Good Job, Brain! - 239: Accessories Pull It All Together

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

We're shining the big, bright, brainy spotlight this week on the... more secondary things in our lives: the add-ons, the trimmings, the enhancements. Colin has prepared an unreal quiz about Barbie accessories that have caused arm-flailing outrage, cringe controversy, and risky recalls. Karen ponders about accessories in the digital world: what are some things people use to spruce up their online space and make it their own? And what does this have to do with the most viewed photograph in the history of humankind? Put on your best scrunchies and slap bracelets because Chris takes us back to December 1989, when the world first witnessed the ultimate video game accessory: the Power Glove. “It’s so bad.” For advertising inquiries, please contact [e-mail]! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an airwave media podcast. Saluto, salient sailors sailing in the saline sea of salami. This is Good Job, Bring your weekly quiz show and Offbeat Trivia podcast. This is episode 239. And of course, I'm your humble. Karen, and we are your hodgepodge of hollering holograms hot for hot toddies. I'm Colin. And I'm Chris.

We are recording this Friday night, which is something we don't usually do. Getting a little loose over here. Karen's pounding some kombucha. Who knows what's going to happen? It's hard kombucha. Oh, there's no such thing as easy kombucha. Without further ado, let's jump into our first general. general trivia segment, pop quiz, hot shot.

Here I have a random trivial pursuit card from the box. You guys have your barnyard buzzers, buzz in with the right answers, and here we go. Blue Edge for Geography. Which Russian leader did poet Robert Frost meet in Crimea in 1962 to mend fences with during the Cold War? Hmm. Robert Frost, 1962. Okay.

Chris. Gorbachev? No. No. Before. No, before. Colin. Cruzev.

Yes. Yes. Okay. All right. You know what his first name is. Um, yeah, you know, it's in the, uh, yeah, there we go. It's in the punch hole. I was going to stall until it, uh, floated at the top.

But, uh, thank you. Thank you, Chris. Just fish it right on top of that. Yeah, no problem. Just fish it right out of there for me. Appreciate it. No need to let you flail and struggle. I've got your first name right here.

Yeah. Oh, his first name. You know, that's interesting that you ask his first name, Karen, because, as you know, it comes before his last name. Pink Wedge, which MTV reality show features Ashton Coocher pranking celebrities? Chris. Punk, apostrophe D. Yes. Punked.

D. Punk it. Yellow Wedge, in what year did the Supreme Court make it legal for interracial marriages to take place? Multiple choice. Oh, okay, okay. 1867, 1927, or 1967? Colin. I believe that was the last one, 1967, right?

1967. Yes, I was just going to ask, do you know what the case was? Loving the last name, their last name is Loving versus Virginia State. 1967, not that long ago. Not that long ago. No. Purple Wedge, which actress whose TV character was the opposite of otherworldly

wrote a sci-fi novel in 2014 titled A Vision of Fire Oh gosh, okay all right TV character TV, wait sorry Which actress

Whose TV character Was the opposite of other So she wasn't an alien Like what does that mean? Like or she's really plain Or she yeah yeah yeah Yeah she's super down to earth Like she yeah and what

And she wrote a novel Sci-fi novel in 2014 titled A Vision of Fire. Interesting. I haven't seen the answer. I'm going to see the answer now. Ah. Is it a Rosanne Barr, Arnold?

No, no, no. Okay. You know what? The initial feel of the question was right. All right. Not an alien. She's not an alien, which means she was probably in a show

that deals with aliens. Oh, okay, okay. It's probably not like the mom from Elf. It's probably not, could it be somebody from third rock from the sun who was not an alien? Oh, oh, oh. Yes, actress, please. Is it Jillian Anderson? Correct.

Who is Scully from the X-Files. Right, right, right. All right, green wedge. The term anosmia refers to the loss of which of the five senses. Chris. Smell. Smell. Because nose is right in there.

Yeah. A nose. No nose. Last question. Orange Wedge. Which UK department store has doorman called carriage attendants who wear green and gold uniforms? Colin. That has got to be Herod's. I cannot name another famous UK department. Selfridge? I think that's one. Certainly, yeah. Certainly not one more famous than Herod's.

All right, good job, Brains. Hey. So this week, I was brainstorming about a bunch of things, and I was like, oh, accessory. It can apply to so many things, fashion accessories, peripherals or dongles of tech, accessories to crime. So I'm super curious what you guys are doing. Mine is pretty weird. So this week, accessories pull it all together. My mind immediately went to toys and toy accessories.

But this quiz is not about Star Wars figures or Transformers or even Chris's favorite he-man. Oh, no. I have assembled for you two a quiz all about Barbie and Barbie accessories. I see. I see. Now, this is not just about Barbie accessories, but I've got a special emphasis on misfires and recalls and other assorted Barbie universe controversies. This will be a write-down quiz. There will be points awarded on every question, starting with the correct answer. And then to most correct. And then if neither of you are particularly close, I will award a point to my favorite answer. It is anybody's game here.

Here we go, spanning the years, the decades. Barbie's been around for a very long time. I learned a lot assembly in this quiz. I'm just going to say that at the top here. All right, here we go. First question. In 2006, Mattel released the Barbie and Tanner set. The next year, it was recalled from stores

after complaints about loose magnets in the accessories for this kit. For two points, who or what is Tanner in Barbie and Tanner. And what was the magnet-powered accessory? Oh, my gosh. Interesting. And what year was this? This was 2006, Barbie and Tanner.

Yeah. Who or what is Tanner? And what was the accessory? Oh, man. Tanner is such an all-purpose name. Do you know what I mean? It can be anything. It really could.

It really could. Were people like swallowing them? Because like Bucky Balls got recalled. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. All right.

Answers up. Answers up. Karen says Tanner is a dog and the accessory is a dog collar. Chris says, ooh, Tanner was a horse and the accessories were magnetic horseshoes. It's like Barbie learns how to shoe a horse, you know what I mean? She's pounding the nails in or it's got the magnets. Instead of the Barbie Dreamhouse, it's the Barbie Dream stable, kind of like my little pony stable. That would absolutely.

Man, great, great answers. Tanner was, in fact, Barbie's dog. So point to Karen, point to Karen there. And the problematic accessory was, so, you know, it came with a dog and other dog-related things. Oh, my God, is it poop? It was a little magnetic poop scooper that Barbie held. And so she had a little stick. It was magnetic on the end.

And it came with little, you know, you were supposed to pick up Tanner's tiny little magnetic doggy turd, basically. And parents, apparently, some parents said that the magnets could come loose. Not clear if anybody actually swallowed them. But, yeah, that was kind of the concern was, hey, we cannot have these little... So it is a bucky ball sort of situation, basically. I mean, and if I was a kid, I would put on a little doggy turds in my mouth. Sure.

I mean, I wouldn't, I mean, you know, yeah, like a little brown tic-tac. Don't put magnets in your mouth, kids. Yeah, please, seriously, do not put magnets in your mouth kids. Yeah, it is, yeah, for real, for real. All right. So, uh, we'll give two points to Karen there for a dog and dog collar. All right. in 1992

Mattel released Teen Talk Barbie Teen Talk Barbie This was actually This one You might remember this one Teen Talk Barbie rubbed many parents

and educators the wrong way For what reason Why did Teen Talk Barbie Get on the wrong side of authority figures when you are ready. You emphasize the word rub. Don't read too much into it.

Chris seems pretty confident here. Yes. Yeah, this one was in the news. Kind of turn some people off. All right, answers up. When you are ready. Chris says. Chris says, all right, first, top three joke answers to this. Number one, spelled out all of the ingredients

and how to make a Molotov cocktail. Number two, wished for the refurb. formation of the USSR. Number three, I don't know. No, the actual answer is when when button was pressed, Barbie said, math is tough. What? Chris, 100% correct. Yes, that's right. Parents, teachers, we're really not happy with this. I mean, for one reason, you don't want to be coming down on math. But for two, it also kind of played into the stereotype of, you know, Barbie and kind of girls in general, maybe not being good at math. The wrong way. Yeah, yeah.

Mattel actually eventually allowed parents to exchange their barbies if they were not happy with it for a version that did not have the math is tough phrase loaded on her. So they did release another version, not like exchange it for another Barbie. Yeah. Mattel's president at the time, she said, in hindsight, the phrase, math class is tough, while correct for many students, both male and female, should not have been included. Math class is tough. Math class is tough.

Yeah. In 1961, Barbie was gifted a very special accessory by the name of Ken. Yeah. I get the gentleman. It's good. Yeah. She didn't have a boyfriend for those first couple of years there. I actually learned, as an aside here, I didn't know that in the Barbie universe,

Did you know Barbie and Ken broke up for a few years there in the early 2000s? Yeah, Barbie and Ken broke up and Barbie was, you know, rumored to be kind of caught the eye of an Australian boogie boarder named Blaine in the Barbie universe. A lot of drama. Yeah, Ken and Barbie, they did eventually get back together a few years later. Yeah, of course. I mean, you can't stay away from Ken forever. Yeah, well, I mean, she found out that Blaine didn't have genitals either, so. You know, when I was a kid,

I noticed that they didn't have gills and I would draw them in with the murder. Good for you. Good for you. Fixing what Mattel would not. All right. So there's a question buried in here somewhere, I promise. So here is the question for you guys.

All right. The original Ken was redesigned to address a problematic part of his body. Okay. What part of Ken's body was redesigned after the original release of the doll? And you're not telling us why? I am not telling you why. You can speculate on why. If you look up a photo of the original Ken, let's just say modern day Ken looks a lot cooler than original flavor can.

I'm just, I'll just say that. Interesting. Okay. All right, answers up. Karen says they redesigned Ken's hair. Chris says they redesigned Ken's belly button. Oh, that's good, right. They ended up to reveal that he was not a clone.

Karen, right on the money. It was his hair. It was his hair, apparently. And you can see this in some of the pictures. So Ken, the original Ken doll, the hair, was a separate piece glued on top of his head, all right? Oh, okay. And it kind of came off a little bit too easy. And Ken would look a little kind of scruffy there with his.

hair head pulled off. Was it, was it like Barbie where it's like strands of hair? No, it kind of looked plastic. It kind of looked more like a like a like a like a like a like a like a like a Brillow pad honestly. So they redesigned Ken's hair to basically just be it was just molded into his head and they just painted it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So it didn't didn't come off anymore. Yeah. All right. Moving right along here to 1975. Now of course beyond Barbie and Ken, the the universe started getting bigger and bigger with Barbie's friends and, you know, family members, uh, including Skipper.

There have been many versions of Skipper over the years. 1975 saw the debut of Growing Up Skipper, which was rather quickly discontinued because of what controversial feature. Growing up Skipper. Not available for very long. Feature on the doll? Yes. Yes.

Not like a feature accessory. That's probably right. Yeah, yeah. Maybe the doll did something or it was not your ordinary skipper. All right. Answers up when you are ready. Chris says boobs, inflated, deflated. Karen has just written boobs.

I'm going to give you both the point on that one. And I'll give Chris a half point here, maybe. That's the first time I'm writing boobs, like not on a calculator. Growing up Skipper was advertised as, quote, two dolls in one because you could make Skipper, quote, grow from a young girl to a teenager in seconds. And in practice, how this worked was if you rotated her arm, her waist got longer and her boobs got bigger. I am not making this up. Maybe understandably, again, many parents said, no, this is not really appropriate. We do not want to see Growing Up Skipper.

Perhaps too many conversations we're not ready to have. So, yeah, growing up Skipper, discontinued. If you happen to have one on your shelf somewhere, probably worth a lot of money. This sounds like this is some really good engineering for that time in the toy industry. You know, it's really true. Yeah, you go back and you read almost any of these. like action figure and doll lines, like the GI Joe's or the Barbies or, you know, or, you know, again, I alluded to the He-Man figures later on.

They had some really, really good construction and good design. Yeah, it was serious business. Barbie herself has had many careers over the decades, you know, all these careers, just so many opportunities for accessories. I mean, she's been everything from an astronaut to a doctor to a chef. In 2010, Barbie became a computer end. In fact, Mattel released a Barbie book entitled, Barbie, I Can Be a Computer Engineer. Now, again, keeping with the theme here, Mattel eventually had to discontinue this book.

They pulled it from stores after complaints. Why was the book, Barbie, I Can Be a Computer Engineer, controversial? What caused, again, what rubbed? to people the wrong way. I'm just going to say sometimes people, companies, you fall into the same traps over and over again. You know what I mean?

Okay, okay, okay. Okay, all right. All right. Answers up. Let's see what we got here. I'm looking forward to see what you guys got on this one here. All right. Chris says,

Barbie was shown mishandling classified documents. Karen has written sexist workplace. Oh. I'm going to give Karen the point there. Oh, I'm just guessing. I'm going to give Karen the point there. Oh, that's unfortunate. Yeah, actually, so the book was actually available for a little while here before it surfaced on the internet. Of course, in the book, talking about being a computer engineer, Barbie says, quote, I'm only creating the design ideas. I'll need Stevens and Brian's help to turn it into a real game. I feel like I heard about this, but oh, that's so much worse than I remember.

It's almost like they're going out of their way not to learn the lesson here. It's like, come on, this is meant to be an empowering toy, or at least neutral. We're not going backward here. 2010. So, yeah, I mean, again, like, they pulled it. There was an e-book version on, you know, Amazon pulled that one, couldn't buy it anymore. Yeah, back to the drawing board. They're trying. They're trying.

In 2002, retail giant Walmart refused to stock. It didn't even reach the recall stage. Walmart said, we will not sell a Barbie set from the Happy Family Collection featuring Barbie's best friend Midge, all right? Who had been in, I guess, some other collections earlier. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. She had been well established. Why were Walmart and many parents, I might add, upset with this Midge?

What did Midge do? What was their problem with Midge in the Happy Family Collection? It was an idea that Mattel thought was good enough to make and Walmart thought was not good enough to sell. And it was ultimately discontinued, maybe in no small part because Walmart wouldn't sell it. All right, answers up. Karen says pregnant. Chris says

Midge was great with child Yes Yeah you guys both Got the right answer there First of all I want to emphasize Midge was married Her husband

Alan was part of The Happy Family Collection In the happy It was mommy and baby And Midge was pregnant Does the baby come out With a removable baby Yes

You could pull the baby Out of Midge's belly womb body and then it was an infant. And in the collection, Barbie was Dr. Barbie. So you could take the invent to Dr. Barbie, you know, for infant checkups. But Walmart and many parents felt that Midge looked too young to be having a baby. And they were concerned that it could be taken as a depiction of teen pregnancy and said, we're not going to stock it. We're not going to dance on that line. I see now. I thought it was the tiny plastic up

placenta that was in the thing that rubber band umbilical cord yeah magnets on the placenta yeah exactly yeah well they would stick to the doggy turds you don't want that right it's just not sanitary okay we're gonna we're gonna wind the quiz down here i got a couple here that are uh maybe not so much about the accessories themselves but i'm gonna give you guys a chance to do some closest closest to the mark here kind of questions all right 2020 was a presidential election year and not for the first time Barbie ran for president this is going to be a closest to the mark question here

how many times has Barbie run for president I will say they do theme it with presidential election years 2020 was not the first time so at least two how many times has Barbie run for president hmm

all right Chris and Karen Karen says three times Chris says 10 times Barbie has been on the ticket seven times since 1992 so point to Chris

very tight game here yeah so the first time Barbie ran for president was 92 perhaps stung by her defeat she sat out the 96 election but came back strong with a renewed sense of purpose in 2000 and has run every four years, yeah, since 2000. Yeah. Wow. All right. Final point.

On the line. We'll frame this last question as kind of a mini version of one of my favorite personal segments from Good Job Brain, Brad Pitt or Lasers. The format of this question is going to be a which came first, all right? Featuring some bona fide American classics here. And I would say, in my opinion, Barbie's most glamorous accessory. Which came first, Barbie's Little Pink Corvette? Or the Prince single, Little Red Corvette. Did she have other cars too? There is a rich history of Barbie's cars.

Yeah, over the years, she has had, she's had multiple corvettes, first of all. Yeah. She's had a Ferrari, she's had a Porsche, she's had a Mercedes-Benz. had a Jeep. She's got, I mean, yeah, she's Barbie rides in style. All right, which came first. I have Little Red Corvette trivia, which I can tell you after. Chris has written, Oh, oh, here we go. Chris has written Barbie Pink Corvette. Karen has written Prince. All right, I love it. We got the showdown. Prince's Little Red Corvette released as a single in 1983, taken from the album

1999, which was released in 1982. Yes. This makes the following year. Barbie's StarVet debuted in 1976. 19706 was Barbie's first Corvette.

Oh, so closer than I thought. I thought the Corvette was maybe even earlier, but I guess not. Yeah, it was closer than I thought. Yeah, and I should say here, it was, strictly speaking, not pink, pink, pink. It was purple and pink, but, you know, close enough here. They are generally pink when they give them to her. All right.

Well, we tied it up there. Chris, good job. Pulled it out at the end. You guys know your Barbie. You know your dog turds. You know your Corvettes. You know, you know your growing up skipper. And perhaps you two can someday go work for Mattel.

have a Barbie accessory that is recalled or controversial. I think that would be really cool. I remember there's a Barbie that can sun tan. One of the Barbies I read about, there was a hair color changing Barbie. And you could, if you dipped her hair in like a weak vinegar solution. Oh, like a litmus test. Yeah, it was really pretty neat.

A little Red Corvette trivia, which I promised you. Karen, you probably know that the Stevie Nick song Stand Back. Um, maybe Colin, you know this too. I mean, Karen, I know we've, we've heard it in concert live. Sure. Live. Steve Enix was listening to Little Red Corvette and she started singing the lyrics. She started improvising the lyrics to stand back over Little Red Corvette. And in fact, you just listen to Little Red Corvette and just have the stand back lyrics in front of you.

You can just sing Stand Back along to Little Red Corvette. And once she had done this, she called Prince, because obviously they know each other, and was like, listen, I did this. What do you think? like, that's, that's awesome. I'll come and play the synthesizer. So it's prints on the synthesizers and stand back is credited to Steve Enoch and Prince for the, for the melody. Yeah. He's just like I'll head over. He's like, yeah, yeah, sounds great. Let's do it. Yeah. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. The new Bimo, V.I. Porter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks, more points, more flights, more of all the things you want in a travel rewards

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That's great. You just bailed out almost immediately. Well, you are listening to Good Job Brain. This week we're talking about accessories. So I have a story. This happened in 1996, you know, the tail end of the 1900s, 1996. A man was driving on his way to visit his lady friend. It was a beautiful day surrounded by beautiful landscape.

He realized it's like, oh man, what a great photo op. You see, he was a working photographer. So he actually had cameras like in his car. So he parked the car and he loaded up film, physical photos. film into his camera snapped a few shots then went on his merry way little did he know that one of those photos would become what is now widely considered as the most viewed photograph in the history of humankind can you guess what photograph this is what do we know from this story where was this person

He was just He was driving around somewhere He took a picture outside I have a guess Karen I feel really good about it Okay okay I'll wait Grace you want to come up with the gas for it

I like Chris chew on it I'm trying to think of like what would be a photograph That would be used so much And just seen everywhere Is it something Is it like oh geez Like something that's on like a computer screen saver Or something like that

Is it the green and blue blue photo of the Windows background, the desktop background? It is. It is. Oh, okay. More commonly known as the default Windows XP wallpaper. Okay, okay, wow. The photograph has a name.

It's called Bliss, because, you know, Bliss, right? It's very peaceful. Classic rolling, low green hills, bright blue sky, a couple of clouds, like, moving, like, you're kind of like streaking across the sky. anyone and everyone who interacted with a computer in the 2000s. Seriously. The image was used pretty much in all of Microsoft's branding, their advertising. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like when they have a picture of like a machine running windows, it's just a little picture. Commercials, billboards, and it was this photo of this landscape. Now, today's show is all about accessories and it got me thinking about like, oh you know accessories in like the digital space things that we can do to like customize our and accessorize like our digital experience we change our background colors or we choose a profile avatar image but like no matter what we do digitally we have to interact with a screen right and so I was kind of inspired by by this thought to look into wallpapers digital wallpapers

which I feel like is kind of like a virtual accessory pop quiz what wallpaper do you currently have on your desktop or phone? On my phone, I have the movie poster from the movie Metropolis, the classic. Very Colin. Fritz-Lang, yeah, it is very Colin. It's the Android that C-3PO, the design was very famously kind of inspired by. My desktop is, I just only set the color. It's good job, rain orange.

But on my phone, I have my husband's sixth grade. class photo in the peak 90s because he's wearing a Chicago Bulls shirt. With that blue and white kind of daffled background that just screams school photo. I had to check because I couldn't remember and it's just the default iOS block screen. I don't even know what that looks like actually. It's a picture of growing up Skipper. Why do you have that? Chris.

Well, it was supposed to be a. GIF, but... Okay, so back to this photograph titled Bliss. I have some answers for questions that you guys might have. For example, who was this guy? Who was this guy who took this photo? Well, his name is Charles O'Rear. He not only is a professional photographer, but he used to work for National Geographic.

And it brings us to the next question that a lot of people have is, is this image real? Is it real? And if so, where is it? How can anything be this idyllic? Charles O'Rear, he confirmed and really emphasized that he took the photo. He didn't do anything to it. He just took the photo and that's what developed. So even with film camera, you know, you can do a lot of like manipulation, right? In the dark room, you're like burning and you're dodging, you're making darks look darker. And he said that he didn't do any of that. That's just right how he took the shot. If this is real, then where is this place? It's hard to believe it is literally one hour away from us.

It's Sonoma, California. Sonoma. Wine country. Yeah, dripping through there several times. You can go visit those hills today. Now it's used as a vineyard. So it's covered in those gnarly grape vines. But when Charles was there, it was just an ideal combination

of a lot of factors. First of all, that hill was covered in grass. Before then, it was a vineyard a couple years before Charles got there. The vines had had a pest infestation, so they had to pull all the vines out, which left that hill naked. So it became this untouched, grassy hill. Secondly, it recently had rained. So all the grass was like super lush, super green. And thirdly, the weather was just so good. A bit of cloud, the lighting, the blue, of the sky. It was just like a perfect combination. So how did this photograph get Microsoft's attention? How did Microsoft even learn about this photograph? So at the time, Charles was actually working on a photo book about Wine Country. Obviously, he wasn't going to use his photo because it was

like a vineless hill. It wasn't going to be included in his book. So he's like, okay, well, I'm going to make this photo available onto a stock photo service, right? So that people, or companies they could pay for the license and use that photo for like commercial purposes. So there are reports saying that that the stock photo service that Charles used was actually owned by Bill Gates. And so that maybe the XP team was like sourcing photos from that stock photo service because it was all kind of in the family. XP team is like, this is it.

We want this photo. They got in touch with Charles. And it's not like, oh, they just want to buy a. license to use the photo. Microsoft wanted to own complete rights. Exclusive. Much better, much better to simply, when you have infinite money, get it, lock it down, throw the money at it, and then never have to worry about licensing ever again. So how much did Microsoft pay? Oh. We don't really know. Okay. Charles, Charles O'Rear, he had to sign a confidentiality agreement. So again,

And Charles used film for this photograph. So it's not like they can just download the photo onto their computer. Like a big part of Microsoft owning the rights meant that they have to have the physical film. Right. They want those negatives. Yeah. Yeah. But due to the reported value or what Microsoft was going to pay Charles, the shipping companies wouldn't mail it because of insurance.

Oh, okay. So this is how. So this is how people know, like, it has to. to be at least six digits. Right, right. If they're going to balk at the insurance on it. Right. Right.

Wow. Microsoft flew Charles with the negatives to the office. That's nothing. It costs nothing. Yeah. When you're talking about, when you're talking about spending a million dollars in the photo, you spend an extra $300 with the guy on an airplane.

To buy the plane. From San Francisco to Seattle, it's like not even that far. That's like a transaction fees. Yeah. Yeah. It certainly is not the most expensive photograph to be purchased. I've seen photographs like at auction houses, they get sold for like millions and millions. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Maybe it's not the most expensive, but it definitely is the most viewed. In closing the segment out, I have a few mind-blowing facts about photographs in general. So the first photograph ever taken was in France in 1826. out of all the photos taken from 1826 to now 222, one third of them were taken in the last three years. Oh, okay. Sure. Yeah. Practically, every person has a camera on them at all times now, right?

I mean, anybody over the age of 12. Even, you know, 10 years ago, you couldn't just take your phone and just be constantly taking pictures all the time because you'd fill up the space on your, on your eye, three or whatever it was right right right but now a photo is like photos takes up so little space they have to like add stuff to photos to get them take up more space live you're like photos right exactly panoramic yeah so now it's just like it's just nothing you can't fill up your phone by taking photos it would be it would be ridiculous so yeah you just do whatever you want one third of all photos ever taken the history happened within the last three years that is actually pretty staggering to think about yeah it is here's a trivia question for you users share the

most images on what app 6.9 billion photos per day. Wow. I'm going to say based on number of users and the fact that you can just sort of upload like batches of photos and it kind of encourages that. I'm going to say Facebook. Oh, it is not Facebook. Colin. Man, I'm torn. I was going to say I go back and forth, line or WhatsApp. I was going to guess what. It is. What's app. And the last fact is, the average user has around 2,100 photos on their smartphone. Wow. Yeah, I'm going to look.

Let's check. Let me see. Okay, well, there's also like screenshots, too. I take a lot of screenshots. Okay, let's minus the screenshots, minus the videos, 23,000. So the average is 2100. I have 23,000. 6,100.

18,689. how wow wow average user 2100 you know it's because we have kids yeah exactly it's the kids that's exactly what it is we have a an app that uh my my son uses when he brushes his teeth it makes sure that he's brushing because it follows the motion of the no way yeah yeah yeah and then at the end it's like take your picture now that you're done brushing your teeth and it puts a little fake it puts a little hat on you and you earn more hats by brushing your teeth so like it a r is a little hat on you and I'm looking at my photo albums now. I have 550 pictures of my kid

who was just brushed his teeth. When Johan Rawl received the letter on Christmas Day 1776, he put it away to read later. Maybe he thought it was a season's greeting and wanted to save it for the fireside. But what it actually was was a warning, delivered to the Hessian colonel, letting him know that General George Washington

was crossing the Delaware and would soon attempt. his forces. The next day, when Raw lost the Battle of Trenton and died from two colonial Boxing Day musket balls, the letter was found, unopened in his vest pockets. As someone with 15,000 unread emails in his inbox, I feel like there's a lesson there. Oh, well, this is the Constant, a history of getting things wrong. I'm Mark Chrysler.

Every episode, we look at the bad ideas, mistakes, and accidents that misshaped our world. Find us at Constantpodcast.com, or wherever you guys. get your podcasts. All right, folks, yes, accessories, accessories, accessories, what could I possibly be talking about? Well, let's begin in December of 1989, and let's take a little trip to the movies. December, 1989, it turns out, big month for big movies, National Lampoon's Christmas vacation was out.

Back to the Future Part 2 was in theaters. Oh, wow. The Little Mermaid was in was in theaters. Those were three of the biggest. Look Who's Talking was actually still. Remember that one? We must have spent a lot of time in the theater during the Christmas season because I saw all those movies in the theater.

In the theaters? Yes. But today, I want to start us off with a little clip from the 15th biggest in the box office dollars movie of December 19. Let's roll that clip. What is that? I don't know. Power glove.

Oh! I love the power glove. it's so bad it's so bad his eyes are burning a hole through Jenny Lewis in this scene for the incredibly

incredibly memorable scene from the 1989 film The Wizard about a young boy who travels across the country to attend a fictitious Nintendo tournament yeah the Wizard Fred Savage Jenny Lewis released on

December 15th, 1989 the same month as the Power Glove controller and accessory thing for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The Wizard was an ad for, like, Nintendo. It was an ad for Super Mario Bros. 3, which was going to come out at a couple of months after that. And it was a big old ad for the Power Glove, because there's a scene where the main characters meet this kid, Lucas Barton, who is going to, he's the main antagonist, basically, he was going to kick this kid's ass at the video game, you know, competition. His guy is so cool that he has,

he has his whole Nintendo entourage all around him. He has all his little minion children who, like, set up his Nintendo for him and just sit and watch him play it. And he has a power glove, and he's got it in this big metal case with his name on it. It opens up and takes the power glove out. You know, it's the first time any kid is seeing this. Nobody's heard of this thing, right? and he puts it on he puts a glove on his hand and he's playing the driving game rad racer

and instead of just sitting there you know like some sort of fool or simpleton the standard condo controller like yeah like a yeah he he's just holding his hand out in front of the tv his hands in a fist and he's moving his hand back and forth like he's like he's gripping the steering wheel of a Ferrari sweat you know and cool as a cucumber this kid. The car on the screen is moving back and forth across the road, you know, with the movements of his hand. Everybody is just, is crap in their pants because like, what is this, what is this wizard? How did it even get this thing? We all saw this and was like, oh my God, I have to have this. Make me a God. And be able to control Nintendo games, you know,

with, with my outstretched hand. Now, then, fortunately, everybody learns that the power glove is in fact available. It came out in December 1990. It was ready. It was ready for the holiday season. Well, Super Mario Brothers 3, which was at the end of that movie, didn't come out until April. But the Power Glove was available that Christmas and could be asked for, you know, that moment.

There was a commercial, to the commercial for the Power Glove, not the movie, The Wizard, which was a commercial for the Power Glove, the actual, the commercial for the Power Glove. It's the most amazing thing in the world, by the way. Again, it shows, first of all, it just skips right past children and just comes to a man.

it's just there's just a man walks out and he walks out not to a television but to a massive projector screen in the dark and he walks up to this big projector on which like mike tyson's punchout is is being projected and he's got the power glove on and he just stands in front of this projector just throwing haymakers pow pow and he socks the guy in the face and you know beats mike tyson with the with the power i mean it makes It looks incredible. And then it's just like everything else is child's play. Wow. So, yeah, it's a glove that you put on. It goes up over your hand and then like halfway up your forearm. And it's like a black cloth glove, but then on top of it, big plastic part on top of

your hand. And then on the forearm part, it's a little mini keyboard full of buttons. There's a Nintendo D pad, a directional pad. You're supposed to reach over with your left hand and like punch in calibration and codes and stuff like that, like on your right hand, which even just the act of doing it, because we see Lucas do that in the wizard, that in and of itself is part of the appeal of this whole thing. Like, I've got this keyboard on my hand and I'm like, typing out of another hand. Yeah. The thing is, the actual power glove experience, as many people found out, it was just this

very, very early, very fiddly, very low fidelity, like motion control and finger control sort of technology. And if you actually tried to play Mike Tyson's punch out, I go, bam, you know, with your waving your fists, punching it up in the air, not much was really going to happen. You know what I mean? You really had to have very, you know, little controlled movements that it could sense it. It turned out to be this very, very quick, very flash in the pan, fad. It sold for that 89 holiday season, and that was basically it. The thing is, though, it has just had this afterlife as this icon of the 8-bit gaming in the 1980s culture. It was in a nightmare in Elm Street movie.

It was in Freddy's Dead, The Final Nightmare, where Freddy, like, there's a sequence where Freddy, like, uses a power glove instead of his usual Nike glove thing. What? I do not remember that. I don't think I made it that far in the series. Watch Freddy's Dead, the Final Nightmare. You'll see it. You know, people wear it, like, Halloween costumes.

You know, there's power glove branded oven myths you can. you can. I just saw that. I just saw that somewhere on the internet. Those are really popular. They probably made more of those than the actual like power glow. I mean, it just, it looks cool as hell. Like what it lacked in basic functionality. If you look at any power glove controller, it looks incredibly futuristic. Oh, yeah. Cool emblematic. Well, and also like, I mean, any, I feel like anyone who's ever played any kind of sport where you have like a uniform, like, when you're putting that uniform on, you feel so cool. And like, you're putting on, you're like putting on your Nintendo uniform. You're like, I'm getting ready to, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

I started looking into, well, where did the power glove actually come from? And it has this really interesting backstory in the sense of, like, how it was designed and where it was birthed from and who it was connected to. So in the early 80s, there was an engineer whose name was Thomas Zimmerman, and he was doing a lot of thinking about, like, gestural control. He was thinking about, like, orchestra conductors. He liked the air conduct and orchestra, and he's like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if he could control a computer? by moving your hand around.

Like a ceramic. And he actually, on his own, came up with a prototype using LEDs and optical sensors and like a standard like a gardening glove. And he kind of put like LEDs into tubes. And so when you bend the fingers, it refracted the light. And then he had optical sensors at the end to see how much light was coming through. Then he knew what fingers you were bending. So he's like, he put that prototype together.

And he ends up actually getting a job at Atari in 1983. And Atari offers him 10,000. for his patent. And he's like, no. That's too little. He's like, this is big. And he ends up meeting another guy working at Atari. And this guy's name is Jaron Lanier. Jaron. Jaron Lainier. And you might have heard of Jaron Lanier. Jaron Lanier. Jaron Lanier is the guy who invented the term virtual reality. Oh. He is the person who coined if he, he is a very well-known figure in that space, you know, been an engineer for a very long time, very well known as having come up

with the term virtual reality. The two of them, they leave Atari, they found a company called VPL research and they turn Zimmerman's idea into a product. You can see into a product you can actually buy called the data glove. And actually data glove now has become, it's become like a generic term for like a gestural control glove. Oh, interesting. But that's basically, they call it the data glove. It costs about $9,000. They did it with fiber optic bundles, basically, and they could detect movements,

they could detect where your fingers, how your fingers were bent, and also like the positioning of your hand. They were also the first company around the same time. They started just doing virtual reality stuff, like early virtual reality stuff. They were the first company to actually like manufacture and sell like as a consumer product

that you could buy a VR headset. And they called it, this is in the 80s, right? They called it the iPhone, E-Y-E iPhone. You could buy this stuff from them if you had like $200,000

because like you also needed a state-of-the-art Silicon graphics computer like do anything with it. But like they built them for NASA. Like NASA, you know, they built like VR stuff for NASA that like, oh, we want to try this out. Potentially like astronauts controlling stuff

in space too. You know, maybe this would be good for that. So, okay, you got this $200,000 super futuristic. up like NASA has one, you know, people are getting, starting to get very excited about virtual reality in the late 80s. And then there is a toy licensing company called AGEE that comes kind of knocking around. And they're like, we want to turn your $200,000 VR tech into a toy. We're going to license it and make it a toy. And they're like, okay, give us money, right? Like, yeah, it's fine. Okay. And then so then AGE starts to go to the toy companies to start telling them like, oh, we

want to do. We have the license to the data glove. Oh, I see. And we're going to make a toy version of it. They end up selling the Mattel, the toy company Mattel, which made the power glove. They kind of sold them on this idea. What they actually did was they took a data glove, $9,000 data glove, hooked it up to the $100 Nintendo Entertainment System. They let the CEO of Mattel play the first guy on Punchout, Glass Joe, with the data glove. Now, if you know anything about the first guy on Punch Out Glass Joe, it is that you almost can't lose, like literally just as long as you are hitting buttons and throwing punches, like you will knock this guy out. So the CEO of Mattel doesn't really play a lot of video games, takes the data glove, just starts punching the air, and knocks out Glass Joe, and is so excited about this, she is like, yeah, we're doing this. We're doing this. Amazing.

You know, it takes wonderful. I assume you'll work out all the details. I don't know. But then it's like, okay, well, oops. Like, AGE went to Mattel and told them that they can take this $10,000 piece of incredibly futuristic NASA hardware and turn it into an Nintendo Entertainment System accessory that Mattel can sell for $100. And when Mattel's going to sell this for $100, that means that the cost.

that means that the cost of goods to make the gloves has got to be like 20 bucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, less than the price. It can't even be, it has to be like a quarter to a fifth of what the final after the wholesalers after everything, right? And the crazy part of this is that they did it. They actually came up with a way to do it. So they had to do two things. One, they had to measure finger bends. Like, are your finger straight?

Are they slightly bent? or they totally bent, are you making a fist? Okay. Right? And they had to figure out where you're, what the positioning of your hand was kind of like in, in the space in front of you. So finger bends, they come up with, they used electrically conductive ink. They took like plastic and put the conductive ink on the plastic. And then when you bend your finger, it can pass electricity through it.

But if you bend your finger, you can cut it off. And then it's like, oh, I'm getting less resistance now. therefore the finger is bent because the contact point moves yeah the current is not passing through the ink right hand motion or the location of your hand in space again ingenious

cheap as heck off the shelf solution the power glove that's got a big chunky black sort of nodule that sits in the top of your hand in there there's two speakers audio speakers and then you had to take the sensor bar for this thing

which was an L, it was an upside-down L-shaped and you had to put it around your tube television and you sit it on the TV. In the sensor bar at each corner, there's a microphone. And so the power glove is emitting an ultrasonic beep. The microphones are picking it up. And so the microphones listen for how loud the beep is

and that's how they know, oh, the hands over there because it's louder in this side than it is on that side and it is in the corner. put aside for a second the fact that this is this is cheap as heck and super fiddly and didn't really work that well it's kind of a miracle that they were able to engineer and figure out how to do this yeah yeah yeah for like an everyday setup they're taking a technology that is already kind of at the the bleeding edge maybe too to you know ahead of its own time and trying to make a subset of it that is itself also ahead of its own time it's pretty incredible and giving you a toy version like not even a consumer version of version of it, like a kid's toy version, that kind of does it. It's the same thing. Crazy. One of the real problem is the thing would lose calibration a lot. Like you had to like hold your hand and like calibrate it like every time you wanted to play a game. You really had to calibrate first. And then also every game used a slightly kind of different control scheme

because essentially so it's like mapping, you're mapping hand movements and finger bending into button inputs. So for a game like a Mario type game, you want to like you like lift your hand up to make him make Mario jump maybe bend a finger to make him run or not all that kind of that kind of interpretation that had on board like computing to do that but you had to type in a code for each game and so there was just a lot of stuff that you kind of had to do before yeah you had to put in the right code for the game like load up the controls yep you have to use the this is this is why you get the crew of children around to help you set all your stuff exactly Lucas really had uh yeah exactly

he had it all planned out there. There was just a whole lot of setup and tweaking and recalibration and stuff like that, like kids didn't want to do. Kids want to put the thing on and just have their body movements magically translated. If you're doing this, if you're doing a motion-controlled video game, you want to be having fun and energetic, you want to bounce around and move versus like having to really stiffly move your hand in a very defined area. Yeah.

You can be more emotive and have more motion by holding a controller and jumping up and down or bending it back and forth, you know, that you can't really with the Power Glove. The Power Glove is actually a big success for that Christmas season. As a flash-in-the-pan, hop holiday toy, they sold over a million of them worldwide. Mattel made $80 million off of it, which is a huge amount of money to make for a one Christmas season toy.

And really, the toy industry is very seasonal anyway. You know, you make all your money off Tickle Me Elmo one year, and then kids move on to the next thing. so it actually like it was fine that was the end of it it was the end of the power glove now of course it was not the end of consumer virtual reality VPL a lot of the things

that their actual products that they were making because they had the they had the iPhone they had the data glove and they had a full body suit and a lot of that stuff is actually their like commercial products were in the movie The Lawnmower Man that very yeah I remember that one

and people's fascination with VR continue not. And the stuff that we use today is really just the direct descendants of that very early work. So it just, the power glove just remains. It's very interesting. It was way too early from a technological perspective, but from a toy perspective, from a cultural perspective, it was the perfect, perfect timing for this very, very early consumer VR tech that, yes, is literally tied directly to the person who invented the term virtual reality, which is, spring. And that's our show. Thank you guys for joining me and thank you guys listeners for listening in. Hope you learned stuff about the Power Glove Barbie accessory recalls about the Windows XP default wallpaper. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and on all podcast apps and on our website, good job, bring.com. This podcast is part of Airwave Media Podcast Network. Visit Airwavemedia.com to listen, subscribe to us. other shows like The Constant, a science history podcast about getting things wrong, the pirate

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