Playthings were serious business for Helen Malsed. The Magnolia housewife reportedly banked upwards of $1 million in royalties for the more than two dozen toys and games she created. Well, maybe not banked. “I’d get checks for $50,000 and just spend the money,” she told The Seattle Times in 1983.
Not all on herself. Malsed, who died in 1998 after a series of strokes, wasn’t just an insatiably curious tinkerer who read both Seattle newspapers daily; she was as selfless as she was ingenious.
When her son, Rick, was a boy, he suffered from illnesses that left him confined to their house for a few months. “Mom stayed
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