Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry rolling in there,
Speaker 1: and this is stuff you should know for all the
Speaker 1: kiddies out there. For the cats, the kiddies, there was
Speaker 1: a D d oh, two d s and an I E.
Speaker 1: Not no, not the nice call back man. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was a good one, Bass Salts. Probably shouldn't mention that
Speaker 1: on the one for the kiddies. Uh, Chuck, Yes, have
Speaker 1: you ever tested a toy? Um? No? Did you ever
Speaker 1: want to? Well? Yeah, I mean I've done some product
Speaker 1: testing before because I have a friend or had friend
Speaker 1: that worked in market research and she would occasionally hit
Speaker 1: me up for a burger taste or a beer drink
Speaker 1: or a tool test, but never toys. Wow, I'll bet
Speaker 1: the beer drink was fun. That's great, drink a little
Speaker 1: beer and you get paid like a hundred bucks. But
Speaker 1: she's like, no, no, you can't swallow. You have to
Speaker 1: switch it around in your mouth and spit it out. Actually,
Speaker 1: most of the beer one is the only one I did.
Speaker 1: I think there was only one that was a taste
Speaker 1: a lot of times it's just like, what do you
Speaker 1: think of this logo type of thing? Oh? Really? So,
Speaker 1: like the beer wasn't even in the room with you?
Speaker 1: What a tease? Yeah? They just throw things up and
Speaker 1: I just go boring. Yeah where you like, you probably
Speaker 1: could have explained this better when you asked me to
Speaker 1: test the beer. Well you get that little envelope with
Speaker 1: a hundred bucks? Also, who cares? Oh nice? Is that
Speaker 1: how much that pays? Sometimes more sometimes fift. I did
Speaker 1: a frozen yogurt one for fifty bucks one time, but
Speaker 1: it ranged between fifty and a couple of hundred. Very cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah cash money? Yeah, why not? You know you can
Speaker 1: go buy a lot of beer with that. Totally well.
Speaker 1: I remember hearing about the idea of toy testing as
Speaker 1: a kid and just being like, how how do I
Speaker 1: do this? My parents are like, I don't know, we
Speaker 1: both work, we're busy to go be a latch key kid.
Speaker 1: Especially after the movie Big Oh. Yeah, there was like
Speaker 1: a lot of toy testing in that right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that was his job, and I forgot about that,
Speaker 1: totally forgot about that. I just remember the piano scene
Speaker 1: and then the scene at the end, Well, don't spoil it. Okay,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I said the scene at the end hopefully
Speaker 1: didn't spoil it for anybody that big ends eventually. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't spoil it. But it has something to do with
Speaker 1: it a dirty bomb, right, that's the next st episode,
Speaker 1: the big surprise ending. So anyway, I remember wanting to
Speaker 1: be a toy tester and it never panned out for me.
Speaker 1: And now that I have grown up a little bit
Speaker 1: and I've read this article, especially doing a little research,
Speaker 1: toy testing still sounds awesome if you're a kid, but
Speaker 1: if you're a parent, it does not sound all that great.
Speaker 1: What do you mean, like if your kid does that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a lot of work, man, Like getting
Speaker 1: the toy and having your kid play with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not like that's the end of it.
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of a lot of extra stuff
Speaker 1: you have to do. You have to pay attention to
Speaker 1: your kid while they're playing with it. You have to uh,
Speaker 1: you've got to write reports and stuff. There's like if
Speaker 1: there's work to it if you're the parent, for sure.
Speaker 1: So in other words, you have to take them out
Speaker 1: of there. Uh, they're small plane brick room and actually
Speaker 1: let them play, Yeah, take off their hannibal lector face
Speaker 1: mask and their straight jacket. I never thought about it
Speaker 1: that way to work, and then put them back in
Speaker 1: after they were done with their toy. Um. No this again.
Speaker 1: If you're the kid, great job. If you're a parent,
Speaker 1: it seems tough. Plus also, one of the things that's
Speaker 1: tough about it is that this is not something that
Speaker 1: UM is easily come by. I think, although it's a
Speaker 1: lot easier today to get a job for your kid
Speaker 1: as a toy tester than it was, say like in yeah,
Speaker 1: I think back then you had to literally depend on
Speaker 1: someone getting in touch with you, right, or you had
Speaker 1: to like go show up at headquarters and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: what do you think you kid? Huh? You know? All right, well,
Speaker 1: let's let's go a little further, a little further back,
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of different testing that goes on
Speaker 1: with toys. There's the kind I was just talking about
Speaker 1: research market research, right, like you and your beer logos? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like playing with this toy, kid, what do you think stink?
Speaker 1: There's also the kind that UM that has to do
Speaker 1: with like actually making sure it's safe, which is another
Speaker 1: kind of toy testing. And we're going to cover both. Um.
Speaker 1: But the idea of testing toys to make sure that
Speaker 1: they didn't you know, disembowel the kid that was playing
Speaker 1: with them with some weird sharp edge or missile that
Speaker 1: was actually you know, could would would stick in your
Speaker 1: gut and catch fire or something like that. That's actually
Speaker 1: a relatively new concept, like surprisingly new. Actually yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean toys have been around for thousands of years. Like
Speaker 1: they found toys that are potentially four thousand years old.
Speaker 1: I saw a rattle that was from Turkey that maybe
Speaker 1: like four thousand years old. And by all accounts, this
Speaker 1: Italian find was a sort of like an early easy
Speaker 1: bake oven kit. Yeah, it was like a toy kitchen
Speaker 1: basically kitchen stead. Yeah. So, like little kids have always
Speaker 1: wanted to play with stuff. It's just part of being
Speaker 1: a child. Whether it's took Took Jr. Or uh, you know,
Speaker 1: all the way up to modern times. Uh. And in
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century it became a thing to where the
Speaker 1: Enlightenment philosopher said, you know what, learning through play is
Speaker 1: a really valuable thing. So, like legit toys started being
Speaker 1: developed for the first time. Yeah, I think this is
Speaker 1: about the time maybe a little before. But this is
Speaker 1: probably the seeds of where childhood came from, and we
Speaker 1: need to do an episode just on childhood. I think,
Speaker 1: man like when it was allowed. Yeah, like, this is
Speaker 1: not it's not like a a natural. It may be natural,
Speaker 1: but observing it is not a longstanding thing among humans.
Speaker 1: It was like, well, you're five years old, time for
Speaker 1: you to get to work. Exactly Like here you get
Speaker 1: a little more cold dust on your face. You look jobless,
Speaker 1: you know. So, Um, the idea of kids playing, especially
Speaker 1: to kind of learn and grow into adults. That that, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like finds its roots in the Enlightenment. And so
Speaker 1: you've got that that that one branch or that one
Speaker 1: sapling coming up and it starts to integrate and merge
Speaker 1: with another one that comes up later on in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century industrialization. Yeah, so now you have the idea
Speaker 1: that kids should play with toys because prior to industrialization,
Speaker 1: families may have made them themselves. It may like the
Speaker 1: kid may have been just playing with a kitchen utensil,
Speaker 1: forced to use its imagination. Um. And I just realized
Speaker 1: it keep referring to the kid as it yeah, his
Speaker 1: or her imagination. Um, like a broom becomes a horse
Speaker 1: pretty easy. Yeah, or you know, I mean, look at stickball.
Speaker 1: Is there anything simpler than cutting a broom into a
Speaker 1: broomstick and and playing baseball? Right? Or um, A a
Speaker 1: nice ladle can become an electric guitar. Sure, that was
Speaker 1: always my thing. I always played air guitar or whenever
Speaker 1: I could, I would give entire God Man, when I'm like,
Speaker 1: now that I am older, how torturous must this have been?
Speaker 1: I would give entire concerts of like bon Jovi's Slippery
Speaker 1: when Wet, but like it would be an either air
Speaker 1: guitar or a drum set made of like country croc
Speaker 1: lids for symbols and then the tubs for the drum themselves,
Speaker 1: or like a quicker Roads box or something like that.
Speaker 1: But I have like a whole like Tommy Lee drum
Speaker 1: kit made up. All right, I got some questions here,
Speaker 1: I wasn't I wasn't done. I was on us there more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we give this whole concert, and like everybody would come
Speaker 1: into my room and sit there and listen to like
Speaker 1: the first song and be like, okay, one more, and
Speaker 1: I try to go through at least one whole side
Speaker 1: of the tape. Okay, I don't think I ever made
Speaker 1: it through a whole side, but my aim was to
Speaker 1: do the whole album. All right, Well, that that answered
Speaker 1: all my questions. Actually, Okay, I want to know how
Speaker 1: long were these performances? Who you subjected them to? My family?
Speaker 1: And they were long, and they must have been excruciatingly long. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that pretty much sums it up, right, So I'm not
Speaker 1: even sure how I got on that. What my point was, Well,
Speaker 1: because of your imagination of turning household items into fantastical toys,
Speaker 1: that's right. So thanks to industrialization and mass production, toys
Speaker 1: could be made and sold and distributed, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, now you have something like the beginning of
Speaker 1: a consumer culture, especially in America. Yeah, and we're talking
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. It became a real thing. Except back then
Speaker 1: the toys were highlyly to injure or kill your child. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm not highly like it, but but a lot of
Speaker 1: them were pretty dangerous. But there, I found this one
Speaker 1: stat from nineteen sixty eight, and like I've seen it,
Speaker 1: like question, no one was keeping track. Apparently no one
Speaker 1: really started keeping track two toy injuries and deaths until
Speaker 1: like the twenty one century, isn't that jaw dropping? Man?
Speaker 1: UH century is when they started releasing reports with injury
Speaker 1: and death statistics from toys. So I saw this one.
Speaker 1: It was a guestimate, but I saw seven hundred thousand
Speaker 1: injuries from toys in nineteen sixty eight. And that's not
Speaker 1: including jungle gyms and swing sets, bikes, trampolines, probably scooters,
Speaker 1: nothing like that. These are just straight up toys. By
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, I saw that there were eleven children
Speaker 1: who died in the US. Um five of them were
Speaker 1: from tricycles, two of them were from scooters, two or
Speaker 1: from balloons. So really technically only two children died from
Speaker 1: what you would consider like just a straight up toy,
Speaker 1: like a dollar stuffed toy or something like a crane
Speaker 1: or plato. I think both of them were asphyxiation. So
Speaker 1: the idea that there was this huge change from very
Speaker 1: very very dangerous toys into actually a pretty safe industry
Speaker 1: that has to do largely with toy testers. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it was that they finally passed what's known as uh while,
Speaker 1: the first Federal Safety Standards for toys into law, and
Speaker 1: then the National Commission on Product Safety that same year, said,
Speaker 1: all right, we've got eight recommendations for banning toys. And
Speaker 1: I look these up in picture because they're they're kind
Speaker 1: of fun to look at. The Empire Lady Empire Little
Speaker 1: Lady stove, which is basically an easy bake oven, uh
Speaker 1: mixed with a pottery kiln six hundred degrees fahrenheit. This
Speaker 1: thing would kit's sixteen degrees celsius like your home of
Speaker 1: and doesn't get up to six hundred degrees. Probably it
Speaker 1: genuinely does not. I think mine goes to five fifty.
Speaker 1: Maybe in cleaning self cleaning mode it gets up that high.
Speaker 1: But this is not something a little a little toddler
Speaker 1: needs to play with, right and self cleaning mode it
Speaker 1: locks itself, shuts he can't open the door even uh
Speaker 1: what else? The Bird of Paradise sling shot, which looked
Speaker 1: um innocuous enough, but it uh. The deal with that
Speaker 1: one was that had these sharp missiles that could make
Speaker 1: you bleed. But yeah, I think sling shot it just
Speaker 1: begins and ends at that as far as the safety
Speaker 1: is concerned. I looked up sling shots today because I
Speaker 1: had remember the wrist rockets, Yeah, I do. Those things
Speaker 1: were so dangerous did you have one? No, I was
Speaker 1: never allowed to have one, So I had a wrist
Speaker 1: rocket And I looked up today after this article. I
Speaker 1: was like, I wonder, what what's going on in the
Speaker 1: world of sling shots? And dude, you should see some
Speaker 1: of the sling shots on the market today. Are they
Speaker 1: even more dangerous than the wrist rocket? Oh? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: like there are YouTube videos with people with these things that,
Speaker 1: uh they look like little musket balls that you can fire.
Speaker 1: And I mean this guy was shooting these balls with
Speaker 1: a sling shot through like half inch plywood. It's like
Speaker 1: a gun that is a dangerous toy. Wow. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's really just look up extreme sling shots at some
Speaker 1: point and uh and go get one. Yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: eighteen year older and don't have like some you know,
Speaker 1: grudge against anybody. This last one, the Zulu blowgun. Um,
Speaker 1: was was that period in America where you could have
Speaker 1: some kid's toy that was highly raised, just in very dangerous,
Speaker 1: all in one one convenient box. Yeah. I can't imagine
Speaker 1: what the packaging looked like on that one. It looks
Speaker 1: like what do you think it looks like? So um
Speaker 1: kids were choking on the darts, I'm sure, like putting
Speaker 1: the dart in then taking a deep breath exactly. They
Speaker 1: were like, I should have thought this through first, pretty
Speaker 1: much no thing, and that was that, right, So that
Speaker 1: that was That was the first time they started taking
Speaker 1: toy safety seriously. And prior to that, the last time
Speaker 1: they had looked out for little kids was I think
Speaker 1: in the fifties, because in the forties there was a
Speaker 1: lot of um like flash fire deaths among children wearing
Speaker 1: like pajamas because pajamas were made of ray on, this
Speaker 1: new material at the time, and I guess no one
Speaker 1: had ever tested it around a flame. And it turns
Speaker 1: out that it could burn up real quick, and not
Speaker 1: only could it burn the kid badly, possibly to death,
Speaker 1: it could also of them from smoke inhalation from their pajamas, right,
Speaker 1: And even if they survived, they were again very badly burned.
Speaker 1: So Congress passed the flammable um not flammable. Flammable um
Speaker 1: fabric act, I think is what it's called, not flammable.
Speaker 1: And can we can I go off here for a second,
Speaker 1: can we all come together and just agree to drop
Speaker 1: the word inflammable together. There's no reason for it. It's
Speaker 1: just a dangerous word. Uh yeah, I'm still I'm still
Speaker 1: beating the druma on that one too. Yeah, it's dr Nick.
Speaker 1: He's like, flammable means flammable. Uh okay. So they so
Speaker 1: Congress passed this Act to basically say all kids wear
Speaker 1: UM needs to be flame retarded. Now, the problem is
Speaker 1: is the chemicals they used to make the close flame
Speaker 1: retardant was um. They were not. They were the opposite
Speaker 1: of flammable in their credit, but they supposedly were linked
Speaker 1: to kids um an increase in hyperactivity and a decrease
Speaker 1: in i Q. And still today it's very, very tough
Speaker 1: to get kids pajamas that aren't flame retardant with those
Speaker 1: same chemicals in them. But apparently in the mid nineties
Speaker 1: Congress allowed a loophole they keep going where if the
Speaker 1: pajamas were of a snug fit, they could be not
Speaker 1: flame resistant, right, they didn't have to have the flame
Speaker 1: retardant chemicals because um, to to burn fire needs oxygen
Speaker 1: and if there's no oxygen really between the kid's skin
Speaker 1: and the pajamas because they're snugly, snug fitting pajamas, then um,
Speaker 1: the fire is probably not gonna happen. So they don't
Speaker 1: have to have flame retardant chemicals. That's the one loophole.
Speaker 1: Isn't that fascinating? Well, yeah, and now we can get
Speaker 1: back to the long standing tradition of leaving a lit
Speaker 1: candle in your baby's for the first month. Well, there
Speaker 1: was one other thing I saw, chuck too. There is
Speaker 1: a long standing rumor that it was actually the tobacco
Speaker 1: industry that got the Flammable Fabrics Act pushed through because
Speaker 1: they were trying to deflect the blame for um death
Speaker 1: by fire accidental fire from cigarettes to the actual fabric manufacturers,
Speaker 1: even though a lot of people die in their beds
Speaker 1: from their mattress going up because they fell asleep with
Speaker 1: a cigarette in their mouth. Smoking in bed it seems
Speaker 1: like such a such a thing that nobody would do anymore.
Speaker 1: But I know people still do it, yes, but it's
Speaker 1: still shocking when you see it in a in a
Speaker 1: movie or TV show, which I used to us see
Speaker 1: that all the time in movies, But now when you
Speaker 1: see it, you think people really smoke in bed. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, I don't know either. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't smoke. All right, Well, let's take a break, um
Speaker 1: and we will come back and talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about different kinds of toy testing right after this. Alright, so, um,
Speaker 1: there are mechanisms in place and regulatory bodies in place
Speaker 1: now that are in charge of making sure toys are safe,
Speaker 1: and these are constantly It's not like they wrote the
Speaker 1: book on it and said all right, we're good. Um,
Speaker 1: as toys expand and are developed, the safety standards need
Speaker 1: to be changing all the time, and they do, which
Speaker 1: is great. So um. One thing I saw, ironically enough,
Speaker 1: is that somebody actually did write the book on this.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, but it's not a finalized version, right Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: See do you mean like they updated as new science
Speaker 1: comes in? Yeah, yeah, agreed, agreed. Um. But even that,
Speaker 1: you know, just the idea of creating standards again is
Speaker 1: pretty new because I think until like the nineties, Um,
Speaker 1: they they didn't really update the toy safety requirements for
Speaker 1: a while. It started to finally pick up, I think
Speaker 1: in the nineties, and then in the two thousands there
Speaker 1: is a group, um, an organization called a st M.
Speaker 1: Could not for the life of me find what that
Speaker 1: stands for, but they created the Standard Consumer Safety Specification
Speaker 1: for Toy Safety, which apparently is the universal guidelines for
Speaker 1: toy safety, American standards for toy manufacturers. Maybe that's not bad, Chuck,
Speaker 1: all right, that was my first stab at it. That's
Speaker 1: pretty good. Uh. You also have companies like in our
Speaker 1: article here at how Stuff Works called Intertech, not in
Speaker 1: a tech? What's in a tech? I think that was
Speaker 1: office space, wasn't it? Oh? I think so um Interchech,
Speaker 1: which basically they they're professional toy testers. They have laboratories
Speaker 1: where they have technicians that say, here, let me um,
Speaker 1: let me see if I can bite the eyes off
Speaker 1: of this doll into my mouth, and let me see
Speaker 1: if it's so small that I can swallow that I
Speaker 1: let me rip it apart, let me light it on fire. Uh.
Speaker 1: In England they have I think actually not even just
Speaker 1: England and all of Britain. They they have a rule
Speaker 1: that a toy burn rate can be no more than
Speaker 1: one inch per second, with the idea that if a
Speaker 1: toy does catch on fire, at least your kid has
Speaker 1: enough time to throw it away, throw it towards the
Speaker 1: gas can and run. And then the EU has their
Speaker 1: own set of standards too. So with that burn thing,
Speaker 1: I should say, at least if if a toy burns
Speaker 1: faster than thirty millimeters a second, which is a little
Speaker 1: over an inch, um, then it can't be sold in
Speaker 1: the EU. Right. And then if it burns between ten
Speaker 1: millimeters second in thirty millimeters a second, it still has
Speaker 1: to have a warning that says warning, keep away from fire,
Speaker 1: right right? Um? And yeah, the whole idea is like,
Speaker 1: if the kid sees the thing on fire, they're gonna
Speaker 1: throw it and run and the household kitch on fire.
Speaker 1: But the kid's not gonna burn up, right unless the
Speaker 1: kid goes and tells the grown up. I think that
Speaker 1: should be in the in the warning too, Throw doll, run,
Speaker 1: tell grown up, right, don't go make like a ham sandwich.
Speaker 1: I saw this really great video from inter Tech and uh,
Speaker 1: it's called Teddy Bear testing. Did you see it? It
Speaker 1: is great. It's that they clearly are aware of what
Speaker 1: that what they're doing is bizarre and morbid if you
Speaker 1: just start standing there watching it as an observer. But
Speaker 1: you know, the point to the whole thing is actually
Speaker 1: quite quite noble and heroic. But one of the things
Speaker 1: that they did was there's this like three pronged It
Speaker 1: was almost like you know those things that a jeweler
Speaker 1: uses to pick up diamonds with tweezers kind of. But
Speaker 1: they have one that's like a three pronged thing where
Speaker 1: you push down on the end and the prongs extend
Speaker 1: and open a little bit, and you pick something up
Speaker 1: and then release the end and it it draws it
Speaker 1: up and tightens it and holds it. Snuck's that's gonna
Speaker 1: be in the O E. D one day, I think.
Speaker 1: But with this that was a little bigger and much sturdier.
Speaker 1: And they hooked the dolls, the teddy bears I to
Speaker 1: this thing and then pull the teddy bear back to
Speaker 1: see how many pounds of pressure it could be saying
Speaker 1: before it came off. And that's the other thing too.
Speaker 1: They're not just like pulling this and like having fun
Speaker 1: like they're they're making measurements and they're using like standardized
Speaker 1: um like force that they're applying to this, right, Like
Speaker 1: the the seems the sewing has to um be able
Speaker 1: to withstand like one kilogram of wait for ten seconds
Speaker 1: without opening up. Just things like that, right, And it's
Speaker 1: thanks to these groups like the EU or the A S. T.
Speaker 1: M and who who have gone through and said this
Speaker 1: is like if your toy makes a sound, it should
Speaker 1: be no louder than this. Or if you are manufacturing
Speaker 1: a toy gun, it should be marked like this, so
Speaker 1: it's obviously a toy and not a real gun. Like,
Speaker 1: just comprehensive standards that everyone could adhere to to keep
Speaker 1: little kiddies two d's safe. I just think it's great
Speaker 1: that there's people out there doing that because it's a
Speaker 1: kind of a new thing. Well sure, and they ostensibly
Speaker 1: have done the research on, like they really cover all
Speaker 1: their bases, like what what could we imagine a child
Speaker 1: doing with this thing? You know, I suspect that even
Speaker 1: as much time as they spend doing that, kids still
Speaker 1: come up with some black stuff to do with toys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I told the story during the Evil Kneedl thing,
Speaker 1: we used to make uh coat hanger hoops and dip
Speaker 1: them in gasoline to jump. I wish I would have
Speaker 1: known you back then so I could stand there and
Speaker 1: watch that. Man. Well you would have been putting on
Speaker 1: your we would have been running the pyrotechnic for your
Speaker 1: bon Jovi concert. Oh wow, good thinking, Gott and I
Speaker 1: would have been all over that. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: too late, that's true. Um, all right, so that's toy
Speaker 1: making sure toys are safe. Um. Once the toy is safe,
Speaker 1: then there's this whole second thing that we were kind
Speaker 1: of talking about from the movie Big. Um, like the
Speaker 1: great scene when Tom Hanks is first and uh, growing
Speaker 1: up Josh Baskin is in the office. What did you
Speaker 1: look up his name? Or do you just walk around
Speaker 1: knowing it? No? No, I know the movie Big Inside. Now, Wow,
Speaker 1: is that one of your favorites? I you you've been
Speaker 1: running around asking people on movie Crush with their favorite movie?
Speaker 1: Is what's yours? It's Big It No, no, no, but
Speaker 1: it's up there. I love the movie Big I've seen
Speaker 1: it a dozen times or more easily. Josh bat Yes,
Speaker 1: a little Josh Baskins all grown up in the office,
Speaker 1: and um, what's his name? Was it? John? Heard that
Speaker 1: he recently passed away. He's the the evil corporate executive
Speaker 1: that has his idea and remember his famous line stop
Speaker 1: having fun? Yeah? And he he makes his big presentation.
Speaker 1: I think it was like a building that turns into
Speaker 1: a robot. And Tom Hanks very sweetly just raised his handset.
Speaker 1: I don't get it. He's like, what do you mean?
Speaker 1: I don't get it. Uh, And that's basically what they
Speaker 1: want to ask kids, like, do you want to play
Speaker 1: with this? Is it fun? Like? Adults design these things,
Speaker 1: and they might. I would assume that if you're a
Speaker 1: toy designer, you have a mind of a child to
Speaker 1: a certain degree, but you're still not a kid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's got to pass that test, right exactly. That's the
Speaker 1: whole point of having toy testers. It's it's kids like
Speaker 1: that's they're not adult toy testers. Maybe their parents are
Speaker 1: there or something like that. But the whole point of
Speaker 1: actual market development toy testing is by just giving did
Speaker 1: some toys and seeing what they do with it. That's right.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of a lot of places that
Speaker 1: do this right, Like um, apparently Mattel has something called
Speaker 1: the Mattel Imagination Center in El Segundo. And if you
Speaker 1: live around Al Sagundo or willing to travel to Al Sagundo,
Speaker 1: and you have a child at zero to thirteen, there's
Speaker 1: a pretty high likelihood that you will be able to
Speaker 1: get into the door and your kid will be able
Speaker 1: to play with some toys and and be watched by
Speaker 1: scientists behind two way mirrors. But that's pretty I mean
Speaker 1: that's a little I think that's pretty close to reality.
Speaker 1: I think that the places where you go to actually
Speaker 1: test on site with toys are a little more fun
Speaker 1: than like a like a room with a two way mirror,
Speaker 1: But it's still the same principle. Generally, you're being observed
Speaker 1: while you're playing with toys as a kid. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there's um to get these gigs, the dream job for
Speaker 1: a kid or I guess you think the job from
Speaker 1: hell for a parent. Um attention, Like sometimes they might
Speaker 1: get in touch with you. Sometimes you might can follow
Speaker 1: the social media page of like the Mattel Imagination Imagination Center.
Speaker 1: Uh they I mean if you just google toy testing jobs,
Speaker 1: there are pages and pages on places where you can
Speaker 1: submit your name and uh it's you know, from there.
Speaker 1: It's probably a bit of a lottery like experience, depending
Speaker 1: on what exactly they're looking for. Like you might fit
Speaker 1: your kid might fit a demographic, but there's still a
Speaker 1: lot of kids in that demo that they have to
Speaker 1: sip through. So it's not like you can say, you know,
Speaker 1: don't promise your kid you can get them a job
Speaker 1: as a toy tester. Right, Well, yeah, you may want to.
Speaker 1: I don't even tell them that that's a job until
Speaker 1: you've secured it. Just don't even say the word toy
Speaker 1: around your kid. Yeah, that exactly. Um, So there's that's
Speaker 1: there's The old school way is like going directly to
Speaker 1: the company, like to go to Mattel or um Fisher
Speaker 1: Price maintains something called its play Lab, and you can
Speaker 1: email these companies directly and basically send your kids resume,
Speaker 1: maybe a video of your kid playing with a toy. Um.
Speaker 1: What they would be looking for, Like you said, they
Speaker 1: might be looking for a certain demographic um, but they
Speaker 1: more often than not if they're just looking for like
Speaker 1: a go to toy tester to where your kid actually
Speaker 1: has the job of being a toy tester, where somebody,
Speaker 1: some company or companies are mailing your kid toys to
Speaker 1: test you. You basically need to audition for that, and
Speaker 1: you would want to include a video and that your
Speaker 1: kid in the video would want to be using like
Speaker 1: coherent words that express how he or she's feeling about
Speaker 1: that toy at that moment um, and you may get
Speaker 1: picked up. That's the old school way of doing it,
Speaker 1: although if you want to do super old school, like
Speaker 1: use a video camera and sending like a VHS tape
Speaker 1: of your kid playing with the toy. That's the old
Speaker 1: school way to do it. Now you can go onto
Speaker 1: onto social media, like you were saying, Chuck, and um,
Speaker 1: they there's a lot it's a lot easier for companies
Speaker 1: to reach out in a targeted way, um to to
Speaker 1: basically tap kids to become toy testers. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: are a mom, mommy blogs are huge. They are huge
Speaker 1: on the Internet and they get sent everything from you know,
Speaker 1: um baby products that they can use to mommy products
Speaker 1: to toys. So tell your mom start a blog, become
Speaker 1: a top blogger, and she'll thank you because then she'll
Speaker 1: be rich. Yeah, say, mom, start a viral blog today?
Speaker 1: Who is it? Ellen degenerous as a as a show
Speaker 1: feature where she has these kids that come out and
Speaker 1: test toys on TV. Um, you're not gonna get that
Speaker 1: job because these two kids already have it. Well that
Speaker 1: one of the kids. I'm not sure what trade Hearts
Speaker 1: background was, but Noah Ritter, he was the apparently kid
Speaker 1: on Allen Remember him, m No. He he came off
Speaker 1: ride and was asked by a local newsperson like what
Speaker 1: he thought of the ride? He's like, well, apparently Um,
Speaker 1: I thought it was great. Had me scared half to death.
Speaker 1: You've never seen the video of that kid. It's beyond adorable.
Speaker 1: He's one of the two toy testers now, so that's
Speaker 1: how I got that gig. Yes, good for him. What else?
Speaker 1: You can start a YouTube channel? There are actual kids
Speaker 1: out there with their own YouTube channels where they test toys. Uh.
Speaker 1: And beyond that, I want to recommend have you ever
Speaker 1: seen our buddy Joe Randazzo's Lego Dude reviews? Yeah? I have.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you have to be a friend
Speaker 1: of Joie or not, but go out there and look
Speaker 1: at Lego Dude reviews, Lego City Logging Truck and our
Speaker 1: friend Joe formally of Onion, informally of at Midnight Fame,
Speaker 1: our comedian writer friend. It's just the funniest thing I've
Speaker 1: ever seen. And it doesn't translate everyone because there are
Speaker 1: comments like is this guy for real? Right? Yeah? Because
Speaker 1: it straight But it's like all those reviews like they
Speaker 1: start off with the box that it comes in and
Speaker 1: said Joe starts off of the box and how well
Speaker 1: taped up it is. It's just it's just really funny.
Speaker 1: He's a nice, nice spoof leg reviews, Lego Dude reviews,
Speaker 1: and there are all kinds of those, but specifically Lego
Speaker 1: City Logging Truck. Uh. And you'll you'll just see that
Speaker 1: sweet face of Joe's and you'll know it's him. But
Speaker 1: there's a boy called well, I don't know what his
Speaker 1: full name in was. Evan tube HD is a YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: Yeah he didn't his sister do reviews. Yeah, and he is.
Speaker 1: He has four and a half a million subscribers. Is
Speaker 1: that as of today? Yeah, yeah, four point six. I
Speaker 1: noticed that they did like a pizza challenge where they
Speaker 1: just put weird stuff on pizza and it has like
Speaker 1: sixty five million views. Unbelievable. It is unbelievable. It's crazy, Chuck.
Speaker 1: If you if you ask somebody like back in to
Speaker 1: conceive of like what TVs like in the future, and
Speaker 1: they said, Um, it's people just opening up toys on
Speaker 1: on TV and that's it. And you'd be like, that's
Speaker 1: a pretty good, pretty good description. I would buy that.
Speaker 1: Well the futures. Now, well there's the other one, the
Speaker 1: um Disney Collector. Br Right, this is who I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Nine and a half million subscribers, and like you said,
Speaker 1: there It is literally nothing but the hands of some woman,
Speaker 1: some anonymous uh robot ai creature. Right now, it's a
Speaker 1: real person's hands opening up toys and playing with them
Speaker 1: and talking a little bit in a very creepy voice.
Speaker 1: If you ask me, I think it's great. You think
Speaker 1: the voice is great? Dude? Yeah, Pepper Pig. It creeped
Speaker 1: me out. Oh I liked it. Her Okay, So her
Speaker 1: name probably is Vera crid didiou woman, vera money bags. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a woman. Yeah, get this, she's she's even more wealthy
Speaker 1: than you realize. She's a woman in winter Park, Florida.
Speaker 1: If her, then that's so. That's that's that's supposedly her
Speaker 1: and her husband, messiest critdio um. He has something called
Speaker 1: Blue Toys Club Surprise, which is the boys version basically
Speaker 1: of Disney Collector b R. And together they seriously are
Speaker 1: probably clearing twenty plus million dollars a year, making a
Speaker 1: video every day and uploading it. And she will say
Speaker 1: Peppa Pig or something like that and say what it
Speaker 1: is the product that she's holding or opening or playing
Speaker 1: with or whatever, and that like that's it. Man, It's
Speaker 1: like you were saying, like all you see her her hands.
Speaker 1: She's opening the packaging. She's actually really good at opening packaging.
Speaker 1: She never gets frustrated. I didn't see her like, um,
Speaker 1: I didn't see them have to cut and like there
Speaker 1: was no jump cut or anything like that. She's really
Speaker 1: good at opening packaging. Um. And then she kind of
Speaker 1: says what it is out loud and then just like
Speaker 1: sets it down to the side. And I was watching
Speaker 1: it like, this is ridiculous. This is the first ten seconds.
Speaker 1: This is ridiculous. People actually watch this. I can't believe this.
Speaker 1: And then the next thing I knew. The next four
Speaker 1: minutes were me sitting there with my mouth kind of
Speaker 1: open a little bit, just zoned out watching this. I
Speaker 1: think that's the whole point. It's um, kids love it.
Speaker 1: Toddler's love watching. I can see why her husband though,
Speaker 1: or I should say Blue Toys Club Surprise, he didn't
Speaker 1: talk at all. And then I find a little creepy.
Speaker 1: He he just like plays with them. He plays with
Speaker 1: them more than she does. She just opens them. He
Speaker 1: opens him and plays with them, but he doesn't talk.
Speaker 1: But again, you just see the hands. Twenty million dollars
Speaker 1: a year. What a world. It is quite a world.
Speaker 1: It's the future. All right, should we take another break? Yes,
Speaker 1: all right, let's do that, and we're gonna come back
Speaker 1: and finish up with a little fun with some of
Speaker 1: the most dangerous toys of all time right after this. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back, man, Are you ready? I'm ready. So this,
Speaker 1: this list could go on for years. Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: lots of lists like this out there, so in this
Speaker 1: and it's not meant to be comprehensive. This is just
Speaker 1: a selection of some of our favorites. Huh so um.
Speaker 1: One that I saw was the snack Time Kid cabbage
Speaker 1: Patch doll, yes, which you could feed real stuff to
Speaker 1: her that in the ad they feed like the cabbage
Speaker 1: Patch kid a French fry or two or maybe I
Speaker 1: think it came with food, That's what it was. It
Speaker 1: came with food and you could feed it and it
Speaker 1: would just keep chewing and swallow and then bam, the
Speaker 1: plastic French fry was gone. Your cabbage Patch kids just
Speaker 1: ate a French fry, can you believe it? And that
Speaker 1: was the whole thing, right, But they they would chew
Speaker 1: no matter what was placed in their mouth, yeah, like
Speaker 1: fingers or hair, right, and they wouldn't stop either. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you're a little kid could end up with like
Speaker 1: a crushed finger, lose a big tuft of hair, and
Speaker 1: the cabbage patch kid would just be all fists and
Speaker 1: elbow saying more and more and more, give me more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a here's that's something for your nightmares. Is a
Speaker 1: cabbage patch kid just chewing their way towards your exactly
Speaker 1: connected by your hair to you. Uh so that was
Speaker 1: recalled by Mattel So they did the right thing there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they did. Um. Probably the most famous one of all
Speaker 1: time is lawn darts. Yeah, lawn darts. Uh, I played
Speaker 1: it when I was a kid. If you haven't seen
Speaker 1: lawn darts, just you're of a newer generation, just google it.
Speaker 1: And they were you. You would have two big kind
Speaker 1: of hula hoop rings, uh, kind of like a horseshoe game,
Speaker 1: and you would launch these large plastic, sharpish darts plastic
Speaker 1: on one end. Yeah, the fins were plastic. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: the stick part or the what would you call that
Speaker 1: the dead end? The pizzer sure, yeah, was metal and
Speaker 1: it was sharpish. It wasn't like a you know, like
Speaker 1: a a razor or anything, but it was sharp enough
Speaker 1: to where if you launch this thing from across the
Speaker 1: yard and you look up and go, I can't see it.
Speaker 1: It's in the sun. All of a sudden, it's in
Speaker 1: your eyeball and you're blind. Yeah, that happened to some people.
Speaker 1: Like people were getting injured by these things. Apparently there
Speaker 1: were seven thousand reported injuries from lawn darts. Would you
Speaker 1: call them jarts? M M no, I never said that.
Speaker 1: I thought you'd call them charts earlier. Okay, Um, that
Speaker 1: is the thing, though, I've heard of yarts. What are they?
Speaker 1: I thought that was the same thing. So maybe that
Speaker 1: was the brand name. Maybe I'm not sure, but they
Speaker 1: they were banned. Actually, they didn't even have a chance
Speaker 1: to be recalled. They were banned in so it is
Speaker 1: illegal to manufacture, sell, possess, and certainly play with lawn
Speaker 1: darts in the US by punishment of death by lawn darts. Yes,
Speaker 1: I just looked it up quickly. By the way, darts
Speaker 1: was the brand name for at least one of them.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there was more than one kind. There definitely was,
Speaker 1: because the one I saw was Franklin yard Darts. Franklin.
Speaker 1: They made the shuttle cocks that my family used to
Speaker 1: play badminton with Did you know I was like a
Speaker 1: world class badminton player. I'm just learning so much today
Speaker 1: now that I think about it. World class is probably misleading.
Speaker 1: Neighborhood class. Neighborhood class for sure. Yet I could destroy
Speaker 1: the neighborhood at least. Yeah, I will still play a
Speaker 1: game of badminton. My brother set one up a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. Of course, how did you do? It
Speaker 1: was okay? Good enough? Yeah? Have you ever watched like
Speaker 1: Olympic Babin. Oh, it's it's awesome. It's so it is amazing,
Speaker 1: But I can't even follow it. I'm just they might
Speaker 1: as they could be out there faking like there is
Speaker 1: no shovel cock and I would never know. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: only way it could get better is if Disney collector
Speaker 1: b R commented on it but didn't even talk about
Speaker 1: what was going on. She just said extra squeezy. Alright,
Speaker 1: So this next one is um Actually, these next two
Speaker 1: are legit scary. The atomic energy Laboratory in a. C.
Speaker 1: Gilbert invent of the Erector set, and he released this
Speaker 1: energy lab like a it's sort of like a little
Speaker 1: chemistry lab set thing, but it actually had uranium. It
Speaker 1: had real radioactive materials, so you could see, like you
Speaker 1: could create mistrails and things. Yeah, it was like a
Speaker 1: chemistry set for kids, but with radioactivity. That was the
Speaker 1: point of it. This is at a time when the
Speaker 1: government was like, no, no, it's all fun radio activities. Fine,
Speaker 1: it's good for you. It gives you a healthy glow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the next one the c s I Fingerprint Examination Kit. Uh,
Speaker 1: this was on I O nine's list, was the number
Speaker 1: two most dangerous toy of all time. Yes, I think
Speaker 1: also thanks for saying that. The last three were from
Speaker 1: the Band Toy Museum online. Yeah, And like we said,
Speaker 1: all these and I've looked at a bunch of these
Speaker 1: lists and it's mostly the same stuff, which is good
Speaker 1: to know that it's not you know, like, there's really
Speaker 1: a hundred things and we're just picking our favorite. Uh.
Speaker 1: So the c s I Fingerprint Examination Kit, you could
Speaker 1: play c s I get dust for fingerprints, uh with
Speaker 1: trim a light, which is one of the deadliest kinds
Speaker 1: of asbestos. The powder that you used to dust had
Speaker 1: about seven percent trim a light. And this was really
Speaker 1: scary and it's amazing that it got through because this
Speaker 1: was not the nineteen fifties. Yeah, No, it was just
Speaker 1: like the early two thousands, I believe because it was
Speaker 1: a C s I brand fingerprinting kit and I guess
Speaker 1: so I saw that that that, um what is it
Speaker 1: trema light? Yeah? Is it's an actual like I think
Speaker 1: they used actual fingerprint dust and that's like part of
Speaker 1: something that fingerprint technicians have to work with. Is this asbestos? Um?
Speaker 1: But they packaged it up and sold it for kids,
Speaker 1: and the company went bankrupt pretty quickly. Yeah, I would imagine.
Speaker 1: So what about Buckie Balls. It's kind of a legendary one.
Speaker 1: Do you remember those? Yeah. I didn't know that these
Speaker 1: had a had a a bad ending because I remember
Speaker 1: my nephew and niece got Bucky balls for Christmas, um whenever,
Speaker 1: I mean not too long ago, and they were awesome
Speaker 1: and cool and I played played with them like crazy
Speaker 1: at their house. Yeah, they're fun. There, There were great.
Speaker 1: They're like ball bearings that are super strong magnet. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really neat, so far, so good. You can build
Speaker 1: stuff out of them, you can hold stuff to a
Speaker 1: refrigerator with him, whatever you want to do. It's just
Speaker 1: a great round magnet. But um, the problem is is
Speaker 1: that if you swallowed more than one, you could be
Speaker 1: in big trouble because these things were very strong magnets,
Speaker 1: and if you had one in your intestine and another
Speaker 1: one and a part of a different part of your intestine,
Speaker 1: they would come together and your intestine would be pinched
Speaker 1: off right there. Yeah, and this actually happened to the
Speaker 1: extent where um about a thousand or so kids required
Speaker 1: surgery to get these out. And they were a big hit.
Speaker 1: It was kind of one of those, uh, just one
Speaker 1: of those Christmas toys that really captured. Yeah, must have
Speaker 1: Christmas toy. And the I guess the inventor did not
Speaker 1: want to acknowledge this, so he basically said, I'm not
Speaker 1: recalling these. These are a hot item. The federal government
Speaker 1: sued him. He dissolved his company instead of funding a recall,
Speaker 1: and so they went after him personally to try and
Speaker 1: get fifty seven million bucks out of him. Yeah, supposedly
Speaker 1: settled for about one percent of that. I know, fifty
Speaker 1: seven million down to what Yeah, that's that was my
Speaker 1: calculation too, But I was like, that's so small. I'm
Speaker 1: not very confident about saying it out loud. Thank you
Speaker 1: for swooping in. Well, I think that's right, And I
Speaker 1: didn't calculate it, and I'm terrible at math. We'll find
Speaker 1: out I am too, buddy. Um, and look look how
Speaker 1: far we've gotten in life. Yeah, uh so, thank you
Speaker 1: for using the UM. And then lastly, Chuck, we've mentioned
Speaker 1: it before. We mentioned the prototype four that was banned,
Speaker 1: the Easy Bake Oven itself, the famous one that was
Speaker 1: in the National Hall Toy Hall of Fame in two
Speaker 1: thousand and six. Um, was itself banned? Yeah, this one
Speaker 1: did not. So was that to deal with the other
Speaker 1: one that was a prototype? No? No, I mean it
Speaker 1: was like a predecessor to is what I mean? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because Easy Bake Oven never got up to six hundred
Speaker 1: degrees No, but it got up to two hundred degrees
Speaker 1: celsius four hundred degrees fahrenheit. That's it's that's you don't
Speaker 1: bake anything that like that much like that hot? That
Speaker 1: is hot? Yeah, like you could go campizza in that thing. Yes,
Speaker 1: not well but you could, yes if you had time. Sure,
Speaker 1: But they had some problems with him over the years.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a is a like you said,
Speaker 1: a Hall of Fame toy. It's been around forever and
Speaker 1: beloved by boys and girls for generations and two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty incidents reported, uh, sixteen cases of second or
Speaker 1: third degree burns. Yeah, and it was specifically a design
Speaker 1: flaw that that got little kids fingers trapped in the
Speaker 1: oven when it was hot. Um, and one one little
Speaker 1: girl apparently had to undergo a partial finger amputation, says I.
Speaker 1: Oh nine, very sad. It is sad, But we know
Speaker 1: about this stuff if it weren't for consumer protection. And
Speaker 1: I guess that that's the moral of the story. That's
Speaker 1: becoming the moral of the story lately our Restaurant Inspector's episode.
Speaker 1: Now it's toy testing. Yeah, there you go. Good point. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about toy testing, you
Speaker 1: can type those two words into the search bar houseolforks
Speaker 1: dot common and will bring up an article. And since
Speaker 1: I say that it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call this, uh something we missed in the FOIA episode.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, a long time listener, first time writer, just
Speaker 1: listen to the Freedom of Information Act episode acknowledges he's
Speaker 1: a little behind and I wanted to bring something to
Speaker 1: your attention. Many states have laws modeled after the FOIA
Speaker 1: and there's a disturbing trend the last few years. There
Speaker 1: are many special interest groups and activists out there that
Speaker 1: have begun using FOI request to stall legitimate research. This
Speaker 1: sounds familiar, Yeah, exactly. With facilities having hundreds of terabytes
Speaker 1: of data to potentially sift through complying with the request
Speaker 1: or say every interdepartmental email from two thousand to sev
Speaker 1: they can completely shut down an operation with only a
Speaker 1: handful of researchers. Another tactic is to cherry pick from
Speaker 1: tons upon tons of data to attempt to piece together
Speaker 1: an argument to discredit unfavorable study results. The group's making
Speaker 1: the request know this, so it's a win win for them.
Speaker 1: They get tons of private emails to look through to
Speaker 1: spend into something nefarious, and even if and when they
Speaker 1: find nothing, they still throw a wrench into legitimate research
Speaker 1: and endeavors. How about that man, He said he was
Speaker 1: a little disappointed we didn't mention it. But um, first
Speaker 1: of all, Brandon I didn't know about this sore, that's why. Uh.
Speaker 1: But he said, you guys, I realized you focus more
Speaker 1: on the federal version, so that's not much of an
Speaker 1: issue there. So yeah, he says, you guys are awesome.
Speaker 1: Keep up the great work. Uh, sincerely, Guy you should Know,
Speaker 1: Brandon ben Zack. Thanks a lot, Brandon, it was pretty smart. Um.
Speaker 1: Thanks for letting us know so we could, in turn
Speaker 1: let everybody else know terrible stuff. I gotta look into
Speaker 1: that now. UM. If you want to alert us to
Speaker 1: something that we walked right past, please do. We always
Speaker 1: want to know that kind of thing. You can tweet
Speaker 1: to us at s y ESK podcast or joshuam Clark.
Speaker 1: You can hang out on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck
Speaker 1: Bryant or Stuff you Should Know. You can send us
Speaker 1: an email the Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: com and has always joined us at our home on
Speaker 1: the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, is that how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com