[Narrator] Back in France, André Cassagnes

still hasn't found the right drawing surface for his toy.

Cassagnes is trying anything he can think of.

Plastic doesn't have enough adhesion to make it work.

[Narrator] Then something unexpected catches his eye.

Plain as the nose on his face, glass.

It's a light bulb moment.

(bright music)

Could this work?

One smooth even sheet, one smooth coating.

(bright music)

Enrique, come see this.

No way, it's sticking.

[Enrique] Hey, let me have a go.

Go for it.

It sticks.

The glass is charged one way.

Aluminum powder is charged the other,

and they attract each other.

There will be a higher transfer of electrons,

which will mean that's there a higher sticking force

between the powder and the glass surface itself

versus the plastic counterpart.

The screen has to made of glass.

[Narrator] But glass presents a whole new set of problems.

André Cassagnes really needed to built a structure,

a case to hold this because what he had inside of there

were all basically, unsafe

materials for a kid to play with.

Glass, it will shatter, they can get cut.

Then there's the aluminum powder.

If you inhale too much of this it will make you sick.

If he doesn't figure out a way to seal this up,

and make this work perfectly,

no toy company is gonna touch it.

[Narrator] As Joe McVicker struggles

to keep his family's wallpaper cleaner business afloat,

his sister-in-law

believes she has an unconventional solution.

[Kay] I'm telling you, I think it's something.

Kay Zufall, it was her that said,

"Joe McVicker, you need to turn this into a toy."

- Hi. - Hi guys.

Do you wanna show us

some of the shapes you've been working on.

Yeah, what are we working on here?

Back then the only kind of moldable substance

a child could play with would be like an oil-based clay.

Which, one, took some very deft hands to work with.

And, two, stained.

(bright music)

He sees these children playing with glee and delight

with wallpaper cleaning putty.

It sounds ridiculous.

It just sounds insane,

but this stuff had a certain feel to it.

And he wonders

could this dough become a successful children's toy?

Joe went right back to Cincinnati and says,

"Look, we're gonna do this,

or we're all gonna be out of business."

And I'm sure he thought to himself,

well, this is a long shot.

It's ugly.

The color was not child-friendly.

I gotta get rid of this detergent smell.

It stinks of detergent.

It's a cleaning agent.

What do I do with this?

Well, did it work?

Just like making wallpaper cleaner.

So they take out the detergent.

They add some coloring.

Joe McVicker uses bright colors, red, blue and yellow.

These are the colors we can make,

but these are just primary for now.

And the thinking was

that you could make any color under the sun

by mixing those three primary colors.

They go,

Do we have a toy here?

Yeah, they do.

[Narrator] Now their new toy just needs a name.

Joe McVicker is a smart guy.

He's got this great idea,

but he's not a toy marketing expert.

The original name was Kutol's Rainbow Modeling Compound.

Kutol's Rainbow Modeling Compound.

Sounds like something you would find

at your local hardware store.

The only word a child could relate to was rainbow.

Joe called my parents to say we found a name.

And he spits out this long thing.

And my parents are just like,

oh, hang on, hang on, we'll call you back.

(phone ringing)

She was like, no, you can't call it that.

Call it Play-Doh.

And take out the silent letters

that we have way too many of in English,

and instead of D-O-U-G-H just D-O-H, Play-Doh.

The process to turn it from industrial cleaning product

into children's toy only take a couple of weeks.

[Narrator] But its transformation

removes something crucial.

But now it doesn't smell like anything.

You're right.

Our olfactory senses

are some of the most evocative we have.

And, yes, it's brightly colored dough, but it's not enough.

[Narrator] Meanwhile, André Cassagnes

has finally sniffed out a solution

for his drawing toy's design.

And it's modeled after another device

taking the world by storm.

The idea that it looked like

you were playing with a TV screen was not an accident.

You're talking to a Baby Boomer here

where television was a very important thing in my life,

and it influenced everyone.

[Narrator] By the mid 1950s,

the number of U.S. homes with a television set

goes from under just 10% to 85.

We were fascinated with TV as a culture,

and how TV is made and what's on TV.

So suddenly you've got something that looks like a TV,

and you're creating something on the TV.

[Narrator] The TV also inspires its name.

So he creates a portmanteau

of the French word for television, télévision,

and the word for screen, écran,

and he creates Télécran.

[Narrator] For the drawing controls themselves,

Cassagnes settles on knobs,

but they make the design more complicated.

You're turning knobs in order to move something

horizontally or vertically.

Going from rotational movement to translational movement

is kind of the first key step in realizing that the toy

is much more complex than it seems.

The knobs are connected to sequences of pulleys,

which basically move a cable attached to these two rails

that hold the stylus at their intersection.

The stylus is rubbing up against the glass,

therefore, removing the aluminum powder off of the glass.

You're seeing through to the back which is dark.

It looks like a black line, that's part of the magic.

[Narrator] Holding it all together is one nylon string,

but Cassagnes can't figure out the right amount of tension

to make it work consistently.

Not only does the string tension

control how smoothly it's gonna draw,

it controls if it's gonna draw at all.

[Narrator] While Cassagnes looks for a solution,

in the U.S.

McVicker is still searching for the perfect smell.

What is that?

[Joe] Perfume, all different scents.

We're gonna put perfume in the Play-Doh.

I think the desire to put a smell in Play-Doh was inspired

because, again, it's a tactile toy,

and it's a whole sensory toy,

so how do we engage all of the senses with kids.

(quirky music)

Give this one a try.

Yea, it's okay.

(quirky music)

Yeah.

They land at a hybrid of vanilla and almond,

something that is fragrant, and maybe a little perfumy,

but also evokes home.

Nothing else smells like Play-Doh.

If you walk into a room you would say

there's Play-Doh in this room.

It's a little bit like something you might eat.

It's a little bit something like you might wear.

Smelling the Play-Doh is half of the fun.

I want all of our machines making Play-Doh tonight.

All of them?

Yeah, there's no sense making wallpaper cleaner anymore.

It's Play-Doh or it's nothing.

Joe McVicker trusted his intuition and he said,

"I am changing our entire company's direction

into children's toys."

I think I would be terrified.

[Narrator] As McVicker goes full speed ahead with Play-Doh

Cassagnes remains at a standstill.

It's a very intricate process

of winding various different strings

in just the right patterns

through just the right pulleys

with just the right tension.

[Narrator] A process that after months of trying

Cassagnes has yet to figure out.

He's got a great idea,

something the world's never seen before,

but can he actually make it work?

[Narrator] After months of trial and error,

André Cassagnes is still struggling

with the biggest obstacle for his Télécran.

The tension of the nylon string.

The tension of the string that holds the stylus in place

has to be just perfect.

The stylus goes too far forward it cracks the glass.

If the tension is too loose, well, we've got a stylus

that can't even touch the glass at all.

I mean, this is one of the most difficult

and complicated toys in history to make.

Cassagnes finally believes he has a working prototype,

and he begins to demonstrate it for people.

I'm very glad to meet you.

Thank you for coming.

[Narrator] But in order to get manufacturers interested

he'll have to prove it actually works.

Here we have a prototype for you.

We have knobs, we have pulleys.

We have all of these things

that must work perfectly together.

If you turn the knob it will make a line.

Go ahead.

If the strings are too loose as soon as you turn the knob

it will just move,

and, like, the stylus won't really move with it.

Just try this one.

I'm not sure what.

It doesn't go so well.

This is a nightmare.

I don't know what's happened.

From a corporate standpoint

it certainly was a big pain in the neck.

My fault here, just bear with me please.

This is gonna be a hard thing to make,

and a hard thing to sell.

[Narrator] While Cassagnes faces a setback,

Joe McVicker's Play-Doh has taken a step forward.

Since Kutol had already been selling the cleaning dough

as a product to schools to clean their wallpaper,

they begin selling them Play-Doh,

but it's not sold in the iconic little yellow cans

that we think of now.

It was in gallon cans, big giant cans.

And it's like Play-Doh becomes a fairly modest hit

in the Cincinnati area.

But that's not enough for him.

He wants more.

He wants this to go national.

He wants to get it in front of as many kids as he can.

He wants it to be a success.

Heck, he wants to be a success.

He wants to conquer the world, not just Cincinnati.

(cheerful music)

Take a look at these.

Oh, consumer-friendly, nice,

but how do we get them to consumers?

With this.

For the Baby Boom generation

there was nobody more important that "Captain Kangaroo."

It came on as you would be having your breakfast,

getting ready for school.

Bunny Rabbit, Mr. Green Jeans,

I mean, Bob Keeshan was Captain Kangaroo,

and he was brilliant.

Television was a game-changer for the toy industry

because what it did was it unified the culture of children.

Almost every kid in America who was watching TV

was watching "Captain Kangaroo."

And that was a huge cultural moment

for an entire cohort of kids,

one of the biggest cohorts

you've ever seen in our population.

Television still is a new media,

but I think manufacturers realized

that this is a peerless advertiser's dream,

so it's risky but it's also a risk that has great reward.

[Narrator] "Captain Kangaroo"

opens up a whole new avenue of marketing toys to kids.

If the Captain told you that this was a good toy

you bought it.

I'm gonna introduce Play-Doh to Captain Kangaroo.

Joe McVicker gets a crazy idea.

Doesn't know anybody there.

Certainly, not the Captain himself.

He's just gonna show up on set,

and try to sell them some dough

that smells like vanilla and almonds.

A crazy idea like that might work.

Then, again, it might just be crazy.

(soft music)

[Narrator] After years of relentless tinkering,

André Cassagnes finally perfects his drawing toy.

Cassagnes spends almost two years

stringing it again and again and again

until he's got the tension just right.

[Narrator] He even wins a medal for the ingenious design,

but so far that's all he's earned.

Remember, André Cassagnes had a job.

He has a young family that he has to provide for.

And money is really tight.

He's really gotta start making some money on this.

But he went to various companies

and he was turned down.

He ends up at a company that produces

automatic cigarette rolling machines of all things.

It's run by a guy named Paul Chaze.

[André] Good afternoon.

[Paul] Good afternoon.

Thank you for coming in today.

[André] Thank you for having me.

Paul Chaze has a plastic injection molding factory.

Injection molding is how most toys

that are made of plastic are made.

The little hotels and the homes on the Monopoly board

are made by injection molding.

Paul Chaze can make the housing for the Télécran.

[André] So here it is.

The challenge of making this thing

certainly dissuaded a lot of companies from even trying.

[Narrator] Now, a desperate Cassagnes

is down to his last option.

[André] And if you wanna start over.

A clean slate.

Ha.

Just turn it over and shake it and it's gone.

What a magic thing.

Genius.

Chaze is a businessman which Cassagnes is not.

[André] See, here's the stylus,

and if you turn both knobs at the same time.

Have you filed all the patents?

Uh, not yet.

Today you can go online and fill out the forms yourself,

and it doesn't cost you any money.

Back then André had to get some money upfront

to pay for the patent.

[Narrator] But Cassagnes doesn't have

the $200 for the filing fee.

That's not a problem.

I'll take care of the patent.

Thank you so much, sir.

You're very welcome.

Paul Chaze having business experience

he realizes he has an opportunity,

not just with the Télécran,

which he thinks could be a brilliant toy,

but in André Cassagnes himself.

[Narrator] Back in the U.S. Joe McVicker

is also determined to seize upon a unique opportunity.

Joe McVicker went to Captain Kangaroo's studio

in New York cold-calling the place, and he's turned away.

Nobody wants to hear about it,

so as he's leaving who does he run into in the elevator?

Captain Kangaroo.

He gives him quite literally

the elevator pitch for Play-Doh.

I want you to feature it on your show.

I have absolutely no money to do this.

Captain Kangaroo loved the product so much

that he takes him up on the deal.

The deal that Joe McVicker and Bob Keeshan

ended up striking was pretty unusual.

To play with Play-Doh

or feature Play-Doh on your show once a week

will give you 2% of the sales.

It was a product really that didn't exist.

Captain Kangaroo was taking a risk too.

I wouldn't celebrate just yet.

[Narrator] As McVicker gears up for Play-Doh's big debut,

another issue arises.

It's getting hard way too fast drying out,

and the color that they put in is fading.

It notoriously dried out when it was first produced.

It would turn white.

Well, we can't go on TV with that.

You have Joe putting basically all his eggs

in Captain Kangaroo's pouch,

and now right before they go national,

Joe McVicker and Captain Kangaroo have a big problem.

It's not Play-Doh.

[Narrator] Meanwhile, André Cassagnes

is unaware of a big problem on his horizon.

André Cassagnes was a trustworthy individual,

and he trusted in Paul Chaze.

Don't forget, we need to file the U.S. patent right away.

To set up the patent for Cassagnes,

Paul Chaze goes to his own personal accountant,

Arthur Grandjean.

Now you have to remember for an inventor

the patent that's your life-blood.

Chaze says, don't worry about it.

I'll take care of everything.

The thing that determines who owns what,

and who profits are filed by Paul Chaze, not Cassagnes.

Good idea said nobody ever.

[Narrator] In 1958, just as Play-Doh

is about to go national with "Captain Kangaroo,"

Joe McVicker and Bill Rhodenbaugh

have a serious issue.

One of the problems with the original formulation

of Play-Doh is that it dried out too rapidly.

They brought in a chemist to look at that.

What's causing this?

Can we solve this?

The chemist says they're just adding too much salt.

But you remove too much salt

it will very rarely hold its form

because it's now just water and flour,

and it becomes a lot less structured.

Now it seems very simple,

but is this simple solution going to save Play-Doh?

[Narrator] As McVicker and Rhodenbaugh

race to get Play-Doh ready for its TV launch,

4,000 miles away,

Paul Chaze works feverishly to land a deal in the U.S.

He gets a deal for the Télécran in France,

but the United States a little bit of a bigger problem.

Part of his problem is he's asking for way too much money.

[Narrator] Finally, an unlikely buyer

steps up to the plate.

Ohio Art was a pretty basic toy company.

Their big products were tin banks,

or pails and shovels for use at the beach,

or in your sandbox.

But they'd never really gotten into this kind of thing,

plastic molding engineering.

The company was a very conservative company,

but my father was a risk-taker.

[Narrator] Sales Vice President, W.C. Killgallon,

convinces his bosses

to take a $25,000 chance on the Télécran.

Which is more than the company has ever spent

on any toy prior to that.

Look, it should just go together,

just those three pieces together like in the schematic.

[Narrator] But assembling the complicated toy

is harder than he anticipated.

They were doing everything they could to figure out

the best way to put this together.

It had to have just the right tension on the knobs.

We had up to 30% defects,

and the defects centered around

the tension on the knobs wasn't proper.

You could draw but there'd be a wavy line.

We gotta speed this up.

[Narrator] They can't figure it out on their own,

so they have to go to the true father of the Télécran,

André Cassagnes.

[André] So what's the problem?

I can't it around the spool.

Almost a third of these are faulty.

We have to pull it at the right tension,

and then tie a knot.

I tried to tie a nylon string together once.

I couldn't do it.

Maybe men are the problem.

[Narrator] As Cassagnes works to figure out

how to mass produce his toy.

♪ Play-Doh you can make it with Play-Doh ♪

[Narrator] McVicker's Play-Doh

is finally ready for the masses.

Once they get the balance with the right amount of salt

and the Play-Doh is no longer drying out,

Play-Doh leads to real dough.

[Narrator] Play-Doh sells out fast in department stores

from Macy's to Marshall Fields.

The deal with Captain Kangaroo

really put Play-Doh on the map almost immediately.

[Narrator] There's even a 16 month backlog of orders,

and Kutol's annual revenues are 30 times higher.

Captain Kangaroo goes from showcasing it on his show

one time a week to three times a week,

and Play-Doh becomes a phenomenon.

[Narrator] Meanwhile the Ohio Art Company

cleverly calls in a different kind of manpower

to fix their production issue.

There are seamstresses that work at the Ohio Art Company.

[André] She's doing well so far.

Not only are they much more skilled

with things like cordage and thread and weaving,

but they have smaller hands.

[André] I think she's got it.

They found that women truly could do this better than men.

[Narrator] Now there's just one piece of the puzzle left.

You need a good name.

No one in America knows what Télécran is.

Originally they were going to go with Magic Screen.

[Narrator] But they worry

it might be too hard to trademark,

so instead they land on something else.

Etch A Sketch.

Nice ring huh?

[Narrator] Etch A Sketch draws and writes like magic.

[Narrator] Finally in 1960,

Ohio Art is ready to debut the Etch A Sketch.

They created a very famous TV ad

with a little girl named Prunella.

[Narrator] Prunella, why are you hiding under the basket?

Because everybody wants to play with my Etch A Sketch,

that's why.

When Ohio Art releases Etch A Sketch

they sell 600,000 units,

which is quite a big number for the launch of a toy.

Remember when I said that as an inventor

the patent is your life-blood.

Paul Chaze had his accountant,

Arthur Grandjean apply for the patent.

So when he filed the patent, he filed it in his own name.

The accountant claimed to be the creator of Etch A Sketch.

The trickery comes in

when Paul Chaze asked Arthur Grandjean

to assign the patent to Paul Chaze,

not back to André Cassagnes.

[Narrator] This means U.S. royalties go to Chaze

for the next 18 years until the patent expires.

In 1962 alone, three million Etch A Sketch's

are sold in the U.S.

André Cassagnes never received any royalties

from the sales in the United States of America,

which amounted to millions and millions of dollars.

André Cassagnes was cheated.

(soft music)

In 1965 Play-Doh was riding high.

[Joe] So this is good.

[Bill] Yeah, it's great.

Play-Doh is pulling in $3 million a year

and Joe McVicker is living the high life.

This is really good.

(phone ringing)

And like any successful toy in the toy industry

the bigger toy companies are gonna come calling.

Speak soon.

Who was it?

General Mills to buy.

- To buy? - Play-Doh.

Being able to cash out,

that's kind of the American dream, right?

But Play-Doh has now saved the company.

Play-Doh saved him.

Can he possibly sell it?

Did they give you a number?

They did, three.

- Three million? - Three million.

General Mills offered him $3 million

for all the rights to Play-Doh.

Play-Doh is on a trajectory.

Sales are up.

It's being sold overseas.

I'm not convinced it's the right time to sell.

I think it's exactly the right time to sell.

And to the surprise of Bill Rhodenbaugh he took it.

Despite the fact that its trajectory

is going up, up, up and ever upward,

he sells Play-Doh for $3 million.

And that's your final opinion.

That's my final opinion.

Despite the fact that Play-Doh

was making $3 million a year.

Well, I hope you're right.

Some people feel that he grew disenchanted

with running a company he never had any intention

or desire to run in the first place.

I think he liked to do fun things for a while,

and then do something different.

He had ideas about going into religion becoming a priest,

and things about music wanting to do musical theater.

Joe McVicker made 18, $20 million in today's dollar,

so it was quite a bit of money,

but history, of course,

has proven that he sold it for way too low a price.

[Narrator] Today, Play-Doh now owned by Hasbro

has sold over three billion cans.

While the prices have varied over the years

at the time it was about $1.50 a can,

so we're talking about billions of dollars

that he left on the table.

[Narrator] And massive sales

are just part of the world's love affair with Play-Doh.

This was a clay material that was developed

for a child to use and it was the first.

Once you got Play-Doh in your hands

you fell in love with it.

I cannot tell you how many toy designers and sculptors

that I know who have been inspired by Play-Doh.

When you smell Play-Doh

it takes you back to your grade school days.

You're on your family's carpet getting it stuck in the rug

and your daddy yelling at you,

and mushing the colors together,

and your mom saying now you ruined it.

[Narrator] There's even a perfume

based on Play-Doh's scent.

It smells a little bit like grammar school,

and a whole lot like childhood.

[Narrator] Etch A Sketch, the toy you'll never tire of.

[Narrator] Like Play-Doh, the Etch A Sketch

has also left a lasting imprint on the world.

Etch A Sketch it was a marvel.

I think it was looked at as a scientific wonder.

Etch A Sketch was really a fascinating toy for many

because they didn't know how it worked.

[Narrator] For many, drawing with the Etch A Sketch

is also a mystery.

I remember as a child trying my best to make a circle,

and it is really hard.

It's frustrating but it's also super fun

because you can start over.

There are a number of toys in the industry

that I think are successful

because they are difficult to master like Rubik's Cube.

I think Etch A Sketch is similar to that.

One of the things as a museum curator is that

I try to name things by common things,

it's a doll, it's a board game,

and when I get to Etch A Sketch

I don't have any name for it.

[Narrator] Today the Etch A Sketch

has sold over 175 million units worldwide.

Unfortunately, André Cassagnes

only receives a tiny fraction of that revenue.

André Cassagnes saw a profit from sales

of the Télécran in France,

but in terms of the sales in the U.S.,

in Canada and in the U.K. he never sees a penny.

Maybe the unkindest cut of all was that

not only did they take his money,

Arthur Grandjean took all the credit.

So for years a lot of people

researching the history of Etch A Sketch

assumed that this gentleman

was the inventor of the Etch A Sketch

when actually he was just some accountant

that put his name on a form that said inventor.

It took nearly four decades for the true inventor

of Etch A Sketch to really get his credit.

[Narrator] But Cassagnes is far from bitter.

Surprisingly enough rather than fill his life with hate

he continues to fill the world with more beauty,

and manages to pivot again and become arguably

the most lauded, respected and revered kite designer

in all of French history.

[Narrator] Before his death in 2013,

Cassagnes is known to often give his kites away for free.

And instead of etching on a screen he etches on the sky.

It's great today to be able to correct

some of the errors of history.

We can remember him and respect his contribution

to the overall history of toys by sharing his story.