Good Job, Brain! - 32: Ugh, It's Just a Fad

Episode Date: October 8, 2012

Still remember how to do the Macarena? We reminisce and discuss the origins of Pogs, singing raisins, ridiculous trend diets, Sanrio, and Hello Kitty. If you think modern fads are nuts, we also talk about the ridiculous crazes from the old-timey days like collecting limes, portable marionettes, and the first 3D movie mania. ALSO: bizarre headlines, and we finally caught Carmin San Mateo and got our music quiz back! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, band of brilliant bantering bantas. This is Good Job, Brain, your weekly quiz show and off-beat trivia podcast. Today shows episode 32. And of course, I'm your humble host, Karen. And we are your hearty party of our. Artie and Smarty Farties. Oh.

I'm Colin. I'm Dana. I'm Chris. I heartily approve of the Star Wars reference. Yes. Just for you. And we got some bizarre headlines to share, huh? I read a story recently, and I thought to myself, my goodness, this combines so many things that we hear a good job, brain, love.

And so I absolutely wanted to share all of this with you in a segment that we are titling, Honey, I'm telling you, you're making me blue. That's why I know. It's true. Yes, honey, you're making me blue. Beekeepers in the Alsace region of France discovered something very, very strange recently. Twelve different apiaries in this one region. They were collecting up their honey, and something turned out to be very wrong.

The honey was coming out colored funny colors, like blue and green. What? And this was very bad. And they can't sell it. Like, nobody would actually eat this weird blue-colored... I would. Yeah. They said, no, we can't do anything with this.

So they had to figure out what was going on. The bees were all producing blue and green honey. So they launched an investigation, and they find out that the bees had picked up an interesting new hobby. Instead of going around to flowers and whatever, they were heading down to the neighborhood biofuel production plant and loitering. And the way that they make biofuel is they break down food matter. And as it turns out, they get waste from food production facilities delivered to them. And this particular plant was processing waste from M&M Mars. No!

The plant was taking deliveries, bins of unsellable M&Ms and bringing them into the plant, but they were uncovered. And so a lot of times the bees have developed a habit of chowling down on the shells of M&M's. Because it's sweet and sugar. Of course, it's everything bees love. And so they were jumping on these, on these, M&M shells and actually eating M&M shells instead of doing their job and then actually that turned the honey blue and green and I saw this as well with a photo of the and you're

absolutely right yeah it is green and blue yeah like they've got so they had a honey that was like a clear see you think you want blue honey but like they had a honey it was sort of a clear green color but then the rest of the stuff they were showing was actually this really opaque muddy blue, purple-colored honey. Yeah, when I saw that, there was another article that I guess was related. This happened, in all seriousness, this happened, I guess, last year as well. In New York, there were some bees. Beekeepers noticed they were producing bright red honey that, in a similar way,

they had traced it back to a Marasino Cherry production facility, and they were picking up the coloring, and it was getting its way into the honey there. That sounds tasty. I think the tragedy at all this, though, is, the increase in diabetes. Oh, my God. The obesity. I'm sorry, I brought it up.

All right, and it's time for our general trivia segment. Pop Quiz Hot Shot. Everybody get your barnyard buzzers ready. I got a random trivia pursuit card here. And let's start with Blue Edge Geography. What St. Louis rapper leads a crew called the St. Lunatics. St. Louis rapper. Dana, come on

Trick question Guys, is it getting hot in here? Oh, is it Nellie? It is Nellie. It's from St. Louis? He's from St. Louis. I don't think I knew. I thought he was from more southern, a more southern state.

You could give me every hint in the world, and I would not have gotten that question. Nellie himself could have given Chris a hint. Right. He could have, okay, here, how about this hint, Chris? Nellie walks in the front door. All right. Pop Culture, Pink Wedge. What name is Lauren?

Lawrence Thoreau, better known by. Lawrence of Arabia? No. What? Pop culture. Pop culture? Well, sure. Lawrence Torode is Mr. T. Correct.

Mr. T. That is a very classy name. All right, Yellow Wedge. Who was crowned Emperor of the Romans, effectively the first Holy Roman emperor in the year 800? Oh, is it Constantine? No. effectively the first Holy Roman Emperor

Is this Alexander the Great? No, also starts with a C though Yeah, it does Is it one of the Caesars? No Charlemagne Yes Oh, good!

Retrieval Nice save That's what I thought I knew C, but We get there eventually Yeah Purple Wedge What ism of the 1950s

Inspired the Crucible by Arthur Miller Oh, Chris Um, oh, McCarthyism. Correct, McCarthyism. Uh, Greenwich for Science. What room and God were volcanoes named for? Oh. Colin?

Uh, Vulcan. Correct. Vulcan. Orange Wedge, last question. Which is not a likely ingredient in a Michelada? Uh-huh. Is it beer, tequila, lime, chili, salt, soy sauce, or tomato juice? Uh, tequila.

Correct. Yeah, good old Michelada. It's a beer-based cocktail. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Quite tasty on a hot day. Is it? So is it made of all those things? I usually make, when I make them, I usually do beer, lime juice, salt.

Mine's pretty basic, but another common one is with tomato juice, absolutely. And soy sauce? Yeah, yeah. Ew. All right, and we're moving into our topic of the week, which is FAD. Everybody is Everybody Everybody's doing it

But if you want to do the popular thing Oh whoa Well to follow away But if you want to find something unique Oh whoa You can look that way All right And I want to start off

By asking you guys You know, growing up There have been a lot of crazy fads Were there any fads you were totally into I think the The closest thing that I could say As a fad that I got into was California raisins.

In the, in the, old late 80s, early 90s, right, when the California Raisin Advisory Board or Calrab came up with a, in retrospect, absolutely genius marketing campaign. It killed it. For raisins. Oh, yeah.

With a claymation, the little dancing. Oh, yeah. It was claymation, dancing, raisins, singing and dancing, heard it through the grapevine, you know, making the raisins into a duop group, basically. And it just took off.

Yeah. The way you're describing this is sounds insane. It sounds really. Ridiculous. Right. It's a life of its own. Revival of 50s, 60s era music and very clever. I mean, claymation in and of itself, getting more and more interesting.

It was technically adept in that era. It just happened to take off. And so I got into it because I was collecting the figurines. And there was actually a raisin board, a California Raisin Advisory Board. Yeah, California Raisin Advisory Board. Right. The increased consumption of raisins. And they still, I mean, it's still around, I think.

Kids were dressing as California Raisins for Halloween. You can get all kinds of California Raisin plushes and toys. But, I mean, for me, it was a TVC. By kids. There was a cartoon. There was a California Raisins' Christmas special I was on, you know. And so it was... Like, are they even cute?

They are. Oh, yeah. So, I mean, I still have all the figures. Like, I literally have all but, like, a handful of the California Raisin figures because I, like, spent, you know, all that time and I, that period of my childhood, those few years, like, building a collection of them. As we know, I collected all kinds of things as a kid. I collected Statue of Liberty stuff.

California is one of coins, rocks. It was really cool. I don't know. I don't know if you picked up on that. I was super cool. Awesome. We need more dried fruit character bands. That'd be great.

It's sad that we've only had the one. Yeah. Crazen. The Pennsylvania prunes never really caught on. Quicks wasn't as much as big a hit. So I was reading BuzzFeed, which is a great source of bad reminiscence. and I saw one about the babysitters club, and I was all about the babysitters club when I was younger. I don't, me too, and I don't even remember what really happened in those books.

It was just a bunch of girls. There wasn't crime fighting, right? It was more just like high school drama. There were mysteries occasionally that they had to solve. And it's like, who's been playing pranks on the babysitters while they're like random, random. I do remember a lot of my friends who are girls really hugely into those books. Yeah. There was a time when I was really, really into E.T.

Like, when E.T. came out. You guys in, like, wrinkly things. Like, you like the raisins and you like E.T. I mean, it was such a huge hit when that movie came out. And I was. I was just a sucker for E.T. merchandise. And, like, they had E.T. trading cards. He's not even cute.

He scared me. Yeah. He really scared me. He is. I mean, but isn't that kind of the triumph? He's like a nightmare tree. They could make even this ugly little alien. You could see his organs. You can see his heart.

But, yeah, I mean, any piece of crap at the supermarket, if it had E.T.'s picture on it, I would pester my mom to buy it. You know, I was the kid that the marketer is like, all right, yeah, just make it look like E.T. Kids will buy it. Like, that was me. The first thing that jumped in my mind for this episode was, of course, maybe one of the quintessential, crazy, ridiculous, why did this ever become popular in the first place fad of the 90s, which was Pogs. Oh, yeah. Hoggs all started with everyone's favorite obsolete job, the milkman. When they would deliver milk to your house back in the day, how it came in like a glass

bottle, and what they would do is just put a round cardboard cap on top of it just to cover up the bottle of milk basically, because the milkman is just bringing it to your house. And so this milk, of course, back in the day, we're talking about like the 20s, 30s. It wasn't homogenized milk. So when you take that cardboard cap off, you peel it off, and all the cream, as they say, has risen to the top. And when you peel it off, it's got cream stuck to it. So, mom would just give it to the kids.

Like, here, lick this, you know? Oh. No, it's delicious. No, it's, oh, it's like the most delicious thing. Oh, no, my parents would tell stories of, like, fighting with the siblings over who got to lick the cream off the cap. Yeah. Absolutely.

I guess you do that with yogurt now, right? Like, when you peel off the yogurt thing, you look at yogurt. Yeah, it's like looking the yogurt cap, exactly. And so, mom would give those to the kids. And so, of course, the basic rule of good job brain when we're talking about the olden days is you saved everything and there were, you know, so of course the kids saved these cardboard caps because you don't really have much else to play with. And so Pogs was a game. Once they collected enough of these cardboard caps, what you could do is you'd stack the caps up on the floor and then

you'd take another cap and you'd throw it down hard at the stack. And what you'd then hopefully do by hitting the stack is you'd flip the caps, the milk covers out of the stack. There's many, many variants for how these rules might go, but, you know, because it's just made up, hey, nothing else to do. So it's pretty fun because you hit it and then the caps flip up and then if the caps flip up, if they land face

up on the ground, you get to keep them. Right. And if they land face down, they go back into the stack, basically. You can play either everybody has their own caps and you play and whoever collects the most at the end is the winner or you can play whatever caps you have in your hand at the end of the game.

They're yours now. Yeah, play for Play for keeps. Exactly. So that's what kids would do with Pogs. And so basically, this got very popular in Hawaii. But what's hilarious is, as I'm doing the research for this and finding out about the game, as it turns out, there is a pretty strong theory that this came from the place where everything seems to come from Japan. There is actually a game that dates back to the 17th century called Minco. They would print pictures of characters or like samurai or whatever on cardboard, on really on tough cardboard. And it's not surprising that something, culturally Japanese would make its way to Hawaii. Exactly, where there were a lot of Japanese immigrants, especially in those times. So, now, kids would play this game back in the day, and then, of course, it fell out of favor because you're just sort of playing with cardboard. In 1991, it's very interesting. They were able to trace this back to a single person.

In 1991, there was a teacher. Her name was Blossom Galbiso. She was an elementary school teacher in Hawaii. And then she used this game, I think a modified version of this game that she used to play when she was a child, and she modified it to teach math to her students. somehow, I don't know, like, you know, putting numbers on the pogs or, you know, putting numbers on the discs themselves. This is considered to be the point at which the fads started.

The kids really liked the game. They started playing the game, and then other kids in other schools and Hawaii started playing the game, and the teachers wanted to spread it around because it was a cool way to learn math. Game itself start becoming more popular. And what then happens is a lot of... The math goes away. It goes right back to what it's supposed to be.

First things first. So as it starts to get popular, So first of all, printing up little cardboard discs that are about the size of a half dollar is pretty actually easy. So a lot of businesses and schools in Hawaii start making them and passing them out as promotional items or whatever. And they start putting their logos on them. And one of the companies that did this was a company that produced a fruit drink that was made at Passion Fruit, Orange, and Guava. And the drink itself is called Pog. So here's the thing.

You can still buy this drink. Very popular drink. Apparently, it's delicious. You can get it to Hawaii and some stores, like, especially on the West Coast. So it goes nuts in Hawaii. It quickly spreads, I mean, it spreads so fast to the continental United States. And, I mean, people just jump on it. They market it. And at some point along the line, the concept of the slammer gets introduced, which is a big, thick metal pog that you throw onto the stack.

It's the hero class. It's the elite. So basically, then, the game, by the time it reached suburban Connecticut, which is where my brother got really into it, the rule was you had a slammer, and you threw the slamer at the stack of pogs. So, of course, schools banned this because kids are throwing that on it. And all they are, well, it's the gambling aspect. They banned it because, like, they don't want kids taking other kids stuff and kids crying and them having to sort out who owns what.

One of my earliest jobs was as a summer camp counselor, a day camp counselor, and we did have to ban that at our camp. I mean, I'm a few years older, so probably I would have been, you know, a little bit older to actually play with the pogs. But we did. It was whatever that first summer that they, this burst through, the kids would bring them, and it was, they played, as you said, for keeps with the slammers, meaning that some kid would always get his or her feelings hurt of

losing pogs, and more importantly, the parents were like, I'm buying you these pogs and you're losing them at day camp. It's so we had to issue an edict, no more pogs at camp. Kids were not allowed to bring pox. Your tough love. The kid is not good at house. I'm sorry. You just need to practice, Jamie. Well, I was thinking it's just you just don't want to have to be dealing with that kind of stuff, you know. As quickly as it shot into being like a white hot star, it immediately fizzled out. And I'm sure a bunch of people lost their shirts on this because buying pogs and selling them.

Oh, that whole market. Yeah, I mean, they were probably, there were probably a lot of people left with a lot of inventory of pogs that they had bought that overnight became from like white hot collectible that they could sell for like $20 for a piece of cardboard. if it was quote unquote rare to worthless, worthless garbage. Yeah. Let's take a trip back to the olden days. I want to ask you guys a question.

Who are Meg, Joe, Amy, and Beth? The Little Women. Yes. The characters from Little Women, a very classic American book by Louisa May Alcott. And the book chronicled basically the lives of the four March sisters, Meg, Joe, Amy, and Beth. during the Civil War era

and it really kind of described the American home life you know what the women did when the men are off to war and there is a really memorable part of the book where Amy who was 12 years old at the time got severely punished and completely

humiliated at school and what was the cause of this it was the fad of limes pickled limes yeah Amy was caught storing limes in her school desk at that time I guess teachers treated limes like like a contraband, and this was a real thing.

Yeah, okay. Growing up reading the book, I got really confused because, you know, why would limes be a fad? Also, wouldn't they be kind of expensive? Although pickled limes sound intriguing. It seems so random. And for the longest time, actually, you know, like you guys, I thought it was maybe a name for something else. Yeah. You know, maybe it was like a candy that was green or something.

For drugs. It's a street name for drugs. I did some research, and yes, it's really referencing the actual fruit, limes, and pickled limes. During that era, especially in the New England part of the country, candy stores used to sell pickled limes in, like, glass jars of very beautiful, or in barrels. And they're really popular because they were really cheap. At that time, the import tariff was really low because they weren't classified as fresh fruit, but they weren't pickles either. And also, I mean, transporting fresh fruit to New England, like transporting limes to New England must have been impossible. unless you pickled them and put them in barrels that would hold up over a long...

Because they're coming from... Somewhere tropical, I would imagine. Yeah, exactly. That's why it's so cheap. And so kids actually could buy a bunch with their pocket money. So what did kids do with them? They ate them. So here I'm going to read a short passage from the book.

All right. From Little Women. And here's Amy describing the Lyme craze, the Lymeania. Why, you see, the girls are always buying them. And unless you want to be thought mean, you must do it too. It's nothing but limes now, for everyone is sucking them in their desk in school time and trading them off for pencils, bead rings, paper dolls, or something else at recess. If one girl like another, she gives her a lime.

If she's mad with her, she eats one before her face. Girls are so mean. So mean. This is Mean Girls' Civil War edition. She ate the lime right in her face. She got that line right in front of me. Damn. She got limed.

They might say. So here's a question. What did they taste like? Yeah. Are they salty lime? I'm guessing it must counteract the sweetness somehow. Because, I mean, I have to say, as you're describing this, I realize now I have heard of pickled lemons. And I'm wondering, it must be somehow similar.

So I don't know. I've never had them, but that'll be my guess. Maybe they're less tart. If kids are going gaga over them, I would assume they're, like, absolutely freaking delicious and sweet and tangy and whatnot. Well, maybe in comparison to everything else they have in, like, the dead of winter in New England. Yeah, exactly. It's like, oh, God, at least it tastes like something. This pickled sponge is terrible.

Dana is absolutely right. Apparently, when they say pickled, they mean preserved in salt. So a lot of the food historians found old recipes, and most of them called for. salt. And these pickled limes aren't sweet. They're extremely sour and extremely salty. Which sounds terrible. There was candy

that was kind of like that, that print your tongue and you do it because of... Sour Patch Tids a little bit. Or warheads. You bring up another fad. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, I can totally see that because, I mean, that was a fad for a while and it was all about like, oh, can you take it? Can you take it? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Speaking. You hold it in your mouth, you know, and speaking of summer camp, that was another thing we had to ban was the atomic warheads, yeah, because the kids were daring each other, I can have three of them on mouth, and kids were, it was like, no one wanted to say no, and the kids were getting, like, tongue blisters, and it was just the amount of things, if you want to see what you have to ban, just get a bunch of seven-to-eight-year-olds together. No, if you want to see what the latest fat is, just ask camp counselors every year, what did you have to ban this year?

Wow. I want to pickle some lines now. I know. I think she should handle some limes and find out. All right, lime picklin party. Kind of on a related note, I decided to look at fad diets. Oh, that's good. There are hundreds of fad diets. There's so many, but so I am only looking at the really weird ones.

Excellent. Yeah, that's my filter for this. So speaking of the limes and the sour things, do you know what's in the master cleanse diet? It is, hold on. Lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper. Yes. Oh, no, yeah. And water.

And water. Water and water. Well, they all have water in, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it's like all of these things work because you're not taking in any calories whatsoever, right? So, yeah, of course you lose weight. You're not eating.

Yeah, but it's the makeup of the actual diet itself, which is junk science, but. That's the way most of these diets work is that you're not taking in calories at all. So the Master Clean's diet is also called the lemonade diet or the maple syrup diet. And it started like 50 years ago, more than 50 years ago was when they first kind of invented it. I remember when my mom used to be on it. Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. But then Beyonce said she lost her.

20 pounds for dream girls using the master cleanse and then it became a fad and you're getting just enough sugar from the maple syrup yeah to keep your neurons yeah yeah yeah so another um fad diet that kind of caught on because a celebrity like was rumored to have done it is the baby food diet where you eat about 14 portions of baby food during the day and then you have maybe a healthy dinner but basically you're getting all of your nutrients from baby food yeah Who was that? Which celebrity was that? That was Jennifer Aniston. And this is even worse because the baby food has been processed down so much, you know,

that your body is not even doing the minimal calorie, you know, burning work of digesting your food. So a diet where you also need to curate the food, but in your mouth is the chewing diet. You're supposed to chew the food until it becomes purified, like it becomes so. A slosh. Yeah, and then spit it out. Oh, you don't eat? Like, while you're chewing, you'll be, like, absorbing. Can it be a diet if you're not actually consuming the food?

It was invented in the early 1990s. It was propagated or purporting. And Kellogg, the cereal impresario, actually was into it a bit. Another old-timey diet was the tapeworm diet. Is that where you just got a tapeworm? Somebody gave you a pill and it had a tapeworm in it. On purpose? Not everybody knew that that was what was going to happen.

Oh, that is so shady! That is so shady! It's so shady. Yeah, so then all of a sudden, you're feeding a thing that's living in your body and becomes really long. How does it, how does it, how does it takeworm exit? The way that you think it does. Oh, it's either that way, or they hold a little piece of food in front of your mouth, and the worm comes out to eat it. Is that true? Is that really true? We should check. No, I think it is.

I thought I had always heard that. Is it an urban legend? I thought I had heard that was an urban legend. They come with a little ladders. It's in the pill too A little tiny telescoping ladder It's a kit really There's another one that's kind of a gross out diet

But it's like a psychological gross out diet It's called the vision diet And you wear glasses that have a blue lens in front of them And it makes all of your food look disgusting to you So you don't want to actually eat when you look at it It can hurt your eyes though So you shouldn't wear it for too long I have heard of oh I put blue food coloring in the food

And so it makes you eat less of it. But, yeah, apparently it does reduce your impulsee. But it might be because you got a migraine from wearing the bluebrae glasses. Right, yeah, yeah. Good news, you lost 10 pounds. Bad news, your vision is ruined forever. Right. And it could be the tapeworm pill that comes with the glasses.

What if you did all these diets together? Like, what will happen? The next one's the Twinkie diet. Yeah. That one works if you only eat Twinkies. That's all you can eat, because each Twinkie is 150 calories. So if you ate 10 of them, it's 1,500 calories. But then you have to eat Twinkies forever.

Yeah, so it makes you not want to eat stuff. Like, these are not diets you should do. Don't do these. Yeah, these are not endorsed by physicians. None of them are nutritious. This isn't the crazy fad diet list. I just think the tapeworm would be so comfortable. This is pretty nice.

Like, this is great. Can I get a ring day? I mentioned the tapeworm wearing little blue glasses. Like, none of this looks good anymore. I'm going to leave. I'm just going to go. Should I just go on the back? I'll see myself out.

Perfect. So as you guys know, I took a trip to France earlier this summer. While we were there traveling around, we were doing a lot of reading just about French history. It's kind of a fun way to travel. I had a lot of fun reading about just some of the crazy fads among the French aristocracy. Yeah, they're nuts, too. Especially, I mean, historically. So, you know, just really the heyday of these crazy fads, the mid-1700s.

And, you know, we've talked on the show before about dandies. dandy is just the quintessential usually guy just with a lot of money and no need to work and just hangs out can there be lady dandy's not really like when you say dandy you really mean

a young man yeah typically a younger man of you know exhibits his wealth and his free time and so a lot of these fads kind of came about as ways of dandy's trying to outdo each other we're familiar with a lot of them like the wigs you see the wigs in a lot of period pieces

and that really is a real thing I mean, a lot of both men and women would have the wigs and really elaborate and the more elaborate, the higher status you were. But one of the funniest things that I came across was this fad that apparently was really brief and really popular, which all the best fads are, of course. So there was a fad in the 1760s of these dandies carrying around with them pantans, which is a little marionette. And so you would carry around just a little marionette. that you would kind of, you know, casually pull out and just sort of play with while you're at the cafe or sitting in the park on a bench and you would just have it with you. But this was just something that the dandies would do.

And if you had your little marionette, your pines had with you, just sort of fiddle with it, absentmindedly, and then put it away and take it with you. So you realize this is what the iPad is going to be thought of in a century. People will be making fun of us for, yeah, exactly. I think that's why it was a short fad, though. It was because it's embarrassing. It's like, what are you doing with the doll? Ladies, don't you hate when you're on a date

and the guy won't stop playing with his marionette? Just every 30 seconds, seriously. He's like, I'm working on a play with my friend. That's so creepy. It's kind of creepy. Yeah, it is really creepy. It is. It's very hipster in a way.

Oh, yeah, it is. I can imagine it. I could absolutely. I could see a modern revival of the panties, a little marionettes, you know. But again, just sort of to show that you're cool and in the know. It's so weird. We're ridiculous.

Yes. We're going to take a little break from our topic of the week for a quick announcement. Guess what, guys? It is podcast award season. Yes, nominations are now open for the eighth annual podcast awards. The potty's. The poddies. Take me to the potties.

And this is over at podcastawards.com. And please nominate us for Best Education Cats. category. We teach you things sometimes. There's sometimes accidentally educational. Important things. And sometimes those things are true. And if we really enrich your lives that much, maybe for the coveted people's choice

award too. So please nominate us for podcastawards.com if you enjoy the show. And thanks you guys for supporting good job, Brain. And we're going to jump back into talking about fads. No frills, delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frails with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC optimum points on your first five orders. Shop now at nofrails.ca.

You can spend less time staying in the know about all things gaming and get more time to actually play the games you love with the IGN Daily Update podcast. All you need is a few minutes to hear the latest from IGN on the world of video games, movies, and television with news, previews, and reviews. You'll hear everything from Comic-Con coverage to the huge Diablo for launch. So listen and subscribe to the IGN Daily Update, wherever you get your podcasts. That's the IGN Daily Update, wherever you get your podcasts. Have you guys heard of a movie named Buanna Devil from 1952?

That's my favorite movie. I'm just kidding. It is, it is by all accounts. Bwano? Bwana, Bwana Devil. By all accounts, it's one of the worst movies ever made, and more than a little racist. But would you care to guess what the significance of Bwana Devil from 1952 in film history? It was a fad. It was.

It was the beginning of an incredibly hot, incredibly brief fad known as 3D. Oh, no. Bwana Devil was the first feature-length film released in the... 3D. Okay. Yes. It was the 3D that we imagine. It had one red lens, one green lens.

And it wasn't really called 3D at the time. It was called Natural Vision. Really? Yes. Okay. And natural vision was the invention of a man named Milton Gunsberg and came up with the idea of shooting the two exposures of the film, projecting them in different colors, and using the different colored lenses to create 3D.

That's cool. Like so many other things we've talked about on the show, He pitched his idea to a lot of major studios, and all the major studios passed on it. So he released independently this technology, and it was used to make Bwana Devil. So now, we'll back up here a second. Why did the major studios pass on 3D? So... Too expensive.

Well, it was interesting. So this was like 1950, 1951, and at the end of the 40s, the film companies and the film studios were freaking out because film viewership was precipitously dropping. 20 million fewer viewers over one year. Why? What were they doing? I'm sure you guys can probably guess why. What major invention in the late 1940s was starting to take over households? TV.

And obviously, taking viewers away from film studios, they thought. So they were looking for ways to bring people back. And they were all in one way or another trying to come up with some new gimmicks. That's right. So Cinerama and these other really super widescreen techniques. And they all sort of pegged their fortunes to some new technology or another. And basically, none of them wanted to take the gamble on 3D at that time. Bwana Devil went on for better for worse to become quite a hit and spawned a number of other

movies that came out in 1953, Natural Vision movies. There were almost 70 natural vision movies in 1953 alone. You know, some of the more famous ones are like, Creature from the Black Lagoon. And so it was pretty quick that the major studios were like, okay, this is a thing. We've got to get on the ball now. So House of Wax with Vincent Price. So that one is the first major studio 3D movie to come out was House of Wax. It was so hot that even Alfred Hitchcock decided to get in on it.

So Dial M for Murder, he filmed it in 3D. But by the time the movie was set to release, the FAD had already started to die just a year later. So most of the showings of Dial M for Murder were shown in 2D, just regular 2D. But it generally seems to be that by 1954, the Fad was died. Oh, my God. It was a year of intense, intense 3D. And again, this is the first wave of 3D, you know, and it would have success of waves.

And obviously now we have the more advanced, you know, digital means of 3D. But yeah, it was hot and brief for that one year. Oops. They might have made too many bad ones. I don't really like 3D now because it's like I don't really like sitting there with the glasses on, you know, with this sort of artificial thing happening. It doesn't feel like natural vision to you? No, it doesn't feel like natural vision. And it felt even worse with red and blue cardboard.

board 3D glasses, you know, it's just like, I get this thing's off of me. It really was used for a lot of cheap effects. Like you would see these movies and it was spears coming at you and people throwing things out at the screen and it wasn't really used in a very artistic way. They still do that. I got confused if you were

talking about recent movies. Since I grew up in Asia, I cannot not talk about what I think is probably the biggest fad factory, perhaps of all time, Sanrio. Yes, the Japanese company whose cute characters have captured the hearts of millions.

Temporarily. Temporarily. In bursts. In bursts. What they do is they generate so many original characters that would wax and wane in popularity. So I kind of want to play a really quick little game with you guys first. I want you guys to take turns naming Sanrio characters. Oh, wow.

And we're going to go around. And when you can't or run out, you're out. Let's see who's going to be the winner I have no idea Let's do Colin first Hello Kitty Coropee Batsmaru

Miffy You're wrong Miffy is actually not a Sanrio character Oh I was trying to pull out the obscure one early My sister's going to be so disappointed in me Oh she's yeah

I'm out Wow Pochaco Yes very good Chris is the winner So many My dearie lou There's Pyrin the dog, a pandaple, Shinkansen.

We talked about Shinkansen in our transportation episode. They had a little train character, too. So, of course, Hello Kitty is probably the most well-known character. She was first introduced in Japan in 1974, according to the official Sanrio character profile. Hello Kitty has a full name. Do you know what her full name is? Hel Lawrence. Hello is the shirt for something

The Warren's Kitty Kitty White First name Kitty, last name White I know the name of her boyfriend Which is Daniel Incorrect what is his complete name

Oh geez It is Dear Daniel Hello Kitty And dear Daniel Dear Daniel Dear Daniel Katson Is he a cat too He looks exactly like

Hello Kitty without the boat Do you guys know what Hello Kitty's nationality is Japanese. What country is you from? Incorrect. I'm going to just take a stab. Is she French?

No. She is British. What? Yes, and this is according to Sanrio's official backstory. She is British, born into the white family in a London suburb. And what's weird at the time in Japan during the 70s, there was a big British mania fad sweeping over Japan. And so everything. from the UK was kind of in fashion.

And so even her name, Kitty, is a reference to Alice's cat from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. I love that she's a British cat that's obsessed with Japanese things made by a Japanese company. Who were obsessed with British fads at that time. So the creation of Hello Kitty in part stem from a cultural fad. It's like a fadception. Yeah. Sanrio started out as a silk company under another name back in the 60s. And it kind of expanded their company by investing in rubber and making rubber accessories, including rubber sandals.

And so they found out that their profits increased when they sold sandals with cute design. Just a simple cute design on the rubber sandals. They're like, hey, wait a minute. Like, this was their light bulb moment. If we add cute characters and hire cartoonists to make us cute characters, then we can sell more of these rubber sandals. And what is so smart about Sanrio is they would introduce new characters and retire. old ones. And these characters would become fads themselves.

Of course, not all characters achieve the same amount of success. There's some that kind of went in and out. There was My Melody that was a rabbit. That's her rabbit friend, right? Right, right. They were friends. Have you seen My Melody lately? She's gone.

Hello Kitty disappeared her. You make the Queen angry. Yeah, my melody, she don't come around no more. Oh, my melody. Oh, you won't see her now more. Get that thing for you. My favorite Serial character, by far, is a dog called Pum Pum Pyrin, or the Pyrin dog.

In Pyrin, in Japanese, I guess, sounds like pudding. Pudding. And he is a golden retriever, and he's very fat. I think what he is, he's half dog and half Flawn. Perfect. Oh, he's a pudding dog. He's a pudding. Dog-flon hybrid animal.

And he would, like, sit in a dog. a cup and he has a little brown bag. I've seen the figures. It's really weird. Yes. It's very high concept. The flound dog. Does he eat himself? No. He has a butthole too. Really? Yeah, he has a actual butthole. You wonder where flan comes from?

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bringing all your most valuable resources onto one powerful platform so you can add value even faster. Workday, moving business forever forward. Well, I know what all of you have now been waiting to hear. We, as you may recall, we had a music quiz stolen from us now three weeks ago. Yeah. Many weeks ago by international puzzle thief, non-infringing satirical puzzle thief, Carmen San Mateo.

It has been a well-traveled quiz. Oh, man. That quiz has been all over the place. And you, good job, brain listeners, have helped us track down Carmen San Mateo. Last week, as you may recall, we were able to catch one of the members of her gang. Mama Castorium, and she did not, in fact, have the quiz anymore, and it handed it off to Carmen. And what she had told us was that Carmen was to be found in a certain country. And the clues that we got were what stars have guided hungry travelers for nearly a century. And you guys helped us out and figured out what we were looking for. Yeah, thanks.

Yes, excellent job out there. We had a few people write them in the correct answer, which, of course, was Carmen was in France, because what we're looking for were Michelin stars. The Michelin guidebook made by these same people who make Michelin tires has been around for a very long time. It is a guide, basically for travelers, telling them what the best restaurants are. And, of course, they use a famous three-star rating system for the restaurants.

Covetive. It is almost impossible to get a Michelin star, let alone three. Just a handful of restaurants. And, of course, the country where this all got started was France. So, again, using our Kickstarter backer money, sparing no expense whatsoever, we took a luxurious flight to France to track down Carmen San Mateo. That was a fun trip, guys.

It was pretty great. It was pretty great. We're really making that money stretch. You really are. You guys got to go to France? Yeah. Here's the fruit of our investigation, finally. So let's listen in to that recording.

Oh, this croissant is so good. Ah, uh, Soutalore. It's you. You posturing pack of pretentious podcasters? How did you find me? I never should have trusted that additive-addicted castorium-chugging chanteuse. Here is your dumb quiz. I solved the whole thing already anyway.

But know this. There is no jail that can hold Carmen San Mateo for long. Except if the jail had had frozen yogurt. I love frozen yogurt. Blue M&M's. That was one weird lady. That's all I have to say. She, yeah.

Anyway, congratulations, guys. We got the quiz back. We actually got the quiz back. So we can finally have this music quiz that we've been reading on. All that traveling, all those puzzles. Carmen San Mateo is in satirical jail for now. I would like to finally present to you the music quiz. Hooray!

And like all good music quizzes There is, of course, a theme attached So I'm going to play you a piece of music And you are going to tell me the artist go Buzzers Ready Buzzers at the Ready I want to wear it again I want to give me your back to mine

Give me a end up Back with my granddaddy's barn Someday I'll turn a slam the back for it on the bar Sounds kind of like Karen The artist is rockapella Yes the artist is Rockapella And that song was something about Indiana

Yes it was So let's move on I want and one is two 1034 I'm heavy lones baby I'm broke I've got to go And maybe I need a lot to go

Oh, I get all of these confused. Is that Colin? Is it Robert Johnson? It is. It is Robert Johnson. And I believe he's singing Sweet Home Chicago. He is. Good job.

Here is clip number three. I wonder what the theme. Look, I didn't say it was a hard theme. Thank you. Give us to dreamers, your heart and your sin. Dana The Killers Anybody else want to go for it?

Oh, Brandon Flowers. Yes, it is Brandon Flowers, lead singer of the Killers. But that was the big single off of his solo album. Las Vegas. Trick question. Tricky. Money don't leave L.A. That's heavy a year's so far.

Okay. Making you seepun play, seep and play, baby. They don't know. James Taylor. Well, and out, it's Chris's music music. It's probably James Taylor. The song is Honey Don't Leave L.A. From his album, J.T.

All right. J.T. Yep. Oh, wow, I could use them back to me. Oh, I'll, I'll guess. Yeah. Beach boys? No.

Oh, you're actually making the same mistake. Yes. There you go. Yeah. Nice. In Blue Hawaii off of Brian Wilson's version of the album.

Oh, man. Billy Joel? It is, yes. Oh, I was going to guess Lady Gaga's version. I thought it was going to be true. She's playing in New York State of Mind. That is just the intro to New York State of Mind. Of course, as Karen correctly surmised, the theme of this round is

singers Chris really likes. Well, I, for one, I'm really glad we finally got to bring closure to this music quiz. That was begun over a month ago. Thanks to all of our listeners who wrote in, man, we got a lot of. of answers. You guys helped us figure it out. We actually randomly selected Super Slews who wrote us in and we're going to have a little prize pack to remember our adventure. Good job, guys. Good job, everybody. All right, great. That's our show. Thank you guys for joining me and thank you guys listeners for listening in Hope. You learned a lot about crazy fads and licking cream off of

paper and dogs shaped like flown. You can find us on Zoom Marketplace on. On iTunes, and also on Stitcher, and our website, which is good job, brain.com. Don't forget to visit our sponsors, bonobos.com, and we'll see you guys next week. Oh, Karen, Karen, Karen, we just caught Carmen San Mateo. That means there's only one more thing we have to do, and you know what it is. Do it, Macapella! Do us! Please, please, please don't sue us.

Please, please don't sue us. Please, please don't sue us. She's a satirical swindler. Legally distinct from others She's a fair use finnacler Who is plainly parody She's discreetly designed So we don't get called from

lawyers, tell me Who in the heck is? Carmen San Mateo From the terrifying power of tornadoes To sizzling summer temperatures Acuweather Daily brings you the top Trending Weather-related story of the day Seven days a week. You can learn a lot

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