{"id":737,"date":"2011-10-30T18:20:01","date_gmt":"2011-10-30T22:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/goodnews\/?p=737"},"modified":"2011-10-30T21:13:27","modified_gmt":"2011-10-31T01:13:27","slug":"you-can-be-a-slinky-for-halloween-for-1-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/2011\/10\/you-can-be-a-slinky-for-halloween-for-1-million.html","title":{"rendered":"You can be a Slinky for Halloween … for $1 million!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Here is the ultimate Halloween costume for anyone who ever loved playing with a Slinky, that great kids’ toy spring from the same innocent era that brought us the Hula Hoop, Silly Putty\u00a0and the Frisbee.<\/p>\n

Now you can become a human Slinky! For only $1 million! That’s the price that was being asked on eBay. <\/a>With the costume comes five years’ permission to perform\u00a0professionally as a Slinky.<\/p>\n

In case you’re not sure how to do that, here is Veniamin, the Romanian-born\u00a0creator of the costume — and\u00a0his act which has appeared on America’s Got Talent, the David Letterman Show and as the halftime\u00a0entertainment at a number of professional sports events.<\/p>\n

With only a $1 million investment, this could be a brand-new career for you!<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=x8NjlBvwLlU&feature=relmfu<\/a>\n

In 1943, Navy engineer Richard James was trying to develop better way to monitor warships’ horsepower using tension springs. One of the springs fell to the ground and kept moving — “walking” down a stairs on its own.<\/p>\n

That evening,\u00a0James told his wife Betty, “I think I can make a toy out of this.” The idea caught her fancy — and she came up with a name for it — “Slinky,” from the Swedish word meaning “sleek.” It\u00a0debuted over the 1945 Christmas season at Philadelphia’s famed Gimbel’s Department Store — selling out their entire stock of 400 in the first 90 minutes.<\/p>\n

Today more than 250 million Slinkys have been sold worldwide.<\/p>\n

During the 1960s, James suffered an apparent mid-life crisis and deserted Betty, their six children and the thriving Slinky empire, moving to South America to join a Bolivian religious sect. Betty took over the company, replaced the original blue-black Swedish steel with less expensive, silver-colored U.S. metal, then added other toys to the line including Slinky Jr., Slinky Dog, Slinky Pets and Crazy Eyes — glasses with fake eyeballs dangling from Slinkys.\u00a0She took the to new success with aggressive advertising, including the famous Slinky jingle.<\/p>\n

High school teachers and college professors have used Slinkys to simulate the properties of waves, United States troops in the Vietnam War used them as mobile radio antennas, and NASA has used them in zero-gravity physics experiments in space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is the ultimate Halloween costume for anyone who ever loved playing with a Slinky, that great kids’ toy spring from the same innocent era that brought us the Hula Hoop, Silly Putty\u00a0and the Frisbee. Now you can become a human Slinky! For only $1 million! That’s the price that was being asked on eBay.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[216,215,214,217],"class_list":["post-737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-happy","tag-costume","tag-ebay","tag-human-slinky","tag-veniamin"],"yoast_head":"\nYou can be a Slinky for Halloween ... for $1 million! - Good News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/2011\/10\/you-can-be-a-slinky-for-halloween-for-1-million.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"You can be a Slinky for Halloween ... for $1 million! - Good News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here is the ultimate Halloween costume for anyone who ever loved playing with a Slinky, that great kids’ toy spring from the same innocent era that brought us the Hula Hoop, Silly Putty\u00a0and the Frisbee. Now you can become a human Slinky! For only $1 million! That’s the price that was being asked on eBay.…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/2011\/10\/you-can-be-a-slinky-for-halloween-for-1-million.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Good News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-10-30T22:20:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-10-31T01:13:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/goodnews\/files\/2011\/10\/human-slinky1.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"You can be a Slinky for Halloween ... for $1 million! - Good News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/2011\/10\/you-can-be-a-slinky-for-halloween-for-1-million.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"You can be a Slinky for Halloween ... for $1 million! - Good News","og_description":"Here is the ultimate Halloween costume for anyone who ever loved playing with a Slinky, that great kids’ toy spring from the same innocent era that brought us the Hula Hoop, Silly Putty\u00a0and the Frisbee. Now you can become a human Slinky! For only $1 million! That’s the price that was being asked on eBay.…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/2011\/10\/you-can-be-a-slinky-for-halloween-for-1-million.html","og_site_name":"Good News","article_published_time":"2011-10-30T22:20:01+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-10-31T01:13:27+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/goodnews\/files\/2011\/10\/human-slinky1.jpg"}],"twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/2011\/10\/you-can-be-a-slinky-for-halloween-for-1-million.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/2011\/10\/you-can-be-a-slinky-for-halloween-for-1-million.html","name":"You can be a Slinky for Halloween ... for $1 million! - Good News","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/2011\/10\/you-can-be-a-slinky-for-halloween-for-1-million.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/2011\/10\/you-can-be-a-slinky-for-halloween-for-1-million.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/goodnews\/files\/2011\/10\/human-slinky1.jpg","datePublished":"2011-10-30T22:20:01+00:00","dateModified":"2011-10-31T01:13:27+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/2011\/10\/you-can-be-a-slinky-for-halloween-for-1-million.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/2011\/10\/you-can-be-a-slinky-for-halloween-for-1-million.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/2011\/10\/you-can-be-a-slinky-for-halloween-for-1-million.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/goodnews\/files\/2011\/10\/human-slinky1.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/goodnews\/files\/2011\/10\/human-slinky1.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/2011\/10\/you-can-be-a-slinky-for-halloween-for-1-million.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"You can be a Slinky for Halloween … for $1 million!"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/","name":"Good News","description":"Good News - What's REALLY happening in the world!","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/author"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":741,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions\/741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}