Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And how the tech are you?
Speaker 1: So later this month, I'm going to be celebrating a birthday.
Speaker 1: Well I say I'm celebrating, but really I'll just be
Speaker 1: taking a few days off to go to a quiet
Speaker 1: cabin in the North Georgia Mountains and not do anything. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it got me to thinking about stuff I used to
Speaker 1: want back when I was a kid, you know, the
Speaker 1: kind of things that I was hoping for for birthdays
Speaker 1: and holidays. And back in those days, well, a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff the kids wanted didn't exactly fall into
Speaker 1: the category of tech. I mean, you had your Cabbage
Speaker 1: Patch kids, they were created not too far from where
Speaker 1: I grew up. Actually, you had your Gi Joe figures.
Speaker 1: Barbie was of course a big deal. And later on
Speaker 1: we get to slightly more techy stuff like the Transformers.
Speaker 1: By the way, I always felt that those toys were
Speaker 1: incredibly creative. You know, you had designers who had to
Speaker 1: start with a mundane form factor like a truck, and
Speaker 1: then figure out how would they design joints and hinges
Speaker 1: and stuff so that a kid could turn that truck
Speaker 1: into a robot. Also quick rant before I finally get
Speaker 1: to the point of this episode. I don't care for
Speaker 1: the Michael Bay Transformer films at all for lots of reasons,
Speaker 1: but one of the big ones is that during the
Speaker 1: transformation scenes, nothing makes visual sense on screen. It all
Speaker 1: just becomes like CGI angles flashing in front of your
Speaker 1: face until a car is suddenly a robot or vice versa.
Speaker 1: But you know, the toys had to move in specific
Speaker 1: ways for the transformations to work. It had to make
Speaker 1: sense because the designers were working in the real world,
Speaker 1: and I thought there was kind of a cop out
Speaker 1: to just have this flashy CGI come up on screen
Speaker 1: with no apparent logic showing how a robot went from
Speaker 1: one form to another. I know those toy designers were
Speaker 1: really creative, all right. Ran over anyway. When I was
Speaker 1: ten years old the holiday season when I was ten,
Speaker 1: a toy came out that if I had been just
Speaker 1: a couple of years younger, I probably really would.
Speaker 2: Have wanted one.
Speaker 1: I thought it was cool, but I was a bit
Speaker 1: too old for the toy, and it was a toy
Speaker 1: that harkened back the animatronics at Disney theme parks, and
Speaker 1: that was already a big Disney World fanatic at this point.
Speaker 2: And it looked like a Teddy Bear.
Speaker 1: But this one could talk, and it could sing, and
Speaker 1: the mouth would move when it talked and sung, and
Speaker 1: it could also blink at Its name was Teddy Ruxbin.
Speaker 1: Now I would later learn that one this was not
Speaker 1: actually a Teddy Bear. I mean, it was, let's all
Speaker 1: be real. But in the lore of Teddy Ruxban, Teddy
Speaker 1: is not a bear at all. He's an illyop. And
Speaker 1: you might say, well, what's an illiop? Well, apparently it's
Speaker 1: a critter that looks a lot like Teddy Bear. Didn't
Speaker 1: start off that way, but that's what they are now,
Speaker 1: and it sounds a bit silly to me. But then
Speaker 1: the creator of Teddy Ruxman built a sort of mythology
Speaker 1: around the character and the world that this character, you know,
Speaker 1: lived in, and I think it's pretty admirable. Actually, it's
Speaker 1: really impressive how extensive that mythology goes.
Speaker 2: Two.
Speaker 1: I learned that this creator, a guy named Ken Force,
Speaker 1: had previously worked as an imagineer at Disneyland. He in fact,
Speaker 1: worked on one of my favorite rides of all time,
Speaker 1: Disney's Haunted Mansion. To immortalize him. There's a word scramble
Speaker 1: of his name that appears on a tombstone in the
Speaker 1: cemetery scene in the Disneyland Haunted Mansion ride. So if
Speaker 1: you have eagle eyes and you spotted tombstone that reads
Speaker 1: NA key sorf any k e E s O r F,
Speaker 1: that's actually supposed to be an anagram of Ken Force,
Speaker 1: even though the word scramble gave him one too many
Speaker 1: ease and left out one of the s's. So today
Speaker 1: I thought I would talk about Force, his work as
Speaker 1: an imagineer and beyond and the creation of Teddy Ruxbin,
Speaker 1: which really was an iconic toy in the mid nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: This is a crazy story like it spans multiple decades,
Speaker 1: all the pieces that would ultimately come together in the
Speaker 1: form of Teddy Ruxsman. But before I dive into it,
Speaker 1: I need to call out an incredibly thorough docu series
Speaker 1: that is available on YouTube, and by thorough, that's putting
Speaker 1: it mildly. It's by Billy Tuma and it's a nine
Speaker 1: part video series on the life and work of kin
Speaker 1: FORC and the shortest episode in this nine part series
Speaker 1: is forty five minutes long. The longest one is an
Speaker 1: hour and twenty two minutes long. So I think you
Speaker 1: could call this work an exhaustive treatment of Force's life
Speaker 1: and work. The docu series is called Ken Forc. That's
Speaker 1: f O r s SE Come dream with me tonight.
Speaker 1: So if you want to learn more about Forc after
Speaker 1: this episode, I highly recommend you check out this docu series.
Speaker 1: Like I said, it is thorough. Also, it is very
Speaker 1: clearly made by people who deeply, deeply love the lore
Speaker 1: of Teddy Ruxsbin, as in like the fictional story that
Speaker 1: Teddy ruxspin inhabits.
Speaker 2: Tuma clearly put.
Speaker 1: A ton of work into the series. He deserves more views.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of these episodes have right around
Speaker 1: one thousand views, and y'all, I mean this is like
Speaker 1: professional grade level work. It deserves to be seen by
Speaker 1: a wider audience. I get that, like the Teddy Ruxsbin
Speaker 1: community is relatively niche, but it's a fascinating work on
Speaker 1: its own, just detailing how this per person became who
Speaker 1: he was. Because unfortunately, Ken Forcy passed away back in
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, But how he became the man he was,
Speaker 1: and how he ended up bringing Teddy Ruxman to life.
Speaker 1: So Ken Forcy was a creative kid. He grew up
Speaker 1: in California. He wanted to pursue a career in art.
Speaker 1: He graduated high school and rather than going on to college,
Speaker 1: he sought employment. He was a very practical kid. He
Speaker 1: landed a gig working in the mail room for this
Speaker 1: little company called Walt Disney Animation Studios. The company was
Speaker 1: already incredibly famous at this point. It had already put
Speaker 1: out numerous feature length animated films by the time that
Speaker 1: Ken joined, and of course he was in the mail room,
Speaker 1: so not really on the animation side of things. However,
Speaker 1: in a stroke of fortune for Ken, at least, the
Speaker 1: animation studios were in a bit of a jam. Production
Speaker 1: was running over schedule on the film Sleeping Beauty, and
Speaker 1: the company needed to bring on more artists to help
Speaker 1: speed things up. So Force interviewed and he took an
Speaker 1: animation test to prove that he had the artistic chops
Speaker 1: to work for the most famous animation studio in the world,
Speaker 1: and he passed, so he was hired on That's pretty
Speaker 1: darn impressive because you know, Force was not a professional artist.
Speaker 1: He was fresh out of high school. He's just a
Speaker 1: very gifted student and a gifted artist, and so he
Speaker 1: was put to work and his job was to serve
Speaker 1: as an in between her. So these are animators who
Speaker 1: are in charge of drawing the frames of animation that
Speaker 1: fall between the start and the end of like a
Speaker 1: short animated sequence. So you'll have a primary artist who's
Speaker 1: really designed, you know, in charge of the look and
Speaker 1: the feel of a specific character often and they will
Speaker 1: draw the character in two different poses or situations, one
Speaker 1: being at the start of the sequence, of one being
Speaker 1: at the end. So let's say that you want to
Speaker 1: animate a sequence in which a character sees that a
Speaker 1: glass is about to fall off a table, and so
Speaker 1: they dive to catch the glass before it can hit
Speaker 1: the ground, and they safely catch it in their hands
Speaker 1: and they land flat on the floor, and that's your sequence. Well,
Speaker 1: the animator who's in charge of the character will probably
Speaker 1: just draw one frame of the character seeing that the
Speaker 1: glass is about to fall, and then draw the final
Speaker 1: frame of the character on the ground safely holding the glass,
Speaker 1: and it's down to the end between ers to draw
Speaker 1: all the frames that come in between those two so
Speaker 1: that you have an actual animated sequence. And that's what
Speaker 1: Force worked as he worked as an in between her
Speaker 1: on Sleeping Beauty. Most in between ers produced between thirty
Speaker 1: to fifty drawings per day. Thirty was kind of what
Speaker 1: you're shooting for. Now, keep in mind that film plays
Speaker 1: back at twenty four frames per second, so if you're
Speaker 1: doing one animated frame at a time and you're doing
Speaker 1: the twenty four frames per second, then you're really talking
Speaker 1: about per using maybe one to two seconds of animation
Speaker 1: each day. So it was a very huge amount of work.
Speaker 1: And remember that's for one character in a sequence. That's
Speaker 1: not for everything else there, And it was just one
Speaker 1: step that was needed in the process of creating an
Speaker 1: animated film. But Ken reportedly really enjoyed working for Disney.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, he was interested in art. He
Speaker 1: was working for the most famous animation company in the world.
Speaker 1: Clearly he was in the right spot at the right time. However,
Speaker 1: once Sleeping Beauty was in the can, having gone well
Speaker 1: over budget and over time, Disney no longer really needed
Speaker 1: this inflated workforce of artists. They had more people than
Speaker 1: were required to do the rest of the work they had,
Speaker 1: so Ken and several other in betweeners found themselves out
Speaker 1: of a job. He would then study under the mentorship
Speaker 1: of a special effects technician named Ellis Berman. So if
Speaker 1: you're a fan of classic Universal monster movies, kind of
Speaker 1: like the second wave of classic Universal Monster movies, you've
Speaker 1: probably seen some stuff that Berman worked on. So he's
Speaker 1: like a practical effects technician. So now Ken Forest was
Speaker 1: moving from creating two dimensional drawings for animation to working
Speaker 1: with three dimensional materials and to create things like costumes
Speaker 1: and props, and Forest learned lots of different skills in
Speaker 1: this process. He learned about sculpting, and he learned about carpentry,
Speaker 1: and he learned about how to work with electrical circuits,
Speaker 1: and he worked with a lot of materials he had
Speaker 1: never worked with before, like plaster and rubber and fur
Speaker 1: and even makeup. So his skill set expanded, but he
Speaker 1: was having trouble finding like steady work. There were a
Speaker 1: few promising projects, including a possible film adaptation of Lord
Speaker 1: of the Rings, which involved Forrest j Ackerman. People who
Speaker 1: are deep in the fandom culture know who Ackerman is
Speaker 1: or was, but yeah, he was possibly going to work
Speaker 1: on this Lord of the Rings project. In fact, he
Speaker 1: had been tapped to sculpt some models that would be
Speaker 1: part of the pitch to Tolkien. But while Tolkien was
Speaker 1: impressed with the effects work the models and stuff, he
Speaker 1: hated the story treatment that was generated for the Lord
Speaker 1: of the Rings film, so he nixed it. It didn't
Speaker 1: go anywhere. So in nineteen fifty nine, Ken enlisted in
Speaker 1: the US Army, and he was in his early twenties
Speaker 1: at this point, so still a very young man, and
Speaker 1: he served until nineteen sixty two and then received an
Speaker 1: honorable discharge.
Speaker 2: Reportedly, he was.
Speaker 1: Very much not in favor of guns. It's kind of
Speaker 1: interesting that he went into the army voluntarily this way,
Speaker 1: but yeah, he won an award for marksmanship, but he
Speaker 1: did not like guns. He was mostly active in doing
Speaker 1: things like working on entertainment and stuff for troops, so
Speaker 1: he was still kind of pursuing his artistic interests wherever
Speaker 1: he could within the army. After his service, Forcy would
Speaker 1: join a company called Universal Products and lead a product
Speaker 1: line called Artistry in Dimension and Forese was using his
Speaker 1: expertise and creating three dimensional objects out of stuff like
Speaker 1: fiberglass to make historic replicas, so you know, like stuff's
Speaker 1: like suits of armor, that kind of thing. So let's
Speaker 1: say that your new money and you want your stately
Speaker 1: home to have some stuff that looks like antiques, but
Speaker 1: you don't want to have to go through the trouble
Speaker 1: of actually securing real antiques. You would go to a
Speaker 1: company like Universal Products. I'm sure you've been to stores
Speaker 1: where you've looked around you're like, oh, this looks like
Speaker 1: an antique globe, or this looks like an antique shield
Speaker 1: that you would hang on the wall, and in fact
Speaker 1: it's made out of something else entirely. Well, that's the
Speaker 1: kind of thing for C was making. So it would
Speaker 1: be stuff for things like set dressing, but also you know,
Speaker 1: just consumer products. However, Forc was restless and he wasn't
Speaker 1: super happy with just working in the Universal Products company.
Speaker 1: So when he saw a job opening that was again
Speaker 1: at the Walt Disney Company, he jumped at it. Now
Speaker 1: this time it would not be in the animation department.
Speaker 1: Instead it was in WED Enterprises or WED Enterprises. In
Speaker 1: this case, WED is not your typical acronym. It's actually
Speaker 1: Walt Disney's initials Walt Elias Disney. And this would be
Speaker 1: the imagineering department. This was the group of people who
Speaker 1: would be in charge of creating the materials and the
Speaker 1: props and the characters that would be seen in attractions
Speaker 1: at Disneysney parks, because those were just really becoming a thing.
Speaker 1: Like Disneyland had opened in nineteen fifty five, so it
Speaker 1: had been open a few years earlier, but now Walt
Speaker 1: Disney was really exploring the possibility of creating animated like
Speaker 1: shows that would exist in the real world, this idea
Speaker 1: of bringing the audience into animation and having animation all
Speaker 1: around the audience. So Force landed a job there and
Speaker 1: he got to work on attraction that would be a
Speaker 1: real game changer for Disney, which we'll talk about as
Speaker 1: we come back from this quick break.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're back.
Speaker 1: So Ken Force gets a job at WD Enterprises and
Speaker 1: he's working as an imagineer, and his first gig is
Speaker 1: to work on the Enchanted Peaky Room. If you've never
Speaker 1: been to Disneyland or disney World or any place where
Speaker 1: they have the Channan Tiki Rum, I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's in the other parks, but I know it's in
Speaker 1: those two. Well, that it's a sit down theatrical experience
Speaker 1: where these various tropical birds sing songs and tell jokes
Speaker 1: to you. And it's an audio animatronic show, and one
Speaker 1: of the more famous ones because it was the first
Speaker 1: big one, and I've done episodes on audio animatronics in
Speaker 1: the past. So the story goes that Walt Disney was
Speaker 1: on a holiday trip with his wife and they encountered
Speaker 1: a shop that had a little clockwork bird in it,
Speaker 1: and it sparked Disney's imagination and he wanted to create
Speaker 1: an attraction. Originally, he wanted it to be a restaurant
Speaker 1: that would have mechanical creatures in it, specifically mechanical tropical birds,
Speaker 1: and they would follow a programmed routine and it would
Speaker 1: bring together elements of puppetry, storytelling, animation, clockwork mechanisms, and
Speaker 1: ultimately pneumatic systems. Over time, it would morph from a
Speaker 1: restaurant concept to a sit down theatrical tra Now, the
Speaker 1: early system for the Tiki Room was both ingenious and
Speaker 1: by today's standards, very primitive. So to match the movement
Speaker 1: of birds beaks with the soundtrack, like how do you
Speaker 1: get it so that the birds appear to actually be
Speaker 1: singing the words and They're not just opening and closing
Speaker 1: their beaks randomly and you just hope that it lines
Speaker 1: up with the music. Well, the imagineers created a system
Speaker 1: in which audio they had the audio of the show
Speaker 1: stored on magnetic tape, would then also cause these metal
Speaker 1: reeds to vibrate, and these vibrating metal reads would close
Speaker 1: a circuit that would control a pneumatic valve and that
Speaker 1: would allow air to pass through tubes going to the
Speaker 1: various birds in this attraction, and when they did, that
Speaker 1: would power the mechanical system inside the bird, so that
Speaker 1: would open its beak and when the valve would shut off,
Speaker 1: the air would ventil the beak would close, it would
Speaker 1: go back to its resting position, which was closed. So
Speaker 1: by opening and closing this valve, you could cause the
Speaker 1: bird to open and close its beak, and those opening
Speaker 1: enclosings were in time with this metallic read vibrating, and
Speaker 1: that again was driven by the audio on the magnetic tape.
Speaker 1: As for what Foresty was doing, well that's not entirely clear.
Speaker 1: He wasn't an engineer, He wasn't one of the ones
Speaker 1: designing the actual engineering system. Most likely he was working
Speaker 1: in the model shop. He was helping, you know, get
Speaker 1: the birds show ready, you know, doing things like installing
Speaker 1: feathers and that kind of stuff, painting that that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. He wasn't a lead on the project, right,
Speaker 1: He had just come in and started and was working
Speaker 1: at a lower level, but he was part of a
Speaker 1: larger team.
Speaker 2: While Foresty was.
Speaker 1: Working with Wed, he also had the opportunity to develop
Speaker 1: a puppet show outside of Disney, and it was intended
Speaker 1: to be a children's show, one that matched fantastical elements
Speaker 1: with tales of empathy and compassion.
Speaker 2: So he's thinking about this idea. This is independent.
Speaker 1: This was not unusual at Disney at the time. There
Speaker 1: were a lot of people who were considering themselves more
Speaker 1: like independent contractors rather than Disney employees. It would be
Speaker 1: a little bit before Disney would change into a company
Speaker 1: where you know, you were a Disney employee and you
Speaker 1: weren't just like work for hire who would then find
Speaker 1: themselves out of work once the project was over. So
Speaker 1: a lot of people at the time would pursue other
Speaker 1: work in addition to the work they did for Disney,
Speaker 1: and Force was no different. So he came up with
Speaker 1: this idea and he started to create this kind of
Speaker 1: fantasy world that he wanted to bring to life. And
Speaker 1: you know, maybe he took some inspiration from works like
Speaker 1: Tolkien's Middle Earth series, but he was really wanting to
Speaker 1: gear this toward children and to give a message of
Speaker 1: compassion and empathy for kids. So he really saw it
Speaker 1: as a way of sending positive messages and sending messages
Speaker 1: of things like friendship and support and love and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. And the main character in his mythology
Speaker 1: was a little critter whose name was Simeon Greep, and
Speaker 1: he would feature a lot of the personality that you
Speaker 1: would later spot in Teddy Ruxsman. He was a very sweet,
Speaker 1: compassionate character who saw the good in people, even if
Speaker 1: they couldn't see it in themselves. There was another character,
Speaker 1: a supporting character, a mushroom like figure nicknamed Fearful, but
Speaker 1: his actual name was Dun Dun Dun Teddy Ruxsmin. See
Speaker 1: Teddy Ruxsman wasn't originally a Teddy Bear at all. He
Speaker 1: was a timid, little fantasy critter that kind of looked
Speaker 1: like a mushroom. Totally makes sense, right, So anyway, the
Speaker 1: Adventures of Simeon Greep was this ambitious, this idea that
Speaker 1: Ken Forcy had, and it was one that was going
Speaker 1: to require a lot of money to actually get it
Speaker 1: to production. Like he wanted to make this fully realized
Speaker 1: puppet show with really cool environments. He didn't want it
Speaker 1: to look like a little puppet theater that a lot
Speaker 1: of the other puppet shows at the time were using.
Speaker 1: He wanted the world of the television program to be
Speaker 1: the puppet theater. The TV itself would serve as the
Speaker 1: borders of this mystical world. So Fores would take on
Speaker 1: various projects in addition to his full time gig at
Speaker 1: Web Enterprises, and continue to develop this idea, all with
Speaker 1: the goal of eventually producing this puppet show. He was
Speaker 1: doing some of the work a little bit reluctantly because
Speaker 1: while he was creative and an inventor, he didn't consider
Speaker 1: himself a writer. So originally he had these ideas, but
Speaker 1: he wanted to hire someone else to actually write the stories.
Speaker 1: Like he wanted to be able to kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: work a story, but have a writer actually put that
Speaker 1: into shape, you know, to frame it properly into actual words.
Speaker 1: The problem was he couldn't find anyone to do that,
Speaker 1: so it was down to him, so he kind of
Speaker 1: became the chronicler of this world of his own creation. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: back at Disney, Force was put onto projects like the
Speaker 1: It's a Small World ride, which was originally constructed for
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixty four World's Fair, So he assisted in
Speaker 1: painting and probably some sculpting some stuff like that, but
Speaker 1: again he wasn't a lead designer. He was part of
Speaker 1: the team. He also actually traveled with the ride to
Speaker 1: New York in order to help the ride stay operating
Speaker 1: because originally it was a little finicky, so he was
Speaker 1: there to help fix when things broke down. He also
Speaker 1: was in charge of cleaning and repainting figures at the
Speaker 1: end of the day to make sure that it was
Speaker 1: ready for the next day. He'd this for a while
Speaker 1: until it was show ready, really and then left to
Speaker 1: go back home. He also reportedly got very very sick
Speaker 1: of the theme song It's a Small World after All,
Speaker 1: which you know, same Force. He kept working on his
Speaker 1: Simian Greek project, even built out a set piece in
Speaker 1: order to show potential investors the work that he was envisioning.
Speaker 1: He had this villain called Twig, and the villain lived
Speaker 1: in a tower, so he ended up out of pocket,
Speaker 1: essentially paying to create this really large puppet set. It
Speaker 1: had to be big enough for puppeteers to move around
Speaker 1: in freely while still controlling the puppet of the villain,
Speaker 1: and the construction process did not go quite as planned.
Speaker 1: For one thing, there was a bit of a fire
Speaker 1: that caused some costly damages, and it meant that Force
Speaker 1: ultimately kind of ran out of money to work on
Speaker 1: the like. He spent about as much as he was
Speaker 1: willing to spend and hit his limit, and so the
Speaker 1: whole project was figuratively put on the back burner after
Speaker 1: having been literally burned earlier. Force took a larger part
Speaker 1: in working on the Haunted Mansion attraction for Disneyland. That
Speaker 1: attraction has its own fascinating history. We've talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about it on this show in the past. I
Speaker 1: talked about Pepper's Ghost, things like that. It's an attraction
Speaker 1: that changed many times over the course of its development.
Speaker 1: Originally was supposed to be a walkthrough attraction. Force worked
Speaker 1: on sets and characters and designs and effects, so he
Speaker 1: was more involved in this one than he had been
Speaker 1: in the previous ones, and he earned a spot in
Speaker 1: the cemetery scene, along with eight other designers who also
Speaker 1: worked on the ride. So if you see those weird
Speaker 1: tombstones with odd names, those are anagrams or references to
Speaker 1: nine of the designers who worked on the original ride.
Speaker 1: After that, Fores went on to work for an attraction
Speaker 1: for a Florida project with Disney. This is what would
Speaker 1: become Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and the project
Speaker 1: he worked on was the Country Bear Jamboree, an attraction
Speaker 1: that was so popular that the Disney Company later decided
Speaker 1: to build a version of it in it's California park too,
Speaker 1: so that one actually originated at disney World and then
Speaker 1: was also built in Disneyland. Now, by this time, Walt Disney,
Speaker 1: the man he had passed away, and many people at
Speaker 1: the Walt Disney Company felt that things were changing and
Speaker 1: not necessarily for the better. That new management at the
Speaker 1: company was working in a totally different way from how
Speaker 1: Walt did things, and Forese would not be the only
Speaker 1: person to make this decision, but he decided that he
Speaker 1: was ready to leave and pursue other opportunities, So he
Speaker 1: resigned from the Walt Disney Company and sought out other work. Now.
Speaker 1: One of the opportunities he would pursue was Force's own creation,
Speaker 1: the Siemion Greep project. So Forcy brainstormed ideas for nearly
Speaker 1: forty episodes, something like thirty eight or thirty nine episodes
Speaker 1: of this puppet show. This puppet show still didn't have
Speaker 1: any investors, it didn't have a home, it didn't even
Speaker 1: have puppets. Really, he had a whole world built out
Speaker 1: conceptually with Simeon Greep as the protagonist, who had an
Speaker 1: insect like Buddy named Grubby, and then you had the
Speaker 1: villain in the form of Twig, and then Forcey's ideas
Speaker 1: would see these characters explore a fantasy world that when
Speaker 1: in some ways, like I said, mirror the complexity of
Speaker 1: Tolkien's Middle Earth, but maintained that childlike sensibility. So Middle
Speaker 1: Earth is not really meant for little kids. This work
Speaker 1: that Forcy was thinking of would be, and to call
Speaker 1: it an ambitious undertaking is a huge understatement. But another
Speaker 1: opportunity that he would pursue that would actually earn him
Speaker 1: some money was with the creators Sid and Marty Groft Brothers,
Speaker 1: who made some truly bonkers entertainment, mostly for kids over
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, really in the late sixties and into
Speaker 1: the seventies. So I'm talking about stuff like hr puff
Speaker 1: and Stuff, and that's actually a little bit before my time.
Speaker 1: I did not grow up with hr puffin stuff, And
Speaker 1: after watching clips of it, I guess I should be
Speaker 1: glad because I'm I don't know, maybe I wouldn't be terrified.
Speaker 1: It's hard to think about how I would feel from
Speaker 1: a modern lens, but it is so weird, Like it's
Speaker 1: amazing to me that they were able to get that,
Speaker 1: you know, on the air, and it's not bad, it's
Speaker 1: just weird. And you know, if you were to pitch
Speaker 1: an idea like hr r puff and Stuff or hr
Speaker 1: puff and Stuff today to anyone, it would be a
Speaker 1: really tough sell, unless you were pitching it as like
Speaker 1: some sort of late night stoner comedy for adult swim
Speaker 1: or something.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 1: Other stuff that sit In Marty Kroft produced includes Land
Speaker 1: of the Lost, which I absolutely loved when I.
Speaker 2: Was a kid.
Speaker 1: I watched the heck out of that show. Also Electra
Speaker 1: Woman and Dinah Girl, which got a cheeky reboot as
Speaker 1: kind of a web series many years later. Back in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, I think maybe twenty fourteen, somewhere around there.
Speaker 1: I remember that had Grace Helbig and Hannah Hart, two
Speaker 1: people known for their work on YouTube playing the main characters.
Speaker 1: And Force worked on at least three different sit in
Speaker 1: Marty Croft series. So he worked on Land of the Lost,
Speaker 1: he worked on a show called Far Out Space Nuts,
Speaker 1: and he worked on The Lost Saucer, which is another
Speaker 1: like science fiction e show.
Speaker 2: The Craft method was about as different from.
Speaker 1: WD as you could get. You know, it was no Disney.
Speaker 1: The teams that fores had access to. They had very
Speaker 1: limited resources, So FORC and his team had to work
Speaker 1: with whatever they had at hand in order to make
Speaker 1: the stuff they needed to make, and they typically had
Speaker 1: very very short deadlines.
Speaker 2: However, those kind.
Speaker 1: Of challenges really gave FORC and others on his team
Speaker 1: the inspiration to create effective solutions while meeting deadlines. Like
Speaker 1: I often think that when you have a wide open
Speaker 1: sandbox where anything is possible, it can actually be harder
Speaker 1: to create stuff in that environment. Sometimes then it would
Speaker 1: be if you had lots of restrictions, because then you're thinking, well,
Speaker 1: how can I work within these restrictions to do whatever
Speaker 1: I need to do? And you can get some really
Speaker 1: creative solutions. That's kind of what happened with Sid and
Speaker 1: Marti Kraft. It's not always the case, but that's typically
Speaker 1: how I find it. If the world is my oyster,
Speaker 1: it's much harder for me to really narrow down on
Speaker 1: getting stuff done. But if I've got some restrictions in place,
Speaker 1: it suddenly becomes easier to ide eight, at least for me,
Speaker 1: and I suspect FORC found the same thing to be true. Now,
Speaker 1: in the mid nineteen seventies, the Crofts got the chance
Speaker 1: to make their own theme park and indoor theme park
Speaker 1: based in my hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. So when we
Speaker 1: come back, we're gonna talk about this theme park that
Speaker 1: would make a very brief splash and then fade away
Speaker 1: and how FORC was part of it. But first let's
Speaker 1: take another quick.
Speaker 2: Break, all right.
Speaker 1: So we're in Atlanta, Georgia. It's the mid nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: Things are groovy. I'm a bibe and at the Omni Center,
Speaker 1: they said in Martykroft got the opportunity to make an
Speaker 1: indoor theme park. So today the Omni is home to
Speaker 1: the news network CNN. That's where CNN's headquarters are it's
Speaker 1: at the Omni. But in the nineteen seventies it was
Speaker 1: the home, very briefly, of a very weird theme park.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not quite old enough to remember this park,
Speaker 1: because it didn't last long enough for me to really
Speaker 1: go as any sort of kid capable of forming memories.
Speaker 1: I do remember that the way to the theme park
Speaker 1: was an eight story tall freestanding escalator. I mean, this
Speaker 1: escalator is beyond huge. You take a look at and
Speaker 1: you're like, there's no reason anything needs to be that big.
Speaker 1: But I would go to the Omni as a kid,
Speaker 1: you know, because science fiction conventions were held in the Omni,
Speaker 1: and my dad, being a science fiction author, would often attend.
Speaker 2: And I would always.
Speaker 1: Wonder, where does that escalator even go to? Well, back
Speaker 1: in the day, it went to the top level of
Speaker 1: a five story indoor theme park, and then you would
Speaker 1: work your way down, floor by floor through the park. Anyway,
Speaker 1: The park actually just opened and closed in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 1: Within five months it was open and then closed. It
Speaker 1: was a spectacular failure. Now this wasn't because the attractions
Speaker 1: weren't imaginative or creative. They were and four c was
Speaker 1: a big part of that, having brought his expertise from
Speaker 1: Web Enterprises to work on rides and sets and characters
Speaker 1: for the new theme park. But it was poorly attended
Speaker 1: and it was very expensive to run, and the money
Speaker 1: ran out, and the Crofts tried to get the creditors
Speaker 1: to hold off on demanding their money back so that
Speaker 1: they could get a good footing, because they believed that
Speaker 1: if they could get through the winter and into you
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven, that they could turn the around. But
Speaker 1: they weren't given that chance, and so the whole park
Speaker 1: had to be shut down. Force received word from a
Speaker 1: former colleague from way back in the Universal Products days
Speaker 1: about a company that was producing a technology called micro phonographs.
Speaker 1: So this company was called Microsonics originally, and the technology
Speaker 1: was this small device.
Speaker 2: It was like a small enough.
Speaker 1: To be handheld. It looks like a little cassette player almost,
Speaker 1: but instead of blaining cassettes, it actually played micro phonograph discs.
Speaker 1: These discs were mounted on plastic plates and they would
Speaker 1: actually be stationary inside the device. You would put the
Speaker 1: plate inside the device and the stylus would be the
Speaker 1: part that would move, so instead of the disc rotating
Speaker 1: and the stylust just travels down the groove. The stylus
Speaker 1: would rotate and go down the groove that way, and
Speaker 1: the disc would stay, you know, stationary. It's kind of crazy,
Speaker 1: but this whole technology spawned and another company called micro Sound,
Speaker 1: and this is one that can foresee, was interested in.
Speaker 1: So Microsound marketed this technology as a way to bring
Speaker 1: sound to storybooks, among other things. So you would buy
Speaker 1: a book and it would come with one of these
Speaker 1: sound plates, and you would have this device.
Speaker 2: You would put the.
Speaker 1: Soundplate in the device and it would play little bits
Speaker 1: that would you know, be incorporated into the book. Maybe
Speaker 1: you would have a section of the book where you
Speaker 1: were told to push play and it would play some
Speaker 1: audio that was you know, related to the book, or
Speaker 1: maybe it would actually read out part of the story.
Speaker 1: The disc plates could only hold about a minute's worth
Speaker 1: of sound each, but this would be fine for a
Speaker 1: children's book. You might have a few to cover the
Speaker 1: entirety of the book, but you know, the kids could
Speaker 1: actually read along as they listened to the audio in
Speaker 1: this little separate device. And four c's buddy thought that
Speaker 1: the Simon Greep project might work well as a series
Speaker 1: of books. He wasn't able to get it done as
Speaker 1: a puppet show, but maybe he could make children's books
Speaker 1: and incorporate this micro sound technology. Well, by this stage,
Speaker 1: Foresty had decided to do some name swapping. He decided
Speaker 1: Simeon Greek was not a good name for his protagonist,
Speaker 1: and so he ended up taking the name of a
Speaker 1: different character, that mushroom like character whose real name was
Speaker 1: Teddy Ruxspin, but he was called Fearful. Well, forest was like,
Speaker 1: teddy Ruxpin's a better name. I'm going to make that
Speaker 1: the name of my protagonist, and so Simeon Greep became
Speaker 1: teddy Ruxspin. He still wasn't a teddy Bear. He was
Speaker 1: a little furry critter, but he didn't look particularly like
Speaker 1: a teddy bear. So the character design remained pretty much
Speaker 1: the same. It's just the name had changed. But there
Speaker 1: were some business sheananigans going on in the background. Had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with forc Foresy was a stand up guy,
Speaker 1: but the business sheenanigans meant that an another company that
Speaker 1: was using the exact same micro phonograph technology was able
Speaker 1: to land a lucrative deal with Fisher Price and Microsound,
Speaker 1: a competing company really had nowhere to go, so that
Speaker 1: didn't end up going anywhere. However, in the process, Fores
Speaker 1: learned a lot about the publishing world and children's books,
Speaker 1: which would come in handy later on. That's foreshadowing forc
Speaker 1: next joined up with a couple of creatives to form
Speaker 1: a company called Brown Squirrel Productions, which set out to
Speaker 1: try and get funding to produce several different projects, among
Speaker 1: them Force's long imagined puppet series, The Adventures Now of
Speaker 1: Teddy Ruxman. They worked up some more designs, they were
Speaker 1: fined some characters, They even built out some of the
Speaker 1: stuff they would need to produce the show and pitch
Speaker 1: it to the networks, but again they came up driver
Speaker 1: for funding. They went to Quaker Roads and tried to
Speaker 1: get some money from them. Quaker Roats had previously bankrolled
Speaker 1: the film Willy Wonkan, the chocolate factory. Quaker Roads was
Speaker 1: not interested, and so they didn't really have anyone who
Speaker 1: was willing to fund production so that they could shoot
Speaker 1: a pilot. So they decided to do it themselves. Would y'all,
Speaker 1: just so you know, don't do that. It almost never
Speaker 1: works out anyway. They get together in nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: to shoot the pilot for the Adventures of Teddy Ruckspin.
Speaker 1: The puppets they made were really sophisticated. They were operated
Speaker 1: by controls mounted on bars far beneath the puppets. So
Speaker 1: like the bars fed cables down through them, and by
Speaker 1: pulling on cables you could manipulate parts of the puppet.
Speaker 1: So it's like a marionette, but in reverse right. A
Speaker 1: marionette is suspended by strings and by pulling the strings
Speaker 1: you can make the puppet move. In this case, the
Speaker 1: puppet is mounted on essentially a pole, and various cables
Speaker 1: are fed down through the pole, and the cables attached
Speaker 1: to different features in the puppet, So pulling on the
Speaker 1: cables you can do things like make the puppet blink
Speaker 1: or make its mouth move. That's sort of stuff. But
Speaker 1: like so many other attempts with this particular story the
Speaker 1: Adventures of Teddy Ruxman, their efforts were in vain. They
Speaker 1: produced a pilot and they showed it around, They sent
Speaker 1: it to the networks, they sent it to brand new
Speaker 1: cable companies like HBO and No One Bit and because
Speaker 1: they had self funded the project and even had to
Speaker 1: lean on you establishing credit to pay for some of it.
Speaker 1: They were left footing the bill and so their partnership
Speaker 1: ultimately dissolved and for C packed up his puppets. They
Speaker 1: then went on to work in effects and production as
Speaker 1: sort of a freelancer. He contributed his talents to some
Speaker 1: big budget Las Vegas shows, including one that had a
Speaker 1: forty foot long model of the Titanic that would sync
Speaker 1: on command. He also did more work with sitt In
Speaker 1: marty Croft. He worked on a project called Pizza Productions.
Speaker 1: It was meant to be a way for pizza companies
Speaker 1: that wanted to compete with like Chuck E. Cheese and
Speaker 1: Showbiz Pizza to go and get animatronic figures that could
Speaker 1: entertain in their restaurants.
Speaker 2: So this was a.
Speaker 1: Big thing in the eighties and the early to mid
Speaker 1: eighties were these pizza places that had these animatronic shows
Speaker 1: in them.
Speaker 2: Showed His Pizza and Chuck E.
Speaker 1: Cheese were the two that were best down and of
Speaker 1: course Chuck E Cheese is still a thing, but yeah,
Speaker 1: Sidy Marty Kroft tried to compete with Pizza Productions, looking
Speaker 1: more to be like, you know, we'll create the product,
Speaker 1: you just pay us and we'll install it in your place.
Speaker 1: It didn't really work out, though, by the time that
Speaker 1: you know, they were really ready to push it, that
Speaker 1: trend was already kind of on the decline, and so
Speaker 1: he for he did work on animatronics. He helped design
Speaker 1: characters for the pizza production stuff, but it just didn't
Speaker 1: go anywhere. But around the time he was working on this,
Speaker 1: he was starting to think about making animatronics portable. At
Speaker 1: this stage, all animatronic figures were bolted to stages and stuff.
Speaker 1: You couldn't move them around, So he was thinking, what
Speaker 1: if you could incorporate animatronics into something that could freely
Speaker 1: move about his space. Now, initially he was not intending
Speaker 1: this to be a toy. Instead, fos was thinking about
Speaker 1: fully costumed characters at places like theme parks. Like if
Speaker 1: you go to disney World or Disneyland and you see
Speaker 1: like Tigger, you know, Tiggers covered in head to toe, right,
Speaker 1: it's it's a costume that it fully envelops the performer inside.
Speaker 1: And they these performers are very expressive, but they are
Speaker 1: limited by the costumes.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The costumes can't do everything that someone could do if
Speaker 1: they were just appearing as a face character. You know,
Speaker 1: they can't speak. Some of them could do things like
Speaker 1: open and close their eyes and open and close their mouths,
Speaker 1: but they couldn't actually talk. So forest He started to
Speaker 1: think about an approach that would allow performers to use
Speaker 1: pre programmed sequences built into a system that could be
Speaker 1: housed inside a costume that would let them do all
Speaker 1: sorts of performances. So the performer would still be inside
Speaker 1: the costume and still move the body, but a program
Speaker 1: would control mechanisms in the head and maybe also include
Speaker 1: a speaker built into the costume to project audio and
Speaker 1: create a more robust performance that could go anywhere and
Speaker 1: not just be secured to a stage. So ken Foresty
Speaker 1: met another engineer named William Munn who was developing robots
Speaker 1: for film and TV productions, and together they started to
Speaker 1: work on this kind of idea, you know, simplifying animatronics
Speaker 1: a little, because one, you're going to have a human
Speaker 1: being in this costume, and two, by simplifying you keep
Speaker 1: complexity and cost down at a manageable level. So then
Speaker 1: ken Foresty creates a company called Alchemy two. Meanwhile, his
Speaker 1: old employer two times over, the Walt Disney Company, is
Speaker 1: getting ready to launch the Disney Channel, which is going
Speaker 1: to have various programming on it sixteen hours a day.
Speaker 1: So fores petitions to be the builder of costumes for
Speaker 1: a live action Winnie the Pooh series, and he says
Speaker 1: he'll make sophisticated animatronic costumes that will have more expression
Speaker 1: in them than just a static costume that you might
Speaker 1: see in the parks. So he offers to create a
Speaker 1: Winnie the Pooh costume to kind of show his technology
Speaker 1: to the Disney Channel, and the Disney Channel at that
Speaker 1: point was pretty skeptical that he would be able to
Speaker 1: pull this off, especially since at the time he was
Speaker 1: a one man operation. And then he says, if you
Speaker 1: like it, you can agree to pay me for it
Speaker 1: and to hire me on to create all the other characters.
Speaker 1: So they move forward and then force hires on several people,
Speaker 1: some of whom he had worked with in the past
Speaker 1: is Imagineers, and they developed the prototype for the Winnie
Speaker 1: the Pooh costume. The Disney Channel executives love it. They
Speaker 1: see it, They're like, wow, this really is what we need.
Speaker 1: And so Alchemy too lands a contract and gets to
Speaker 1: work in Earnest on the various characters from the Winnie
Speaker 1: the Pooh live action series, so you know, Typically these
Speaker 1: character heads had something like a bicycle helmet to serve
Speaker 1: as the foundation, and then mounted to this helmet would
Speaker 1: be this sort of aluminum frame, and the aluminum frame
Speaker 1: would hold the various servos and other components needed to
Speaker 1: move different facial features. At Forest also used instructions stored
Speaker 1: on magnetic tape and sent wirelessly to micro controllers in
Speaker 1: the helmets, which would allow the operations to be in
Speaker 1: sync with audio. So the audio would be saved on
Speaker 1: several tracks of magnetic tape. The instructions to the helmets
Speaker 1: would be saved on a separate track in sync with
Speaker 1: the audio. So this meant all that puppeteering for the
Speaker 1: mouths would be automatic. The character heads were kind of
Speaker 1: a more sophisticated version of the old audio animatronic idea
Speaker 1: that powered the Tiki Room decades earlier. There were no
Speaker 1: pneumatics or anything like that, but again, it was marrying
Speaker 1: audio with the operating instructions. It's just that Fource's version
Speaker 1: was a little more complicated than making a metal read
Speaker 1: vibrate to complete a circuit. The performers also had additional
Speaker 1: controls for the head. Typically they would have a series
Speaker 1: of switches mounted on gloves.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: The hands for these characters were these big mitten like things,
Speaker 1: so the performers could use their hands inside these mittens
Speaker 1: to operate little switches that were mounted on the palms
Speaker 1: of their hands on gloves inside the character, and pushing
Speaker 1: a switch would create a specific movement like maybe blinking
Speaker 1: an eye or moving ears or something along those lines.
Speaker 1: So they would just have to remember which switches controlled
Speaker 1: specific motions and make that part of their performance. So
Speaker 1: some of the puppeteering was done by the performers themselves,
Speaker 1: some of the puppeteering was done through this pre programmed
Speaker 1: audio track. Four c's Alchemy two started to do some
Speaker 1: pretty decent business. They built animatronics for family destinations including
Speaker 1: like restaurants and mall installations and more.
Speaker 2: Because again this was a bit of a trend at this.
Speaker 1: Point in the in the eighties, like everyone was interested
Speaker 1: in getting these animatronics, some of which were more impressive
Speaker 1: than others, some of which were terrifying and and kind
Speaker 1: of the subject of of a wonderful YouTube video. So
Speaker 1: I would say that five Nights of Freddy's wouldn't even
Speaker 1: be a series without this era of creativity. Let's say
Speaker 1: that's the kind way of putting it. Forest's team also
Speaker 1: worked on effects that were in a couple of movies,
Speaker 1: and Forese got to mentor his coworkers and found great
Speaker 1: joy in finding people and encouraging them and growing their talents.
Speaker 1: Everyone in the docuseries who talks about Ken Foresy makes
Speaker 1: it very clear that they loved him and his style
Speaker 1: of leadership. They said he was very modest and quiet,
Speaker 1: but very encouraging, and that he believed in his colleagues
Speaker 1: and that, you know, it was just a it feels
Speaker 1: like it was just a really wholesome work environment. That's
Speaker 1: the best word I can use for it. He also
Speaker 1: kept coming up with ideas for various products, not just animatronics,
Speaker 1: and that included toys. So he kept a sketchbook where
Speaker 1: he would come up with an idea and he would
Speaker 1: sketch it out, and then often his team would take
Speaker 1: ideas from that sketchbook and try to figure out a
Speaker 1: way to actually make them into a real thing, like
Speaker 1: a prototype. One idea was based off the technology Alchemy
Speaker 1: Too developed for those free roaming animatronic costumes, so Force
Speaker 1: wanted to create a toy that would essentially miniaturize the
Speaker 1: technology that was used for those costumes down to a
Speaker 1: plush animal form factor. This would give the toy the
Speaker 1: ability to move its facial features, and when paired with
Speaker 1: a cassette tape that would have both audio and operational
Speaker 1: commands recorded to it, it could give this plush animal
Speaker 1: the ability to apparently speak and sing. The mouth would
Speaker 1: move in conjunction with the words. It would be like
Speaker 1: you would have your own personal animatronic figure. And so
Speaker 1: the very very long journey of the ideation of Teddy
Speaker 1: Rexman to the actual creation of the toy started to
Speaker 1: come together into something that kids of the eighties would recognize.
Speaker 1: But we're not there yet, because this story really is
Speaker 1: full of twists and turns. So we're gonna take one
Speaker 1: more quick break. When we come back, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about what went into the creation
Speaker 1: of Teddy Ruxxban the toy, and that character's impact on
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. But first, let's take this break to
Speaker 1: think our sponsors. All right, So, ken Voresy is looking
Speaker 1: at the possibility of creating a plush animal character that
Speaker 1: is able to use this sort of animatronic approach and
Speaker 1: to use cassette tapes to have the instructions on how
Speaker 1: to to you know, move the mouth at the right moment.
Speaker 1: Like that's the genesis of the idea. Now, initially he
Speaker 1: was thinking about creating licensed characters, like, not not licensed
Speaker 1: characters from him, but to license characters from other companies
Speaker 1: and to secure retail deals with big outlets like Sears
Speaker 1: at the time. So the idea was that, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to try and license, say, Winnie the Pooh
Speaker 1: from the Walt Disney Company, and I'm going to try
Speaker 1: and secure a deal with Sears to agree to a
Speaker 1: certain number of units, and that will give me the
Speaker 1: money to pay the licensing fee, to develop the technology
Speaker 1: and to create the product that ultimately will then be
Speaker 1: sold in Seers. Everyone will be happy and we'll all
Speaker 1: become millionaires. So as initial write up of this idea
Speaker 1: mentions Walt Disney by name, like the Disney Company by name,
Speaker 1: and that the Winnie the Pooh property would be ideal
Speaker 1: for this because you could create a whole series of books,
Speaker 1: read along books for little kids, and Winnie the Pooh
Speaker 1: could read stories to the little kids. You have the
Speaker 1: cassette tapes, got the story on it. Whennie the Pooh
Speaker 1: reads it, the kid can follow along with the book.
Speaker 1: Amazing idea, except Disney wasn't interested. The whole toy was
Speaker 1: going to need to be battery powered. Obviously you couldn't
Speaker 1: have like big cables going to it or anything. You
Speaker 1: aren't going to have industrial batteries at your disposal. So
Speaker 1: a lot of money was going to be needed to
Speaker 1: actually fund the development of this. The idea was sound,
Speaker 1: but to actually produce it was going to take some cash.
Speaker 1: And since Disney was like, no, I'm not interested, it
Speaker 1: really meant there was nowhere to go from there. So
Speaker 1: then for Si and his team try to figure out
Speaker 1: ways to, you know, perhaps go a different route, because
Speaker 1: if Disney wasn't going to be interested, they had to
Speaker 1: find somewhere else to get the money. They In the meantime,
Speaker 1: they were still working on this technology, ways to make
Speaker 1: it as lightweight as possible, because obviously you don't want
Speaker 1: your plush toy towaigh twenty pounds, and if it's going
Speaker 1: to have a tape deck in it, that's going to
Speaker 1: add a lot to the weight.
Speaker 2: Just from that.
Speaker 1: So you wanted to have lightweight materials.
Speaker 2: You also didn't.
Speaker 1: Want to have mechanical systems that would, you know, be dangerous.
Speaker 1: He didn't want a kid to stick their finger in
Speaker 1: Winnie the Pooh's mouth and Winnie the Pooh ends up
Speaker 1: mauling the kid and chewing the finger off.
Speaker 2: That would be a bad thing.
Speaker 1: Technically, Disney would probably frown on that. So their team
Speaker 1: was still working on the technology over at Alchemy too.
Speaker 1: But as I said, the Disney deal didn't move forward force.
Speaker 1: He decided to go with a Teddy Bear form factor
Speaker 1: at that point. He still did not move to Teddy
Speaker 1: Ruxsman yet. Teddy Ruxsman was a separate idea. It did
Speaker 1: not cross over here. But he was thinking about a
Speaker 1: Teddy Bear form factor because the teddy Bear is obviously
Speaker 1: a familiar and belo loved staple in children's toys. Right,
Speaker 1: everyone knows what a teddy Bear is. And so Alchemy
Speaker 1: two ended up buying a Teddy Bear, gutting it, replacing
Speaker 1: it with mechanical parts, like the insides with mechanical parts,
Speaker 1: and they called this monstrosity Joey Bear. This was just
Speaker 1: sort of a work of proof of concept kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So Joey Bear would have the mechanics and the tape
Speaker 1: deck built into it, so you have a tape deck
Speaker 1: as part of the toys.
Speaker 2: In it's back.
Speaker 1: You'd place a tape in push play, and then that
Speaker 1: would drive the animations that you would see.
Speaker 2: And they had.
Speaker 1: A bunch of different ideas for what kind of stories
Speaker 1: the bear could tell, like Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Speaker 1: was an obvious one. And it would also have a
Speaker 1: speaker on the inside, so Joey Bear when he spoke,
Speaker 1: you could actually hear him tell the story and see
Speaker 1: his little mouth move and move his eyes and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. One of Vorsi's colleagues, however, questioned
Speaker 1: the concept of Joeybear. He argued that without something special
Speaker 1: about the bear itself, without some sort of personality hook,
Speaker 1: without something to set it apart from just being a
Speaker 1: teddy bear, there wouldn't be enough there for kids to
Speaker 1: really care about it. I mean, yes, it would appear
Speaker 1: to be able to sing and talk, which is huge,
Speaker 1: but if there's no other personality there, then it might
Speaker 1: be too generic and it might not be enough to
Speaker 1: capture kids attention. And if you know, whatever they were
Speaker 1: going to sell this thing for it was going to
Speaker 1: be a lot more than your typical teddy Bear. So
Speaker 1: the toy needed to have something in its personality and
Speaker 1: approach that would really appeal to kids. And if it's
Speaker 1: just a teddy Bear, well there are a lot of
Speaker 1: other Teddy Bears out there that aren't going to cost
Speaker 1: fifty dollars or more. So Force was kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: the wind was taken out of his sales a bit,
Speaker 1: but he also felt that the criticism was correct, and
Speaker 1: that's when his world's collided and he chose to bring
Speaker 1: into alignment this project to make an animatronic toy for
Speaker 1: children with his decades old concept of the Adventures of
Speaker 1: Teddy Ruxpin, the thing that was supposed to be a
Speaker 1: puppet show and then was going to be a series
Speaker 1: of children's books. So he changed the design of the
Speaker 1: character Teddy Ruxpin from just being this furry little fantasy
Speaker 1: creature into one that looked a lot more like a
Speaker 1: Teddy bear. And this is why Illiops Illiops being the
Speaker 1: species that Teddy Ruxpin is, that's why they look like
Speaker 1: teddy bears. It was a practical decision that had little
Speaker 1: to do with the name Teddy Ruxpin. It's so interesting
Speaker 1: to me that Teddy Ruxbin was independently arrived at from
Speaker 1: it being a Teddy bear like creature. So for the
Speaker 1: first time, Force actually had a decent shot of getting
Speaker 1: this vision, this idea of this character and this fantasy
Speaker 1: world into an actual thing that other people could enjoy,
Speaker 1: not just the people he worked with or the people
Speaker 1: in his family, but the world at large. So over
Speaker 1: the years, Forc had gone from this concept of this
Speaker 1: puppet show with nearly forty episodes to there was a
Speaker 1: time where he was pushing it as a ninety minute special.
Speaker 1: That was when he was trying to get networks or
Speaker 1: even HBO to sign on to it. That version condensed
Speaker 1: a lot of the story elements that had been broken
Speaker 1: out into those forty episode ideas into a single narrative,
Speaker 1: and now he was thinking about adapting the story for
Speaker 1: a series of story books that would have an accompanying
Speaker 1: cassette tape, with each episode lasting about twenty minutes. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of like he was going back to the
Speaker 1: drawing board, back to the format of those early puppet shows,
Speaker 1: versus the ninety minute special he had worked on briefly
Speaker 1: in the late seventies. So in many ways he would
Speaker 1: reapproach the story and divide it back up so that
Speaker 1: you would have these individual adventures that were connected by
Speaker 1: a larger narrative arc, but one where it's much more episodic, right,
Speaker 1: like each episode is its own individual thing, sort of
Speaker 1: the way the puppet Show was meant to be. So
Speaker 1: Force had this huge wealth of lore to draw from
Speaker 1: because he had been developing the story idea for more
Speaker 1: than twenty years at that point, and he still went
Speaker 1: in and fleshed more things out, like he built in
Speaker 1: more details in the world that he had created. But
Speaker 1: the bones had been there for a very long time.
Speaker 1: So by the fall of nineteen eighty four, Alchemy two
Speaker 1: had developed a working prototype of Teddy Ruxsman. It didn't
Speaker 1: look like the final Teddy Rucksman doll that would come
Speaker 1: out the next year, but it was a good working prototype. Now,
Speaker 1: at that time, Alchemy two was hitting a rough patch financially,
Speaker 1: like they were in a cash flow crisis. In fact,
Speaker 1: they were in danger of folding. They had gotten to
Speaker 1: a point where they weren't going to be able to
Speaker 1: make payroll. But four C's team believed in him and
Speaker 1: in the work of Alchemy two, and they agreed to
Speaker 1: continue working. They were taking like essentially half pay so
Speaker 1: that the company could continue to operate, and they wouldn't
Speaker 1: you go without anything, but they rather than leave the company,
Speaker 1: they tried to keep on working while taking less money.
Speaker 1: Hasbro expressed interest, and that could have been a huge,
Speaker 1: huge thing. I mean, Hasbro being an enormous toy company. However,
Speaker 1: Hasbro thought that it was going.
Speaker 2: To take like three years to bring.
Speaker 1: The product to the market, and that would not work
Speaker 1: for Alchemy two. The company wouldn't be able to hold
Speaker 1: out that long. It would have been bankrupt.
Speaker 2: Before three years were up.
Speaker 1: So Forc kind of had to turn down that offer,
Speaker 1: even though that must have been a very difficult decision,
Speaker 1: because like, even though you know you can't make it,
Speaker 1: Hasbro being the company, it's hard to just walk away
Speaker 1: from that. So Forc then starts reaching out to other people,
Speaker 1: just trying to see if you can find sub investor
Speaker 1: who will pour some money into the project and allow
Speaker 1: it to get to a point where it can become
Speaker 1: an actual thing. And he reaches out to a former
Speaker 1: executive who had retired at the ripe old age of
Speaker 1: thirty seven, a guy named Don Kingsborough. By the way,
Speaker 1: Kingsborough still working today in as an executive in the
Speaker 1: tech space. But yeah, he had originally retired at thirty
Speaker 1: seven years old. So who is Kingsborough. Well, in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies and the early nineteen eighties, he was the
Speaker 1: president of a little company called Atari, and he stopped
Speaker 1: being president of Atari in nineteen eighty three, you know,
Speaker 1: the same year when video games home video games kind
Speaker 1: of stopped being a thing in the United States. There's
Speaker 1: this big video game crash. But Kingsboro he got out
Speaker 1: and made a lot of money, so he was able
Speaker 1: to retire and kind of sidestep some of the worst
Speaker 1: drama that unfolded in the wake of the video game crash.
Speaker 1: Forese got in touch with him, and Don Kingsborough agreed
Speaker 1: somewhat reluctantly to hear Force's sales pitch. So Kingsborough flies
Speaker 1: back to California and he meets with Force, who hands
Speaker 1: him a prototype and this teddy bear starts to speak
Speaker 1: and sing to Don Kingsborough, and immediately he was enchanted
Speaker 1: by it. So Foresy was hoping that he could get
Speaker 1: Don Kingsborough to invest in the project. Instead, Kingsborough says, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want to give you money. I want to
Speaker 1: actually make this a's according to the docu series I
Speaker 1: was talking about earlier in this episode. So by mid
Speaker 1: February nineteen eighty five, Alchemy two and Kingsboro enter into
Speaker 1: an agreement for the licensing rights to Teddy Ruxsman and AnimagiC,
Speaker 1: which is the technology that Alchemy two had named that
Speaker 1: actually animated Teddy Ruxsman. Kingsboro goes on to contact some
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs to kind of form a partnership, and he demonstrates
Speaker 1: the prototype which consistently wows other business leaders, and they
Speaker 1: form a new company called Worlds of Wonder. So you
Speaker 1: have Alchemy two, which is actually doing the technology side
Speaker 1: of things, the development, and you have Worlds of Wonder
Speaker 1: that's going to be the company that produces the final
Speaker 1: product and sells it. They go out as Worlds of
Speaker 1: Wonder and they seek funding for Teddy Ruxbin and it
Speaker 1: becomes a joint project between Worlds of Wonder at Alchemy two.
Speaker 1: By the way, the name Worlds of w Under was
Speaker 1: reportedly reverse engineered because Don Kingsborough had come up with
Speaker 1: the acronym. First, he wanted the acronym WOW because if
Speaker 1: it were on a stock listing, people would take notice,
Speaker 1: like if the stock is called Wow, that might be
Speaker 1: enough to push the value. So very very salesperson kind
Speaker 1: of pitched to that, and then.
Speaker 2: Once he figured out that he wanted.
Speaker 1: Wow, he had to work backwards to say what does
Speaker 1: the WOW stand for. That's when they eventually got to
Speaker 1: Worlds of Wonder. So the Worlds of Wonder version of
Speaker 1: Teddy Rucksman would build from the foundation of this prototype.
Speaker 1: They made some changes in order to make it production ready.
Speaker 1: They wanted it to be as easy to produce, as
Speaker 1: cheap to produce as possible, so that you have a
Speaker 1: good profit margin on these things. You know, you've got
Speaker 1: some expensive components going in there, so you want to
Speaker 1: try and control costs as best you can. So part
Speaker 1: of that was sourcing very cheap tape decks that could
Speaker 1: be used as the tape deck incorporated into a Teddy ruckspin.
Speaker 1: They used a technology that in the docu series they
Speaker 1: refer to as being servo like, so no an actual servo,
Speaker 1: but these would be the little electric motors that would
Speaker 1: drive the facial movements.
Speaker 2: In the character.
Speaker 1: I think originally they had three of these inside the
Speaker 1: heads of the characters, and then more recent versions have
Speaker 1: reduced that down to two. Worlds of Wonder got its
Speaker 1: funding received about fifteen million dollars in investments from the
Speaker 1: Abercrombie family. Alchemy two was able to keep going because
Speaker 1: now they had a fresh influx of cash they were
Speaker 1: developing the technology. It reinvigorated the company and in fact
Speaker 1: they had to hire people on in order to meet
Speaker 1: the demand of now being responsible for creating a toy
Speaker 1: that was going to become an honest to goodness product.
Speaker 1: They had to bring more help on. So it was
Speaker 1: the reversal of fortune in the best way. So they
Speaker 1: start working on fleshing out the world of Teddy Ruxspan.
Speaker 1: They start working on writing the books, thirteen books for
Speaker 1: the first six months, which would also require recording the
Speaker 1: cassette versions recording original music for these these books. Philip
Speaker 1: Baron gets hired on to become the voice of Teddy
Speaker 1: Ruxsbin and he would record the audio that was used
Speaker 1: on cassette tapes. So when you watch those classic commercials,
Speaker 1: it's Philip Baron's voice you hear on them to program
Speaker 1: the movements.
Speaker 2: This was really cool.
Speaker 1: So you know, you would lay down the audio track,
Speaker 1: so Philip Baron would go in and record his audio
Speaker 1: for a Teddy ruxsmin book. This would then be handed
Speaker 1: over to puppeteers who would take the audio track. They
Speaker 1: would play it back, and they would use digital controls
Speaker 1: similar to what you would find on a remote control car.
Speaker 1: They would use that to send direct commands to a
Speaker 1: puppet head. It would just be the head. You didn't
Speaker 1: need the whole body of Teddy Ruckspin, but you have
Speaker 1: essentially like a Teddy Ruckspin head mounted on a pole
Speaker 1: with cables going to it, and using this little control panel,
Speaker 1: you could make the mouth open and closed, and you
Speaker 1: could do the same with like eyes. And so what
Speaker 1: they'd do is they'd run the audio track and then
Speaker 1: the puppeteer would move the digital controls in time with
Speaker 1: the audio track, and those inputs would be recorded onto
Speaker 1: the magnetic tape on a separate track. So this is
Speaker 1: what would be then transferred to the cassettes and it
Speaker 1: would play back both the audio and the instructions that
Speaker 1: the puppeteer had made while matching the soundtrack to the
Speaker 1: character's movements. My sister is a professional puppeteer, so to me,
Speaker 1: this is just one of those really fascinating elements of
Speaker 1: the creation of Teddy Ruckspin. So Hasbro had said it
Speaker 1: would take three years to get Teddy Ruckspin to a
Speaker 1: point where they could put it on the market. The
Speaker 1: Alchemy two in Worlds of Wonder did it in less
Speaker 1: than a year. In fact, in September nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: remember they had signed the agreement in mid February nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five. September nineteen eighty five, Worlds of Wonder holds
Speaker 1: a debut of the Teddy Rouxsbin toy in Central Park
Speaker 1: in New York City, with Teddy Rouxsbin actually doing some
Speaker 1: of the presenting. It was very cute. You can actually
Speaker 1: see this in the docu series. They had a very
Speaker 1: expensive toy on their hands because when Teddy Rrouxsbin would
Speaker 1: hit store shelves, it had the price tag of seventy
Speaker 1: dollars essentially, and each additional book with cassette would cost
Speaker 1: twenty dollars. You would get one Teddy Ruxspin in the
Speaker 1: airship with the base toy, but if you wanted more
Speaker 1: than one, you had to pay twenty bucks a pop,
Speaker 1: which means, if we adjust for inflation, Teddy Ruxsbin would
Speaker 1: cost you about two hundred dollars today to buy, and
Speaker 1: then each book would cost around fifty six dollars to buy,
Speaker 1: which is pretty darn expensive. And even with that high
Speaker 1: price tag, Teddy Rucksman became something of a phenomenon. Although
Speaker 1: only briefly, it was highly in demand. It became the
Speaker 1: most popular toy for the end of nineteen eighty five
Speaker 1: and maintained its position for nineteen eighty six. Like, this
Speaker 1: was a toy that was well marketed. Kids loved the
Speaker 1: idea of it.
Speaker 2: It was fascinating.
Speaker 1: Anyone who was into animatronics would automatically be really charmed
Speaker 1: by this toy. Like it used to be something that
Speaker 1: you would only see if you went to a theme
Speaker 1: park or a place like Chuck E Cheese, and now
Speaker 1: you could actually own one. It was really cool. A
Speaker 1: lot of people thought, oh, I could put my uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Black Sabbath cassette tape in here and have
Speaker 1: Teddy Ruxsban rocking out. Didn't work because the operational instructions
Speaker 1: wouldn't be present on Black Sabbath. No one Black Sabbath
Speaker 1: didn't think to include a track that was just operational
Speaker 1: instructions for teddy Ruxpan, which is really a shame because
Speaker 1: that would have been amazing. But no, because that information
Speaker 1: wasn't there. You could play it like it would work
Speaker 1: as like a Teddy Bear shaped speaker, but it wouldn't.
Speaker 1: Teddy Ruxban wouldn't be singing along, so didn't quite get
Speaker 1: to that level. Now, there was something else that was
Speaker 1: on the rise that would ultimately steal some of the
Speaker 1: thunder from Teddy Ruxsman, and that was the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Speaker 1: The video game crash from nineteen eighty three had really
Speaker 1: depressed the video game market to a point where a
Speaker 1: lot of people just figured it was never going to
Speaker 1: be a thing again, that it was just a fluke.
Speaker 1: There was something that happened in the late seventies early
Speaker 1: eighties and would never come back around. Nintendo proved them wrong, right.
Speaker 1: Nintendo created a product that people actually wanted. But this
Speaker 1: also meant Teddy ruxbin Star was on the decline, and
Speaker 1: it had only been out for a little bit more
Speaker 1: than a year. Worlds of Wonder overextended itself. They had
Speaker 1: incorrectly predicted there was going to be increased demand for
Speaker 1: Teddy Ruxsban in nineteen eighty seven, and as a result,
Speaker 1: they overextended themselves financially, and they ultimately spent too much
Speaker 1: and didn't generate enough revenue, and by nineteen eighty eight
Speaker 1: they were going into bankruptcy, and then by nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: one they ceased to be. Hasbro swooped in and acquired
Speaker 1: the rights to Ruxman, which is again it's funny because
Speaker 1: Hasbro had the chance of doing that earlier, but Force
Speaker 1: wasn't able to take that opportunity, so Hasbro came in
Speaker 1: got the licensing rights. Around nineteen ninety six, they stopped
Speaker 1: producing Teddy Ruxsban. There just wasn't enough demand. In nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight, a company called Yes Entertainment secured licensing rights,
Speaker 1: but only briefly. Something happened that made that fall apart,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure it might even be covered in the docuse,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't able to watch all ten hours of
Speaker 1: it in preparation for this episode, so I don't know yet.
Speaker 1: I do plan to watch the rest of it, by
Speaker 1: the way, because it is quite good. Teddy Ruxbin would
Speaker 1: resurface again in two thousand and five, then it faded
Speaker 1: away again and now it's back. It came back in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen. It's a different toy now. Instead of using
Speaker 1: cassette tapes, it actually pairs with an app, because of
Speaker 1: course it does, but that means that, you know, you
Speaker 1: can use the app to play with the toy and
Speaker 1: to have it read out stories and you're not limited
Speaker 1: to whatever happens to be in stock. Right, Because it's
Speaker 1: an app, it's way easier to get access to the
Speaker 1: material you want. So yeah, that's the story of Teddy
Speaker 1: Ruxsman's origins, which again pretty intense, like so much had
Speaker 1: to come together for that toy to become a thing,
Speaker 1: and it really was an iconic toy in the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. Like I said, if I had just been
Speaker 1: a little bit younger, I probably would have wanted one myself,
Speaker 1: but at that stage I was wanting other stuff. I
Speaker 1: couldn't tell you what I wanted at age ten, I can't.
Speaker 2: Maybe I don't.
Speaker 1: Know Ghostbusters stuff. Maybe I don't know, but yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was really one of those that made a huge splash,
Speaker 1: Like this technology looked like it was next generation stuff
Speaker 1: when it came out, and when you start to learn
Speaker 1: the full story about what went into the creation of
Speaker 1: that toy and the work of ken Force and sort
Speaker 1: of his very gentle approach toward work and creativity, you
Speaker 1: get a new appreciation for it.
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoyed this.
Speaker 1: I know is a long episode, again a fraction of
Speaker 1: the length of the docu series, which goes into much, much,
Speaker 1: much more detail about ken Force's life, his work, and
Speaker 1: especially the lore of Teddy Ruxxman. There are entire sections
Speaker 1: that are dedicated just to fleshing out what that's how
Speaker 1: that story coalesced. I highly recommend checking that out. Again,
Speaker 1: it's on YouTube and you can find that by doing
Speaker 1: a quick search about Teddy Ruxman and ken Foresy And yeah,
Speaker 1: you should check it out if you're at all interested
Speaker 1: in this topic. That's it for this epic episode. I
Speaker 1: hope you are all well and I will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.