Mr. Potato Head

Mr. Potato Head was invented and manufactured by toymaker George Lerner in 1949, but was first distributed by Hasbro in 1952. It was the first toy advertised on television and has remained in production since. In its original form, Mr. Potato Head was offered as separate plastic parts with pushpins to be affixed to a real potato or other vegetable. Due to complaints regarding rotting vegetables and new government safety regulations, Hasbro began including a plastic potato body with the toy set in 1964. The original toy was joined by Mrs. Potato Head in 1953 and later supplemented with accessories including a car and boat trailer. Hasbro updated the brand in 2021, dropping the honorific in the name and marketing the toy simply as Potato Head, while retaining the individual characters of Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head.

Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head both appeared in the Toy Story franchise, formerly voiced by the late Don Rickles and Estelle Harris, and recast and later voiced by Jeff Bergman and Anna Vocino for the most recent release. Additionally, in 1998, The Mr. Potato Head Show aired but was short-lived, with only one season being produced. As one of the prominent marks of Hasbro, a Mr. Potato Head balloon has also joined others in the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Toy Story Midway Mania!, in Disney California Adventure at the Disneyland Resort, also features a large talking Mr. Potato Head.

History

Creation

In the early 1940s, Brooklyn-born toymaker George Lerner came up with the idea of inserting small, pronged body and face parts into fruits and vegetables to create a "funny face man"; however, the exact origin and inspiration for this idea are unknown. One theory is that, as a child, Lerner often took potatoes from his mother's garden and, using various other fruits and vegetables as facial features, made dolls for his younger sisters. In a slight variation of this story, the items he attached to the potatoes were smaller fruits and vegetables. However, others have speculated that he got the idea from his wife's nephew Aaron Bradley, who was seen placing sticks inside of potatoes in the family garden. Yet another version states that Lerner came up with the idea in 1949 and was inspired by his own children, who often played with their food. Various sources list 1949 as the official year that the Funny Face Man was invented.

In 1951, Lerner completed a prototype for Funny Face Man. Finding a buyer was initially a challenge because companies thought consumers would be hesitant to waste food so soon after the rationing that was widespread during World War II. However, Post Cereals purchased the rights to Funny Face Man that same year, with plans to include the kits in breakfast cereal boxes. Just a few months later, the toy company Hassenfeld Brothers (now known as Hasbro) and Lerner bought back the rights to Funny Face Man kits from Post. In Hasbro's version, the kits included a styrofoam head. However, because the styrofoam head had limited reusability, the packaging still recommended that the accessories be affixed to potatoes or other produce.

On April 30, 1952, Mr. Potato Head became the first toy advertised on television. The campaign was also the first to be aimed directly at children; before this, television commercials were mostly targeted at adults. The commercial revolutionized marketing by focusing on children as a target audience and encouraging them to convince their parents to buy the product (a concept that came to be known as the "nag factor"). Additionally, between 1949 and 1952, television sales had increased exponentially, and a massive polio outbreak in 1952 resulted in children spending even more time indoors. Over one million kits were sold in the first year.

Subsequent developments

In 1953, Hasbro introduced a Mrs. Potato Head variant, and soon after, Brother Spud and Sister Yam completed the family, followed by accessories reflecting the affluence of the 1950s: a car, boat trailer, kitchen set, stroller, and pets marketed as Spud-ettes. In the 1960s, Hasbro also introduced the Tooty Frooty Friends kit, which came with over 60 pieces for building four additional characters: Katie the Carrot, Kooky the Cucumber, Oscar the Orange, and Pete the Pepper. Although the toys were originally produced as separate plastic parts to be attached to a real potato or other vegetable, in 1964, Hasbro began to include a separate plastic head and body in each box and made the attachments less sharp, leaving them unable to puncture vegetables easily. These changes were due, in part, to parental complaints about finding spoiled food in their homes, but there were also reports of children choking on the small pieces or cutting themselves with the sharp ends. In 1973, further changes were made to increase safety. To comply with the Child Protection Act of 1966 and the Child Protection and Toy Safety Act of 1969, Hasbro combined the head and body into one large piece and made the attachments larger to prevent choking. Arms were no longer included in the kits. Additionally, Hasbro replaced the holes with flat slots, allowing only one possible orientation for the attached parts. In 1983, Hasbro tweaked the Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head design by adding white bendable arms wearing white gloves. A storage compartment was also added to this larger head/body combination piece.

In 1985, Mr. Potato Head received four postal votes in the run for mayor of Boise, Idaho in the "most votes for Mr. Potato Head in a political campaign" as verified by Guinness World Records. In November 1987, Mr. Potato Head became "Spokespud" for the annual Great American Smokeout and surrendered his pipe to Surgeon General C. Everett Koop in Washington, D.C. In 1989, Hasbro replaced the attached bendable arms with the removable plastic arms. In the 1990s, the League of Women Voters used Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head to promote a "Get Out the Vote" campaign. Additionally, Mr. Potato Head received an award from the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, presented by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was chairman of the organization at that time.

In 1995, Mr. Potato Head was featured in a leading role in the Disney/Pixar animated feature Toy Story, with the voice provided by comedian Don Rickles. Mr. Potato Head later returned in Toy Story's four sequels — Toy Story 2 (1999), Toy Story 3 (2010), Toy Story 4 (2019), and Toy Story 5 (2026) — with Rickles reprising the role; however, Rickles died in April 2017 due to kidney failure, so Pixar used unused archival audio of his voice for the fourth release, the character being recast and performed by Jeff Bergman in the fifth. Also in 1995, the Mr. Potato Head Pals Mix 'n' Match game was made. This box contained four bodies and four sets each of hands, eyes, noses, mouths, hats, and shoes. Aimed at young children, the goal of the game was to build characters to match the provided cards.

In 2000, Mr. Potato Head was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong in Rochester, New York. In 2006, Hasbro also began to sell sets of pieces without bodies for customers to add to their collections. Some of these themed sets included Chef, Construction Worker, Firefighter, Halloween, King, Mermaid, Police Officer, Pirate, Princess, Rockstar, and Santa Claus. In the same year, Hasbro introduced a line called "Sports Spuds" with a generic plastic potato (smaller than the standard size) customized to a wide variety of professional sports teams. In 2010, Hasbro received a Toy & Game Innovation Award from Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. In the same year, Hasbro tweaked the Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head body design to give it a slimmer appearance, commonly referred to as "Active Adventures". As of 2012, sales of Mr. Potato Head and related products were reported to have exceeded 100 million units since the original release. On February 25, 2021, Hasbro dropped the honorific in the brand name and began marketing the toy simply as "Potato Head", while retaining the individual characters of Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head. However, several media outlets misinterpreted the announcement as stating that all Potato Head products would henceforth be gender neutral. While continuing to offer the classic Mr. and Mrs. characters, Hasbro was praised by some for being progressive, although others called it a "PR stunt". Since 2024, new models of the Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head toys have been produced.