The new slinky is in the world record books. This Connecticut family made it happen
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Five-year-old Axel Luchsinger was having a normal day at school, until an announcement came over the intercom: He had officially broken a world record.
“Everybody was hugging me,” he told CBC News.
It turns out that everyone’s favorite children’s toy is actually a stair master – not the kind we dread seeing at the gym. According to Guinness World Records, the record for the most flights down a slinky has been broken, at 53 years old. They beat the previous achievement by 23 steps.
And behind the feat are Axel and his parents, Joe and Christelle Luchsinger, a family of three from Connecticut.
It seemed ‘overwhelming’
Axel is “really interested in what’s the biggest, fastest, strongest of everything,” Joe Luchsinger told CBC News.
He said his son had recently become interested in slinkies and knew his father had tried to break records before, including a 20-hour long handshake practice that ended with him being pulled from an event in New York City, when his friend fainted.
So when they look at the slinky’s record, the previous milestone of 30 stairs set in 2014 seems “beatable.”
They bought seven slinkies of different lengths, widths and springiness to find the perfect fit. Winner: multi-colored plastic.
Then in May 2025, the family took a trip to visit Joe’s parents in Ohio. While there, he checked his maps app and found what he thought would be the perfect location for this trick: a large dam “with a big staircase.” But soon they found the steps were too big, and the slinky couldn’t go down one flight of stairs. So they scramble for backup.
The first thing that came to mind, Joe said, was Ohio Stadium, but they couldn’t get in. Instead, he called the athletic director at Otterbein University in Westerville, after driving by and seeing a bunch of brakes there. The director agreed to give them a try, and that’s when they enjoyed the story of the princess’s descent.
Blowing up a storm
Each group of three had a task to do. Christelle was the designated starter, Axel was the official stair counter and Joe was tasked with returning the slinky back to each run.
For several hours, they repeatedly threw the toy down the stairs.
“In the beginning we were only going to get 10 runs,” said Joe. “We almost gave up. A storm came, we heard thunder in the distance.”
But their luck started to change when Christelle started getting long runs.
“That’s when we were at it, and finally one went all the way,” Joe said. “We hit a bit of rain.”
A live judge can verify the records on the spot, but it was the family that was there that day, who caught it on video in May 2025. They found out that they had been given a certificate of it by email about 10 months later this past March.
Finding time to play
“As bad as it may sound, it’s really good,” Christelle said of the record.
“Maybe one day we’ll get to 150,” Axel told his parents, with a grin and a giggle.
A total of 254 players gathered on Saturday to break the Guinness World Record for the largest game of human foosball. Organizers built a life-size foosball court in Etobicoke just for the event. It’s all part of a campaign to get fans excited for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which kicks off in Toronto in just 20 days.
For now, they’re eyeing their next goal: a super-high launch from the Galilean cannon, in which a person drops several balls stacked together of decreasing mass to see how far the lightest one can bounce. The current record stands at 13.08 meters, set in March 2020.
In the meantime, Joe says it’s a good reminder that finding time to play as an adult is important.
“Although this is not a difficult task, we took it seriously and it was magical,” he said.
“[We] have a memorable experience doing something that is fun [Axel] he thought.”
