Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, it's time for our episode on etcha sketch,
Speaker 1: the little tablet that you could draw on using two
Speaker 1: dials for some reason, and then when you made a masterpiece,
Speaker 1: you'd shake it up and start over again. Or if
Speaker 1: you're a real jerk, you could shake up someone else's
Speaker 1: masterpiece when they weren't ready to shake it up yet.
Speaker 1: This is a good one. I guess all of our
Speaker 1: toy episodes were good ones, so it goes without saying,
Speaker 1: but it is a good one.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Speaker 1: Charles w. Chucky Bryant, and there's Jerry the Delicious dish
Speaker 1: Rolling And this is stuff you should know. The vintage
Speaker 1: Nostalgia edition that went off to China and then got
Speaker 1: so do a different company edition.
Speaker 3: So do you want to have a rough list of
Speaker 3: classic toys we've covered? You want to hear it?
Speaker 1: Oh? Lay it on me, Charles.
Speaker 3: I'm sure I've missed something, but it did help me
Speaker 3: think of some more that we should do.
Speaker 1: Slinky, We did slinky, Oh yeah, we did sleek okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, lego Oh yeah, of course Barbie sure, her boyfriend
Speaker 3: g I Joe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a good one. Sorry, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, I'm sorry. Did we just specifically do
Speaker 1: a G I Joe one or an Action Figures one?
Speaker 3: I think both. We definitely did Action Figures.
Speaker 1: Although not Okay, go ahead, I'll.
Speaker 3: Cross check that. Hot wheels.
Speaker 1: So so this is a made up list, is what
Speaker 1: you're saying.
Speaker 3: Hot wheels.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm glad you didn't. You didn't call it hot wheels.
Speaker 3: Easy bake oven mm hm, play dough, silly putty? All right?
Speaker 3: Do you count boomerangs?
Speaker 1: Yeh sure, do.
Speaker 3: You count Monopoly? Yeah, Yo yos?
Speaker 1: Of course.
Speaker 3: Hula Hoops.
Speaker 1: I knew Hula Hoops was after Yo Yos. I just
Speaker 1: knew it.
Speaker 3: Teddy Ruxxban we covered him in our Christmas show this year.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's a deep cut right there.
Speaker 3: And then that's all I have. But I could have
Speaker 3: sworn we did it on Frisbees, but I cannot find it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I feel like we did Frisbees too, because I
Speaker 1: think we talked about like frawl for something at some point.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know. Maybe it's out there and I
Speaker 3: just didn't or maybe it's under flying disc or something.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's possible, because yeah, we made that joke about it,
Speaker 1: calling it a novelty flying disc because Frisbee like used
Speaker 1: to sue everybody who called anything else to Frisbee.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'll have to look, but there's probably more out there.
Speaker 3: But that's a solid you know, twelve or thirteen.
Speaker 1: That's pretty good, which leads us to Edges sketch. Yes,
Speaker 1: one of the one hundred top hundred toys of the
Speaker 1: century according to I want to say, not the Toy
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame. It's just in the Toy Hall of Fame.
Speaker 3: I think according to some snot nose kid who makes
Speaker 3: lists online.
Speaker 1: All right, this is the one hundred best toys of
Speaker 1: the century. This is the one hundred best guitar solos
Speaker 1: of the seventies.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I'd love to do a show on that.
Speaker 1: That would be pretty cool. I can't remember who named
Speaker 1: that that who made that list, but it's a high honor.
Speaker 1: It's a high accolade, even if we can't remember who
Speaker 1: came up with it. Like the etcher sketches a ubiquitous toy.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows what an ecch of sketches unless you go
Speaker 1: to France and then they'll say, oh, you mean La
Speaker 1: cara megic right, and you might say, like, well, why
Speaker 1: would they have anything to say about the extra sketch
Speaker 1: in France? Turns out, buddy, the etcha sketch is actually
Speaker 1: French in origin. Did you know that before this?
Speaker 3: I did not. I didn't either, because it seems like
Speaker 3: super American, you know, it looks like a TV and
Speaker 3: just feels like pure Americana. So when I realized it
Speaker 3: had some French stank on it, my dreams were dashed.
Speaker 1: You like, it smells like champagne and cheese, which is
Speaker 1: kind of pleasant.
Speaker 3: No, I didn't really care. I thought I thought it
Speaker 3: was great sketch, erase and sketch again the log line
Speaker 3: that will forever be tied to this really interesting little toy.
Speaker 3: And I can't remember who it is in this article,
Speaker 3: but so they were interviewing different folks. I think it
Speaker 3: was someone from the company commented, and I totally agree that, Like,
Speaker 3: it's amazing that today in the digital world and Bluetooth
Speaker 3: and Wi Fi and video gaming as it is, that
Speaker 3: this little lo fi toy that doesn't even have batteries
Speaker 3: in it, much less hook up to the internet is
Speaker 3: still like super popular and still has a little bit
Speaker 3: of mystique, and I agree with them, and I think
Speaker 3: the reason why one of them is like you look
Speaker 3: at it and you're still kind of like, how does
Speaker 3: this thing work?
Speaker 1: Right, Well, we're going to ruin that mystique for everybody
Speaker 1: because we're gonna explain how it works actually in this episode. Right,
Speaker 1: But hopefully it won't affect that you just sketch sales
Speaker 1: because we love that you sketch, you know.
Speaker 3: All right, should we go to France?
Speaker 1: We will go to France sometime. It's apparently not clear
Speaker 1: whether it was nineteen fifty five or nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: but in a little town called Vitry sir Sin, which
Speaker 1: means Victory on the Sinn River, there was a company
Speaker 1: called what was the name of the company.
Speaker 3: Chuck uh linn crusta company, right, terrible name.
Speaker 1: It is a terrible name. But the reason they called
Speaker 1: themselves that is because lynn Crusta is a type of
Speaker 1: wall covering that was really popular in the nineteenth and
Speaker 1: early twentieth centuries. You know, like have you ever been
Speaker 1: into an old, creepy, abandoned house and like the walls
Speaker 1: are covered in what looks like dimpled tin with like
Speaker 1: some weird patterns to it or whatever.
Speaker 3: No, but keep going.
Speaker 1: Okay, so where if you you could rub your hand
Speaker 1: over it's very much it's like heavily embossed. Okay, sometimes
Speaker 1: it's painted and it's it just imagined that as like
Speaker 1: Wayne Scotting in the house. That is Lin Crusta. And
Speaker 1: so that is one of the two things that this
Speaker 1: company made in the fifties, link crustal wall coverings and
Speaker 1: artificial leather. That is really neither here nor there, but
Speaker 1: I could. I was with you, I was like, what
Speaker 1: kind of a name is that for a company? I
Speaker 1: looked it up and they just it basically be like
Speaker 1: if you and I called our podcast podcast because that's
Speaker 1: what we did, was make podcasts.
Speaker 3: Or call the company crust pod, Crusta, just the name
Speaker 3: crust Anyway, I think I know what you're talking about
Speaker 3: because I have we have a pie safe that has
Speaker 3: that metal tin stuff. But it's, uh, I've never seen
Speaker 3: it on a wall, but I bet it's about the.
Speaker 1: Same thing, virtually the same thing. Yeah, yep, Okay, So
Speaker 1: that's Link Crusta and that's where this guy worked. His
Speaker 1: name was Andre Cassagnis. I bet that you hill.
Speaker 3: Well, if it's French, wouldn't it be Caissan? Is that
Speaker 3: she pronounced?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you just nailed it. Actually, Andre Cassol,
Speaker 1: Well that's.
Speaker 3: What we're gonna call him. And we have gone back
Speaker 3: in time. You didn't know fifty five or fifty six.
Speaker 3: I say we go to fifty four, just to play
Speaker 3: it safe, setup shop in France and maybe get some
Speaker 3: emails done.
Speaker 1: All right for a couple of years.
Speaker 3: Sure, why not? We could use a break because you know,
Speaker 3: podcaster burnouts a real thing.
Speaker 1: He really is as we thought, we're dropping, we're dropping
Speaker 1: like flies.
Speaker 3: All right. So he's working in this factory. It's north
Speaker 3: of Paris, and they are making these wall coverings like
Speaker 3: you're talking about, and he this is a little confusing
Speaker 3: how this actually happens if you asked me, or at
Speaker 3: least the way the first article put it, it's confusing.
Speaker 1: Oh you're leaving it to me by notice, by your
Speaker 1: by your balls. After that?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, no, let let's I'll start it. But
Speaker 3: I just still don't quite get it. He marked up
Speaker 3: with pencil on a sea through decal, so like he
Speaker 3: was putting on an electrical plate like a light switch
Speaker 3: and on that plate, like many things, has like a
Speaker 3: little sea through plastic that you peel off. So he
Speaker 3: was riding on that he peeled it off. But then
Speaker 3: that's where it loses me. It's to exactly what magic
Speaker 3: took place.
Speaker 1: So okay, remember this is link Krusta and they make
Speaker 1: metal wall coverings, which means there's metal dust in the air,
Speaker 1: metal shavings everywhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he's.
Speaker 1: Right, all of them are. What's crazy. This guy made
Speaker 1: it to the ripe old age of eighty six after
Speaker 1: breathing that for years. But so there's there's metal dust everywhere,
Speaker 1: including on this electrical switch plate that he's installing. And
Speaker 1: I guess the decal against the plate, and I think
Speaker 1: think what happened was when he marked on the decal
Speaker 1: and pulled the decal off, he'd seen that he had
Speaker 1: disturbed the metal shavings that were stuck to the underside
Speaker 1: of the decal. Oh do you see what I mean?
Speaker 1: So he had disturbed the shape, so there was like
Speaker 1: the whole decal is coated in a metal dust. He
Speaker 1: marks on it with a pencil and the impression that
Speaker 1: he makes like gouges out lines on the backside of
Speaker 1: the decal. I know, it's really tough. It was magic. Basically,
Speaker 1: this man witnessed a feat of magic that still cannot
Speaker 1: be explained to this day. And that's where he got
Speaker 1: his idea for the etches sketch amazing.
Speaker 3: So a big, big moment. He has that literal light
Speaker 3: bulb that goes off of his or not literal of course,
Speaker 3: light bulb above his head, although you never know, there
Speaker 3: may have been a light bulb in that factory right
Speaker 3: above his head.
Speaker 1: Why not?
Speaker 3: And he said, all right, this is uh, this, this
Speaker 3: can be something. He however, did not have a lot
Speaker 3: of money to sync into this weird idea, and so
Speaker 3: he had to partner with somebody with money, man named
Speaker 3: Paul Chase Cze or maybe Shaw's if he's French.
Speaker 1: Oh that's good.
Speaker 3: And this guy had some dough because he owned a
Speaker 3: plastic injection molding company.
Speaker 1: This is like early on.
Speaker 3: I wonder if we could count that as a toy,
Speaker 3: the uh the little plastic machines that spit out little
Speaker 3: plastic guitars in Chicago and at zoos.
Speaker 1: Oh, yes, Lama, that would definitely count. Yeah, that goes
Speaker 1: on the list.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he didn't it wasn't moldorama, but it was
Speaker 3: plastic injection molding that this guy made his money from. Uh.
Speaker 3: And this where things get a little confusing historically, because
Speaker 3: the man who his accountant, his name was Arthur gra.
Speaker 1: You were the French today. Try to run French people,
Speaker 1: you can't. Chuck is pronouncing your words just beautifully.
Speaker 3: So his accountant has actually given credit a lot of
Speaker 3: times because he filed the patent under his name, which
Speaker 3: I'm curious about how that works legally.
Speaker 1: He so he was, do you remember the first time
Speaker 1: we did south By Southwest and on the sign it
Speaker 1: had like somebody I can't remember whose name it was,
Speaker 1: but whoever had like filed the application to get us
Speaker 1: into south By Southwest? It said that like that's who
Speaker 1: was performing in the room that day.
Speaker 3: I don't remember that at all.
Speaker 1: I think this is the same, basically the same thing.
Speaker 1: Where as like the US government bureaucracy, the patent in
Speaker 1: Trademark office basically said whoever's name is on there, that
Speaker 1: is who is the patent holder. And since Grangene, who
Speaker 1: was the accountant of Shay's, who was the partner of Kess,
Speaker 1: and since he was the one who actually filled out
Speaker 1: the application and paid for the application for the patent.
Speaker 1: As far as the government was concerned, he was the
Speaker 1: person who patented the etches sketch in the United States,
Speaker 1: even though gran Gene made no claim on it whatsoever
Speaker 1: immediately transferred the title over to Chase. He's for decades
Speaker 1: everybody thought Arthur Graanjine was the guy who invented the
Speaker 1: etches sketch.
Speaker 3: Interesting, all right, So that was July twenty third, nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty nine, was when this patent was granted. And I
Speaker 3: guess we should just look at the little guy itself,
Speaker 3: the little TV, looking that iconic red frame with the
Speaker 3: two dials, which it didn't have initially. We'll get to that.
Speaker 3: But the underside of this screen here has what's known
Speaker 3: in the patent as a pole virulent material such as
Speaker 3: aluminum powder.
Speaker 1: Is that French as well?
Speaker 3: I don't know. And then to keep that from clumping
Speaker 3: up there a little tiny plastic beads and then the
Speaker 3: two knobs control again from the patent, a movable tracing stylus,
Speaker 3: although initially it was a joystick, isn't that right?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, basically like an atari, but it served the
Speaker 1: same purpose and it was it was held together the
Speaker 1: same way through an intricate system of pulleys and gears
Speaker 1: that moved the stylus either upward or downward. And then
Speaker 1: if you combine the upward and downward together, you could
Speaker 1: make diagonals and circles and stuff like that. But it's
Speaker 1: it's really tough to describe what's going on in a
Speaker 1: Nutch just sketch. But there's a House Stuff Works article
Speaker 1: from years back called inside a Nutches Sketch where the
Speaker 1: people at House of Verse like took one apart and
Speaker 1: photographed it and explained it step by step, and it
Speaker 1: really becomes much simpler and ruins any bit of magic
Speaker 1: there is to it when you see inside an Etches sketch.
Speaker 1: But it's still kind of wondrous, you know, like the
Speaker 1: engineer in you is like, wow, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's sort of like it's not a negative image,
Speaker 3: I don't think. But what's going on when you're moving
Speaker 3: those knobs. There's a stylus that's actually removing like the
Speaker 3: screen is coated with this powder, so it's actually removing powder,
Speaker 3: not adding something to the screen.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3: And of course if you want to get that away
Speaker 3: and start a new picture, you just shake that thing
Speaker 3: up and that recoats the screen once again with that powder.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, like you know how your TV screen always
Speaker 1: has tons of dust on it no matter how often
Speaker 1: you dust it. Sure, So that's because like that dust
Speaker 1: is attracted electrostatically through an electrical charge to the glass.
Speaker 1: That's they take advantage of that same thing with the
Speaker 1: underside of the etch a sketch and that aluminum dust
Speaker 1: which sticks to everything like it wants to stick to
Speaker 1: the glass because I think it's missing some electrons or something.
Speaker 1: And then when you move the stylus through it, you're
Speaker 1: just removing that that dust. Like you said, it's not
Speaker 1: a negative. It's the removal of dust. And that's the
Speaker 1: that's just sketch like at its at its core. And
Speaker 1: what's interesting, Chuck, is like that is how I met
Speaker 1: just sketched today works. That's how I not just sketch
Speaker 1: worked in nineteen sixty two, like the two meaning like
Speaker 1: also but that that dude Andre Cassolgne said, this is
Speaker 1: how this is gonna work, and it's it's basically the
Speaker 1: same thing.
Speaker 3: That's pretty awesome. Let's take a break. Yes, we're going
Speaker 3: to come back and talk about coming state side right
Speaker 3: after this.
Speaker 1: All right, so Chuck, So how do we agree on
Speaker 1: his last name? I think I'm butchering it still, and
Speaker 1: I even took years of French in high school.
Speaker 3: I think you said Castle.
Speaker 1: All right, Andre cass Role, that seems that seems wrong.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm still gonna go with Caisson.
Speaker 1: Okay, there you go. Andre Caisson. He knew he was
Speaker 1: onto something like this guy was an electrician. He was like,
Speaker 1: this is a great idea, this is a prototype I made,
Speaker 1: this is this is worth something? So he and Cruz
Speaker 1: I guess, funded a trip to the Nuremberg Toy Fair
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty nine, and it was there that Caisson
Speaker 1: was walking around saying, check this thing out. It is
Speaker 1: yours for a mere one hundred thousand dollars, which at
Speaker 1: the time was a lot of money. One hundred I
Speaker 1: think it was eight hundred and seventy thousand dollars today.
Speaker 1: And that's what this guy wanted for the for the
Speaker 1: right to produce this, and every toy maker at the
Speaker 1: place said no, including a little toy maker called Ohio Art.
Speaker 1: Everybody turned it down, and Casson went home from the
Speaker 1: toy fair empty handed, but he didn't give up. He
Speaker 1: still persisted. But that was a big strikeout for him
Speaker 1: right out of the gate.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Ohio Art eventually settles on a number of
Speaker 3: twenty five grand for the rights to make this thing
Speaker 3: in the United States. It is still called La cron
Speaker 3: Magique in France because they had a different licensing deal
Speaker 3: over there from the get go, and Ohio Art Company
Speaker 3: is pretty interesting. It started, did you see that thing did? Yeah?
Speaker 3: They started out in nineteen oh eight, founded by a
Speaker 3: man named a dentist named doctor Henry S. Winsler in Archibald, Ohio.
Speaker 3: He gets out of dentistry because he's like, hey, man,
Speaker 3: toys is the future. Toys is the future.
Speaker 1: There's no future in teeth. In a decade, no one
Speaker 1: in America is going to have teeth. It's just a
Speaker 1: losing trade to be in his dentistry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he saw the way forward. He rented a
Speaker 3: music hall, hired fifteen women, and they were making metal
Speaker 3: picture frames at first too great great success.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So they use something called the metal lithography, which
Speaker 1: is a type of printing and I think the metal
Speaker 1: refers to like the medium that you're using to print
Speaker 1: with like the like you carve a picture out of
Speaker 1: metal and you put ink on it and then you
Speaker 1: print on whatever you want. But they were printing onto metal,
Speaker 1: like they had like these picture frames and pictures that
Speaker 1: were like a huge cellar of a cupid. It was
Speaker 1: a pair of like oval plates basically, but they were
Speaker 1: metal printed pictures on them of like a cupid hanging
Speaker 1: out and then the same cupid sleeping, and it's just
Speaker 1: kind of like whatever. Like these days, it seems kind
Speaker 1: of it's got a tinge of old timey creepiness. But
Speaker 1: in the first half of the twentieth century, there were
Speaker 1: fifty million sets of those things sold in the United States,
Speaker 1: which is an astounding mouth. It's basically every house in
Speaker 1: America had a pair of this, and that really kind
Speaker 1: of made Ohio art like a very viable business. But
Speaker 1: they eventually got into things like sand pails and little
Speaker 1: trucks and that kind of thing. Anything that was printed
Speaker 1: with metal before the time that plastic toys came along
Speaker 1: they were into So it wasn't a huge leap into
Speaker 1: the edges sketch, but the Edges sketch was definitely different
Speaker 1: than anything that they'd ever kind of messed around with before.
Speaker 3: Did you know I've done metal lithography.
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was one of our industrial arts. It was,
Speaker 3: you know, in at least at my school, each quarter
Speaker 3: you did a different medium or whatever, and lithography was
Speaker 3: something we did one quarter.
Speaker 1: Do you remember what you printed?
Speaker 3: Uh? I'm trying to remember what I printed. It's funny
Speaker 3: I can remember that because we also at one quarter
Speaker 3: was screen printing, and I remember the T shirt I did
Speaker 3: monkeys T shirts.
Speaker 1: Like the see No Evil, Hear No Evil monkeys.
Speaker 3: No the band the Monkeys. They're they're their logo with
Speaker 3: the guitar spelled out as monkeys.
Speaker 1: Like, Wow, did you draw it yourself?
Speaker 3: No? No, no, of course not. But we did metal
Speaker 3: sheet lithography. I don't remember all of the process, but
Speaker 3: what I do remember was it essentially was like burning
Speaker 3: chemically burning images onto metal plates and then that metal
Speaker 3: plate was used to print.
Speaker 1: Okay, So so the metal in metal lithography does it
Speaker 1: talks about the metal press that you're using to print with.
Speaker 3: Like at the end of There may be different processes,
Speaker 3: but in my class, we would do this thing and
Speaker 3: apply this like image with like this gel onto a
Speaker 3: metal sheet and use this combination of chemicals that would
Speaker 3: burn that in to like make it part of the metal,
Speaker 3: and then all of a sudden you would have a
Speaker 3: metal sheet with a thing on it, like a negative image,
Speaker 3: and then you would use that in the printing process
Speaker 3: to print a positive image.
Speaker 1: Right, and you could print use that to print onto
Speaker 1: anything including other metal. Right.
Speaker 3: Well, hey man, that's where my knowledge and again this
Speaker 3: was ninth grade me, So I've forgotten a lot of
Speaker 3: things over that time period, right, And I'm sure I
Speaker 3: just butchered that. But that's my one little dance with
Speaker 3: metal lithography.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you who would be able to tell
Speaker 1: us exactly how you could how metal lithography works. It's
Speaker 1: anybody who works at Ohio Art, because not only was
Speaker 1: that their bread and butter before the etches sketch, it
Speaker 1: still is today. Actually, so so Ohio Art, like I guess,
Speaker 1: gets in touch with Andre Cassan and either he got
Speaker 1: in touch with them again or they got in touch
Speaker 1: with him. I think it was the ladder of the
Speaker 1: two and said, hey, we heard you're selling this for
Speaker 1: one hundred grand. It's way too rich for our blood.
Speaker 1: How about either fifteen thousand or twenty five thousand, depending
Speaker 1: on who you ask in the future, and Kassan is like,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about. They're like, just take the money,
Speaker 1: and so they either got it for fifteen thousand or
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand, which is still substantial. I mean it
Speaker 1: was like around one hundred k or two hundred k
Speaker 1: something like that, depending on which one it was, and
Speaker 1: Kissan was quite a happy man. There was a story
Speaker 1: where the guy who was running the show at Ohio
Speaker 1: Art and his wife went over to meet Andre Cassan
Speaker 1: and just kind of have like an initial meeting and
Speaker 1: like shake his hand and all that and buy the
Speaker 1: license from him. And Cassan was like welcome and had
Speaker 1: like this huge spread of baguettes and champagne and everything
Speaker 1: at his house, which is pretty cute because it was
Speaker 1: just like this humble guy who came up with a
Speaker 1: really great idea for a toy and was finally like
Speaker 1: selling it for a wad of cash. Interesting lot of
Speaker 1: those what the bagets and champagne.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you know, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: Wait went in France, right, so he.
Speaker 3: Is Once he's on board with Ohio Art, he gets
Speaker 3: together with their chief engineer, Jerry Berger and says, and
Speaker 3: Burger's like, listen here, frenchie, you need to drop the joystick.
Speaker 3: It's all knobs these days. And he said, what is
Speaker 3: that knob? And he was like, well, let me show you,
Speaker 3: and he introduced the idea of the same system like
Speaker 3: you were talking about, but knobs instead of a joystick
Speaker 3: to move that little line horizontal or vertical or as
Speaker 3: you pointed out, if you're really talented and you can
Speaker 3: master both at once, you can actually do root it. Well,
Speaker 3: if you're really good, you can do very nice curve lines.
Speaker 1: But yeah, beyond no, neither am I I can make
Speaker 1: a line go up, in a line go to the
Speaker 1: left or right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well we'll get to.
Speaker 1: You can't even make it go down.
Speaker 3: We'll get to the art of it maybe at the end,
Speaker 3: but because there are some serious artists out there doing
Speaker 3: some cool stuff, but at any rate, it just skeet.
Speaker 3: It was rebranded as Etches Sketch in the United States,
Speaker 3: Ohio Arts producing them for the nineteen sixty holiday season
Speaker 3: and they sold about six hundred thousand of these that year,
Speaker 3: which is a it's a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they sold it for a lot of money too.
Speaker 1: They went for sale at two dollars and ninety nine
Speaker 1: cents apiece, which is twenty five sixty four in today's money.
Speaker 1: But I mean, if you go buy an that's just
Speaker 1: sketch today, it's between ten and fifteen bucks. So that
Speaker 1: was a lot of money, especially to sell six hundred
Speaker 1: thousand of these things, especially if you were selling like
Speaker 1: creepy you know, metal waste baskets with an unsettling clown
Speaker 1: painted on it or printed on it, like right before this.
Speaker 1: This is a huge It was a good move by
Speaker 1: the people at Ohio Art to buy the license to
Speaker 1: this thing. In other words, and they say, chok that
Speaker 1: it coincided really perfectly with television, so much so that
Speaker 1: they believe like that is one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: Jerry Burger it was like, you need knobs. This thing
Speaker 1: needs to look like a TV set, because that's what's
Speaker 1: all the rage with the kids right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he it was one of the first toys
Speaker 3: to actually do a TV commercial. And so if it's
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty and you're a child watching, first of all,
Speaker 3: your mind is blown because you're watching in television to
Speaker 3: begin with.
Speaker 1: It's just like, you know, I can't believe this I
Speaker 1: can't believe what's going on right now.
Speaker 3: Then a TV commercial comes on for a toy, and
Speaker 3: this toy has animation in it to where like they
Speaker 3: would etch a sketch a little rocket ship and then
Speaker 3: that rock that rocket ship would animate and take off.
Speaker 3: And this was like these kids might have I mean,
Speaker 3: keep in mind, kids in nineteen sixty were idiots, but
Speaker 3: they might as well have been dosed with LSD.
Speaker 1: You know, they just kept fainting over and over again
Speaker 1: throughout the commercial because they could not believe what they
Speaker 1: were seeing. And it's just an etch a sketch, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's genius. I love it, it.
Speaker 1: Is, but it really I think the point was though,
Speaker 1: the like taking advantage of the novelty of TV and
Speaker 1: also now having away like if you we just tried
Speaker 1: to explain an etch just sketch over a podcast prior
Speaker 1: to TV, if that just sketched you come out during
Speaker 1: like the Little Orphan air in the radio era, they
Speaker 1: would have had to have done the same thing. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't have landed quite as well. The fact that a
Speaker 1: kid could see this happening on their TV screen was
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. And then also to say and then you
Speaker 1: just shake it, turn it upside down and shake it
Speaker 1: and coat the glass screen again, and your drawing is
Speaker 1: gone forever. Like to be able to see that TV
Speaker 1: made the Etches sketch what it was like for sure.
Speaker 1: It definitely ushered it into a position where it could
Speaker 1: become like a cultural icon of a nostalgia.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, you know, they perfected it by the
Speaker 3: time they started rolling off in nineteen sixty. Prior to that,
Speaker 3: like any product like this, so it was a lot
Speaker 3: of R and D. One of the people who worked
Speaker 3: there talked about the mountain of red frames behind the
Speaker 3: factory while they were trying to get it right, and
Speaker 3: it was such a huge smash hit out of the
Speaker 3: gate that, as legend has it, they were manufacturing up
Speaker 3: until noon on Christmas Eve just to get them to
Speaker 3: the West Coast in time for Christmas morning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's pretty that's pretty cool. I mean, they really
Speaker 1: wanted those kids to have those thatch just ketches. They
Speaker 1: really wanted that money.
Speaker 3: Should we take another break, Yeah, all right, we'll talk
Speaker 3: about some ways Etches Sketches ebbed and flowed in popularity
Speaker 3: and pop culture over the years.
Speaker 1: Right for this, Chuck, I don't know if we said
Speaker 1: it or not. But from what I've seen, more than
Speaker 1: one hundred and seventy five million Etches sketches have been
Speaker 1: sold since nineteen sixty.
Speaker 3: And we should point out we're not just like ticking
Speaker 3: off a list of pop culture references. Right, Like, every
Speaker 3: time this happened, etch A Sketch sales would go up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the Mitt Romney one increased sales like thirty percent.
Speaker 1: I guess everybody was like, Oh, I just sketch, I
Speaker 1: forgot about that. I think I'll go buy one right now.
Speaker 3: Well, they actually branded after that Republican and Democrat Etches Sketches, though,
Speaker 3: didn't they.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you could buy a red one or a
Speaker 1: blue one, but both of them came with a sticker
Speaker 1: which I'm assuming that they printed on their metal lithography
Speaker 1: presses of a donkey and an elephant, like playing Tugo
Speaker 1: war on the front of the White House lawn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just crazy, it is, but it's also that's smart,
Speaker 1: you know, that's how you make the money.
Speaker 3: And then, of course, in the movie Toy Story from
Speaker 3: Pixar was one of the character's name was Etch and
Speaker 3: had the fastest knobs in the West. Yeah, and that
Speaker 3: was that was always a very fun character, I think,
Speaker 3: to see him drawing things out really fast to communicate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, you said something earlier, you were
Speaker 1: talking about how like, despite the fact that it doesn't
Speaker 1: even have batteries, it's had the staying power for you know,
Speaker 1: fifty something years, almost sixty years, it's been around, and
Speaker 1: it's a really simple thing that the design hasn't changed.
Speaker 1: And I think even more of a testimony to, you know,
Speaker 1: the staying power of the Etches sketch is the fact
Speaker 1: that they have tried stuff with batteries and like things
Speaker 1: that connect to your computer over the years, and nothing
Speaker 1: has managed to improve on the original Etches sketch. Like
Speaker 1: there was you remember the Etches Sketch animator. No, so
Speaker 1: I couldn't quite place it either. By went and watched
Speaker 1: an old ad. It was big in the eighties and
Speaker 1: it was basically like an etch of sketch, but there
Speaker 1: was nothing mechanical about it. It was digital. You're creating
Speaker 1: like a bitmap, digital picture, and then you'd press like
Speaker 1: I guess play or something like that, and it would
Speaker 1: just kind of run it like a flip book over
Speaker 1: and over again. So your it just sketch drawing like
Speaker 1: came to life. But kids were like, I'd rather have
Speaker 1: the original Etches Sketch because the Sketch animator went away
Speaker 1: and the Etches Sketch is still available today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there have been other variations. They had
Speaker 3: the Doodle Sketch, the plug and Play, which this sounds
Speaker 3: like a bad idea plug and Play allows you to
Speaker 3: draw on the TV screen. That's just asking for trouble
Speaker 3: as a parent, sure, and then the mobile app, which
Speaker 3: I've been playing with today.
Speaker 1: Oh, how's it going well?
Speaker 3: I mean, what do you think of this picture?
Speaker 1: Oh, it's not bad. It looks kind of edges sketchy,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So what you can do is it's kind of fun.
Speaker 3: You can you can upload or take a photo on
Speaker 3: your smartphone, plug it into the app, and then it
Speaker 3: will instantly etchify it. And what I've learned is that
Speaker 3: it's the more basic, like a picture of your face,
Speaker 3: works much better than something with a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: in the background. But it's fun, right, Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: I like it.
Speaker 1: I was reading reviews of the app. I didn't try
Speaker 1: it myself, like you, but it's it did say like,
Speaker 1: if it's a basic picture, you'll look way more etches sketchy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so my official review is not bad.
Speaker 1: So three stars out of six.
Speaker 3: Sure. I mean for something that downloaded in thirty seconds
Speaker 3: and was free, I'm gonna give it a half a
Speaker 3: thumb up.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that has kind of kept
Speaker 1: etches sketch alive for like the younger kids. If I
Speaker 1: read this article about etch a sketch, and it was
Speaker 1: right before they sold, so a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: know ohio Art doesn't make echa sketch anymore. They sold
Speaker 1: it to a brand called spin Master, and I didn't know.
Speaker 3: I didn't see that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not it's not ohio Art. Ohio ar it
Speaker 1: said we're going back to metal lithography, and that's what
Speaker 1: they did. So they sold that just sketch off to
Speaker 1: spin Master. Spin Masters like, that's fine with us, baby,
Speaker 1: thanks for all these licenses. I mean that just sketch,
Speaker 1: a frozen braided that just sketches. It might as well
Speaker 1: just be like a printing press for money, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it was probably a pretty good bye for spin
Speaker 1: Master and ohio Art was like this thing is It
Speaker 1: was great. It was a good run. While it lasted,
Speaker 1: but they also had to oversee it through some really
Speaker 1: dark times because well, for one, thing like that just sketch,
Speaker 1: is it landing with the millennials, I get the impression
Speaker 1: like it used to with the baby boomers. That was
Speaker 1: one thing, and Ohio Art also almost went bankrupt because
Speaker 1: of it back in like two thousand and one. They
Speaker 1: managed to get some more money back into the business
Speaker 1: and stay afloat. But part of that also was they
Speaker 1: had to send the manufacturing of that just got off
Speaker 1: to China, which they were really unhappy about because they
Speaker 1: lost like thirty five jobs in tiny little Brian, Ohio.
Speaker 1: But eventually, like fifteen years later, they said, you know
Speaker 1: what we're getting out the etch of sketch business and
Speaker 1: sold it off to spin Master.
Speaker 3: Which is a weird name.
Speaker 1: But the but then, one of the things, it's a
Speaker 1: little weird, Ohio Art's a little weird too. You don't
Speaker 1: associate Ohio with art, you.
Speaker 3: Know, Oh, oh, you just don't.
Speaker 1: I'll say it again.
Speaker 3: Tell that to Chrissy hind the Blacks.
Speaker 1: No, Christy, heind gets what I'm saying for sure. So
Speaker 1: the thing, one of the things that is keeping Eucher
Speaker 1: sketch relevant. The reason why, like if you walk up
Speaker 1: to like a seventeen year old and say what do
Speaker 1: you think about that just sketch, they say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've heard of that. Because every once in a while
Speaker 1: you'll see on the internets a photo or two of
Speaker 1: somebody who is really really good at etcha sketch, and
Speaker 1: it just kind of makes the rounds on social media.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean everything from like the Mona Lisa to
Speaker 3: just like portraits of people to land escapes. What's really
Speaker 3: fun is you can go on YouTube and look at
Speaker 3: time laps renderings at just sketch renderings, which when you're
Speaker 3: seeing it done super fast like that, you kind of
Speaker 3: think like, I feel like I could do that. But
Speaker 3: you really have to be a master with those knobs.
Speaker 3: Like what I found is the thing you really need
Speaker 3: to master to do everything that you want to do
Speaker 3: is being able to retrace well, because, as everyone knows,
Speaker 3: it's not like a pencil. You can't pick it up
Speaker 3: off the paper and start somewhere else. You have to
Speaker 3: if you want to go somewhere else, you have to
Speaker 3: retrace as closely to that original line as you can,
Speaker 3: all the way back to that point that you want
Speaker 3: to be at or else it's just going to look
Speaker 3: like something that I did, which looks like something a
Speaker 3: toddler did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean, like that's a really good point
Speaker 1: when you're making a good at just catch drawing is
Speaker 1: all one single line, so frequently double back over and
Speaker 1: that just sketch artists will use like that frame. They'll
Speaker 1: create a line frame around the edges that they can
Speaker 1: travel back out to and move around the picture like that.
Speaker 3: Pretty brilliant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a guy named George Vlasitch the third who's
Speaker 1: known for some pretty amazing portraits of Muhammad Ali, Barack
Speaker 1: Obama or Bron James. There's an artist named Jane Labowitch
Speaker 1: or Labovich maybe she calls herself Princess etcha sketch. She's
Speaker 1: done some amazing like architectural detail with it. And then
Speaker 1: there's a guy named Ryan Burton who does erotic Simpson's art.
Speaker 1: There you go with the eedches sketch and all three
Speaker 1: of them are like really good at the ches sketch drawings.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the fanfic of etches sketch or artists interesting.
Speaker 1: And then apparently if you when you're very satisfied with
Speaker 1: your etches sketch and you don't want anything to happen
Speaker 1: to it. You drill a hole in the back and
Speaker 1: get the aluminum powder out, and then you lock the
Speaker 1: knobs to keep them from being turned. Then you have
Speaker 1: an etcha sketch masterpiece that you can hang in a museum.
Speaker 3: Oh so that makes it permanent. Yeah, so when the
Speaker 3: little uh so, when a kid comes to the museum
Speaker 3: and rips it off the wall and shakes it, nothing happens.
Speaker 1: No, no, And I think by law you're allowed to
Speaker 1: pick up that kid and shake it.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think so, as long as it's not a baby.
Speaker 1: Don't check right, you know, never shake a baby. Come on, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would never advocate shaking a baby. Everybody just want
Speaker 1: to go on record as say that.
Speaker 3: There was you know, the comedian Nate Bargatzi. No, he
Speaker 3: has a he's great. He's got a very funny bit
Speaker 3: about shaking babies.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, believe.
Speaker 3: It or not.
Speaker 1: It takes a lot to turn that into something funny.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he did it. Man, good for him.
Speaker 1: Nate Nate Bergotzi, huh.
Speaker 3: Nate Bergazzi, dude, you would love him. He's great.
Speaker 1: So Nate Pergotti just became a cultural icon because we
Speaker 1: did not see him coming up in this episode.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: Uh, well, if you want to know more about Nate Bergatzi,
Speaker 1: you should go check him out on the internet like
Speaker 1: I'm going to. And uh, since I said Nate Bergatzi,
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 3: Man. If someone tells Nate, we're plugging him, plugging away,
Speaker 3: plugging Nate. All right here, I'm gonna mention this is
Speaker 3: about Jerry and her eating, and this is from Kim Cooper.
Speaker 1: Did you see this Jerry?
Speaker 3: She says, no. Hey, guys, I notice that you often
Speaker 3: mentioned what Jerry is eating a lot during the podcast.
Speaker 3: I don't know how close to you, how close she
Speaker 3: is to your microphones. I'll go ahead and say that
Speaker 3: from your side over there, she's about five feet Like.
Speaker 1: All I have to do is lean in my seat
Speaker 1: a little bit and I can touch Jerry's miso soup.
Speaker 3: That's right. You could dip your thumb in her suit sometimes,
Speaker 3: I threatened to I don't know how close she is
Speaker 3: to your microphones, but I never hear her eating, which
Speaker 3: is good for your fans with misoponia. But I'm curious
Speaker 3: why she chooses this time to eat do you guys
Speaker 3: spend all day podcasting and that's the only time she
Speaker 3: can fit it in.
Speaker 1: No, No, silly.
Speaker 3: Question that popped into my head listening to this Week
Speaker 3: this week after Josh said, and there's Jerry eating god
Speaker 3: knows what. Anyway, guys, she's got me interested in trying me.
Speaker 3: So I tell her she's doing a great job because
Speaker 3: I don't know, because I know she doesn't get too
Speaker 3: many shout outs. And Josh and Chuck, you guys are
Speaker 3: pretty great too. That is from Kim Cooper.
Speaker 1: Thanks Kim, that's funny. She went all the way around
Speaker 1: just basically say I guess what I'm trying to say
Speaker 1: is I've always wanted to try miso.
Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 1: Well go try some meso, Kim. I mean you can
Speaker 1: buy it at like any grocery store. Just go get
Speaker 1: a tub of it, get a big old spoon, try
Speaker 1: your first spoonful and go from there. Do you ever
Speaker 1: eat just miso paste? No, it's good if you're craving
Speaker 1: something salty and savory and dow Mommy, let's just say
Speaker 1: it's good, but you can't you can't eat very much
Speaker 1: of it. I'm just teasing Kim like a spoonful is
Speaker 1: a lot of miso paste?
Speaker 3: Okay, what do you just add that to? Is it
Speaker 3: an ingredient? Yeah, for like soups, sou.
Speaker 1: Stuff like that. Yeah, but you can just eat the paste,
Speaker 1: okay and live to tell about it. I'm proof. Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with us to
Speaker 1: talk about Jerry, we're always fine with that. You can
Speaker 1: go to Stuff you Should Know dot com, find out
Speaker 1: all of our social links, and you can always send
Speaker 1: us an email. Attention everybody. We have a new email
Speaker 1: address is wowie Wow wow Wow. It is Stuff Podcast
Speaker 1: at iheartpodcast Network dot com.
Speaker 3: How about that.
Speaker 2: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 2: HowStuffWorks dot com.