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The Fatal Flubber Fiasco of ’63

As Ned Brainard sang in his hit pop standard The Flubber Song, “Flubber – it’s a boon to man.”

Or was it?

Walt Disney was no stranger to promotional tie-in merchandise, going back all the way to his early Hollywood successes. A constant stream of Mickey Mouse tchotchkes had provided a much-needed financial boost in those days, and clever cross-promotion continued to be one of the key foundations of Walt’s fortune.

When Disney’s The Absent-Minded Professor debuted in 1961, there was naturally a resultant demand among film-going youth for the movies’s gravity-defying substance “flubber”. In the fall of 1962, and in anticipation of the film’s 1963 sequel Son of Flubber, toy shelves across the nation were stocked with Flubber courtesy of Disney licensee Hassenfeld Bros., Inc. of Rhode Island. The silvery, glittery substance came in a ball, but could be stretched or bounced. Made of butadiane, a synthetic rubber, and mineral oil, it was very similar to the more familiar product Silly Putty.

All went well until the following spring, when news services began to report of rashes that were attributed to Flubber. In the February 28th, 1963 edition of the Los Angeles Times, it was said that health officials on both the local and state level were investigating an “outbreak” of rashes in school children. Officials were unsure of the source of the rashes, saying that they could be due to contact dermatitis caused by Flubber or even a simple viral outbreak.

Apparently the “outbreak” was none too serious; Dr. George M. Uhl, Los Angeles city health officer, was quoted as describing the rash as “so faint it is hard to see.”

Hassenfeld Bros. claimed that the problem couldn’t be due to their product; Flubber had been tested commercially in several markets before it was introduced nationwide and none of its customers had reported any rash during that time. Nevertheless, they referred the claims to their testing laboratories which embarked on trials to see if the product could be responsible. (Some modern sources say that these trials were conducted on volunteer convicts!)

An answer seemed to come quickly; by March 1st the Los Angeles Times declared that Flubber had been cleared in the mystery. The City Health Department’s director of communicable disease, one Dr. Herbert Cowper, opined that the affected children did not have dermatitis, but were rather the victim of a virus. This interpretation was backed up by a team of virologists from the USC School of Medicine who had been consulted; apparently the USC team had examined stricken students at a local school and discovered that not all of those affected had played with Flubber.

Flubber seemed to be in the clear – or was it?

By March 17th the Washington Post reported that a series of outbreaks reported in Los Angeles, Kansas City, St. Louis, New York City and Phoenix had led the Food and Drug Administration to open its own Flubber fact-finding foray. “A number of cases of mouth rash have been reported by health authorities,” said an agency spokesman. “The reaction appears to be associated with a novelty toy called Flubber.” Despite the fact that the FDA pointed out that “no cause and effect relationship between flubber and a rash has been demonstrated to date,” Merrill L. Hassenfeld, president of Hassenfeld Bros., issued a statement proclaiming the FDA comments to be “somewhat ridiculous.”

The complaints continued to spread. In April the Baltimore City Health Department issued a warning about Flubber, and encouraged stores to pull the product from their shelves. It also “strongly recommended” that any Flubber already purchased “be discarded in the trash.” The Baltimore Sun cited local dermatologist Dr. Harry M. Robinson, Jr., president of the Baltimore City Medical Society, as having referred several cases of Flubber-related contact dermatitis to local health officials. According to Robinson, the Flubber caused “considerable inconvenience and discomfort” to those affected. Health department investigations in local elementary schools revealed several outbreaks; in one class sixteen of twenty-seven students who had Flubber exposure developed “redness and eruptions” while seven out of sixteen students in another class were so afflicted.

Flubber was on the ropes. On the first of May, 1963, Hassenfeld Bros. pulled the plug for good. The FDA, speaking to the Associated Press, said that a survey provided compelling data that Flubber had indeed caused the outbreak of rashes. According to the agency, they had received around 1,600 reports overall of skin irritation related to Flubber. Flubber was pulled from shelves, along with two knock-off imitators, “Robly Rubber,” manufactured by the Old Fox Toy Company, and “Plubber,” a product of Deca Plastics Material Co. Inc. According to Hassenfeld Bros., over four million units of Flubber had been sold since September 1962; it’s unknown how many of the complains involved Flubber or were instead the result of the imitation products.

Still, Hassenfeld Bros. maintained its innocence. Merrill Hassenfeld told the Associated Press that tests both preceding and following Flubber’s release all showed that “it was not the product that caused rashes.” According to Hassenfeld, the FDA had informed him that laboratory tests on animals found no causal relation between Flubber and skin rash.

Nevertheless, Hassenfeld Bros. has pulled Flubber from shelves and was now stuck with millions of balls of Flubber that needed disposal. Since this took place in the “good ol’ days” before “onerous” government regulation ruined all the fun by preventing businesses from doing whatever the heck they wanted to do, the disposal of Flubber proved a colorful tale that has been occasionally (and somewhat flamboyantly) recounted over the years.

Hassenfeld tried dumping the Flubber at the landfill, but local authorities weren’t having it. Attempts to burn the Flubber resulted in clouds of acrid black smoke that was equally frowned upon by locals. Eventually Hassenfeld found a lake and simply tried to dump the Flubber there; unfortunately for them, Flubber floats and they had to hire boats to skim the water for several days to recover the bobbing blobs.

According to reports, the final resting place of all the Flubber was rather prosaic – Hassenfeld dug a big hole near their offices, dumped the Flubber into it, ran it all over with a steamroller, and paved it over for a new parking lot. Thus Flubber met an untimely, Hoffa-esque fate that ensured it a place in urban legend beside all those E.T. The Extra Terrestrial Atari cartridges in the New Mexico desert.

And yet, the Flubber endured. Son of Flubber proved a huge success and The Absent-Minded Professor received remakes for television in 1988 and (unfortunately) at the cinemas in 1997.

Weep not for the Hassenfeld Brothers, either. The company, which began in 1923 as a textile remnant company in New Jersey, found continued success in the toy industry until it adopted a shorter, snappier name in 1968 – Hasbro.

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15 comments to The Fatal Flubber Fiasco of ’63

  • beaglelady

    I remember flubber!

  • RO93461

    Thanks, great story. There were many irresponsible products as I remember. I’m sure there is Silly Putty still lodged in many mid century carpets, or burn scars from “Thinkmaker” Creepy Crawler ovens. I got my first wood burning kit when I was about 6, no wonder arson is so appealing.

  • @Beaglelady – Did you have Flubber??? Did you get a rash or “eruptions” (whatever that is?) Wow!

    @Eddie – I hate that I missed the golden age of dangerous toys. At least I still grew up in an era when toy guns could look like actual guns. I remember when the orange caps showed up on the muskets at Fort Wilderness and I was crestfallen. Oh for the days of water-guns that looked like actual tommyguns!

    There was a great Mystery Science Theater 3000 skit about the era of dangerous toys – I know they mentioned the Creepy Crawler over in that. Good times! Chemistry sets and wood burning kits…

  • RO93461

    LOL. I HAD a Creeple People set. Very funny skit. The most dangerous toys were metal like Erector sets or tin toys that would cut you really bad, or a Schwinn Sting Ray bike with a Stick Shift right beneath your crotch. One sudden stop and you’ll never forget it.

  • Griff

    Yes — I had Flubber. It wasn’t “silvery, glittery” — although the packaging did make it appear it that way — so much as it was completely clear and filled with bubbles, like fizzy 7-up.

    At first, that is.

    After even a brief time playing with it, the substance darkened, looking more like Flubber from the movies. It also became dirty very easily, picking up dirt and lint from any surface you’d bounce it on; it was impossible to clean. As a kid, I remember thinking, “this stuff won’t last — Silly Putty stays clean!”

    The thing is, I don’t know whether it would have lasted or not… when my parents read of the possible rash issues connected with the product, they protectively confiscated the stuff.

    I can still remember the TV spot for the product, narrated by the great Don Wilson. Thanks for an informative post.

  • @Griff – Wow!! I didn’t expect on-the-ground reporting from people who actually encountered Flubber! It was hard to get a handle on what it actually looked like from the press reports (I wasn’t able to find any actual pictures of the product). The general impression I got was clear and glittery, but I’m not surprised the AP reporter didn’t investigate closely!

    I wish I could see that commercial. Awesome. Thanks for the info!

    @Eddie – Thankfully I inherited an old-school Erector set from an uncle so I could toughen my fingers on that. I’ve heard tell of the Schwinn Stingray and…. ouch. Yeah, I’m glad I missed out on that one.

  • beaglelady

    @Michael I didn’t have flubber myself but I think my brothers got it. As I recall it was pretty popular. We heard about people getting rashes from it but I never knew anyone who had that problem.

    (Now I get rashes from my raspberry plants!)

  • seanomatopoeia

    Please, I need your thoughts on the Avatar Atrocity. I cannot believe Disney has ruined my favorite park on earth with that Cameron garbage.

  • Mark W

    So I know you’re out on the West Coast performing a mysterious project for Eddie, and you’ve now been published on The Disney Family Blog (congrats!!), but as this blog eclipses one month without an update, I’d just like to submit a humble request that you not forget us, your readership.

    Yours is up there with Passport, SAMLAND, and Imagineering Disney as one of the few truly quality blogs discussing the history and design of WDW, and I’d hate to see you become the next Re-Imagineering or Epcot Central. I enjoy reading your snarkiness on twitter, but it’s just not the same as full-fledged articles.

    I know that this blogging gig doesn’t pay the bills and you obviously need to prioritize in light of that, but please just know that I speak for a silent majority when I say that there are a lot of us who really love your work and would love to see it continue.

    (PS: Lou Mongello has recently started offering private tours of WDW. Yawn. If you or Foxx ever did something like that, I would jump all over it. And I imagine I’m not the only one.)

  • Mark,

    Thanks so much. I really do appreciate it. I apologize to everyone that it’s been tumbleweeds around these parts for the last few months. For those who don’t know, I’ve had a big move so I was off-grid for a bit, and lately I’ve just been trying to get things squared away and functional. And, as you say, pay the bills – or trying to figure out a way to do so. 🙂 There’s also been a certain lack of inspiration at play, and the result has been a bit of a perfect storm to keep me away from writing.

    I want to get back into it though, and get my nose to the grindstone. Hopefully inspiration will strike and we can get some momentum going again!

    Thanks again for the encouragement…

  • I forgot to reply to the part about the tour – actually, I’ve had others bring that up and I think it would be fun 🙂 I’ve joked about doing Disneyland tours for WDW lifers who are visiting for the first time. Having only first been to DL in 2009 I sympathize with the disorientation!

  • Rick

    Yep, had some Flubber myself when I was MUCH younger. Never had any rash problems, but got in trouble when some got left on the carpet and it spread and got absorbed. IMPOSSIBLE to clean up! What I really liked was you got a whole lot more of the stuff than Silly Putty, and it had a bounce that was just about a good… as I remember it now!

  • John Beene

    I remember the Flubber toy and the compaints. The goo had an oily residue and smell. It immediately became unpopular when rumors spread about the rashes and rug staining it caused. We through ours in the trash.

  • Jona

    I was one of those kids who got a rash shortly after getting my cool Flubber. After a visit to the doctor, my mom threw out my Flubber. I remember wanting to keep it anyway, rash or no rash!

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