Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Chuck here on a Saturday. I hope you're
Speaker 1: enjoying some breakfast cereal and maybe watching cartoons on the Telly,
Speaker 1: but maybe take a pause and listen to this curated
Speaker 1: episode from February twenty eighteen. What is mold Rama. I'm
Speaker 1: not even gonna tell you what moldarrama is if you
Speaker 1: don't know. It's not gross. It's not something that lives
Speaker 1: on your walls when it's too humid. It's actually a
Speaker 1: pretty cool, fun machine from.
Speaker 2: Days gone by. So I hope you enjoyed this episode
Speaker 2: all over again.
Speaker 3: Right now, welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production
Speaker 3: of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 4: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
Speaker 4: there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there,
Speaker 4: and this is Stuff you Should Know a rama.
Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of funny that you did that
Speaker 1: little Do Do to Do, because I'm gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and plug this right off the top. Okay, we're doing
Speaker 1: this show on Moldorama, which spoiler is a machine that
Speaker 1: makes that made and still makes these little plastic things, but.
Speaker 4: Has maybe one of the worst trade names.
Speaker 2: Ever, Moldorama.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna go ahead and plug this. There's a
Speaker 1: YouTube video from this young lady where she shows off
Speaker 1: her Moldorama little plastic toys that she's collected. Carpetbagger dot Org.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Moldorama. Just look up that YouTube. She is
Speaker 1: adorable and she's the best. And when she shows her
Speaker 1: suitcase full of Moldorama plastic toys, she does a little
Speaker 1: song and it's just adorable and great.
Speaker 4: I gotta check that out. I saw her use one
Speaker 4: of the Disney Disneyland toy factory Moldoramas. Yeah, I saw that,
Speaker 4: so I know who you're talking about.
Speaker 2: She's great.
Speaker 4: So that was nice of you, Chuck. Well, let's wait
Speaker 4: for everybody to come back from watching her YouTube video show.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's wait for I think five or six minutes
Speaker 2: and done.
Speaker 4: Yes, time passes faster here at stuff you should know,
Speaker 4: doesn't it.
Speaker 2: It does. I'm eighty years old.
Speaker 4: So so with you. Like you said, mold Rama, it
Speaker 4: is a I've seen it described as a factory in
Speaker 4: a case. Okay, I thought that was a pretty apt description.
Speaker 4: But for those of you who don't know, it is
Speaker 4: basically an odd demand injection blow molded plastic toy dispenser.
Speaker 4: That is the that's a technical definition for it. And
Speaker 4: while that might not make sense yet, it all will
Speaker 4: make sense in about thirty or so minutes.
Speaker 2: All right, how about this picture?
Speaker 1: This?
Speaker 4: All right, let's start over. Should we wait? Should we
Speaker 4: edit my part out?
Speaker 1: Oh no, let's leave this all in. All right, good
Speaker 1: picture this. You walk into a room.
Speaker 2: Let's say it's the tower now Willis Tower? Is it Willis? Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was Willis Tower, Sears Tower? Who keeps calling
Speaker 4: it Willis Tower? Stop that Sears Tower? Or a world's
Speaker 4: fair or something. And there is a machine that looks
Speaker 4: sort of like a jukebox from fifty feet away. Oh yeah,
Speaker 4: that's a good, good way.
Speaker 1: And then you walk up closer to it and you're like,
Speaker 1: oh wait, what is this weird mechanical thing? Let me
Speaker 1: put in fifty cents, and right before your very eyes,
Speaker 1: it will mechanically create a little plastic toy of an
Speaker 1: alien or a building or a lion at a zoo,
Speaker 1: and it will spit it out. And you'll say, that
Speaker 1: was just melted from plastic and molded and shaped and
Speaker 1: given to me right in front of my eyes.
Speaker 2: What a fun neat thing.
Speaker 4: Right, and you'll say all this after you recover from
Speaker 4: fainting from the fumes of melted plastic, and then get
Speaker 4: up and get your toy out, which is good because
Speaker 4: they say that you should wait half a minute for
Speaker 4: your toy to cool before you grab it from the Molderama, right.
Speaker 4: I think that was a pretty good job. You just
Speaker 4: did it describing it.
Speaker 1: And I think this is super neat because this reminds
Speaker 1: me of a bygone era, like where I went to
Speaker 1: Nashville recently and went to Jack White's Third Man Records,
Speaker 1: and he has one of those booths where you can
Speaker 1: go in and.
Speaker 2: Record a record.
Speaker 4: Would you record?
Speaker 2: Well, I didn't do it. I chickened out.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 1: What I wanted to do was go in and sing
Speaker 1: a little song for my daughter and give it to
Speaker 1: her as a record. And I was thinking, like, what
Speaker 1: could I do? What do I know in my brain
Speaker 1: by heart? Because they have a little guitar you can
Speaker 1: take in there, and it was such a small room
Speaker 1: and it was in the room with everything else, and
Speaker 1: I just got weirdly shy, like I don't want to
Speaker 1: you to hear me.
Speaker 4: You got shy? Jack White made you shy? Huh? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I didn't want to do it in front of people. Like,
Speaker 1: if there was literally no one in there, I would
Speaker 1: have cut ten records.
Speaker 4: Oh I got it. You should have stuck your head
Speaker 4: on and been like, can you als leave for a
Speaker 4: little while?
Speaker 2: Just trust me?
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: But anyway, this reminds me of those days gone by
Speaker 1: where you could cut your own record or you know,
Speaker 1: they had these really cool machines at fairs and things
Speaker 1: that they just I mean, now, I guess you can
Speaker 1: still get your picture taken and printed digitally.
Speaker 4: Or the Penny smasher that's still around two. I see
Speaker 4: that compared to this, A get a lot. Yeah those
Speaker 4: are cool, not really, but still it's an app comparison.
Speaker 1: I will just say, I'm surprised that my brother doesn't
Speaker 1: have a Molderama in his basement.
Speaker 4: So I am too, because there's a guy who collects
Speaker 4: these things called Moldville, and I saw videos of his collection.
Speaker 4: Did you see this, Yeah, it's like a warehouse full
Speaker 4: of mint conditioned Molderama machines. This guy must be richer
Speaker 4: than an astronaut. He's got so many of these machines.
Speaker 4: And you're right about this. It evoking the memories of
Speaker 4: a bygone era. But what's crazy, Chuck, is that these
Speaker 4: things are still in use today. You can find them
Speaker 4: all over the country. Yeah, and they're still working. And
Speaker 4: this is what's amazing to me. There are the original
Speaker 4: machines that were made for about a seven year period
Speaker 4: during the nineteen sixties. Every Moldorama machine that you might encounter,
Speaker 4: including ten at the Toledo Zoo. By the way, we're
Speaker 4: built in the sixties and have been operational ever since.
Speaker 2: Should we talk about the history, Well, first.
Speaker 4: Let me ask you this do you have Did you
Speaker 4: ever use a Moldorama when you were a kid? No?
Speaker 4: Oh you didn't.
Speaker 2: No, And I'm dying now to go do one as
Speaker 2: an adult.
Speaker 4: So they're still around. Yeah, they're still around. Okay, I
Speaker 4: actually I got one that there's this thing in Toledo
Speaker 4: called well actually it's in mallme which is a suburb
Speaker 4: of Toledo, but it's called Children's Wonderland and it's like
Speaker 4: this amazing three D Christmas walk through diorama. Basically that
Speaker 4: just nothing can put you in the Christmas spirit as
Speaker 4: a kid better than Children's Wonderland. And at the end
Speaker 4: of this there was a Moldorama machine and it made
Speaker 4: a gold, smelly, plasticy angel. It was kind of boring,
Speaker 4: boring Christmas angel, but it was mine and I was
Speaker 4: so glad to have it. And I have no idea
Speaker 4: what happened to it. I'm sure it broke pretty quickly,
Speaker 4: but I was like, holy cow, I've had one of
Speaker 4: these before. I had no idea what it was called.
Speaker 4: That it was moldorama, but I looked it up and
Speaker 4: actually found the angel.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: I think that's the cool thing about these as a
Speaker 1: kid is it's not putting your quarter in a gumball
Speaker 1: machine and seeing all those things and one of them
Speaker 1: falls out right. This is made just for you, right
Speaker 1: in front of your face.
Speaker 4: Yep. Pretty cool.
Speaker 2: All right? So now can we go back in time?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, I'm I'm done nostalgizing? All right? Wait, what
Speaker 4: is it reminiscing?
Speaker 2: Sure, Okay, nostalgizing. I think it's a word, right it is?
Speaker 1: Now all right, we're going back to nineteen thirty seven
Speaker 1: in the winter when one J. H. Miller Tyke is
Speaker 1: his nickname. I don't know what that comes from.
Speaker 2: Was he little?
Speaker 4: I don't know, not that I saw.
Speaker 2: Well, because it's spelled differently. T ik. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: know what it means anyway, of.
Speaker 1: Quincy, Illinois, he was he made figurines. He and his
Speaker 1: wife made figurines, and they needed a replacement for his
Speaker 1: Nativity scene. I guess his little baby Jesus was decapitated
Speaker 1: by his dog. He needed a new one, and he
Speaker 1: couldn't find a place to sell him just one little piece. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta buy the whole Nativity scene. And he was like, well,
Speaker 1: what am I going to do with that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, he said, I just needed one. And you could
Speaker 4: understand the department stores position, like if they sell you
Speaker 4: just one piece, there's a whole set that they can't
Speaker 4: sell because who wants that set without the one piece.
Speaker 2: Right, unless it's like maybe a.
Speaker 4: Donkey maybe I remember the donkey. That was a good
Speaker 4: one though. That was one of my favorites as a kid.
Speaker 1: But anyway, he and his wife said, here's what we're
Speaker 1: gonna do. We're gonna take these lemons and make them
Speaker 1: into lemonade in the form of making our own little
Speaker 1: plaster replacement figure. And apparently they were pretty good at it,
Speaker 1: because they ended up doing this for a living and
Speaker 1: founding a company doing this. Because the Germans evidently had
Speaker 1: the market cornered on nativity pieces, and when World War
Speaker 1: two came around, they said nine for you, right, and
Speaker 1: we had a shortage.
Speaker 4: Yeah. All we wanted was liberty figures is what they
Speaker 4: called them during World War two, not nativity because the
Speaker 4: Germans had supplied us with nativity figures, so American main
Speaker 4: ones you could call liberty figures.
Speaker 2: That like freedom fries, right.
Speaker 4: I think they actually called sauerkraut liberty cabbage. I'm not kidding.
Speaker 4: So the tyke and his wife established this company and
Speaker 4: in World War Two that really kind of grew because
Speaker 4: they cornered the market and they just kept going from there.
Speaker 4: And then about ten years after World War Two they
Speaker 4: decided to move from plaster and by the way, he
Speaker 4: started selling nativity figures into visual ones to those same
Speaker 4: department stores who would only sell them sets before, which
Speaker 4: I think is kind of sweet revenge. But they moved
Speaker 4: from plaster figures to plastic and got into a type
Speaker 4: of injection molding where air is blown into it, which
Speaker 4: saves on plastic and creates a lightweight plastic figurine. And really, honestly,
Speaker 4: nothing says nineteen fifties Midwest more than plastic nativity figures
Speaker 4: you know, probably so yeah, made by a man named Tyke.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean they did pretty well for a
Speaker 2: little while. I guess.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly when the company was founded, but
Speaker 1: if in nineteen thirty seven he came up with this
Speaker 1: idea and they went bankrupt in nineteen fifty nine, they
Speaker 1: sounds like they added some good years in there.
Speaker 4: Yeah they did. But I and I did not see
Speaker 4: why they went bankrupt. I saw they were nothing but successful.
Speaker 4: I don't know. I don't know if maybe they sunk
Speaker 4: a bunch of money into these machines and it just
Speaker 4: didn't quite make it or what. But he was very successful.
Speaker 4: And he had a line of plastic toys that kids
Speaker 4: would buy by the fistfol at like the local five
Speaker 4: and dime or novelty store or something like that. And
Speaker 4: he had lines of like dinosaurs, I think, toy soldiers.
Speaker 4: But the one that really put his company on the
Speaker 4: map as far as kids were concerned, were called Earth Invaders, yeah,
Speaker 4: also known as Miller Aliens, and there was a line
Speaker 4: of tons of them, but the one that is still
Speaker 4: today the most prized of all was the Purple people Eater,
Speaker 4: and it actually inspired that that song from the fifties,
Speaker 4: which I didn't realize that song was quite that old.
Speaker 4: But the song about the one eyed, one eared flying
Speaker 4: purple Peepleater that was based on Tyke Miller's creation from
Speaker 4: the fifties.
Speaker 2: I think it was the other way around.
Speaker 4: I don't think so. I think the song was based
Speaker 4: on the figure.
Speaker 1: It says here the Purple people Eater was inspired by
Speaker 1: the hit.
Speaker 4: Song Oh I saw. I read that as the opposite.
Speaker 4: Thanks good cat.
Speaker 1: I think that's the case because that song was a
Speaker 1: big hit and they were all manner of Purple people
Speaker 1: Eater souvenirs and things.
Speaker 4: Gotcha.
Speaker 2: It was a big business back then.
Speaker 4: Thank you for that one.
Speaker 2: No problem.
Speaker 4: We would have gotten some email from like three people
Speaker 4: on that.
Speaker 2: Tyke's great grandson, little Tyke.
Speaker 1: So in fifty nine or sixty they went bankrupt, and
Speaker 1: it was right around this time where he said, all right,
Speaker 1: I've got this idea for an actual vending machine that
Speaker 1: could make these things on demand.
Speaker 2: And he was successful.
Speaker 1: He licensed this thing actually to what would eventually become
Speaker 1: a Merra Mark, which everyone knows that that company is still.
Speaker 1: Around the time, they were called the Automatic Retailers of America,
Speaker 1: and he developed these machines with them, and in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two at the Seattle World's Fair, they premiered there
Speaker 1: doing little space needles and monorails and buddhas and buddhas
Speaker 1: for like fifty cents, which is about four bucks today.
Speaker 1: So it was not a little cheap thing. It's not
Speaker 1: like sticking a dime in a machine today.
Speaker 4: Right, No, they were definitely expensive, but they were a
Speaker 4: huge hit at that Seattle World's Fair. That was what
Speaker 4: nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 4: So in nineteen sixty four at the New York World's Fair,
Speaker 4: they blew up. They went from a couple of machines
Speaker 4: in Seattle, I guess three machines in Seattle to as
Speaker 4: many as one hundred and fifty at the New York
Speaker 4: World's Fair from nineteen sixty four in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 4: And even more than just having that many more machines,
Speaker 4: they also had branded machines. Right, So, like if you
Speaker 4: were a company like Sinclair Oil or Disney and you
Speaker 4: wanted to just kind of give people an extra little
Speaker 4: amazing experience, you could license and brand your own Molderama,
Speaker 4: And they had plenty of those at the World's Fair
Speaker 4: some pretty cool ones too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, like you said, anywhere from Disneyland to Montreal's
Speaker 1: World Expo. And that's the cool thing, is that disney
Speaker 1: World or a Disneyland there could be. I think they
Speaker 1: were some of the characters that were actually acting like
Speaker 1: they were working the machine, right, it's kind of clever.
Speaker 1: Or if you know in you're in Montreal, it's going
Speaker 1: to be Canadian mounties or maybe an Eiffel Tower, right.
Speaker 4: If you could contact the company, get them to make
Speaker 4: you your own like signage I guess, to put on
Speaker 4: the machine, and then most importantly, they would sculpt and
Speaker 4: then manufacture a mold from that sculpture whatever you wanted,
Speaker 4: say your logo or your brand or something like that,
Speaker 4: some sort of statuette that had that you could set
Speaker 4: it up and people would take home your little branded chotchkey.
Speaker 4: It was pretty cool. It was a big hit in
Speaker 4: the sixties and to air Marker AAR at the time,
Speaker 4: they were like, well, this is great, but apparently they
Speaker 4: were just looking at the whole thing as a proof
Speaker 4: of concept because they had their sights on not just
Speaker 4: like on demand novelties, but on demand everything, like on
Speaker 4: demand dishware on demand, jewelry on demand, combs on demand,
Speaker 4: ash trays that they felt like this was the future
Speaker 4: because at the time, you know, the early sixties, plastics
Speaker 4: was the future. It was pretty soon everything was going
Speaker 4: to be made in plastic and no one was ever
Speaker 4: going to have cancer from it a day in their life, right,
Speaker 4: you know. It was a plastically optimistic time.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: And in the end they manufactured about two hundred of
Speaker 1: these machines over a seven year period. But by nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one they said, you know what Aar said, we're
Speaker 1: getting out.
Speaker 2: Of this moldoramabizeh. Should we take a breaking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to go press together our own little
Speaker 1: mouldi dinosaur and be right back.
Speaker 5: Shop, all right, chuck.
Speaker 4: So Aar gets out of the biz, and it's kind
Speaker 4: of understandable. So why there's a couple of big problems
Speaker 4: with Molderama machines. One, they're expensive to manufacture. They were
Speaker 4: like apparently thirty six hundred bucks per at the time.
Speaker 4: That was back in nineteen sixty two, so just under
Speaker 4: thirty thousand dollars today your machine h machine. And then
Speaker 4: also once you set these things up, they required almost
Speaker 4: constant attention. You had to go refill them with plastic,
Speaker 4: You had to top off their fluids, you had to
Speaker 4: fix any parts, you had to keep them clean, you
Speaker 4: had to get gum off of them, because again these
Speaker 4: are interfacing with little kids, so there was a lot
Speaker 4: of maintenance in upkeep to them as well. So aer
Speaker 4: remarks said we're done. In the seventies, they sold off
Speaker 4: their machines to a couple of different groups.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a mechanical like hydraulic machine that
Speaker 1: required like oil and anti freeze.
Speaker 2: There was it was no uh.
Speaker 1: I mean if it sounds like and I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess we can go into the process a little bit.
Speaker 1: It gets a little wonky for my taste, Okay, but
Speaker 1: I guess we should talk a little bit about how
Speaker 1: these actually work, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we kind of have to and it'll be fun,
Speaker 4: I promise you.
Speaker 2: Ready, Well, I will say this. First of all, there
Speaker 2: are hydraulics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there are these these two molds, and you
Speaker 1: can go to on YouTube and look at how these
Speaker 1: things work.
Speaker 2: It's pretty neat. They these two molds.
Speaker 1: It's basically one half of the little toy on each side.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, there like a three dimensional sculptured statuette.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So they move toward each other with these hydraulics
Speaker 1: and they're pressed together forms a big seal and it
Speaker 1: ends up it ends up being hollow on the inside.
Speaker 1: That's kind of a big point to make.
Speaker 4: It's a negative of the sculpture.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So then there's a couple of holes in the bottom
Speaker 4: that lead into that sculpture cavity, and into that you
Speaker 4: inject hot plastic. Because one thing that a lot of
Speaker 4: people don't realize about the mold thematic is just beneath
Speaker 4: this the work surface that is the floor of what
Speaker 4: you can see below that is a vat of two
Speaker 4: hundred and twenty five to two hundred and fifty degree
Speaker 4: Farrent height molten plastic just sitting there, bubbling hot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, little pellets.
Speaker 1: They feed it in little colored pellets, right, although for
Speaker 1: a little while they actually had just kind of neutral
Speaker 1: pellets that they use colored powder. Right, But they at
Speaker 1: least wised up there and said, why don't we just
Speaker 1: color the pellets and just stick with the one color yep.
Speaker 4: And then so the system has a closed steam system
Speaker 4: that runs hot steam through crazy that runs through these
Speaker 4: plastic pellet vat, this plastic pellet vat and it melts
Speaker 4: the pellets and then keeps a molten So then when
Speaker 4: that when the the the mold seals up above come
Speaker 4: together and form that seal, hot plastic is injected into
Speaker 4: the mold and fills it up.
Speaker 2: That's right, hot plastic injection. Great band name.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then these things obviously have to be cooled pretty
Speaker 1: quick like in order for them to I mean, what
Speaker 1: solidify is that the right word? But when they do
Speaker 1: come out, like you said, they are warm, and I'm surprised.
Speaker 1: I mean, this seems like something that you could not
Speaker 1: create today without there being so much liability on your hands.
Speaker 4: Well, again, they still are in use. You can still
Speaker 4: go to the Toledo Zoo, to zoos all over the
Speaker 4: Midwest and Florida and tourist attractions and rest stops and
Speaker 4: you will find these things still in use.
Speaker 1: It's just so funny to me that, like it literally
Speaker 1: says on the little door that you open, hold upside
Speaker 1: down while it cools, don't let the molten plastic drip
Speaker 1: on little Timmy's hand.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right. So we got the injection molding part done,
Speaker 4: but there's one step that we missed, and that's the
Speaker 4: blow part that makes it injection blow molding. And this
Speaker 4: is how these companies manage to actually make money. And
Speaker 4: one of the reasons why the molderama chatchkeys are so
Speaker 4: fragile is that they're hollow inside. So the mold is
Speaker 4: filled with the hot plastic and then compressed air is
Speaker 4: blown into it. And the compressed air does two things. One,
Speaker 4: it pushes the plastic against the mold so it completely
Speaker 4: covers it, and it takes on the shape of the mold, right,
Speaker 4: And then it also blows the excess plastic out the
Speaker 4: bottom so it's hollow, and then the excess plastic goes
Speaker 4: back into the vat when it's reused, reused exactly, so
Speaker 4: it might use enough plastic at first to make ten
Speaker 4: of these things or five or something. I'm just totally
Speaker 4: guessing here, But then it reuses it by blowing it
Speaker 4: out the bottom and making it a hollow object rather
Speaker 4: than a solid one, right, okay, and then it comes
Speaker 4: out hot. They say, wait thirty seconds or half a minute,
Speaker 4: I think is how they put it. And the reason
Speaker 4: why they say hold it upside down is because there's
Speaker 4: still that hole at the bottom that that little hot
Speaker 4: plastic can. Like you said, burn Timmy's hands.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: The smell, chuck. You've never smelled anything like it.
Speaker 2: Do you remember the smell?
Speaker 4: Yes, I can remember the smell it was. It's it's
Speaker 4: at the same time pleasing and totally noxious. Interesting, Like
Speaker 4: as a kid, you're like, this smells weird and cool,
Speaker 4: But as an adult, I'm sure you'd be like, this
Speaker 4: is going to kill my whole family and it's going
Speaker 4: to kill my great grandchildren somehow.
Speaker 1: Well, back then, no one cared. No, they didn't, you know,
Speaker 1: and like we said, tons of upkeep. You know, you've
Speaker 1: got steam, you've got hydraulic fluid, you have anti freeze,
Speaker 1: sometimes cold water, but I would suspect anti freeze in
Speaker 1: most cases. Yeah, And until the nineteen seventies, like I said,
Speaker 1: you had powdered coloring. I mean, this whole thing is
Speaker 1: I'm surprised they didn't explode at any point.
Speaker 4: Yeah. One of the other things that I really admire
Speaker 4: about this is that, again, the machines that are still
Speaker 4: in use today, that still work just as well as
Speaker 4: ever today, were built exclusively from nineteen sixty two to
Speaker 4: nineteen sixty nine when Ara Mark was making them, and
Speaker 4: then these things also because they put off these terrible fumes,
Speaker 4: they're kept outside, so they've been sitting in the elements
Speaker 4: for fifty plus years and they still work. They're pretty
Speaker 4: pretty well built machines, for sure.
Speaker 1: I think they've they've got some now that they have
Speaker 1: been able to move indoors.
Speaker 4: Yeah, from using a different type of plastic. I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's crazy that these things had to be outside.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and they still are. Most of them are a
Speaker 4: lot of them have like kind of built in little
Speaker 4: canopies over them or something like that. But if you
Speaker 4: look at the canopy you can tell they're kind of new.
Speaker 4: They've been outside basically for fifty years.
Speaker 2: I'm so going to be on the lookout for these now.
Speaker 4: So there is a website Chuck called Waymarking way m
Speaker 4: A r KI NNG dot com. They have a comprehensive
Speaker 4: list of every single MOLDERAMA in use today in the
Speaker 4: United States, and they they have like actual like longitude
Speaker 4: and latitude coordinates. If you want to, I guess geocash
Speaker 4: your way to them.
Speaker 1: Well, what I want is an app that will text
Speaker 1: me when I'm within five hundred feet of one.
Speaker 4: Oh that's a that's a good idea.
Speaker 1: There's a ten dollars app and by ten dollar app,
Speaker 1: I mean you would make ten dollars.
Speaker 4: Yeah, although people are crazy for these things still is We'll.
Speaker 2: See they're none in Atlanta, right, not that.
Speaker 4: I saw no, But again, there's a bunch of Toledo.
Speaker 4: I found the machine that I almost certainly got my
Speaker 4: angel from.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 4: They keep it in storage at Tama Shanner, which is
Speaker 4: an ice skating rink in I guess a Scottish ice
Speaker 4: skating rink. I don't know, in Mome, which is where
Speaker 4: they have Children's Wonderland. But I saw a picture of it,
Speaker 4: and now it looks like the most recent thing it
Speaker 4: makes is polar bears.
Speaker 2: And your DNA is on that machine.
Speaker 4: Still somewhere in the form of a lot of gum.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's take another break.
Speaker 1: We'll come back and talk a little bit about some
Speaker 1: of these fun figures and the people that are still
Speaker 1: trying to keep this traditional alive.
Speaker 2: All right, So.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing that I wanted to know, and that
Speaker 1: our article didn't get to till three quarter the way through.
Speaker 1: I was like, can do they have different things for
Speaker 1: each machine. The answer, sadly is no. If it spits
Speaker 1: out a dinosaur, it can only spit out a dinosaur
Speaker 1: unless you change up that mold.
Speaker 4: Yes, but you can change the color and you'll have
Speaker 4: a different colored dinosaur.
Speaker 2: Well until they started using the single color pellets.
Speaker 4: Right, Well, no, then they just put in a different
Speaker 4: color when they refill the thing, and all of a
Speaker 4: sudden it went from a purple dinosaur or a green dinosaur.
Speaker 1: Right, But could you say purple and hit a purple button? No,
Speaker 1: or it's whatever the kid who worked there decided to
Speaker 1: put in that morning.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right. The thing is though, and again it's
Speaker 4: not even just the toy that comes out. The toy is,
Speaker 4: especially as a kid, invariably disappointing, sure, but it's the process.
Speaker 4: It's watching this thing happen, and the MOLDERAMA machines will
Speaker 4: have like little different lights that light up like now
Speaker 4: we're cooling, now we're about to launch the toy to you.
Speaker 4: You know, it tells you what's going on, so you're
Speaker 4: following the process, which is at least is probably eighty
Speaker 4: percent of the appeal of the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Stand back right now, because if I were to explode,
Speaker 1: it would be during this next eight seconds.
Speaker 4: Right, all right, your mom who's standing there missing her
Speaker 4: one arm from saving you in a car wreck. It's
Speaker 4: like you probably should stand back exactly.
Speaker 1: No one knows exactly how many of these molds were made,
Speaker 1: but they're, like we said, our enthusiasts who collect these.
Speaker 1: And this one dude, Bill Bolman, who owns one and
Speaker 1: runs moldville dot com. Bad bad You are all there, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is bad. And I got to say, I
Speaker 4: looked it up and it's a dead domain. But he's
Speaker 4: got a Facebook thing that he does. Now that's where
Speaker 4: he's moved to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's where he went. My Space and then he
Speaker 1: went Facebook. But there will never be another site better
Speaker 1: than Facebook. So I'm sure it's all over right, probably
Speaker 1: so he his estimate is about three hundred designs us
Speaker 1: more than that.
Speaker 4: I don't know. This guy knows what he's talking about.
Speaker 4: He counted one hundred and ninety six original ones. And
Speaker 4: then he said after the sixties more people started to
Speaker 4: make them. They weren't just commissioned by Aerra Mark who
Speaker 4: was keeping track of these things. And I would I
Speaker 4: would say this guy's probably the person on earth who
Speaker 4: could estimate how many there are the closest.
Speaker 2: And not just me guessing randomly. But it's more.
Speaker 4: And what's cool though also is again like if you
Speaker 4: were you could be anybody, if you wanted a Moldorama
Speaker 4: thing at your event, you could, it could happen. Sure
Speaker 4: I found there was a Circleville, Ohio Pumpkin Festival Moldurama figure.
Speaker 2: Wonderful.
Speaker 4: So one of the three hundred molds is a pumpkin
Speaker 4: from Circleville, Ohio's pumpkin Fest in the seventies. Another one,
Speaker 4: so apparently Toledo was crazy about these things, because again
Speaker 4: there's ten at the Toledo Zoo. There's the one at
Speaker 4: Tamlashan that I got a mine from. There was one
Speaker 4: in the eighties at the Toledo mud Headens Stadium, and
Speaker 4: there's a mud Hen's figure, which is pretty cool actually.
Speaker 4: And I looked and there's like zero for sale anywhere,
Speaker 4: but now I'm kind of on the lookout for that thing.
Speaker 4: But all you had to do was just make a
Speaker 4: bold get your hands on one of these, and bam, Circleville,
Speaker 4: Ohio's Pumpkin Fest went from zero to hero.
Speaker 1: Right, and you two could have a snowman or a
Speaker 1: Gramman's Chinese theater, or a space lab or a Lawrence Welk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or a Titan missile.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and NASA had a lot of these things. Actually,
Speaker 4: I'm sure what else was there?
Speaker 2: Well, the Lawrence Welk. None of those were jokes. Those
Speaker 2: are real.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, for sure, there was.
Speaker 1: A Titan three C missile in a Lawrence Welk says.
Speaker 1: Other famous people. I'm kind of curious.
Speaker 4: I didn't see anybody besides President and Lawrence Welk. There's
Speaker 4: one of the Georgia State Capitol building. Oh really, Yeah,
Speaker 4: there were some cool ones. Actually, the Saint Louis arch
Speaker 4: is surprisingly cool. You wouldn't think it'd be that cool.
Speaker 4: The Oscar Meyer Wiener mobile, this one was kind of random.
Speaker 4: It was it's a high Ali player and then at
Speaker 4: the base it says, hi, a lie in Miami.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: The water Skier from Cypress I think Cypress Gardens, Florida.
Speaker 4: And the Mermaids from Wikiwachie Springs, Florida.
Speaker 1: Oh, we talked about them. Oh, here's one. Universal Studios
Speaker 1: had one that made a Frankenstein coinbank.
Speaker 2: That's kind of cool.
Speaker 4: It is very cool, Like, a lot of these are
Speaker 4: actually super cool, especially the original retro ones. You can
Speaker 4: actually see like I can't remember the woman's name, but
Speaker 4: there is a woman who was hired by one of
Speaker 4: the companies that still operate these things to start making molds,
Speaker 4: and she's been making them for the last twenty five
Speaker 4: years and compare to some of the ones from the sixties,
Speaker 4: like she's just head and shoulders above the people who
Speaker 4: are sculpting them. Then, like, these are really really well
Speaker 4: made sculptures, not only in like the actual sculpture that
Speaker 4: she's making, but the decisions she's making produces just a
Speaker 4: better mold. Arama toy. Yeah, because again, you're you're dealing
Speaker 4: with melted plastic in a mold that is two halves
Speaker 4: pressed together. There's a lot of like details that can
Speaker 4: go wrong, and this, this great sculptor is taking all
Speaker 4: of them into account making some really boss ones like
Speaker 4: the Wienermobile. It's art to behold this, The detail in
Speaker 4: it is really really nice.
Speaker 1: Should we talk about a couple of these companies that
Speaker 1: are still still going strong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, at least going No, they're going strong man, Okay, good.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of them one called Replication Devices,
Speaker 1: one called mold A Rama Incorporated Replication Devices, founded by
Speaker 1: Elden Irwin, who bought a bunch of these. It has
Speaker 1: dozens in the early sixties, eventually passed down through his family,
Speaker 1: and right now his grandson and his wife, the Strigowls
Speaker 1: in Florida are operating sixty or seventy of these.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and let's think about this for a second. So
Speaker 4: Elden Irwin bought dozens, now they're up to sixty, maybe seventy,
Speaker 4: And those Molderama machines have supported three generations of this
Speaker 4: family fully from what I understand, Yes, okay, I saw
Speaker 4: an interview with Tim Strigou and he said he was
Speaker 4: surprised that the business was still going when his parents
Speaker 4: took it over. And now he the grandson and his
Speaker 4: wife operate it. And yes, from what I understand it
Speaker 4: fully supports it. The San Antonio Zoo estimated that they
Speaker 4: make one hundred and thirty thousand figurines a year from
Speaker 4: their one Molderama.
Speaker 1: Two bucks a pop. That's two high undred and sixty
Speaker 1: thousand gross.
Speaker 4: Times sixty or seventy, So yeah, they're doing just fine.
Speaker 1: This other one Molderrama Ink like, we're not asking one
Speaker 1: to open their books for us.
Speaker 4: No, for sure, and I certainly don't want to shine
Speaker 4: a light on these people's finances. But I'm just saying,
Speaker 4: like it's it's astounding to me that these machines built
Speaker 4: in the sixties, left out in the elements for fifty years,
Speaker 4: are managing to support three generations of the families who
Speaker 4: have been operating them. I just think that's super cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it sounds like it's kind of like
Speaker 1: people are own car washes. Sure, isn't it like a
Speaker 1: front always to launder money from drug sales?
Speaker 4: I would guess. I think it's low hanging, easy to buy.
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding everyone out there that owns car washes.
Speaker 1: I've watched too much Breaking Bad.
Speaker 4: Oh that's right, that's right. But I think that is
Speaker 4: like a legitimate thing.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, cash businesses are ripe for the picking.
Speaker 4: I forgot they bought that car wash.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Moldorama Inc. Like I said, William A.
Speaker 1: Jones Company's changed their name in twenty eleven, but they
Speaker 1: got into this in nineteen seventy one when William A.
Speaker 1: Jones bought some of these from one of the guys
Speaker 1: who worked for the original Moldorama. Then they expanded, bought
Speaker 1: more machines and it is still a family business again.
Speaker 2: They got about sixty of them.
Speaker 4: Yep, and they were William A. Jones Company. And then
Speaker 4: I guess they got their hands on the Moldorama trademark
Speaker 4: in twenty eleven and they changed the name of the
Speaker 4: company to Moldorama, Inc. Again because that's originally what it
Speaker 4: was called back when Era Mark was running it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're mainly in the Midwest, Minnesota, Michigan, a bunch
Speaker 1: of them in Illinois and one in Texas.
Speaker 2: It looks like right, not bad.
Speaker 4: And then every once in a while you have just
Speaker 4: some independent operators like Knoxville Zoo owns their own. They
Speaker 4: apparently got there from Dollywood, which man, Moldorama is at Dollywood.
Speaker 4: That make your wig spin.
Speaker 1: There's this one cool thing I wanted to shout out.
Speaker 1: This toy store in Chicago, Roto Fugi or Rotafuji, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how you pronounce it. They repurposed their own Moldorama.
Speaker 1: They bought one and repurposed it that was originally the
Speaker 1: La Zoo and they call it the Roto a Mattic.
Speaker 1: And they have something called the Helper Dragon you can
Speaker 1: get for six bucks. And if you look up the
Speaker 1: Helper Dragon and these dudes, it is clear that they
Speaker 1: are Simpsons fans.
Speaker 2: Did you see this thing?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I did. I saw a video of it, but
Speaker 4: it was kind of out of focus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like just google image of the Helper Dragon rodo
Speaker 1: omatic and it is to me at least clearly the
Speaker 1: cyclops alien from The Simpsons.
Speaker 4: With its oh yeah.
Speaker 2: With its head stuck on the body of a winged lion.
Speaker 4: Nice.
Speaker 2: That's my take on it.
Speaker 4: Very nice.
Speaker 1: And then there is this one other guy. He is
Speaker 1: a Disney World imagineer named James Durand, and he has
Speaker 1: built his own moldorama called the Mini Molder. And you
Speaker 1: just look at this guy. You know, he's an imagineer.
Speaker 1: You look at this machine and you're like, I would
Speaker 1: hire that guy to build and do anything, because he's
Speaker 1: clearly a brilliant genius.
Speaker 2: Yep, really cool looking thing.
Speaker 4: And a bit of a show off. Frankly, you think, So,
Speaker 4: I've got two more things, all right. The Moldorama used
Speaker 4: to be fifty cents in its original incarnation in nineteen
Speaker 4: sixty two, which, again thanks to our friends at West
Speaker 4: Egg inflation calculator tells us is about four dollars and
Speaker 4: twelve cents in twenty seventeen money. Today you can get
Speaker 4: a Moldorama for two bucks, which means that the price
Speaker 4: has gone down by half over the last fifty years.
Speaker 4: Oh interesting, pretty cool. And then lastly, so after Tyke
Speaker 4: Miller got out of the plastics injection molding business, he
Speaker 4: had another invention that he called the Golden Goat, and
Speaker 4: it was this big machine that apparently he invented to
Speaker 4: put out in parking lots at like grocery stores, and
Speaker 4: it would take up about two parking spaces, and customers
Speaker 4: would come in and put in their used aluminum cans
Speaker 4: and then the Golden Goat would weigh it and then
Speaker 4: give them some money in return, and then it would
Speaker 4: compact those cans, and then later on is that aluminum
Speaker 4: would be sold as scrap for recycling. The thing is
Speaker 4: that this was years before the green movement was ever
Speaker 4: even thought of. That's how ahead of his time this
Speaker 4: guy was. And I don't think the Golden Goat ever
Speaker 4: made him a lot of money, but it's a pretty
Speaker 4: cool invention that this guy had. He was like one
Speaker 4: of those great Midwestern tinker inventor guys. Yeah, hats off
Speaker 4: to him.
Speaker 2: God blessed all those people.
Speaker 4: Yep. So there you go, Nativity figures plastic. If you
Speaker 4: want to know more about Mulderama Man, you can fall
Speaker 4: down a rabbit hole just looking at pictures of him
Speaker 4: on the internet. So why don't you go do that?
Speaker 4: Take some time for yourself, you know, why do you
Speaker 4: always have to work? Work?
Speaker 2: Work?
Speaker 4: Since I said that it's time for a listener mail, I'm.
Speaker 2: Going to call this just kind of a quick shout out.
Speaker 1: We don't do these a lot because we get a
Speaker 1: lot of shout out requests, but this one was adorable
Speaker 1: because this little kid. So this is from Ginny, she's
Speaker 1: the mom. She says, how about a shout out or
Speaker 1: my son Jake. He listens to every episode more than once.
Speaker 1: Nic He's got me and many others into the show
Speaker 1: and we love it. So young Jake is out there
Speaker 1: spreading the word and we appreciate that, Jake, and you
Speaker 1: love the show so much you named well, not quite yet,
Speaker 1: but Jake says he wants to get a puppy and
Speaker 1: call it Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and he says this
Speaker 1: most of the time he will be called Chuck, but
Speaker 1: when he does something wrong, I'll be like, Charles W.
Speaker 2: Chuck Bryant, why did you do that?
Speaker 4: Yep? Well, Jake, we have a really big surprise for
Speaker 4: you if you will go to your back door. I
Speaker 4: think you're gonna find something pretty special out there. No,
Speaker 4: I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2: No, We're just kidding, Jake.
Speaker 1: There's not a puppy at your back door unless your
Speaker 1: mom Jenny heard this beforehand and is the best.
Speaker 2: Mom in the world. Yeah, and your mom.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was pretty cool of her to write in
Speaker 4: and let us know. So way to go, Jake for
Speaker 4: listening to us. Thank you, Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, Jake, Thank you Jenny. We count literally
Speaker 1: count on people like you to spread the words, so
Speaker 1: we appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Good luck with your eventual puppy too named Charles W.
Speaker 2: Chuck Bryant when he's bad.
Speaker 4: If you want to tell us about well, your cute kid,
Speaker 4: we want to hear about him or her, you can
Speaker 4: send us an email. The Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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