Pennsylvania Magazine – by Sharon Watts

We’ve all heard of one-industry towns. Up until last year, the borough of Smethport in McKean County was home to a one-town industry, thanks to the production of a simple toy known to baby boomers as Wooly Willy.

Recently voted one of the top-40 toys from the 1950s through the 1980s, Wooly Willy is an unlikely success story. It consists of a piece of cardboard featuring a funny-looking, bulbous-nosed, bald-headed “everyman” that can be “drawn on” with a magnet, shaping black powder into a moustache, a goatee, hair or eyebrows. Read more »