In the late 50's and early 60's Mattel was on fire with it's new lines of toys. One of their innovative ideas was the "Make and Play" concept where much of the fun was actually making your own toys. As part of this line Mattel released the Vac-U-Maker. This toy had a hot plate and a vacuum pump that could be used to vacuform hot, softened, sheets of plastic on various molds of toys. The hot plate could also be used to melt and gel a liquid plastic resin dispersion, Plasti-Goop. After evaluating the immediate success of the toy they realized that they could develop the toy into two separate lines thus the Vac-U-Form and Thingmaker lines were started