Listener Rabbit Hole: The Squishy Toys

Bonus Episode And Listener Question

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to our very first bonus episode. I've decided to kind of tweak this a little bit from what you would expect. We're going to take a question from a listener every every once in a while, and we're going to make us a bonus episode out of it. So feel free to send your submissions in on the website. Just hit the contact us page and then send it in that way. Make sure you include your email, and we'll be able to see where we can go from there. See what kind of rabbit holes we can find. So the one for this week was submitted by William, and it did kind of throw me off a little bit. Somewhere in a factory, somebody had to make a very strange decision. Not how to build a rocket or how to cure a disease or any of that. Somebody looked at an ordinary toy and said, you know what this needs? We're gonna fill it up with goo. And somehow everybody agreed with that. And now they're everywhere. The stress balls, the squishy animals, uh little blobby things that pretty much puff back into shape. They're gel-filled eyeballs and sticky hands. If you've ever picked one up, you've probably done the exact same thing everybody else does, which is squeeze it, squeeze it again, and somewhere in the back of your head, you just feel really, really satisfied. But also, a tiny question appears. What is this stuff? Like, is it water, is it slime, is it rubber? Why don't it dry out? Why doesn't it leak? And who was the first person brave enough to say, you know, I think people are gonna love squeezing this? The weird thing is, that question doesn't lead to a toy factory, it actually led to chemistry labs, an accidental discovery, a little bit of medical research, and a handful of scientists who weren't trying to make toys at all. Because sometimes the story behind the squish is a lot more fascinating than the squish itself. I'm Andrew Perry, and this is a listener rabbit hole.

Why Squishy Toys Feel Irresistible

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Now, one of my favorite parts of making this podcast is hearing the questions that kind of pops into people's heads, the ones that kind of make you stop for a second and think you're like, wait, okay, so I get you. Like, why is that? Sometimes they're about history and sometimes they're about science. And then sometimes you get a really kind of off-the-wall question. And they're about something super random that I I mean, I know I just gotta go for the answer on that one. Today's question came from one of our listeners, and I have to admit, the first time I read it, I kind of laughed because it wasn't a bad question because it was a it was a great one. It was the kind of question that's kind of hiding in plain sight your whole life, and they just asked, so they said, Where did this squishy stuff inside those squishy toys come from? And honestly, I had no idea, like at all. So I did what any curious person would do, especially one with ADHD. I started doing some digging, and before long, I wasn't reading about toys anymore. I was reading about chemistry, accidental discoveries, weird new materials, and inventions that were never supposed to end up in a toy aisle. So let's see where this rabbit hole takes us.

From Toy Aisle To Chemistry Lab

SPEAKER_00 3:50

So why like you know what's funny? Nobody buys one of those squishy things because they're useful. Like, nobody's ever said, you know what would really improve my day, just help the work flow a lot better. A tiny rubber axolotol filled with funky goop. And yet millions of people have one. Like my son has at least 70 of these things. Um now, when we were younger, when I was younger in elementary school, my teacher did have this little apple that sat on her desk and it was like a stress ball. The thing was pretty addicting. I'm not gonna lie, I had that thing in my hands all the time. Or you've had those sticky hands that you would throw at the wall and they would just stick there, and then you'd your parents always told you not to do that because it was just gonna leave mom leave a mark on the wall, or if you put it on the window, it'd leave smudges. It maybe it was like one of those little squishy animals you would get from the vending machine at the grocery store, which whatever it was, you probably couldn't resist picking it up, and then without even thinking about it, you just squeezed it just because it doesn't, you're it's reflexive. You give a a toddler one of those things, their first thing they're gonna do is squeeze it or put it in their mouth. That's kind of the strange thing about the toys. They're almost impossible to just ignore. Like you have to touch it. Your brain needs that that scratch, needs to itch. Your brain seems to know exactly what to do before you even think about it. Pick it up, squeeze. Which, and then you can just watch you watch it slowly puff back up to its original shape, which is super cool in the first place. Like, I could do that all day. I have one of the squishies, it's a stick of butter. My son has one too. He had one first, and then I was so addicted to his that we had to get me one because I wouldn't leave his alone. But if you're if you're anything like me, the first squeeze is never gonna be the last. You're gonna mess with that thing forever. But have you ever stopped in the middle of that squeeze and wondered, like, what am I actually holding? Seriously, like what's inside this thing? Is it water? Is it slime? Is it gel? It's some kind of alien goo. I don't know. My son had one that exploded in the back of the car one time, and that was horrible. And if it's soft enough to squish, why doesn't it like why doesn't it doesn't leak out? I mean, his exploded because it was 2,000 degrees in the car one day. And it does they don't seem to dry up or don't get hard. Like, I don't understand. So the more I thought about it, the weirder the whole thing started to become because somebody had to invent this. At some point in history, there was a world with absolutely no squishy toys, and then one day there was the first one. Which raised another question. Who looked at a handful of weird, squishy material and like, you know what, kids are gonna love this? Or maybe they didn't. Maybe it was just not, it wasn't invented at a toy at all. Maybe the squishy stuff was created for something completely different, and someone accidentally discovered that it was just fun to squeeze, which is what I'm going with. The possibility sent me kind of I was looking a few places and I ended up nowhere near a toy company or a designer, but a chemistry lab. Because the story of the squishy stuff doesn't begin in a toy aisle, it starts with a bunch of scientists trying to solve an entirely different problem. So, like I said, it didn't it didn't start with toys. The more I dug into this question, the more I mean one thing became pretty clear. There's there's not one magical squishy stuff. In fact, if you cut open 10 different squishy toys, which for the record I don't recommend doing that, you might find several completely different materials inside. Some have soft gels, some are stretchy silicone, some are made entirely from special foams that trap tiny pockets of air. So the real question, I guess, William, isn't who invented the squishy stuff or where did it come from? It's who invented the materials that could be in the squishy in the first place because there's so many that's in these things. And that that story begins way before anybody was making toys in the first place.

Polymers And The Birth Of Squish

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Back in the early 1900s, chemists were they were becoming a little fascinated with something called polymers. Now, the the word is funky, I'll give you that. A polymer is it's a very long chain of tiny molecules that are linked together, almost like a thousand paper clips that are just clipped end to end. Depending on how the chains are built, they can become incredibly hard like plastic in a football helmet, or unbelievably soft like the sole of your running shoes. Or if you get the recipe just right, they can be perfectly squishy. Like scientists weren't chasing the squishiness because they thought kids needed better toys. They were trying to solve actual problems. Could they make better seals for machines? Could they design something soft enough for medical devices? Could they replace expensive natural rubber with something humans like we could actually manufacture? Every experiment answered one question and then created three more. So I mean and then in the 1940s, a German chemist named Otto Bayer Bayer. That that comes into play later in it comes into play later. And him and his team developed a remarkable new family of materials called polyurethanes. And I know you've heard that one before. At first, nobody imagined stress balls or squishy dinosaurs or any of that stuff. They were going for insulation, like furniture cushions and car seats, uh, protective coatings, materials that could bend without breaking. It was uh it was one of the biggest breakthroughs in the world. Not long after that, researchers around the world began experimenting with silicone gels and other flexible materials. Like some of them were sticky and some of them were bouncy. Some slowly returned to their original shape after they got squeezed. Engineers, they saw industrial materials and doctors were seeing medical possibilities and stuff like that, but somewhere, somebody decided that they picked one up, they gave it a squeeze, and they were like, you know what? This is gonna work. Because sometimes inventions don't become interesting when they're finished. It kind of becomes interesting when somebody just picks it up and they're just like, you know what? I can think of about a hundred different uses for this. And that discovery, just the squeeze and the smile, would kind of transform lab materials into one of the most irresistible toys ever made. So nobody can point to one single moment in history when somebody invented the squishy toy. There wasn't one specific inventor who was like in a workshop proudly holding up the world's first squishy toy, which would be cool. I mean, that if that picture existed, that'd be pretty interesting. Instead, it kind of happened the way a lot of great ideas happened, just a bunch of discoveries made by a bunch of different people over a whole bunch of decades, and they all kind of mushed together. So by the 1970s and the 80s, companies had gotten pretty good at making those soft polymers and like flexible foams and gels. Factories were producing materials that were durable, very inexpensive, colorful, and most importantly, safe enough for everyday products. And then somebody noticed something, people couldn't stop touching them. Like, think about it. And think about the factory at the squishy toy, like the squishy toy factory, how much they probably have to get onto those workers for touching and squeezing and everything else. I'm sure there's some kind of quality testing area where all you do is just sit there and squish on squishy toys all day long. Think about it. If somebody gave you two identical objects except one of them is soft and squishy, which one are you picking up? Exactly. There's something about our brains that just we're just pulled into that unusual texture, and it you just can't help it.

Why Your Brain Loves Texture

SPEAKER_00 12:32

Scientists have actually studied that. Like our fingertips are packed with specialized nerve endings that constantly gather information about pressure and texture and movement. So when you squeeze something soft, those receptors send a steady stream of signals to your brain, which is one reason it can feel pretty satisfying. It's not just in your imagination, I can promise you that. Your brain genuinely enjoys exploring textures. Like toy companies figured this out pretty quick. So by the late 1980s and into the 1990s, stores were absolutely just overrun with stress balls and the gel-filled toys, stretchy creatures, sticky hands, and all kinds of funky little gadgets that didn't really do anything, but you know, they were just like a quarter. Their entire purpose was to be touched. And people were obsessed with them. Like adults kept the stress balls on their desks at work, like in their cubicles and stuff like that. Kids would collect the squishy animals. And before long, entire stores had like whole sections of the store that were dedicated to toys that were literally just squish it, squeeze it, pull it, all that. Like stretch arm strong. But the story doesn't really stop there because as manufacturers experimented with new materials, the toys they became even stronger. Like some of them would slowly go back in into shape and you could squeeze it over and over and over again, and it would just slowly uh reinflate back to its shape. Some of them they would uh like squish through the mesh nets and look like a bunch of grapes. You know those that I'm talking about, like the little it's like in a net, and when you squish it, it just pops out the other side. They used to have some with little eyeballs and stuff. Some of them would change colors with the heat from your hand. Others felt almost impossible to really describe. Like they weren't wet, but they weren't dry, and they weren't solid, but they weren't liquid. They were kind of somewhere in between. Every new material inspired another idea. So every new texture inspired a new toy. And then something kind of unexpected happened. The scientists they started studying whether squeezing objects could actually help people concentrate or feel calmer. Now that idea had already been floating around for a minute because they had the stress balls, remember? But now the research is mixed. Like squishy toys aren't a cure for stress or anxiety, but they don't they don't magically improve everybody. But for some reason, especially those who benefit from keeping their hands busy, having something to fidget with can make it a lot easier to stay engaged. Like in other words, the strange little toys weren't just for entertainment anymore. They were for some people, they were tools. Which is kind of amazing when you think about it. Like this material that began in the 19 early 1900s in a chemistry lab for industrial problems ended up solving stressful problems. Like meetings and long classes and anxious moments. It wasn't because anybody planned it to be that way. They just somebody somewhere picked it up, gave it a squeeze, and they realized this feels kind of nice. Sometimes the biggest inventions don't change the world because they're complicated. They just kind of change it because they feel good.

What Is Inside Different Squishies

SPEAKER_00 16:25

So after all that, we can finally answer the question that started this rabbit hole in the first place. What is the squishy stuff inside of those squishy toys? And the answer is it depends. There's no single secret recipe. Like toy manufacturers use different materials depending on what kind of toy they're making and how they want it to feel. Like a classic stress ball, some are made from a single piece of soft polyurethane foam. There isn't any goo inside at all. The foam is filled with millions of tiny air pockets, and when you squeeze it, those pockets collapse, and when you let go, the foam slowly expands back to its original shape. And that's why some of the stress balls have that slow motion rise. Like if you now, if you've ever squeezed one that felt like it was filled with jelly, that's a different story. Those they do kind of contain a a thick polymer gel. And it's mostly made of water that's trapped inside an incredibly complex network of long molecular chains. Think of it like a microscopic sponge. The water can move around just enough to make the toy feel soft, but it can't just pour out or slosh around like a water balloon. It's trapped. And some toys, they use silicone gels instead. Silicone has a silky, almost buttery feel that stays flexible across a wide range of temperatures. And that's one reason it's used in almost everything from kitchen utensils to medical devices. And then there are just the really strange ones, you know, like the toys that look perfectly normal until you squeeze them, and then suddenly colorful bubbles push through, or they have the little meshnette. Those usually combine stretchy rubber-like materials with soft gels inside. And the net just kind of changes the shape of the gel as the pressure forces it through the openings. So there's no magic, unfortunately. Just some pretty clever engineering. And the same goes for those tiny uh moky squishies that uh have just blown up over the past few years. Those are filled with an kind of an incredibly soft material. They call it thermoplastic elastomer or TPE. It's flexible enough to stretch and twist and squish all over and over and over and over again, but it doesn't fall apart. So the squishy stuff isn't actually one thing. It's an entire family of materials that scientists and engineers have spent like a hundred years developing. Every recipe is a little different. Some are better at bouncing back, some feel cooler, some stretch farther, or they last longer. And companies are constantly experimenting with new combos and new textures, like things we've never felt before. Which means the next time you pick up a little squishy dinosaur or a stress ball sitting on someone's desk, you're not really holding a blob of mysterious goo. You're holding decades of chemistry, material science, engineering, and a little bit of human curi curiosity. And it's all packed into something that's just really, really fun to squeeze.

The Bigger Story Behind Materials

SPEAKER_00 19:49

So yeah, thanks, William. Because I don't think I'll ever be able to look at one of those squishy toys the same way ever again. Like it's funny how often that happens whenever I search up stuff for this podcast. You start with what sounds like a silly question, and then you're just like, what's the goo inside the toy? And then somehow you end up talking about chemists and accidental discoveries and medical research and materials that pretty much changed the entire planet in the first place. The toy was never really the story, your curiosity was. So we appreciate that, William. Because once humans learned how to build materials that could bend without breaking, stretch without tearing, uh, and cushion without wearing out, we started using them everywhere. Like the soles of your shoes, uh the padding in your bike helmet, your mattress, seats in your car, grips on your toothbrush, implants, artificial joints. I mean, there's a lot, like even equipment used by astronauts. They're all part of the same family of materials that eventually made their way into a toy aisle. So that's one of my favorite things about rabbit holes, is they just remind us that nothing exists all by itself. Everything is connected to something bigger. A kid squeezing a little rubber dinosaur is connected to scientists in laboratories a hundred years ago who were just trying to solve a regular everyday problem. And they really they probably never imagined that their work would one day become a toy. People were just obsessed with squeezing, but you know, you never know. The wonderful thing about Discovery is you never really know where it's gonna end up. And maybe that's the real answer to William's question. The squishy stuff didn't come from a toy factory, it came from thousands of curious people willing to ask another question. How can we make this stronger? How can we make it softer? How can we make it last longer? Question after question, experiment after experiment, until one day, someone picked up a strange new material, gave it a squeeze, smiled, and said, You know what? We're gonna use it. The most ordinary things around us are really just old scientific breakthroughs wearing a different set of clothes. And once you know that, it's pretty hard to squeeze a stress ball without thinking about the remarkable journey it took to end up in your hand.

Thanks William And How To Submit

SPEAKER_00 22:22

So, that's our very first listener rabbit hole. And I have to admit, I never expected a question about a squishy toy leading us into the world of chemistry and engineering, and I'm sure there was gonna be some accidental discoveries in there. But I guess that's the whole point. The best questions usually sound a little ridiculous right up until you discover the incredible story hiding underneath of them. So the next time you pick up a stress ball or one of those little squishy animals sitting on a desk or hanging from a backpack, I hope you don't just need a toy. I hope you see decades of experiments, curious scientists, creative engineers, and a simple question that opened the door to an extraordinary story. So before we go, I will give you a special shout out, William, and thank you for sending in today's question. Thank you for your curiosity. And without questions like yours, these bonus episodes just wouldn't exist. Because I can't think of all of them. And if you're listening right now and you got a question that's always made you wonder, don't keep it to yourself. Head over to adhdtheory.com and submit it through the listener rabbit hole page. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, where we share behind the scenes content, strange facts, and plenty of extra rabbit holes between episodes. And if you enjoyed today's journey, I'd love for you guys to follow the show wherever you're listening so you never miss an episode. Until next time, keep asking why, because nothing is ordinary. Once you know the story behind it, don't be afraid to follow the rabbit hole.