All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
My family had the chance to try out three holiday colors of Crazy Aaron's Thinking Putty this past month.
- Snow Angel: The color we took out of the container in the photo above; a beautiful silvery, glitterly, BLINGY color.
- Mistletoe: A red color that turns green as the heat from your hands reacts to it. This is one of the company's "hyper colors."
- Monster Mash: It comes out of the container glittery purple. But turn out the lights and it glows in the dark...in orange!
This is a fantastic stocking stuffer idea, as well as a great budget-friendly, science-savvy gift idea for all ages, for any occasion.
My family gets a chance to be guinea pigs to many products, thanks to my affiliation with GeekMom: games, books, gadgets, toys, and accessories. We enjoy just about everything, but this Thinking Putty has been THE favorite with my family for a solid month. I have never seen such enthusiasm for a sample product before! Every night one of us in the family is breaking out one of the colors and pulling, massaging, bouncing, and blowing bubbles through it. My husband took one of the three containers we received to his office and it now sits on his desk for him and his colleagues to play with while engrossed in critical national security decision making.
We first discovered this product through our friends at ThinkGeek; we bought a container for my oldest son as a gift in early 2012. It was the Alien Ooze glow-in-the-dark color, retail packaged as Smart Mass exclusively for ThinkGeek. He has loved playing with it as he works on homework or watches TV.
Puttyworld has come up with an incredible variety of geeky putties: hypercolors (changes color with heat/cold), glitter, magnetic, glow-in-the-dark, color shifting, "clear glass," and even a 24-karat gold version, 1 ounce of which is gold!
I need to make clear that this not Silly Putty. It's better. Crazy Aaron put a lot of research and work into making their products less sticky, less prone to attract dirt and hairs, and more colorfast. After a month or more of playing with this product in our house, all three samples still look as good as new. There is an absolute minimum of mess -- we get the occasional little blob on the carpet when the kids are stretching it out -- and I have seen NO evidence of the colors rubbing off anywhere in my house. This is a high quality product.
GeekDad featured this product in 2010, and gave away one tin of putty per day during that year's 12 Days of Geekmas giveaway series.
The Puttyworld.com website has a link that offers endless ideas for how to demonstrate its non-Newtonian fluid properties.
Made in the USA! I will always appreciate American-made products, and I will appreciate even more Pennsylvania-made products! Puttyworld manufactures their products in the western Philadelphia suburbs, and "proudly employs exceptional people with special needs." Read more about the company founder, Aaron Muderick, who was interviewed on Wired.com back in 2002 when his business was in its infancy.
Fundraising/Trade Show Swag Opportunities. Crazy Aaron's Puttyworld has a program for companies to design custom labels and market their putty products under your own name.
How Do I Buy Crazy Aaron's Thinking Putty? 3.2 ounce (1/5 of a pound) tins of Thinking Putty retail for $10-15 and can be obtained in the following ways.
- Buy online directly through Puttyworld.com.
- Buy online from our friends at ThinkGeek (marketed as Smart Mass).
- Buy online from Amazon.com.
- Look in person at specialty toy stores, hobby shops, and bookstores. Use this online tool to find a location near you.
Learn more about Crazy Aaron's putty through their Puttyworld website, and you can follow more of their news on their blog.
Complimentary samples of this product were provided for review purposes.
