Speaker 1: Welcome to Business on the Brink, a production from I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and how Stuff Works. Invention doesn't always go
Speaker 1: as planned. Sometimes you get unpredictable results, but rather than
Speaker 1: stick to the original plan, a wise business owner might
Speaker 1: cast about for a new strategy, and before you know it,
Speaker 1: you've got a success on your hands. This is a
Speaker 1: series of accidental inventions on Business on the Brink, Harry One.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Arial Casting, And this episode
Speaker 1: was sort of done as a whim whom Yeah, I
Speaker 1: had been thinking about incidents where someone has come up
Speaker 1: with an idea and they have an I you know,
Speaker 1: they've got an actual implementation in mind for that idea,
Speaker 1: but it turns out whatever that implementation was doesn't work out.
Speaker 1: And in most cases, if that happened, you'd say, well,
Speaker 1: that's a failed invention, that was a failed experiment. Yeah, exactly, like, well,
Speaker 1: I gotta you know, you learn more from failure than
Speaker 1: you do from success. Gotta try something else. But occasionally
Speaker 1: people are able to take that failure or that miscalculation
Speaker 1: and then reposition it to become a success. That became
Speaker 1: the genesis for this episode. And there's some stuff I
Speaker 1: mean there's a lot of things we could have covered.
Speaker 1: We're only going to look at three specific products in
Speaker 1: this episode. But one of the ones that was going
Speaker 1: to mention that we don't cover in this episode, just
Speaker 1: as an example, is the super Soaker. Water guns your
Speaker 1: bmiliar with each Ye, yeah, we love these things. Uh.
Speaker 1: They came out when I was still young enough to
Speaker 1: be able to play with water guns without raising suspicions.
Speaker 1: I mean, I still I still play with water guns,
Speaker 1: I know, but you're also younger than I am by
Speaker 1: a decade. So the super Soaker was actually invented by
Speaker 1: a guy who was working on water pump for like
Speaker 1: water heaters, and turned out and you figured out how
Speaker 1: to use that for a water gun, and it became
Speaker 1: a huge deal. That story is its own dramatic up
Speaker 1: and down story that we may cover in a future episode.
Speaker 1: But the the things we're covering here are smaller, Yeah,
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller in size, but not necessarily smaller in success.
Speaker 1: Although some you may say we're never made as big
Speaker 1: a splash, so to speak, as a super Soker, but
Speaker 1: they've been around longer. So yeah, we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: some creative ideas and creative individuals who were able to
Speaker 1: take they that initially didn't go as planned and turned
Speaker 1: them into successes. And the first on our list is
Speaker 1: tall do do do do do do? Shake this and
Speaker 1: see it, says a a'ser unclear. Ask again later what
Speaker 1: could that mean? It means that you're holding an imaginary
Speaker 1: eight ball, magic eight ball in your hands, Jonathan, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: but your way to break the illusion. It's an audio podcast.
Speaker 1: They never know. Yes, we're going to talk about the
Speaker 1: magic eight ball. And one thing that I found very fascinating.
Speaker 1: These were things that I just sort of looked around
Speaker 1: and found a couple of these. It surprised me, and
Speaker 1: the magic a ball was one of them. You think
Speaker 1: the magic a ball is just kind of a fun
Speaker 1: little diversion, right, Yeah, you know, a toy by people
Speaker 1: who are inspired by Wegi boards and yeah, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. And Luigi board also is a toy, by
Speaker 1: the way, it was created by a board game company.
Speaker 1: But the eight ball has its history wrapped up with
Speaker 1: the history of mysticism, of seances and and clairvoyance because
Speaker 1: the inventor of the magic gate ball, or at least
Speaker 1: a co inventor, was Al Carter and I call him
Speaker 1: Al because and about half of the references about the
Speaker 1: origins of the magic eight ball, his name is given
Speaker 1: as Albert, and in the other half it's given as
Speaker 1: Alfred and Albert. Yeah, so we're just calling him al
Speaker 1: kind of like Chevy Chase and Paul Simon. All right,
Speaker 1: But um, it says here that the first eight ball
Speaker 1: that al created wasn't even a ball. No, it wasn't
Speaker 1: a ball. It certainly wasn't an eight ball. Uh So
Speaker 1: his mom worked as a clairvoyant and a mystic, so
Speaker 1: essentially a medium or a fortune teller, and he was
Speaker 1: inspired by this to create a device, a gimmick. You
Speaker 1: might say, if you were a magician, you would call
Speaker 1: it a gimmick, and it was a thing to use
Speaker 1: sort of as a fortune telling device. And uh he
Speaker 1: came up with this concept that he called the psycho
Speaker 1: sear psycho is spelled s y c o. And this
Speaker 1: would be in the nineteen forties. And this did not
Speaker 1: look like a magic eight ball, although it it had
Speaker 1: the same purpose. So it looked kind of like, um,
Speaker 1: imagine a soda can, but it's taller than a soda can.
Speaker 1: So like one of the new diet coke cans, sure,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's it's narrower than a standard coke can.
Speaker 1: Right now, I'm calling it coke that you can tell
Speaker 1: him from Atlanta, because all soft drinks become coke eventually.
Speaker 1: But then the ends of the cylinder are clear, like
Speaker 1: a little clear windows. So instead of a solid top
Speaker 1: and a solid bottom, it's i mean still solid, but
Speaker 1: now it's clear like acrylic. On the inside. He had
Speaker 1: a very dark, syrupy liquid. A lot of sources say
Speaker 1: it was essentially molasses. Uh. It was apparently divided in
Speaker 1: the middle, so it's actually two containers um in one
Speaker 1: form factor and the a eye on either one. Well,
Speaker 1: because you could put smaller canisters on either end of
Speaker 1: it and not have to fill the entire tube necessary. Yes,
Speaker 1: and you had die with things written on the faces
Speaker 1: of the die, very much like you would with a
Speaker 1: magic eight ball, So you would ask yes or no questions,
Speaker 1: Give a little bit of shake, turn it up so
Speaker 1: that one of the windows is facing up. Wait for
Speaker 1: one of those dye to slowly rise to the surface
Speaker 1: of some thick old more lashes. If you break it,
Speaker 1: you get a snack, that's true, a nice sweet tooth
Speaker 1: there and then you get to read the message on
Speaker 1: there and find the answer to your yes or no question.
Speaker 1: Was one of his messages when he was designing this
Speaker 1: Go talk and get a partner. Uh No, but that
Speaker 1: is what he did, So it would have been a
Speaker 1: very predictive message had that been the case. So yeah,
Speaker 1: he decided that he couldn't just go out there with
Speaker 1: this idea on his own. He didn't. He lacked the
Speaker 1: resources to make it as a big product. It's going
Speaker 1: to be kind of a common theme throughout all of
Speaker 1: the stories we're telling in this episode. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: something that you run into a lot when you're talking
Speaker 1: about inventors. I mean, most of the time, the people
Speaker 1: who are inventing something don't necessarily have access to, say,
Speaker 1: a manufacturing facility, and that was the case here. So
Speaker 1: depending upon the version of the story that you read,
Speaker 1: uh he either went to his cousin Abe Bookman, or
Speaker 1: his brother in law Abe Bookman, or he went to
Speaker 1: a merchant named Max Levinson who had a brother in
Speaker 1: law named Abe Bookman. I mean, I guess technically all
Speaker 1: three could be correct. That's creepy. But he went to
Speaker 1: a guy named Abe Bookman, who had graduated from essentially
Speaker 1: an engineering school, that Ohio Mechanics Institute. And this was
Speaker 1: with the hope that Bookman would help him come up
Speaker 1: with a way to mass manufacture the psychos here. And
Speaker 1: so the two of them went into business together and
Speaker 1: they created their own company called a Labe Crafts. And
Speaker 1: a Labe is a combination of the names Al and Abe.
Speaker 1: That's very clever. Yes, So sometime in that early partnership,
Speaker 1: al Carter passed away. Ironically, he didn't see it coming, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: but it's a serious thing that I shouldn't joke about.
Speaker 1: But I mean, yes, but time and comedy, you know. Alright. Anyhow,
Speaker 1: so this wasn't the end of the magic eight ball
Speaker 1: A Bookman continued on, Yes, exactly. So even though Carter
Speaker 1: had he had patented this idea. UM. The name of
Speaker 1: the pattern was really funny too, is like very If
Speaker 1: you've ever read titles of patents, you see that they're
Speaker 1: very technically describing whatever it is the invention does. They
Speaker 1: don't give like a name like that. UM. Anyway, he
Speaker 1: did patent it, and so Bookman still continued forward with
Speaker 1: the design. He ended up making a shorter version of
Speaker 1: the Psycho Sear. It was about half the height of
Speaker 1: the original cylinder, still in cylinder. So it wasn't more
Speaker 1: short sighted. Yeah, I mean it wasn't more longsighted. It
Speaker 1: was just as sited, I guess, is what we can say.
Speaker 1: But it was. It was about half the size of
Speaker 1: the Psycho Sere and it only had one side of
Speaker 1: the cylinder with a window in it. The other side
Speaker 1: was solid, and it was called the Psycho slate instead
Speaker 1: of the Psycho Sear. I wouldn't think of a slate
Speaker 1: is something I could shake and get a fortune out of.
Speaker 1: Well here's another interesting the fact that I didn't include
Speaker 1: in our notes, But apparently al Carter when he was
Speaker 1: first thinking about this, he was inspired by something his
Speaker 1: mother is to do, which is that she would take
Speaker 1: a slate, like a like a blackboard slate and some chalk,
Speaker 1: and the slate would have nothing written on it, and
Speaker 1: she would have the chalk and she would put it
Speaker 1: out of sight, like in a container of some sort,
Speaker 1: and she would have her clients ask a question and
Speaker 1: then she would open up the container and the answer
Speaker 1: would be written on the slate. Now here's the interesting
Speaker 1: thing is that that's an old style stage magic trick.
Speaker 1: It is. I've seen it on Penn and Teller. Yes,
Speaker 1: Penn and Teller are famous for doing tricks very much
Speaker 1: in this very same style. And the argument goes, and
Speaker 1: this is a very solid argument, if there is a
Speaker 1: non magical way to do it, chances are that's how
Speaker 1: it was done, because why go through the trouble of
Speaker 1: doing in a magical way, which is, as far as
Speaker 1: we know, impossible when you can do it in ordinary
Speaker 1: way exactly, But if you play it up with a
Speaker 1: lot of theatrics, you can make it seem like it's mystical.
Speaker 1: So he got the idea from his mom. So Psycho
Speaker 1: sl eight in a way, is almost a throwback to
Speaker 1: the original inspiration for this device. Now, Bookman was able
Speaker 1: to make these in larger volume than the Psycho sear,
Speaker 1: but it didn't exactly take off. I mean, obviously we
Speaker 1: don't have it today. We have the magic eight ball. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so how do we go from a slate to a ball?
Speaker 1: So first it was Bookman saying, you know, these just
Speaker 1: aren't going off store shelves. I guess there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of mediums at large. But I would flip this
Speaker 1: table if I know, and you've got your cup of waters.
Speaker 1: So yes, there was. There was not a huge demand
Speaker 1: for the psycho slate. So he thought, well, maybe I'll
Speaker 1: change up the form factor a bit more and have
Speaker 1: something that appeals to that same set of people. And
Speaker 1: so he decided, I'll make a crystal ball version where
Speaker 1: the cylinder is essentially nestled in the crystal ball. Um
Speaker 1: it'll be a dark crystal ball, so it's not like
Speaker 1: it's clear acrylic or something, and you'll still turn it
Speaker 1: over to read the little message on the uh in
Speaker 1: the window, the clear window that's in this crystal ball.
Speaker 1: And so he started making those, and these also weren't
Speaker 1: going like gangbusters, but they did get the attention of
Speaker 1: a Chicago company called Brunswick Billiards. Billiards as in pool tables,
Speaker 1: the capital P that rhymes with trouble. Yeah, that doesn't
Speaker 1: rhyme with trouble, but it starts anyhow. So he must
Speaker 1: have been the one who said, hey, let's take these
Speaker 1: and turn them into billiard balls. Yeah, well the billiards
Speaker 1: company did. They came up to book exactly. They came
Speaker 1: out to book when they said we want to do
Speaker 1: a promotional item Essentially, it was a giveaway and we
Speaker 1: like this thing you've created. Can you make some that
Speaker 1: look like eight balls from the game of pool? And
Speaker 1: Bookman said, you bet you anyone about making eight ball
Speaker 1: versions of this fortune Teller's crystal ball. And the giveaways
Speaker 1: were incredibly popular. People loved the magic eight ball, and
Speaker 1: people of free things, people also love free things. That
Speaker 1: remains true to this very day. This, by the way,
Speaker 1: is still happening in the like early fifties. At this point,
Speaker 1: Bookman decides, after this agreement has concluded with Brunswick Billiards,
Speaker 1: that he would continue making eight balls as a variation
Speaker 1: of this crystal ball one that he had been making,
Speaker 1: and he starts kind of giving up a little bit.
Speaker 1: He starts selling them as paper weights because he can't
Speaker 1: really think of like, people aren't buying them as much
Speaker 1: as they were enjoying getting them. Yeah, they weren't. There
Speaker 1: just wasn't a market of people who were like, I
Speaker 1: want to consult the spirits of beyond, but I just
Speaker 1: don't know how to get into that racket. So that's
Speaker 1: when thought, hey, Amar, get these two kids. Kidcel fall
Speaker 1: for anything pretty much. He saw that kids were playing
Speaker 1: with these paperweights and really having a fun time with him,
Speaker 1: and he thought, well, maybe that's just the Maybe that's
Speaker 1: just it. It's not that the product is bad, I'm
Speaker 1: marketing to the wrong audience exactly. And so he decides
Speaker 1: he will market it as a toy, and he starts
Speaker 1: to do that, and now it actually is starting to
Speaker 1: take off. And again it was an unpredictable result. But
Speaker 1: by nineteen one, Bookman was ready to retire from this business.
Speaker 1: So he sold the company A labor Crafts, which had
Speaker 1: been around for twenty years. Of that more than twenty years,
Speaker 1: almost almost thirty years at that point, respectable sold it
Speaker 1: to a company called the Ideal Toy Company. That's another
Speaker 1: company we could do a full episode on. They mainly
Speaker 1: were known for doing like doll type stuff. They were
Speaker 1: very much in the dull biz. I think Betsy Wetsy
Speaker 1: was one of their dolls. Yeah and uh. In nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one, the same year when Ideal Toy Company would
Speaker 1: acquire a Lab Crafts that joined the New York Stock Exchange.
Speaker 1: At the time, it was one of the largest toy
Speaker 1: companies in the United States. Well, they also had toys
Speaker 1: like the Rubik's Cube yep, they were the ones that
Speaker 1: made the Rubik's Cube famous in the eighties, So that
Speaker 1: was from the Ideal Toy company. But by the later
Speaker 1: part of the eighties, mid to later part of the eighties,
Speaker 1: the company was really starting to struggle that there was
Speaker 1: a recession. Um there were some bad business decisions that
Speaker 1: led to some financial troubles for Ideal Toy and so
Speaker 1: uh CBS Toys, which was a subsidiary of CBS. YEP.
Speaker 1: CBS the Broadcasting Company ended up purchasing Ideal Toy and
Speaker 1: Magic a Ball went along with it in nineteen two
Speaker 1: for fifty eight million dollars. So now Ideal Toy becomes
Speaker 1: part of CBS Toys. But that would only last for
Speaker 1: a little while because CBS would then sell Ideal Toy
Speaker 1: to another company called view Master International. You remember, you
Speaker 1: know a Master. I owned a view Masks. Okay, I
Speaker 1: didn't know. So v Master are those ones that look
Speaker 1: kind of like binoculars. You put in a disc that
Speaker 1: has different photographs in it. It has the stereo vision
Speaker 1: kind of lenses, so it gives you that sort of
Speaker 1: three D yeah, and you just click through and it's
Speaker 1: like a slide and then if you click halfway, then
Speaker 1: you just try to get these really weird images. Yeah. Anyhow,
Speaker 1: so yeah, that becomes the view Master Ideal company. Uh
Speaker 1: rolls around. Then you get Tycho Toys, which announces that
Speaker 1: it would acquire view Master Ideal for about forty four
Speaker 1: million dollars, less than the last acquisition, but not that
Speaker 1: not bad. And it also meant that the Magic eight
Speaker 1: Ball would go to Tycho Toys, which was famous for
Speaker 1: other types of toys like the easy Bake oven, so
Speaker 1: very very popular or tasty bake oven, I should say
Speaker 1: not easy bake. They did not start putting the lasses
Speaker 1: back into the eight balls, no know. At this point
Speaker 1: it was rubbing alcohol with blue dye. That was the liquid.
Speaker 1: But they weren't done yet. Mattel, another giant in the
Speaker 1: toy industry, swoops in to acquire Tycho for seven hundred
Speaker 1: fifty five million dollars. Well, I mean, Tycho is a
Speaker 1: bigger company. They had a lot more toys exactly. Tycho
Speaker 1: was huge. Now that meant that the Magic eate Ball
Speaker 1: went with Mattel, and along that whole process, the Magic
Speaker 1: eight Ball continued to be a product sold on the market.
Speaker 1: So even though ownership was changing hands, multiple times. The
Speaker 1: product itself continued to do pretty well. It was you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like it was flying off store shelves in
Speaker 1: particular years, but it was a steady seller. I mean,
Speaker 1: about two thousand twelve they had sold a million of
Speaker 1: them a year. A million a year's a lot. That's
Speaker 1: pretty decent. And uh. Now these days you can find
Speaker 1: magic eight balls in all sorts of size, from the
Speaker 1: regular size, which is definitely larger than an actual billiard ball,
Speaker 1: two key chain versions. You can find a bunch of
Speaker 1: them that are licensed. I've got a Simpsons one which
Speaker 1: has Simpsons phrases in there, like dough instead of no um.
Speaker 1: So there are definitely variations on the magic eight ball. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting. So I have the notes here, so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask you arial the questions and you can
Speaker 1: tell people what the answers are. How many sides does
Speaker 1: the die inside of magic eight ball have? Yes? So
Speaker 1: it's essentially like a Dungeons and Dragons. A bookman must
Speaker 1: have been a secret Dungeons and Dragons. No, No, it's
Speaker 1: just so that they could have a lot of sides
Speaker 1: with the answer yes, ten of them, a lot with no.
Speaker 1: Five of them, and then five more that said maybe yes,
Speaker 1: So you weren't just shaking like, well, you can't have
Speaker 1: a three sided dice. No, no, The best you could
Speaker 1: do is the's a coin. This way it made your
Speaker 1: chances more random, right, well, and also meant that you
Speaker 1: were twice as likely to get a yes as you
Speaker 1: were a no, maybe or a maybe. And Uh, it's
Speaker 1: funny because I was looking at a statistic site and
Speaker 1: it said, statistically speaking, you would need to ask seventy
Speaker 1: two questions at least to see all twenty possible answers
Speaker 1: just based on probability, that would be the bare minimum
Speaker 1: you would need to to do. Uh, based on probability alone.
Speaker 1: Now it is entirely possible to ask twenty questions and
Speaker 1: then get each answer in sequence. It's just not likely
Speaker 1: to happen. So you've got a note here says well,
Speaker 1: that happen every seventy two times. Ask again later, Ask
Speaker 1: again later. Now you don't have one here that they have.
Speaker 1: Ask again later. That's true unless it's a maybe. That's
Speaker 1: that's a maybe. It's it's on there kind of like
Speaker 1: answer unclear, Ask again later, that's a maybe. Uh, so
Speaker 1: it's it's not an outright yes or no and uh
Speaker 1: yeah again, like the licensed versions have different variations for
Speaker 1: positive and negative. But yeah, that's to me, that's an
Speaker 1: interesting story about an item that originally was marketed more
Speaker 1: seriously if you can, if you can, think of it
Speaker 1: that way, or at least more earnestly as a fortune
Speaker 1: telling device, and then ultimately became a novelty slash toy.
Speaker 1: And that's where it found its success. I'm very excited
Speaker 1: to get into our next story. But first, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break aerial. Yeah, let's let's talk about rubber
Speaker 1: for a minute. It's pretty useful, it is. It's incredibly
Speaker 1: useful stuff. I mean, it's so here's the stuff about
Speaker 1: rubber that makes it useful, right, It's really resilient, It
Speaker 1: resists damage pretty well. It's waterproof material, it's stretchy, it's flexible. Uh.
Speaker 1: It is used in tons of stuff, including and this
Speaker 1: is important, stuff like wires and boots. But you know
Speaker 1: it's not easy to get rubber, right, not not natural rubber. No, no,
Speaker 1: not natural rubber because it comes out of trees and
Speaker 1: and specifically trees that largely are in Asia. Yes, so
Speaker 1: like largely a specific region and to get it, you
Speaker 1: have to like cut into the tree and collect sap
Speaker 1: like you're getting maple syrup, and and that has latex
Speaker 1: in it, and then you're trying to in them that
Speaker 1: makes rubber. Yes, So it's a whole process. And then
Speaker 1: you have to of course ship it from wherever you're
Speaker 1: you're harvesting it to wherever you wanted to go to
Speaker 1: use in whatever materials. So rubber. Everyone recognized that rubber
Speaker 1: was useful stuff, but it was just it was hard
Speaker 1: to get a lot of it at once. So starting
Speaker 1: even as early as the eighteen hundreds, you had scientists
Speaker 1: who are saying, this is definitely useful, but we need
Speaker 1: to figure out a different way to make it, and
Speaker 1: so people started to work on formulas to create synthetic rubber. Okay,
Speaker 1: but you know, I don't want to start in the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred, skip ahead, Jonathan. Okay, all right, well how
Speaker 1: about World War two? That better, because that's that's going
Speaker 1: to get to the beginning of where we're going to hear.
Speaker 1: World War two. Obviously, the U. S. Military has a
Speaker 1: huge need for rubber for stuff like tires and boots,
Speaker 1: like I had mentioned a second ago, And on top
Speaker 1: of that. In World War Two, one of the powers
Speaker 1: that the unit United States was up against was Japan,
Speaker 1: which had already attacked or was threatening regions where natural
Speaker 1: rubber was coming from. So there was a clear need
Speaker 1: to develop synthetic rubber, and only that it needed to
Speaker 1: be synthetic rubber that came from materials that were easy
Speaker 1: to get to in wartime. So that meant that the
Speaker 1: US had to say, who out there can help us
Speaker 1: do this stuff? So who did well? There are a
Speaker 1: couple of different versions of this story. There was actually
Speaker 1: a lot of people working on this problem, and at
Speaker 1: least two different groups came up with a similar possible
Speaker 1: solution that ended up not being a solution to the
Speaker 1: synthetic rubber problem spoiler alert. One of that one of
Speaker 1: those groups rather was Earl Warwick and Rob Roy McGregor,
Speaker 1: who worked at Corning glass Works, and they took borick,
Speaker 1: ox side and silicone oil, mixed it together and they
Speaker 1: found that it made this stretchy, bouncy material stuff which
Speaker 1: they filed for a pattern in the early forties and
Speaker 1: they got the pattern in ninete The other version has
Speaker 1: a guy named James Wright, who was an engineer at
Speaker 1: General electric. This is the version of the story that
Speaker 1: most people tell for the material we're about to cover. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is more fun. He got the assignment to try
Speaker 1: and create cheap synthetic rubber, and he dropped some silicone
Speaker 1: oil in boric acid, so very similar. He got that
Speaker 1: same sort of gooey substance. Discovered that it had some
Speaker 1: interesting properties. It bounced. You could, you know, roll it
Speaker 1: into a ball and bounce it against the ground. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you hit it hard enough it would shatter. You
Speaker 1: could stretch it. Uh, you could even press it against
Speaker 1: newsprint and pick the newsprint up off the paper. But
Speaker 1: you know what, you can't do that replace rubber. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So because you can't use it for as a replacement
Speaker 1: for rubber, the military was not interested in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they said, uh, thanks, but we need something that will
Speaker 1: work entires, and this wouldn't even if the only thing
Speaker 1: we were driving across was newspaper. So no, thank you.
Speaker 1: So at that stage, again, you could say, well shucks,
Speaker 1: that didn't work out and you could move on, or
Speaker 1: you could try and do what Right tried to do,
Speaker 1: which was to market it as a commercial product. I
Speaker 1: mean he was having fun with it. Yeah, he found
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of interesting things you could do with it.
Speaker 1: My favorite is the shattering it. My favorite is picking
Speaker 1: up newsprint because I used to do it to use.
Speaker 1: I used to do that to comic strips. And when
Speaker 1: he tried to market it commercially, he called it nutty putty.
Speaker 1: But obviously, you guys i'll there have figured out what
Speaker 1: this substance must have been, and nutty putty is not
Speaker 1: what we call it. But so we'll skip ahead again.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of different conflicting stories about what
Speaker 1: weapons next. No big surprise, We've already got these branching
Speaker 1: narratives that have happened. But in one version, you have
Speaker 1: a guy named Peter Hodgson who was at a party
Speaker 1: in nineteen nine, and he was an admin worked in
Speaker 1: the magazine trade and catalogs and stuff like that, and
Speaker 1: according to some stories, he was out of work at
Speaker 1: that time, and the main entertainment at that party was
Speaker 1: people playing with Right's nutty putty, which sounds way worse
Speaker 1: when I say it out loud, and it did when
Speaker 1: I wrote it down. It definitely sounds worse orally than
Speaker 1: on the page. Yes, I think we can agree it
Speaker 1: sounds worse orally. Anyhow, he saw that people who are
Speaker 1: really amused with this putty, and he was like, hey,
Speaker 1: this could be a successful toy. Yeah, And he ended
Speaker 1: up deciding that he could use his marketing skill coupled
Speaker 1: with this amazing stuff and that would be the key
Speaker 1: to success. Now. The other version of this story says
Speaker 1: Hodgson was actually working on a catalog for a toy
Speaker 1: store that was owned by a woman named Ruth fall Gather,
Speaker 1: and they found out about the putty when Hodgson was
Speaker 1: visiting a Harvard physicist who had some of the stuff.
Speaker 1: There's another version that says both Hodgson and fall Gather
Speaker 1: were at that same party where people were passing stuff around.
Speaker 1: It's hard to say who is telling the most accurate
Speaker 1: story here, but no matter what, they decided to go
Speaker 1: to ge and to get the production rights to make
Speaker 1: this stuff. Uh and Gee said, sure, we don't know
Speaker 1: what to do with it, go ahead. Yeah. They had
Speaker 1: no use for it. So Hodgson got the rights to
Speaker 1: Nutty putty and he started making it and he would
Speaker 1: sell it for two dollars per unit or glow bob
Speaker 1: or wad of the stuff. Yeah, and uh, and it
Speaker 1: sold really well inside fall Gathers catalog. She she marketed
Speaker 1: it in the catalog for her twist. Yeah, it's so
Speaker 1: better than everything but crayons. Yes, there was a box
Speaker 1: of crayons for fifty cents. That was the top seller,
Speaker 1: and the second top seller was this nutty putty stuff.
Speaker 1: But then fall Gatter decided to stop selling it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't don't know why if it was selling so well.
Speaker 1: She didn't have the putty passion. Just what we say
Speaker 1: in the business, I see, I follow you. She was.
Speaker 1: She felt petty about the putty all right. Anyhow, Hodgson
Speaker 1: took out a loan and bought a big batch of
Speaker 1: the stuff and rebranded it a silly putty. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: And that as when another idea occurred to him because
Speaker 1: at the time where he was launching this secondary attack here, uh,
Speaker 1: the launch date was really close to Easter, and that's
Speaker 1: what we thought. Hey, you know what, I could package
Speaker 1: this stuff in chocolate Easter bunnies might have been his
Speaker 1: first thought, but he did not go with that one.
Speaker 1: He thought plastic eggs, and that's where the silly putty
Speaker 1: in a plastic egg package comes from. And he started
Speaker 1: selling it for a dollar per egg. And what really
Speaker 1: helped him was not the fact that folks were finding
Speaker 1: it so fascinating, but rather a certain magazine published a
Speaker 1: short passage about the stuff, and that got it into
Speaker 1: the public consciousness. That magazine was The New Yorker. That's impressive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like it's it's known for two things, launching
Speaker 1: silly putty and cartoons that nobody's really sure if they're
Speaker 1: funny or not. Yeah, but you can use your silly
Speaker 1: play to pull those cartoons right off the New Yorker,
Speaker 1: you'd be fine. So if you look at it twice,
Speaker 1: maybe you can figure out how twice and backwards. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then Hodgson ends up making television commercials for it.
Speaker 1: Some of the earliest TV commercials aimed at children were
Speaker 1: for silly Putty. The earliest was for a different toy.
Speaker 1: Do you know which toy it was? Mr? Potato Head? Yes?
Speaker 1: Do you know what Mr potato Head was like when
Speaker 1: it first launched? Uh, it was a real potato. You
Speaker 1: supplied the potato and all you got were the like
Speaker 1: the lips and the eyes and the feet, and you
Speaker 1: shoved into a potato and then you bake it and
Speaker 1: then you eat the melted plastic cover potato and then
Speaker 1: you lose a customer for life because to the young,
Speaker 1: death is what it would be, because you would just
Speaker 1: become a potato zombie. Yeah. So his commercials aired during
Speaker 1: Captain Kangaroo and How Do You Duty? And like that exactly.
Speaker 1: There were specifically geared two shows that kids were watching,
Speaker 1: so the kids would see the commercials for Silly Putty
Speaker 1: and then say, Mommy, Daddy, buy me that. And it worked.
Speaker 1: By the time that Hodgson passed away in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: his estate was worth more than a hundred forty million dollars.
Speaker 1: Not bad for a guy who was apparently out of
Speaker 1: work when he first got the idea. When he when
Speaker 1: he's made this stuff the first time, like for Syria,
Speaker 1: he had to take out a loan of a hundred
Speaker 1: fifty dollars because he didn't have enough money to start
Speaker 1: up the production costs. That's a really good return on investment. Yes,
Speaker 1: a hundred fifty dollar loan leading to a hundred forty
Speaker 1: million dollars state not bad. Yeah. In nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: a company called Binny and Smith, which also owned Crayola
Speaker 1: Crayons purchased the rights to Silly Putty, and Benny and
Speaker 1: Smith still own those rights, although the company changed its
Speaker 1: name officially to Crayola Llc. In two thousand seven. It's
Speaker 1: nice that the two top sellers in Fall Gathers catalog
Speaker 1: can be together once again. Yes, reunited, and it feels
Speaker 1: so good. And uh, today you can still buy silly putty.
Speaker 1: You can actually buy lots of different variations of silly putty,
Speaker 1: including one that I wish didn't exist. Which one was that?
Speaker 1: Are you gonna make me say it? Yeah? It's a
Speaker 1: poop putty with like fake corn colonels. Yeah, it's called
Speaker 1: ugly putty poop version, which to me is a terrible, terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible misnaming because you know what I would have called it, No,
Speaker 1: silly potty putty. Oh that's that is more clever. You
Speaker 1: know what. I understand that you found that painful, painful
Speaker 1: item and you share it with me. I didn't just
Speaker 1: share it with her, folks, I sent her a picture
Speaker 1: of the product. But I'm going to move on. So
Speaker 1: silly Putty does actually have some practical uses, oddly enough,
Speaker 1: discovered after it was already marketed as a toy. So
Speaker 1: what are some of those practical uses. Well, you can
Speaker 1: use it to remove lint. Yes, that's actually true. People
Speaker 1: have used it as a lint remover on clothing. That's true. Um,
Speaker 1: you've ever been to, say, a restaurant, and you sit
Speaker 1: down at the table and it's one of those irritating
Speaker 1: tables that has one leg slightly the wrong length all
Speaker 1: the time. I'm like the irritating table magnet. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: there are people who have you still putty to essentially
Speaker 1: just you know, wedge some silly putty underneath the wobbly
Speaker 1: leg to stabilize the table. Practical use just just keep
Speaker 1: a wad in your back pocket and bring it with
Speaker 1: you to all restaurants. And then it's also used someplace
Speaker 1: I have never been, which is in space. Yes, I
Speaker 1: also have never been to space. I was so amused
Speaker 1: to hear about this. Yes, people astronauts and space have
Speaker 1: used silly putty in order to secure tools to a
Speaker 1: particular spot inside the spacecraft. Otherwise they tend to float off.
Speaker 1: So if you're working with tools on something in space
Speaker 1: and you wanted to be where it was when you
Speaker 1: dropped it, you stick it against the wall with some
Speaker 1: silly putty because you can just peel the silly putty
Speaker 1: off when you're done. So yeah, it actually has that
Speaker 1: practical use too. Now granted I would argue that's a
Speaker 1: very limited use case scenario. It is, it is. Uh,
Speaker 1: this was a really great story. Uh we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about something else that was also kind of sticky,
Speaker 1: not and not the Pooh putty, And this will be
Speaker 1: one that air Old takes the lead on because she
Speaker 1: did all the research for it. But we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that in just a second. Alright, so we just talked
Speaker 1: about rubber, So let's talk about some string. Okay, what
Speaker 1: kind of string? Silly string? Silly string? Ariel, did you
Speaker 1: know when I first applied to work at How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: one of the articles I got to read early on
Speaker 1: before it published was how Silly String Works, written by
Speaker 1: Tracy Wilson. I didn't know that, but I did read
Speaker 1: that article, and you know Tracy and I know Tracy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we both are friends with Tracy, and uh that
Speaker 1: was It's funny because this takes me back to the
Speaker 1: my first year two thousand and seven with How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about silly string. Where does this come from?
Speaker 1: All right, So silly string was being developed in Nino,
Speaker 1: and it was being developed by Leonard Fish who was
Speaker 1: an inventor, and Rob Cox, who was a chemist. And
Speaker 1: like our last two stories, they weren't developing a children's toy.
Speaker 1: They were trying to create a spray on cast that
Speaker 1: would harden in seconds. Okay, so this is like medic
Speaker 1: So you've broken you've broken your arm, You're in some
Speaker 1: remote location, uh, you may not be anywhere close to
Speaker 1: medical help, and this would be a way to stabilize
Speaker 1: a broken limb until you can actually get more qualified help.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly. The technical patent for it was foamable resinous Composition.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I wrote a few of those when
Speaker 1: I was in college. I'd believe it. And the reason
Speaker 1: that is is because silly string starts as a liquid
Speaker 1: plastic which is made of a little acrylog resin, a
Speaker 1: little surficant, which is what kind of makes it sticky.
Speaker 1: It makes it it's the same thing that makes your
Speaker 1: detergent sticky. Yeah, and a lot of propellant obviously to
Speaker 1: push out of the can. Yeah, which originally was free
Speaker 1: on twelve it's been replaced since then because it has
Speaker 1: been deemed environmentally unsounded, affects the ozone layer. That's one
Speaker 1: of those chloral flora carbons that we heard about all
Speaker 1: the time in the late eighties. Yes, and so when
Speaker 1: you push it out the can, it turns into attack
Speaker 1: e string like substance. Now, when you say tacky, you
Speaker 1: mean sticky, sticky, not like well, I mean some people
Speaker 1: would say that silly string is also, but that wasn't
Speaker 1: how it was intended. I mean you'll be like, oh,
Speaker 1: look at that cast you're wearing. It's not so tacky. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not in the beginning. Anyhow, A little fun fact I
Speaker 1: want to put it in hair, just because we're talking
Speaker 1: about how silly string is created. It takes less force
Speaker 1: to pull the string off a wall than it does
Speaker 1: to pull the string apart. So it's so it's stickiness
Speaker 1: is less strong than it's tensile string. Yes, you think, well,
Speaker 1: this is this is a foam that comes out of
Speaker 1: a can, but it's as actually sticky plastic string. Interesting. Okay,
Speaker 1: So they created this compound, and then they had to
Speaker 1: figure out the best way to distribute it. Since it's
Speaker 1: coming out of a can, they need a nozzle. Okay,
Speaker 1: So yes. So now they're looking at the practical implementation
Speaker 1: of this stuff, and they tried a bunch of nozzles,
Speaker 1: and they tested their prototype a ton of times. And
Speaker 1: I'm in the wrong job, and i want a job
Speaker 1: where I'm testing nozzles, different nozzle designs. I'd imagine it
Speaker 1: would get boring after a while, maybe, but that first
Speaker 1: day has got to be fun. Anyhow. The nozzle they
Speaker 1: landed on, they landed on because it reliably shot the
Speaker 1: foam thirty ft across the room in a consistent straight
Speaker 1: When your friend has broken their leg and you don't
Speaker 1: want to be anywhere near them, like maybe they're covered
Speaker 1: in ants, probably because ants would gets stuck inside the
Speaker 1: phone cast. That's a bad day. Okay, yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: you don't want to you don't want to get more
Speaker 1: involved than you have to be in that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, Okay, Okay, So Fish looked at
Speaker 1: this and he went, well, that was really fun. Uh,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe this shouldn't be a medical thing. Maybe it
Speaker 1: should be a toy. Because so the idea of being
Speaker 1: like this might not have the practical application we were
Speaker 1: hoping for when we first set out to do this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they realized they couldn't make a lot of headway in
Speaker 1: the medical industry, which is a really I wonder if
Speaker 1: they were already doubting their their concept from the early
Speaker 1: get go. I would imagine that by the by trying
Speaker 1: to apply this stuff in a way that could have
Speaker 1: enough surface coverage to be a cast would be a challenge. Well,
Speaker 1: especially you'd have to turn the limb to get it
Speaker 1: all the way around, or maybe you could spray it
Speaker 1: on one side like a splint and then yeah, but
Speaker 1: but it wasn't like it was going on like a
Speaker 1: mist where you could get a lot because if it's
Speaker 1: like a thin spray, then it's almost like you're drawing
Speaker 1: with a pencil, right, You have to line after line
Speaker 1: after line after line. I mean, if you if you
Speaker 1: spray silly string, it comes out and continue as strings.
Speaker 1: So you could just get a giant globs. You could
Speaker 1: get a giant clo anyhow. So he course, they core
Speaker 1: corrected before it even hit market, and Fish, knowing that
Speaker 1: he wasn't really a toy mogul, said I'm gonna find
Speaker 1: a toy company to help me with this. Ah perfect,
Speaker 1: So there he again kind of like al Carter who said,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to manufacture on the mass scale.
Speaker 1: I'm going to need to find someone to bring in
Speaker 1: same sort of approach. Yes, so Fish went to Whemoeoemo.
Speaker 1: WAMO is a huge toy manufacturer. Uh. They sold things
Speaker 1: like hula hoops, frisbee, slipping slides, all kinds of stuff,
Speaker 1: and that same year they issued the pattern for silly string.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just a walk in. Here's our product. Cool,
Speaker 1: we love it, let's do it. Okay, So how did
Speaker 1: it actually go down? All right? So Fishing Cox decided
Speaker 1: the best way to demo the product was to meet
Speaker 1: with a toy executive at WAMMO and then to spray
Speaker 1: an entire can of this string in the executive's office
Speaker 1: to demonstrate it. And the executive was really angry and
Speaker 1: had them escorted off the premise. Wow, this actually reminds
Speaker 1: me of another story that I'll tell you off microphone,
Speaker 1: because it doesn't have anything to do with this episode.
Speaker 1: And I'm already tangent man, so let's let's keep on going.
Speaker 1: So all right, so it sounds to me like it
Speaker 1: was a nonstarter. Then, because the executive is upset, they
Speaker 1: get escored off the premises, They're like, don't come back.
Speaker 1: So how did things turn around? Well, some other people
Speaker 1: went into the office after this executive tried to clean up.
Speaker 1: There was still some The story goes, there are still
Speaker 1: some silly string hanging off of his lamp and they
Speaker 1: saw it and they said, what is this stuff? This
Speaker 1: stuff looks like a lot of fun. So the next day,
Speaker 1: after all this happened, uh fishing Cox got a request,
Speaker 1: got a message for that. They Remma wanted twenty four
Speaker 1: cans of the stuff for basically R and D testing,
Speaker 1: and then two weeks later the contract was signed. Awesome,
Speaker 1: So I see you've got some interesting, like an interesting
Speaker 1: fact here about silly string, at least the claim about
Speaker 1: a can. So tell everybody how much silly string is
Speaker 1: in a can of silly string, according to wammo. According
Speaker 1: to wammo, a quarter of a mile of silly string
Speaker 1: isn't a can of silly string, which is impressive considering
Speaker 1: most of the can is just propellant. Yes. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: also makes me think that, you know, if you need
Speaker 1: a quarter of a mile of stuff in order to
Speaker 1: set your arm, you really do need to seek medical help. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. Also, don't use silly string to do that,
Speaker 1: it won't work and it might burn your skin. Well
Speaker 1: before before, before they sold it to as a toy,
Speaker 1: they did adjust the formula so it was less sticky
Speaker 1: and less Yeah, it would stick and it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: as as it wouldn't harden the same way that the
Speaker 1: stuff originally was meant to. I mean, there there's still
Speaker 1: some dangerous with it, and we'll get into that in
Speaker 1: a little bit. But first, uh, while we should do
Speaker 1: an episode on Wammo at some point, because they've also
Speaker 1: gone through a lot as a company. I'm just going
Speaker 1: to run through some of the changing of hands that
Speaker 1: happened with WAMO. So inwo the owners of Wammo retired
Speaker 1: and they sold the company to Krantzco. And then Kransco
Speaker 1: then sold Wamo to Mattel in everything they do like
Speaker 1: silly putty. Was it s like magic eate ball? Yes,
Speaker 1: all right. So then Mattel does some restructuring of the company,
Speaker 1: including creating a new Wammo, and they put a bunch
Speaker 1: of the products into the new Weamo company, and then
Speaker 1: they sent some of the products elsewhere and one of
Speaker 1: those products was silly string. Sometime between and two thousand one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we love it when we can't nail things down with
Speaker 1: our sources. Yeah, WAMO gave the rights for silly String
Speaker 1: to Julius Salmon and the car Freshener Corporation Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: who then made and distributed silly string through their toy division,
Speaker 1: Chef for Kicks. So wait a minute, there's a car
Speaker 1: Freshener Corporation that has a toy division. Yes, okay, but okay,
Speaker 1: so there's conflicting reports. So some say that car Freshener
Speaker 1: bought Just for Kicks in seven and Just for Kicks
Speaker 1: was already making silly string. Other reports say that WEIMO
Speaker 1: gave the car Freshener Corporation the patent in or and
Speaker 1: then the official Silly String website says they've been manufacturing
Speaker 1: millions and millions of cans out of their manufacturing facility
Speaker 1: in de Witt, Iowa since two thousand one. It's hard
Speaker 1: to pinpoint because Just for Kicks doesn't have their own
Speaker 1: website and isn't even mentioned on the Little trees dot
Speaker 1: com website, which is the car air fresheners that Car
Speaker 1: Freshener Corporation make. Okay, yeah, but so what we're hearing
Speaker 1: is there's a shadow organization making silly string. But we
Speaker 1: do know that car Freshener Organization. Sorry, car Freshener Corporation
Speaker 1: is the parent company that currently owns silly string. It
Speaker 1: is on the Silly String website, all right. So in
Speaker 1: two thousand six, a few American companies got in trouble
Speaker 1: for selling imported silly string, mainly coming out of China.
Speaker 1: So these are are knockoff products, especially because they had
Speaker 1: propellants that had been banned, So they got confiscated and
Speaker 1: destroyed in a way that wouldn't hurt the environment, right,
Speaker 1: just thrown into a basement with a bunch of board kids. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now that's so mean. It took me a second, that's
Speaker 1: I know, because you thought Jonathan just added something material
Speaker 1: to this podcast, and then you all know he did not.
Speaker 1: I mean, I really do listen to your comments, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: they just don't sink in until about later. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm like a protosaurus. It takes a while for to
Speaker 1: get to my brain. Um. Anyhow, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: American silly string doesn't have a lot of these dangerous,
Speaker 1: dangerous propellants, it is still dangerous. Some of the other
Speaker 1: propellants to use other than free on twelve can do
Speaker 1: things like catch on fire, or can get too cold
Speaker 1: and freeze your skin. Yeah. So, even even allowable cans
Speaker 1: of silly string have warnings on them. But they also
Speaker 1: are a banned in certain cities for being otherwise environmentally unsound.
Speaker 1: They're hard to clean up, they can clog storm drains,
Speaker 1: they could be used by jerk wads, Yeah to totally
Speaker 1: like vandalize a property. They can go into the ocean.
Speaker 1: They don't break down quickly. Again, vandals, I'm guessing that
Speaker 1: might be a real big reason behind it. Like it's
Speaker 1: hard to clean up. You don't want silly string stuck
Speaker 1: to your street forever. But no. One of the things
Speaker 1: I think is really interesting here is that you have
Speaker 1: a note that silly string has found practical uses in
Speaker 1: some very serious applications. Like you wouldn't think of it
Speaker 1: with the name silly string, but it's been used to
Speaker 1: help military operations. Yeah so, like so, like silly putty,
Speaker 1: this does have practical applications. Uh, some stories say as
Speaker 1: early as the Vietnam War. We're not exactly sure when
Speaker 1: silly string became a thing to use, but apparently people
Speaker 1: have been using it for a while. They in the military.
Speaker 1: People spray it in areas where they think there might
Speaker 1: be trip wires or booby traps or bombs because the
Speaker 1: string is sturdy enough to not break when it hits
Speaker 1: the wire, so that drapes across and it shows you
Speaker 1: where the wire is, Yes, but it's not heavy enough
Speaker 1: to actually trip the wire. And in this really made
Speaker 1: really big news in two thousand and six two thousand
Speaker 1: seven because there was a young soldier who wrote to
Speaker 1: his mom for a couple of cans of silly string,
Speaker 1: and when she found out what he needed them for,
Speaker 1: she's like, I'm going to send him a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of cans of silly string. Uh. And then she couldn't
Speaker 1: send them because the US Post has restrictions on sending materials.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, in the mail. And so they ended up
Speaker 1: with a stockpile of eighty thousand cans in New Jersey. Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And some some were donated by Just for Kicks, the
Speaker 1: company that makes it. Yes, Eventually they did find somebody
Speaker 1: who could ship them to Iraq, where this soldier was.
Speaker 1: So silly string is still around the companies that technically
Speaker 1: is distributing making it now is Silly String Products, but
Speaker 1: that's part of the car Preessional Corporation. Yes, and they're
Speaker 1: based of Waterton, New York. I don't like that. And
Speaker 1: they're based out of Waterton, New York. Well it's uh
Speaker 1: so that is also a story that I like, I
Speaker 1: had read about how it works, but I hadn't really
Speaker 1: read too much into the history of it. So this
Speaker 1: is all really fascinating to me. And again it shows
Speaker 1: how people can take lemons and make lemonade on a
Speaker 1: big business scale. And if your lemonade doesn't sell, maybe
Speaker 1: you sell it as a skin cleanser to a child
Speaker 1: or maybe as mace who knows. But yeah, now this
Speaker 1: was this was cool because I think the lessons when
Speaker 1: you say lessons learn, Like the lesson here is you
Speaker 1: don't necessarily just accept failure as failure. You look and
Speaker 1: to see where opportunities are. Now those opportunities may just
Speaker 1: be learned from your mistakes so that you don't repeat them.
Speaker 1: There are certainly times you need to move on, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then there are other times where you're where you
Speaker 1: may think, well, I set out to go for goal A,
Speaker 1: this did not achieve goal A. But it may turn
Speaker 1: out that this could be a stepping stone to goal B,
Speaker 1: which is equally valid, and I can still go after
Speaker 1: goal A later on if I want to. But if
Speaker 1: I use this, I can actually use it as a
Speaker 1: way to earn revenue as opposed to it just being
Speaker 1: a total loss. And again, obviously that's not applicable in
Speaker 1: every situation, but it does remind us to to reevaluate
Speaker 1: when we fail, and to say, first of all, this
Speaker 1: isn't the end of the world. Second of all, what
Speaker 1: can we learn from this? Is there anything that we
Speaker 1: can salvage for this or even just apply this to
Speaker 1: the next attempt. So I think that that is a
Speaker 1: really fun way to do it. Like we we pick
Speaker 1: three sort of light and uh and silly silly was
Speaker 1: in the name of two of the different products. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna start calling it a silly magic gate ball, now
Speaker 1: a silly meant just so we can have a nice,
Speaker 1: nice collective there. But yes, this was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: And now we'll probably occasionally do a little one off
Speaker 1: episodes like this where we step outside of our normal
Speaker 1: profile of a specific business at a specific time, but
Speaker 1: we'll be going back to that that tried and true formula,
Speaker 1: because that is what the show is is mainly about.
Speaker 1: But yes, if you have any ideas for things similar
Speaker 1: to this that you would like for a very silly
Speaker 1: episode of Business on the Brink or an't even not
Speaker 1: silly but just outside of our norm, you should send
Speaker 1: us an email. Where can they do that aerial well, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: they can do that at feedback at the Brink Podcast
Speaker 1: dot Show. That's and you can also visit our website
Speaker 1: that's also the Brink Podcast dot Show, where you will
Speaker 1: find an archive of all of our past episodes and
Speaker 1: information about your lovable hosts such as me I have
Speaker 1: been Jonathan Strickland and me I've been aerial casting. Bye.
Speaker 1: Business on the Brink is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,