Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and this is the first
Speaker 1: of two Stuff you Should Knows that we're recording today.
Speaker 1: My voice already sounds weird to me. What do you
Speaker 1: mean it doesn't sound a little weird, you know how
Speaker 1: like when we get towards the end of the second one,
Speaker 1: or it gets a little like worn out or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's been extruded through a Plato fun factory. What's
Speaker 1: all that is set up? Or do you really feel
Speaker 1: that way that was off the cuff? Baby, Okay, No,
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound weird to me. Your voice never sounds weird.
Speaker 1: Mus you're sick, Jerry Judge McCall, Yeah, Jerry Brooklyn Ti
Speaker 1: she sided with me. Well, Jerry, were headphones. But you
Speaker 1: and I fight the broadcasting business by being the only
Speaker 1: people that don't wear headphones or cans. I never get it,
Speaker 1: like your two ft from me when my headphones, I know,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to hear myself anyway. I don't
Speaker 1: want to hear myself better. No, it's terrible. It sounds
Speaker 1: like torture that. How about this for a new s
Speaker 1: Y s K T shirt? No more cans just have
Speaker 1: a little X through some headphones. I think when you
Speaker 1: make a step, you should know a decree from now
Speaker 1: we should have like a fairy wand sound effect. We
Speaker 1: just like, here's this for a new T shirt. I
Speaker 1: decreate be made into existence. Yeah, we get. We're gonna
Speaker 1: by the way, since I mentioned it, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: some new shirts coming soon. Yeah, some good like some
Speaker 1: fan designs even yep, exciting. Yeah, we and we do
Speaker 1: have some now that people can go by if I
Speaker 1: like those first designs we had, and I well, let's
Speaker 1: just have this out on the air. It's not an argument,
Speaker 1: but let's have this discussion. Are we going to retire
Speaker 1: the original six from the contest or should we just
Speaker 1: let them keep going in perpetuity? Oh, unless there's a reason.
Speaker 1: I think perpetuity is the way to go. But someone
Speaker 1: might like the dancing uh you know what we call that,
Speaker 1: the skeleton would cut Yeah, perfect parade of dancing skeletons,
Speaker 1: the maccab parade, That's what I would call it. Doesn't
Speaker 1: give him All six of them were excellent. The baby
Speaker 1: with the fly on its forehead. Still my altime paper.
Speaker 1: Good stuff. If you don't know what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: go to stuff you should know dot com are venerable
Speaker 1: website and uh in the top navigation there's a store
Speaker 1: button and it will take your store and you can
Speaker 1: see with your own very eyes, what the heck we're
Speaker 1: talking about? That was off the cuff. Yeah it was.
Speaker 1: I wasn't like, oh, we gotta plug the T shirts. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: You very rarely say things as fretfully as that, chuck. Yes,
Speaker 1: do you want to talk about Plato? Yeah, we promised
Speaker 1: to do this recently, and here we are. If, in
Speaker 1: my defensive, is already on the list. Oh well, so
Speaker 1: it's not like, you know, I'm at the beck and
Speaker 1: call of anybody's like, do Plato do this? Do that? No,
Speaker 1: it was already on the list. Um did you play
Speaker 1: with Plato a lot when you're a kid? Oh? I
Speaker 1: played with it. I ate it. I don't recall eating it.
Speaker 1: I do specifically recall eating the paste that was an
Speaker 1: off brand that had a purple pirate on it. Oh,
Speaker 1: he was. He was a pirate wearing a purple hat.
Speaker 1: And I think maybe it an orange parrot. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was the paste. Did I have a on the inside
Speaker 1: the lid? Did I have a applicator attached to it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I totally ate that paste. That was the best tasting
Speaker 1: paste on the planet. As a matter of fact, I
Speaker 1: think that paste might have been manufactured in part to
Speaker 1: eat like it's served to like kids, some bad kids. Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: I want to revise my statement. I take I licked
Speaker 1: and tasted Plato. I don't remember like swallowing it, but
Speaker 1: I remember, like, you know, tasting it and then maybe
Speaker 1: you can put it in my mouth and spitting it
Speaker 1: back out. But I don't think I got you. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: I never. I don't think I ever ate Plato in
Speaker 1: any form or fashion. But the scent of it, it's unmistakable, unmistakable.
Speaker 1: It's so unmistakable in fact that apparently back in two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, plato Or has growth a year long
Speaker 1: celebration for Plato, which it owns, which it bought off
Speaker 1: of Kenner, which Kenner bought from a dude named Joe McVicker's.
Speaker 1: Actually they bought it from Tonka. Talk about it from Kenner?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, how do I forget Tonka exactly? Um? And
Speaker 1: for this fiftieth birthday party, they had a a cent
Speaker 1: a Plato perfume released that smelled just like Plato. Can
Speaker 1: you buy that? Wonder? I looked, and I think you
Speaker 1: can get it, but I don't think as easy as
Speaker 1: you could. Back in two thousand six. Yeah, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to wear it. I was just curious. I think, yeah, nostalgia,
Speaker 1: I like them. I would like to smell it, but
Speaker 1: don't spread that stuff on me. I don't think you're
Speaker 1: supposed to wear it. Was it just like, yeah, one
Speaker 1: of those things, the mood stabilizer. Okay, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Yea spray in front of your face and
Speaker 1: you just go, oh yeah, okay, should put this lead
Speaker 1: pipe down and rethink things? Right? Remember when I was
Speaker 1: a kid and let's violent, somebody give me some paste
Speaker 1: to eat? They should do that. Well back when you
Speaker 1: were a kid, Um, did you know much about the
Speaker 1: origin and play Plato? Oh? No, not at all. I
Speaker 1: didn't either until today. You're yesterday when I started researching
Speaker 1: this Plato everyone and in this article by Tracy Wilson,
Speaker 1: who hosts Stuffy miss in History class Um, she says
Speaker 1: that it's lower, but I've seen it all over the place,
Speaker 1: and from what I understand, it's the truth. I think
Speaker 1: it's the truth. There was a dude named Joe mcvickers
Speaker 1: who had a company and his company, uh produced, from
Speaker 1: what I understand, mc vicker's invention, which was wallpaper cleaner. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They his his father and uncle started it and they
Speaker 1: were called Coutole Products and it was a soap company,
Speaker 1: and but their big seller was this wall cleaner because
Speaker 1: when we heated our homes with coal, your house would
Speaker 1: get coal sit on the walls, which is really weird
Speaker 1: to think of now. Yeah, but it's true. And your
Speaker 1: wallpaper can still get dirty, grease from cooking things, food fights,
Speaker 1: what ever, your wallpaper can get dirty. Let's just face facts, everybody.
Speaker 1: And mc vicker's company had this putty. It was kind
Speaker 1: of a pliable, gooey putty that you slapped up against
Speaker 1: the wallpaper and rolled up and down and it just
Speaker 1: took that suit or that grease or that spaghetti sauce
Speaker 1: clean off. And it was wallpaper cleaner and it was
Speaker 1: doing okay. I guess I don't think they were like
Speaker 1: hurting necessarily. But Joe was married to a woman, or
Speaker 1: was his sister in law. Was a teacher. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was Cincinnati. Yeah. They they sold a lot of this
Speaker 1: stuff for a while, but then natural gas came around
Speaker 1: and so they fell upon hard times. But um Joe
Speaker 1: took over from Cleo. Uh as Cleo's was his father
Speaker 1: and his sister in law, cash Fall of New Jersey,
Speaker 1: read about kids that were making Christmas ornaments out of
Speaker 1: that stuff and she said out of the wallpaper cleaner. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, much like kids do today with Plato. And
Speaker 1: she said, hey, you know we're hurting, why don't we
Speaker 1: try and turn this stuff into a toy. And they
Speaker 1: did so, and in ninet he made a non toxic version,
Speaker 1: added some almond scent, and you had your first little
Speaker 1: off white Plato. Yeah. Kind of exactly what you would
Speaker 1: think of when you think of a gummy colored like dough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: off white khaki almost yeah. Um and mc vicker was
Speaker 1: a pretty smart dude as far as business goes. He
Speaker 1: um donated a bunch of cans to the Cincinnati City
Speaker 1: school system. Very smart, and so got these little kids
Speaker 1: hooked on Plato. It was a huge hit, but it
Speaker 1: it might have just been a regional hit. Uh. And
Speaker 1: if he hadn't have approached a dude named Captain Kangaroo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he went to, Uh, what does Keptain Kangary's name Bob,
Speaker 1: Bob Keashan. I think Bob Keashan nice memory, Chuck I
Speaker 1: pulled out from I don't know how many years ago
Speaker 1: heard that name. He well, did you watch Captain Kangaroo?
Speaker 1: Me too, love Captain Kangaroo. I like Captain Kangaroo more
Speaker 1: than Mr Rogers. I liked them both, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I might have been Yeah, Captain Kangaro a little
Speaker 1: bit more. It was a haircut and I was Electric
Speaker 1: Company over Sesame Street Amon. Yeah, I like both, but
Speaker 1: I like the Electric Electric Company more. But I like
Speaker 1: Pinwheel most. I didn't watch that. It was for real
Speaker 1: little kids. Um. Anyway, Captain Kangaroo had a show and
Speaker 1: Joe mcvickers somehow got in contact with Captain Kangaroo and said, hey,
Speaker 1: I have a little deal for you. We've got this
Speaker 1: awesome stuff. The kids in Cincinnati are crazy for it. Um.
Speaker 1: We're calling it Plato right now. It's an off white
Speaker 1: where it used to be, but now we have four colors, red, blue, yellow,
Speaker 1: and white. Those are the four original colors of Plato.
Speaker 1: By the way, and he gave someone to Captain Kangaroo said,
Speaker 1: I will give you two percent of gross sales if
Speaker 1: you mentioned this on your show two times a week
Speaker 1: he played with it. Bob Keashon was a money grubber.
Speaker 1: That's so we all know he I think he believed
Speaker 1: in this product. Yeah, and as he's a smart guy,
Speaker 1: he is. And uh, he believed in it so much
Speaker 1: that he upped the number of mentions without any additional compensation,
Speaker 1: from two times a week to as many as three
Speaker 1: times a week. He would play with Plato on TV
Speaker 1: and it just took off like a rocket from there.
Speaker 1: That was his additional compensation that he got free Plato. No,
Speaker 1: he had a percentage. So, oh yeah, you're you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. You're right, But it suggests that he
Speaker 1: believed in it. That's right. He did believe in it.
Speaker 1: And do not shatter my image, Captain Kangaroo. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying he just wanted to make more money, of course not.
Speaker 1: Isn't that the show that Mr green Jean's was on.
Speaker 1: Big fan of that guy too. Uh. They formed the
Speaker 1: Rainbow Crafts Company. Um, you know, they wanted to take
Speaker 1: it out from under the Cotole Products banner and got
Speaker 1: famous wildlife artist John Ruthven to design that first package
Speaker 1: with Originally it was very briefly it was an elf. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and those I think you're probably if you have a
Speaker 1: can of that, you probably it's probably in a museum
Speaker 1: or something that wasn't around long. And then they went
Speaker 1: to Plato pete Um the kid with the smock in
Speaker 1: the beret, because all little kids wore berets and smocks
Speaker 1: back then, or you wore your dad's dress shirt like backwards.
Speaker 1: That made a good smock too. Yeah, the one he
Speaker 1: didn't want anymore, or that you thought he didn't want anymore,
Speaker 1: but he really got mad at you. He got paint
Speaker 1: on it. That's my good short sleeve dress shirt. Uh.
Speaker 1: And finally it took all the way until two thousand
Speaker 1: two did the Herbal Elvis wear short sleeve dress shirts
Speaker 1: with slacks and ties. Yeah. My dad usually as a
Speaker 1: principal wore a coat. But when you take off the
Speaker 1: jacket and you've got the short sleep that's something else.
Speaker 1: With a blue felt tippin, a red felt tippin, and
Speaker 1: green felt tip pin in his pocket front pot it
Speaker 1: that was your dad. Yeah, he's a mechanical engineer. Oh
Speaker 1: so each one had a different use. I think he
Speaker 1: also just thought they were pretty Yeah, like they kind
Speaker 1: of they made it. They made a shirt pocket. Pop.
Speaker 1: That's where you get it with your shirt pocket thing, right,
Speaker 1: all right. It took it until two thousand two for
Speaker 1: that beret to become a baseball cap, and then now
Speaker 1: he's just gone. Yeah I was looking like somebody anymore
Speaker 1: at not at all. Now it's a can with arms
Speaker 1: and the lids kind of pulled back, and in between
Speaker 1: the rim of the can in the top of the
Speaker 1: litter a couple of eyes. It looks a bit like
Speaker 1: a garbage can, but it's obviously a Plato can, but
Speaker 1: just kind of I don't like it. I like Plato Pete,
Speaker 1: the kid with the beret, Yeah, me too. He was great.
Speaker 1: That's what we grew up with. His nostalgia. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: he was around for a really long time. And just
Speaker 1: do away with him like he's nothing. That's another shirt.
Speaker 1: Bring back Plato Pete. Yeah, we'll get sued, although I
Speaker 1: didn't get the impression that they were too terribly litigious. Well,
Speaker 1: plus we could tell him we sold nine T shirts.
Speaker 1: You're sure seventy three dollars two percent. So Plato, we
Speaker 1: all played with it. It was fun, uh for modeling,
Speaker 1: but it was not like if you were like me,
Speaker 1: your your hopes were dashed a bit when you modeled
Speaker 1: something and left it out overnight because you thought it
Speaker 1: would make it into a permanent um exhibit. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it would really just kind of break apart. It's not
Speaker 1: like you can't cure it like you do modeling clay. No.
Speaker 1: I was on Plato's site and they readily admit that
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact. They say, if you want
Speaker 1: a permanent thing, go get your some modeling clay. You
Speaker 1: get some sculpie. Um. I don't want to buzz market,
Speaker 1: but sculpies a lot of fun. Okay, um, we're talking
Speaker 1: about Plato though. Yeah, that sculpie is fun. Um So,
Speaker 1: but they say modeling clay. They don't say sculpie. But
Speaker 1: they say, if you want to make a permanent thing,
Speaker 1: go get some molling clay. It's not what Plato's for.
Speaker 1: It's it's or being in the moment making fun things
Speaker 1: and then put smashing those and then putting it back
Speaker 1: in the can, doing it all over again every day,
Speaker 1: and driving your mom crazy because she can't stand colors
Speaker 1: to be mixed together. She sits there and pick them
Speaker 1: apart or whatever. Or it's in the orange sad carpet,
Speaker 1: which again has bro has some some helpful suggestions for
Speaker 1: how to clean this stuff up. Um number one, and
Speaker 1: you will understand eventually by the end of this podcast.
Speaker 1: Why do not use warm water when you're cleaning up
Speaker 1: Plato from the carpet. Yeah, it will make everything a
Speaker 1: million times worse what they say, if possible, if you
Speaker 1: have the patients of job, just go ahead and let
Speaker 1: this thing dry, turn brittle, use a stiff brush and
Speaker 1: just kind of brush it out of the carpeting, vacuum
Speaker 1: it up boom, or do the reasonable thing and get
Speaker 1: hardwood floors. All right, Well we'll discuss that very soon,
Speaker 1: um after this message. Alright, So Plato is fun enough
Speaker 1: on its own. Like when I was a kid, I
Speaker 1: had zero, a couch rum all to go along with
Speaker 1: my Plato. I don't recall having anything but just the
Speaker 1: Plato to All I had was the Plato in my imagination.
Speaker 1: And uh, I said, you know what, let's get a
Speaker 1: couple of engineers from General Electric to design what's going
Speaker 1: to be called the fun Factory. That's like, that was it.
Speaker 1: That was it. Then you could put Plato into various
Speaker 1: forms and molds and press it and have it come
Speaker 1: out like sausage or spaghetti or just whatever they decided
Speaker 1: to design. Like, have you been to the site recently?
Speaker 1: There are hundreds of different things that you can buy
Speaker 1: now with your Plato, of course, yes, and different types
Speaker 1: of Plato to to make different looking things as well. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: but the original fun Factory things basically just a hand
Speaker 1: pushed lever that shoved the Plato inside through a hole
Speaker 1: a sausage and then basically and then in front of
Speaker 1: the hole. Um, you had just kind of like different
Speaker 1: um shapes that you could make this thing into what
Speaker 1: did you say, spaghetti and the rope. Speaking of the rope,
Speaker 1: all of these are basically what it is. An extruder.
Speaker 1: This is a Plato extruder. Is what what these guys
Speaker 1: came up with. And I guarantee they had colored felt
Speaker 1: tip pens in the front of their pockets too when
Speaker 1: they designed this thing. But this, if you took all
Speaker 1: the Plato. By the way, here's a Plato fun fact.
Speaker 1: If you took all the Plato ever created, and ran
Speaker 1: it through the fun factory and extruded it into one
Speaker 1: long rope. It would wrap around the earth three thousand
Speaker 1: times how many big maxes that no, I'm sorry it
Speaker 1: were wrapped around there? Or three hundred times let's not
Speaker 1: let's not go crazy on. Yeah, and you could go
Speaker 1: to the moon and back ten times with that rope.
Speaker 1: You could make a pretty good little break that would
Speaker 1: be kind of crumbly by the next day, but it
Speaker 1: would be colorful. That's right. That's a little lot of Plato, man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've sold nine hundred and fifty million pounds of this stuff,
Speaker 1: more than two billion cans since nineteen fifty six. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they apparently make about a hundred million cans every year.
Speaker 1: What I find heartening is those are current statistics that
Speaker 1: are not rated for inflation, you know. But um, this
Speaker 1: article that Tracy wrote was apparently written in two thousand
Speaker 1: and six. She said that they make nine million cans,
Speaker 1: so they've up their production by five million cans a year,
Speaker 1: which means Plato is not going anywhere. That's right. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty psyched about that. Yeah, and all the stuff they
Speaker 1: have now, like, um, they've got all sorts of licensing
Speaker 1: deals like they have like the Plato Disney Princess set
Speaker 1: and you can make dresses for your Disney princess out
Speaker 1: of Plato. And um they have a longstanding tradition too
Speaker 1: of making fake food. Like I was, I was watching
Speaker 1: some UM. I wouldn't really call it documentary. It is
Speaker 1: almost just a compilation of Plato ads over the years.
Speaker 1: And um there's one from the eighties where you could
Speaker 1: make pizza hut pizzas out of Plato. I think I
Speaker 1: remember that. Nowadays they have UM like a kind of
Speaker 1: a sweet shop I think is the name of the line.
Speaker 1: And like I said, they have different types of Plato
Speaker 1: summer squishy here and thinner and more pliable, so you
Speaker 1: can use those to make the frosting, use regular Plato
Speaker 1: to make the actual cupcake. That's because the cupcake graze
Speaker 1: I bet yeah, probably has filtered down to kids. And
Speaker 1: with the gluten free craze UM on your website it
Speaker 1: says contains gluten yeah, has wheat yeah. But they have
Speaker 1: to advertise that now because your child will want to
Speaker 1: eat the Plato and if you have your kid off gluten,
Speaker 1: they can't eat the Plato. No mommy has to explain
Speaker 1: that or daddy. But if your kid has a peanut
Speaker 1: allergy or um milk allergy, yeah you're fine. That's right. Water,
Speaker 1: salt and flour is the general I mean to. It's
Speaker 1: a very proprietary recipe obviously, right, it's a U S.
Speaker 1: Patent number six seven one three six two four. But
Speaker 1: if you look that up, you're not going to find
Speaker 1: the ingredients. No, Like you said, it's proprietary. Um. They
Speaker 1: they do give kind of like a general um ingredient
Speaker 1: list somewhere I guess in the patent itself. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not gonna tell you like how to make it,
Speaker 1: but we'll list those really quickly, and then we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about chemistry. Yeah, we're gonna get to the chemical
Speaker 1: molecular basis of Plato itself. But in broad terms, at
Speaker 1: his water, you got a starch based finder. You have
Speaker 1: a retrograde aation inhibitor because you have to inhibit that
Speaker 1: retrograde aation salt an they're salt in there. In fact,
Speaker 1: at one point it was too salty and they had
Speaker 1: to get a new uh chemist to remove some of
Speaker 1: the salt. Is there, right? Yeah, but you remember how
Speaker 1: salty it tasted. No, I didn't. I never tasted it.
Speaker 1: Oh you didn't know, I said, you said you tasted it.
Speaker 1: I said, I never did. I ate the paste. Okay,
Speaker 1: I've never tasted it. But the smell was the paste.
Speaker 1: The salty no, no, no, it had a weird sweet
Speaker 1: taste to it. It wasn't overly sweet, but of all
Speaker 1: of the tastes, that's sweet enough to get a kid
Speaker 1: to eat it. Right. Uh, salt, you got your lubricate, um,
Speaker 1: and all this will make sense in a bit. A surfactant, preservative, hardener,
Speaker 1: a humicant, a fragrance of course in color. Uh. I
Speaker 1: know we used almond for the first fragrance, but I
Speaker 1: wonder if it's still an offshoot of that smell like almond.
Speaker 1: From what I saw, they've admitted to vanilla. That's all
Speaker 1: I've seen. And they're saying like that, that doesn't tell
Speaker 1: us anything. That's all they admitted to. Yeah, under question. Um.
Speaker 1: But the colors, we should also say chuckers. Um. They
Speaker 1: originally had red, yellow, and blue primary colors. Then they
Speaker 1: added white, and this is all in the fifties and
Speaker 1: those are the only colors until the eighties, and they
Speaker 1: added a couple more than they had eight colors total,
Speaker 1: and then now today it's like a whole rainbow, a
Speaker 1: whole galaxy of different colors. I never got the white
Speaker 1: because it just it looked dirty so quickly. I never
Speaker 1: really understood the purpose of the white. I liked it.
Speaker 1: I thought it was a nice juxtaposition with the primary colors.
Speaker 1: You're a artist, No, I was just a kind of sure,
Speaker 1: all right, So now, um, the rest of the show,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about chemistry. You're not happy about this? Sorry, Well,
Speaker 1: what do you think about this article? I thought it
Speaker 1: was It was good, you know, because that's what how
Speaker 1: stuff works does, is they tell the story behind things,
Speaker 1: Like we can't just talk about surfing. We have to
Speaker 1: talk about the physics of a wave. I get that. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, chemistry, it was not my bag, baby, this one. Um,
Speaker 1: this one. Kissing and roller coasters. You're kind of like
Speaker 1: you had a little bit of protests going on, like,
Speaker 1: come on, this is fun stuff. Yeah, when you're talking
Speaker 1: about kissing, you want to talk about Remember the title
Speaker 1: of it was a rigid, sterile lucket. Well, I don't
Speaker 1: know if the title for this will end up being
Speaker 1: what I wanted but it was going to be taking
Speaker 1: the fun out of Plato. No, let's call how Plato works.
Speaker 1: All right, but you heard it here. That was my
Speaker 1: working title. Yeah, alright, Well I will kick the chemistry
Speaker 1: off and maybe I will spark your interest. Are you ready?
Speaker 1: Do you have your beret and your smock on. This
Speaker 1: isn't even the fun chemistry you get to burn things. No,
Speaker 1: this is the chemistry of compounds. You're just adding them together.
Speaker 1: You know. There's a little heat involved, as we'll see,
Speaker 1: so you could start that flame. Okay, okay. So um,
Speaker 1: the whole basis of Plato, it turns out, is an
Speaker 1: interaction between starch and water. That's right, and starches are um,
Speaker 1: they're polysach rides, which are sugar molecules. And there's basically
Speaker 1: two varieties or two types that combine. There's amlos and
Speaker 1: there's a melo pecton that's right, and analyst is like
Speaker 1: a string. A melo pecton is branched, and when they
Speaker 1: get together they form a starburst shape. They form a
Speaker 1: molecule in a starburst shape, and it's arranged around a
Speaker 1: central area hollow called the highland h I l u
Speaker 1: M the highland and UM it's all held together thanks
Speaker 1: to hydrogen bonds. And then you have all that these
Speaker 1: polysach ride chains all mixed together with hydrogen bonds forming
Speaker 1: a starburst. And my friend, you have a starch molecule.
Speaker 1: And when you have the starch molecule, you have one
Speaker 1: of the two bases of Plato. Yeah, and this one,
Speaker 1: this article does have some pretty handy illustrations. If um hearing,
Speaker 1: this doesn't make as much since you can follow along
Speaker 1: on your own computer. Look at the illustrations. H If
Speaker 1: you add cold water to starch um, the granules are
Speaker 1: gonna absorb some. But when things really get interesting is
Speaker 1: when you add warm water or when you heat up
Speaker 1: that cold water to be warm water. Like you can
Speaker 1: mix it ahead of time and then warm it up,
Speaker 1: and basically what you're doing is making a gelatine, just
Speaker 1: like when you make jello. It's gotta be warm water. Right.
Speaker 1: Like if you've ever had like corn, starch or flour
Speaker 1: or whatever um and you add cold water to it,
Speaker 1: they just kind of separate, right. It's really untoward. It
Speaker 1: doesn't do much. It's almost like the starch protects itself
Speaker 1: against the cold. It's like brd you stay over there
Speaker 1: cold water. But when you use warm water or a
Speaker 1: mechanical action of mixing together, it forms, like you said,
Speaker 1: it gelatinizes, and now you're starting to get the basis
Speaker 1: of play dough. But the problem is um. When you
Speaker 1: just add warm water and the starch in this case
Speaker 1: it's wheat starch that they use, right, because they have
Speaker 1: to war against gluten um. When you add those two things,
Speaker 1: they mix together well, they form a nice gelatinous goo,
Speaker 1: but as it dries, you've got the problem of retrogradation.
Speaker 1: That's right, and that's that's trouble, yeah, because it really
Speaker 1: depends on the breakdown of amlos to a melopecton is
Speaker 1: the key. If you have a lot of amlos, it's
Speaker 1: gonna take more swelling to gelatonizes, right. But you get
Speaker 1: a nice robust gel when you have a lot of amylose.
Speaker 1: But the problem is that excess amlos separates some from
Speaker 1: the water, binds to itself, and then you have something
Speaker 1: that's not a full compound anymore. It's basically like a
Speaker 1: couple of it's it's like you've got that gel and
Speaker 1: then some extra amulose and it's dry and brittle, and
Speaker 1: it's not good. Well, yeah, and in the case of
Speaker 1: making a product for kids to play with, it's too firm,
Speaker 1: Like they had to get this recipe just right to
Speaker 1: make it firm but still appliable, and a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of work went into this, I'm sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: because at any time, like they started with the starch
Speaker 1: and the water, put it together fantastic, but then that
Speaker 1: created this problem. And then when they went to solve
Speaker 1: this problem, it created this problem. So then they had
Speaker 1: to solvate this problem. And then after adding like seven things,
Speaker 1: they finally have this like precariously balanced compound. That's perfect.
Speaker 1: That's perfect, but it's pretty neat. It's really complicated, and
Speaker 1: it it's self complicating, which I find very interesting it is.
Speaker 1: And what they ended up settling with as far as
Speaker 1: percentages goes for that weed starts was amlose a melopecton.
Speaker 1: They found that to be the secret sauce, right, as
Speaker 1: our buddy Chad likes to say. And the reason they
Speaker 1: have the a melo pecton is because the amelo pectin
Speaker 1: is a waxy starch and it keeps the amlose from
Speaker 1: binding to itself, so you have, um, you've prevented that
Speaker 1: retrogradation problem. Right where the amlose separates from the water
Speaker 1: and just binds to itself. The problem is now that
Speaker 1: you have this extra a melo pecton, the a melo pectin.
Speaker 1: It keeps the whole thing together, but it doesn't too much,
Speaker 1: And now you have a sticky tacky compound. You don't
Speaker 1: want it sticky. No, And anybody's ever played with Plato
Speaker 1: and tried to make something. You can't make it sticky.
Speaker 1: I'll stick to your hands or stick to itself. It's
Speaker 1: not gonna make a cheeseburger like that. No. Um, So
Speaker 1: they added something else, a lubricant that's right in this case. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's that's part of them the
Speaker 1: secret or not, but it's probably some sort of a
Speaker 1: vegetable oil or mineral oil. Well they think possibly it's
Speaker 1: a it's a mineral oil which is derived from petroleum,
Speaker 1: which petroleum which is why it's non toxic. Basically, shouldn't
Speaker 1: eat it. Yeah, I didn't see that there was petroleum.
Speaker 1: I bet you they're going to come out with a
Speaker 1: gluten free play though I'm surprised they haven't already. But
Speaker 1: that would almost be like admitting your child is eating
Speaker 1: this or can't eat it. Well, some of that new stuff,
Speaker 1: like the Sweet Shops stuff. I'm actually I would be
Speaker 1: very surprised if they hadn't done some R and D
Speaker 1: of different flavored play dough, you know, because if they
Speaker 1: have the different colors and this is supposed to look
Speaker 1: like this frosting, that's supposed to look like this frosting.
Speaker 1: So I wonder if they were like, well, we can't
Speaker 1: make this taste like vanilla or or you know, cotton
Speaker 1: candy or whatever. But yeah, and then they kind of
Speaker 1: shook their heads off and we're like, wait, we can't
Speaker 1: have kids eating this stuff. Or I wonder if they've
Speaker 1: done R and D on how much of it you
Speaker 1: can eat before it makes you sick. Surely, Like if
Speaker 1: they're making something that looks like a cupcake, some kid
Speaker 1: is probably gonna eat that entire thing at some point.
Speaker 1: And like we said, they've pretty much always been like,
Speaker 1: you can make fake food with this pizza Hug gave
Speaker 1: us money to do this, but don't eat it. Right,
Speaker 1: it's a weird mixed message. It is a totally mixed message.
Speaker 1: But you were saying they used the petroleum oil for
Speaker 1: as a lubricant. Yeah, and that keeps it from being
Speaker 1: all sticky. So if you've ever played with it, you
Speaker 1: know it like it's very pliable, um and moist, but
Speaker 1: it's not going to stick your fingers, which is the key.
Speaker 1: So you have added the mineral oil or some sort
Speaker 1: of lubricant to prevent the extra a melo pectin from
Speaker 1: making it sticky. And the whole reason you added amlo
Speaker 1: pecton was because too much amlose can cause retrogradation. So
Speaker 1: you've got all these solutions, and you've got the lubri
Speaker 1: con solution. The problem is you can't just put like
Speaker 1: you can't just drop it into lubricant and expected to stick.
Speaker 1: The lubricant will won't bind within this compound, so you
Speaker 1: have to add yet another thing, the surfactant. Yeah, surfactants
Speaker 1: you'll see in a lot of household cleansing products if
Speaker 1: you use that chemical junk to clean your house. But
Speaker 1: a surface active agent is another name for it, and
Speaker 1: it basically, uh, they're artificially manufactured their molecules, but it's
Speaker 1: gonna suspend something in water. It's the whole key to
Speaker 1: being a surfactant. Imagine, a surfactant has two ends, and
Speaker 1: one end is hydrophilic. Which means it attracts water and
Speaker 1: is attracted to water, and the other is hydrophobic, which
Speaker 1: means it repels water. And it's actually attracted to fats lipids,
Speaker 1: right or afraid of it. Even The cool thing about
Speaker 1: a surfactant is that if you take it and you
Speaker 1: throw it into a solution of water and oil, fats
Speaker 1: and waters, right it, one end will attract the fat
Speaker 1: molecules and another end will attract the water molecules. And
Speaker 1: what the end result of all of this is that
Speaker 1: you can basically suspend fats in water or water and
Speaker 1: fats um so that you have effectively, molecularly speaking, something
Speaker 1: a compound that's all mixed together. It's not going to
Speaker 1: separate like oil and water, because the whole thing is
Speaker 1: being held together by surfactants. That's right, that's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: It actually binds to the molecules of the lubricantants the
Speaker 1: chemical reaction is taking place and keeps them all mixed together.
Speaker 1: It won't allow them to separate. So we've got the
Speaker 1: lubricant in there. The whole thing is being held in
Speaker 1: place by their surfactant. We've got a little extra water
Speaker 1: chuck where we're gonna do. Uh well, I don't think
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier the reason it dries out to begin with,
Speaker 1: if you leave it out overnight, it's just because evaporation, right,
Speaker 1: And has Burrow recommends that if this happens, you take
Speaker 1: your plate modeling clay and you um rapid like a
Speaker 1: damp paper towel, put it back in the camp. But
Speaker 1: to cover on it, leave it overnight should be good
Speaker 1: as new. Yeah, and I've seen you can also add
Speaker 1: a little water to it as well, um, but I've
Speaker 1: never tried that. So that, my friend is it's a
Speaker 1: very fine tuned mixture, like you said, they had to sure.
Speaker 1: It took a lot of work over the years to
Speaker 1: get it just exactly right. And we're gonna learn how
Speaker 1: you can make your own right after this break, So Chuck,
Speaker 1: we should have said. There's a couple of other things
Speaker 1: that they add, Like you get excess water, so they
Speaker 1: added a little salt, and apparently for the excess salt
Speaker 1: they brought in a new chemist. So it's just fine,
Speaker 1: perfectly fine tuned stuff. And they got a colored of course,
Speaker 1: and and give it its sent yeah um, and then
Speaker 1: uh possibly make it taste in the future. Who knows.
Speaker 1: I'm betting on that. Yeah. And you know, the salts
Speaker 1: also adds a little anti microbol element to it, which
Speaker 1: is nice. It was so it has acts as a
Speaker 1: preservative as well. Um And to make Plato, you just
Speaker 1: put all this stuff in these um in the right
Speaker 1: measurements and apply heat to it and mix it together
Speaker 1: and package it and that's Plato. Yeah, and it's got
Speaker 1: to have that shelf life like this is. It's really
Speaker 1: hard to come up with a product like this that
Speaker 1: meets all those needs. And we'll still like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there were times early on we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this stuff is two weeks old on the shelf. It's
Speaker 1: like a brick back to the drawing board, put on
Speaker 1: your beret, in your smock. Remember in our How Twinkies
Speaker 1: Works episode, they dealt with that initially, the shelf life, right,
Speaker 1: so they just made it infinity. Man, that was such
Speaker 1: a good episode. That was good, one of my all
Speaker 1: time favorites. Agreed, We still get emails from people they're like,
Speaker 1: I found the banana Twinkies. Yeah, they have them in
Speaker 1: like um limited release from once in a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have yet to try one. I remember trying one
Speaker 1: years ago, but it wasn't my bag. I don't like
Speaker 1: banana flavorite things, but I like bananas. You're a very
Speaker 1: complex man, Chuck. Well, they don't. They don't quite get
Speaker 1: it right. Don't think ever. I've never tasted a banana
Speaker 1: flavor thing that got it right. I'm hard to please, so,
Speaker 1: um man, you just totally threw me off. What were
Speaker 1: we talking? We were I think we were a chap
Speaker 1: point where we're gonna make our own right. Right. So
Speaker 1: it's very tough to make until you come upon the recipe.
Speaker 1: But apparently a lot of people, even though it's a
Speaker 1: proprietary recipe, a lot of people have come up with
Speaker 1: their own recipes for Plato. Sure, and it's fun to
Speaker 1: do with your kid, you know, like if they like
Speaker 1: playing with it, then you can teach them a little
Speaker 1: chemistry along the way, right if at a learning moment,
Speaker 1: if you um, want to save some money, or you
Speaker 1: don't want to feed the corporate beast, that too, um
Speaker 1: or yeah, you just want to do something with your
Speaker 1: kid and make it. You can do all this stuff.
Speaker 1: It just takes a little elbow grease and work. And
Speaker 1: there's recipes all over the internet. There's some for like
Speaker 1: glowing the dark plato. There's some for glittery plato. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of recipes in this article on how
Speaker 1: stuff works. But basically you're doing the same thing. You're
Speaker 1: adding starch to water, you're adding some sort of lubricant
Speaker 1: to it, something to hold the whole thing together. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this recipe, it's a cream of tartar which stiffens
Speaker 1: eggs and gives plato homemade plato. It's it's firmness. But
Speaker 1: there's a lot of recipes online that if you want
Speaker 1: to not only just play with plato with your kid,
Speaker 1: but make it. That's a great chemistry teaching experience. I think, agreed.
Speaker 1: And you can explain, um, you know what what each
Speaker 1: ingredient is doing, and then at the very end you're
Speaker 1: gonna have plato and your kid's gonna say this plato stinks.
Speaker 1: It's not nearly as good as the real thing, unless
Speaker 1: it's the peanut butter variety. When I'll bet you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is tasty plato. Do they have that? Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a recipe for it in this article. It's the peanut
Speaker 1: butter is one of the ingredients. Yes, interesting, Yeah, or
Speaker 1: you know what you could make it with your kid. Wow.
Speaker 1: You listen to us stumble through the explanation and to
Speaker 1: everybody who's doing that right now? Hello, hello everyone and
Speaker 1: your kids. Canna say? Who are these jerks? And why
Speaker 1: does my Plato not work? Can we just go to
Speaker 1: the store and buy some Plato please? Yeah? Well we're portable.
Speaker 1: We go around on MP three players, so we can
Speaker 1: go to the store with the exactly what else you got?
Speaker 1: And then you can listen to our episode on temper
Speaker 1: tantrums on the way to the store. That was a
Speaker 1: good one too. It was what else you got? I've
Speaker 1: got nothing else? Um? I got plenty more? Oh please
Speaker 1: Mr Bill remember him from Sorry Life? Of course he
Speaker 1: was made a Plato. Yeah, they made the first Mr
Speaker 1: Bill short for twenty bucks. That's pretty good stuff. What
Speaker 1: else you got? There's a there's not not just one,
Speaker 1: but two at least Plato three D printers on the
Speaker 1: market right now. Really, Yeah, it's pretty awesome. You put
Speaker 1: a hunk of it in there, different hunks in there,
Speaker 1: and no, no, no no, and it and it uh. I
Speaker 1: was about to say a hunk in there and then
Speaker 1: it whittles it down. But that's the opposite three D
Speaker 1: p No, no, it extrudes it, it builds up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. There's one on think Geek for like fifty
Speaker 1: bucks that um plugs into your iPad so that's where
Speaker 1: your schematics are and it tells it what to do
Speaker 1: and it makes pretty cool little three D plato stuff.
Speaker 1: That's kind of fun. It is. At the same time,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, you know, I mean, you're really
Speaker 1: building a little geek there, but the imagination and the
Speaker 1: hands on things kind of taken out of it a
Speaker 1: little bit. Well, I think that that's the new imagination,
Speaker 1: my friend, I guess. So to follow forms and schematics
Speaker 1: to a t it would be cool is if you
Speaker 1: could design your own schematic and then which I'm sure
Speaker 1: you can yeah. Um. And then Plato has one called
Speaker 1: the do vinci Um and that's a three D printer too.
Speaker 1: And then one other thing I found we were talking
Speaker 1: about plato ads earlier, there is a series of band
Speaker 1: plato ads that were published in Singapore a couple of
Speaker 1: years back. Oh, band is and I thought you meant
Speaker 1: like bands recorded music. No, no, like band and any
Speaker 1: D taboo plato ads that are very adult centrically. Yeah that, Um,
Speaker 1: can you say, what? Well, how about this? I made
Speaker 1: a slide show of them on our site. You can
Speaker 1: go check them out. They're pretty crazy. Um they're not
Speaker 1: like naked or and not adult in that way, but
Speaker 1: like kind of violent and a little dark. Um that
Speaker 1: this ad agency made basically without the approval of Hasbro.
Speaker 1: Um And uh, Hasbro came in and like denounced it
Speaker 1: and everything. But they're pretty great. So if you go
Speaker 1: to stuff you should dot com and search banned Plato ads,
Speaker 1: it will come up. And Hasbro had a news Releases
Speaker 1: says we don't endorse this use of Plato brand multiple
Speaker 1: clay right, they just kept working the name in there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty crazy. I learned all about something called scam ads,
Speaker 1: where um advertising agencies basically create ad campaigns based around
Speaker 1: brand names without the brand names permission, simply to submit
Speaker 1: them for awards consideration to expand their prestige. Interesting. Well,
Speaker 1: and uh, if you want to be a TV commercial director,
Speaker 1: you have probably made some spec or fake ads yourself
Speaker 1: just to have on your reel. Like you know, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make a Dirito, Well doritos I said cost over year, right,
Speaker 1: So this is that same thing, but sometimes they really
Speaker 1: run a foul of like the spirit of the brand. Um,
Speaker 1: and there's scam ads. Yeah, they're like European commercials, which
Speaker 1: are always way better and risque and like funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: get with it, America. So if you want to learn
Speaker 1: more about Plato, including a few Plato recipes, you can
Speaker 1: type Plato into the search part house stuff works dot
Speaker 1: Com and and say said search parts time for a
Speaker 1: listener mail. I'm gonna call this another m p a
Speaker 1: A called the Golden f Bomb. Hey, guys, I discovered
Speaker 1: your show, um and he says a little Jerry and
Speaker 1: spilled her name to which doesn't happen aten the spelling
Speaker 1: that is, I discovered your podcast while looking for something
Speaker 1: interesting to listen to while I worked on my organic
Speaker 1: farm in Kauai. I heard the mp A show and
Speaker 1: I just had to write. In Growing up, my friends
Speaker 1: and I were always looking for a way to sneak
Speaker 1: into movie theaters. He had the exit door, having an
Speaker 1: older friend or parent, biased tickets, using a ticket single
Speaker 1: ticket stub passed back through to get in on the
Speaker 1: same ticket, etcetera. He had all sorts of ways of
Speaker 1: stealing our goal was to get into an R rated
Speaker 1: movie underage, with n C seventeen being the ultimate prize.
Speaker 1: PG thirteen always felt like we had failed or were settling,
Speaker 1: So to make it fun we would count how many
Speaker 1: expletives were we heard and compare notes after the movie.
Speaker 1: He really took things to a different level. It must
Speaker 1: have been a time when movies weren't as good as
Speaker 1: they are today in the theaters in the movies have
Speaker 1: never been this bad. It is really out of terrible. Uh.
Speaker 1: One pattern we soon realized was that PG thirteen movies
Speaker 1: are allotted one F bomb. Listening for that one F
Speaker 1: bomb became the looked for a moment making the PG
Speaker 1: thirteen movie experience. It's had more interesting and something I
Speaker 1: look out for to this day. Still. There are some
Speaker 1: real classics, including Ron Burgundy's an Anchorman, most recently in Skyfall,
Speaker 1: when Judy Ditch uses that naughty word she did, I
Speaker 1: don't remember that, Judy, the first one in the Bond
Speaker 1: series and Judy, Judy, I just saw Filimino. By the way, finally,
Speaker 1: what did you think it was fantastic? Was that just
Speaker 1: an amazing change of pace for her? She always plays
Speaker 1: like the short pulled together like yeah, like Boss Lady
Speaker 1: and this when she was just kind of just working class.
Speaker 1: That was a good movie. That was really good. Love
Speaker 1: that movie, highly recommended um And then I noticed the
Speaker 1: rating rule is not ironclad, however, because recent examples of
Speaker 1: Lincoln and Filomena. Hey, how about that had two of
Speaker 1: those naughty words a piece. Lincoln had it in there,
Speaker 1: hunts that's o bird gets away with anything. Well, he's
Speaker 1: the one that had the whole thing changed. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: he was the one that created it. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: he ran a foul of it. Anyway, My absolute favorite
Speaker 1: PG thirteen Golden Goal naughty word uh not mentioned anywhere
Speaker 1: else that I've researched, was the one that got me
Speaker 1: out of my seat cheering, like the President's speech and
Speaker 1: Independence Days from Oblivion. Tom Cruise's character awaits to the
Speaker 1: very end of the movie to deliver the perfectly timed
Speaker 1: line to his enemy. That movie stunk, did it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I heard the other one was pretty good though, Edge
Speaker 1: of Tomorrow, Yeah, that was really good. Oblivion stunk. And
Speaker 1: he closes by saying, Mahalo Nuela, thank you very much
Speaker 1: for all you do to in Photinous and that is
Speaker 1: evans On Kauaii. Uh yeah, sorry, Evans, Oblivion was no good.
Speaker 1: He said that he liked it a lot, but you know,
Speaker 1: to each their own, I'm not gonna poopoo his taste.
Speaker 1: Good for you, Chuck, Thanks for your your game and
Speaker 1: your fevery. If you want to talk to me and
Speaker 1: Chuck about movies, we are always down for that. We
Speaker 1: love talking about movies. We should just like do an
Speaker 1: episode where we just just say have you seen this movie? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that one for like a half hour. There'll
Speaker 1: be a couple of people out there they're like, this
Speaker 1: is a good episode. There are podcasts like exactly like that.
Speaker 1: You know that? Mm hmm um, what was I just saying?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. If you want to get in touch with
Speaker 1: us for whatever reason, movies or otherwise, you can tweet
Speaker 1: to us at s YSK podcast. You can join us
Speaker 1: on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You
Speaker 1: can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com, and you can join us at
Speaker 1: our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
Speaker 1: it how Stuff Works dot com.