Did Mr. Potato Head originally come without a potato?

Thanks to Toy Story, Mr. Potato Head is one of the most famous toys on the planet: grumpy, plastic and endlessly losing his ears. But for his first twelve years on toy shelves, he wasn’t really a potato head at all. He was just the face. The potato was your problem.

The short answer

Yes. The original Mr. Potato Head kit, launched by Hassenfeld Brothers (the company we now know as Hasbro) in 1952, contained plastic eyes, noses, mouths and other parts with pushpins on the back. Children stuck them into a real potato or any other vegetable from the kitchen. A plastic potato body was only added in 1964.

The real story

The toy was invented by George Lerner, who came up with the idea in 1949 and had a prototype ready by 1951. At first, the rights went to Post Cereals, which planned to give the parts away as prizes in cereal boxes. A few months later, Hassenfeld Brothers and Lerner bought the rights back and turned it into a stand-alone toy.

Here is the twist that makes Mr. Potato Head a genuine piece of TV history. On 30 April 1952 he became the first toy ever advertised on television. The campaign was aimed squarely at children rather than their parents, encouraging kids to ask for it at home. It worked: more than a million kits sold in the first year. Advertisers have been using the same trick ever since.

So why did the real potato disappear? Parents were not thrilled with rotting vegetables turning up under beds and in toy boxes. New government safety rules also came into play, along with worries about small parts and sharp pins. In 1964 Hasbro started including a hard plastic potato body.

The toy’s second big moment came in 1995, when Mr. Potato Head starred in Pixar’s Toy Story, voiced by comedian Don Rickles. He returned in the sequels and introduced the character to a whole new generation. By 2003, more than 50 million had been sold, which is a lot of plastic potatoes, and an even bigger pile of eyes and ears down the back of the sofa.

Why people get it wrong

Almost everyone alive today grew up with the plastic version, so it never occurs to us that it could have been any other way. The idea of buying a toy and then raiding the vegetable drawer to finish it sounds bizarre now.

But in the early 1950s, it made perfect sense. The kit was cheap to make, the potato was free, and children had endless “heads” to play with. Any other vegetable from the kitchen was fair game too.

“First toy ever on telly, and you had to bring your own spud. Talk about a budget production.”