This year, the classic Play-Doh compound in its yellow container got a new purple partner: Play-Doh Plus. “Through the years we’ve made some evolutions of the traditional Play-Doh compound to make it a little bit softer and to make the colors brighter,” says Gregory Lombardo, Senior Global Marketing Director for Play-Doh and other brands at Hasbro. “But this is really the first compound with a whole new formula we’ve created that was intended to be used with traditional Play-Doh.” When it was first developed in the 1950s, Play-Doh wasn’t a kids’ toy: It was made to clean wallpaper that had been dirtied by soot from home heating systems. But as cleaner heating systems were developed, the makers of that wallpaper cleaner realized it had another purpose—a toy that kids could mold things out of. In 1956, they began marketing the stuff, now called Play-Doh, to schools, and kids have been turning it into faux-cheeseburgers and smashing it into carpets in over 90 countries ever since. Play-Doh Plus began when the company was looking for a way to make the treats kids create in its Sweet Shoppe playsets look more realistic. “We were basically looking at, ‘Hey, if we made a cake out of the regular Play-Doh, could we make a softer, lighter, fluffier compound that would be more like the icing and the frosting that you would put on it?’” Lombardo says.