For many years now, when I’ve gone on motorcycle rides that included my friend Frank O’Connell, I would hear about this little toy company that he was involved with. Frank is a marketing guru of significant renown and he also has a connection to the toy business from years ago when he worked for Mattel on the Intelevision product. I know this for two reasons, the first of which is that it’s what business friends do, staying in touch with the portfolio of activities of our friends. But in addition to that, several years ago, I got involved with Frank in writing his business autobiography, which resulted in a published book called Jump First, Think Fast: An Unconventional Approach to High Performance. In that book, which I wrote and rewrote several times over a few years, I learned everything there was to know about Frank’s life and career. In the final chapters, there was a section about his lingering board memberships, including Schylling Toys.
Schylling is a Massachusetts toy company founded in 1974 by Jack Schylling, originally as a small family-run operation driven by a love of classic design. It started by selling mechanical flying birds imported from France after one such toy caught Schylling’s eye in Harvard Square. His founding vision was to bring better-quality, more beautiful toys to the U.S. market, particularly toys made from quality materials like tin and felt, as a counterpoint to the all-plastic toy landscape of the era. Schylling’s offering spans classic toys popular from the 1970s, 80s, and 90s as well as products dating back to the turn of the 20th century, alongside new creations that encourage classic play patterns. About half of its products are Schylling exclusives and originals, with designers constantly drawing inspiration from vintage toys and figuring out how to make the toys of bygone eras appeal to today’s consumers. The company uses factories around the world, primarily in China, to bring its creations to life and churns out hundreds of new toys each year. The company’s flagship products include the LAVA Lamp, Big Wheel, hand puppets, Sea-Monkeys, and a variety of classic tin toys, kaleidoscopes, harmonicas, and other retro items…and something called NeeDoh.
Big Wheel, acquired in 2021, is the iconic low-riding trike originally launched by Louis Marx & Co. in 1969 and a National Toy Hall of Fame inductee. Schylling offers it in the classic yellow, red, black, and blue color array. LAVA Lamp was acquired so that the company could refresh the classic with subtle updates like new color palettes, limited editions, and both classic wax and multicolor glitter versions, while preserving the look that makes it so iconic. The company has also leaned into the growing “kidult” trend — adult toy collectors — as a meaningful part of its audience. In short, Schylling occupies a distinctive niche — quality nostalgic and sensory toys that appeal across generations, deliberately positioned against the disposable, screen-driven mainstream toy market.
NeeDoh is a sensory squeeze toy… essentially a small, smooth-skinned ball filled with a proprietary non-toxic dough-like compound that gives it an unusually satisfying tactile quality. It’s a line of squishy, stress-relief sensory toys that launched a thousand TikToks and became a viral fidget phenomenon, available in numerous sizes, shapes, textures, and fillings. The outer skin is made from a smooth, slightly tacky silicone-like material. Inside is a dense, dough-filled compound that behaves unusually: it feels soft and yielding when you squeeze slowly, but resists and feels almost firm when you squeeze fast. When you let go, it returns perfectly to its original round shape every time. No mess, no residue. The filling is the key differentiator from ordinary stress balls. Most stress balls are filled with foam, gel, or sand — materials that feel hollow or granular. NeeDoh’s compound has a viscosity that creates what’s often described as a “melting” sensation when squeezed — almost like kneading dense dough, but contained. The name is a pun on “knead” for exactly this reason.
NeeDoh is, without a doubt, Schylling’s biggest modern hit. In fact, it may be the hottest toy on the market at the moment. It sits at the intersection of several trends that converged in the early 2020s: Sensory/fidget toys, Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) and TikTok — the visual and auditory satisfaction of squeezing NeeDoh is extremely well-suited to short video; it became a staple of toy unboxing and sensory content, occupational therapy crossover — therapists began recommending it for kids with ADHD, anxiety, and sensory processing needs, giving it a quasi-clinical credibility, and, last, but not least, price point — classic NeeDoh retails for around $5–7, which puts it in impulse-buy territory at checkout and makes it a default party favor or stocking stuffer.
Board member Frank tells me the company has 50 SKUs worth of Needohs. There’s no single published master SKU list from Schylling, but from their website, Amazon storefront, and retailer listings, the distinct NeeDoh product lines are:
∙ Classic NeeDoh (Groovy Glob) — original ball
∙ Super NeeDoh — twice the size
∙ Teenie NeeDoh — 3-pack of mini versions
∙ Nice Cube — square/cube form
∙ Mega Nice Cube — oversized cube
∙ Teenie Nice Cube — mini cube multipack
∙ Glitter and Glow Cube
∙ Nice Berg Swirl Cube
∙ Swirl Ball – (squishberry, blushmallow, etc.)
∙ Gumdrop — gumdrop shape
∙ Gummy Bear
∙ Color-changing Cubes
∙ Dream Drop — teardrop shape with sparkle filling and display stand
∙ Shaggy NeeDoh — shaggy/fuzzy exterior
∙ Fuzz Ball / Teenie Fuzz Ball — velvet texture, “Wonder Waves” pattern
∙ Jelly Belly — jellyfish shape
∙ Jelly Hops Bunnies — bunny shape
∙ Hot Shot Teenie — 4-pack in sports ball designs (basketball, baseball, soccer, football)
∙ Nice Ice Baby — mini ice/cube style
∙ Dohnuts — donut shape
∙ Color-change NeeDoh — dip in water to change color
∙ Various 3-packs, 4-packs, and gift sets bundling existing styles
∙ Ramen Noodlies
At the product-line level you’re looking at roughly 20–25 distinct items, but because many ship in assorted colors (blue, pink and purple being the apparent most popular) the product array is much broader. Scylling’s products are also sold at specialty retailers, but also the big boxes of Target, Walmart, Hobby Lobby and Barnes & Noble…and, of course, on Amazon.
When I think of Needoh, I think of all sorts of toys from my youth. I think of Play-Doh because of the spelling and the doughy centers. I think of Super Balls and their crazy bounce. I think of those sticky crawly spider things that you would throw against the wall and watch them “walk” down. I even think of Silly Putty in terms of its ubiquitous appeal and presence in every household. I also think about a toy Frank launched while at Gibson Greetings, called Silly Slammers that had a similar tactile feel, but also had thematic audio chips in them that said silly things when you threw them against a hard surface. So, no surprise when my daughter asked me to twist Frank’s tail to get some increasingly hard-to-get Needoh from Frank. I pulled in all of my favors since even Frank was having sourcing trouble on Needoh since they are in “craze” mode in the market at the moment. He tells me that the big boxes stores are ordering hundreds of millions of dollars worth and supply cannot keep up with demand. Frank did find a few of the SKUs on my daughter’s list, but Kim and I went out to do our own shopping recon. We spent a few hours going to all the local stores and found that NONE had ANY in stock. So what’s a Gramps to do? I went on eBay and paid the scalper’s premium to buy a dozen of the missing items on the shopping list. It cost me $325, about 4X the retail MSRP. Then I did the math. Frank running around and shipping me the few he could get and Kim and me running around and coming up empty handed suddenly made the $325 a bargain. I figure that between Frank, Kim and me we spent three times that amount in time, energy, gas and electric charge and got 15% of our order filled versus eBay filling the other 85%. Bottom line…needing to knead Needoh can be costly, but I suggest paying the price and keeping the grandkids happy.