Good Job, Brain! - 14: You Betcha, Dollface

Episode Date: June 3, 2012

...BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL! Join us as we skip down memory lane and talk about the delightful origins and facts behind our favorite dolls and action figures. Learn how Star Wars and Barbie revolutionized the toy industry, how Cabbage Patch dolls get fertilized, and WHAT EXACTLY IS STRETCH ARMSTRONG MADE OUT OF?! Also: toy name quiz, and see if you can find the two Mel Brooks references Karen made in the episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, Anagram, adoring audio-absorbing awesome audience. Welcome to Banjo Bird Goo. Oh, it's an anagram of good job, rain. Welcome to Good Job Brain, your weekly quiz show and off-beet trivia podcast. This is episode 14. And of course, I'm your humble host, Karen. And along with me are our marvelous minutia mining minds and mouths.

I'm Colin. I'm Dana. And I'm Chris. Yeah. We're just mouths to you. Is that all we are? And minds. Oh, sorry.

Sorry. Before we start the show, I want to share something pretty interesting. There's a new book recently called Cruising Altitude. Tales of Crash Pads, Crew Drama, and Crazy Passengers at 35,000 Feet by Heather Poole, who is, sorry, not stewardess, but a flight attendant. And basically, it's a collection of stories and tales and facts of life as a flight attendant. I want to read this. Yes, very interesting.

And so there's one fact that I thought was really mind-blowing, which is flight attendants hate Diet Coke. Diet Coke is almost our unofficial drink of good job right here. Almost official. We love Diet Coke. And turns out Flytintendents hate Diet Coke. And the reason is because the Fizz takes forever to settle. Yes. At 35,000 feet, it takes a really long time for it to kind of calm down.

You know, in terms of time efficiencies, when you have a whole bunch of people ordering Diet Coke, they have to stand there in the aisle and kind of wait for a diet. As more and more people shift to drinking diet sodas, you know, maybe there's money in finding out, because this always happens to me. I order Diet Coke, like, at bars and things like that, and, like, the bartender will pour Diet Coke in, and it's just, like, 80% fizz. So maybe they'll, maybe they'll formulate some Diet Coke that fizzes less. So Heather Poole says, in the time it takes her to pour a single cup of Diet Coke, she can serve three passengers a different beverage. That's really interesting. Isn't that crazy?

Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny that you mention that because, you know, the Mentos and the Tenthos and the Diet Coke fountain guys, you know, who they make the little squirting fountains at a child's Diet Coke. I remember that they're saying that Diet Coke in particular is their soda. They use it because it is so foamy and frothy and produces such copious amounts of the bubbles, yeah. But yeah, that's a... That's really interesting. This and other facts and stories are in her book.

Very interesting. So here we go. Let's start off our show with our general trivia segment with our random trivial pursuit card. Pop Quiz, Hot Shot. All right. Barnyard Buzzers. Number one, what country is home to the electronics company Phillips? Chris?

Japan. Incorrect. I believe it's the Netherlands. Yes. Oh, that's right. Of course. Yes, yes, yes. Well, I mean, of course.

I didn't know that. No, I mean, Phillips did the CDI, which was the video game system, and they're based in Europe. They invented the CD. I believe they're credited with inventing the CD, yeah. Huh. Okay. Jointly, I believe. Yeah, you're not right.

Pink Wedge, pop culture, what 70s Hannah-Barbera cartoon starred a dog who could do martial arts? Oh, Chris. Hong Kong, fooie. Yeah. I've never heard of this character in my whole life. Yellow Wedge.

Who was the last president born in a log cabin? James A. Garfield, Ulysses S. Grant, or Theodore Roosevelt. What a random weird trivia. Born in a log cabin. It is James A. Garfield. Well. Could have been any of it.

You know, I feel like if I had a thought about it a little bit more, maybe you want to come up with that. Okay. Purple Wedge. If you're typing in traditional hand position, what finger do you use to strike the letter Q? Your left pinky? Correct. Left pinkies.

Right, because it's upper left. All right. Green Wedge for Science. What abbreviation is the plastic polyvinyl? Chloride better known by Come on, come on I think Chris actually best in her Hong Kong food

PVC, would that be PVC? PVC, correct. And last question Orange Wedge, what is a kitchen on an airplane called? Oh, not topical. Galley. Correct, galley. Which comes from ships, right? I think so. Term also refers to a kitchen of a

boat, train, or submarine. All right, and we also have our backer question. This one is from Trevor for Morrow Bay, California. These questions are always so weird. This is weird. This is weird. What is the longest non-technical word in the

English language? I mean, longest non-ta, it's the black lung disease. Is that what he's looking for? Nomano ultramacro-microscopic cellicovolcanicconiosis. Can you say that again? Is that, I believe it sounds like a technical word to me. Is that what he's looking for? That counts as technical.

Is it anti-establishmentarianism? Yes, anti-disestablishmentarianism. Wow, how do you guys know? That's just known as this like long word. I think that's also technical. Like that's a technical term. I think like medicine or engineering, what do you mean? I'm like super califragilistic.

That is not technical. That's not technical, but it's not a word. It's in the dictionary. What is he looking for? What are we? It is, God, I, okay, let's see if I can pronounce this. Phloxenosa nihilipilification. What is it?

And it means the estimation of something as valueless. Sounds technical. I'm going to challenge that answer, but... Phloxanasa nihilohyla pilification. Floxenosa nihilipilification. Oh, mouthful, man. Even though the sound of it was something... Quite atrocious.

All right. So, let's jump into our topic of the week, much like junk food, where we're all kind of crazy for we're crazy about this and you know it's a large topic uh we're going to talk about toys but toys is a giant topic so we're going to boil it down to i don't know how it's describe it maybe more human version okay yeah humanoid toys yeah humanoid toys so dolls action figures and all that awesome stuff away my things

Peace me all together The broken I am sweet You've all my heart was made of wood But I can't hear it things Before we start out I want to ask you guys What company is the world's largest Distributor of toys

Worldwide Distributor not Toys R Us? I don't know Incorrect Disney Incorrect McDonald's. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah.

Absolutely. Happy Mill. That's a good. That's good. Blows my mind. So McDonald's, anybody asks, you know the answer now. All right, I think we're going to do this, uh, boys versus girls. I'm going to let the boys go first.

Okay. Obviously, you guys have your G.I. Joe's and action figures. So, right. I mean, and dolls and action figure is really the same thing. It's just, oh, yeah. Well, it's a question of after the massive success of like Barbie, you know, in the 50s, it's like, well, how could we, also sell this to boys, right?

Because Barbie herself, which I think will, Karen, you said we're going to talk about Barbie, right? Yeah, Barbie's a big part of doll business. Yes, yes, and it's a big part of girls growing up in America. So we'll let the girls tackle the Barbie thing. But I mean, basically, even Barbie herself was revolutionary. And so after that revolution, it was

a question of, what do we do for boys? Can we get boys to buy dolls? And the answer to that was GI Joe. Yeah. The original G.I. Joe versus Cobra, but G.I. Joe, the down the middle, no superpowers United States military. And they were the larger ones, yeah.

Yeah, they were a foot tall. The 10, 11 inch tall, right, right, right, yeah. Oh, this is... That was the previous incarnation, because, I mean, not the 80s, G.I. Joe. Oh, yeah, G.I. Joe originally in the 1960s. And they had a lot in common with the Barbies. I mean, in that they had outfits. They were naked and they had outfits.

They had specialized uniforms. Yeah, right. They were kin-naked, though, right? They were, they were Ken naked. They were smooth. Yes. Yes, exactly. Exactly.

You, you know, you want to be. They're exploring all. all these crazy countries and you can get all kinds of crabs and yeah they were they were kennedy it was how do we get them to swap outfits oh well you could buy the air force outfit for your GI Joe or you could buy the Navy outfit for your GI Joe probably fair to say the golden age of action figures would have been 70s 80s but the gold well the golden age of action figures was whatever age that you were buying action figures but I mean you know the the GI Joe's and Star Wars figures and right now you

You're slightly older than me, so you were, really, you were a Star Wars kid. The Star Wars figures themselves were actually kind of revolutionary, too, because they kind of brought us out of the dolls and action figures are really tall era. Because, you know, you had G.I. Joe's, which were very popular in the 60s, and the 70s were really popular, were the mega-o figures, right? Mermigo, Mego-O. Mega-Migo. Superheroes. And again, they were tall.

They were a little shorter than G.I. Joe's, but they were, like, they were eight inches tall. They had outfits that you could take on, and, you know, it's like, it still followed that same kind of pattern. Star Wars figures were really changed the paradigm. They did because they were down, you know, three and three quarter inch figures, obviously a lot smaller, less material to make. But, you know, the other really brilliant stroke about the smaller figures is that it was a lot easier to make vehicles, you know, that you could scale them. You know, I mean, if you imagine you've got the G.I. Joe figure at 12 inches, if you want to make a Jeep that he fits in, it's,

you know, it's going to be two feet long. But, I mean, that wasn't necessarily the goal, but they discovered pretty quickly that in the world of Star Wars that they sold so many vehicles and things like that. It was a lot easier if you could fit the figures inside. Originally, they had gone to Meggo. You know, along the lines of like Eminem's turning down E.T. And Reese's pieces picking it up. Yeah, so Migo was

approached and the movie hadn't come out yet, Star Wars being the movie. And Migo was one of the kings of American toys. They made the micronauts and they made all kinds, as Chris said, all kinds of great 70s toys. And they turned down the offer to license the Star Wars toys. Even

knowing the context of the movie coming Well, all you know is no one could have, or certainly no one did predict how huge it was going to be. And then Kenner picked it up, Kenner Toys subsidiary of General Mills, which is one reason that there were so many cereal and product tie-ins early on because it was just, you know, corporate synergy right on down the line. So while we own the cereal company and the toy company, we can have mailaways to encourage cross-selling of both of them. Cereal and save your UPC codes and you can mail it away for a Star Wars figure. Right, exactly.

Yeah, and so Kenner was the company that did end up picking up Star Wars. Ultimately, yeah, in the 90s, I think it was bought by Hasbro, and Hasbro owns the rights to all of the Star Wars now. But Kenner at the time made millions and millions and millions of dollars. And one of my favorite stories about the early days of those figures was the very, very first Christmas of Star Wars. So, you know, Star Wars came out in May, summer, summer 1977. Obviously, huge hit.

I mean, it became like the biggest grossing movie of all time within that first calendar year. Absolutely. It wasn't very long before, yeah. Young and old. you know boys girls i mean everybody it was a huge hit and so it became really crystal clear that that christmas was going to be a prime toy giving toy buying opportunity so i want you to imagine though you know travel back with me imagine that you're a little kid christmas of 77 like you were just geeked out on star wars like all you want is the star wars toys you open up the box you're expecting

the star wars toys your action figures and you get an i o you from kenner which is Essentially what happened. They could not ramp up. Well, parents knew. The parents knew. The parents knew. Yeah, it wasn't like the parents were a shock. But Kenner knew.

They knew it was such a huge hit, but they had no chance of ramping up production up to get enough action figures in stores in time for Christmas. But they didn't want to miss out on this looming cash cow. So it's pretty smart in one sense. So they came up with the, they called it the Early Bird package, is how they branded it, which is pretty clever. Instead of IOU. Right.

It's pretty crappy. I'd be disappointed. But it was, for all intents and purposes, it was essentially a box that came with a little cardboard diorama. It had some pictures of the figures on it. They encouraged you to use it as a stand for when you eventually got the figures. They threw in some stickers and Star Wars swag and a fan club card. But the bulk of the purchase was you were buying a certificate that you could cash in for the figures

a few months down the road. You're buying futures in Star Wars. That's right. And, you know, in... I wonder how many sad kids lost their certificate in that amount of time. It's hard to manage paperwork as an adult, like, little. Right. And the figures weren't ready for months is the thing.

The figures weren't ready until well into 1978. And they had added a few figures by that time. And, you know, the original four figures. And if you have these today, I mean, the biggest irony is that these certificates now are worth many times more than... The toy itself. Yeah, of course. Yes, yes, yes.

So, yeah, the first set was... Luke and Leia and Chewbacca, Chewy, and R2D2. Not Darth Vader. No Darth Vader, no Han Solo. Right. Yeah, they decided those four. And in 1978, they sold 40 million action figures. Wow.

Over $100 million, despite the early shortfall of getting an IOU. They did follow through, though. They did. Oh, yeah. No, if you sent in your certificate, you would get what they called the early bird package of those four figures. In the mail. In the mail, some months later. Yes.

Merry Christmas from Kenner. So inefficient back in the days. You can't even go to a store and redeem it or something. I mean, and then just the other small part that a lot of Star Wars fans will know is that this was George Lucas's really masterstroke was that the studio essentially said to him, we'll let you have the lion's share of the merchandising rights in exchange for giving us these really favorable to us terms on the movie.

And that's where Lucas really has the bulk of his billions is from the merchandising that he was smart enough to. To lock up early on, yeah. Wow. For me, the action figure line that I was into, like you were to Star Wars, was He-Man. Oh, yeah. This started up in 1981, and basically this all actually apparently came about. There's some disputes because Mattel was negotiating for the rights to make Conan the Barbarian figures.

Based on the movie. I believe so, yes. And it was a comic before then, too, I think. Yeah, yeah. So there was Conan the Barbarian was kind of enjoying a resurgence at that point. They were looking at making action figures, but it felt. through. They decided not to. And then, like, a year later, they do He-Man, very similar to Conan the Barbarian. I believe there was, in fact, there was legal action over this, and I think

Mattel won because it wasn't, you know, materially, substantially, because there was so much to the He-Man mythos that they kind of came up with. And they came up with the mythology for He-Man and all of the action figures, really first as action figures. And what they did was they had mini-comics that told stories about He-Man and Skeletor and Tila and Prince Adam and all this kind of stuff and they inserted those mini-comics into the action figure packages. So you got this little comic. Oh. And that's how it told you who these people were. Yeah. And what their origin stories were. Yeah. The cartoon wasn't even made yet. Now, eventually in 1983, they started making the cartoon. And a cartoon, I mean, that cartoon was to sell action figures. Yeah.

Advertising. No doubt about it. Yep. We introduced characters in the cartoon and the kids like the characters and then the action figure comes out later. Oh, so smart. And one of the things with Masters of the Universe is that they, I mean, really to save money in the beginning. I mean, it was very much designed to save money in every way possible in terms of reusing molds and reusing body parts. Like, He-Man and his arch nemesis, Skeletor, like, their torso is the same. Their crotch is the same. They have veins on their leg in the same spot.

Right. Well, their legs and their arms are different because they had bad guy arms that were claws. and they had bad guy legs that had webbed feet. But then they've used those same bad guy arms and the arms popped off the torso because they're literally assembling them at the factory like pop pop, just popping the arms on. And they would just be different colors, right? The legs are attached with rubber bands. Yeah, they just painted different colors.

They had figures that were just like there was Beast Man, but then they came out with Moss Man, who was just Beast Man covered in like green fleck of the average. And they would just get away with the most. crazy stuff. Like there was Stinkor, who was a skunk, but he was just Merman, right? Painted black, and then they took Mekanex red armor and painted it orange and put it on Stinkor, and I think they gave him a weapon that was a repaint of somebody else's. So they made this whole new figure. The whole thing is just mix and match. It's just mix and match out of old parts. I noticed they were always the same size, but I didn't realize, oh, it's because they're made from

the same parts. Everybody in this universe is exactly the same height. You knew as a kid that they were doing that, you know, it starts to, that's how you start to get cynical as a kid. It's using biomasters of the universe figure, and you're like, wait a gosh darn minute, I could have my own. I mean, I was making hybrids, like you put the skeletor arms on him, man. Oh, yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah.

And actually, well, Stinkor, they actually put like a perfume on it. I remember. He actually had an odor to him. It's like, oh, he smells like a skunk. He didn't. He smelled like, you know, he smelled like a scratch and sniff snicker of, of, of, um, of dubious quality. No, it smelled good. No, it smelled good because as a kid, you just sat around a, you know, huffing, Hopping stink or

The Chris Collar memoirs Huffing stink or Yeah so and then later I mean Masters of the Universe I mean again just like the Star Wars figures it did incredibly well And then it just petered out

dramatically instantly Towards like 1986 87 When the movie came out I mean that was the movie was just the end I remember The Dolf Lundgren Motion Picture which yes Frank Langella

Courtney Cox also, a pre-Friends Courtney Cox was in that movie. By that point, the last in the lines of the figures were actually all original sculpts, you know, they weren't reusing things. But they had a few characters in the movie, which are now some of the more collectible characters because they were produced in smaller batches. It just died and petered out. They've brought it back with like figures aimed at collectors now. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I was going to say, like, it's come full circle in that, I mean, Star Wars as well, that they have all these retro vintage editions that are sold to us again. You know, people like you and me, 20 years later, they're not selling to a younger generation. You know, trying to get you back. And in terms of Mattel really coming full circle after, okay, well, what do we do? How do we make dolls for boys or action figures? A couple years into He-Man, it was how do we make action figures for girls? And that turned out to be Princess of Power or Shira, which is combining, you know, they were the same height as He-Man.

But they had pretty hair that came with little brushes so the girls could brush their hair. but then they fought with swords and guns. Wow. Well, I think it's the girl's turn to talk about our action figures. No, they're just called dolls. They're dolls. You make them go on adventures. They're having action.

Of course, we have to talk about Barbie. The grandmama of all action figures and dolls, she's the one who started all. And actually, I didn't realize this until I did some research, was that before Barbie, all of the dolls or humanoid toys were based. Right. And I didn't know that. Give a girl a little baby doll to play with. Yep. Ruth Handler, who is the wife of Mattel.

Elliot Handler, the L and Mattel. Yep. And so she saw this. She saw that her own kid, a daughter, Barbara, was playing with infant dolls. And she'd pretend that they're a little bit older. And she's like, wait a minute, there's no market. To fit this role. Yeah.

Well, there's a market, but there's no products for the market. Or there's a huge market for this. Yep. On a family trip to Germany, they saw that there was a doll in Germany called a build, pronounce it. Well, Lily. Lily. Yeah. Bill, Lily.

It was a pretty much like a proto Barbie, a grown-up woman. Right. Supposed to be. She was based off, I believe, a newspaper cartoon. Yeah, a cartoon. She's kind of like a working girl, I guess. But not in the prostitute. Well, no, I mean, not that she was a prostitute, but it was an adult-oriented newspaper cartoon about this kind of like dumb blonde girl who was like this blonde bomb shell.

Like blonde bandaglet or something. went around doing like kind of stupid girl things right in the newspaper and so they made this doll and it was more like a novelty thing for men and people people thought of it as being like a sex doll or sex toy you know because the lily doll had really exaggerated proportions and hips you know and really looked like kind of a cartoonish parody kind of the way like today like an adult collector might have like an anime or manga girl figure exactly yeah yeah yeah precisely just like that and at first motel were kind of lukewarm on that idea they're like uh no no no no No, I don't think they wanted to do it at all.

Not at all? No, they were just like, no. Because it's so, it's weird, like, who's going to buy this? It's like, it's really oddly mature. She has really huge breasts. Really, we're going to sell this to young girls? Like, they didn't understand. Well, as you said, like, the previous, I think the vision of, like, the role playing and playing

with the doll was that the girl envisioned herself as the doll's mother. Whereas with Barbie, it's more envisioning yourself as Barbie. So, I mean, it really, you kind of had to think about the play in a whole new way. Do you guys know what Barbie's full name is? I do actually because I researched it for this podcast. I believe it's Barbara Millicent Roberts. Correct. And she was named after the aforementioned daughter of the inventor.

Bonus point. What are her parents' names? Oh, Elliot. I wish it was Elliot's proof. Tim and Marsha. George and Margaret Roberts. Wow. And she, from the lore, from Canon, Barbie.

is from the town Willows in Wisconsin. Huh. And now she's, and she's not a student, right? She's graduated college. She has a degree. She's out in the working world. I think there might be conflicting.

She has a lot of degrees. She's an astronaut. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But she did go to high school in New York. So, yeah. So she actually does have a whole backstory. And Barbie, lots of controversy with Barbie.

Obviously, what Chris touched upon is it's very sexy. The first Barbie doll actually has kind of a, They all, their eyes are looking to the side. Oh, yeah, and sort of a demure way, like they're glancing over to the side instead of, like, looking forward, yeah. And this, that was, it was, it was, the Barbie doll, you have to look at the Lily Dolls, too, because the original Barbie dolls are just a straight up copy of the lily dolls. Yeah, I mean, the eyes are looking the same way, the heads with, the Lily Dolls have, like, a five head or a six head. That's how you kind of tell the difference. It's a huge, exaggerated comic forehead, which was slightly more realistic for Barbie, yeah, yeah.

Oh, well, it saves on research and design, right? If you can just copy what somebody else. And obviously, Barbie's measurements have been, you know, in the news a lot. Right, right. People are saying, oh, if we translate the Barbie size to actual person, it's not very probable. Her waist is too skinny. And so Mattel has been widening her waist. Well, and they've adjusted her over the years.

Yeah, right, right. But, I mean, she still looks bombshelly. It's funny, they had, like, those real, the American girl dolls, and those are kind of, like, proportioned like a real. girl right are you there i don't think you're their mother either that's not the fantasy it's more they're you they're you or your little sister maybe and they're historical so they're like you as a slave or you you in old time me time right i don't think they really have that one yeah they have a slave american girl she was a yeah she was a freed slave oh wow yeah young girl is about american history american history yeah american history results okay american girl stuff man that that stuff is crazy

People go nuts! I don't want to have girls because, like, just American girl bills alone are going to bankrupt the future men. Are they really that expensive? Well, yeah. They're over $19. You have to go to the American girls store. And it's about the accessories and things like that. Oh, yeah, of course.

The dolls are so large, you know? Like, the dolls themselves are really expensive. Think about all the clothes and the books and everything like that. Man, girls are pricey. I know. Oh, more. That's about that boys. I'll just give me a couple of rocks to bang together.

More bonus points. We know Barbie's boyfriend or love interest is Ken. What is Ken's full name? Ooh. Kenneth? Kenneth J. Smooth Crosh. I think I like Ken better if his name was indeed Kenneth J. Smooth Crosh. It's Ken Carson.

Oh, I think I knew that. And now there was, she has her cousin or sister, right? Skipper. Skipper. Is that her sister? It's her sister. It's her sister. Okay. There's a whole, Barbie's families is as extensive as. Right, because there's like babies.

Yeah. And she has a pregnant friend, a pregnant midge. Ah, right. Midge has been pregnant for a long time. They don't make Barbie pregnant because that would lead to too many uncomfortable conversations. Right, right, right. It has to be her friend. Right, right, right, right.

Her boyfriend has genitals. Husband, husband. It's not married. Mitch, she's pregnant Teen pregnant Barbie Teen pregnant Barbie So Midge

You can remove her uterus Oh not uterus About her skin Her belly Her pregnant belly You can remove it It's like a lid And inside is an upside down

Baby Oh So it's so it's C-section Yeah C-section Midge It looks really gross It looks like

It looks like something from alien Is this a modern one or this is like a retro one? They've been making pregnant midge for a while. I did not know that. And in 1997, Mattel joined forces with Nabisco to do a cross-promotion. Cracker Barbie. Double stuff, Barbie.

Yeah, yeah. You open her stomach in their... She's a man. It's a creedage. It's called Oreo Fun Barbie. And it's... I saw this. I saw this at the Fleemar.

market what is it so it's just Barbie who likes Oreos basically that's crap that's just the whole the whole intent is so you know little girls can play after class with their Barbies while eating Oreos and milk oh they can all they can all is she holding Oreos or something what does she so sure it comes a stack of tiny Oreos right like a pest dispenser you pull back her head and Oreo comes out of it this was back in 1997 so I think during in the 90s they would make for every kind of a new Barbie version they would make a black Barbie and white Barbie. So for Oreo Fun Barbie they had both the African American Barbie and the original Barbie. Yeah. And people kind of freaked out because Oreo

might be used as a derogatory term. Indeed. Or, yeah, someone who is quote, black on the outside and white in the inside. So a lot of people are like, whoa, that is really weird. And so guess what? The doll was unsuccessful.

Successful, and Mattel recalled the unsold stock. Really? Actually, if you saw this at the flea market, you should buy it because it's sought after by collectors. Get out. I bet. I bet. Boreo fun Barbie. And Barbie collectors are hardcore. Yeah, I missed it.

Non-controversial Barbie. So they actually did a series of Barbie in the workplace. Like Barbie goes to work kind of stuff, like veterinarian Barbie and things like that. And they actually had people vote online on what they would also like to see added to the line. And the runaway success, duh, in this online poll, was... Is it a blogger Barbie? It was, in fact, computer engineer barbless that was, of course, that's what the internet decided to pick. And so, yeah, there's a computer device out there.

There was a little little small controversy because they gave her a pink laptop, right? Oh, oh, no, part of it was I felt that they thought that they had given her like a dumb phone, like a flip phone, something like that. And they switched it into a smartphone, yeah, but I think maybe there was a pink laptop too, yeah. I think there is a blogger barbie. Yeah, I think there's a separate blogger Barbie. Writing for, like, Jezebel, not celebrities. A lot of blind items on Midge. Mitch's baby bump enters its 27th month.

Aw. It's like Mitch has like those calcified babies. It just stuck there forever. Oh, poor Midge. Dark turn. It got really dark. Sorry. So there are, you know, dolls that are about taking care of babies.

Like, I feel like we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about those kinds of dolls. So when I was a little kid, cabbage patch kids. Oh, man. Oh, yeah. That was the nuts. Such a phenomenon. My little sister was definitely the cabbage patch kids. 1984, 20 million dollars were sold that year.

And it folds back into video games, of course, like everything does with me, because it was made by Calico, just kind of finished up, like, the video game market, it just crashed, and, you know, the Calico vision was basically off the market, and their, they're, they're Adam computer had basically failed. And they found a salvation in Cabbage Patch Kids. A lot of salvation. Oh, my God. Yeah, it was a good get for them.

They made the right move, yeah. Cabbage Patch Kids, they're basically babies that supposedly you have to adopt them because they're born from cabbage patches, not from parents. And each of the dolls is different. They use computer technology to make each of them totally unique. And they all have their own names and a birth certificate and adoption papers when you get them. And they're, they come from Babyland General Hospital. There's part of the whole fantasy of cabbage patched.

The cabbage patch kids is, you know, it's one of the lies that you tell your kids about, like, you know, they ask where babies come from and you don't want to actually tell them. So you're like, oh, well, the stork, Stork delivers them. And then some people say, oh, babies grow in cabbage patches. They're fertilized by the bunny bees. This is in the cabbage patch mythology. And, yeah, and it's canon for the cabbage pad.

They fertilize them with crystals, magic crystals. And you're, you're helping them, escape from being enslaved in the gold mines. So it's so Dickensian. Yeah. Well, and they, I remember the cabbage, they had these big round heads and big round eyes. As much as how successful Cabbage Patch kids are, they're ugly. They're really ugly.

I don't care what computer technology made them unique. When you look at, they look really freaky. There was a whole, there was an urban legend in the 80s about them being ugly on purpose in order to prepare people in case there's a nuclear holocaust that their children will be That was like an urban legend that was going... Bologian. There was also Cabbage Patch Kids controversy because they had... There were... I recall, Cabbage Kids premiums.

Yes. Which they made smaller Cabbage Petsch Kids. They were like, oh, it's a preemie. That's right. It's a premature baby. It was so sad. That was the ones that were like babies, not like little toddlers. They just, they were ball-headed.

But the whole thing was just like, wait, and they marketed these things. And it was just, wait a minute. Are we really like glamorizing? Yeah. Getting the premature baby? Like, severe health risks and... You know what? But in the 80s, it seems like there probably...

There was a higher chance of premature babies living than there had been before. I knew a lot of preemies when I was growing up. So I wonder if like... In the 80s and 90s. To garner some preemie pride. I was premature. I'm going to wager that it was more about selling toys than making any grand social statement. It was a marketing.

Yes, I would put my money on that. Turn people off. But I remember, like, they grew out of cabbages, right? So they would be, they would have these rows of cabbages with these tiny round heads in the middle of them. So, do you remember Garbage Pail Kids? Yes, totally. That was what I did. Thank God for Cabbage Patch Kids, inspiring Garbage Pail.

They had that awesomeest names. I had, I thought they were associated with each other. Because they looked just like Cabbage Patch Kids. Wait, they're separate? Oh, yeah. It's totally different. Yeah. They, Xavier Roberts, who did the Cabbage Patch Kids sued tops for those.

Yeah. Garbage Pail kids were basically a parody of Cabbage Patch Kids, and they were, um, trading cards with stickers, and they came with gum and little packs of the store. They were following on from, like, wacky packages, which was a set of parody trading cards, it was parody product. They had crazy names, like Smelly Kelly or Yicky Mickey, and they were gross pictures. They were really gross, right up your alley if you're a little kid. So they're separate.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a parody, total parody. Well, that's the whole point. It was kind of like Mad Magazine-style parody, where the goal is like get the art style, as close as possible. And I mean, I don't know if this was the goal, but at least in my circle of friends, it was mostly the boys who were really into the garbage pale kids, which I thought was pretty clever

since it was most of the girls who were into the cabbage patch kids. So it kind of, they found a nice market for the parody. Everybody in my class had them. We traded them. Oh, yeah. Yep, yep. No frills, delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express.

Shop online and get $15 in PC optimum points on your first five orders. Shop now at no-frails.ca. When the creators of the popular science show with millions of YouTube subscribers comes the Minute Earth podcast. Every episode of the show dives deep into a science question you might not even know you had,

but once you hear the answer, you'll want to share it with everyone you know. Why do rivers curve? Why did the T-Rex have such tiny arms? And why do so many more kids need glasses now than they used to? Spoiler alert, it isn't screen time. Our team of scientists digs into the research

and breaks it down into a short, entertaining explanation, jam-packed with science facts and terrible puns. Subscribe to Minute Earth wherever you like to listen. All right, and I have a quick toy quiz for you guys, so get your buzzards ready. And today we're going to talk about, in my quiz, names of toys. A lot of toys have very, very weird and eccentric names. And first up, this toy comes from the Filipino Tagalog expression, meaning come. Technically, it's come, come. Is that a yo-yo?

Correct. Oh, wow. Is it from the Philippines? The yo-yo? All right. And this comes from a phrase in a foreign language that means play well. Oh, oh. I believe that's Lego.

Correct. Oh, okay. The Danish phrase for play well is leggoat. So this toy slash game is named after the word. That means to grope frantically. It's a real word, and the real word stands for a grope. I believe that's scrabble. Correct.

Oh, nice. Scrabbling for purchase. Yes, scrabbling for, yes. And Scrabble was first called lexico, and then got changed to crisscross words. And then changed to scrabble. Lexico sounds like a bad, nerdy villain. Lexico. He used the power of words.

against you All right the name of this toy is derived from the word peppermint in a foreign language

Pez Correct Pfeffermins Yep German word for peppermint which is Pfeffermins

This toy means to build Swahili word for To build Is it Djanga? Correct

Oh, okay. That's good. And last one here, a little bit tricky. So this toy was named after the name of a baking company in Bridgeport, Connecticut. And there's a reason why it's a baking company. Easy bake oven. No. Yeah.

They used something from the baking company to make this toy. Oh, wait. I'll say it. It's not right. Shrink eatings. No. No. Frisbee.

Oh, the pie pan. The Frisbee baking company had a whole bunch of pie tins that people used to throw it around and hence became Frisbee. College students. That's right. And it was Fris B-I-E, I believe. It was F-R-I-S-B-I-E. Right, right. Awesome.

Good job, you guys. That was my quick toy quiz. So as I kept thinking about collectible values, because, you know, that's where my mind goes. You know, I started thinking about the ultimate fad of Beanie babies. in the 1990s. Oh, man! Yeah. So here's the thing, even though the beanie, so beanie babies for those who are like,

you know, if you're living under a giant pile of discarded beanie babies and don't know about them, they're small stuffed animals. They were sold in like hallmark stores and little, you know, kind of boutique stores like that, mostly for the first few years. But they're just, they're filled with beans or little PVC beads. They're bean bags. Yes, they're bean bags. So they can, you can pose them a little more easily, basically.

and the company, the guy's name is Ty Warner, and he started the company like Ty Warner Incorporated, which he eventually changed to Ty. You know, they have the little plastic paper tags on them that have the Thai company logo, TY. For some reason or another, these things became huge. And not only did kids love them. Like this was in 1993, like 44, they kind of started up

in a few years, you know, a couple of years down the line. Every kid wanted all these Beanie Babies, but adults just started collecting them. And there were limited amounts of them, right? Yeah, so, well, first of all, there were limited amounts because, you know, it was a small toy company. They was making a few toys and selling them in specialty shops, you know. But their strategy was they, and they came up with this, the phrase, retiring, were retiring of these beanie babies. Creating scarcity.

Artificial domain. And so, I mean, instead of, instead of discontinuing, we're crossing this off a list, we're like, well, this beanie baby is going into retirement, so buy it now. And because they were kind of hard to track down in the first place, you know, people would sort of scramble to buy them. What this then caused is people going out and buying the new Beanie Babies, assuming that, you know, because, yeah, exactly, because these older ones were retired and suddenly became worth money, right? Because now that the secondary Beanie Baby market emerges. And interestingly enough, some of them really do still sell for a lot. It was the Dutch tulip craze for Beanie babies, precise of it. Speculators got into it.

They had no value. and one day everybody decided they weren't worth anything anymore and the bottom of the market drops out and people, if you had a lot of money tied up in these and Beanie babies they did like a Princess Diana bear immediately after Princess Diana died and it was this purple bear with a white rose on it and people bought those up those are worthless now

because I mean so many of them you know but there's some and I'll tell you so if you're looking out for these I looked on eBay for actual completed auctions that actually sold and things like Peking the Panda Which was a panda And that was, I mean, just as a quick

I said, that was part of their thing Was like each one was a different animal With a cute, usually alliterative name You know, Jenny the giraffe Peking the Panda, right There was a Brownie the Bear Which is one of the first like of the beanie babies They did

And they changed his name to Cubby Very shortly afterwards So you have one with the tag that says brownie But then of course it's just a little paper tag You've got to make sure it's not a counterfeit tag You know all that kind of stuff Because people would switch the tags on things I remember they made tag protectors.

Yes, there was a cottage industry in the accessories around the beanie babies, including a protector for your tag. The coolest thing I thought you might like this is that around 2006, I believe it was, the chef, Joel Robichon, was opening a new restaurant. I think it was in New York. And to commemorate this, to invite people to the grand opening of the restaurant, they sent them a special Beanie Baby with a chef's hat and a chef's coat that said, Chef Robichon. on it, and the Beanie Baby's, the bear's name was Sheffro Beauchamp, and they mailed these out as part of the invites to the grand opening. This is like the most desired. The premiere, right.

So I want to talk about what, I thought this was going to be grouped in with the boys' action figure stuff. I see this as the original action figure, Mr. Potato Head. I think that's, I think it's unisex, but skews to girls, actually. Really? Yeah, there's a lot of girl. accessories on there. I feel like it's split right down the middle.

Oh, yeah. I feel like I had as many, yeah. Vegetables are uniseise. Right, but so smart, you know, mom is preparing dinner, you know, and she's not ready to peel the potatoes yet. She's like, here, okay, take this potato and you can use her.

Because the original Mr. Potato Head was just a box of... It was just a bunch of accessories, right? It did not come with a body. You're supposed to use an actual potato, which I do not... Supply your own potato. Did you not know this at all.

And this was when that they came out with them? And this was a 19. 50s, I believe. But the thing is, the big change when they actually introduced the plastic body, it was because people were injuring themselves. Little kids were... I was wondering about that, because potatoes aren't soft. Like, they're not...

No, all of those eyes and nose and stuff, they actually had a pretty sturdy poking mechanic in the back. Oh, really? You slip trying to poke it in or something. Yeah, so they would pierce it in the potato and kids... Kids are dumb. Kids are dumb. fingers.

Kids are done. Motor skills haven't fully developed. Exactly. Recurring motif on this podcast. They changed that. They actually had the plastic potato body with the bigger holes and you can fit the pegs in the holes so there's no cutting involved.

As I was looking at stuff for this podcast, it was looking at the original box for the slip and slide, which actually has a diagram showing a kid doing like a back summer song. It's like, just flip over backwards and land on your back on the slip and slide. I didn't slide all the way down. Perfect. They didn't really think things through. Speaking of not having lawyers in the commercials or whatever.

So do you guys remember the Stretch Armstrong? Yeah. Okay. I totally had, I didn't just have a Stretch Armstrong. I had multiple Stretch Armstrongs. He's kind of like Mr. Fantastic. Right, right. I had one until he broke.

Exactly. Every kid had at least one until they broke. They were so fragile. So just for anyone who may not know what it is, it was the very original was Stretch Armstrong and he kind of looked like a pro wrestler. He was like this big blonde buff guy with like little black

trunks on and he it was a latex rubber skin and the whole thing was filled with this viscous material so you could stretch the arms and legs way, way out, multiple feet long. And what I remember about the commercials, you know, so

it came out in 1976 originally. The commercials were just these little boys just stretching the arms as far as they could. Like, I felt like the commercials were almost daring you to try and break the toy. And that's what we did. Oh, I remember my sister and I had one, and we would each grab an arm and a leg and just see how far we could go. Yep.

Like, kids would bring them to school. We would wrap them around the jungle gym. Sure enough, they would always, always, always develop its little punctures. Yes. Or tears in the skin. And the stuff inside comes out, and it's sticky and gooey. and it was actually... What is it?

So I did a little bit of digging into this, and it got more and more fascinating. So as I say, the skin was latex. They were filled with corn syrup. Okay. It was like a condensed, gelled from a corn syrup. So it was totally non-toxic. Totally non-toxic.

It would get all over everything. And I remember, like, at our house, so, you know, we would puncture them, and my dad would try and fix it or whatever, and that would never last. And so I would buy a new one. They had many variations of the stretch, Armstrong. It was such a hit.

So they came out, started coming out with superhero versions. I had the Hulk. They had these two octopus figures as well. And I remember very clearly having these. They were Ollie and Olivia. Did they have eight tentacles? They did. That sounds awesome.

It was so much fun. And you can, they have a, if you just do a little Googling, you can still find photos and commercials of these. And they were so much fun because it was the stretchy viscous material with eight tentacles to pull on. That's awesome. Now any kid like strangle himself with this or like, you know, they tied around each other's necks and it snaps back. I remember we would try using them. We would use them as handcuffs and

things like that. I mean, it was like, I don't, I didn't find any reports of children dying or asphyxating, but many, many broken ones. The more I read about this, and a lot of this information is coming from stretcharmstrong world.com, a fanatical collector has put together this information. Can you still buy them? So they, they've reintroduced them at various points. And in fact, we talked about Migo earlier. Migo came out with their own line of, uh, they called them the Elastic. There was Elastic Batman, Elastic Hulk. They came out with another one. Every no and then they'll come out. They came out in the 90s again. They reissued Stretch Armstrong. But apparently the original 70s ones are among the most collectible toys out there.

Intact. Because they're so fragile. Right. They're so, not only to have survived being played with by kids, but I guess, you know, their latex rubber in this viscous gel, if they're stored in two hot temperatures or two cold temperatures, they just disintegrate. And, you know, a lot of these hardcore collector guys they'll say people will find them in their attic and like oh i remember this toy and you pull the arm and it just comes right off you know um thousands of dollars literally thousands of dollars for some of these and they estimate that for some of them they estimate that you know for the batman and the hulk there may be fewer than 20 left in the entire world these hardcore collectors you can count yeah you can count on one hand the number of stretch

batman's left in the world apparently um i read uh just a couple of quick little tibbets, I read that from 1976 to 1979, Migo was the largest buyer of corn syrup in America to fill these acts and perhaps most depressingly, well, I think we can all agree that, you know,

nothing makes a better movie than a movie based on a toy, right? In 2008, they picked up the rights for Stretch Armstrong to make a movie out of it, much the way they've done with Battleship. Yeah. Yeah. Taylor Lottner was apparently attached to the project. To be Stretch Armstrong. To be Stretch Armstrong. He is no longer

connected to the project. So connected. Yeah, so look forward to that. Apparently, one of the rarest stretch Armstrongs was kind of created as a joke by some of the employees at Migo. They customized some of the molds and made two, Stretch Armstrong with manhood. And I'll just let you imagine what that means. Oh, with manhood.

With manhood. With manhood. Like a hoodie? What? Like A hooded sledgewood? That doesn't sound very strange. So, yes, there are two

anatomically correct Stretch Armstrong's floating there. Well, of course. Correct being very loose. It's like flesh-colored plastic in your own. Right. So that is our show. Thank you guys for joining me

and thank you guys, listeners, for listening in. Hope you guys learned a lot about Stretch Armstrong, anatomy, and whatnot. Masters of the universe. Oh, man.

Yeah. So you can find. find us on Zune Marketplace, on iTunes, on Stitcher, and also on our website. And we'll see you guys next week. All right. Bye. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. This is Jen.

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