Unwinding the long history of the Slinky

"What walks down stairs, alone or in pairs, And makes a slinkity sound?"

Do you feel compelled to sing along with those words? Maybe that’s because it's a jingle many Americans remember from their childhoods... the siren song of the Slinky, a simple coil of wire made in Hollidaysburg, Pa.

At Poof-Slinky, the procedure for making the toy hasn't changed much since the first time it came off the line. They haven’t found a more efficient way to do it in over 60 years.

Tom James, the son of the Slinky’s inventor, gave CNBC a factory tour.

Standing by a gleaming column of cable, he said, “Our wire comes in 2,000 pound spools of galvanized spring steel wire. It’s all American-made in Shelbyville, Ky."

The steel, which arrives as round wire is fed into a flattener at 12 miles an hour… the same flattener created by Tom James’s dad, Richard James more than 60 years ago.

“After the wire’s flattened it comes into the coiling unit ... also designed by my father," James says.

James told us that the coiler was off-limits to our camera. Although the process is over sixty years old, Poof-Slinky worries that foreign competitors could copy it and make knock-off Slinkys. But the mechanism basically wraps 62 feet of wire around a spindle about 80 times, spitting out a new Slinky every 15 seconds. Once spring steel is wound it doesn’t unwind.

After getting coiled, each Slinky gets a crimp — or a band — around both ends of the toy "for child safety,” James says.

Because the crimp was added in 1973, many people may not have childhood memories of it. Instead they may remember getting jabbed by the toy a few times over the years.

Once crimped, the Slinkys proceed single-file along a conveyor belt to be boxed. James proudly showed us the end of that belt where the coils of wire truly became Slinkys.

There, as each did a graceful somersault off the end of the conveyor belt, he explained,

“Each one takes its first step right there. And then they’re pushed into the boxes automatically and sealed automatically.”

Since the first dollar was handed over for a Slinky in 1945, about 300 million of them have been sold. Beyond simply enjoying them for their slinkiness, their owners have made many other uses of them, from serving as birdhouse protectors to acting as antennas during the Vietnam War.

No matter what their use, the Slinkys have gone far. "These go all over the world — every continent except Antarctica,” James said, pointing to cases of Slinky that were packed and ready to go.

Hollidaysburg, the starting point of those slinky journeys around the world, is a small town 90 miles east of Pittsburgh.

It was a vital gateway to the west in the 1800s when barges from the Pennsylvania Canal were broken into sections, hauled up over the Allegheny ridge, and sent on to the Ohio Valley.

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