08/04/2026
Etch A Sketch was a toy very few kids could make perform up to its full potential. A set of stairs was about the best most of us could do, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t have fun with one. You could move across the screen going up and down, and if you didn’t jostle the thing too much you’d end up with a window to the mysterious interior of the machine, which turns out to have the same mechanism a modern 2-D plotter uses to print a blueprint.
Invented in Europe in the 1950s, it was originally called The Magic Screen before The Ohio Art Company renamed it and brought it to the U. S. First hitting stores in July, 1960, it sold over 600,000 units at $2.99 a piece that first year. Ohio Arts' other big seller was the drawing toy Bizzy Buzz Buzz, and they also made a wide variety of printed tin toys. They're still making custom printed metal items, but it’s Etch A Sketch they’re remembered for. In 1995, Etch got a boost after a bit part in Toy Story, and continues to sell well today, albeit made by the Canadian manufacturer Spinmaster.
The Taj Mahal picture, which Wikipedia uses for the main picture of their Etch A Sketch page, is a stunning example of the full potential inside that little red box. The curves on the dome are near perfect, the reflection is identical yet somehow shimmery, and that cloud isn’t touching anything. How’d the artist do that? The aluminum powder adheres to the glass by static electricity, and bare glass has the strongest charge. When the stylus draws a line, it works like a mini snow plow, and rather than falling, most of the powder gets mounded on either side of the nib and sticks from static. Blow up the picture and you can see a faint line going from cloud to tower on each side. The cloud was drawn as you’d expect, and when the picture was finished, the artist used some secret technique to get the mounds of powder to collapse and re-cover (mostly) the bare glass just on those two lines.
We’re selling our used one for the original MSRP of $2.99.
Etch A Sketch commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HkuiCZD5kU&list=PLQlCDjekfTRoqSuiAr9q0x5Y33THjHmeU&index=2
Bizzy Buzz Buzz Commercial:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XRfhWrX4PYM
