Good Job, Brain! - 7: Willy Wonka & the Wax Tadpole Factory

Episode Date: April 16, 2012

What do wax tadpoles and Wonka have in common? Find out in this big advertising episode! Our favorite unsuccessful marketing campaigns, advertisement urban legends, ridiculous informercials, company mascot/spokesperson quiz, our own shameless plugs, the ultra-useful mnemonic for identifying the Rice Krispies Elves, and the mysterious anatomy of the Starbucks lady creature. BONUS: Our pub trivia tactics! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, peppy, peachy and perceptive party pals. Welcome to Good Job, Brain, your weekly quiz show and offbeat trivia podcast. This is episode seven, and of course, I am your. humble host Karen and along with me are our extremely excellent, exceptional, and eccentric expert co-host contestants. Yeah. And we have.

I'm Colin. Dana. I'm Chris. Yay. Chris is back. I'm back. Yay. So Chris is back with us today and the gang's all back together and our team is complete.

And speaking of which, I'm getting quite a bit of mail from listeners asking us. For me, I'm back. Yes. Yes. And I'm. And you're here. Thank you all. And they're also asking us for our personal tips and strategy when it comes to

pup trivia. Because Colin, Dana, Chris and I have been on a pub trivia team for the past three years. And of course, we've come up with our own kind of house rules and tricks. It's good for us to share some of our air quote secrets, I guess. Yeah. In case you're looking to start your own team and rip off our trade secrets. Exactly. If you're one of the teams that competes against us,

and you're listening right, please disregard all of us. I mean, it seems like our most basic rule we always have is like don't sense of yourself. Like, it's like the first rule of brainstorming. Like, no matter how stupid or fleeting a thought, and you're just get it out because it may spark a thought in somebody else's way. Oh, yeah. Well, first of all, there were so many instances early on when somebody would say,

oh, God, I was thinking that, but I thought it was wrong, so I didn't say it. Yeah. And it's like, no, you, yeah, say everything, everything you think. And as you kind of said, like, even if you don't know the answer, if you know something about the topic that's at hand, just start talking about it. Because, again, that might jog somebody else's memory and be like, oh, it's not that, but it is this. Thank you for saying that. Like, that's happened to us so many times. Our other, actually, this is really helpful, is always go for the more topical, especially with current events, right?

I think certainly, like, in, you know, in bar pub quizzes and things like that, where there, yeah, you know, if you're down between two, what teen singer, Justin Bieber was just in the news a week ago for something, go with Justin Bieber. Right, because they've got to find these questions somewhere, and they're probably just searching through the news of the day. And maybe they don't use the news of the day, you know, that's that article. You know, maybe it's not the point of whatever article it was they just read that popped up that day, but they might go, oh, yeah, Justin Bieber, and they might go find some factoid about Justin Bieber and write that into a question, too. Mm-hmm. Our internal term for when a round turns out has questions that, you know, somehow we all know from personal experience. We actually hope for it. That's our best case scenario. We call that a slumdog millionaire round. Yep. Yep. So we're always like slumdog millionaire, you guys. Every question relates to our. You know, it's to keep our spirits up and to realize that, you know, we could go into this last round and slumdog it, you know, and just know every single hard question for some reason and win. You know, it's like just. always remember, like, you know, let's keep our spirits up here because we're only one round

away from winning. I think our team in part, I don't know, maybe other teams feel like, but I think our team in particular, we have a tendency to overthink things. And I, I mean, my gut is that I feel like we do better in the harder rounds than we do in the earlier rounds, especially if you're in a quiz where the questions get harder and easier, you know, gauge your answer, you know, first question in the very first round one, it's not going to be a trick question. It's not going be something too complicated. They're still trying to get the people who are drunk at the bar interested

and playing pub trivia. So it's going to be easy. And that's what it's like in our trivia. I mean, really you have to learn your trivia. You know, what are these people who put these questions together? Like, how do they structure these quizzes? That's right. Get in their heads. Our thing is stacking, right? And this is our internal term for

if you've got a picture of somebody and you can't figure out who it is and it's one of two people, and one of those people has been referenced in the quiz before. Go with the answer that's been referenced in the quiz before. And this is only for us, only at our particular trivia night, where you have found that they will have a thread that runs through all of the different rounds. Certainly, yeah, over the course of a few weeks, it tend to be clustered.

Right, yeah. And the general takeaway from this is to just watch out for how these quizzes are structured, the people who do them. Awesome. All right. Well, let's start off the show now. with our general trivia quiz segment, which is Pop Quiz Hot Shot. And here I have our random Trivial Pursuit card.

We got our barnyard buzzers ready, everybody. And we have to wait until you finish the question, right? Yes. Yes, let's do our best. Blue Wedge. What country granted independence to Madagascar in 1960? Hmm. Huh. Did not notice.

Whoa, Colin. I'm going to guess France. Yes. All right. How did you figure that out? Well, I just knew that France into the 50s 60s had territories or colony. I don't know what the term they used, but in Africa. So that was sort of my guess, yeah.

Awesome. I was going to see DreamWorks. Well done. Pink Wedge. How are Access Hollywood host Billy Bush and George W. Bush related? Dana. I'm going to guess. I think he's the nephew.

Billy Bush is the nephew? Incorrect. Oh, that's wrong? Okay, they're second cousins. They're cousins. Oh, okay. So I guess you're right. Grudgingly give you that point.

Yellow Wedge. How many King Edwards have ruled Britain? Oh. I'm going to guess three. Incorrect. Two. Incorrect. Just give me a number.

Five. Incorrect. How many is it? Eight. That's tough. That's a lot. That's a lot of Edwards. Right.

As immortalized in the song, I'm Eddie the eighth I am. Oh, wait. Purple Wedge. What book inspired the Disney attraction, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride? which is the best ride. Wind in the Willows? Correct by Kenneth Graham. Oh, well, maybe I didn't ever know that.

That's a fantastic ride. Yeah, I love it. I love it. I remember being so young that I was scared of that ride. It was scary. You go to hell. You die in a car crash and go to hell. It's the talking animals that die.

Yeah, it's awesome. Dana's least favorite ride. Talking animals. Hell and anthropized animals. All right. Greenwich Science, a lab to produce what illicit drug was discovered in 2000 in an abandoned Kansas nuclear missile silo. Chris. Crystal math.

Incorrect. How is it not crystal math? You were so sure. I know. Colin? MDMA, ecstasy. Incorrect. LSD.

Correct. It's all trippy and stuff. Yeah, that's a trippy place to do that. Kansas nuclear missile. That was a weird card, man. That was a weird trivial pursuit card. Okay, last orange question. One more.

It's getting weird. What is a literal translation of karaoke? I'm just waiting for you to be. It's a multiple choice. Empty orchestra. Empty orchestra. Yes. I do you have to say.

I was like, embarrassing singing. Yeah, what are the other few? Embarrassed businessmen. The choices are empty orchestra, tiny voices or drunken singer. That one. That's how I do it. All right. And now we have our Kickstarter backer questions as well.

And this one is from Across the Pond, Ben and Freya Hall from York, U.K. And their question is, what is Pogonophobia, the fear of what? Pogonophobia? Pogonophobia. And that's spelled P-O-G-O-N-O-phobia. My goodness. Dana Not having a Pogo

Or beer of mosh pits Yeah Sadly incorrect I have no guess I don't know It is the fear of Beards or facial hair

And the trick thing about Phobias or all of the phobia names is they're actually not Latin or Roman language-based. It's completely Greek-based. So the fear of heights is acrophobia, not altophobia. Yes, okay. So, you know, the Greek words are a little trickier. So Pogono is a Greek for a beard.

That's a good one. Ben said that he learned this phobia in a games review in Amiga Power magazine. Nice. I wonder what game it was that. mentioned it. Again, our second backer question is from Amber Theson from Redmond, Washington. And her question is, the food additive ethylene damine, tetraacetic acid, which is known as EDTA, is used in sodas to do what? My hint is the soda being the key clue. And where do sodas come from?

Oh, where do sodas come from? Where do sodas? Well, when a mommy soda and a daddy soda, I love each other very much. They make a baby food. It's one of those little small pint-sized cans, or the eight-house cans. Baby sodas. Well, I think I'm off, but I knew that they put an additive in some root beers to make them frothier, but I guess that's not what you're going for.

You said frothy. No, incorrect. Does it keep the carbonation from leaking out, or does it? Incorrect. Where do soda is usually resists? reside on my shelf. Yeah. The grocery store.

Yeah. Like what is their container? Oh, in aluminum. Oh, they won't react? Is it the lining or something that keeps it from reacting with the aluminum? Well, close. So it is specifically to trap metal particles and food. And so Amber wrote in in saying that she learned about this because she was enjoying

some canned beer that didn't use EDTA and you could taste the me. metal and so EDTA is basically to remove or to lighten I guess that's metal flavor and Amber's interesting fact is that Amber has survived a tornado, a flood, and a

fire and now Amber's waiting for an earthquake volcano and hurricane right I think if she gets an avalanche on her punch card the next disaster's free right? Oh yeah six disasters get the next one free all right good job everybody's brains that was a very

eccentric motley crew of questions. Have we ever gotten a backer question right yet? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Star Wars. Oh, yeah. We've gotten a few of them, right? You guys are good quizmasters.

Yeah, they are. They're awesome questions. So it's time for our topic of the week. And our topic today is all about advertising, ad campaigns, and commercials. Brought to you by Mountain Duke Code Purple And Jack Link's beef jerky No, these are really not brought to us

No, no, not at all. But if they do want to sponsor us. Code Purple does not exist. Man, God, so this is a pretty giant topic. God, where should we start? guess it's always more fun to talk trash so let's talk about like maybe the big snafus or the failed attempt at advertising yeah failure is always interesting so in the 50s 7 up decided to try to market itself as baby food they said well they said that their ingredients were so pure you could

feed them to a baby and in their picture they had a 11-month-year-old drinking it as if it were a bottle, and they said, oh, for your toddler, you can do 50% 7-Up and 50% milk and make a bubbly. Just right in the bottle. It didn't last. It didn't. No, I can't imagine so. So you're telling me a product that contains a lot of sugar and gives your baby gas. That didn't last.

That's amazing, yeah. Mix it with milk, too. Get your baby messed up on sugar. My question is, well, I mean, 7-Up is a lemon or it's acidic drink. When you mix it with milk, doesn't it curdle? I think it's only if it has like real lemon or, yeah, actual. Yeah, I mean, no dish to this. Find people at 7 up, but yeah.

Plus, babies, they don't know. You know, the milk is curdled? Babies have no purchasing power. It's a very soft cheese that's formed. They can eat the curdles with their... It's just squeezed out of the bottle like toothpaste. Seven-up cheese. That's your next project.

Seven-up and... milk. So, and drink you chew. Young boy choked on seven-up. Seven-up. So that campaign didn't last then. It sounds like, big surprise.

You know, at least I remember when I was growing up hearing from my parents that, you know, the Edsel, the Ford Edsel, was just synonymous with failure. What, what, Ford? The Ford Edsel. Oh, it's a, it was a brand. Yeah, right. It actually, it was its own, it was a division, I guess. I guess technically a Ford, and they had spun off a new line.

But it's sort of widely regarded, like, even today is one of just the most colossal failures on many fronts of advertising and product rollout. Why? Well, so, you know, in the 50s, Ford was facing a lot more competition from other car companies, and they really, I guess, were under the gun to come up with a new hit. And so they decided to come up with a new mid-sized sedan. They hired a, you know, PR advertising agency, came up with 20,000 names, 20,000 possible names between them and the Forge staff.

And some of these names now are hilarious. I mean, I just throw a few of these out there. These are some of the proposed suggestions. For a car. That's right. The Mungus Sivik. That's horrible. The Cobra. Don't they eat snakes.

Yeah. The Utopian Turtle Top. Absolutely. That's Urban Dictionary. These sounds like things that were translated from another language, exactly. The pastelogram, the varsity stroke.

That's from Urban Dictionary Yeah, that's definitely an urban dictionary But isn't it will be by the end of this podcast What time frame is this? Like what decade? So this was early 50s, early to mid-50s And they didn't think varsity stroke could be They thought feed your baby 7 up in the 50s

I know, it was a very innocent time And then there was also This one was not bad, the resilient bullet I think that was a pretty good suggestion But so anyway, I mean They did a lot of focus testing and research And in one of the sort of the first missteps, the V decided to name the car, the Edsel instead, which was actually named after Edsel Ford, which was Henry Ford's only son. And this was a name that people had specifically rejected during the focus testing.

Yeah, I bet. They said it sounded like some farm equipment or something like that. Oh, it does. So, you know, they're kind of already off on the wrong foot by ignoring the product advice. But anyway, the whole thing was shrouded in secrecy. So they were running ads, you know, for months and months leading up to it, promising, like, the Ed's. is coming and they would show you little glimpses of the logo, but they wouldn't show the car. So the whole thing was meant to be a suspense buildup. They would have blurry photos of the

car or the silhouette underneath a tarp or something like that. It sounds like it might have been a little bit ahead of its time. It might have been. You know, the other problem was that the car itself was frankly kind of a lemon. It sounds like they had so many problems rolling them off the line in functional condition. On launch day, they only had 68 cars ready to sell. This This was nationwide now. This sounds like a car unicorn. Did it really exist? It rolled out.

Oh, people bought them. And people bought some of them. Yeah. Did they sell all 68? Well, they probably did sell all 68. But it was a lemon. I mean, that was essentially what was wrong with the Edsel. It was a lemon.

It cost a lot of it. And it was ugly, you know, so it rolled out. And because no one had been able to see it, they're kind of taking a gamble and hoping that people would like it. Yeah. The critics said, so, you know, it had one design feature that they still talk about today. They call it the horse collar, or it was like an impact ring on the front of the car. And if you Google, if you Google the Edsel, you can see this weird thing in the front. And people said that it made the car look like a Pontiac pushing a toilet seat.

Another reporter said it looked like an Oldsmobile sucking a lemon. You know, I kind of like it. It looks like a cartoon vampire car. You know, and the irony is that it did have some good features. It was one of the first, if not the first car, to have standards. seed belts, but that was an optional upgrade at the time. But that was like a turnoff

at the time, because at the time, people were rejecting this idea that you had to wear seat belts. They were like, I don't know if it were seat belts. They're like, you don't know what for? I can't have a cocktail in the morning. So it had some good features, but it was just doomed to success. I mean, they didn't listen to their focus testing. They spent $450 million

in 1950s. At that time. At that time, I've read estimates that that's over $2 billion in today's. money essentially down the drain and they pulled the plug about two years later on the car. So what do you bet they named it after the owner's son just so that way their project wouldn't get killed even though it was sucking really

really fast. Right, right. I think he was long dead at the time. Yeah. And apparently Henry Ford II didn't want that name even, I guess. Wait, Henry Ford the second, his son's name was Edson. Henry Ford the second I believe was Henry Ford's grand son.

So his son was Edsel. When you get named Edsel, you're like, listen. How about I'll just name my child after my father instead of myself? I'll do for my child and my father couldn't do for me. That's because the other is when they were in the womb heard about the fact that their big brother was named Edsel. They were just like strangled themselves at the umbilical cord. Darks.

Wow. So happy thoughts. Yeah, happy thoughts basically associated with the head soul. So I wouldn't say this is a failed ad campaign, but it was kind of unfortunate, and not a lot of people know this. So obviously there are a lot of instances of using movies as like a giant ad vehicle, right? We've seen it in Top Gun, increased what, the Navy recruitment by zillions. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Wizard from back of the day, Power Glove. I wanted that so bad. Oh, my God, yeah. And Super Mario Brothers 3. Do you guys remember the original, the 1971, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? Oh, of course. I do remember this movie. Of course.

But I love it. Classic. Yeah. Yeah. You know, everybody loved it except for that one creepy tunnel scene. I said good days. I said good day.

So, not a lot of people know this, but that movie, the 1971 star in Gene Wilder, Willie Walker, The Chocolate Factory, was actually a marketing vehicle for candy to sell candy. Now, so what happened was, going back in the beginning, it didn't really work out so well. The movie's great. But the history of the movie. Quaker Oates was in talks with a movie producer, film producer, his name is David Wolper. Quaker Oates was trying to release a new type of candy from one of their candy subsidiary. And David Wolper, the producer, convinced the company who had absolutely no experience in filmmaking or that...

Entertainment at all. Exactly. Or that scale to back the film entirely. So the movie was funded entirely by Quaker. Wow. So not only that, they also had to buy the rights to Roll Doll's original book. Well, yeah. Just for the pure purpose of promoting Quaker Oates is new, and they named it the Wonka Bar.

Oh, so, okay. So I always wondered about that. I mean, I remember as a kid having the, I mean, you know, the Willy Wonka candies. Nerds. Right. And I just, I think I had assumed it was, you know, created. So that was actually after. because eventually the Wonka candy company got sold to Nestle.

And then they made nerds. They made, you know, other stuff. Everlasting Godstopper. So what candy did they release with the movie? So they're trying to time it so that when the movie would come out, the candy, the Wonka Bar in 1970s would also come out too. But the bars were released in stores, but there was a giant production recall because the bar tasted like

Well, a fat German kid fell in the chocolate river. It tasted horrible, and they had a recall. So really, when the movie came out, maybe if you're lucky, you got a gross candy bar out of the... Oh, I've got the golden ticket. Yeah, and it's weird because, I mean, obviously, Quaker Oats was trying to try something new, and they couldn't make the bar tasty enough to meet expectations of the movie. And that's also the reason why the original book is called Charlie and the chocolate factory. Oh, is that the name switch?

Yeah, to Willy Wonka for the movie. So to get the Willie Wonka brand out there. That makes sense. No, quite frankly. It's almost like reverse product placement. Now, the, and that was actually smart. Rald Dahl was not a master of branding because you name the thing after its most interesting central character, right? You know, so, I mean, the fact that movie, you know, what's interesting about Willie Wanka and the Chocolate Factory is the character of Willie Wanka. He's so crazy, right?

I guess. Although I had heard that he wasn't that happy with the movie. He was very disappointed. Oh, I bet. Because that, well, I mean, like, exactly what you said, he, in his eyes, Charlie was the main character. And the movie didn't, didn't pay attention more to Charlie's back story. Yeah, Charlie was just sort of, Charlie was just sort of there, you know, advancing the plot along. Charlie was like the cipher that the viewer, you know, he was the know-nown-nothing that the viewer could kind of go along with, right? But you're right. I mean, in the book, it was really Charlie's journey as the main character. And being such a fantastic person is what got Charlie from poverty to riches, right? Right, right, right.

They lucked out getting Gene Wilder. I mean, I can't imagine anybody else. Well, that was the crazy thing is that's the other reason why Roald Doll was really disappointed with the film was because all of his picks for playing Willy Wonka the producers and the film team did not listen to, including

one of the old Doctor Who actors. Oh, he could have been Willie Wonka, sure. But they went with a popular American comedic actor, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's really interesting. The movie's very good. It is, it departs. It departs everywhere from the book

as much as it possibly can. And it was interesting of course that the Johnny Depp version is actually much more true to the book. Very, very close to the book from the title. From the poetry. The oompa-lupa songs are actually the songs that are in for all dolls. They actually took his lyrics in the book and set them to music and all that kind of stuff. In the spirit of advertising, the bar didn't make it, but the movie was fantastic.

And now Wonka Candy and there's even Wonka Ice Cream. They sell it in upside-down pints. Oh, no. Yeah, so everything is printed upside down on the pint and the cap is on the bottom. Oh, cool. What they really hit on. was, well, how do you do, because Wonka's candies are impossible candies, right? Right.

Like, that's the cool thing about the candy is that it's impossible for it to exist in real life. So instead of just doing chocolate bars and nerds and things like that, now they just try to think outside the box and do all kinds of crazy character, you know, or not character, but flavor combinations. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, or things that change flavor. Yeah, so upside-down ice cream. I'm waiting for the tomato soup and roast beef gum. Deverry gum.

Dared a dream. I always find out of it. of very fascinating when I was a kid because I read all of these things, things like Uncle John's bathroom reader or, you know, various magazines and articles and things about quirky facts you might not know. And you always heard this stuff about when such and such company went to such and such a country, they would translate their popular advertising slogan, and then this is what the translation would be.

And so I decided for this, for advertising, we're going to research a whole bunch of these and we'll talk about these. So the one that I always, always love to quote, is that in China, when Pepsi was advertising that back in the 80s. Pepsi was advertising back in the 80s. They had the slogan, Come Alive with the Pepsi Generation. This was badly translated into Chinese,

and the actual, what the meaning that came out was, Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead. And then I actually had heard that they hastily changed it to something more like, come alive, you're in the Pepsi generation, which unfortunately actually read more like, when you resurrect, your body will be made of Pepsi.

I had also heard that Chevy had tried to sell the Chevy Nova in Spanish-speaking parts of the world, but of course, Nova means doesn't go. Right, I've always heard that one before, yeah. I've certainly heard that when KFC tried to translate its slogan, Finger-looking good into Chinese, it was translated into Eat Your Own fingers. Parker Penn apparently had a pen that said, it won't leak and embarrass you. Oh, yeah. But they used in Spanish Embarazar, which does not mean to embarrass you, but to become pregnant.

The pen will not impregnate you. Has this been a problem? And this is a phrase that's actually come back and entered back into like American popular culture. Chinese name of Coca-Cola, they just took, because what they do, you know, when they try to phoneticize an English language word into Chinese is that they take characters that have the readings like Coca-Cola. And they put them all together. But unfortunately, the characters that Koch chose read, Bite the Wax Tadpole or something along the size. Now, what's so, now, I had heard all of these, you know, before,

and I wanted to do the research and find the absolute best ones. The really interesting thing that I found out about all of these things that you guys have, you said you've heard before, or you brought them up, is that every one of them is false. Every single one of these things that were presented to us is true as an urban legend. Nice. But they make such good stories. I know, they sound so great.

Even the Embarazar pregnant one. Like, it sounds so perfect. No one can find any evidence of it. People are like, look, this company would not make such a dumb mistake. Like, you can find somebody who speaks Spanish to translate into Spanish. Also, being a Chinese Mandarin speaker, I can disprove two of those. Right, right, right. That's really interesting.

Yeah, I did not know that the vast majority this were false. I had read about the Chevy Nova, unfortunately. And I've told that story. I have told that story as true, and I wish I could take it back now. My Spanish teacher told me. Apparently, the Chevy Nova did very well in Spanish-speaking. Well, yeah, so the article that I read made a really good point. They said, you know, that it's, even though those words separately can technically mean it does not go.

It's so colloquially wrong that they said it would be like an English-speaking person not buying a dinette set because it said it was a notable dinette set, like notable, no table. Right. It would be that level of ridiculousness. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like that is what it means, but it doesn't necessarily mean that people would look at it and process that. I just saw a sign and it said kids exchange. And that both words were together. Right, right.

It's so. Oh, I've seen that. I've seen that. There is a fantastic, there is a fantastic website, a fake website called pen Island. Yes. And it's like, welcome to pen island.com where you can get all of your favorite pens. And there's like a picture of an. island with pens on it. It's wonderful.

Oh, now I get it. Now you get it. That's great. That's great. I mean, that's one of the best parts of that trivia is the misconceptions. Next time your friend is like, hey, just you're about the Chevy Nova, you're like, that's actually. Actually. And then you lose a friend. It's worth it. It's well worth it. It's worth it. It's worth being right. All right. Let's take a quick pneumonic break in And the mnemonic today is related to advertising so handy because it's always asked in pub trivia. And it's very, very quick. And now you can learn all the names of the elves from Rice Krispy.

That comes up all the time. It has come up like twice. And that's a lot. You'd be surprised how often we get it wrong with a 33 and a third percent chance. So who's who on the Rice Krispy box? And here's the numon. Oh, and just for our listeners who may not know. So we're talking about snap, crackle, and pop.

Right. So snap, crackle, and pop, three elves. You can only tell the difference by the hats or, you know, by the costumes they wear. There's a baker. There's like a music bandleader one. Right. And another one who just has like a stocking. He's kind of just more like generic elf.

Yeah, like pajama hat. So my quick mnemonic is Ginger Snap, pop music, and Crack of Dawn. Okay. So Ginger Snap is Snap, the Baker. Oh, okay. Okay, ginger snap cookies. Pop music. Pop is the band leader.

Pop music. Okay, pop music. And Crack of Dawn, he's kind of wearing pajamas, so he's waking up Crack of Dawn. Crack is the pajama guy. That is a good one. So Ginger Snap, Pop Music, and Crack of Dawn. Did you make this up yourself? Yes, it did.

Good job. A little bit of trivia. In the 1950s, they actually added a fourth elf. Poochie. Snapcackle pop, poochies. Coochie pop. His name is kind of close. It's pow.

Oh, yeah, okay. Snapckel pop and pow. So, obviously, snapckel and pop are, you know, represent the sounds. So pow is to represent the explosive nutritional value. This is not as described food is explosive. Oh, man. Explain to me why, uh,

this did not work for them rules of three also exclusive also nutritional value unfortunately pal is living under a bridge these days it's really sad it's meant to an elf with a general hat on is that what he was for i don't know oh yeah like a little army just support the war yeah the war effort the war against bad nutrition and uh here's some there's also poop who represents how how rice helps you avoid colon can't answer. Also, didn't really go

over well with the kids. Do we have like a quota on poop references for you just to say? Oh, okay. No, we can do as many as we want.

So other foreign names of snap, crackle pop in Denmark they're piff, puff. Yeah, I want to live in Denmark.

That's awesome. In Germany, it's Nisper, Naspur, Nusper. Why is every word so much longer in German? I know.

I always feel that way, too. Well, I can't really come up with mnemotics for foreign languages, You're on your own. Ginger snaps, pop music, and Crockin' Island for the English one.

I like that. That's good. Good mnemonic break. On August 1st. May I speak freely? I prefer English. The naked gun is the most fun you can have in theaters. Yeah, let's go! Without getting arrested.

Is he serious? Is he serious? No. The naked gun. Only in theaters. August 1st. Get to Toronto's main venues like Budweiser Stage and the new Roger Stadium with Go Transit.

to Go Transit special online e-ticket fairs, a $10 one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel on any weekend day or holiday anywhere along the Go network. And the weekday group passes offer the same weekday travel flexibility across the network, starting at $30 for two people and up to $60 for a group of five. Buy your online go pass ahead of the show at go-transit.com slash tickets. Awesome. All right, let's go back to advertising. And I have a quick quiz ad quiz and I kind of broken them up into a

brief categories so get your buzzers ready number one sing me the Toys Are Us jingle Oh dear Chris I don't want to grow up I'm a Toys R Us kid B'Ban-Nan-Nat-N-Din-N-Di-Gent

Oh it's cheating Lots of toys and other crap that I can play with From bikes to trains to video games It's the best toy store there is Gee whiz. I don't want to grow up Because if I did I wouldn't be

Toys R Uskin Da-da-da-da-da-na-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Very good job. What is the part that I'm missing? I don't know. I actually don't. I just want you guys to sing it. Well done.

Toy's all right. Formerly known as Children's Super Mart. Huh. That was a good case. Back in the days. All right. Number two. Sing me the Band-Aid jingle.

Chris. I am stuck. On Band-Aid, because Band-Aid's stuck on me. Correct. Bonus point. Can you sing me the State Farm jingle? Yeah. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

Oh, we can all do it. Yeah. So, both songs are written by Mr. Oh, man, hold on, hold on. Elvis Costello. I'm just kidding. The State Farm Jingle and the Band-A-Songs are written by, oh, man, I know this. I have a guess.

Colin guess. Is it Paul Anka? Incorrect. Is it Prince? I'm just kidding. Bob Dylan. I forget who it is, but... Barry Manilow!

Yes, he was a jingle writer. That's right. Yeah. Barry Manalo. Barry Freak and Manolo. Propa Cabana. Yeah. I'm going to name a few ridiculous, but real, infomercial products, and you have to tell me what product it is.

support. Colin. Is this one of the ones you put it under your couch cushions to prop them up? Is that that one? Incorrect. It's, um... Oh, is it like a kush ball? Incorrect.

What is... It is an object that you put for ladies to put in their cleavage while they go to sleep so that their breasts will not sag when they sleep on the side. What? Okay. So you place it between your boobs. Uh-huh. And then you go to sleep.

And it's supposed to prevent wrinkles on your, on your booboies. Thoroughly tested, I mean. The most rigorous scientific. Yeah, exactly. Evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. The Breast Institute. Our next infomercial product is the Tiddy Bear, and that's spelled T-I-D-D-Y. The Tiddy Bear.

Chris. You put it between your breasts. Just for fun And it's shape like a bear It's a bear It's a bear It's Yogi Bear's fantasy So it's more discreet

I guess I have no clue Titi I don't I don't even know what the references You guys never seen this infomercial TV bear Everybody go YouTube it right now If you're listening

Go YouTube it It is basically You know The commercial starts with tired of seatbelt burns or seatbelt bumping on your shoulder. It moves the seatbelt down. It was, yeah. It is.

It's a little teddy bear. And you grip it around the belt strap, right? So your shoulder won't get, I don't know, scars from seatbelts because that's so annoying. People slam on the brakes. Yeah, I still don't get the name reference. My favorite part of all infomercials is when they show you using a good competing product, but terribly. it's like can't open potato chip bags somebody just pulls the bag and it's always in black and white

they're always the most incompetent consumers on the planet I saw one today for just a thing that like puts a nail into your wall and it's just like tired of those those sticky hooks and they pull a command hook off the wall and it takes like a square foot of paint off with it when they get it off the wall or they're using the hammer and there's like six hammer holes in the wall for a nail no no no

human has this problem. There's got to be a better way. My favorite one is the black and white montage of this lady. And it's in the, the VO was tired of stuffing that pizza in your toaster oven. And this lady's got a giant circular whole pizza pie. Like an 18 inch pizza. She's trying to stuff in the toaster. Oh, man. So, Karen, thank you very much for that. And I actually have brought for my return a product and advertising related ways as well. I think we're going to be able to rush through this pretty fast. I'm going to name

the mascot or the advertising character. Love it. Love it. And you are going to tell me the product that they pitched. So if I were to say cool spot, you guys would say seven up. Yes. I would have said that. The spot was set the seven up spot. Okay. Oh geez, I guess

I should have saved that one. I didn't know I didn't know he had the one in sunglasses. The red spot. The red spot. Cool spot. Sunny the cuckoo bird. Karen. Uh, cocoa puff.

Absolutely. The noid. Collin. Domino's pizza. Yes. Jeffrey giraffe. It looks like Karen. Toys R Us.

Yes. Tukan Sam. Dana. Fruit loops. Absolutely. Snoopy. Dana. MetLife?

Yes. Nice. Nice. That's right. Sugar bear. Karen. Oh. Oh, sugar smacks.

This is exactly what happened in testing, by the way. Sugar smacks? Colin. It's Golden Crisp. Golden Cris. Precisely. You might be thinking of Honey Smacks, but had some sort of a frog. Now, I just have a very quick anecdote here for the Golden Cris.

So when I was growing up, Golden Crisp was actually called Sugar Cris. Super Sugar Crisp. And I remember watching so clearly, watching cartoons one morning with my sister, my little sister. And a commercial comes on for Super Sugar Crisp. And we call it to my mom. my other room, my sister's like, mom, will you buy us some super sugar, Chris? And my mom, without missing a beat from the other room, who says, I'm not buying you super sugar anything. And that's why they changed the name.

Ladies and gentlemen, all right, here we go. Spuds McKenzie, I need a specific answer, Karen. Budweiser, light. Yes. Spuds McKenzie was the pitch dog for Bud Light. Yes. Sunny, not Sunny the cuckoo bird, but Sunny, S-U-N-N-Y. Colin?

Is it raisin-brand? It is. It's pretty like that. Son. Here's one from back in the day. Sprout. Oh, uh-uh. Colin.

He was a green giant, right? His little sidekick. He was the scrappy dude to his Scooby-Doo. Speaking of scrappy dudes, punchy. Oh. Hawaiian Punch? Hawaiian Punch. Nice.

Nice. Charlie the tuna. Dana. The StarKist. Star Kist. Another tough one in testing. I never understood that character. He wanted to be eaten was the whole premise of that character.

Absolutely. Why is he like a beatnik? He's like a cool tuna. Yeah, he's like Charlie Tuna. Colin's going to get this one. Morris the Cat. Dana buzzed in first. Wait, is a meow mix?

No. No. Colin? I think Karen had that one. Friskies. No. It's nine lines, isn't it? It's nine lines, more.

It's the cat, the finicky cat. Speedy. S-P-E-D-E. Collin. That was the original McDonald's mascot. Yes, sir, it was. Was he a clown? No, he was just a dude.

He was just a dude delivering you a burger. Like a little hat, right? Just a little happy face. Just a little guy. Wow. Bread the baker. Bread the baker. Oh.

Colin? Is this the Dunkin' Donuts guy? Dunkin' Donuts! The most delicious coffee in the world. Last one, Mr. Whipple. Oh. Mr. Whipple. Colin.

That was Charmin. Charmin, toilet paper. Mr. Whipple, the grocery store owner. Yep, that's right. Oh, he's not the bear? Charmin. No. It was an old man.

It was a grocery. It was a crotch-de grocery store manager because Charmin was so soft, people would come into the store and just squeeze it. Just to squeeze it. It's just to squeeze it. This was apparently a big problem. Yeah, in his store. And he said, don't squeeze.

I don't like the bear is better now. It's charmed. Full marks all around. That was a good one. That was a good one. So we do have an ulterior motive of why today's show is about advertising. Yes. We have things to advertise.

Sell out with me. Oh, yeah. Sell out with me tonight. The record company's only killed my lots of money and everything's going to be. All right. So I was up at the Penny Arcade Expo in Boston a couple of weeks ago, and you can right now go to wired.com slash game life, or actually you can go to Twitch.tv slash Wired Game Life

and check out the live shows that we did. I interviewed game designers like Kim Swift, who was the designer of a game called Portal, and Jordan Mechner, who was the designer of a game called Prince of Persia back in the day. This little game called Prince of Persia. Yeah, and, you know, we actually, with my first time ever actually doing live, they were like daytime talk shows essentially where I talked to game developers and we showed

game demos and we played audience games. And so go check those out. It's Twitch.tv slash wired game life. We'll bring you to all those. And also something that we do called Retro Game Road Show, which is like Antiques Road Show, but for old video games. And that was a, that was a panel

at Penny Arcade Expo and you can go to Twitch. com.com. And you can actually watch the video that we did of retro game Rocho. So I want everybody to check this out because Retro Game Road Show especially, if you care any little bit about old video games. And even if you don't, if you like watching Antiques Road Show, you should check this panel

out. We have no affiliation with Antiques Rocho. Awesome. And our plug number two, Dana, we got big news. My game just came out. My iPhone iPad game just came out. It's called... Yay! It's called T-Rex Tea Party. And you're

a little dinosaur and you run down the table and try to knock all the dishes off the table. You're very little dinosaur in this game. You get bigger. Or it's a giant table, yeah. Yeah, it's one of the two. I'm not sure which. They really mean to you because your arms are too short to pour the tea properly.

You always wanted to be fancy. And you made this game, you're self-publishing it. Yes. Pretty much. Design, artwork, promotions. Dana's being humble here, but obviously you had some help, but it's... A fun project to make. And I did a little bit of voice work, and so did my fiancée, Regina.

So we're both actually in this game as teacups that get smashed to death. Yeah. So we're in there. So good job. I mean, we actually have jobs, everybody. Yeah. We have our own shameless plugs. Yeah.

That was our shameless plug segment, and hence advertising. And we have a final quiz segment. All right. Brought to you by Colin. Yeah. So, again, keeping with the kind of advertising and branding theme here, I put together a little quiz A little bit of a grab bag here

But all about products and branding and logos All right so get your buzzers ready In the Domino's Pizza logo What domino tile is featured? Oh Oh Karen 3-1

Close Three-two yeah Wrong direction One three It is two one Dana is correct It is the 2-1 tile Two in the lower left

One in the upper right And the dots actually represented the three don't the three little pepperoni they represent the three domino stores that were in existence when they created the logo in 1969 and apparently the original plan was to add new dots for each store they abandoned that pretty quickly yeah according to the manufacturers of m&Ms what is the most common color eminem in a bag of average eminems I think that was chris brown incorrect no Karen. Red.

Incorrect. What? Yellow. Incorrect. It is blue. Blue was a new color. Blue was a new color. Blue was added in...

People like it so much that... It's the distribution of a bag of M&Ms. Blue, according to M&Ms, should be 24% of the bag. Should be blue. Oh. That's... They're their stats. So blue was added in...

Karen, you look disappointed. Karen's going to run her own experiment. She's angry. I think it used to be brown. I want to say... that maybe I'm just outdated. So they retired tan when they brought Blueback. That's right.

They got rid of tan. This fast food franchise, in many ways, considered sort of the originator of the Southern California fast food franchise movement, started in the early 1940s, predates Disneyland and McDonald's. What fast food franchise is this? Chris. Hardies. Incorrect. Really?

Karen. The only reason why you're hesitating is I bet the other name, which is Carl's Jr. Correct. Oh, really? So what's the difference? Well, they knew they're the same thing. They originally merged, I believe, but it originally started by Carl Carcher in Southern

California. That's right. Before McDonald's, not long before McDonald's. All right. In the 1990s, radio host Howard Stern helped make what beverage company a household name by frequently promoting it on his show? Howard Stern helped Chris. Snap-o.

That is correct. Yes. Really? He is widely. credited along with Wendy the Snapple lady being one of the main reasons that Snapple became very popular in the 1990s. Did they pay him or he really liked it? Oh no, it was a paid, it was a paid promo. But he did always go out of his way to stress that he really did enjoy the product and he knew the, or you know, got to know the company pretty well. Yeah. That's cool.

What kind of cow is featured in the packaging and logos for Ben and Jerry's ice cream? Regular. Just a regular cow. Karen. Holstein. It is a Holstein. Yes, correct. I was going to say log you. Black is going to goog you. And we'll wrap it up here with this one. Specifically, what type of creature is featured in the Starbucks logo? Oh.

I don't know specifically, but mermaid. Incorrect. Ciren. Closer. Dana, you want to take a guess? Now I was going to say starfish because there's starfish on her, which is a creature. A real creature. The creature featured in the Starbucks logo is a massive.

Melusine, which is a very specific type of siren with a split tail. So if you notice, she has the two halves per tail coming off to each side, and the original logo is based on an old European woodcut. Huh. How do they reproduce then? Where are the reproduction organs? I think that's beyond the scope of this episode. All of this is tackled in the movie The Little Mermaid 2, which no one's ever seen.

It has it, it actually has a, yeah, no, it has a, it has a, it has a, it has a, it has a, In-depth, 15-minute long explanation of how it's all works. Well, let's think through, let's think through this. If she has the fish part of the bottom, she probably doesn't have a womb. She probably lays egg cells. She lays eggs, yeah. But where does it live? Is it between the split tail?

We need an episode on the Siren Anatomy. Let me throw this one out there. Okay. If they lay eggs, why they got belly buttons. Oh. Boom. If I can drop my microphone, I would. Melusine.

Melusine. Write a letter to Starbucks right now. All right. That's the end of our giant advertising episode. Thank you guys for joining me. And thank you, the listeners, for listening in. You can find us on Zoom Marketplace on iTunes and also on our website, which is good job, brain.com.

We're getting a lot of awesome reviews. Thank you guys so much for overwhelming the support. Thank you. And bye. Bye. decide to run for a second non-consecutive term. These are among the topics we deal with on the My History Can Beat Up Your Politics Podcast. We tell stories of history that relate to today's news events.

Give a listen. My History Can Beat Up Your Politics wherever you get podcasts.