Speaker 1: Guess what, mango, what's that? Well, I thought it was
Speaker 1: pretty funny. Recently when we were coming up with our
Speaker 1: list of underrated toys from childhood, and both of us
Speaker 1: put Silly Putty on the list, right, and it was
Speaker 1: such an awesome I don't even know if you could
Speaker 1: call it a toy. But not only did it come
Speaker 1: in a plastic egg for some reason, which is really
Speaker 1: the world's best carrying case, you asked me, but you
Speaker 1: know you could stretch it, it bounced, And the weirdest
Speaker 1: and maybe best thing of all was that if you
Speaker 1: pressed it against the newspaper, it actually picked up the
Speaker 1: text and images right off the page. Did you ever
Speaker 1: do this? Yeah, with like the funny pages. And to me,
Speaker 1: that just like elevated it from just another like piece
Speaker 1: of slime or a bouncy ball to a spy gadget
Speaker 1: like you could almost imagine Carmen San Diego carrying one
Speaker 1: of these in her pocket. Well, today kids just don't
Speaker 1: get that joy because Silly Putty no longer picks up newsprint. Now.
Speaker 1: Apparently it isn't because the silly Putty formula has changed.
Speaker 1: It's because newspapers have started using a different kind of ink. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is just so silly putty
Speaker 1: can't pick it up. I think maybe it's because they
Speaker 1: don't want reader's hands to pick up the print. But
Speaker 1: it made me wonder, like, how have classic toys changed
Speaker 1: over the years. And that's what today's nine Things is
Speaker 1: all about. So let's dive in. Y Hey, their podcast listeners,
Speaker 1: welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as
Speaker 1: always I'm joined by my good friend Man Guesh Ticketer
Speaker 1: and sitting behind the soundproof glass djaying music on his
Speaker 1: old Teddy Ruxman doll. That doll looks pretty worn out
Speaker 1: at this point. That's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil.
Speaker 1: So Teddy Ruxman is such an old reference, you know.
Speaker 1: I actually had this memory from when I was a
Speaker 1: kid in the summertime, and I want to say it
Speaker 1: was like nine or ten at the time, and I
Speaker 1: remember staying up to watch Johnny Carson and he did
Speaker 1: this joke I just thought was hilarious. Uh. He was
Speaker 1: like on stage doing his monologue and he goes, Hasbro's
Speaker 1: just come out with a Milli Vanilli talking doll? But
Speaker 1: it had to be pulled off the shelves because it
Speaker 1: was using Teddy Ruxpin's voice and as a kid. For
Speaker 1: some reason, that joke was so funny to me, like
Speaker 1: it's a throwaway joke, but I always recycle it. I mean,
Speaker 1: if admit it's not a bad joke, though it is
Speaker 1: funnier to me think about how old these references are,
Speaker 1: like Johnny Carson, Milli Vanilli, Teddy Ruxman, And I will
Speaker 1: say the timing on this is really weird because, as
Speaker 1: you know, this past weekend, I went camping with our
Speaker 1: family and it was raining one day and I started
Speaker 1: singing Blame It on the rain, and the kids didn't
Speaker 1: know the reference, and so I actually pulled up a
Speaker 1: Milli Vanilli song. I love the fact that we were
Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere listening to Milli Vanilli on Spotify,
Speaker 1: But anyway, we were listening to this and it hit
Speaker 1: me like, it's not as though that I thought this
Speaker 1: had been a great song or a great group, like
Speaker 1: whoever was doing the actual singing, but it is so
Speaker 1: much worse than I remembered it. Like it is bad.
Speaker 1: So I'm encouraging anyone to pull up Milli Vanilli and
Speaker 1: just appreciate how terrible it is. It makes sense that
Speaker 1: Teddy Rux been saying. It makes sense that Teddy Ruxy
Speaker 1: say But anyway, none of those references mean anything to
Speaker 1: kids anymore at this point. Well, I do hope some
Speaker 1: of the toys on this list are still things people
Speaker 1: play with. You know, you talked about silly Putty at
Speaker 1: the top of the show. But I thought it was
Speaker 1: fascinating that the reason we have this ridiculous invention in
Speaker 1: the first place is because during World War Two we
Speaker 1: had to ration rubber because of the limited access to
Speaker 1: rubber plants. And it was this unexpectedly delightful thing that
Speaker 1: came out of this search for synthetic rubber. And this
Speaker 1: was during wartime desperation. Oh, that is pretty interesting. I
Speaker 1: feel like maybe you're stalling Omego what do you do?
Speaker 1: You have a fact you prepared for this episode. I
Speaker 1: did bring some facts, so I wanted to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the etch A sketch first, and and
Speaker 1: this is actually an invention that comes from France. It
Speaker 1: was originally called Lecron Magic. I don't French, obviously, and
Speaker 1: then when it debuted at toy fairs, it had a
Speaker 1: slightly different design because instead of those two white knobs,
Speaker 1: it actually had a joystick on it, which is how
Speaker 1: none of us remember it, of course. But the other
Speaker 1: weird thing about the edge of sketches that toy companies
Speaker 1: were very lukewarm on the idea, like almost all of
Speaker 1: them passed on it. In fact, all of them did.
Speaker 1: And then finally Ohio Art decided to take a second
Speaker 1: look at it, and they picked it up in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1: They decided to make it more sleek. They changed the
Speaker 1: control to those two infuriating white knobs now and and
Speaker 1: they started advertising it on TV and it flew off shells.
Speaker 1: Over a hundred million EG sketch have actually sold ever since.
Speaker 1: You know, it was never very good at them, and
Speaker 1: I'm still not any good at them, But I do
Speaker 1: like looking at those galleries of portraits and you know
Speaker 1: the other artwork that an ETA sketch can do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty cool that you can preserve those things
Speaker 1: by like drilling through the back and you take out
Speaker 1: the powder and it makes those drawings permanent. But for me,
Speaker 1: like the ability to shake the pictures and rest art
Speaker 1: is the best thing about it. Like I can't imagine
Speaker 1: saving any artwork I've ever created on cane. Alright, well,
Speaker 1: going in a very different direction and something that I
Speaker 1: have no memory of, but it was interesting to read about.
Speaker 1: Did you know that the precursor of My Little Pony
Speaker 1: was called My Pretty Pony? No, so what's the difference? Well,
Speaker 1: color and size for starters. So My Pretty Pony was
Speaker 1: brown and about ten inches tall, and according to an
Speaker 1: article in Gizmoto, it was part of Hasbro's Romper Room line.
Speaker 1: And it also wiggled its ears and its tail and
Speaker 1: it winked at you, apparently very very contemperent. But you know,
Speaker 1: the big attraction was the main and the tail, and
Speaker 1: they were both extra long. And you can imagine kids
Speaker 1: really enjoying this because they could just brush it for
Speaker 1: days and days. But it really was just like a
Speaker 1: toy horse. So it debuted in nine and then the
Speaker 1: following year they decided to shrink it down. They took
Speaker 1: out some of the movable features, added all those colors
Speaker 1: that we associate with them, and make them a little
Speaker 1: bit more like the ponies that we know today. So
Speaker 1: every time I hear My Little Pony now, I I
Speaker 1: think about how people thought Bill Clinton was a brony
Speaker 1: because he answered like three questions straight on. Wait, weight,
Speaker 1: don't tell me about My Little Pony friendship is magic?
Speaker 1: I had forgotten all about. Well, obviously, how you play
Speaker 1: with My Little Pony is different than the kids who
Speaker 1: have the original, and you know, then it was more
Speaker 1: of like a horse toy and less of this magical
Speaker 1: horse boy. But you know, the other thing I'd forgotten
Speaker 1: is that My Little Pony cartoon that came out in
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen eighties. It was actually called My Little
Speaker 1: Pony and Friends because half the animated show was really
Speaker 1: used to market these ponies to kids, and then the
Speaker 1: other half was reserved to sell toys for for other
Speaker 1: things like I was just looking back on this, like
Speaker 1: Glow Worms, which I remember, and Potato Head Kids. I
Speaker 1: don't remember this cartoon, but Gizmodo recapped it as quote
Speaker 1: a bunch of potato children being marginally watched over by
Speaker 1: Mr potato Head with a lazy dad. So I vaguely
Speaker 1: remember glow Worms, but I have no memory of that
Speaker 1: Potato Head cartoon. But speaking of Mr potato Head, Uh,
Speaker 1: there's an old fact which always blows me away, and
Speaker 1: we've mentioned on the program before but it's that the
Speaker 1: original potato heads were just parts that you stuck into
Speaker 1: any produce you had around the house, like it was
Speaker 1: funny eyes, felt mustaches, hats and whatever. And the packaging
Speaker 1: actually read any fruit or vegetable makes a funny face man.
Speaker 1: So as I O. Nine puts it, it was b
Speaker 1: y O P or bring your own potato. And apparently
Speaker 1: the sales killed. It was one of, if not the
Speaker 1: first toy to advertise on TV, and in ninetift two
Speaker 1: they did over four million dollars in sales. I mean
Speaker 1: that's actually about thirty seven million dollars in today's money.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, like I always wondered, like when
Speaker 1: did they stop this and and shift over to putting
Speaker 1: these plastic bodies into the boxes? And this is according
Speaker 1: to Ion nine again, but apparently in ninety eight some
Speaker 1: of the toys got really elaborate and also really sharp,
Speaker 1: and that's because they put out a Mr. Potato Head
Speaker 1: on the Moon Set. I guess this was capitalizing on
Speaker 1: the Space Race. But it came with super sharp plastic
Speaker 1: parts that fixed into a cucumber to make it stand
Speaker 1: up as a rocket. So you had potato parts, cucumber parts,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's pretty cool to look at, but by
Speaker 1: the nine seventies, all those sharp parts were just deemed
Speaker 1: too unsafe for kids. You know, I've definitely seen a
Speaker 1: few photos of those boxes, but I'm curious if you
Speaker 1: can still get them on eBay. So so after we
Speaker 1: finished the episode, let's look that up. Let's see. All, Well,
Speaker 1: here's another classic toy that's changed over the years, and
Speaker 1: that's the Magic eight Ball. Now, one of the questions
Speaker 1: I've always had about the magic eight ball was like,
Speaker 1: why is it an eight ball? And it feels like
Speaker 1: a weird choice for a kid's toy, But it turns
Speaker 1: out there's a marketing reason behind it. So the toy
Speaker 1: itself has this long, weird story and apparently was invented
Speaker 1: by a kid whose mom was a fortune teller, I think,
Speaker 1: And so she used to have some sort of rig
Speaker 1: that she called the psycho slate, and she would ask
Speaker 1: a client some questions and then the answers would be
Speaker 1: magically produced on a magic chalkboard. And I don't quite
Speaker 1: understand the setup of this, but it influenced her son,
Speaker 1: his name was Albert Carter, to come up with a
Speaker 1: product where you kept the fortune telling, but you took
Speaker 1: the human consultant out of the picture, and so the
Speaker 1: toy provided the answers directly. Those ninety four and he
Speaker 1: invented what was called the psycho Sere, which was this
Speaker 1: long tube with liquid in it and then a couple
Speaker 1: of dice that floated up with different phrases on it.
Speaker 1: And basically the concept of the magic eight ball was there.
Speaker 1: And anyway, this this toy went through these various iterations.
Speaker 1: They turned from a tube into a crystal ball. But
Speaker 1: then it was Brunswick Billiard Tables. They were looking for
Speaker 1: this promotional gimmick back in nineteen fifty and Carter's partner
Speaker 1: redesigned the crystal eight ball into an eight ball, and
Speaker 1: that idea just kind of stuck from there. That's crazy,
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny to think of fortune telling being
Speaker 1: the family business for for Albert Carter, but it's also
Speaker 1: funny that this is just like a marketing tool. It's ridiculous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just supposed to be this paper weight for adults,
Speaker 1: really nothing more than that, and something kind of sit
Speaker 1: on their desk. It when it caught on with kids,
Speaker 1: it was remarketed as a toy and and obviously really
Speaker 1: took off from there. That's fascinating. I've actually read something
Speaker 1: about like the psychology of eight balls and how they
Speaker 1: wait the answers with positive ones. I think they're like,
Speaker 1: uh ten positive answers and then like five negative and
Speaker 1: five and different ones, So like you keep playing for
Speaker 1: those answers. Yeah, I mean, I guess it makes sense
Speaker 1: if you think about having that perfect mix that keeps
Speaker 1: us wanting to flip it over and over, kind of
Speaker 1: getting those those different answers and knowing we might get
Speaker 1: positive ones more often then we get negative ones. So
Speaker 1: all right, what do you have next, Mengo? So I'm
Speaker 1: going to talk a little bit about Lincoln logs and
Speaker 1: how they were originally built to withstand earthquakes. So I
Speaker 1: had heard the story that Lincoln logs were created by
Speaker 1: Frank Wood rights son John, and I thought it was
Speaker 1: cute that there was this architectural connection between them. But
Speaker 1: it's actually deeper than that. So according to history dot com,
Speaker 1: the first Lincoln logs weren't toys at all, but architectural models,
Speaker 1: and they kind of come out of the father's son
Speaker 1: designed for Tokyo's Imperial Hotel. Apparently, John used to work
Speaker 1: for his father. In fact, at age twenty four, he
Speaker 1: was his chief assistant. And when they were in depend
Speaker 1: they were trying to come up with the system that
Speaker 1: would help the building with stan tremors and also earthquakes.
Speaker 1: So they built a model of interlocking logs that could
Speaker 1: bend with the sheiks. And you know, the father and
Speaker 1: son had falling out, and while Frank concentrated on building
Speaker 1: the hotel, which actually managed to survive major earthquakes, John
Speaker 1: Wright took that model, tweaked it and made a toy
Speaker 1: that doesn't fallow when your kid, brother, kid's sister thumps
Speaker 1: around right next to it. That's pretty cool. I had
Speaker 1: never heard that story before. All right, well, very different toy.
Speaker 1: Here's a quick story about transformers, which have outlasted gobots
Speaker 1: and Voltron. You remember those two, remember all of these
Speaker 1: very well. But the funny thing is that transformers weren't
Speaker 1: actually the original. You know, Gobots had come to the
Speaker 1: market before them, and there was also a line of
Speaker 1: these mass toys that transformed, and they were like dozens
Speaker 1: of other transforming toys. And at the time, regulations had changed,
Speaker 1: and so TV was flooded with cartoons basically were king
Speaker 1: as these advertisements for toys like he Man or we
Speaker 1: were talking about before with My Little Pony cartoons. So
Speaker 1: Transformers got in on this too. But the thing that
Speaker 1: really set them apart was, you know, first of all,
Speaker 1: their price. They were actually pricier than other toys of
Speaker 1: the same genres. So newspapers referred to Transformers is it's
Speaker 1: almost like being the status symbol that you'd have on
Speaker 1: playground or the sandboxes. You know, the cool kids had these.
Speaker 1: But more importantly, they took a lot of care in
Speaker 1: the packaging. So every box came with this backstory for
Speaker 1: the character, elaborately written by a Marvel Comics writer, so
Speaker 1: the kids really got invested in these stories from the start.
Speaker 1: And they also had those stickers that warmed with your
Speaker 1: hand to tell if they were good guys or not
Speaker 1: an autobot or what were the others called the Decepticons.
Speaker 1: But and this is how the toys have changed. The
Speaker 1: Transformers also came with these cards that had power levels
Speaker 1: secretly written on them, and you can only tell a
Speaker 1: Transformer strengths and weaknesses by putting a red plastic It
Speaker 1: was like a three D glasses type limb is over it,
Speaker 1: and then you could read the numbers, and so, you know,
Speaker 1: just like kids obsess over Pokemon stats for characters, those
Speaker 1: three D readers gave Transformers kind of that nerdy fun
Speaker 1: quality that kids could obsess over, you know, in addition
Speaker 1: to just transforming into things and crashing them into one another.
Speaker 1: We almost forget what they actually did. But anyway, I know,
Speaker 1: we've got two more facts for you. But before that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius,
Speaker 1: where we're talking nine classic toys and how they've changed
Speaker 1: over the years. All right, mano, you got one last
Speaker 1: fact of the day. What is it? So I think
Speaker 1: I want to talk about or No, Rubik who invented
Speaker 1: the Rubik's Cube. So you and I have both heard
Speaker 1: a lot of this story before that Ruby was Hungarian
Speaker 1: and a communist country, and he designed this cube partially
Speaker 1: because he was just curious if there was a way
Speaker 1: to create a cube with moving parts. He figured that
Speaker 1: you'd need a round core inside and and he only
Speaker 1: did this after contemplating the pebbles under his feet while
Speaker 1: he was on this long walk. But kind of like
Speaker 1: with Lincoln logs, this was originally supposed to be a model,
Speaker 1: like in this case, it was something to teach geometry
Speaker 1: and spatial relations. But once he put stickers on the
Speaker 1: thing and then twisted it, it became something totally different.
Speaker 1: So mental Floss found this unpublished memoir of his and
Speaker 1: in it he writes quote only after a few turns
Speaker 1: the colors became mixed. It was tremendously satisfying to watch
Speaker 1: this color parade. And of course, when he tried to
Speaker 1: reset the colors, he couldn't like it. Took Rubik a
Speaker 1: full month and a half to put the cube back
Speaker 1: in order. But here's the funniest part. Like when he
Speaker 1: finally did, he went home to brag to his mom
Speaker 1: about it, and her reaction was that he was just
Speaker 1: thrilled he was no longer wasting his time working so
Speaker 1: hard on this ridiculous puzzle. I'm curious that, like, how
Speaker 1: did Rubik's cube become such a phenomenon? Basically when he
Speaker 1: took his colored version into his class and saw the
Speaker 1: kids going crazy for it. When Rubik knew you had
Speaker 1: something more than a math model on his hands, it's
Speaker 1: pretty fun, all right. So I thought i'd end this
Speaker 1: on cabbage patch dolls, and I guess what's surprising to
Speaker 1: me isn't that the toys have really changed that much,
Speaker 1: but more that they started out as this mix of
Speaker 1: craft and art. So according to Collector's Weekly, when Xavier
Speaker 1: Roberts started making the dolls in nineteen seventy seven, it
Speaker 1: was based on a German fabric sculpture technique, the idea
Speaker 1: of adopting dolls they were they were called little people
Speaker 1: at the time. That was there from the start, and
Speaker 1: so he charged forty dollars for these sculptures and then
Speaker 1: hand you a certificate with them. It's hard for me
Speaker 1: to think of these dolls as sculptures. But after one
Speaker 1: of his pieces, called Dexter One, first place at an
Speaker 1: art show in Florida, he realized there was something there.
Speaker 1: So he and a few friends formed this collective, and
Speaker 1: then they renovated an old medical center in Georgia and
Speaker 1: turned it into an art and performance space where the
Speaker 1: little people were born from cabbages and delivered by licensed nurses.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's all a little bit straightage, but
Speaker 1: people could watch as they occasionally did cease actions or
Speaker 1: cabbage sections kess and of course you could buy the
Speaker 1: sculptures there Anyway, the hospital was featured on this documentary
Speaker 1: and a national press picked it up, and people just
Speaker 1: went bananas for these things. So Colleco licensed the dolls,
Speaker 1: made them smaller, lower the prices some and the fat
Speaker 1: just took off. That's crazy, you know. I always think
Speaker 1: about the Snack Time cabbage Patch dolls that had to
Speaker 1: be returned because they kept chomping on kids hair instead
Speaker 1: of just the plastic snacks you had for them. Like,
Speaker 1: those things give me nightmares. All right, well, we've got
Speaker 1: to pick a winner, and there were a ton of
Speaker 1: great facts today, but I really like that Lincoln Logs
Speaker 1: fact and the idea that you built this little log
Speaker 1: cabin it might just withstand an earthquake. So ango, I'm
Speaker 1: going to give you today's trophy. Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: and thank you guys for listening. We'll be back with
Speaker 1: a full length episode tomorrow