Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles w. Chucky Bryant, and there's Jerry uh the
Speaker 1: Delicious dish rolland and this is Stuff you should Know,
Speaker 1: the vintage nostalgia addition that went off to China and
Speaker 1: then got sold to a different company edition. So do
Speaker 1: you want to have a rough list of classic toys
Speaker 1: we've covered? You wanna hear it? Oh? Lay it on me.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I've missed something, but it did help me
Speaker 1: think of some more that we should do. It. Slinky,
Speaker 1: we did slinky. Oh yeah, we did slink. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: Lego Oh yeah, of course. Barbie sure, her boyfriend g
Speaker 1: I Joe. Yeah, that was a good one. Sorry, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, Wait a minute, I'm sorry. Did we just
Speaker 1: specifically do a G I Joe winner in Action figures one?
Speaker 1: I think both. We definitely did action figures, although probably not. Okay,
Speaker 1: go ahead, I'll cross check that. Hot wheels, So so
Speaker 1: this is a made up list, is what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Hot wheels? Ye, I'm glad you didn't. You didn't call
Speaker 1: it hot wheels. Easy bake oven m play dough, silly putty.
Speaker 1: All right, do you count boomerangs? Yes, sure, do you
Speaker 1: count Monopoly? Yeah, Yo yos. Of course, Hula Hoops. I
Speaker 1: knew Hula Hoops was after Yo Yos. I just knew it.
Speaker 1: Teddy Ruxpan, we we covered him in our Christmas show
Speaker 1: this year. Oh yeah, that's a deep cut right there.
Speaker 1: And then that's all I have. But um, I could
Speaker 1: have sworn we did it on Frisbees, but I cannot
Speaker 1: find it. Yeah. I feel like we did Frisbees too,
Speaker 1: because I think we talked about like frall for something
Speaker 1: at some point. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's out
Speaker 1: there and I just didn't or maybe it's under a
Speaker 1: flying disc or something. Oh that's possible. Yeah, we made
Speaker 1: that joke about calling it a novelty flying disc because Frisbee,
Speaker 1: like used to see everybody who called anything else to Frisbee.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll have to look, but that there's probably more
Speaker 1: out there. But that's a solid you know, twelve or thirteen.
Speaker 1: That's pretty good, which leads us to edge sketch. Yes,
Speaker 1: one of the hundred top hundred toys of the century,
Speaker 1: according to UM, I want to say not the toy
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame. It's just in the Toy Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1: Kid who makes lists online? All right, Uh, this is
Speaker 1: the hundred best toys of the century. This is the
Speaker 1: hundred best guitar solos of the seventies. Oh man, I'd
Speaker 1: love to do a show on that. That would be
Speaker 1: pretty cool. I can't remember who named that that who
Speaker 1: made that list, but it's a high honor. It's a
Speaker 1: high accolade, even if we can't remember who came up
Speaker 1: with it. Like, it just catches the ubiquitous toy. Everybody
Speaker 1: knows what an that just sketches unless you go to
Speaker 1: France and then they'll say, oh, you mean like cro
Speaker 1: magic and you you might say, like, well, why would
Speaker 1: they have anything to say about the extra sketch in France?
Speaker 1: Turns out, buddy, the a just sketch is actually French
Speaker 1: in origin. Did you know that before this? I did not.
Speaker 1: I didn't either, because it seems like super American, you know,
Speaker 1: it looks like a TV and just feels like pure Americana.
Speaker 1: So when I realized I had some French stank on it, uh,
Speaker 1: my dreams were dashed. You like, it smells like champagne
Speaker 1: and cheese. Which is kind of pleasant. No, I didn't
Speaker 1: really care. I thought it was I thought it was great. Sketch,
Speaker 1: erase and sketch again. The logline that will forever be
Speaker 1: tied to this really interesting little toy. And um, I
Speaker 1: can't remember who it is in this article, but they
Speaker 1: were interviewing different folks. I think it was someone from
Speaker 1: the company commented, and I totally agree that, like, it's
Speaker 1: amazing that today, in in the digital world and Bluetooth
Speaker 1: and WiFi and video gaming as it is, that this
Speaker 1: little um low fi toy that doesn't even have batteries
Speaker 1: in it, much less hook up to the internet is
Speaker 1: still like super popular and still has a little bit
Speaker 1: of mystique. And I agree with them, And I think
Speaker 1: the reason why one of them is like you look
Speaker 1: at it and you're still kind of like, how does
Speaker 1: this thing work? Right, Well, we're going to ruin that
Speaker 1: mystique for everybody because we're gonna explain how it works
Speaker 1: actually in this episode. But hopefully it won't affect that
Speaker 1: just sketch sales, because we love I just catch you know,
Speaker 1: all right, should we go to France? We will go
Speaker 1: to France sometime. It's apparently not clear whether it was
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five or nineteen fifty six, But in a
Speaker 1: little town called Vitry Sir Sin, which means Victory on
Speaker 1: the Sin River, there was a company called what was
Speaker 1: the name of the company, chuck uh lynn crusta company name.
Speaker 1: It is a terrible name. But the reason they called
Speaker 1: themselves that is because Lynn Crusta is a type of
Speaker 1: wall covering that was really popular in the nineteenth or
Speaker 1: early twenty centuries. You know, like, have you ever been
Speaker 1: into an old, creepy, abandoned house and like the walls
Speaker 1: are covered in what looks like dimpled tin with like
Speaker 1: some weird patterns to it or whatever. M m no,
Speaker 1: but keep going, Okay, So where if you you could
Speaker 1: rub your hand over it's very much it's like heavily embossed.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's painted and it's just imagined. That is like
Speaker 1: Wayne scouting in the house. That is Lynn Crusta. And
Speaker 1: so that is one of the two things that this
Speaker 1: company made in the fifties, Lynn crusta wall coverings and
Speaker 1: artificial leather that is really neither here nor there, but
Speaker 1: I could I was with you. I was like, what
Speaker 1: kind of a name is that for a company. I
Speaker 1: looked it up. They just basically be like if you
Speaker 1: and I called our podcast podcast, because that's what we did,
Speaker 1: was make podcasts, crust pod Crusta, just the name crust Anyway.
Speaker 1: I think I know what you're talking about because I have,
Speaker 1: uh we have a pie safe that has that metal
Speaker 1: tin stuff. But it's I've never seen it on a wall,
Speaker 1: but I bet it's about the same thing, virtually the
Speaker 1: same thing. Yeah, okay, so that's link Crusta and that's
Speaker 1: where this guy worked. His name was Andre Cassagnas. Well,
Speaker 1: if it's French, wouldn't it be uh Caissan is that pronounced? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you just nailed it. Actually, Andre Cassong. Well
Speaker 1: that's what we're gonna call him. And we have gone
Speaker 1: back in time. You didn't know fifty five or fifty six,
Speaker 1: I say we go to fifty four. Just play it safe,
Speaker 1: setup shop in France and maybe get some emails done.
Speaker 1: Alright for a couple of years. Why not we could
Speaker 1: use a break um because you know, podcaster burnouts a
Speaker 1: real thing. Really, we're dropping, We're dropping like flies, all right.
Speaker 1: So he's working in this factory. It's north of Paris,
Speaker 1: and they are making these uh wall coverings like you're
Speaker 1: talking about. And he this is a little confusing how
Speaker 1: this actually happens if you ask me, or at least
Speaker 1: the way that the first article put it, it's confusing.
Speaker 1: Oh you're leaving it to me. I noticed by your
Speaker 1: by your pass after that, well, I mean no, let's
Speaker 1: let's I'll start it. But I just still don't quite
Speaker 1: get it. He marked up with pencil on a see
Speaker 1: through decal, so like he was putting on an electrical plate,
Speaker 1: um like a light switch. And on that plate, like
Speaker 1: many things, has like a little see through plastic that
Speaker 1: you peel off. Um, so he was writing on that
Speaker 1: he peeled it off. But then that's where it loses me.
Speaker 1: It's to exactly what took place. So okay, remember this
Speaker 1: is link Crusta and they make metal wall coverings, which
Speaker 1: means there's metal dust in the air, metal shavings everywhere, right,
Speaker 1: all of them are. Um that's what's crazy. This guy
Speaker 1: made it to that ripole age of eighty six after
Speaker 1: breathing that for years. But um, so there's there's metal
Speaker 1: dust everywhere, including on this electrical switch plate that he's installing.
Speaker 1: And I guess the decal against the plate. And I
Speaker 1: think what happened was when he marked on the decal
Speaker 1: and pulled the decale off, he'd seen that he had
Speaker 1: disturbed the metal shavings that were stuck to the underside
Speaker 1: of the decal. Do you see what I mean? Like
Speaker 1: he he had disturbed the shape, so so there was
Speaker 1: like the whole decal is coated in a metal dust.
Speaker 1: He marks on it with a pencil and the impression
Speaker 1: that he makes like gouges out lines on the backside
Speaker 1: the decal. But I know it's really tough. It was magic. Basically,
Speaker 1: this man witnessed a feat of magic that still cannot
Speaker 1: be explained to this day. And that's where he got
Speaker 1: his idea for the etch just sketch amazing. So a big,
Speaker 1: big moment he has that that literal lightbulb that goes
Speaker 1: off of his or I'm not literal of course, light
Speaker 1: bulb above his head, although you never know, there may
Speaker 1: have been a light bulb in that factory right above
Speaker 1: his head. Why not? Uh? And he said, all right,
Speaker 1: this is uh, this, this can be something. He however,
Speaker 1: did not have a lot of money to sink into
Speaker 1: this weird idea, and so he had to partner with
Speaker 1: somebody with money, man named Paul uh Chase c j
Speaker 1: z E or maybe Shaw's if he's French. And this
Speaker 1: guy had some dough because he owned a plastic injection
Speaker 1: molding company. This is like early on, I wonder if
Speaker 1: we could count. That's a toy, the the little plastic
Speaker 1: machines that spent out little plastic guitars in Chicago and
Speaker 1: it zoos. Yes, Rama, that would definitely count. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: goes on the list. Yeah, so he didn't. It wasn't
Speaker 1: mold rama, but it was plastic injection molding that this
Speaker 1: guy made his money from. Uh. And this where things
Speaker 1: get a little confusing historically because, uh, the man who
Speaker 1: his accountant, his name was Arthur Grangenny. You are nailing
Speaker 1: the French today. Try to run French people, You can't.
Speaker 1: Chuck is pronouncing your words just beautifully. So his accountant
Speaker 1: is actually given credit a lot of times because he
Speaker 1: filed the patent under his name, which I'm curious about
Speaker 1: how that works legally. Uh. He so he was do
Speaker 1: you remember the first time we did south By Southwest
Speaker 1: and on the sign it had like somebody I can't
Speaker 1: remember whose name it was, but whoever had like filed
Speaker 1: the application to get us into south By Southwest. It
Speaker 1: said that like, that's who was performing in the room
Speaker 1: that day. I think this is the same, basically the
Speaker 1: same thing. Where as like the US government bureaucracy, the
Speaker 1: Patent and UM Trademark office basically said, whoever his name
Speaker 1: is on there, that is, who is the patent holder.
Speaker 1: And since um Grand Gene, who was the accountant of Chaise,
Speaker 1: who was the partner of qusayan Um, since he was
Speaker 1: the one who actually filled out the application and paid
Speaker 1: for the application for the patent, as far as the
Speaker 1: government was concerned, he was the person who patented the
Speaker 1: just catch in the United States, even though grand made
Speaker 1: no claim on it whatsoever, immediately transferred the title over
Speaker 1: to Shase. He's for for decades, everybody thought Arthur grand
Speaker 1: Jean was the guy who invented the A sketch. Interesting, alright,
Speaker 1: so that was July nine fifty nine was when this
Speaker 1: patent was granted. And um, I guess we should just
Speaker 1: look at the little guy itself, the little TV, looking
Speaker 1: that iconic red frame with the two dials which it
Speaker 1: didn't have initially. Well we'll get to that. But um,
Speaker 1: the underside of the screen here has what's known in
Speaker 1: the patent as a pull virulent material such as aluminum powder.
Speaker 1: Is that French as well? I don't know, uh? And
Speaker 1: then to keep that from clumping up there a little
Speaker 1: tiny plastic beads and then the two knobs control um
Speaker 1: again from the patent, a movable tracing stylus, although initially
Speaker 1: it was a joystick, isn't that right? Yeah, yeah, basically
Speaker 1: like an atari um, but it served the same purpose
Speaker 1: and it was it was um held together the same
Speaker 1: way through an intricate system of pulleys and gears that
Speaker 1: that moved the stylus either upward or downward. And then
Speaker 1: if you combine the upward and downward together you could
Speaker 1: make the diagonals and circles and stuff like that. But
Speaker 1: it's if you it's really tough to describe what's going
Speaker 1: on and and and that's just sketch. But there's an
Speaker 1: House Stuff Works article from years back called Inside and
Speaker 1: that just sketch where the people the House of Verse
Speaker 1: like took one apart and photographed it and explained it
Speaker 1: step by step, and it really becomes much simpler and
Speaker 1: ruins any bit of magic. There is to it when
Speaker 1: you see inside ants just sketch, but it's still kind
Speaker 1: of wondrous, you know, like the engineer and you was like, wow,
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's sort of like, Um, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not a negative image, I don't think. But what's
Speaker 1: going on when you're moving those knobs, Uh, there's a
Speaker 1: stylist that's actually removing like the screen is coated with
Speaker 1: this powder. So it's actually removing powder, not adding something
Speaker 1: to the screen. Yes, exactly. And of course if you
Speaker 1: want to get that away and start a new picture,
Speaker 1: you just shake that thing up and that recoads the
Speaker 1: screen once again with that powder. Yeah. So like you
Speaker 1: know how your TV screen always has tons of dust
Speaker 1: on it, no matter how often you dust it. Sure,
Speaker 1: So that's because like that dust is attracted electrostatically through
Speaker 1: an electrical charge to the glass. That's they take advantage
Speaker 1: of that same thing with the underside of the um
Speaker 1: etch a sketch and that aluminum dust which sticks to everything,
Speaker 1: like it wants to stick to the glass because I
Speaker 1: think it's missing some electrons or something. And then when
Speaker 1: you move the stylus through it, you're just removing that
Speaker 1: that dust. Like you said, it's not a negative. It's
Speaker 1: the removal of dust. And that's the next that just
Speaker 1: sketch like at its at its core. And what's interesting,
Speaker 1: Chuck is like, that is how a nuts just sketch
Speaker 1: today works. That's how ants just sketch worked in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two, like the two meaning like also but that
Speaker 1: that that dude, Andre Cassaigne said, this is how this
Speaker 1: is gonna work. And it's it's basically the same thing.
Speaker 1: That's pretty awesome. Uh, let's take a break. Yes, we're
Speaker 1: gonna come back and talk about coming stateside right after this. Alright, So, Chuck,
Speaker 1: so how did we agree on his last name? I
Speaker 1: think I'm butchering it still. And I even took years
Speaker 1: of French in high school. I think he said casserole.
Speaker 1: All right, Andre Casserole. That seems it seems wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm still gonna go with Cassan. Okay, there you go.
Speaker 1: Andre Cassan. Um, he knew he was onto something like
Speaker 1: this guy was an electrician. He was like, this is
Speaker 1: a great idea, this is a prototype I made, This
Speaker 1: is this is worth something? So he um and Cruise,
Speaker 1: I guess funded a trip to the Nuremberg Toy Fair
Speaker 1: UM in ninety nine. And uh, it was there that
Speaker 1: Cassan was walking around saying, check this thing out. It
Speaker 1: is yours for a mere hundred thousand dollars, which at
Speaker 1: the time was a lot of money. I think it
Speaker 1: was eight hundred and seventy thou dollars today. And that's
Speaker 1: what this guy wanted for the for the right to
Speaker 1: produce this um. And every toymaker at the place said no,
Speaker 1: including a little toymaker called ohio Art Um. Everybody turned
Speaker 1: it down, and Cassan went home from the toy fair
Speaker 1: empty handed. But he he didn't give up. He still persisted.
Speaker 1: But that was a big strikeout for him right out
Speaker 1: of the gate. Yes, so Ohio Art eventually settles on
Speaker 1: a number of grand for the rights to make this
Speaker 1: thing in the United States. Uh. It is still called
Speaker 1: La Chrome Magique in France because they had a different
Speaker 1: licensing deal over there. From the from the get go
Speaker 1: Um and Ohio Art company is pretty interesting. It started,
Speaker 1: did you see that thing? Should? Yeah? They started out
Speaker 1: in nineteen o eight, founded by a man named a
Speaker 1: dentist named Dr Henry S. WinCE Winsler in Archibald Ohio.
Speaker 1: He gets out of dentistry because he's like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: toys is the future. Toys is There's no future in teeth.
Speaker 1: In a decade, no one in America is gonna have teeth.
Speaker 1: It's just a losing trade to be in his dentistry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he uh all the way forward. He rented a
Speaker 1: UM musical, hired fifteen women and they were making metal
Speaker 1: picture frames at first, to great great success. M hmm yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So they they use something called the metal lithography, which
Speaker 1: is a type of printing, and I think the metal
Speaker 1: refers to like the medium that you're using to print with,
Speaker 1: like the like you carve a picture out of metal
Speaker 1: and you put inc it and then you print on
Speaker 1: whatever you want. But they were printing on to metal.
Speaker 1: Like they had like these UM picture frames and pictures
Speaker 1: that were like a huge seller of a Cupid. It
Speaker 1: was a pair of like oval plates basically, but they
Speaker 1: were metal printed printed pictures on them, like a Cupid
Speaker 1: hanging out and then the same Cupid sleeping, and it's
Speaker 1: just kind of like whatever, Like these days, it seems
Speaker 1: kind of it's got a tinge of old timey creepiness.
Speaker 1: But in the first half of the twentieth century, there
Speaker 1: were fifty million sets of those things sold in the
Speaker 1: United States, which is an astounding amount. It's basically every
Speaker 1: house in America had a pair of this, and that
Speaker 1: really kind of made Ohio art like a very viable business.
Speaker 1: But they eventually got into things like sand pails and
Speaker 1: little trucks and that kind of thing. Anything that was
Speaker 1: printed with metal before the time that plastic toys came along,
Speaker 1: they were into so it wasn't a huge leap into
Speaker 1: the edge just sketch, but the edge sketch was definitely
Speaker 1: different than anything that they'd ever kind of messed around
Speaker 1: with for Did you know I've done metal lithography? No? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was one of our in industrial arts. It was,
Speaker 1: you know, and at least at my school, each quarter
Speaker 1: you did a different medium or whatever, and uh, lithography
Speaker 1: was something we did one quarter. Do you remember what
Speaker 1: you printed? I'm trying to remember what I printed. It's
Speaker 1: funny I can remember that because we also at one
Speaker 1: quarter was screen printing. Remember the T shirts? I did
Speaker 1: monkeys T shirts like this, see no evil here, No
Speaker 1: evil monkeys. No, the Band of Monkeys. They're there their
Speaker 1: logo with the guitar spelled out as monkeys, Like, wow,
Speaker 1: did you draw it yourself? No? No, no, of course
Speaker 1: not um, but we did metal sheet lithography. I don't
Speaker 1: remember all of the process, but what I do remember
Speaker 1: was essentially was like burning chemically burning images onto metal
Speaker 1: plates and then that metal plate was used to print. Okay,
Speaker 1: So so the metal and metal lithography does it talks
Speaker 1: about the metal press that you're using to print with
Speaker 1: like at the end of There may be different processes,
Speaker 1: but in my class, we would um do this thing
Speaker 1: and apply this like uh image with like this gel
Speaker 1: onto a metal sheet and use this combination of chemicals
Speaker 1: that would burn that into like make it part of
Speaker 1: the metal. And then all of a sudden you would
Speaker 1: have a metal sheet within thing on it like a
Speaker 1: negative image, and then you would use that in the
Speaker 1: printing process to print a positive image, right, and you
Speaker 1: could print use that to print onto anything including other metal. Right.
Speaker 1: Well hey man, that's where my knowledge and again this
Speaker 1: was ninth grade me, so I've I've forgotten a lot
Speaker 1: of things over that time period, right, And I'm sure
Speaker 1: I just butchered that. But that's my one little dance
Speaker 1: with metal lithography. Well, I'll tell you who would be
Speaker 1: able to tell us exactly how you could, um, how
Speaker 1: metal lithography works. It's anybody who works at Ohio Art,
Speaker 1: because not only was that their bread and butter before
Speaker 1: the atch just catch it still is today. Actually so
Speaker 1: so Ohio Art, like I guess, gets in touch with
Speaker 1: um Andre Cassan and and either he got in touch
Speaker 1: with them again or they got in touch with him.
Speaker 1: I think it was the ladder of the two and said, hey,
Speaker 1: we heard you're selling this for a hundred grand. It's
Speaker 1: way too rich for our blood. How about either fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand or twenty five thousand, depending on who you ask
Speaker 1: in the future. And Cassan is like, what are you
Speaker 1: talking about there, Like, just take the money. And so
Speaker 1: they either got it for fifteen thousand or twenty five thousand,
Speaker 1: which is still substantial. I mean it was like around
Speaker 1: a hundred k or um two k something like that,
Speaker 1: depending on which one it was, and Cassan was quite
Speaker 1: a happy man. There was a story where Um, the
Speaker 1: guy who was running the show at Ohio Art and
Speaker 1: his wife went over to meet Andre Cassan and just
Speaker 1: kind of have like an initial eating and like shake
Speaker 1: his hand and all that and buy the license from him,
Speaker 1: and Cassan was like welcome and had like this huge
Speaker 1: spread of baguettes and champagne and everything at his house,
Speaker 1: which is pretty cute because there was just like this
Speaker 1: humble guy who came up with a really great idea
Speaker 1: for a toy and was finally like selling it for
Speaker 1: a lot of cash. Interesting, what the baggetts in champagne? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know what are you gonna do? Well? Went
Speaker 1: in France, right, so he is. Once he's on board
Speaker 1: with Ohio Art, he gets together with their chief engineer,
Speaker 1: Jerry Burger and says, and Burger's like, listen here, frenchie,
Speaker 1: you need to drop the joystick. It's all knobs these days.
Speaker 1: And he said, what does that knob? And he was like, well,
Speaker 1: let me show you, and he he introduced the idea
Speaker 1: of UM, the same system like you were talking about,
Speaker 1: but knobs instead of a joystick to move that little
Speaker 1: line horizontal or vertical, or as you pointed out, if
Speaker 1: you're really talented and you can master both at once,
Speaker 1: you can actually do UM rooted. Well, if you're really good,
Speaker 1: you can do very nice current lines. But beyond rudimentary.
Speaker 1: No neither am I I can make a line go
Speaker 1: up and a line go to the left or right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll get you can't even make it go down.
Speaker 1: We'll get to the art of it. Um maybe at
Speaker 1: the end. But because there are some serious artists out
Speaker 1: there doing some cool stuff, but at any rate, at
Speaker 1: just sketch. It was rebranded as etch a sketch in
Speaker 1: the United States, Ohio Arts producing them for the nineteen
Speaker 1: six holiday season and they sold about six hundred thousand
Speaker 1: of these um that year, which is a it's a lot, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they sold it for a lot of money too.
Speaker 1: They they went for sale at two dollars and nine
Speaker 1: cents apiece, which is sixty four in today's money. Um.
Speaker 1: But I mean if you go by and it's just
Speaker 1: sketched today, it's between and in fifteen bucks. So that
Speaker 1: was a lot of money, especially to sell six hundred
Speaker 1: thousand of these things, especially if you were selling like
Speaker 1: creepy you know, metal waste baskets with an unsettling clown
Speaker 1: painted on it are printed on it like right before this.
Speaker 1: This is a huge it was. It was a good
Speaker 1: move by the people at Ohio Art to buy the
Speaker 1: license of this thing, in other words, and they say,
Speaker 1: chook that it coincided really perfectly with television, so much
Speaker 1: so that that they believe like that is one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why Jerry Burger was like, you need knobs,
Speaker 1: this thing needs to look like a TV set, because
Speaker 1: that's what's all the rage with the kids right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he um. It was one of the first toys
Speaker 1: to actually do a TV commercial. And so if it's
Speaker 1: NIX and you're a child watching, first of all, your
Speaker 1: mind is blown because you're watching in television to begin with.
Speaker 1: It's just like you, I can't believe this. I can't
Speaker 1: believe what's going on right now. Then a TV commercial
Speaker 1: comes on for a toy uh uh, and this toy
Speaker 1: has animation in it to where like they would at
Speaker 1: just sketch a little rocket ship and then that rocket
Speaker 1: ship that rocket ship would animate and take off. And
Speaker 1: this was like these kids might have I mean, keep
Speaker 1: in mind, kids in nineteen sixty were idiots, but they
Speaker 1: might as well have been dosed with lsd mm hmm.
Speaker 1: You know, they just kept fainting over and over again
Speaker 1: throughout the commercial because they could not believe what they
Speaker 1: were seeing. And it's just it's just an etch, just sketch,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, but it's genius. I love it. It is,
Speaker 1: but it really I think the point was though that
Speaker 1: like taking advantage of the novelty of TV and also
Speaker 1: now having away like if you we just tried to
Speaker 1: explain and that just sketch over a podcast prior to TV,
Speaker 1: if that just sketch you come out during like the
Speaker 1: Little Orphan, any radio era, they would have had to
Speaker 1: have done the same thing. It wouldn't have landed quite
Speaker 1: as well. The fact that a kid could see this
Speaker 1: happening on their TV screen, it was pretty awesome. And
Speaker 1: then also to say and then you just shake it,
Speaker 1: turn it upside down and shake it and code the
Speaker 1: glass screen again and you're you're drawing is gone forever.
Speaker 1: Like to be able to see that TV made the
Speaker 1: it just gets what it was like. For sure. It
Speaker 1: definitely ushered into a position where it could become like
Speaker 1: a cultural icon of a nostalgia. Yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: they perfected it by the time they started rolling off
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty. Prior to that, like any product like this,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of R and d um. One
Speaker 1: of the people who worked there, talked about the mountain
Speaker 1: of red frames behind the factory while they were trying
Speaker 1: to get it right. Um, and it was such a
Speaker 1: huge smash it out of the gate that uh As
Speaker 1: legend has it they were manufacturing up until noon on
Speaker 1: Christmas Eve just to get them to the West Coast
Speaker 1: in time for Christmas morning. Yeah, that's pretty that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I mean, they really wanted those kids to have those
Speaker 1: Thats Just catches. They really wanted that money. Should we
Speaker 1: take another break, Yeah, all right, we'll talk about some
Speaker 1: some ways at Just Sketches ebbed and flowed and popularity
Speaker 1: in pop culture over the years. Right for this, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I don't know if we said it or not, but
Speaker 1: from what I've seen, more than a hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: five million ET Just sketches have been sold since nineteen six.
Speaker 1: And we should point out we're not just like ticking
Speaker 1: off a list of pop culture references. Like every time
Speaker 1: this happened, uh ET Just Sketch sales would go up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the Romney one increased sales like thirty percent. I
Speaker 1: guess everybody was like, Oh, I just guess I forgot
Speaker 1: about that. I think I'll go buy one right now. Well,
Speaker 1: they actually branded after that, UM, Republican and Democrat sketches,
Speaker 1: that didn't they Yeah, so you could buy a red
Speaker 1: one or a blue one, but both of them came
Speaker 1: with a sticker which I'm I'm assuming that they printed
Speaker 1: on their metal lithography presses of a donkey and an elephant,
Speaker 1: like playing Tugo war on the front of the White
Speaker 1: House lawn. Yeah, that's just crazy, it is, but it's
Speaker 1: also that's smart. You know, that's how you that's how
Speaker 1: you make the money. UM. And then of course in
Speaker 1: the movie Toy Story from Pixar, uh, that was UM
Speaker 1: Like one of the character's name was and had the
Speaker 1: fastest knobs in the West, and that was that was
Speaker 1: always a very fun uh character. I think to see
Speaker 1: them drawing things out really fast to communicate. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, you said something earlier, you were you were
Speaker 1: talking about how like despite the fact that it doesn't
Speaker 1: even have batteries, it's had the staying power for you know,
Speaker 1: fifty something years, almost sixty years it's been around, UM
Speaker 1: and it's a really simple thing that that the design
Speaker 1: hasn't changed. And I think even more of a testimony
Speaker 1: to you know, the the staying power of the etch
Speaker 1: A Sketch is the fact that they have tried stuff
Speaker 1: with batteries and like like things that connect to your
Speaker 1: computer over the years, and nothing has managed to improve
Speaker 1: on the original etch A sketch. Like there was do
Speaker 1: you remember that at Just Sketch Animator? So I I
Speaker 1: couldn't quite place it either, but I went and watched
Speaker 1: an old ad. It was big in the eighties and
Speaker 1: it was basically like an et just sketch, but there
Speaker 1: was nothing mechanical about it. It was digital. You're creating
Speaker 1: like a bit map digital picture and um. Then you'd
Speaker 1: press like I guess play or something like that, and
Speaker 1: it would just kind of run it um like a
Speaker 1: flipbook over and over again. So your it just skets
Speaker 1: drawing like came to life. But kids were like, no,
Speaker 1: I'd rather have the original ETU sketch because that Sketch
Speaker 1: Animator went away and the I just sketches still available today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there have been um other variations. They had
Speaker 1: the doodle sketch, Um, the plug in play, which this
Speaker 1: sounds like a bad IDEA plug in play allows you
Speaker 1: to draw on the TV screen. That's just asking for
Speaker 1: trouble as a parent. UM and then the mobile app,
Speaker 1: which I've been playing with today. Oh, how's it going? Well?
Speaker 1: I mean, what do you think of this picture? Oh?
Speaker 1: That's it's not bad. It looks kind of edges sketchy,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, So what you can do is it's
Speaker 1: kind of fun. UM. You can you can upload or
Speaker 1: take a photo UM on your smartphone, plug it into
Speaker 1: the app, and then it will instantly etchify it. And
Speaker 1: what I've learned is that it's UM the more basic,
Speaker 1: like a picture of your face, works much better than
Speaker 1: something with a lot of stuff in the background. But
Speaker 1: it's fun, right, yeah, you know, yeah, I like it.
Speaker 1: I was reading reviews of the app. I didn't try
Speaker 1: it myself like you, but it's uh it did say
Speaker 1: like if it's a basic picture, you'll look way more
Speaker 1: etch just sketchy. Yeah. So my official review is not bad.
Speaker 1: So three stars out of six. Sure. I mean for
Speaker 1: something that downloaded in thirty seconds and was free, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna give it a half of them up, you know.
Speaker 1: So UM one of the things that that has kind
Speaker 1: of kept at just sketch alive for like the younger kids.
Speaker 1: If I read this article about UM that's just sketch,
Speaker 1: and it was right before they sold, so a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't know ohio Art doesn't make that just
Speaker 1: sketch anymore. They sold it to a brand called spin Master,
Speaker 1: and I didn't I didn't see that. Yeah it's not
Speaker 1: it's not ohio Art. Ohio Are it said we're going
Speaker 1: back to metal lithography, and that's what they did. So
Speaker 1: they sold that just sketch off to spin Master. Spin
Speaker 1: Masters like, that's fine with us, baby, thanks for all
Speaker 1: these licenses. Um, I mean I just sketch a frozen
Speaker 1: branded that just sketches it. You might as well just
Speaker 1: be like a printing press for money, right, So it
Speaker 1: was probably a pretty goodbye for spin Master in Ohio Ar.
Speaker 1: It was like this thing is it was great. It
Speaker 1: was a good run while it lasted, but they all
Speaker 1: so I had to oversee it through some really dark
Speaker 1: times because, um, well, for one thing, like I just sketched,
Speaker 1: is it landing with the millennials? I get the impression
Speaker 1: like it used to um with the baby boomers. That
Speaker 1: was one thing. Um. And Ohio Art also almost went
Speaker 1: bankrupt because of it back in like two thousand one.
Speaker 1: They managed to get some more money back into the
Speaker 1: business and and stay afloat. But part of that also
Speaker 1: was they had to send the manufacturing of that just
Speaker 1: sketched off to China, which they were really unhappy about
Speaker 1: because they lost like thirty five jobs in tiny little Brian, Ohio.
Speaker 1: But eventually, like fifteen years later, they said, you know
Speaker 1: what we're getting out that that's just sketch business and
Speaker 1: sold it off to spin Master, which is a weird name.
Speaker 1: But the but then one of the things, it's a
Speaker 1: little weird, Ohio art's a little weird too. You don't
Speaker 1: associate Ohio with art, you know, you just don't. I'll
Speaker 1: say it again to Chrissy Hind. Chrissy Hind gets what
Speaker 1: I'm saying for sure. Um So the thing that one
Speaker 1: of the things that that is keeping it just sketch relevant.
Speaker 1: The reason why, like if you walk up to like
Speaker 1: a seventeen year old and say what do you think
Speaker 1: about that? Just catch you say, oh, yeah, I've heard
Speaker 1: of that. Because every once in a while you'll see
Speaker 1: on the internets a photo or two of somebody who
Speaker 1: is really really good at that just sketch and it
Speaker 1: just kind of makes the rounds on social media. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean everything from like the Mona Lisa to just
Speaker 1: like portraits of people to landscapes. Uh. What's really fun
Speaker 1: is you can go on YouTube and look at time
Speaker 1: laps um renderings at just sketch renderings, which when you're
Speaker 1: seeing it done super fast like that, you kind of
Speaker 1: think like, I feel like I could do that, But
Speaker 1: you really have to be a a master with those knobs.
Speaker 1: Like UM, what I found is the thing you really
Speaker 1: need to master to do everything um that you want
Speaker 1: to do is being able to retrace well because as
Speaker 1: everyone knows, it's not like a pencil can't pick it
Speaker 1: up off the paper and start somewhere else. You have
Speaker 1: to if you want to go somewhere else, you have
Speaker 1: to retrace as closely to that original line as you can,
Speaker 1: all the way back to that point that you want
Speaker 1: to be at, or else it's just gonna look like
Speaker 1: something you're that I did, which looks like something at
Speaker 1: Toddler did. Yeah, And I mean like that's a it's
Speaker 1: a really good point. When you're making a good at
Speaker 1: just sketch drawing, it is all one single line, so
Speaker 1: frequently double back over and that's just sketch. Artists will
Speaker 1: use like that frame. They'll create a line frame around
Speaker 1: the edges that they can travel back out to and
Speaker 1: move around the picture like that. Pretty brilliant. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a guy named m. George Vlosits the third who's known
Speaker 1: for some pretty amazing portraits of Muhammad Ali, Barack Obama,
Speaker 1: Lebron James. There's a an artist named Jane lab A
Speaker 1: Witch or Labovich maybe she calls herself Princess at just sketch,
Speaker 1: sent some amazing like architectural detail with it. And then
Speaker 1: there's a guy named Ryan Burton who does erotic Simpsons art.
Speaker 1: There you go with the etch just sketching. All three
Speaker 1: of them are like really good at the drawings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the fan fick of just sketch our artists. And then
Speaker 1: apparently if you when you're very satisfied with your et
Speaker 1: just sketch and you don't want anything to happen to it,
Speaker 1: you drill a hole in the back and get the
Speaker 1: aluminum powder out, and then you lock the knobs to
Speaker 1: keep them from being turned in. You have a net
Speaker 1: just sketch masterpiece that you can hang in a museum.
Speaker 1: Oh so that makes it permanent. So when the little
Speaker 1: uh so, when a kid comes in the museum and
Speaker 1: rips it off the wall and shakes that nothing happens. No, no,
Speaker 1: And I think by law you're allowed to pick up
Speaker 1: that kid and shake it. Yes, so as long as
Speaker 1: it's not a baby, you never shake a baby. Come on,
Speaker 1: I would never advocate shaking a baby. Everybody just want
Speaker 1: to go on record to say that there was you know,
Speaker 1: the comedian Nate Bargatzi. He has a he's great. He's
Speaker 1: got a very funny bit about shaking babies. Believe it
Speaker 1: or not, it takes a lot to turn that into
Speaker 1: something funny. Yeah, he did it. Man, good for him.
Speaker 1: Nate BURGOTSI huh Nate Burgotti, dude, you would love him.
Speaker 1: He's great. So Nate Burgotti just became a cultural icon
Speaker 1: because we did not see him coming up in this episode.
Speaker 1: That's right. Uh, well, if you want to know more
Speaker 1: about Nate Burgotti, you should go check him out on
Speaker 1: the internet like I'm going to. And uh, since I
Speaker 1: said na Purgatzi, it's time for listener mayo. Man, if
Speaker 1: someone tells Nate, we're plugging him, plugging away, plugging Nate.
Speaker 1: All right here, I'm gonna mention this is about Jerry
Speaker 1: and her eating and this is from Kim Cooper. Did
Speaker 1: you see this Jerry? She says, no, Hey, guys, I
Speaker 1: notice that you often mentioned what Jerry is eating a
Speaker 1: lot during the podcast. I don't know how close to
Speaker 1: you she how close she is to your microphones. I'll
Speaker 1: go ahead and say that from your side over there,
Speaker 1: she's about five ft Like. All I have to do
Speaker 1: is lean in my seat a little bit and I
Speaker 1: can touch Jerry's miso soup. That's right. You could dip
Speaker 1: your bumb in her soup sometimes, I threatened, I don't
Speaker 1: know how she close she is to your microphones, but
Speaker 1: I never hear her eating, which is good for your
Speaker 1: fans with Misa Ponia. But I'm curious why she chooses
Speaker 1: this time to eat. Do you guys spend all day
Speaker 1: podcasting and that's the only time she can fit it in?
Speaker 1: No silly question that popped into my head listening to
Speaker 1: This Week this week after Josh said, and there's Jerry eating.
Speaker 1: God knows what um Anyway, Guys, she's got me interested
Speaker 1: in trying me. So I tell her she's doing a
Speaker 1: great job because I don't know, because I know she
Speaker 1: doesn't get too many shout outs and Josh and Chuck,
Speaker 1: you guys are pretty great too. That is from Kim Cooper.
Speaker 1: Thanks Kim, that's funny. She went all the way around.
Speaker 1: Is it basically say? I guess what I'm trying to
Speaker 1: say is I've always wanted to try me so yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much, we'll go try to me, so, Kim. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can buy it at like any grocery store. Just
Speaker 1: go get a tub of it, get a big old
Speaker 1: spoon try your first spoonful. You can go from there.
Speaker 1: I do you ever eat just miso paste? It's good
Speaker 1: if you're craving something salty and savory and new. Mommy,
Speaker 1: let's just say, um, it's good, but you can't. You
Speaker 1: can't eat very much. But I'm just teasing him, like
Speaker 1: a spoonful is a lot of me so paste, Okay,
Speaker 1: what do you just add that to? Is it an ingredient? Yeah,
Speaker 1: for like soup stuff like that. Yeah, but you can't
Speaker 1: just seat the paste and live to tell about it.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm proof. Well, if you want to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us to talk about Jerry, we're always fine
Speaker 1: with that. Um, you can go to stuff you should
Speaker 1: Know dot com find out all of our social links
Speaker 1: and you can always send us an email attention to everybody.
Speaker 1: We have a new email address. Wow wow, it is
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast. I heart podcast network dot com. How about that?
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
Speaker 1: it how stuff Works dot com