Speaker 1: Hi, everybody. This is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. It is Saturday,
Speaker 1: and that means it's time for my weekly Selects episode. Pick.
Speaker 1: I went through the archives and I found this gym
Speaker 1: from April fourteenth, twenty fifteen, How Slinky Works. A big
Speaker 1: fan of our Classic Toys episode and this is one
Speaker 1: of them. And the great thing about a slinky everyone
Speaker 1: is its spans generations. There's just something about this dumb
Speaker 1: little toy that kids enjoyed for decades, including my own daughter,
Speaker 1: who has her own slinky and loves it. So everyone
Speaker 1: please listen right now to how Slinky Works, not Slinky's Slinky.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, there's
Speaker 2: Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there, and
Speaker 2: this is the Stuff you should Know, projecting from Studio
Speaker 2: one A.
Speaker 1: Just us. It's not us on stage in front of
Speaker 1: hundreds of the dooring fans.
Speaker 2: No, I feel all listless.
Speaker 1: We just got back from our tour and.
Speaker 2: That was just us again. Yeah, there's a paper ikea
Speaker 2: lamp with a dimmer that makes it turn into a
Speaker 2: strobe light even though it's not supposed to. And yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a toolbox over there. That's it.
Speaker 1: It's a lot more fun to do this on stage
Speaker 1: in front of people, and it turns out.
Speaker 2: I think we should do it again because the West
Speaker 2: Coast tour was pretty fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so keep your eyes peeled. Perhaps Philly, d C.
Speaker 1: New York, and Boston.
Speaker 2: Don't literally peel your eyes.
Speaker 1: Then perhaps Chapel Hill.
Speaker 2: Oh man.
Speaker 1: We can't announce anything yet, but we're just teasing with
Speaker 1: those cities that we'll be in in June.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're actually going to Providence, are no, No, just kidding.
Speaker 1: There were like ten people in Providence going yeah, oh man,
Speaker 1: I got to go to Boston again.
Speaker 2: So how are you doing? You're still jet lagged.
Speaker 1: I have recovered somewhat. I have to say that the
Speaker 1: city of Seattle is a place I could live. It's
Speaker 1: beautiful except for the weather, like we had it good
Speaker 1: and it's easy to fall in love with the place
Speaker 1: if you're there for like a great weekend, right because
Speaker 1: it was beautiful when everyone.
Speaker 2: Was out, it was gorgeous.
Speaker 1: But I told Emily she was all fired up too.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, nine months out of the year.
Speaker 1: It's pretty depressing. Yeah, with the weather bleak, and I
Speaker 1: think you're just used to it. I feel about there.
Speaker 1: I guess you know, you're hearty.
Speaker 2: Everybody seemed to have their spirits up though maybe it
Speaker 2: was the weather. I assumed it was because we were
Speaker 2: in town, but now that I think about it, it
Speaker 2: could have definitely been the weather.
Speaker 1: Well, Portland fans stood in line in the rain, and
Speaker 1: I felt all bad, But then I was like, they
Speaker 1: stand in line for in the rain all the time,
Speaker 1: for everything.
Speaker 2: Gas, doughnuts, what have you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So anyway, thanks to everyone who came out.
Speaker 1: It was so so fun.
Speaker 2: Yes, La San Francisco, Portland, Seattle from both of us.
Speaker 2: From Jerry too, Yeah, from everybody, A heartfelt, hearty thank you.
Speaker 1: Jerry was a regular hot shot, you know.
Speaker 2: With w's so chuck. Yes, did you ever have a
Speaker 2: slinky when you were a kid, Sure, I feel like
Speaker 2: I played with them. I definitely played with him. I
Speaker 2: don't remember actually owning a slinky at any point, at
Speaker 2: least yours.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: It was just kind of one of those things I
Speaker 2: was like, always around there was always a slinky. You
Speaker 2: could get your hands on a slinky, But.
Speaker 1: You don't remember getting a slinky right and saying this
Speaker 1: is my slinky.
Speaker 2: Or going to the toy store and saying like, I
Speaker 2: want a slinky, right. But I did love slinkies whenever
Speaker 2: I played with them. Yeah, it turns out I was
Speaker 2: just one of many many children over the last sixty
Speaker 2: seventy years that have loved slinky.
Speaker 1: I was frustrated by my slinky a bit because I
Speaker 1: never well, I never had stairs that it worked well on.
Speaker 2: You know, you gotta thought, say I never had stairs, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll bet you're frustrated with slinky.
Speaker 1: No, I had stairs going up to my room, but
Speaker 1: it was you know, if you don't have the right
Speaker 1: height and depth of stair, it just stops. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then you got to do it again.
Speaker 2: Were they for like really long feet, were they wide
Speaker 2: stairs or were they really tall or what was the deal?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I felt like I felt like they
Speaker 1: were standard stairs.
Speaker 2: And then you just didn't like them.
Speaker 1: Well, we get all. I had the metal ones. It
Speaker 1: would get all you know how they would tend to
Speaker 1: get tangled. Yeah, that was sort of the hallmark of
Speaker 1: the metal slinky.
Speaker 2: And again, like people's hair would get caught in and
Speaker 2: now that I'm an adult and looking back, I'm like,
Speaker 2: how did anybody's hair get caught in the slinky? What
Speaker 2: was the deal? But when it happened, it hurt.
Speaker 1: I think kids would like wrap slinkies around each other.
Speaker 1: I remember using slinky like as rope like handcuffs. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Like you'd wrap it around your friend and then sort
Speaker 1: of just latch it and you'd be like, ah, i's.
Speaker 2: Slinky, or like attaching a knife to one end and
Speaker 2: like yeah, yeah, just jamming it towards somebody.
Speaker 1: That was fun.
Speaker 2: There's this guy on YouTube while there's a YouTube video
Speaker 2: of a guy called Slinky Master, Oh boy, and he
Speaker 2: is good. He's just like basically like moving it from
Speaker 2: one hand to another, making it do all this awesome
Speaker 2: stuff in the middle. And it's a rainbow slinky and
Speaker 2: I think it might be like glow in the dark too.
Speaker 1: Holy cow.
Speaker 2: But he is a pretty good I say, go check
Speaker 2: it out.
Speaker 1: I got it. Definitely want to check that out.
Speaker 2: Oh and actually, we have a new thing on our
Speaker 2: website on our podcast pages, so like the page where
Speaker 2: you can go listen to any podcast on our site,
Speaker 2: there's now a like an additional links section where it
Speaker 2: has stuff that we talk about. It links out to
Speaker 2: articles that we use for extra research. They'll be on
Speaker 2: this Slinky episode podcast page, a link to that Slinky Master.
Speaker 2: Oh you don't even need to google that. You just
Speaker 2: basically make stuff you should know your homepage and we
Speaker 2: can take care of it for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And we're bringing back transcriptions right yep, which we
Speaker 1: are super happy about because we used to have transcriptions
Speaker 1: for our friends in the deaf and Heart of Hearing
Speaker 1: community and then we didn't do it for a while
Speaker 1: and they were like, what gives shirks? Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: we've been working to get those back and I think
Speaker 1: they're going to be back now yep.
Speaker 2: So that's Slinky's a goodnight.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, we didn't start yet.
Speaker 2: So I had no idea while I was watching people
Speaker 2: get their hair caught in Slinky's or playing with them
Speaker 2: in general that they had a kind of a pretty
Speaker 2: neat history until I ran across this article from PRIs Nomics,
Speaker 2: written by a dude named Zachary Crockett.
Speaker 1: Yeah, big, thanks, it's a good article. It is.
Speaker 2: It's called The Invention is Slinky, and in it, Crockett
Speaker 2: starts at a pretty reasonable place the birth of the
Speaker 2: inventor of slinky, Richard Thompson James.
Speaker 1: Rick James, and in the slinky, I don't think he
Speaker 1: went by Rick.
Speaker 2: No, he went by mister James, right, inventor's slinky.
Speaker 1: Yes. He was born in nineteen fourteen in Delaware, and
Speaker 1: apparently his brother Samuel said that he was always a
Speaker 1: pretty enterprising, mechanically oriented type of kid, because he had
Speaker 1: this one story about when he was like thirteen, he
Speaker 1: found an old car and literally like fixed the car
Speaker 1: up well enough to sell it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it had like mice running around living. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: he sold it for twenty five bucks, which I went
Speaker 2: to West Egg and converted that three hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: seven dollars in twenty fourteen. Money.
Speaker 1: Not bad for a thirteen year old, No, no way, that's yeah.
Speaker 1: But it was a car. Whoever bought it got a
Speaker 1: good deal, That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 2: But I mean he probably didn't get rid of the mice.
Speaker 2: He just got the thing to run again.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Plus it wasn't his car anyway, he just took
Speaker 1: it exact fixed it up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was the mice's car.
Speaker 1: So in the nineteen thirties he went to Penn State
Speaker 1: and did study mechanical engineering.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He was just a tinkerer, so it made a
Speaker 2: lot of sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I find that often when people like you researched
Speaker 1: the people who invented like a circuit board for an
Speaker 1: amp or something. It seems like that starts when you're very,
Speaker 1: very young, right, just interest in that kind of thing. Yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: you don't get into mechanical engineering in your twenties, no,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Like you ditch psychology for a mechanical engineering degree.
Speaker 1: Yeah. My brother went the other way. He was an
Speaker 1: aerospace engineering major and he switched to psychology.
Speaker 2: Did he really? I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He wanted to be an astronaut. That's awesome, but
Speaker 1: not like a six year old. He was like, he's
Speaker 1: an adult, wanted to be an astronaut, right, He wanted
Speaker 1: to be a cowboy.
Speaker 2: Too, cowboys you grew up to actually be cowboys.
Speaker 1: So anyway, he got a mechanical engineering degree and then
Speaker 1: started work as a naval engineer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it makes sense. It was World War Two,
Speaker 2: so that's what you did. Yeah, he had to go
Speaker 2: fight Hitler, so he did. He fought it from behind
Speaker 2: a desk because they're like you're a mechanical engineer, you
Speaker 2: just sit here and figure out how you can make
Speaker 2: our weapons of war better.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 2: And he was actually working on something that you springs
Speaker 2: is something that basically kept some sort of electronics on battleships.
Speaker 2: I think it had to do with the measuring horse power.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a horsepower meter that I guess if
Speaker 1: you're in rough waves that would mess with the meter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you didn't want to rocking all over the
Speaker 2: place that you would use springs to keep it intact
Speaker 2: or keep it from moving around too much, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: So while he was tinkering around with one of this,
Speaker 2: he quite by accident knocked over some stuff. I don't
Speaker 2: think it was in a fit of rage, it was accidental.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And one of the things he knocked over included a spring,
Speaker 2: and he watched the spring fall off the shelf in
Speaker 2: a nice graceful arc, hit a book, go over from
Speaker 2: the book onto the desk, and then from the desk
Speaker 2: onto the floor in this nice arching manner.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Yeah, exactly, and he said, let's try that again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's apparently captivated by it.
Speaker 1: It's pretty neat, like this is literally one of those
Speaker 1: toys you can trace back to one of those silly
Speaker 1: fluke moments, like the microwave. Was that the same thing?
Speaker 2: He was, Yeah, they there was a oh man, I
Speaker 2: can't remember what the actual the actual thing that makes
Speaker 2: the microwave. The microwave was discovered by accident that yeah,
Speaker 2: that it had these properties that like a guy had
Speaker 2: a chocolate bar in his shirt melted, it melt. He's like,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, So of course he logically ran and
Speaker 2: grabbed some popcorn and saw that that happened, and then
Speaker 2: the microwave was born.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's slinky. Is actually the only place
Speaker 1: that's on our website is one of those our top
Speaker 1: ten Accidental Inventions or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and all bet microwaves are in there too.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it is. So basically, you're right. The light
Speaker 1: bulb went off over his head and he went home
Speaker 1: and told his lovely wife Betty, Betty, Betty, I think
Speaker 1: I've got something here, and I just need to figure
Speaker 1: out how to how to make it to where it
Speaker 1: keeps doing this thing. I'm going to try, because you
Speaker 1: can't just get any spring and throw it on a step.
Speaker 2: No, you can. There's all sorts of different kinds of
Speaker 2: springs that turns out, you know, like there's a tension
Speaker 2: spring sure that they use on mouse traps, and then
Speaker 2: there's this slinking Yeah, but no, the slinky spring is
Speaker 2: this super refined type of spring that was designed over
Speaker 2: the course of a year through trial and error to
Speaker 2: have just the right tension, just the right shape, just
Speaker 2: the right size of the coils, just the right everything,
Speaker 2: so that it really accentuated that graceful flow, that arcing
Speaker 2: flow that it has. Yeah, it makes it the slinky.
Speaker 2: And it took him like a year of tinkering with
Speaker 2: all these different tensions and types of materials before he
Speaker 2: finally hit upon it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think he settled on a point zero
Speaker 1: five seven to five inch in diameter high carbon steel.
Speaker 1: The original slinkies were black metal, which was kind of
Speaker 1: cool looking by the time, like we were kids. I
Speaker 1: think they just they had the shiny, silvery ones. And
Speaker 1: then of course we'll get to the plastic that came
Speaker 1: along later too, but the first ones were black and
Speaker 1: it demonstrates property and physics hooks law.
Speaker 2: So I ran across this like super hardcore physics forum
Speaker 2: where somebody posted that they were talking about the physics
Speaker 2: of slinky and somebody's like, it seems like Cooks law
Speaker 2: is a good place to start, and they got piled on.
Speaker 1: Oh really.
Speaker 2: They said that Hooks law has to do with the
Speaker 2: amount of force a spring exerts on something it's attached to.
Speaker 2: So I think with Hooks law, if it does apply,
Speaker 2: what you're talking about is the force being transferred from
Speaker 2: one end of the slinky to the other, and that
Speaker 2: as the momentum at the front of the slinky goes downward,
Speaker 2: that same amount is transferred to the back and it's
Speaker 2: pulled forward and it just keeps going end over end.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if Hooks law does apply or not,
Speaker 2: but if it does, that's my understanding of how it
Speaker 2: would apply.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the one definition I saw was that it basically
Speaker 1: means a spring will return to its original shape once
Speaker 1: the load is removed.
Speaker 2: So that makes sense, right. But there's another thing, at
Speaker 2: least one other thing going on with the slinky, and
Speaker 2: that is that it goes along a launge tudinal wave.
Speaker 2: So just like a sound wave, basically a slinky is
Speaker 2: a sound wave slowed down or the same type of
Speaker 2: wave as a sound wave, and it slowed down and
Speaker 2: as the slinky's moving on a molecular level, molecule to molecule,
Speaker 2: is pushing the ones in front of it forward, and
Speaker 2: then the whole thing starts over again once it reaches equilibrium.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a great explanation to me.
Speaker 2: Yes, no, that's all right. It avoids equilibrium. Once it
Speaker 2: hits equilibrium, it stops. Oh okay, Yeah, but the whole
Speaker 2: thing starts with the slinky just sitting there at the
Speaker 2: top of the step. And what it has there is
Speaker 2: potential energy. It's a store.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you gotta move it to get that kinetic energy going. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, I just remember staring at it.
Speaker 1: It's like it's not doing nothing.
Speaker 2: This is where Slinky and our esp episodes collide. How's
Speaker 2: that You're just staring at slinky willing it to move?
Speaker 1: Oh? Gotcha? All right. So he comes up with this
Speaker 1: little slinky. It works like a charm, his little prototype.
Speaker 1: He does the smart thing, which is if you want
Speaker 1: to find out if kids actually will enjoy it. He
Speaker 1: got the neighborhood together. Yeah, and came to some kids
Speaker 1: and they went nuts. They were like, this thing is amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, stop hitting that other kid with those sticks. And
Speaker 2: come over and play with this toy that I came
Speaker 2: up with. Let me know what you think.
Speaker 1: And they wrapped up that kid in the spring, got
Speaker 1: it caught in that kid's hair. Yeah, he said this
Speaker 1: is perfect.
Speaker 2: He's like, this is Gangbusters. And I mean, like he
Speaker 2: saw from that very early back of the envelope market
Speaker 2: research that he did with the neighborhood kids, it made
Speaker 2: him a believer. Oh yeah, Like he saw that kids
Speaker 2: really were into this thing. And I got the impression
Speaker 2: that at no point was he like this thing is amazing,
Speaker 2: it's supernatural. He's like, this is a it's really cool.
Speaker 2: It's a spring. It's physics, but it just looks really
Speaker 2: neat and it is somehow weirdly captivating.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think they say that one in a thousand
Speaker 1: toys hits it big.
Speaker 2: Yeah, something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I mean there are toy inventors that labor
Speaker 1: for their entire lives, yeah, and never hit on something
Speaker 1: like the slinky. I mean, it's one of the top
Speaker 1: ten toys in history. When they give frustrate a little spring,
Speaker 1: they go slinky. So Betty, his wife, wasn't super well.
Speaker 1: She was a little skeptical at.
Speaker 2: First, which we'll learn later is pretty ironic.
Speaker 1: Very ironic. And he actually tasked her with naming it though.
Speaker 1: And she is the one that found the word slinky
Speaker 1: in the dictionary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently she spent like several weeks drinking for just
Speaker 2: the right word.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, what else was she doing raising six kids?
Speaker 2: Right, exactly? She had a lot of downtime.
Speaker 1: So right after this break, we will talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about how it went from a just a garage
Speaker 1: neighborhood idea to one of the biggest selling toys ever.
Speaker 1: All right, So he's got his slinky, he's got the prototype,
Speaker 1: he gets a five hundred dollars loan to start from
Speaker 1: a friend to start James Spring and Wire Company, LLC. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty good name.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and then he got the five hundred bucks
Speaker 2: apparently pretty easy from the friend by just showing him
Speaker 2: the slinky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he was like, how much do you need?
Speaker 2: I didn't look up how much five hundred bucks is,
Speaker 2: but in nineteen forty five, but we can guess that it's.
Speaker 1: About forty million.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, because I think it's about let's see,
Speaker 2: it was about I think sixty five hundred bucks probably
Speaker 2: roughly today. Okay, which I mean, that's substantial to give
Speaker 2: a friend.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I can, and it was enough to get
Speaker 1: things going. I think he really, I mean he had
Speaker 1: the prototype, he just needed an official company banner basically. Right.
Speaker 1: So he has his machine shop and he has his prototype,
Speaker 1: and he gets a bunch of wire and he makes
Speaker 1: a bunch of slinky.
Speaker 2: Well, he goes through his local machine shop first.
Speaker 1: Right, So he's at his local machine shop and he
Speaker 1: makes four hundred slinkies. They were two and a half
Speaker 1: inches tall, contained eighty feet of wire, which that's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: I didn't know it was nearly that much. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it makes sense, I guess because I think every kid's
Speaker 1: tried to uncoil theirs fully, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And apparently slinky starts out as like normal round wire,
Speaker 2: but then they smush it to make it flat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's got to be flat to perform and
Speaker 1: sit on itself. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize though, I mean, yeah, it makes sense,
Speaker 2: but I didn't realize it started out as like a round,
Speaker 2: like diameter type wire.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But what kind of metal did he start out at?
Speaker 1: Swedish steel, high.
Speaker 2: Grade blue black Swedish steel.
Speaker 1: I guess that was the wire of the day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was in ninety eight coils and at first
Speaker 1: they just wrapped it in parchment paper. Later on, I
Speaker 1: think they packaged it in just a box like it's
Speaker 1: in today, right, Actually today, I think it's in that
Speaker 1: awful plastic stuff that you can't open.
Speaker 2: Oh is it now?
Speaker 1: Well, they have a throwback you can get in the box. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's still like modeled after the original box, which is
Speaker 1: kind of neat. Yeah, So I don't see why you
Speaker 1: wouldn't get that one personally.
Speaker 2: So with the original metal slinky, yeah, and the whole
Speaker 2: history from the time he walked into that metal shop
Speaker 2: the first time, once he had the prototype figured out
Speaker 2: throughout today. There was only one design change in the
Speaker 2: whole time, and that was to crimp the ends that
Speaker 2: after it was produced to keep it from tangling is easy,
Speaker 2: uh huh, and for safety. So it didn't like cut
Speaker 2: some kid's eye out.
Speaker 1: Right, So after a bunch of kids eyes were cut out,
Speaker 1: they'd crimp the INDs.
Speaker 2: I don't know if they had foresight or if if
Speaker 2: it was in response to eyes being gouged out, but
Speaker 2: that's crazy one. Yeah, and I mean still today, I
Speaker 2: went on Amazon to double check, and the slinky is
Speaker 2: still two and a half inches tall.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: It didn't say how many coils it was because they
Speaker 2: didn't get that descriptive. But it's the same thing as
Speaker 2: it was back in nineteen forty what five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm surprised they didn't have like, you know, the
Speaker 1: Mega x stream right slinky.
Speaker 2: That like is powered by mountain dew or something like that.
Speaker 1: You know, they probably do have that, actually extreme. I
Speaker 1: love that though the original slinky is still like exact same.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the original metal ones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure I changed something that's perfect right, right,
Speaker 1: And so the.
Speaker 2: James's knew that this thing was perfect, had a great name,
Speaker 2: worked really well. Yeah, the neighborhood kids loved it.
Speaker 1: Sure, So of course.
Speaker 2: This thing's going to become like a hit right out
Speaker 2: of the gate, right.
Speaker 1: Nope, No, you're being coy. My friend he took it
Speaker 1: to toy stores and there was one storekeeper who said,
Speaker 1: this is the atomic age. Kids want big, bright, fancy
Speaker 1: things with lots of colors and lights. We couldn't give
Speaker 1: the thing away if it played God bless America picked
Speaker 1: up the Daily Double Is it walked down the steps.
Speaker 1: That's very cynical.
Speaker 2: It is very cynical. He used exclamation points and stuff.
Speaker 1: But James, Rick James was like, I'm Rick James, and
Speaker 1: you know, tell me what to do with my toys.
Speaker 2: No, and he got in touch with Gimbals, who is
Speaker 2: very famous as the Macy's competitor from there go on
Speaker 2: thirty fourth Street. That's the only reason most of us
Speaker 2: have ever heard of Gimbals. Yeah, and Gimbals in Philadelphia
Speaker 2: apparently said do you know what I like you? I
Speaker 2: like the way you smell. I'm going to put your
Speaker 2: toys in our Christmas display and we'll just see where
Speaker 2: it goes from there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was local at that, living outside of Philly, right,
Speaker 1: I wonder if that so.
Speaker 2: They eventually moved outside of Philly, but I'm not sure
Speaker 2: exactly where they were at this point. It would make sense,
Speaker 2: although it's entirely possible he was hustling hard enough that
Speaker 2: he was just hitting department stores all over the northeast.
Speaker 1: Well in Delaware, it's not too far anyway, So.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they may have still been in Delaware, but they
Speaker 2: they did talk the Philadelphi Gimbals into putting this on
Speaker 2: their Christmas display, So in Christmas nineteen forty five. November
Speaker 2: nineteen forty five, the slinky debuts to public and it
Speaker 2: immediately takes off like a rocket. Right.
Speaker 1: Nope, again that was double koy. No. It for weeks
Speaker 1: just sat there because of course, it's just this thing
Speaker 1: that kids had never seen before, the spring and the
Speaker 1: parchment paper sitting between like really awesome toys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just like all it's nothing but potential energy
Speaker 2: at that point. Yeah, there's like a spring sitting between
Speaker 2: those atomic age toys that that one shopkeeper was using
Speaker 2: exclamation points about.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I mean if there was ever a toy
Speaker 1: that needed a demonstration to delight and amaze, it was
Speaker 1: the slinky.
Speaker 2: So very frustrated with this, Richard James apparently said to
Speaker 2: his wife, like, I'm going down to Gimbals and I'm
Speaker 2: going to deal with this head on. Yeah, and he
Speaker 2: said meet me there in like ninety minutes or something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So he went down there, took a couple of Slinkies
Speaker 2: out of their parchment paper and started lookie, dummies, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you stupid kids, keep your hair away, but check this out.
Speaker 2: And he started playing with them, and apparently by the
Speaker 2: time Betty got down there, ninety minutes later, he had
Speaker 2: sold all four hundred Slinkies and there was apparently a
Speaker 2: line around the block asking for more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds like such a trumped up story, but
Speaker 1: you know, I love it though. It was like, within
Speaker 1: ninety minutes, It's great. The world was slinky crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The Santa Fa Miracle on thirty fourth Street comes
Speaker 2: through and does like a little towirl and goes out
Speaker 2: of frame again.
Speaker 1: But he did sell those four hundred units that day, supposedly,
Speaker 1: and by Christmas they had sold twenty thousand, so it
Speaker 1: really did take off super fast. Yeah, once kids understood
Speaker 1: what the heck it was.
Speaker 2: And that was that's a significant amount of money, Chuck,
Speaker 2: I used west Egg this time. Oh yeah, a one
Speaker 2: dollar They sold him for a dollar apiece. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: he sold four hundred units and twenty thousand by the
Speaker 2: end of Christmas. That it translates to like thirteen dollars
Speaker 2: in today's money.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: So imagine being a parent today and being like, you
Speaker 2: want me to pay thirteen dollars for a spring?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Are you crazy? But they still managed to capture the
Speaker 2: public imagination just right. Yeah, and the thing just spread
Speaker 2: like wildfire, not just in Christmas of nineteen forty five.
Speaker 2: By Christmas of nineteen forty seven, there was a New
Speaker 2: York Times article in like the fashion section talking about
Speaker 2: how the must have adornment of the year was a
Speaker 2: slinky dipped in gold with glitter.
Speaker 1: It sounds like something Edward Brenees might have cooked up, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. I think Another cool thing is they
Speaker 1: remained a dollar for a lot of their life, right.
Speaker 1: And it said in this article here that in the
Speaker 1: mid nineties are only a dollar eighty nine. Now they're
Speaker 1: like four or five bucks.
Speaker 2: It looks like I saw again on Amazon. Yeh, Amazon,
Speaker 2: Amazon dot com. Amazon, it was like two twenty nine.
Speaker 2: It was the lowest I saw.
Speaker 1: Hey, that's a good deal for a slinky.
Speaker 2: But even still, Yeah, if you want a great deal
Speaker 2: on anything, go to Amazon dot com.
Speaker 1: I saw others at other nameless online toy store retailers.
Speaker 2: And always that we were supposed to do four or
Speaker 2: five bucks. No Amazon, I could see that though, four
Speaker 2: or five bucks it makes sense. Yeah, But the point
Speaker 2: is is, for a very long time still pretty cheap. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It stayed the same even as the cost of living increased,
Speaker 2: so its relative price went down. Tremendously and they did
Speaker 2: that on purpose.
Speaker 1: Well, and that was yeah, exactly. That was one of
Speaker 1: the things that as we'll see here shortly, Betty's one
Speaker 1: of her favorite things. What is it that kids could
Speaker 1: have a cheap toy and she wanted even poor kids
Speaker 1: to be able to buy something, right, and here's my spring,
Speaker 1: here's this link to just give me a dollar.
Speaker 2: So the James is and by this time they were
Speaker 2: they were in pretty much partnership from what I understand,
Speaker 2: at the very least, Betty was playing some sort of
Speaker 2: supporting role, at least as an advisor. Possibly sure, But
Speaker 2: again they had like six kids and she was raised,
Speaker 2: so it was really mostly Richard running the company. But
Speaker 2: they took the Slinky to the toy Fair, the American
Speaker 2: Toy Fair in New York, which is the same one
Speaker 2: that Barbie debuted at in the fifties. I think, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: Barbie registered trademark and they took Slinky there in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty seven. And they did it all themselves. They'd pitched
Speaker 2: the thing, and they had people from toy stores and
Speaker 2: department stores from around the country just signing up. And
Speaker 2: Slinky was he huge. Apparently they made the equivalent of
Speaker 2: a billion dollars in the first two years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he sold more than one hundred million in the
Speaker 1: first three years of production. That's crazy. One hundred million,
Speaker 1: one hundred million, And this is the population of you know,
Speaker 1: the mid forties, right, Yeah, it's not like you know nowadays,
Speaker 1: that would be a little more believable, I think.
Speaker 2: So well, no, think about it. I wish I would
Speaker 2: have thought of that. Like, there probably weren't too terribly more,
Speaker 2: much more than one hundred million people in the US
Speaker 2: at the time, So that's like a slinky for every
Speaker 2: person in the.
Speaker 1: US, slinky in every pot. Right, So things were going
Speaker 1: so well. He realized that my my machine shop here
Speaker 1: in uh uh, Delaware, Delaware, suburban Pennsylvania, which whichever it was,
Speaker 1: is not up to snuff, and I need to set
Speaker 1: up my own shop. So he did that in Albany,
Speaker 1: New York, and was like, I'm a I'm an inventor.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna make my own machine that can make
Speaker 1: our own slinkies at a rate of five seconds a pop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the old machine shop was making them in a
Speaker 2: couple of minutes per slinky.
Speaker 1: Which was fast for back then, I think.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so Richard James said, I'm gonna make my
Speaker 2: own machine. That's that's really cool. Absolutely, I think it's
Speaker 2: pretty neat. And not only did he make his own machine,
Speaker 2: he made a machine that can do one in five seconds,
Speaker 2: like you said. So, yeah, it took it, took the
Speaker 2: round wire, huh, smushed it yep, and then coiled it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: in nine seconds, crimp the ends. I guess that's crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then bam, you got a slinky. You got a
Speaker 2: dollar in your pocket right there.
Speaker 1: This is when this is when it came in the
Speaker 1: black box and they ditched the parchment and it was
Speaker 1: labeled Slinky Colon, the famous walking spring toy, and it
Speaker 1: was gangbusters.
Speaker 2: Man, it was again. They sold one hundred million in
Speaker 2: the first two years. To put that in perspective, I
Speaker 2: did find out how many people there were in America
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty seven. There was one hundred and forty
Speaker 2: four million people in the US.
Speaker 1: And he sold one hundred million slinky huh.
Speaker 2: So for every one point four people there was, one
Speaker 2: of them had a slinky.
Speaker 1: So that means adults were buying slinkys too. Yeah, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So in the nineteen fifties they started to do what
Speaker 1: all great inventors do, They started to expand the line
Speaker 1: a bit. Yeah, they came up with courtesy of a
Speaker 1: woman named Helen Malsaid came up with a slinky dog
Speaker 1: and the slinky train because she was a fan that
Speaker 1: they would like solicit ideas, and she wrote them in
Speaker 1: and said, Hey, I think it would be pretty neat
Speaker 1: if you made like a dog that walked, but the
Speaker 1: middle of them was a slinky.
Speaker 2: Right, and so like the rear end up to the front.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like in toy Story exactly, which they got some
Speaker 1: nice kickback money on that.
Speaker 2: There was also the uh yeah, oh yes, So then
Speaker 2: they didn't steal people's ideas either.
Speaker 1: No, that was waiting for that to read that. When
Speaker 1: I was reading this, I was all nervous that, like.
Speaker 2: Paul said, died bitter and penniless in New York.
Speaker 1: No, she actually was a ended up creating twenty six
Speaker 1: toys and games in her career. Wow, the slinky dog
Speaker 1: and slinky train were her biggest successes. But they basically
Speaker 1: paid her sixty five grand a year for seventeen years
Speaker 1: on that royalty. That's awesome, which is a ton of money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so hats off to you.
Speaker 2: Helen mal said, there, did you get the idea of
Speaker 2: whether she was already a toy inventor or that this
Speaker 2: kind of gave her the boost she needed to become
Speaker 2: a toy inventor for a career.
Speaker 1: I think she was. I read her New York Times,
Speaker 1: oh bit, and I talked about some other games that
Speaker 1: she had tried to create.
Speaker 2: Gotcha.
Speaker 1: I don't think she had like burst onto the scene
Speaker 1: though or anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's a pretty comfortable living back then.
Speaker 1: Oh heck. Yeah. So they also had this SUSI the
Speaker 1: slinky worm and slinky crazy eyes.
Speaker 2: Yeah you know those.
Speaker 1: I remember those.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those glasses that have like the slinkies attached to
Speaker 2: the big bloodshot eyeballs. Yeah, those are slinky brand hysterical.
Speaker 2: And it turns out that it wasn't just toys. This
Speaker 2: slinky patent that Richard James originally got back in the
Speaker 2: forties was also licensed out for other stuff, like it
Speaker 2: was used in antennas. It ended up being used on
Speaker 2: battleships or other kinds of ships. Is a stabilizing thing
Speaker 2: like he was originally after. Yeah, gutter protectors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw that too, Light fixtures, total sense.
Speaker 2: So They also made a ton of cash sub licensing
Speaker 2: this whole that, like the slinky patent out for other
Speaker 2: uses besides just the toys and the slinky hippo and
Speaker 2: all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they gave soldiers in Vietnam slinkies. Didn't license that,
Speaker 1: like just straight up gave them slinkies to use in
Speaker 1: the field as antennas. So they would throw the slinky
Speaker 1: like over a tree branch and then pull it down
Speaker 1: and connect it to their radio to boost their intenna signal.
Speaker 2: That is pretty smart, pretty neat. You know it's being
Speaker 2: used today in space. Oh really, they're using the same
Speaker 2: I think the same patent originally to deploy solar sales
Speaker 2: in space. Oh wow, yeah, pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I wonder if they're licensing the actual.
Speaker 2: They I mean, NASA was using the slinky name all
Speaker 2: over the article I was reading. And there's another one too.
Speaker 2: There's a paper slinky that has it's coated with a
Speaker 2: metal on one side, and so the when you make
Speaker 2: it go springing to non springy I think is the
Speaker 2: physics terms that I'm searching for sure, it creates static electricity,
Speaker 2: and it creates enough that that can be captured and
Speaker 2: used to generate power. No way, yeah, way, And it's
Speaker 2: people at Georgia Tech who are doing it.
Speaker 1: Well, that makes sense, all right, So where are we
Speaker 1: He has sold one hundred million of these. He's expanding
Speaker 1: the line. And right after this break, we are going
Speaker 1: to talk about a very interesting turn in this story
Speaker 1: that has to do with well, you'll see.
Speaker 2: So we're back, Chuck. Slinky's doing well. It's the fifties.
Speaker 2: There's a ton of different slinky stuff, slinky eyeballs. Everybody's
Speaker 2: freaking out their teachers. Yeah, and things are going great
Speaker 2: for the Jameses, right.
Speaker 1: I think teacher's desk drawers are loaded with slinky products,
Speaker 1: the shattering teeth and rotten apples. Wonder where that came.
Speaker 2: From giving the teacher an apple. Yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 2: but I'll bet somebody out there will let us know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, So it's the mid nineteen fifties. They
Speaker 1: are loaded at this point, loaded making tons of money.
Speaker 1: At this point, they had moved to a wealthy suburb
Speaker 1: of Philadelphia with a thirty one bedroom estate on twelve acres. Rich,
Speaker 1: super rich people. Yes, good for them.
Speaker 2: They're in Bryn Mahr, which is like the wealthiest of
Speaker 2: the suburbs. I bet it still is Bryn Mahr.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like a place has gone down the tubes.
Speaker 2: No, you know, no, so Welsh Brynn looks pretty Welsh.
Speaker 2: V r y n m awr.
Speaker 1: It's definitely something uk.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say Welsh, all right.
Speaker 1: So Betty, things were going well with the business, but
Speaker 1: within the family things weren't so great because Betty found
Speaker 1: out that Rick James was stepping out. He was a
Speaker 1: super freak and he was fulling around on her quite
Speaker 1: a bit from the sounds of it, right, And she was.
Speaker 2: Like, Okay, let's see, am I gonna ditch this zero
Speaker 2: and go find a hero or what am I going
Speaker 2: to do? And she said, well, I have six kids
Speaker 2: and I'm gonna stick with this dude for the benefit
Speaker 2: of the kids. And she did. But apparently things were
Speaker 2: never the same after that, I'm sure. And as a result,
Speaker 2: Richard James started going to church a lot more and
Speaker 2: it really got to him. It really spoke to him
Speaker 2: a lot going to church and became something of a
Speaker 2: I guess I took it, although he didn't say he
Speaker 2: became something of a born again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly what he game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he started out obviously as a Catholic because
Speaker 2: he used to go to confession all the time, which
Speaker 2: seems like, okay, well that guy felt really bad about
Speaker 2: things and he wanted to get stuff off of his chest.
Speaker 2: Not so, says Betty, his ex wife. Betty said that
Speaker 2: he liked the attention that he would get from confessing
Speaker 2: in confession.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he pretty he was sort of a hot shot,
Speaker 1: and I think he liked to just be revered maybe
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Or just for people to listen to him or who knows.
Speaker 2: That's just a that's a weird thing. That's a weird
Speaker 2: little thing to do, is go to confession to get attention.
Speaker 1: I thought it was very strange.
Speaker 2: So as he's going to confession, as he's going to
Speaker 2: church more and more and more, he's also his family.
Speaker 2: He's even though yeah he's still at home and he's
Speaker 2: living with his family, he's becoming isolated, not just from
Speaker 2: society at large, he's becoming pretty isolated from his family
Speaker 2: as well. I got the impression that they didn't go
Speaker 2: down the church path quite the same degree he did,
Speaker 2: and so that was causing him to feel more and
Speaker 2: more isolated. Causing him to withdraw more and more, and
Speaker 2: there was at some point a moment where he revealed
Speaker 2: that they didn't have much money anymore.
Speaker 1: Not only that they were in debt to like seven
Speaker 1: figure debt, yeah, about a million dollars in debt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he started funneling all their millions to dogmatic evangelical
Speaker 1: religious groups, donating all their money.
Speaker 2: Not only donating some Yeah, exactly. He was like not
Speaker 2: paying creditors for the LLC that owns slinky. He was
Speaker 2: diverting that revenue from the business to religious groups that
Speaker 2: he was a member of.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And this article said straight up like if you
Speaker 1: bought a slinky before nineteen sixty, your money went exactly there, right.
Speaker 2: So it was kind of a big deal. This is
Speaker 2: a big revelation that was you know, started in the
Speaker 2: mid fifties and really things just got weird in the
Speaker 2: James family from the mid fifties till nineteen sixty, and
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden in nineteen sixty, Richard James said,
Speaker 2: have you guys ever heard of Bolivia? No, Well, it's
Speaker 2: too bad because I just bought a one way ticket
Speaker 2: there and I'm going now. Don't ask me why I'm
Speaker 2: just going to join a religious group in the wilds
Speaker 2: of Bolivia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I've seen it characterized as a cult. That
Speaker 1: is not quite the deal. They were called the Wycliffe
Speaker 1: Bible Translators and they're still around, but it was basically
Speaker 1: their mission is to translate the Bible into as many
Speaker 1: languages and get it into as many hands around the
Speaker 1: world as possible. And he felt that call and straight
Speaker 1: up left. His family said smell you later, and never
Speaker 1: got back in touch with him again. No, so as
Speaker 1: far as I could deal.
Speaker 2: That was February of nineteen sixty. And I think it
Speaker 2: was Betty who called it a cult, an evangelical Christian cult.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which you know, she was upset, sure, you know,
Speaker 1: and she read up about him and said this seems
Speaker 1: really weird to me, right, But yeah, it wasn't quite
Speaker 1: a cult, but I get it. She was scorned.
Speaker 2: So that was February nineteen sixty that Richard leaves for Bolivia.
Speaker 2: And before he left, he sat Betty down and said,
Speaker 2: as you know, we're a million dollars in debt. I'm leaving.
Speaker 2: You have a choice here. We can either liquidate the
Speaker 2: company or you can take over your choice. I really
Speaker 2: don't care. I'm going to Bolivia and I'm probably never
Speaker 2: coming back.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was kind of surprised that she got that
Speaker 1: opportunity to decide at least what to do with her future. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: I was glad to know that it was within her power.
Speaker 2: R Right. It took me a couple of times of
Speaker 2: reading this before I finally called on to that. At
Speaker 2: first I thought he just laughed and she slid into
Speaker 2: that position. But yeah, he gave her the choice, like,
Speaker 2: you can liquidate, you're raising six kids. You'll probably make
Speaker 2: some money off of it after the creditors are paid off.
Speaker 2: So do you want to do that? She said, you
Speaker 2: know what, No, I'm going to try taking over the company.
Speaker 1: I'm going all in on Slinky.
Speaker 2: So she took over this company, Chuck, that was in
Speaker 2: really dire straits.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't think we even mentioned that Slinky's had
Speaker 1: started to wane in popularity, right, So not only were
Speaker 1: they in debt, but toward the end of the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: everyone had like the slinky craze had sort of passed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we said that it sold one hundred million
Speaker 2: units in its first two years. Since nineteen forty seven. No,
Speaker 2: nineteen forty five, they've sold three hundred million total. Oh wow,
Speaker 2: so a full one third of all the slinky sold
Speaker 2: were sold in the first two years. So yeah, it's
Speaker 2: star crested and then started to fall.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so this lady took over a company that was
Speaker 2: saddled with debt. It's star product was not so much
Speaker 2: of a star any longer.
Speaker 1: And she had six kids.
Speaker 2: She had six kids. Yeah, and she decided, rather than
Speaker 2: to liquidate the company, to say, no, I'm going to
Speaker 2: see what I can do with this. I'm going to
Speaker 2: try to bring it back. And she did.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, reading this, she's truly one of like
Speaker 1: the great women in American history.
Speaker 2: I think she's She's definitely the hero of this story too.
Speaker 1: And revered by toy enthusiasts. But I don't think a
Speaker 1: lot of people even know her name, you know.
Speaker 2: Nope, it's Betty James everybody.
Speaker 1: So her first plan was, I have all these creditors
Speaker 1: at least let me try and get this deferred for now,
Speaker 1: and was somehow able to talk them into the some
Speaker 1: of these payments. Yeah, thank god. And then in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two, she hired three dudes from Columbia, South Carolina.
Speaker 1: Johnny McCullough and Homer Fesperman wrote the music, and Charles
Speaker 1: Weegley wrote the lyrics to what would later become the
Speaker 1: longest running Dare I say most successful commercial jingle of
Speaker 1: all time?
Speaker 2: Yes? I would say it's possibly the most well known
Speaker 2: at least.
Speaker 1: So let's let's play a little bit of that right now.
Speaker 1: Everyone's heard it, and here it is who walks to
Speaker 1: day without to get and makes the happiest sounds that
Speaker 1: bumping down.
Speaker 2: Just like a club. Everyone else is ninety.
Speaker 1: That's been the get to give, I get the favorite
Speaker 1: all over town.
Speaker 2: So I mean that surely sounds familiar. Apparently there was
Speaker 2: a nineteen ninety survey that was conducted that found that
Speaker 2: eighty nine point eight percent of Americans either know what
Speaker 2: a slinky is or are familiar with that jingle. So
Speaker 2: that's yeah, definitely, it's got to be the most successful
Speaker 2: jingle of all time. Like, what else is there? I
Speaker 2: can't think of anything else to put up against it.
Speaker 1: Have a coca and a smile whatever.
Speaker 2: I don't even know how that goes.
Speaker 1: No, I think that was just a slogan that wasn't
Speaker 1: a song. Oh, yeah, No, you're totally right. And you
Speaker 1: and I, of course all day have been singing it's log,
Speaker 1: It's log.
Speaker 2: And I was like, sure, that was obviously based on
Speaker 2: the Slinky jingle. And I went back and listened to
Speaker 2: I was like, no, it is the slinky jingle. They
Speaker 2: replace the lyrics. I didn't get the joke.
Speaker 1: Well, Ren and stimpy fans obviously know what I just did.
Speaker 1: But if you were like I don't get it, what
Speaker 1: does log have to do anything?
Speaker 2: Just look up log. I guess log jingle maybe.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So this was a huge it and it's funny.
Speaker 1: I was looking on the internet to see if I
Speaker 1: could find anything on these guys that wrote this thing,
Speaker 1: and Homer Fesperman has a face book page. It's got
Speaker 1: to be him.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just clicked on it and the first thing
Speaker 1: I saw was South Carolina game Cocks. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: was like, well Columbia, South Carolina. Yeah, And it looks
Speaker 1: like he's making like a video scrapbooks for people. Well,
Speaker 1: that's Facebook page was wide open, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: get touch and say are you are.
Speaker 2: You the Homer Fest?
Speaker 1: Maybe we could just get a like a little quick
Speaker 1: interview or something, but I didn't know. So look him up,
Speaker 1: Homer Fest Perman.
Speaker 2: He's on the he's on the internet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everybody friend him. He'll be like, what is going on?
Speaker 2: Have been spam by the friendliest people on Facebook?
Speaker 1: Who are fans? Yeah, most of them.
Speaker 2: So Betty's got this jingle out there. This was a
Speaker 2: master stroke.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: She also did some the advertising. She really put a
Speaker 2: lot of money into advertising. But apparently I get the
Speaker 2: impression that she had like some she cut some good deals.
Speaker 2: It wasn't she's she went hemorrhaging money on every time.
Speaker 2: It was all very smart and Slinky's star started to
Speaker 2: rise once again.
Speaker 1: Well, she moved the facility closer to Philadelphia too. I
Speaker 1: think it saved some money and allowed her to be
Speaker 1: with her kids more, although she did, you know, she
Speaker 1: had a caretaker. So the kids, I think they said,
Speaker 1: like Sunday through Thursday, they had a lot of attention
Speaker 1: from nanny's and things right, But I get the idea
Speaker 1: she was a good mom. She was trying to do
Speaker 1: right by her family, you know right.
Speaker 2: And not only her family this This article on Perisonomics
Speaker 2: points out that she was also helping out the families
Speaker 2: of I think the one hundred and twenty person team
Speaker 2: that she put together. Yeah, and it says they were
Speaker 2: a close knit, which definitely kind of jibes with the
Speaker 2: impression that I've gotten of her totally. So she's she's
Speaker 2: got this jingle down. Slinky's starting to come back a
Speaker 2: little bit. And also I think the tact that she's
Speaker 2: taking iss a. It's an inexpensive toy that everybody can enjoy, right,
Speaker 2: but it's still I mean, I don't know if all
Speaker 2: of it would have been quite so possible had a
Speaker 2: bit of serendipity not happened. In the mid nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: Plastic plastic was that the thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a dude in Minnesota who was a
Speaker 2: plastic worker who figured out basically a way to make
Speaker 2: a plastic slinky and went directly to Betty James and
Speaker 2: her company and said, what do you think about this?
Speaker 2: She said, you know what, I don't steal ideas I
Speaker 2: pay for him. How much do you want me to
Speaker 2: make the checkout for?
Speaker 1: Yeah. His name was Donald James Room, and he was
Speaker 1: of master Mark Plastics, and he was trying to make
Speaker 1: a garden hose that coiled like they have now, like
Speaker 1: a plastic garden hose that self coiled, and he failed
Speaker 1: and his kids apparently were like, that looks like a
Speaker 1: slinky and he was like, oh well let.
Speaker 2: Me, stupid kids, I'm trying to concentrate.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to make a garden hose. So, like you said,
Speaker 1: they made a great deal and he he ended up
Speaker 1: with tons of money too. Yeah, and it made slinky
Speaker 1: super popular again.
Speaker 2: And it became the Slinky Rainbow, the Rainbow Slink, And Yeah,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, not just original slinky. Now you
Speaker 2: had this what they call it, a less tangle prone
Speaker 2: alternative to slinky. Yeah, which is pretty bold because you're
Speaker 2: saying your original product is tangle prone. Yeah, still worked.
Speaker 2: I think maybe they just knew that everybody knew that
Speaker 2: the slinky is tangle prone. And now they had a
Speaker 2: couple of products again that were really saleable, and the
Speaker 2: slinky star rose once more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like I said, the Toy Story, they did
Speaker 1: make a great deal with I guess it was Pixar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and sold a ton more slinkies when Toy Story came
Speaker 1: out because of the dog right exactly. And in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, Betty Heard received news that her husband, Rick James,
Speaker 1: had passed away.
Speaker 2: Who she hadn't he cues within a few months of
Speaker 2: going to Bolivia, like she hadn't heard anything from him.
Speaker 1: That's just unbelievable. But she was doing fine, and so
Speaker 1: she was probably like, thanks for letting me know who cares.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it might have been a little sad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say that. But she then sold to
Speaker 1: poof Products in nineteen ninety eight for what she called
Speaker 1: a quote boatload of money and good for her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And she lived on for another ten years, to
Speaker 2: the ripe old age of ninety and I think before
Speaker 2: then she was recognized by the Toy Industry Association's Hall
Speaker 2: of Fame. I think Slinky was inducted in two thousand,
Speaker 2: so she would have been alive for that. Pretty neat. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so that's slinky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what. The only other thing I had
Speaker 1: was you can make the Star Wars blaster sound with
Speaker 1: a slinky?
Speaker 2: Oh really?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well you can do it with the microphone, or
Speaker 1: you can you put a cup, like a paper cup
Speaker 1: in the end of the slinky and you hold that
Speaker 1: in the air just at like the height of your
Speaker 1: head and the rest of this slinky falls to the
Speaker 1: ground and then you just start. Basically, there are all
Speaker 1: kinds of noises you can make, but if you want
Speaker 1: to make that sound, you can pick up the bottom
Speaker 1: off the floor and then just let it drop on
Speaker 1: the floor and catch it real quick and it does
Speaker 1: that nice, makes a neat sound.
Speaker 2: That's a chuck tip right there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can go to YouTube and look up Star
Speaker 1: Wars slinky sound and there's a couple of dudes of
Speaker 1: course that'll show you just how to do it.
Speaker 2: Well. That's one of the reasons too, why Betty James
Speaker 2: chose the word slinky is not only because it was
Speaker 2: sleek and attractive, but also thinks she thought that that
Speaker 2: was a good description of what the sound it may does.
Speaker 2: It went downstairs.
Speaker 1: That was before the Star Wars blaster, or she would
Speaker 1: have called it exact the blaster.
Speaker 2: And there's one last thing about slinky physics that are
Speaker 2: pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: Let's hear it.
Speaker 2: So, if you dangle a slinky out to where it's
Speaker 2: completely stretched out as much as it's going to without
Speaker 2: putting any pressure on, just letting the force of gravity
Speaker 2: stretch out the slinky until.
Speaker 1: It reaches equally about out a window.
Speaker 2: Let's say, okay, but without this bottom touching the ground
Speaker 2: out a fourth story though awesome, and you actually, if
Speaker 2: it was like eighty something feet, it'd have to be
Speaker 2: higher than that. Because it's slink, you would go right
Speaker 2: down to the ground.
Speaker 1: Man, Well, I mean you have to weight the bottom
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 2: Okay, So let's say four stories. You're right then, and
Speaker 2: if you have it, you're holding it steady, it's not moving,
Speaker 2: and then you release the top, the top will start
Speaker 2: to fall, but if you pay close attention, the bottom
Speaker 2: stays where it is. Whoa slinkys actually have this amazing
Speaker 2: property of managing to levitate momentarily when the top is released.
Speaker 2: And some very smart scientists studied this and they measured
Speaker 2: it and they found yes, indeed, the top is moving
Speaker 2: and the bottom is remaining. It's floating in mid air.
Speaker 2: And they figured out that the reason why is because
Speaker 2: the tension is still acting against the force of gravity,
Speaker 2: which has reached the equilibrium on the lower part of
Speaker 2: the coil. And basically, the information that gravity is that
Speaker 2: tension is released and gravity's about to win hasn't reached
Speaker 2: that bottom part yet. Each coil stacks upon the next
Speaker 2: one and the next one, in the next one. So
Speaker 2: as it's happening up top down below, it's all hunky dory.
Speaker 1: Still it's like you're still holding on to me.
Speaker 2: As far as I know, it's literally floating in mid air. Wow,
Speaker 2: it's ceaselessly amazing, basically the slinky.
Speaker 1: Yes, well those are two pretty boss slinky tricks.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: And what a great way to finish, I think.
Speaker 2: So if you want to know more about slinkies, you
Speaker 2: can go to the podcast page on how Stuff you
Speaker 2: Should Know dot com and check out our slinky episode
Speaker 2: and there should be links to this PRIs Nomics article
Speaker 2: and the YouTube slinky mast or all that jam. Just
Speaker 2: go check that out. And I didn't say search bar,
Speaker 2: but you can imagine that I would have under normal circumstances,
Speaker 2: which means it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this Sage from Portland. Remember Sage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we do a little Q and A at the end
Speaker 1: of these live shows and where people can get up
Speaker 1: in it ask us questions and sages was great, so
Speaker 1: I told her to scend it in. Hey, guys, just
Speaker 1: got back from your live show in Portland, and Chuck
Speaker 1: said to ride in to my amazing fact. I was
Speaker 1: super nervous to go up there. We'll saved. You did great.
Speaker 1: By the way, my fact is that you can actually
Speaker 1: tell how old a humpback whale is by looking at
Speaker 1: their earwax because it forms rings like a tree. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: remember that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Humpback whales migrate from Alaska Towaii each year for mating.
Speaker 1: The temperature shift of the ocean water causes the rings
Speaker 1: to form. Researchers will examine the ear wax of deceased
Speaker 1: whales there were beached to find out their age and
Speaker 1: a lot of other facts about them. Gross and fascinating,
Speaker 1: just like the actual ear Wax podcast. Guys. I found
Speaker 1: out this while snorkeling on a cruise in Hawaii last
Speaker 1: week for spring break. Thanks for everything, and thanks for
Speaker 1: the live show especially. It was totally awesome with four
Speaker 1: exclamation points. Oh four, that's pretty good, rating, men a lot.
Speaker 1: I had so much fun and I think I got
Speaker 1: my mom hooked on your show, too.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 1: So thanks to Sage and her mom for bringing her.
Speaker 1: And it was good to meet you. You did a
Speaker 1: great job. You didn't seem nervous at all.
Speaker 2: No, totally large and in charge like you do audience
Speaker 2: QA stuff every night.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: Thanks to everybody in Portland, you guys, I think chuck.
Speaker 2: Every single person that we met before and after said
Speaker 2: welcome to Portland, Like we were literally welcome by every
Speaker 2: single person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was really neat that they're proud of their
Speaker 1: city as they should be. Yes.
Speaker 2: If you want to get in touch with us about
Speaker 2: anything to do with whales or slinkys or live shows
Speaker 2: or any of that jazz, you can tweet to us
Speaker 2: at sysk podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com,
Speaker 2: slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an
Speaker 2: email to Stuff Podcast at houstuffworks dot com, and as always,
Speaker 2: joined us at our luxurious home on the web. Stuff
Speaker 2: you Should Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
Speaker 2: a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: App Apple Podcasts. Have you listen to your favorite shows