Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Ramsey over there
Speaker 1: the husu, which means it's time for Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know Nostalgia Edition Colon t s hodgment. Yeah, we've done
Speaker 1: a few toys. Um plato, Uh, slinkys right, what else?
Speaker 1: Well does a boomerang count as a toy? Uh, it's
Speaker 1: away alive, mate. Um, we've done tons. We did silly putty,
Speaker 1: silly putty, we did um uh, you know a bunch
Speaker 1: that The balls, Yeah, the balls the balls episode How
Speaker 1: Balls Work. They round and they bounced. We said balls
Speaker 1: like a million times in that episode. Uh. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: one's kind of cool though. The easy bake oven, which
Speaker 1: I never had one. Did you ever have one in
Speaker 1: your home? I don't think so. No. I don't think
Speaker 1: my sister had one either, although I was a pretty
Speaker 1: tubby kid, so it's possible that my mom was like,
Speaker 1: make sure your brother doesn't know you have one of those,
Speaker 1: Do not feed your brother or anything from there. But
Speaker 1: it's interesting that this is one where uh sort of
Speaker 1: a very simple idea and you never can tell what's
Speaker 1: gonna hit toy wise, nothing super complex about this other
Speaker 1: than you could literally bake food and sort of pretend
Speaker 1: to be an adult in the kitchen. That's that was
Speaker 1: the basis of it. Being an adult. That was kind
Speaker 1: of Kenner's thing. And Kenner, the people who made Star
Speaker 1: Wars toys, were the ones behind this, and they were
Speaker 1: very much into um toys that like let kids pretend
Speaker 1: they were growing ups. Yeah, that was their bag. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a new neighbor. Actually, shout out to Rick Kathy. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: where they really got into your skin? Huh what? Rick
Speaker 1: and Cathy got a shout out on the podcast and
Speaker 1: their new neighbors. Jeez. Yeah, because he worked for I
Speaker 1: was talking to him and I was like, he seems
Speaker 1: like a good guy. He was like, what you know,
Speaker 1: what do you do? Ricky's retired? Now, what did you do?
Speaker 1: And He's like, I was a toy and action figure
Speaker 1: designer for Kenner And I was like, whoa what? Years?
Speaker 1: He came on after his first The first thing he
Speaker 1: worked on was the Tim Burton Batman movies. And he
Speaker 1: stayed on for a long time, like his whole career,
Speaker 1: Like after they were sold and everything pretty neat. That
Speaker 1: is very cool. Yeah, good for him. Yeah, so he
Speaker 1: still does wonderful uh sculpture. So just go after Rick
Speaker 1: Watkins art online and then check it out. I'm going
Speaker 1: to check it out. But I mean, Kenneda is such
Speaker 1: a big deal to like two people, our age and
Speaker 1: of many ages. But I didn't realize that they didn't
Speaker 1: realize their origin as a company. Remember that we talked.
Speaker 1: We did a whole Action Figures episode, remember, and we
Speaker 1: talked a lot about Kenner. Was that a two part
Speaker 1: episode or was it just like an hour and a
Speaker 1: half long? I feel like it was just long. It
Speaker 1: was very long. But um, Kenner almost didn't do the
Speaker 1: Star Wars ones if I remember. But for us at least,
Speaker 1: that put Kenna on the map. What I didn't realize
Speaker 1: is that Kenner was already on the map as far
Speaker 1: as toys go. And one of the ways that they
Speaker 1: got there was from the Easy Bake Oven, which debuted
Speaker 1: in November of nineteen, right around the time that John
Speaker 1: Kennedy was shot. Yeah, but Kenner had been around since
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties. Um Albert Philip and Joseph Steiner Um
Speaker 1: formed the company after, as legend goes, one of them,
Speaker 1: I saw a bubble you know maker bubble wand or
Speaker 1: whatever you call him, and it was like, hey, if
Speaker 1: I could do a gun that shoots bubbles, we might
Speaker 1: be onto something. And that was our very first product,
Speaker 1: is the bubble Mattic gun, and then whatever lesson twenty
Speaker 1: years later, the easy Bake oven. Even though as we
Speaker 1: learned today and yesterday, there had been toy ovens since
Speaker 1: like the Victorian days, yes, like really really dangerous one
Speaker 1: like real real little ovens like wood burning, pellet solid
Speaker 1: fuel stoves made of cast iron that were sized down
Speaker 1: for little kids to you. Yeah, basically like here's the
Speaker 1: oven that can kill your parents. We'll just make a
Speaker 1: smaller one they can kill you. Yeah. Um yeah. So
Speaker 1: the children's play oven functioning play oven um history very
Speaker 1: kind of closely treks the real oven history, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like when there were cast iron wood burning ovens, there
Speaker 1: were kids versions of them. As they as real ovens
Speaker 1: moved into electric ovens, there were kids versions of them apparently.
Speaker 1: Um Lionel the train the model trainmakers, they made some
Speaker 1: in the thirties. Also, we want to give a shout
Speaker 1: out to Lisa Hicks and the people at Collectors Weekly
Speaker 1: for a great article we also used for this episode two.
Speaker 1: But um, in the thirties there were electric ovens. By
Speaker 1: the forties or fifties, I think there were fiberglass insulated ovens.
Speaker 1: Electric ovens. It was just like a small oven for kids,
Speaker 1: but they were ovens. They were extremely dangerous. And um,
Speaker 1: Kenner had this really great idea. And the reason that
Speaker 1: this idea came about at Kenna to begin with. So
Speaker 1: apparently Kenner was really big on having like ideas could
Speaker 1: come from anywhere. Anybody in the company flowed an idea
Speaker 1: and people would listen, and they had like regular meetings
Speaker 1: where you know, there were bull sessions. Maybe they ordered
Speaker 1: some like chowel Maine or something like that. Everyone rolled
Speaker 1: up their sleeves and relaxed and and spat out ideas.
Speaker 1: And one of the salesman from Kenner came back in
Speaker 1: from the field and said, you know what, I saw something.
Speaker 1: I saw some pretzel vendors keeping their pretzels warm on
Speaker 1: the street using a lightbulb. What if we used a
Speaker 1: lightbulb to heat up an oven for the little kiddies.
Speaker 1: And somebody, I think Charles House Ralph House, well, Norman
Speaker 1: Shapiro was that gentleman, and then Ronald House. Ronald was
Speaker 1: the big time inventor for Kinner, who had a couple
Speaker 1: of like really big products under his belt, and he
Speaker 1: was like that that's an ace's idea. That's exactly how
Speaker 1: he talked. Probably everyone hated him for it, but he
Speaker 1: was really good at inventing toy so they had to
Speaker 1: put up with that. Yeah, but Kinner's deal, like you
Speaker 1: were saying, was find things that mimic adult things. And
Speaker 1: that's like kind of I bet like kids are gonna
Speaker 1: dig that stuff, and they did from like and kids
Speaker 1: still do little toy lawnmowers and toy bulldozers. And I
Speaker 1: mean Ruby's got a little cleaning set with like a
Speaker 1: duster and a dust pan and a mop. Been shed
Speaker 1: she o c D no, But I mean all the
Speaker 1: time she will say, you know, come on, daddy, let's clean,
Speaker 1: and she'll hand me him up. That's a little low
Speaker 1: c D. Well, No, that's good. Then, Yeah, I like
Speaker 1: where she said it. Did you have one of those
Speaker 1: um plastic safety razors so you could shave next to
Speaker 1: your dad? No? I did, but I was I think
Speaker 1: a lot of boys are pretty obsessed with shaving before
Speaker 1: they have whiskers, and I think I heard that they
Speaker 1: would actually stimulate hair growth. And I was about to say,
Speaker 1: I remember being worried about that, Yeah, because I didn't
Speaker 1: have I had a pretty I mean, looking at me now,
Speaker 1: you would never know, but I didn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of facial hair going on until well into college. Was
Speaker 1: it like lacking or did it come in patchy just
Speaker 1: a little bit, sort of like my brother is now.
Speaker 1: He just stayed in that phase where your brother's got
Speaker 1: a perfect chiseled face. Well, I know that's because he
Speaker 1: doesn't have a beard, but um Scott can grow a
Speaker 1: pretty decent gotee now, but I don't. I don't think
Speaker 1: he could grow the full beard, but his his was.
Speaker 1: We were both spotty, like a little bit above the lip,
Speaker 1: a little bit on the chin, the one part just
Speaker 1: kind of traced to line up to your eye from
Speaker 1: around from under your nose. Yeah, but I mean it
Speaker 1: was sort of a family thing. We're not harry dudes.
Speaker 1: We don't have very hairy legs or it is odd
Speaker 1: that you have such a full beard, like I don't
Speaker 1: have hairy arms or anything like that. Your your beast.
Speaker 1: I don't know if beasts is the right word, but yes,
Speaker 1: I'm a little Harry. You're a Harry guy. My chest
Speaker 1: hair definitely plucks out from under my shirt. Have you
Speaker 1: ever done any like a laser or anything like that?
Speaker 1: Good for you? No, I'm just I'm Harry. No, I
Speaker 1: mean you're normal. It's not like you're Robin Williams. He
Speaker 1: was hairy. Yes, he was, God rest his soul. Yes, indeed.
Speaker 1: So back to the ovens. So, um, the idea has
Speaker 1: been put out there now by Norman Shapiro, Yes, yeah, okay, so,
Speaker 1: and it was taken up by Ronald House and this
Speaker 1: was this was huge and groundbreaking because again there were
Speaker 1: safe there were um unsafe ovens for kids that have
Speaker 1: been around since the nineteenth century. What these guys had
Speaker 1: just happened upon was the way to make another unsafe
Speaker 1: oven seems safe to parents. That was That was it.
Speaker 1: That was the genius of this idea. That is what
Speaker 1: made easy bake ovens take off. What they had figured
Speaker 1: out was that if they used a light bulb as
Speaker 1: the heating element, and believe me, a lightbulb can can
Speaker 1: heat up an oven. Um, yeah, up to three fifty,
Speaker 1: which is a common baking temp. Yes, from a light bulb,
Speaker 1: and actually at first as we'll see a pair of
Speaker 1: light bulbs, but the fact is they're light bulbs and
Speaker 1: parents are familiar with light bulbs. They don't seem weird
Speaker 1: or scary. It's not a wood pellet. And the fact
Speaker 1: that it's not like a heating element like in an
Speaker 1: actual oven, it's just a light bulb. That is what
Speaker 1: they used to convince parents that this was a safe
Speaker 1: product that they could buy for their kids. It was
Speaker 1: a genius idea, it really was. And like you t
Speaker 1: s a second ago, the very first model, and if
Speaker 1: you look at the very first one, it doesn't really
Speaker 1: even look like an oven. Well certainly the new one
Speaker 1: doesn't either. NOA, I did go online. I was like,
Speaker 1: maybe I should get one of those. But they're ugly
Speaker 1: now they I'm sorry to the person who designed them. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you said it. They're ugly little ovens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they should kind of go back to looking more classic.
Speaker 1: I think it would be my advice. Um, But they
Speaker 1: used to one incandescent bulbs at first, one over the
Speaker 1: top and another under the bottom. Obviously they were trying
Speaker 1: to get an even heat because you're baking things right,
Speaker 1: And they very wisely designed this thing um so that
Speaker 1: the actual oven part was basically inaccessible to the kid
Speaker 1: on either side. So just imagine a box. Um okay.
Speaker 1: Oh man, here's the very It's my favorite thing when
Speaker 1: you try to describe something. Let me see if if
Speaker 1: I close my eyes, it works. Uh. Imagine a box okay,
Speaker 1: and then coming out from either side of the box
Speaker 1: or a couple of little little arms. But the arms
Speaker 1: are half arms, and they're rectangular and hollow, and they're
Speaker 1: actually openings. One opening. You slide in the uncooked thing
Speaker 1: that you want to bake into the heating area of
Speaker 1: the oven, let it bake, and you push it through
Speaker 1: the other the other side, the cooling chamber, and then
Speaker 1: it comes out the other arm. Everyone Josh has had
Speaker 1: his eyes close that entire time, and it worked. I
Speaker 1: really painted a great picture in your mind's eye. M
Speaker 1: hm yes, uh yeah, So that's what's what's going on.
Speaker 1: You had the two bulbs, um. And in fact, let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and take a break there, Okay, nice litl cliffhanger.
Speaker 1: When we come back, I'll redescribe the easy bake oven again.
Speaker 1: It sounds good. Alright, we were at one bulb, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, No, we were at two bulbs so long ago,
Speaker 1: I couldn't remember. I know there was a full add
Speaker 1: a go. But then what they did was they figured
Speaker 1: if they just engineered this thing to distribute heat and
Speaker 1: whole heat a little better, almost like a convection of him. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: like a convection of him, that they could go down
Speaker 1: to one bulb. Yeah. There was a dude named Charles
Speaker 1: hold On I really wanted, Yeah, Charles Cummings, Charles one
Speaker 1: bulb Cummings. Yeah, that's what he was known as. Charles
Speaker 1: Cummings was a designer at Kenner, and I think in
Speaker 1: the late seventies he designed the interior of the oven
Speaker 1: so that the bulb one bulb created confection current, so
Speaker 1: it cooked just as well as two bold but you
Speaker 1: just needed one um And he owns the patent to that.
Speaker 1: Oh really, which that's the way it should be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was the desire. He came up with this pretty
Speaker 1: rare too, I think kind of course, I'm sure had
Speaker 1: an exclusive license to it, but I'm sure he got
Speaker 1: like a decent amount of money from that license. Agreement
Speaker 1: that is the way it should be. He also created
Speaker 1: the patent um or he held the patent for the
Speaker 1: add on popcorn maker that you could put onto the
Speaker 1: easy bake oven. Too good for him, good for you,
Speaker 1: Charles Cummings, Charles one bulb Cummings. He probably lives on
Speaker 1: top of the mountain somewhere. It's on a mountain of money.
Speaker 1: Uh so, all right, you're down to one bulb thanks
Speaker 1: to Charlie Cummings. They initially wanted to call this in
Speaker 1: nine when it was two bulbs with a debut. Yeah,
Speaker 1: right out of the gate. They wanted to call it
Speaker 1: in November of sixty three the Safety bake Oven, because
Speaker 1: they really wanted to drive this home was that it
Speaker 1: was super safe, and the regulatory bodies were like, you can't.
Speaker 1: You haven't even sold one yet, Like, we don't. We're
Speaker 1: not sure if this is going to kill kids. You
Speaker 1: burned a dozen monkeys during the product testing trial. Oh
Speaker 1: that's so awful, um, but you can't call it that
Speaker 1: yet because we don't know yet whether it's truly safe.
Speaker 1: Go ahead and sell them, but just don't still call
Speaker 1: it safe the safety bake And so they're like, well,
Speaker 1: what about easy and they're like, are we still talking
Speaker 1: about this? We're done with you, go away and um
Speaker 1: they so they were like, okay, fine, we'll call it
Speaker 1: the Easy Bake Oven. Then, and they sold it as
Speaker 1: the Easy Bake Oven and it sold out immediately. They
Speaker 1: sold it. So November is right before the Christmas season,
Speaker 1: actually in the Christmas season, I think even back then,
Speaker 1: and they made a little more than half a million
Speaker 1: units and sold them all like before Christmas. Yeah, for
Speaker 1: which is expensive. That would be about a d thirty
Speaker 1: dollars today. No, yeah, that's a that's an expensive toy. Wow.
Speaker 1: And if you look at the thing. I saw a
Speaker 1: picture of one that's for sale on eBay for really cheap.
Speaker 1: I think it was like thirty bucks or something. Really
Speaker 1: it was unused in the box, still needed to be assembled.
Speaker 1: But if you look at it, you're like, that thing
Speaker 1: looks like a death trap. It looks like the four
Speaker 1: pinto of children's toys from the sixties, you know, like
Speaker 1: the sharp metal edges. Yeah, you're like, like, that's what
Speaker 1: it looks like, like like the baby strollers we were
Speaker 1: pushed around. Yeah, remember that that Dana Kroyd snls get
Speaker 1: from years ago. With the dangerous Christmas toys, and there
Speaker 1: was one called the Bag of Glass, so great. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that's all it was just a bag of shards
Speaker 1: of glass. So yeah, they sold a half a million
Speaker 1: and then they're like, we gotta make a lot more
Speaker 1: of these for next year. Yeah, because this is back
Speaker 1: at a time when toys didn't do that very often.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like every Christmas now people are like, well,
Speaker 1: what's the toy we should go fight other parents for?
Speaker 1: Tell us? Yeah, because I'm training in the ring. This
Speaker 1: is when it right. This is when it happened organically,
Speaker 1: when you put out a toy and if it became
Speaker 1: like the fight worthy toy, that was a few and
Speaker 1: far between. Think the easy Bake oven was the fight
Speaker 1: worthy toy right out of the gate. Yeah. So in
Speaker 1: year two, I think they made about one point five
Speaker 1: million sold all those And here was here's the little
Speaker 1: bit of genius from Kenner is Uh, anytime you can
Speaker 1: sell a supplementary product to the big thing, then you're
Speaker 1: really cooking with Gasically Gilette Razor model, I think it
Speaker 1: was King Gilette who came up with that. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: what they did was they sold uh mixes you know,
Speaker 1: these little instant mixes that you would pour and it
Speaker 1: would make a little creddit cake. And they had twenty
Speaker 1: five of these at first, and we're selling those like
Speaker 1: crazy because if you're a kid, If if you're a kid,
Speaker 1: you want all those, you're like, well, I haven't tried
Speaker 1: the strawberry cake yet. Plus also, it's not like you're
Speaker 1: putting this in like a book like some baseball cars
Speaker 1: and you're like, well, I've got this one out and
Speaker 1: you eat that thing and you need another thing to
Speaker 1: it and you poop it out. Yeah, and you're not
Speaker 1: gonna eat the poop again. You're going to go buy
Speaker 1: another one. And that was the genius of the other
Speaker 1: genius idea of this whole thing. There was a third
Speaker 1: genius idea to Kenneth did this so right? Not just
Speaker 1: no the advertising so remember this is kids emulating grown ups.
Speaker 1: That was their thing, um it. They advertised not just
Speaker 1: two kids through like Archies comics, but they advertised directly
Speaker 1: to their parents too. There were ads for the Easy
Speaker 1: Bake Oven, on I Love Lucy and on Hogan's Heroes.
Speaker 1: According to This Collector's Weekly article, and in these ads,
Speaker 1: if you look at a lot of old ads and
Speaker 1: even some of the newer ads too. For easy bake
Speaker 1: oven it's a mom and a daughter and the parent
Speaker 1: is like, oh, this is something we can do together.
Speaker 1: I love baking. It's basically my whole life I live in,
Speaker 1: and I'm a woman, so I would love to share
Speaker 1: that with my daughter. Maybe she's old enough to have
Speaker 1: an easy bake oven herself. And that definitely helped propel
Speaker 1: sales for sure, because it's not just kids going on
Speaker 1: an easy bake oven, it's the parents going that'd be
Speaker 1: a great thing to do with my kid. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: of course, as people evolved and people became more woke
Speaker 1: over time, even though that word wasn't used um enlightened,
Speaker 1: maybe it became a bit of a problem with gender
Speaker 1: roles and like this is for moms and daughters their
Speaker 1: pink and that's what you're supposed to do is be
Speaker 1: in the kitchen baking for the men. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: very famously, the easy bake ovens always ended with the
Speaker 1: disclaimer like this toy is not for boys. Yeah it
Speaker 1: didn't really, but essentially it was like that was this
Speaker 1: that was what was coming through. And the weird thing
Speaker 1: is is far as as like legendary and iconic a
Speaker 1: toy as the easy bake oven was as gender roles
Speaker 1: and um, yeah, as gender roles evolved, I mean this
Speaker 1: was we're talking like the early seventies when this really
Speaker 1: started to become like a thing. Yeah, the easy bake
Speaker 1: oven did not evolve with it right, as we will see.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until the like early two thousand's that they
Speaker 1: started to like respond to that kind of thing. And
Speaker 1: I saw an ad for two thousand fourteen not a
Speaker 1: boy in sight, all girls and um it just dancing
Speaker 1: around like the girliest easy bake oven you could possibly imagine.
Speaker 1: They actually got more girly as time went on and
Speaker 1: more girl focused. Um as gender roles went on, which
Speaker 1: is really weird to me. Not just non responsive but
Speaker 1: almost like no, we're going the opposite way. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: in early two thousands Hasbro who uh you know, they
Speaker 1: bought out Kenner, eventually makers of the classic snoopy snow
Speaker 1: comb machine. I never had one of those. You have
Speaker 1: one of those? No neighbor did, okay, Um, but you
Speaker 1: got to eat some of that sweet, sweet sugar ice.
Speaker 1: There was nothing like the taste of I think the
Speaker 1: cherry one. I can't remember, but it was just the
Speaker 1: greatest snow cone you could possibly have. And that's until
Speaker 1: you had a shave dice later and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a lot better still. Number one reigning champ
Speaker 1: really Number two is blue raspberry slush put. Yeah. See,
Speaker 1: what I would always do was um slurp that sweet
Speaker 1: liquid and that would be left with just some faintly
Speaker 1: colored kind of just ice. Oh yeah, no, I know.
Speaker 1: It was the problem with it for sure, But if
Speaker 1: you did it right and you just kind of let
Speaker 1: it settle, you got, you know, through the nasty stuff first,
Speaker 1: when you got to the bottom, then you got to
Speaker 1: the true, like hyper hyper dense snow cone experience. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I could never do that. I'd still have problems regulating
Speaker 1: my like hot fudged to ice cream ratio when eating
Speaker 1: a Sunday. I just won't even do it anymore. So
Speaker 1: you do all the hot fudge first, and then you're
Speaker 1: left to some crutty ice cream. That's I mean, that's standard,
Speaker 1: cretty delicious ice cream, right, This ice cream that some
Speaker 1: people around the world would kill for his cy. It
Speaker 1: doesn't have any more fudge. Dude, I've been on a
Speaker 1: fifteen year campaign to convince Emily that vanilla ice cream
Speaker 1: is like a legit flavor. I think she's she still
Speaker 1: thinks that vanilla ice cream is just like unflavored ice mill. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's like it's the one without the flavor added. Right now,
Speaker 1: vanilla is it really delicious? It is? It is. It's
Speaker 1: subtle vanilla bean ice cream like a true flex so good.
Speaker 1: So in early two thousand, they finally, like you said,
Speaker 1: tried in a very ham fisted way to get boys
Speaker 1: involved with the the que you easy bake queasy bake
Speaker 1: Is that what it is? Took me a second to
Speaker 1: because Q uses separate word. So okay, now, so the
Speaker 1: queasy bake oven and the mixer rader for you boys
Speaker 1: you can make mud and crud cakes and the lar
Speaker 1: delicious cocoon cookies and you know, not like, hey, just
Speaker 1: bake something good because anyone can bake. Yeah, anyone can bake.
Speaker 1: And they didn't like the girls don't don't use that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was it was only boys that showed up in
Speaker 1: these ads. They're like, we really need to get boys involved.
Speaker 1: How can we do that? Oh, we'll make one specifically
Speaker 1: four boys. That's like they're making cruddy cakes. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know they're just trying to sell stuff, but when
Speaker 1: in these meetings, in these marketing meetings that you just
Speaker 1: can't help but think they're it's like a bunch of
Speaker 1: like eight five year old men. It's our it's our Senate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's in there right there, like screaming and pounding and
Speaker 1: yelling at each other about the idea of like selling
Speaker 1: this to boys. Oh man, Well, after that, I feel
Speaker 1: like we should probably take a Yeah, we'll go to
Speaker 1: our Senate chambers and regroup right after this. Alright, So
Speaker 1: in seven, the Easy Bake up in a selling like
Speaker 1: uh hot cakes literally General Mills bis Kenner uh, And
Speaker 1: they did a couple of genius things. They they partnered
Speaker 1: because they were General Mills. They had no problem because
Speaker 1: they owned Betty Crocker, well I assume um launching Betty
Speaker 1: Crocker branded mixes. And then later on they got into
Speaker 1: licensing deals with McDonald's and Pizza Hut because here's the thing.
Speaker 1: You can bake anything in an easy week oven because
Speaker 1: it's just a little oven. Yeah, you can make pizza,
Speaker 1: and you can make you don't have to buy these mixes.
Speaker 1: You can just bake cookies that you made from scratch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like a lot of recipes online easy bake oven recipes.
Speaker 1: Yeah that actually don't taste like garbage, right, so um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They did have a huge line of mixes though, and
Speaker 1: they sold more than a hundred million of them over
Speaker 1: the over the years. That's how they get you. But
Speaker 1: I mean they there there were recipes for mixes for
Speaker 1: candy bars, pecanan brittle, popcorn, bubblegum. You can bake your
Speaker 1: own bubblegum. Interesting, it is interesting. I would have tried
Speaker 1: that for sure. I want to see bubblegum come out
Speaker 1: in like a brownie pan. Yeah, I'd be like, I
Speaker 1: want some of that bubbleguming. Had a cotton candy machine,
Speaker 1: now that I remember what. It would just spin sugar
Speaker 1: and you would, oh, I know what they do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted one. That thing was probably dangerous. It was
Speaker 1: probably like a nuclear centerfuge. What what was interesting about
Speaker 1: those are fascinating to me was like the cotton candy. Um,
Speaker 1: oh it's not called it's like not the web sugar
Speaker 1: or something like that. Um. Yeah, I want to say web,
Speaker 1: but that's not either. You it's not really visible in
Speaker 1: the machine. Yeah, but when you stick in the little cone,
Speaker 1: it just builds up on it like it's like it's
Speaker 1: just coming out of another dimension into this one, like
Speaker 1: coming out of a spider's But it's awesome to see
Speaker 1: a pink and pink and blue spiders. But man, I
Speaker 1: had to go out yesterday two. Uh. I still have
Speaker 1: my pickup truck then, because I just kept it because
Speaker 1: it was paid for, and I still moved and hall
Speaker 1: stuff occasionally had to move. Something justified to me. I
Speaker 1: had to move something yesterday and I went out and
Speaker 1: that was the most beautiful, huge spider web from a
Speaker 1: tree down attached to the rear tailgate of my truck,
Speaker 1: like chuck with this big spider right in the middle.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, man, I just felt so bad.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what to do. So you just put
Speaker 1: in reverse and pretending nothing you didn't see anything. Now.
Speaker 1: I actually plucked it off a little by little because
Speaker 1: I want to ensure his safety. And the web just
Speaker 1: goes crumbling down into a long, you know, skinny string,
Speaker 1: and he climbs right up to the tree and I
Speaker 1: was just like, I'm really sorry. He's like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: sure you are to see you and he tried to
Speaker 1: spit venom into my eyeball, Like what do you what
Speaker 1: do you need your truck for? And you're like, I
Speaker 1: gotta go get peanut butter. He's like, oh, good, thank
Speaker 1: you for ruining thirty hours of my work a giant
Speaker 1: vat of peanut butter that would only fit in my truck. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, so let's let's fash forward here too, Uh,
Speaker 1: the modern times in two thousand seven, the Energy Independence
Speaker 1: and Security Act, when the government said by two thousand
Speaker 1: twelve lightbulbs have to increase their efficiency by twenty five percent,
Speaker 1: So bye bye incandescent bulb. Yeah, so let me just
Speaker 1: say something. Let me set that up to over the years,
Speaker 1: the easy Bake oven and just remained a steady sellar
Speaker 1: for Kenner and then has Bro, and the design had
Speaker 1: been basically the same and went from two bulbs to
Speaker 1: one bulb. But it was this closed box where the
Speaker 1: heating element was, where there was a slot on the side.
Speaker 1: Remember I went through the whole thing, pushed it in
Speaker 1: and it came out the cooling chamber on the other side. Um.
Speaker 1: But really the design was the same. The outward look changed,
Speaker 1: like it went from the weird its own thing to
Speaker 1: the late seventies and early ages and started to resemble
Speaker 1: a microwave. And then in in response to this change
Speaker 1: in light bulb requirements, Easy Baked did a redesign in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, and for the first time ever,
Speaker 1: the Easy Bake Oven actually looked like an oven, like
Speaker 1: a stove, had little like fake burners on the top,
Speaker 1: it looked like a stub, and it was actually a
Speaker 1: front loader to where there was a like a slot
Speaker 1: in the front of the Easy Bake oven and that's
Speaker 1: where you put the thing in, and that's what you
Speaker 1: actually pulled it out from, too, and it went right
Speaker 1: into the heating element um And they replaced the light
Speaker 1: bulb because again so long light bulb because of the
Speaker 1: energy act um. With an actual heating element, a ceramic
Speaker 1: heating element like an oven, it was an oven. So
Speaker 1: they made an oven. But then when they made the oven,
Speaker 1: they redesigned this thing so that you could put your
Speaker 1: fingers right into the oven while it was baking at
Speaker 1: its hottest temperature. And of course kids immediately started doing that.
Speaker 1: How did they How did that one slip past? No idea?
Speaker 1: I mean, that just doesn't make any sense at all.
Speaker 1: So in the end, I think, what what close to
Speaker 1: two kids ended up with like second third degree burns,
Speaker 1: one partial amputation of a finger. Yeah, because kids would
Speaker 1: get their fingers stuck in it, right, and it's just
Speaker 1: and then some kids got their fingers stuck in it
Speaker 1: while it was hot, and yes, they were getting huge burns.
Speaker 1: So um, Hasbro was like, well, we'll do a recall,
Speaker 1: and they recalled five thousand, I think ultimately a million
Speaker 1: of these things. They recalled. First they tried to say,
Speaker 1: here's a little fixed Yeah, here's a retrofitted piece. It's
Speaker 1: really easy to snap it on, and I'll solve them everything.
Speaker 1: And apparently it did solve everything. They're like, why didn't
Speaker 1: you make it that way to begin with, right, But
Speaker 1: most parents were not, Like they didn't have their ears
Speaker 1: out that there was a recall of their easy bake
Speaker 1: oven and so their kids the kids kept getting burned
Speaker 1: and and finally Hasbro was like, just bring them back.
Speaker 1: So there's a recall of a million Easy bake ovens
Speaker 1: from that two thousand and six redesigns for them, Like
Speaker 1: if that would have ruined the easy bake oven, that
Speaker 1: would have been a big, big, deal. So what they
Speaker 1: did was they temporarily went back to an old design
Speaker 1: featuring a light bulb too, while they redesigned it to
Speaker 1: the new version. So uh, then they came out in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven with that that really ugly designed
Speaker 1: what's called the Easy Bake Ultimate Oven. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: it now. That things. Yeah it does. It looks terrible.
Speaker 1: It's horrible. It's super It looks like it's on the
Speaker 1: go or something like that. I don't like it. It
Speaker 1: looks like a weird toaster of it. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: sort of. It looks like it's trying to look futuristic
Speaker 1: and modern, which never ends up looking like that. No,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. But they also made it pink and purple,
Speaker 1: super girly that ads were girl targeted. Yet there's flowers
Speaker 1: on it. Again they were like, nope, this is for girls.
Speaker 1: Boys don't play with this. So in two thousand, I
Speaker 1: think two thousand thirteen, there was a girl named um
Speaker 1: McKenna Pope who is just a hero of heroes. She's amazing.
Speaker 1: I saw an interview with her on CNN. She's just
Speaker 1: so like self possessed and intelligent and like well spoken,
Speaker 1: but also like a kid now where she's a kid.
Speaker 1: She's just amazing, one of those clearly reincarnated um. And
Speaker 1: she went on she started a petition to get Hasbro
Speaker 1: to make a gender neutral version of It's Easy Bake
Speaker 1: Oven because her little brother UM like to bake, but
Speaker 1: realized that the Easy Bake Oven was for girls. She
Speaker 1: wanted him to be able to bake, so she said, Hasbro,
Speaker 1: why don't you make one this gender neutral? And got
Speaker 1: something like fifty thousand signatures for her petition, and Hasbro
Speaker 1: came out with a new version of the Easy Bake
Speaker 1: Ultimate Oven, which was just a black version of it,
Speaker 1: black and I think silver. I'm surprised it wasn't like
Speaker 1: our brush stainless model to emulate, you know kitchens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's she's probably almost twenty years old now. Yeah. One
Speaker 1: of what she's doing, mckinnipope or are you out there,
Speaker 1: she's some sort of like consumer protection lawyer all that
Speaker 1: probably so, I hope. So, uh, two thousand six they
Speaker 1: go into the National Toy Hall of Fame the same
Speaker 1: year that disastrous redesign. Yeah, they they got in just
Speaker 1: under the wire. Can't take it back. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: look here and they're from their very on website some
Speaker 1: of the landmark years. Uh, and it is kind of
Speaker 1: funny that emulated the styles of the time, unless they
Speaker 1: were just doing pink. Like in sixty nine they premiered
Speaker 1: the avocado Green. The very next year was Harvest Gold.
Speaker 1: It's very good metallic p You say that a lot
Speaker 1: in our else. Um. Oh, they had a potato chip maker.
Speaker 1: Do we mention that No? V? Three, the easy Baked
Speaker 1: Potato chip Maker And um. Then in seventy eight they
Speaker 1: finally started putting a fake digital clock on it that
Speaker 1: always read twelve thirty, not for twenty. You see that
Speaker 1: a lot in as a joke and like the pothead joke. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but like you'll see an alarm clock ad and like, uh,
Speaker 1: skymall or something, and I'll say four twenty because the
Speaker 1: publishers paying attention, they get it, doesn't know or they
Speaker 1: don't care. Sure. I remember years ago when we used
Speaker 1: to have a lot of illustrations on how stuff works
Speaker 1: and had two in house illustrators that I won't name,
Speaker 1: and remember one of them drew a like a park
Speaker 1: scene for me, and the tree clearly had a marijuana
Speaker 1: leaf like embedded in it and I was like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: you can't do that, and he was like, oh, I
Speaker 1: was completely an accident. I was like, man, I wasn't
Speaker 1: born yesterday. I've seen a pot leaf before. I mean
Speaker 1: I thought it was funny, but like, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I couldn't do that. Do you got anything else? I
Speaker 1: don't think so. Easy bake oven, mac and cheese you
Speaker 1: can bake. Oh. In two thousand three they they introduced
Speaker 1: the real meal oven and you could That's when you
Speaker 1: could do like French fries and pizza and mac and
Speaker 1: cheese and stuff. I think that was the predecessor to
Speaker 1: the ceramic heating element that they eventually the easy bacon
Speaker 1: in two thousands six. Good stuff, good stuff. If you
Speaker 1: want a nice blast from the past, just type in
Speaker 1: like easy bake oven commercials. There's one from that was
Speaker 1: just perfect. Was it rad? No? It was pretty rad? Okay,
Speaker 1: it was like Carpenter's era Gotcha, which is not rad
Speaker 1: but still lovely. Yes. I love the Carpenters, me too.
Speaker 1: Um Well, if you want to know more about easy
Speaker 1: bake ovens or the Carpenters or the Snoopy snowcomb machine,
Speaker 1: just go onto the internet. It's a vast repository of
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And since I said that, it's time
Speaker 1: for listening to mail. Hey guys, UM a freelance writer
Speaker 1: who works remotely. So I've been writing and traveling the
Speaker 1: world for the past year and a half. It's been wild.
Speaker 1: Since I've been traveling alone, it can get lonely, But
Speaker 1: from Mexico City the Bali to Tokyo, you guys have
Speaker 1: been with me, keeping me company, making me laugh, teach
Speaker 1: me all kinds of cool facts. As a content writer,
Speaker 1: also feel a connection to y'all. We both have to
Speaker 1: research seemingly mundane topics sometimes and discovered the cool interesting
Speaker 1: things about them, present them in a palatable way of
Speaker 1: People sometimes laugh when I'm telling that I'm writing something
Speaker 1: like the history of the egg McMuffin or the best
Speaker 1: month to buy a mattress. But I just point to
Speaker 1: your podcast as a sterling example of how gems and
Speaker 1: surprises lie within even the most unassuming topics. Thank you, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. Have you guys ever considered doing a show
Speaker 1: on digital nomatting. I know it's becoming increasingly popular as
Speaker 1: more companies embrace remote working. I'm in a cafe and medellin, Medaine,
Speaker 1: Columbia right now, and there are five digital nomads tapping
Speaker 1: away in their laptops as we speak. They would beat
Speaker 1: me up if they knew I just refer to them
Speaker 1: as digital nomad. The future is location independent. I say,
Speaker 1: thanks again for being so awesome. It's a short term
Speaker 1: dream of mine to digital nomad over to a country
Speaker 1: where you're doing a live show by you guys a drink.
Speaker 1: If you do read this on the air, please give
Speaker 1: a shout out to Mark Alexander, who insisted that I
Speaker 1: keep listening to you guys, even even after I was
Speaker 1: initially slightly turned off by all of your sides and
Speaker 1: off tracking happens to a lot of people, And that's
Speaker 1: funny because we had a lot of those today. You
Speaker 1: know that reminds me of a totally unrelated story. Uh
Speaker 1: he she says, now, I very much learned to appreciate those.
Speaker 1: He would burst into tears and I would too, So
Speaker 1: thank you, Mark Alexander for turning on your friend. Maria
Speaker 1: Christina Ladonde, thanks a lot, beautiful name. Yeah, I'm sorry
Speaker 1: laalone day leon da Maria Christina Laonde, um, and I
Speaker 1: hope that your buddy did just burst out into tears.
Speaker 1: That'd be amazing, pretty neat. Thanks for that email. If
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with this, you can
Speaker 1: find us on the web but Stuff you Should Know
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