Toy Stories

1 of 27
 Play-Doh
Harry Allen
Product and interior
designer and president,
Harry Allen Design

I loved everything about Play-Doh: the soft thud it made inside the can, the paper packaging (replaced by plastic in the ’80s), its extruded shape when you first took it out, the color, the taste, and the smell. It begged me to get creative.

Play-Doh taps into something primal: the instinct to fashion things out of a lump of soft, moldable material. I think of all the early ceramics in museums and my new niece, who will grab and squeeze anything. A simple act, yet so satisfying. The possibilities are endless. 

I worry that in our desire to sell toys to children, we do too much of the work for them. Toy designers have all the fun and leave little to the child’s imagination. One quickly tires of overly designed toys, but one never tires of one’s own ideas.

At some point I moved from Play-Doh to clay. Pottery class was my obsession throughout high school, and when it came time to choose a profession I made sure it included a soft, moldable medium. Despite all that the computer has brought us in the way of modeling, it still does not compare to getting your hands dirty. At the moment, I’m working on several projects that are being modeled out of Plasticine, and from time to time I pick up a lump to demonstrate an idea. It’s the design profession’s answer to Play-Doh.