QUICK COMMENTS: 1. The Celluloid charms were produced by means that were developed before the 20th Century. 2. EPPY used injection molding, a process that was commercially available beginning in 1936. 3. EPPY used polystyrene, a material that was commercially available beginning in 1936. 4. 1946 is the year that screw injection molding (a completely new form of injection molding) was invented and revolutionized the mass production process of consumer plastics. 5. See more complete details of injection molding below.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF PLASTIC INJECTION MOLDING By Jeffrey Scott Maxwell
One could say that John Wesley Hyatt was behind the 8-ball when he invented a process to inject Celluloid into a mold to make billiard balls. He never received the $10,000 prize once offered by an ivory billiard ball company that originally inspired his discovery of Celluloid, but he did receive a patent for the first injection molding machine in 1872. This process used a basic plunger to inject the plastic into a mould through a heated cylinder. Hair accessories, game pieces, and other small items were made through this process -- including billiard balls.
"Who's behind those Foster Grants?" In 1919, when Sam Foster Jr. founded the the Foster Grant Company in Loeminster, Massachusetts to manufacture women's hair accessories (originally from natural materials), no one would have guessed that the company would become a pioneer in plastic injection molding. In the mid-1920s, hairstyles changed from long to short, so in order to stay profitable the company needed to come up with a new product – of course, sunglasses. Before this time, sunglasses were only sold to invalids through pharmacies. Foster Grant was the first brand of sunglasses that was sold as a fashion item directly to consumers beginning in 1929, when sales took off in the Woolworth's store on the Boardwalk of Atlantic City, New Jersey, and sunglasses became the largest Depression-era fad in the United States when celebrities and world leaders started wearing them.
Sam Foster built an injection molding machine in 1931 to make combs out of cellulose nitrate. It was a more expensive (time consuming) hand process then, but it was the first truely successful commercial use of injection molding for a consumer product. In 1934, Foster Grant invented the first hydraulic injection molding machine -- used to make sunglasses. The factory also made a large variety of other injection-molded plastic products including barrettes, curlers, and combs for Goody Products (the New Jersey-based parent company that bought half of Foster Grant in 1929). By 1938, the Foster Grant company owned more than 100 injection molding presses. Leominster, Mass eventually became the major center for the US plastics industry, and the National Plastics Center and Museum was located there until it was closed last year. (I understand that UMass Lowell has part of the collection and is planning on putting together a smaller plastics museum on campus.)
The first commercially available plastics injection molding machine was produced by Reed-Prentice (also a Massachussetts company) in 1936. Commercial polystyrene was also introduced that year. This is the equipment and material that EPPY would use to make millions of prizes for bulk-vending and other markets -- including a limited number of Cracker Jack prizes.
1946 is an important date, because that is the year that James Hendry made the first screw injection molding machine, which had an auger in the place of Hyatt's plunger. This process was in wide commercial use by 1948. Almost all plastic injection molding machines use Hendry's screw system now. Hendry also developed the first gas-assisted injection molding process in the 1970s, which permitted the production of complex, hollow prizes that cooled quickly.
There are a number of reasons why screw injection molding is such an improvement over the previous injection molding method, because a lot of the necessary functions are combined as never before. But most importantly it meant that high-quality plastic products could now be produced much more rapidly at a fraction of the cost. So CJCO had available to it a wide variety of inexpensive toys that its customers saw as good quality.
So whether behind the 8-ball, or behind those Foster Grants, injection molding ultimately played an important role behind the development of plastic Cracker Jack prizes. I suppose it could be said that injection molding is one of the most important developments behind our consumer society.
Copyright 2011 by Jeffrey Scott Maxwell
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