The Thinking Putty Blog

Putty from Wind Power?

People have been asking me about the environmental benefit of our products. 

I always felt like Thinking Putty didn't have anything particularly good about it environmentally.  Nothing bad really, just nothing exceptionally good.  It isn't grown from end-of-life rubber trees.  Though our colors are beautiful, they aren't made from harvesting rainbows (which are a renewable resource ;-).

Then I did some thinking.  Maybe our product has benefits I hadn't previously considered:

- Thinking Putty is made from sand (quartz), the most common and plentiful mineral on earth.
- Our product does not contain petroleum products.
- Our office uses 100% wind energy.
- Our metal tins are made from a high percentage of recycled material and are 100% recyclable themselves.
- Our printing process is dry and is VOC-free (volatile organic compounds). 
   (VOCs can harm air quality and human health)
- Our putty lasts a LONG time. It doesn't dry out.  So you don't end up consuming more than you need.
- Over 99% of our raw materials are sourced inside the USA.  That means their manufacture is bound by USA environmental regulations.  We are not supporting the manufacture of raw materials offshore to avoid environmental responsibility.

Am I being silly?  Are these real benefits that matter?  If you have an environmental bent, I'd love to hear your comments.

Also, I am considering converting our factory to 100% wind power.  I'd like to do it but, there is significant expense.  It would need to be offset by gaining customers who appreciate our environmental efforts.  Do you think that would happen?

Crazy Aaron's Toy Fair Round-Up

Crazy Aaron returned from the New York Toy Fair and thought some shout-outs were appropriate.  Thinking Putty is loads of fun, but other toys are fun too.  Some of these are really for kids and a few will appeal to adults.  Here's a list of things that caught my eye:

The Cricket Toy - For those awkward moments, a keychain fob that chirps like a cricket.  Its a gimmick, but a funny one.  And Jeff Anderson, the creator, is a fun guy who knows how to turn an awkward moment into a laugh.

OK To Wake Clock - The inventor tells me it works.  I've got one on order and will test it out.  Its the clock that teaches kids to sleep in...so you can too!  The clock glows green when its wake-up time and apparently toddlers will lay in bed staring at it for hours waiting for it to change color.  Then they race to awaken the happy parents (who are happy because they get woken at 7am instead of 5am). 

Triops - I've always been fascinated with SeaMonkeys but they are more hype than reality.  They are tiny and hard to see.  They aren't really monkeys.  Triops takes the concept to a new level of awesomeness.  Billed as "creatures that time forgot", you place the eggs into water and they have growing into swimming creatures that a blend of silverfish, horseshoe crabs, catfish and alien facehuggers.  They get to be about 1 1/2" long.  I saw them in person and they are great.  A tank will be going in to the Puttyworld office very soon.

Crazy Forts - As a kid, I was always rearranging the furniture and blankets to make forts.  With Crazy Forts, you basically have oversized Tinkertoys to shape into fort-like structures. Cover with blankets and the kids can crawl through them.  Then, they pack away in a tiny box for later use.  So obvious, I'm surprised no one ever did this before!

Levitron - The inventor of Levitron has a new invention which will be released later this year.  If you have any kind of collection: action figures, minerals, figurines, this is going to blow your mind.  For about $100 retail, you can buy a floating pedestal that hovers about 2 1/2" above the surface and rotates indefinitely.  Very cool.  Very inventive.  I expect that you'll see this in stores everywhere for demonstrating products.  A great new invention.

Q-Ba-Maze - This building set caught my eye and my ears.  You build towers using a series of cubes which allow steel balls to fall through.  The movement and sound of the balls is just like the Pachinko machines I used to play with as a child.  The pieces are beautiful colored clear plastic and it looks like a lot of fun.  Check out the videos on their site.

SpherePlay - While this is not a new product, it is an opportunity to give a shout-out to the movie Labryinth and David Bowie's cool sphere rotating tricks.  This company makes some beautiful clear acrylic spheres and also a DVD training video.  It looks hard but after 5 minutes of practice at their booth, I could tell that an hour or two will have you seriously impressing your friends with some awesome tricks.

Thanks and have fun!