Cheese Squishy 
Jellyfish Squishy 
Jumbo Lips Squishy 
Mummy Squishy 
Pop-Eye Rhino 
Salted Butter Stick 
Pink Lychee 
Who invented squishies? No one person
Squishies have a family tree rather than a single inventor. The soft, slow-rising, often scented foam toy that most people mean is usually traced to Japan in the 2000s, but almost everything it does was done first by an older American squeeze toy: a putty that flows, a dough you shape, a slime you squash, a figure you stretch. Each of those has its own inventor, and a couple of them have disputed ones, so the honest answer to who invented squishies is a list of names, not one.
For the Japanese end of the story, including the Tokyo maker that says it started making soft squishies in 2002, see our separate piece on where kawaii squishies came from. This page covers the toys that came before it, with dates you can check.
A timeline of the toys squishies came from
| Year | Toy | Who | What it added |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1943 to 1950 | Silly Putty | Disputed: James Wright at General Electric or Earl Warrick at Dow Corning; sold in plastic eggs by Peter Hodgson | A material that flows slowly but bounces when you hit it |
| Mid-1950s | Play-Doh | Kutol, a Cincinnati wallpaper-cleaner maker, reworked by Joe McVicker | A soft dough meant to be shaped and reshaped |
| 1976 | Slime | Mattel, in a small plastic trash can | A squishy, oozy mass you could squash in your hand |
| 1976 | Stretch Armstrong | Kenner | A gel-filled figure you could stretch |
| 1987 | Koosh ball | Scott Stillinger, who patented it | A ball of soft rubber strands, made to be handled and felt |
| 1980s | Foam stress ball | No named inventor | A moulded foam ball made to be squeezed in one hand |
| 2002 | Soft slow-rise squishy | A Japanese toy maker, by its own account | Very soft foam that sinks and rises slowly, with a scent |
Sources for each row are the Wikipedia articles on Silly Putty, Play-Doh, Slime (toy), Stretch Armstrong, Koosh ball and stress ball, plus the interview cited in our Japan piece for 2002.
A few details from those sources are worth knowing:
- Silly Putty came out of wartime research. It was made while looking for a rubber substitute during World War II. Crayola’s own history credits James Wright in 1943; Earl Warrick maintained all his life that he and a colleague got the patent first. Either way, it only became a toy when Peter Hodgson packed it into plastic eggs, with sales counted from 1950.
- Play-Doh started as a cleaner. It was first made in Cincinnati in the 1930s to clean soot off wallpaper, and was reworked into a children’s modelling compound in the mid-1950s, when coal heating and the need for it were fading.
- Mattel’s Slime launched in February 1976, made mainly from guar gum and sold in a plastic trash can.
- Stretch Armstrong was first sold by Kenner in 1976 as a large gel-filled figure. Wikipedia names Kenner’s industrial designer Jesse D. Horowitz as the one who created the concept. Versions from several countries followed until the 1990s.
- The Koosh ball was patented in 1987 by Scott Stillinger, who named it after the sound it made landing in his hand.
Who invented the stress ball?
Nobody is on record as the inventor. Wikipedia’s stress ball article names no inventor at all and files the toy under 1980s introductions. What it does describe is how the foam kind is made: the liquid ingredients of polyurethane foam are injected into a mould, and the chemical reaction gives off carbon dioxide bubbles that turn the mix into foam. Balls like these are the ones that often carry a printed company logo and get handed out as gifts.
The stress ball and the squishy are cousins rather than parent and child. What set the later squishy apart, in the Wikipedia definition, is that it slowly returns to its shape after a squeeze. We compared the two words in stress ball vs squishy.
If you remember a squishy toy from the 90s
About 450 US searches a month ask for a “squishy toy from the 90s” (DataForSEO, 12-month average). The toy behind that search was probably not called a squishy at the time. The earliest dated start for soft slow-rise squishies we could source is 2002. So a squishy toy from the 90s was most likely one of the older kinds in the table:
- A Koosh ball. Wikipedia’s reference list includes newspaper stories from 1989 about it rising up the top-toy lists.
- Slime in its trash can, or one of its many licensed versions.
- A stretch figure, from the Stretch Armstrong line or one of its imitators, which kept coming out into the 1990s.
- A water-filled tube toy, the kind that slips out of your fist. We explained how those are built in the water snake toy.
- A plain foam stress ball, often with a company logo on it.
If what you remember was soft, scented and slowly puffed back up, it was probably from the 2000s or later.
When were squishies invented, and what came after
Going by the sources above, squishies as a named toy date from the 2000s, with the Japanese maker’s 2002 start as the earliest dated one. The Wikipedia article on squishies says they originated in Japan and reached US shops in spring 2017, though that line is marked as needing a citation. The same article records the 2026 trend for butter-shaped squishies and NeeDohs on TikTok and YouTube.
The family tree is easy to see in a modern shop. On 30 September 2026 we counted, across 1,045 of our active listings:
| Ancestor | What to look for | Our listings using those words |
|---|---|---|
| Stretch figure | “stretch” or “stretchy” | 110 |
| Putty and dough | “moldable”, “putty”, “dough” or “clay” | 49 |
| Slime and jelly | “gel” or “jelly” | 176 |
| Slow-rise foam squishy | “slow rise”, “slow rising” or “slow rebound” | 519 |
Some examples: the Stretchy Tiger Squishy ($17.99) keeps the cartoon muscles of a stretch figure, and its listing says a pulled arm “stretches long” and then creeps back. The 3 Pack Milk Carton Squishy ($22.99) is described as moldable dough-like cubes that squish flat and puff back. The Giant Peach Squishy ($17.99) is the plain slow-rise foam fruit, big enough for two hands. For the sealed slime branch, see slime squishies and slime stress balls.
FAQ
Who invented squishies?
No single person. The slow-rise foam squishy is usually traced to Japanese toy makers in the 2000s, and the earliest dated maker account we found starts in 2002. Many of its tricks came from older toys with their own inventors, such as Silly Putty (credit disputed between James Wright and Earl Warrick), Mattel’s Slime and Kenner’s Stretch Armstrong.
When were squishies invented?
As a named toy, in the 2000s. The squeeze-toy ideas behind them go back to the 1940s and 1950s, and the foam stress ball to the 1980s.
Was there a squishy toy in the 90s?
Not the slow-rise kind, as far as the dated record goes. The squeezable toys of the 1990s were things like Koosh balls, slime, stretch figures, water tube toys and foam stress balls.
Who made squishies so popular?
There is no single person here either. Our Japan piece describes a phone-strap boom in Japan in the late 2000s and overseas YouTubers featuring squishies from around 2014, and in 2026 butter squishies and NeeDohs spread on TikTok and YouTube.
