Endless Thread - Geedis

Episode Date: August 5, 2021

What is Geedis? Endless Thread revisits an episode from 2019 in which the team joined the internet's two-year-long quest to answer this question. The strange, furry character and his buddies in The Land of Ta had been a mystery of 80’s fantastical proportions. Follow us down the rabbit hole for an exciting discovery...

Support for endless thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. Produced by the I-Lap at WBUR, Boston. What is your favorite episode of Endless Thread? This is a question Ben and I have been asked many times before, and it's a tough one to answer in some ways, because they're all so different. We cover a range of topics and emotions and experiences on this show, and it's part of why we love making it. The episodes are like our children, and we couldn't possibly

pick a favorite, right? Wrong. Gides. Hands down. Getus is my favorite episode. And if you haven't heard it and you're like, W-T-F-Is Getus, you're about to find out, because we're listening back today. Need I say more? I won't. Let's go.

Once upon a time, in 2017, there was a comedian. One thing about me, I was a bit of a late bloomer. I didn't lose my virginity until college was paid off. I'm Nate Fernald. I live in Los Angeles by way of Boston, New York, and Chicago. I currently write for the Late Late Show with James Corden. And in 2017, Nate was about to embark on a quest.

Like all great quests, our protagonist had no idea his quest was about to begin. He just knew that he liked to collect. enamel pins of his favorite bands, which brought him naturally to the legendary treasure trove of enamel pins, eBay. And I found this one user who had a couple of these very old, probably like 70s or 80s, enamel pins. And I clicked over to their profile to see what else they had, and they were just thousands and thousands of vintage pins. I bought one that said, like, I'm so horny even the crack of dawn looks good because it was just so strange.

Just all sorts of just random slogans on pins and then I'm strolling through and I see this little critter and it says Gidis on it. Getus. G-E-E-D-I-S. Can you describe what it looks like for us? So it's a sort of four-legged creature. The front legs are longer than the back legs.

He's kind of in a sitting position and has a very big smiley face on him, kind of a little bear-like, a little maybe Ewak-like, green eyes, too. An Ewok bear, says Nate, a warthog gremlin says I, Ben? Getus is obviously a combination of Alf from the show Alf. My name is Elf. Mr. Snuffaloopagus from Sesame Street. And snarf from the show Thundercats. Basically just amalgamated pop culture references from my childhood. I'm really pushing this snarf comparison, but nobody else is old enough.

Oh, I know snarf. Guitus definitely has a very snarf-like qualities. Oh, thank God. Okay, the point is, at first glance, Getus looks kind of dopey. But there's also something captivating about him. He's a little mischievous, like maybe his big, goofy smile. is all a ruse. Nate needed to know more.

In my head, my first reaction was like, oh, a Guitus pin, cool. And I was like, wait, what is Getus? So I typed it into Google and not a single result came up for Guitus. Nothing on the internet, which never happens. Also, nothing on the internet

about a character as weird and oddly nostalgic as this one? I couldn't stop thinking about Getus because it's just such a, I don't know, such a stark image looking at it. Just those, the eyes, they just go right through you. So, obviously, Nate bought the Guitus pin for about $6. And then after I bought it, the user put another one up on eBay. And then I bought that one too.

And then I messaged him and I asked him if he knew what Guitus was and he said he had no idea. And then I asked him if he had any more. more Guitus pins. He said he had about, I think, like 75 or 80 of them. And I don't know why, but I requested to buy them in bulk. Trying to corner the Guitus market. I get it. You know, for some reason, I thought that if I bought them, it would help me find answers. But it didn't. The eBay seller was just selling a bunch of stuff they'd acquired from someone

they didn't really know who died. A couple of other Getus pins popped up, and Nate bought those two, but got no answers. Finally, Nate started yelling into the void. So I just posted on Twitter a picture of the pin and said what the F word is Guitus, and then my wife has changed from there. Yelling into the void also didn't get answers. At first, at first, it did something more important. It got Nate some fellow questers. His master's A saddening search went viral. And this is the strange part. There is nothing that makes the discovery of the origins of Guitus a pressing issue.

Getus won't save the world. Getus isn't an unsolved murder. But it's weird that the Internet can't solve this mystery. Which makes this whole thing a little disturbing and enticing to a large and growing community of investigators. Thousands and thousands of people, including us, who are also made. mesmerized by the strange gaze of Guitus. And you will be, too. Seriously, Google it.

Google image search Getus right now. Look into his beady eyes. We'll wait now. Aren't you willing to aid us in our quest? To try and solve a mystery that has gathered thousands of internet strangers all working together to answer the question, what is Gidis? I just want to know.

I need to know. And I don't know. I'm Ben Guitus Johnson. I'm Amory Guitus Siebertson, and you're listening to Endless Getus Thread. The show featuring stories found in the vast ecosystem of online communities called Guitus. We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR Guitus Station. Today's episode, Getus! In August of 2017, about a month after Nate Fernald's first tweet about Guitus, there was a break in the

case. Someone replied to his tweet with a picture of a whole sheet of stickers. Imagine one of those sheets of stickers that's all woodland creatures or jackalantons or trucks. Only this one is full of like sci-fi fantasy-esque creatures. There's a green winged gargoyle like monster named Zoltan, a warrior-looking dude named Eric who's rocking a staff in an outfit somewhere between like Roman Legionary and one of the Birdmen from that 80s sci-fi movie Flash Gordon. But this sticker sheet also features an evil-looking C-3PO-esque robot named Tokar. So Star Wars-ish?

Amory, I'm realizing this is like a perfect combination of our nerdy interests, me with the fantasy, you with the space operas. It's almost like it was made for us. And at the bottom of this sheet of stickers, right in the center, there he is, our Getus, in all his goofy, slightly unsettling glory. The title of the sticker sheet, The Land of Ta. And I was like, oh, excellent. We figured it out. Gidas is from the land of Ta. And then I googled the Land of Ta, quotation marks and everything.

And not a single thing on the Internet once again. All right. So nothing more about the Land of Ta. But there are a couple more clues on the sticker sheet itself. On the far right side, it reads, Copyright Denison, 1981. Denison, as in the Denison Manufacturing Company, a hugely successful paper and branding products business based in Framingham, Massachusetts. Presumably, all we needed to do is find someone at Denison who would know more about this sticker sheet.

No big deal. Oh, yes, big deal. Because Denison merged with the Avery Corporation in 1990. It's now Avery Denison. And according to a spokeswoman I talked to there, they're just as puzzled about Guitus and the land of Ta as we are. In the meantime, we're pursuing another line of questioning, you know, the important stuff. If you could choose the voice of Guitus, Nate, what can you, can we hear some of it? So I picture Getus almost like a Pokemon where he only just says his name.

and that's how Gius communicates is just by saying Getus. I have a voice for Getus in my head and it's like Getus. It's like that. Yeah? Yeah? I would hear it a little more like

high pitched almost. Really? Yeah. Kind of halfway between what the both of you did somewhere in the middle. Getus. Now we're talking. Voices are fun, but joining Nate's Quest.

lending our brains and our swords to the effort because, you know, he has a day job working for the late, late show. That is even more fun. We're definitely on the case, so. Awesome. Well, thanks for all your work. Keep me posted on whatever you find, and I'll do the same. Sounds good. Thank you, Nate.

And geese speed, as we say. Gede speed. Gede speed. Love it. You know who else was on the case? Our fellow Redditors, way ahead of us on this one. I ended up, I don't know how I got there, probably through some other rabbit hole, but ended up on the Mandela Effect subreddit.

And the top post was about Guitus. And I was like, well, what's going on here? What is this? This is Clint, aka Rowdy Wrongdoer on Reddit. I'm just a guy. I'm nobody special in particular, to be honest with you. Lies. Clint is very special to the Getus Quest.

And by the way, when he says he was on the Mandela Effect subreddit, he is referencing this weird theorem idea that our collective use of the internet hath rot. It's called the Mandela Effect because of a bunch of people who could have sworn activist Nelson Mandela died in prison instead of being released and becoming the president of South Africa. There's another one involving the actor Sinbad, another one involving the Baron Stain Bears. Mandela Effect believers think maybe large groups of people with these kinds of wrong memories are accessing alternate timelines, from the multiverse. Non-believers say that these collective hallucinations

are made possible by the Internet's amazing power to connect people who are not great at remembering things correctly. Okay, but Clint, who we might call a Mandela Effect agnostic, says Guitus was gaining popularity fast, collective hallucination or not. And a new Guitus subreddit was gaining followers like gangbusters. I stumbled on it because I guess it was getting posted everywhere.

because it was just kind of going, I guess, Reddit viral would be the best way to put it. The Guitus community now has more than 16,000 subscribers. People share theories, make spin-off art and memes, lead discussions. Clint has become one of the organizers-in-chief of this community, calling all of the updates and tips to help Guitus sleuths stay up to date. Just the other day, he posted flyers for members of the community to print out and post around. They read, join the most fun mystery on the planet. But Clint has also advanced the story.

He learned that there was an archive of old Denison products at the Framingham History Center. Well, I reached out to them via email and just kind of got the follow-up information, which gave us a catalog featuring the Gita sheet, which actually told us the name of that sheet is the land of Ta, Eric. It's how it's referred to internally in Denison. The Framingham History Center knew something. about the land of Tau's ticker sheet, and we were only a 40 to 60-minute drive

in terrible Boston traffic from the Framingham History Center. So we got in the car. We had a need for Gide. All right. Are you Stason? I am. Up top. Nice to meet you.

Stason Goldman is the curator of the Framingham History Center, which is partly housed in a very old-looking stone building. Their air conditioning was broken, hence the whooshing dehumidifier sound, and things were a bit disheveled. In part because they're in the process of mounting their next exhibit, which Stason says is going to include our buddy Giedis, along with a bunch of other Denison products.

I mean, it was the biggest employer in Framingham for about 100 years, and so it was really an integral part of the community. Not only is the Denison portfolio huge, it is also iconic. You may think you've never seen, their work? You have, though. Well, okay, tell me more. Well, I mean, did you get stars in school? Yeah, yeah.

Those are Denison products. Okay. I don't covet gold stars. I covet Giedis. So Stason led us back to a small, hot storage room. I feel like we're in, right now we're in the sequel to the Da Vinci Code and or

any of the National Treasure movies and you're a Nicholas Kitch. The room was full of artifacts, an old toy baby carriage, a side saddle, a lap organ, and boxes upon boxes of archival papers and stickers. Do you guys want to see Guitus first? Yeah, Getus, my goodness. He's beautiful.

I'm just kidding. The sticker sheet is smaller than you might expect, maybe six inches by eight inches, but it is oddly thrilling to see it in person. It makes it feel all the more real that someone dreamed up. these characters, someone who has no idea that thousands of people are searching for answers. So that's the Land of Tau sticker set. We of course have all kinds of stickers sets, some of which are from the same time period. We've got these shiny butterflies. This is the space set that I was talking about. The space set looks very. Star Wars. It is. It's sort of Star Wars. It's definitely like

knockoff sci-fi. It is. Yeah. It's like knock-off. Oh, this is giving me ideas, guys. Because maybe this Gides Land of Ties, like a rip-off of some other Dungeons and Dragons-esque. Or maybe not a rip-off, but just like a- Building on the momentum. Yeah, exactly. Oh, it definitely, it definitely is. They're clearly trying to tap into something here in the early 80s into this rising Dungeons and Dragons culture and this sci-fi culture that's coming up so that they can stay relevant as a business. because they used to, I think, sort of set the culture, and now they're basically trying to follow it.

Stason also showed us the Denison ordering catalog and two other Land of Taugh sticker sets, one of which is the women of Taugh from 1982. But those images don't look like any of the other characters, really. A different artist, maybe? Maybe. Denison was a big company, and they made a lot of stuff. boxes, crate paper, even gas mask repair kits during World War I.

Stason has been in touch with a Denison alumni Facebook group to confirm a bunch of things, including double-checking on something that the company supposedly did not make. Everybody there was very insistent that they have no memory, that they're sure they made no enamel pins. And I believe them because they were the ones who were there at the time, and some of them were pretty high up executives who would know one way or the other. Okay. I know some, and I can reach out to them.

if you guys are interested in talking to any of them. That would be awesome. Whoever you've spoken to, we'd love to excavate whatever corners of their mind they might not be thinking of in connection to this, you know? Sounds very invasive. I think, I know, that was gross. That was really gross. We'd love to kidnap them and then record their brain functions. We excavate some brains in the name of Getus in a minute.

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Is this Lou? Yes, it is. Clearly, we were eager to talk to our next guide lead. And fortunately, he had a sense of humor about it. Hi, Lou. This is Amory. I was emailing with you. Yeah. So you guys are ganging up on you. No, no, no, no, no.

That's right. Lou DeMorrow is the former general manager of Denison. He started as a product manager back in 1972 and worked his way up. A little too high up, in fact, to remember the land of Toss stickers specifically. Then again, none of his former Denison colleagues did either. This is sounding more and more like a collective hallucination, Amory. Mandela effect. All they remember was that they used a lot of outside sources. In addition to doing our own artwork, and we have lots and lots of stickers. And with that, our job got a lot harder.

The Land of Ta was likely not the work of a Denison employee, but a freelancer. But Lou did remember something very interesting, one former co-workers' term for cash. We were rolling in the Guitus at that time, and the problem is that became so popular. Hold up. Rolling in the Getus? He would always use that word. Why should we do with? Well, you know, you get a little more Getus. I can always remember he used that terminology. And Getus, when I heard the word Guitus, I said, well, that's the guy's name was Fred Garlock. He's passed away, but that's the only person I'd ever heard that word or that name. There may not be any Guitus in it for us,

but this was a nice little break in the case, a step forward on our quest. So maybe the Land of Talk creator was a freelancer, but someone who spent enough time in the Denison offices to hear the term Gidis get thrown around. Maybe they'd done other work for Denison. Maybe it was worth trying to reach out to one more Denison alum for more info. This is Tom.

Tom Manguso was the art director at Denison when the Land of Ta Stickers were made. Did you have a chance to look at my email by any chance? No, I did not. I went up and my computer told me that I got to get a 45-watt-something connector. I don't know. It's on the brink. Tom is 92. He was having some trouble with his email, which was making me antsy, because I'd sent him pictures of Gides and the Land of Taa sticker sheet,

and he was the best shot we had of someone recognizing them. Do you have a smartphone? Do you have a phone that can receive pictures, like a cell phone that can receive pictures? Smart phone, but it's got a lot of smart stuff on it. I've never used it. I remember when we kept our record, we didn't even have copying machines, keep all our drawings on tracings just in a file. Tom, do you have a fax machine? You could probably find a fax machine, or maybe like a fax machine app.

Well, without an immediate way of showing Tom the stickers, I asked if you remembered any of the freelance artists that used to work for Denison. Let me think about it. I had some local artists, the guy was, hey, mom, hang on. Yeah. Hey, mom. Do you remember this artist that we met up in New Hampshire, the guy who was from England? That's it.

My son says Dobson Broadhead, that's him. Dobson Broadhead is an amazing name. Like, I would change my name to Dobson Broadhead if it got us to Geatis. We may resort to that, Dobson. But you know what I realized in this part of the phone conversation? He has a son? He has a son with a smartphone. A few minutes later, Tom's son Bill had a picture of the land of Tostickers pulled up to show his dad.

Yes. I'm looking at them now And they look great But I do not recognize them No Did Bill just say he's seen those before? Bill, have you ever seen these before? Really?

All right, here's another name Okay I went to school with a guy named Sam Petruc Gunn Studio And while I was art director for Denison I used Sam Petruci And Billy thinks

That Sam did those Okay This is huge, potentially. Here's Tom's son Bill again, talking about this person, Sam Petruci. Like the green guy, the Zoltan. Mm-hmm. And that, you know, he had a way of drawing figures and faces, you know, and he did kind of the heavy eyes and stuff like that.

But what about our buddy Giedis? Surely his goofy smile and haunting eyes would have stayed with Bill, Right? Yeah, I don't really remember him that much. But all I know is I've seen Zoltan before. If you could find Sam Patrucci, he kind of had that method of working. Next step in our Epigetus quest, find Sam Patrucci. Which we did very quickly online in the form of an obituary.

Sam died in 2013. But he left behind five children. So I started making some cold calls. While we waited for calls back from the kids, we started exploring another tip we had gotten from a redditor named Groovy Orange Alien. Or in real life, Rob, thanks for making time to do this.

No, no problem. I'm still surprised anybody cares. Why? Why are you surprised? Even though there's 15,000 people, It just seems like such a strange endeavor that it's so odd to me. I guess that's what the Internet is for that we've managed to find so many people who actually want to hunt this furry creature down. By the way, Rob's boyfriend Pedy was with him when we called, and Pee-D has a Getus impression that puts ours to shame.

The Getus. The Getus. The Getus. That's excellent. You got the mumbles and everything. Yeah, he can't only say Guitus, but it's like variations of it. Petey has been living the land of Tom Mystery vicariously through Rob, who's become a little obsessed. Have you had any Getus-related dreams or nightmares? I wish. I wish I would have a lead come to me in a dream or something.

One can hope. Keep dreaming, as they say. Rob's not just dreaming, though. He is also doing. He bought a Guitus Pin from another Redditor named Sad Taco Bell. It's like the ones that comedian Nate Fernald has, but it's just different enough with some little details to be weird. Sad Taco Bell says she got the Guitus Pin from a shop in Cherokee, North Carolina, when she was visiting a relative.

But she doesn't remember the name of the shop. Damn it. Which means that this side quest and the trail that Rob illuminated for us is cold for now. Do you think we're going to solve this thing? I hate to say that hope is dwindling. I think someone must know, but every day your odds of finding that person, I feel like, go down. Well, what's it going to take? It might even be a family member that needs to say like, oh, you know, my dad made.

this and, you know, he had all the pins. And I remember he put them away back in a day or something, you know. Well, speaking of family members, Hi, I'm Linda Petrucci. I live in Queens, New York. Hi, I'm Lisa Petrucci. I live in Seattle, Washington, and my dad is Sam Petrucci. Apparently, we'd been saying their last name incorrectly. We actually heard back from all five of the Petrucci children, but we were told that Linda and Lisa were the most familiar with their dad's work. We're so, excited. I mean, I'm definitely excited. Amory has been like freaking out for a week. I had talked to Linda on the phone about a week earlier. She said the land of talk

characters just by the description sounded like something her dad may have done, but she wasn't sure. So I sent her a picture of the stickers and I didn't hear back. For days, I thought she was ghosting me. But then, finally, I got a response that read, yes, my dad dead. Definitely did those stickers. And I have the original artwork. This is like in the quest when you beat a fantastical monster, and then you realize that behind the monster's carcass, there's like a door to a secret chamber which houses a magical scroll.

And in this case, the magic scroll tells us that Guitus was the creation of Sam Petrucci. This is awesome. This is the highlight of my summer. I was around at his office when he was working on these things, and I definitely remember them. This is Lisa, the oldest of the Petrucci children. At the same time, he was doing those stickers. He was doing some work for hire for another company in Massachusetts.

They were these rub-down picture transfers of like some Dungeons and Dragons characters. So they're all kind of the same family. But one of the things that sets the land of Ta apart from Sam's other work is the names of these characters. Zoltan, Tokar, Gidis. If the names were a product of Sam Petrucci's imagination as well as the images, then maybe he was trying to construct a world beyond a sheet of stickers. So I told you that the original artwork, the little paintings, don't have any of that wording on it, right?

It doesn't have the Land of Todd, doesn't have the character names. But I just found the original pencil sketches, and those actually do have those names on them. What? Yeah, so I don't know. She wanted to surprise you. That's huge. Linda.

Yeah, I couldn't believe. I just found that. It was just like going through files and boom, there that was. No way. Undeniable proof. Yeah. That is wonderful. Gita, Gita's my goodness, as we like to say.

Lisa and Linda say that yes, their dad made a lot of imaginative stickers for kids, but he mostly worked in the world of brand marketing, like legit brand marketing. marketing. Well, a lot of famous ones, T.J. Max's logo that I think they still use now was one that he did Friendlies, the ice cream chain. He did. Yeah. He did the Friendlies Curseve? Yes. Also, the World Wildlife Fund's iconic panda and the logos for ocean spray, marshmallow fluff, and so many more. Sam's work is hella famous in Logoland, which clearly is a region neighboring the land of Tom. Clearly, but Sam Petrucci is probably best known as the original artist of G.I. Joe. And that came about because he was sick and tired of watching him some play with Bobby dolls.

Option for boys. This is John Felosi. He worked with San Patrucci at Gun Associates for 25 years. I consider him graphic designers, illustrators that I've ever worked. Okay. That is definitely not. It. John says that Sam pitched the idea of a doll for boys to Hasbro, the toy manufacturer, long before they commissioned him to do the box artwork for it.

But John says Sam never got credit for this idea, which was just one of many stories John told us about the creator of Giedis. See, it was always late. Okay. It could have been the president of the United States that wanted a new league and pool player. Here's another one that Petrucci kids grew up hearing. So, all right, this is something that you can throw on your blog. Okay.

When Sam did all the artwork for G.I. Joe, they wanted to, so usually if a product like that didn't hit, the royalty ended after a while. It was actually stock, not royalties, that Hasbro offered Sam and his business partner in lieu of a flat payment for the art. But Sam needed the money. So he turned down the stock offer. If he hadn't. Sam would a million dollars. a year. That's what he told his family and friends, at least. It's hard to know the exact figure, but we can imagine it was a lot.

Kids, let this be a lesson. If you've got a choice between a quick payout and a stock deal, take the stock deal. G.I. Joe, of course, went on to become an international sensation, comic books, movies, a TV series. It was a total coup for Hasbro. And it got all the fame and fortune that another design of San Patrucci's did not.

not. What was his name again? Gidis. Getus is Sam. Say more about that. Well, Sam is, he had a lot of similarities to me. Shot in stature, highly competitive. And I think he was a little mischievous. I mean, but Sam had, when I said that was Sam, that's from... Now, this is all just speculation, clearly.

But it's a fun idea, right? That maybe Gides had a little bit of Sam Petrucci in him or vice versa. We may never know, but we did get some proof to back up the Petrucci's story. Just last week, we mounted our mighty steed and journeyed to see another one of Sam Petrucci's designs, the family lakehouse in New Hampshire, where Linda Petrucci agreed to meet us. Hi, Sasha. It's okay. It's okay.

There were boxes of Sam's work on. every table countertop and flat surface. It was a Reddeter Giedis Mystery Detective's dream. I was hoping to have it a little more organized before you guys got here. Please. Anyways, the big organization project is underway thanks to you, so that's good.

Is your dad on the fridge? Yeah, this is my dad. This is him posing for G.I. Joe. Oh, wow. So then you can see that, like, the original box actually was, you know, you know, a version of him. And then, I came across his Denison folder. Ooh, Denison folder.

Dun, done, done. As we flipped through pieces in various stages of completion, we started to recognize a lot of the work from our trip to the Framingham History Center. Oh, he did the pizza and the hot dogs. We saw those Star Wars-looking spaceships, also cartoonish baby animals with big heads, holiday stickers, an awesome spaceman with an old computer cord plugged into the spacesuit brain hole. But we also saw a side of Sam Petrucci's work, Denison and otherwise, that we hadn't seen before.

Hyper-realistic paintings of birds and insects, hand-drawn calligraphy and other company logos, medical illustrations, wedding portraits. There was seemingly nothing that Sam Petrucci couldn't draw, which made it all the more exciting to see for ourselves that he definitely did draw. the land of Ta. This is the OG content. We are staring at a pencil drawing of the Land of Ta sticker sheet,

the OG land of ta sticker sheet, before it was colored in. And then up here, I don't know if that says the Fantasy Land or... I mean, it also looks like the farterly something to me. Each character appears to have been cut from a sketchbook and positioned just so to to make what became the Land of Ta Sticker Sheet. The names of each character are in blue pencil, suggesting that they must have been added after the fact.

A lot of Redditors in the Guitous community have compared the Land of Ta Art to the work of other fantasy sci-fi artists. Errol Otis, Boris Vallejo, Clyde Caldwell, but there's one name that has been popping up a lot lately. These were three books in his library. Oh, Frisetta. Okay, so we have Frank Frasette.

Book 3, Frank Prisetta book 2, and then this is presumably book 1, the fantastic art of Frank Frazetta. Frazetta is a legend in the fantasy world. He did Dungeons and Dragons artwork, and his singular imagination is echoed in most fantasy stuff you see today, from Conan the Barbarian to the Lord of the Rings movies. And Frisetta clearly inspired Sam, but Gides appears to have been a true Sam Patrucci original. which became all the more apparent when we finally saw the completed Land of Ta artwork in full color. Oh my gosh.

Amazing. Amazing. This version of Sam's work is super detailed. Tiny brushstrokes, you can see up close. It's the kind of beautiful handmade art that pictures on the internet rarely do justice too. And unlike most of the other work in the family collection, the land of Ta work is mounted, as if Sam intended for it to be framed. Oh, look, look, look. What?

It says his name really tiny here. Oh, San Pertici. And he didn't sign all of them. Right. So he must have been proud of these. Yeah, I would be. They're beautiful. Yeah.

We started to realize that not only had Gides and the Land of Tabe and lost to fantasy fans all these years, they'd been lost even to the Petrucci family. Definitely, these will probably be utilized in some way now. They won't be hiding in this pile of, you know, as just the weird ones at the bottom. They'll be the weird ones at the top. Yeah, they'll be the weird ones at the top or the weird ones on the wall or something. I don't know what we'll do with them, honestly.

If Nate hadn't found those pins, these would just be sitting here. You know, nobody would care about the land of Todd. Yeah, pretty funny. The land of Ta, the land that Lisa, Linda's older sister, thinks their dad did dream up on his own. And where'd the pins come from? Where did the pins come from? It's driving me crazy. And why are there just Guitus pins?

Ah, the questions of our time. What is the meaning of life? Who really killed JFK? And why are there so many Getus pins being sold on eBay? We are not giving up. I will not rest. in the names of Gides and Sam Petrucci. I mean, I think he would think this is just, like, the coolest.

I mean, he would love this. Anything that, like, gave him a little notoriety, he just loved. That's cool. He was very quiet, like I said, but the second he got into a G.I. Joe convention, he just lit up, like, he was the mayor of the place. So I think he would also just be, I don't know if he'd understand Reddit, you know,

and the whole thing, because he would have been, like, in his 90s now. but he would have thought that this was very cool for sure. He'd probably be thrilled to know that there are 16,000 of us. And counting. Who love it too. And you know what else? This has been one heck of a quest. Emery, we made a lot of friends along the way.

We sure did. And it's not over. We really hope to be able to help uncover the origin of the pins, which started this whole thing. But for now, there's someone we got to check in with. Nate, how are you feeling at this moment? I'm very nervous. I'm extremely nervous.

Why? If it gets solved in front of my eyes today, maybe I might just evaporate. You know, I spent my whole life the last two years searching for this. And now, what do I do with my time? Do I read a book? Do I talk to my family? I don't know.

We'll find out. So we have some news. Okay. Obviously. Yeah. We found the Gide father. Wow. We know who created the land of Ta.

Oh, my God. So his name is Sam Petrucci. Or it was Sam Patruchy. We told Nate the whole story. We showed him all the photos. We told Nate about how Sam did the G.I. Joe box designs, the T.J. Max logo, the cursive writing on that family restaurant chain friendlies. Nate was, of course, blown away. because all of these things were things he grew up with

before leaving Massachusetts in search of comedy, fame, and fortune. He was a big presence in my childhood in Massachusetts, and then when I moved to California, his presence followed me there in the form of Guitus. He's my guardian angel. Did Mr. Petrucci do any writing, do you know? Did he talk his like, is there a chance? There's a Lantata manuscript.

Just kind of hiding around that house somewhere? I don't think there's any evidence of any real storyline. You shut your mouth. If they don't exist, I will make them. Yes. It's a 12-volume series. You heard it here. I would read the hell out of that.

Or watch it. So clearly there are some unsolved parts of this mystery still. We know who the artist is, but we don't know who created the pins. So there's still some mystery. left for you to work on. Okay. No preche. Well, for caring and for all your hard work, I would actually like to reward the both of you

with an original Gidas pin. Oh! Yes! I have them. I hope I didn't forget them. Okay, no, I got them. Nate. I brought a few. Nate. Here we go. A true gem. They're in a case. He has them

in a case. Gotta protect them. Nate, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I think I just need to like lay down for a while. That's okay. Geed speed, everyone. Shout out to Redditors A of Jay and Holgergo for reaching out to us about the Guitous mystery in the first place. Also big shoutouts to standard deviation two, rowdy wrongdoer, groovy orange alien, sad Taco Bell, I had 360K karma, damn it, a muck in wah, Stason Goldman and the Framingham History Center, Nate Furrow. The whole Petrucci family.

And R.S.Gides. The Reddit community who has made this so much fun. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR station in partnership with Reddit. Josh Swartz is our producer. Geidis. Mix and sound design by Paul Vicus. Michael Pope is our advisor at Reddit. Getus!

Extra production assistance from James Lindberg. I'm Gidus. Our interns are Magdea Lamaata. And Noah Boston. Getus. And Iris Adler is our executive producer. Uh, no. I don't think so.

Our artwork this week is a picture of... Keetus. You can see that and a bunch of other photos of our trip to the San Patrucci Treasure Trove with Linda at our homepage, WBUR.org slash endless thread. On Reddit, we are endless underscore thread. If you want to contribute art for an upcoming episode or give us a juicy story tip so we can tell it like we did today, hit us up there. My co-host and producer is Amory Sievertson.

I'm senior producer and co-host Ben Brock Johnson. I'll let myself out. There it is. My favorite episode, and I hope you could tell why. Although clearly, the whole mystery hasn't been solved yet. Who made those damn pins? Two years later, we still don't know. But I did have a conversation recently with someone selling a real-life Zoltan pin,

which is to say, I haven't given up. and I never will. In the meantime, of course, Geedspeed.