Mr. Potato Head began as a simple idea: push small pronged eyes, ears and mouths into a vegetable. Brooklyn toymaker George Lerner developed the Funny Face Man in the early 1940s, though the exact origin is disputed, with versions involving childhood doll-making and his own children playing with food. A prototype was completed in 1951, and Post Cereals briefly bought the rights before Hassenfeld Brothers, now Hasbro, bought them back. Hasbro's kit included a styrofoam head so the parts could be reused, while still suggesting real produce for the body.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.