Before it filled bright yellow cans in preschools, Play-Doh was a putty engineered in the 1930s to scrub coal soot off delicate, non-washable wallpaper. This episode follows Noah McVicker of Cincinnati soap maker Kutol Products, who created the cleaner at the request of grocery chain Kroger, and explains how the post-war shift to natural gas heating and vinyl wallpaper made the product obsolete almost overnight and pushed the company toward bankruptcy.

The rescue came from nursery school teacher Kay Zufall, who tested the failing cleaner with her students, saw them fall in love with it, and pushed back on the McVickers' proposed name Rainbow Modeling Compound in favor of Play-Doh. From there we cover the 1956 founding of Rainbow Crafts, in-store demonstrations at Macy's and Marshall Field's, the 1957 television campaigns on Captain Kangaroo ...