I remember playing with these in school in 1966, twisting them into shapes, when they were already specifically made as craft supplies, and were probably too impractical to actually be used for cleaning tobacco pipes. I did a bit of research and found some examples of “vintage pipe cleaners” that I assume were made prior to 1963, because the addresses show postal zones (eg, Chicago 7, Illinois) instead of 5-digit zip codes. I asked my wife if she remembered playing with pipe cleaners…she said yes, but that they were plain white, not different colors (this would’ve been in the mid-to-late 1950s). But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the colorful kind did not also exist back then.
I’m wondering when this became a “thing”–not playing with plain white pipe cleaners, which probably goes back to the first grandpa handing a kid a spare pipe cleaner–but when did manufacturers first realize that they could make some extra bucks by adding colors and marketing these things to kids?
According to this website, dedicated craft pipe cleaners have been a thing since the 50s, since they were imported into Japan and manufactured there then. But whether those were coloured, it doesn’t say (although I would guess yes, in order to attract kids)
You’re right that the craft ones are not good for actual pipe cleaning, as nowadays they use nylon bristles not the absorbent cotton of the real deal.
I was so far out of the loop on those things, I thought they were for cleaning water pipes, and also thought that was ridiculous as no one in their right mind is going to disassemble their plumbing to use these things.
I remember just the plain white ones in the '50s, so the colored ones had to be later than that.
My father had some very old yellow pipe cleaners in a box of random stuff that dated at least to the backuinto 50s. It did not appear they were made for crafts. But that’s just one color, perhaps to distinguish that product across the competition.
They may not allow kids to play with the lengths of copper wire that have different color insulations. Along with the striped color combinations there are a lot of colors. Those were invented by the phone company in thick multiconductor cables of phone wire and then the parents of a friend of mine would find old wire being pulled out of buildings and cut off 1 foot lengths of the wires to sell for crafts.
I was about to reply to this, but it occurred to me that by “water pipes,” you don’t actually mean bongs, do you?
Back in the 1950s they couldn’t sell both in the same place.
I was confused about that too, until he mentioned the plumbing part. I couldn’t understand how someone could be so out of the loop as to mentally skip past tobacco pipe and head right to bong.
Thanks, I was guessing it was sometime during the 1950s. Wow, that Mogol art is a lot more refined than the crude stick figures we were making in school!
I now recall that we (in the US) got a lot of our art/craft supplies imported from Japan back then: Origami and Cray Pas are the first things that come to mind. But I remember some cheap crayons and watercolor paint sets, as well. And those weird coloring “books” (more like tiny pamphlets) of printed ink dots that would turn into “paint” when you brushed water over them.