Podcast: The Ride - Duffy The Disney Bear with Lindsay Katai and Brandi Rhodes

Episode Date: May 17, 2019

Lindsay Katai (Teen Creeps, Infinity Train) returns to talk Duffy The Disney Bear. A character beloved in Japan, and Mike and Lindsay's Apartment. Plus, an interview with Duffy enthusiastand professional wrestler Brandi Rhodes (All Elite Wrestling)! Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus Pan Galactic Pizza Port episode up at The Second Gate! https://www.Patreon.com/podcasttheride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forever Dog Randy Rose. Aww, it's Podcast The Ride! Welcome to Podcast The Ride, the theme park podcast created by Minnie Mouse to keep you company while you're at sea. My name is Mike Carlson. Joining me as always, Jason Sheridan. Did you have the same joke if you were to do the joke? I didn't have the same joke. I have a different Duffy specific joke. I almost joked that you were created by mini mouse to keep me company at sea that joke well because it's too clunky when you're doing a bit of riches well you're it's too clunky when you're doing the intro because i was like well i'm mike carlson and then it's this is jason sheridan and it's like you want to say what the podcast is anyway this is now

clunky oh yeah because it has to be the show why would it not be Yeah I guess we'll hey let Sleeping dogs lie I guess Scott Gairdner talking That's correct Ty and then Over on this couch returning Guest good friend of the podcast My Shelly May Is how I refer to her You know her Lindsay Kaye Ty from

Teen Creeps podcast and What you wanted to talk about the Writing Infinity Train. I think we talked about it before. We still don't know when it's coming out, but we'll just keep talking about it. Inching ever closer to being, this is, you've been in this death march of non-release

of a show that you it seems like will be a wonderful show. Yeah, death march of like waiting for it to happen, but joy march of working on it. Yes, the work itself, not a death march of like waiting for it to happen, but joy march of working on it. Yes, the work itself, not a death march. You've had years where a Christmas never comes. Yeah, yeah.

Many years without a Christmas. That is what it's like. Hopefully Christmas isn't. Or it's like I'm a mother who's just been steadily buying presents for my children and not giving them to them uh on a daily basis yes almost like you're just making tons of uh travel teddy bears but no one goes off on a voyage at sea much like that yeah yeah or imagine if i just kept creating characters in the duffy universe and then never told anyone about them i think not allowed or wouldn't make sense if you talk to network won't let me yet, which is weird because Duffy. Well, I was going to say we're going to get to a point.

First of all, we're talking Duffy the Disney bear today, which is a very important topic that I've wanted to do since day one. And everyone said, no, why? And I said, no, we have to do this. But it's actually better because now we've sort of saved up, you know, a lot of capital. And it would have been a weird thing to do in the first 10 yeah yeah um but now now here we are yeah time for your talk about

whatever if you slowly turn up the heat on a frog they don't know they're boiling I guess that is correct that's what we're doing to the listeners but I'm happy you did it Post me going to Tokyo

Because Tokyo does help you understand Duffy And contextualize him a little bit Even though where you saw him Was not his original home No it's just where He has caught fire Real quick though

Before we launch into Duffy, there's a little show business that we were just talking about via text a couple days ago, and I feel like we should... I just feel like we should talk about it now before we go. I woke up really stressed that day,

and I was trying to be funny, and it just got out of hand, and I'm sorry for... No, I'm not trying to. I just said it's good for the. It's just good to sometimes let the audience in on some of our. I felt so bad. I haven't really seen anyone. I'm not trying to shame you.

I'm just talking about it in a very public recorded way. To be fair to me, I said, let's talk about it on the show, on the text. So it wasn't like I said. You didn't negate that. Yeah. And you didn't say like, oh, no, we should not. I for a little longer i only i saw scott the other night for a few minutes but we were at a a bar and i didn't want and everyone seemed like it was having a nice time and i didn't want to talk business so we didn't have to we didn't get to have very guilty chords

well before with all that build-up mike explain what happened. Or if Jason would like to. No, I... We heard his side of the story. Yeah, I'll... It's been years. Felt like an asshole for days. You were already called a teddy bear given to your company people on a journey at sea. You've gotten some fluffy praise. I've gotten some fluffy praise.

I was going to say, my joke is that this is the theme park podcast podcast of happiness and luck which is a different duffy specific that's like his nickname essentially yeah uh go ahead with dragging my ass okay no i just we i just want to give the listeners a little bit of a little peek uh uh so yeah so we were talking just because look galaxy's edge is coming up the opening is coming up uh we have our time. We know when we're going. We're just discussing, like, we're obviously going to cover this on the show. We're going to do certain segments. Sure. And so we're just discussing, like, how we were going to do it.

And we're going to be in the park with a bunch of friends of the show, Lindsay included. Yes. So it's maybe an opportunity to, you know, get some live or right right after response and such right so we were just sort of talking it through via text on our text chain and then scott brought up which i think he's brought up before you know little lovs we could have little love mics record a little audio in the in the actual park i thought you brought it up well maybe i did i don't i thought you brought it up first and that's why i said what I did. Because I thought it was going to be a thing where I was like, this is one of my schemes. This is going to be funny.

Now I had such a big reaction to it. One of my schemes for recording the podcast. Content for our podcast. But for doing something we haven't done before. It's not like it's a trademark of our podcast. That sneaky little podcast trying to make an episode all right what do we what happened what happened well i think scott's the one introduced it on the chick as he says well i'm gonna get lobs i think that might help us record

without lugging shit around and i said yeah i have some too somewhere let me look for those i said like we could end up recording like 30 minutes just standing in the line uh with the lobs and then you said yeah you uh we were talking about some other stuff and then jason says you want to record in the line i think we leave all that shit in the car and then i was anticipating this because we brought up what if we recorded at city walk during the city walk saga and you flipped the fuck out that was number two craziest stuff we had no media contacts at the time we hadn't started the patreon we were still you know in our

in our infancy we could have been stripped of our right to have a patreon had we been caught by an 18 year old security guard still figuring it out we still we had to go I could serve with that we would get yelled at we had to go back like 10 more times. This time, again, I thought, again, I thought Mike was bringing this up.

And I thought like, this will be funny. I'm responding to Mike. The reaction the first time you brought, when the CityWalk thing came up, was enough that when I brought up, I did, here's my confession. I had a sidebar with Mike about this before any of this because I knew you were going to freak out. So, because the CityWalk one went so bad, the idea of recording in a setting. So, thus, we had had a sidebar. Hey, maybe we should record a little something and we'll reach it with Jason later.

This was the later. Yeah, right, right, right. And Jason did not disappoint because texts within text so yeah i i forgot that that's what that not to set this up anymore my response was like my second or third option oh well we should hear what those are uh uh or maybe not you think about it uh so then i said i was explaining like recording line would be fun and i you said you don't want to just do it the first times talking about going into star wars land and i explained like well i think standing outside early in disneyland if maybe it's a nightmare maybe it's interesting maybe people are like you know uh lining us up weird

or the whole process is a nightmare and it'd be funny if we're describing that and we're, the listener would be on the journey with us. And then Jason went counterpoint. You are wrong. My, my first reaction, which I did not tell you was Jesus. Really?

Well, that's, we, we got the message from that. Yeah. So honestly, you are wrong better than I yeah. From the much harsher. I like you are wrong better than I do Jesus, really?

Yeah. Well, there's like a grandeur to you are wrong. I didn't think that. I sincerely didn't think so. And I'll tell you, Scott, I had a sidebar with Mike after that where I went, it appears I have once again spoken too quickly. Like so many problems in my life I have caused. By whether I meant to or not being glib. I think I figured all this out quickly. My mom taught me back in AOL Instant Messenger days how text can read so much harsher than you intend it to be read.

And I was just telling her, not about this, about another thing, how that is true to this day with a Facebook status or a text mail. You never know. I think it's why it's important to air things out in person. Or on a podcast. That being said, counterpoint, you are wrong, seemed like, wow, that is. But I also was loaded for bear because I knew you were i you have a you have a problem i think with recording in a public well it less so because as mike eventually this goes on

for a while uh yeah and i don't want to give away because there's some other stuff in it that would give away some surprises um but i um uh i got once mike and i were there the day a new ice cream place opened. And it looked like fucking Errol Morris or Alex Gibney was shooting a documentary. People there with so much equipment to shoot like, hey, fam, this is pretty good. Like it's just massive amounts of equipment. I was like, oh, they might give less of a. It's just massive amounts of equipment. I was like, oh, they might give less of a shit than I think they do. Sure.

Hey, I feel you. I'm not a strong man. I don't want to lug a bunch of wires and shit around. But that's why I'm talking about a little, just the thinnest. Yes, no. Perhaps to be hidden. And I'm on, you know, i like i said i was like you know what i think i had a bit of an intense first reaction i'm on board uh i you know we'll we'll do it it'll be fine but i think i was just thinking about like the the article still the articles

keep coming of like record crowds like oh yeah the police said like a void it's good no it's gonna be insane uh it's crazy that we're that we're we're doing it but that but like uh hey you know it's an option it's to have the option sure um i have i do have a question jason which is uh if you had to do out loud how you intended counterpoint you are wrong to be read because in my delivery yeah yeah yeah i think it was less harsh like counterpoint you're wrong i mean that sounds very friendly you typed out in all caps you are wrong no it wasn't okay but i can see that being an interpretation i think the volume of your voice michael um made me think it was in all caps and i was like i think he read it exactly how it should have been i think we're all three of us given uh to hyperbole occasionally sure um i do

think and i'm you i'm used to your glibness in general but i will say four or five minutes you riled me up pretty good i was like really yeah we both were going like well what do you mean but it would be we're both in a flurry i was shot flurry of text messages i thought the reaction would be like oh old man jason's grumpy again like i don't i was like oh man i i uh yeah yeah so for me it's because it was a sequel to the city walk because oh that was a text thing too that was a text thing yeah i i said like oh maybe we could record one in the in this in city walk and then i didn't check my phone for 45 minutes and then i came back to like 70 texts with every possible reason why this would have been a bad idea i blocked that i don't remember that so all the yes we've all also put our phones down at some point

and then come back to the other two having an hour-long conversation usually not that charged though usually boring logistics so uh yeah so officially on the record i we don't we won't drag us out officially on the record you are open to a lot he's holding his head in his hand he is squinting as if he has a headache but i am uh embarrassed that i have learned my lesson wow geez well a moment of humility which is no i think this was all I think it all got away from us. But, you know, I think my mom's lesson rings true. Your mom's lesson is right. I it's it is not honestly, it's not the first time recently where my too brief texting style has gotten me in trouble.

Really? And I don't want to expound on that. Oh, sure. A counterpoint you are wrong to your dad. You won't be speaking for i know he's he's had a lifetime of the glibness and i had to get him from somewhere at least 50 percent of it from somewhere uh i i was going through my text to try to find uh something indicative of mine and kelly's conversations kelly being my co-host for Teen Creeps. We were trying to kind of tweak the

description of our podcast so it's a little more open to covering movies and other stuff like that. Maybe not just books going forward. And so here's how that went. I think that works. Me too. Nice. Thank you. Awesome. I really appreciate

you doing this. We got each other's back kelly and i are constantly texting one another i really appreciate you not just like you doing that i appreciate you that's very nice to be fair to us though if this were dough boys it would have been counterpoint you were wrong you fucking idiot That would be there On the podcast Dick sizes and Yeah ability to suck Your own dick sure dicks would have

Been more at play so I feel like we're in the middle as far as Podcasts been on the table for sucking Yeah So all right well No but look what a nice i think it ended up very uh very sweet like your text conversation you're all uh amenable boys it just goes to show sometimes good good boys go bad that's well now with that being said that means that like tune in near the galaxy's edge opening time because you

may hear us live in the park with some special guests or maybe not because maybe it's uh too too stressful or not interesting or uh it just doesn't sound or after all of this wrong sure or after all of this talk both mike and I see somebody we think is a security guard out of the corner of our eye and then panic. Jump and eat the mic. Again, I- Swallow it. It's the only way out.

I watched someone go through security recently with so much equipment. I watched someone go through with cigarillos and having to assure people, no, it's just- No, there's no weed. No, we didn't cut it. No, it's just cigarillos and having to assure people like no it's just so there's no no there's no weed no we didn't cut it no it's just cigarillos and i'm like that's the kind you buy to put weed in but uh yeah but like so so much equipment i think as long as you are willing to open your bag and take it all out they they honestly don't care it just sounds like you're more concerned about pain in the ass than you are about like being caught or being a problem. I think we all have different levels of tolerance for crowd.

Mike handles crowds best. I'm in the middle. And I think, Scott, you do not like crowds. I'll say that. Yes. I'll own that, Emily. And I am kind of like, huh? No crowd queen.

No crowd queen. No crowd queen. Thanks for filling in a queen for me. Lindsay, how do you feel about do you think you've gotten better being with Mike for so long? Can you tolerate? A crowd lover like me. I would like to state for the record once again

that I have been a Disney kid my entire life. This is not something that Mike has forced on me. I know that. No, I'm just saying that I am good with crowds and it was not something that my boyfriend had to make me better at okay i hear what you're saying i feel like i've already been owned plenty you don't have to dig in no i i i've never i've never had a problem. I'm kidding. Well, hang on.

Crowds is a different issue, I feel, than theme parks because Mike, you seemingly are always in a crowd if you aren't here. That's true. You're like chasing crowds. I do have to say I'm good with theme park crowds and very bad with concert crowds. What about Comic-Con crowds? I mean, we've been in some rough crowds. Yeah, I'm always fine with a theme park crowd, though.

Yeah. I don't know why that is. My dad just trained me. He's just so good at theme parks, just blocks out all the surrounding noise and stuff. That's my answer if somebody has the knee jerk, wait, you like theme parks a lot, don't you hate the crowds? And the answer is, I don't pay attention to it. I actually can see past it, but I can't if it's a concert i really like if it's a concert

i was on the fence about i can't handle it done cons no the cues are so well planned and so i know that i will there's a clear route for getting to the thing i'm trying to get to as opposed to comic-con where it's like i have to throw myself into a rush of people to get to a table where i then have to like try to maneuver myself to the front of so it's just like that's stressful there's no there's there are no light at the end of the there the tunnel. Yeah, there's no guaranteed ways to get anywhere. Sort of true, a little in that Coachella zone. Like, obviously, there is ultimately the stage. But when you're leaving, it's like, I need to go be alone for two months.

I need to not be in a public place. This is so stressful. I will say this to Warren Lindsay, and you gentlemen also should go to this. Bruce Springsteen just announced he wrote a full E Street Band album a month or two ago. So there will be another E Street Band tour. So prepare for the pit is what I'm saying to you now. I'm a less sleepy person than the last concert. That's true.

I'm a different person. That's true. In general or just on the... Well, that's a whole... In general, actually. Okay. That's a whole nother story but long story short we went to a springsteen concert and you were very sleepy and about an hour and 45 minutes in you were like i gotta go sit down and then cut to three hours because bruce plays uh you know a very long time even in the 60s cut to three hours later you were

like well it's the encore i better i'm gonna rally we're gonna do born to run we're gonna do all of it i had been standing at the back of the crowd the whole rest of their or the back of the floor the whole rest of the time and i'm like i'm coming back in i'm up as like close as possible when he's like doing his speeches and i'm like tearing up is that the time where you like touched his hand or something i went to a show two days before that without you. And that's when I touched his leg because he's crowd surfed over me. And that was very, it was a religious experience. Yeah.

So anyway, so prepare for that. We don't, we have so much Duffy to get to. We don't need to hash out all this crowd talk. Yeah, we got to get to mike's eight year long sickness you have the crowd in your brain of bears and links and uh it's another in the genre if we if we package these uh uh you know if there was a mini genre within the show uh one might be episodes where you are so stressed out because you have 40 tabs open yes i'd have to remember that at this point there's been like at least like eight or nine of them you have and i

can imagine this is one stuffed animals next year yeah so so yeah i'll start by jason somebody paint a picture of what's going on behind me there are uh let me do it because i don't know their names all right great there's three bears. One is a cat. One is not a bear. It's a cat. I guess I know... There's three bears. One is a cat.

There's three bears. The interesting thing about one of the bears is it's a cat. It's a cat. And they are of different varieties. Okay, it seems like the female bear... And I think I know their names, but let me just say, the female bear and the cat are normal male bear Duffy

obviously is in a sombrero with Mickey ears on it and then there's a little bird in the sombrero the bird is wearing like a backpack or a knapsack and then also a hat yes that's right and they're all sitting there's somebody else in there

too oh I missed that. Oh, and then a tiny little chef dog. I'm so proud that I remembered who that was just now. I couldn't see it from my vantage point. These are Duffy and his friends. Duffy and friends. Duffy is the bear. His female bear is Shelly Mae.

Can I try to name them? Yeah, please. Okay. Duffy, boy bear boy bear shelly may girl bear gelatoni cat bear tippy blue uh bird bear and uh cookie uh cook bear that's right very good a gift from a listener cookie yeah uh he's who's a Hong Kong exclusive? Yes, at the moment. At the moment. And where does Tippy Blue factor in? I mean, there's probably some order, rhyme, or reason, but does Tippy Blue belong to one of them?

Well, he's a bird mailman. He delivers stuff, he's mad. That's what the knapsack is. Yeah, he has a little knapsack, and he's the bird mailman, and he is in Cape Cod. He's the Cape Cod bird mailman. In case you don't know what we're talking about, these are characters that are all basically plush-specific Disney Parks characters.

They don't really appear in any TV or movies or anything. They appear in shows in Tokyo Disney in paris they appear on the in uh in room channel at the hotels they used to oh is that over i think it's over because i watched it today and at the very end of that in-room loop it says there's a whole big thing come see duffy at epcot and that ended a few years ago so now they could do the story without that tag but i i'm not a 100 sure i see this is disney world they were on the hotel tvs they were on the hotel tvs you used to be they have the power to edit we may never know we may know there's also a bear making the show filming it boom micing it it's a long sock like duffy has multiple origin stories yeah so so yeah

so basically synergy being one of them the true one the true one he yeah so basically he was into what is it 2002 he was just created uh and he was the disney bear his name was not duffy he was just available at disney world's downtown disney once upon a toy shop and he was an exclusive there there's also word for like there were there were different color versions of duffy but when he was not called duffy as well and you can find those on ebay there's like lavender duff pre duffy duffy for like three hundred dollars i was gonna say how expensive are those now uh i have not been on any of them. I just want to let everyone know. That's not on my radar yet.

You're busy with your Beanie Baby purchases. Yes, I want Tabasco the Bull and Garcia. I want a Mint Garcia. That's what I've been looking for. The tie-dye bear. Also, we need to do a second gate on Ty Warner, the Beanie Baby man oh really who created it i don't know i hope so okay anyway do something this feels ripe i don't know i can just

get a sense that it's going to be good um just like we're going to do that robert earl episode eventually oh yeah sandwich yes you can just tell as long as i'm careful with my words uh to not slander that's true we'll have a lawyer listen to the Robert Earl episode. We'll get the prosecutor from the Alki Davis case. Oh, boy. Oh, yeah. If you remember lots of episodes ago, the man who runs the Hologram Theater in Los Angeles, I sort of implied that he was kind of a shady guy.

And I was worried there'd be legal ramifications for Me doing that on our podcast that people Did not really listen to you at that point anyway That guy's getting sued for lots Of money the suit is over He is the court rules lots of Money yeah like tens of millions of dollars Which and he was

Incredibly sexist during The trial Like just like you woman to the attorney. He's not a good man. A businessman, you say, was acting this way? A businessman whose money is, it's not clear where it comes from. Who owns something?

Who owns many businesses that you've never heard of that involve like CBD and also has a theater on Hollywood Boulevard. This doesn't add up. No, no, none of it's making sense. Anyway, I have no regrets about what I said about the hologram, the theater man. Anyway, continue. Yeah, back to Duffy.

So then in 2005 is basically, or no, excuse me, 2004 is when they gave him his name, Duffy. They gave him a sailor suit and a backstory. He wasn't named until 2004? Yeah, because he was a real, it was a real like short run like of him in 2002 as that exclusive. Do you know why they did this? It was just, why don't we have a bear?

Tokyo won it. Well, Tokyo, yeah. Tokyo won it something. Well, I think at the time in 2002, it seemed like they wanted to get a little bit of that, build a bear shine which is very funny because in for a long time at downtown disney in uh anaheim there was a build a bear location so at one point in time they were trying to sell duffy and his costumes in the park

and at downtown disney they were had build a bear with other Disney costumes. And they said, we should be building the bears. And raking in those props. The rent money is not enough. We can't trust you jokers to build these bears. You're building them wrong. Let us do it. Yeah. So 2004, they have now added a backstory.

And a sailor suit. And a sailor suit. Very important. It becomes very important to where he lives and uh where his prominent home now uh yeah so then then that's sort of around 2005 is when they start really like pumping him up in tokyo and end in but in florida they were calling him my first disney bear and it said giving him out as the boy substitute toy at the perfectly princess tea party at dc's grand floridian resort so and for your son we have this handsome boy substitute toy yeah daddy i love my

boy substitute toy there's also around that like they at one there's a story where it's like duffy was brought to life by tinkerbell which was retconned so yeah so duffy has had a couple origin stories the first one being tinkerbell just created him out of mickey's face so you can see mickey like you see like in the shape of duffy's fur it looks like mickey mouse's like the hidden mickey or something i didn't i didn't know that the lighter part of his fur yes is is a mickey right so taking her cues from the movie face off she created a bear in a similar way like she traced it like trace off she just as many doves flying around in the process but that was boring i guess they thought and they wanted to make something much more dynamic and if you didn't know what i was talking about at the

joke with that joke at the start um the or now still official origin is that uh minnie sewed duffy together for mickey who is of course a captain a sea captain uh and duffy was made to keep him company while he was at sea yes so when yeah when did he become a sea captain where this is new information documented in the storybook you could buy but also in the in-room hotel channel uh where you can watch the duffy the disney bear bedtime story that plays pretty much every like 12 minutes on a loop around bedtime um so i my family went down to disney world like in 2012 and we're flipping through like when we get in you know we're flipping through the tv channels and there's the resort the loop that we love so much about everything to do. And then we're like, what the fuck is this channel?

We love Hotel Loops. We love it. That's a final four in the future, our favorite Hotel Loops. Oh, yeah. I like 87 when Pleasure Island opened. Strong loop. But then there's a loop with just this Duffy bedtime story, with just a mother reading to her children this story.

Oh. Which, as Mike has indicated does include the line Mickey is a sea captain so naturally he spends a lot of time on the ocean. Naturally as you do. When being a sea captain.

Yeah. He is? It seems like they're using the origin of Mickey in their like narrative of Tokyo Disney Sea. So, in that world, Mickey, you know, like... Mickey loves the sea. His life and his love and also his lady. Right.

He told Minnie that his love is the sea. It's the sea. You can't settle down with her. So, for some reason, instead, she made him a bear. Yes. Yes. To keep him company. And then, yeah.

Keep him away from that slutty sea. Nobody's worried. Well, he has his crew, but it's lonely out on sea. So when he's homesick. Who's on his crew? Well, never explained it. Probably criminals,

people hiding from the law. Scientologists. Yeah, Scientologists, career long short man Joaquin Phoenix, Lori Loughlin's daughters, Olivia Jade's out there influencing yeah the prisoners um so yeah so that's that was quietly his origin now at this point in the story I mean there's probably things I'm forgetting uh but at this point in the story, I mean, there's probably things I'm forgetting. But at this point in the story, it's 2000. I'm trying to think when I first go to Disneyland at 2007 or eight or nine.

And we all I think have a similar thing. A California adventure. There is all of a sudden a Duffy presence and they have signs. And there is a character, a walk around character for a while. And I think we've mentioned this in the show before, but everyone was saying who the fuck is Duffy? What is this? Much like Mickey being a sea captain, it's just, here it is

you know, it felt like the, we started seeing ads for Mordecai. Hey, here he is, it's Mordecai. What? What do you mean? I don't know. I don't know who that is. We all know him. I don't. When did you all meet and get to know him? All they really had to do was have a banner that said, like, introducing Duffy.

But instead, it was just like, hey, it's Duffy. I don't know her. No one did. Yeah. I didn't know the gender. I probably might have assumed female. Yeah. And I had morbid curiosity.

I went and took a picture with Duffy. And I know the picture. And the look on my face communicates my faux excitement for this character i don't know right which felt very and once you realize oh it's disney's attempt at a teddy bear it feels very crass feels like like my instinct was to to sort of poke fun at it as maybe yours was initially as well it feels very poochy yeah yeah an arbitrary filling of a need yeah and when he's not on screen everyone should be asking at all times where is duffy it does seem like for a company like disney obviously you know there's a lot of crass stuff there's a lot of uh like

jacking up prices for things for something to feel so crass really says something about the gesture of duffy doesn't it yeah like when there's the gesture of duffy crass yeah sure uh like when we go like when we go up and be like oh it's five more dollars for a vegetable skewer now all right but this duffy makes me mad what is this like for whatever reason that felt like you're forcing a thing we don't know in the parks well screw you like we were some might say they they make entire uh trilogies of films that don't really need to exist sure it was like they were trying to inception us on level one and it's like i'm not asleep i know this wasn't a thing you can't just try to insert this into my

memories of disney when i was five duffy was not here i don't need the kick i don't need the kick to wake me up out of this dream state i can wake myself out of this one yeah but lindsey go back check your photos but duffy's in all of them you'll see we go we got here quick get to our photos fucking terrifying yeah oh sure well with meeting duffy and not trusting duffy you don't know duffy might have like weird sort of uh like a reverse type powers or yeah yeah absolutely she she or he whatever it is just appears implanted itself in your mind we should get like we should take photos of ourselves in the parks as kids and then Photoshop Duffy. Like we're meeting Duffy in 1987 or something.

Me hugging Duffy at Ohana. With a Clinton Gore shirt on. With a Clinton Gore shirt on. Duffy, totally mini Nixon. Clinton Gore shirt. Same thing. Can I can I summarize the storybook real quick? Oh, yeah. Before you go on. OK Same thing, yeah. Can I summarize the storybook real quick? Oh, yeah, please.

Before you go on? Okay, so, yeah. So, as you said, Minnie makes Duffy for Mickey. She gives it to him right before one of his sea voyages. Mickey goes on the sea voyage. It is implied he has a long day of training new crew members. And after dinner, he goes down to his room and he's very tired and he's

feeling very homesick but then he sees Duffy and he gives Duffy a big hug and he feels better but he has a dream that Duffy talks to him in the dream and I don't know

conception there it is it's in the origin story already trying again i forgot what duffy actually says in the dream but i wrote down i am become death destroyer of worlds so so then uh i i do have some screen grabs so the next day he wakes up and he gets dressed and he says to this day Mickey still swears that the teddy bear smiled back at him and winked while he's at sea so I think that's sea madness right he's hallucinating

it's not good if your doll comes to life that's a bad thing that's a child's play thing it's not good and then he gets back to shore and he tells all of his friends about the dream he had about duffy coming to life and my note on that is he came back from the sea changed he wasn't the same man anymore he'd seen some real shit he'd seen some real shit then they left with 20 and

came back with 15 um and then the net the end, all the friends like Duffy so much, they all go to Minnie and they want their own teddy bears. So that's a bit crass. That is where the crassness really hit me watching this. You should get your own bears. You should get your own bear. Everyone should get one. Minnie started charging $18.99 for them A reasonable price considering the quality

Discounts available with annual passes You know what money is just energy And then the end card says Come meet Duffy at Epcot For more information visit your concierge And down in the corner Entertainment subject to change without notice Like they still had to put the legalese

The sweetest legalese the sweetest legalese so things so we the duffy story for the at least in america before the first what we're still in the first seven years or so exists in this weird crass the what what is it Is anyone biting on this? Is anyone paying attention to it? Americans don't take the bait. Yes. But does Japan immediately or is there one day when it happened? Or was it just like slowly building in popularity like a band? It's known as D-Day. Maybe less funny for Japan.

It's fair enough. Japan fared pretty well on d-day that's true uh so yeah i i couldn't it makes it seem like everything i read at least it makes it seem like it was pretty a pretty big hit pretty quickly okay so people like uh like people so at the same time of us seeing it and going what the fuck is this it's it's like catching fire because because i remember so so let me go back and we've told this story i think on the show in a brief version of it but uh it was lindsey's 30th birthday and uh i was down at the parks with my mother and sister who were visiting and i said you know it'd be funny we

always talk about this duffy character you know we always have this joke about it what if i got her duffy and a couple outfits and my mom and sister thought that was funny or whatever and uh i did and i got and the outfits are still here uh his obviously his sombrero and what do you call this poncho this poncho thank you that's the original outfit and uh his little pit crew cars outfit oh it's a red it's a lightning mcqueen reminiscent rusties racing suit and that was lightning himself that's what you said when you saw it right that's what lindsey's always say. And I gave it to her and I was like, pretty sure it would be fine. And you were not thrilled with it.

No. Yeah, we talked about this on the Tokyo Disneyland episode. It was just the fact that it was my 30th birthday. It was sort of, you know, one of the milestone birthdays. If you had come back from the park and it was just like a surprise gift out of nowhere, I would have thought it was great and hilarious. But when it was like, I'm really a woman now i'm 30 is that how you were thinking

of 30 oh i was i'm a woman now like wow i'm moving into my 30s leaving my 20s behind i'm my life is a little more on track i've had a stable job for two years now which is the longest i'd had a job for um i'm in this relationship for two years the longest relationship i've ever had were you living together now no not yet so that so at the time so it was like a thing uh uh it's not like you just saw each other every day automatically when you came home you had to make a point to see each other. Yeah, we were seeing each other maybe almost every day. Five times a week at least. Yeah.

So it was the fact that it was my 30th birthday and I was getting a joke bear for my birthday. He was a joke bear. I will say he started as a joke bear. Of course, I like to think he really warmed his way into our hearts. I mean, certainly he's got a whole family on the couch right now. Much like his general popularity. It just took a minute. Now, I probably asked this before or we might have covered this before.

Was this the primary gift? No. Okay. No. Well, in that case, if it's a supplementary gift. But it did sort of feel like it was going to be the big gift. I was probably the most excited about it. So it probably took like center stage.

I think that that was part of it. Like because you were excited about it being funny, I just thought it was like a really good gift. Everything I say makes it sound so much worse. But I thought it was going to be a really good gift that I'd like is the thing. It's overshadowed even my memory of what we did or where like we went to dinner or anything too. It's just all I can think about is 30 is Duffy.

I remember nothing but receiving this. Yeah. In my mind, maybe it was all we did. That's all I remember for my 30th birthday. Well, you know, those iPhone 4 photos are so blurry. You can barely make them out anymore. And like we talked about on the last episode is it was like had we

said I love you yet I don't know and then I got a Duffy bear on my 30th birthday well you just said that in February it's a whole stew of of it being not the most thrilling present for me that year

when does a couple say I love you? When does a couple give their first tiny red racing suits meant for bear? Joke bear. Joke bear. Now it's a match. Duffy the joke bear. Duffy the joke bear. If they put that up in America, that's what they call it in America, would have made sense completely.

When Mike explained it to a bunch of us, it brought us a lot of joy because we all thought it was hilarious. Now I've had endless joy in telling this story. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of mileage out of it. I mean, one of my favorite parts is he, when I was like, wow, that's very funny. How did she, what did she think? And his something along the lines of,

she wasn't thrilled. Lindsay said, counter counterpoint you are wrong well that was her first reaction but she apparently kept it to herself so i can't imagine opening a gift and just saying counterpoint you are wrong the only way that phrase is um but you're but this story is not now like like jason you were just telling the duffy origin story with and i was looking over your your shoulders seeing like this the storybook panels of the sweet story of mini giving the gift of duffy and it's funny how oh in reality it was a slightly less sweet of a tale or at least less idyllic but now i'm imagining

this story being told just realistically but in storybook panels the 20 page story added on top of that was me knowing how much i was disappointing you by not having the reaction that you wanted me to have so then i felt bad about not loving the gift it was just a whole a whole stew of um it not working out and i usually i feel like usually i'm pretty good with gifts too as i said yeah i think you're much better than i am uh thank you we didn't need to go that far i just wanted to say at least usually i'm putting duffy in his racing outfit as you're hearing clothing rustling you you are changing your Duffy. I do think this is the superior outfit that we own for him.

I think so. But I love that little poncho. It's only the two? We have tried to put the poncho on Edwin. I can't go too nuts. There's other toys I need to buy. I would imagine also that when that was my reaction, it was like, I guess I won't keep buying clothes for the bear.

Perhaps if you had been like very excited about it, I would have been like, you know, they have a Sully costume from Monsters, not the pilot. I immediately thought the pilot. As soon as I said it. You guys love making Sully references. A little mustache for Duffy for joey he's in his outfit here that's cool would be a great accessory line uh um well i do wish that you could uh i wish that you had enough costumes to change duffy's clothes every 45 minutes that we're recording

this like he's a bet middler in a share-esque manner yeah i got some costume like this is this is a picture of four different duffy costumes it kind of looks like those old headshots where you would have four different like kooky outfits a doctor a basketball player yeah here's a duffy 2014 he's got a classic disney year shirt there's steam but willie there's stitch there's duffy in a vintage uh yellow oh that's great poncho which they of course don't make anymore because they found it was too easy to shoplift wearing those ponchos so now they shall sell clear ponchos they smell we didn't even talk about this they made us sick horrible oh we were an animal one no no they were clear oh okay we were an animal kingdom the last time we were in florida and it was downpouring and we

just were like we should just buy let's just buy them and we put them on and i think we went on everest and we were like everest i think we were like it was almost like you were sniffing a marker and it wasn't fun or it was like a bad it was like opening a can of paint and then just breathing it in it was insane i don't know what was wrong with if it was normal or whatever but anyway stay away from those yeah anyway so yeah duffy has a lot of great outfits uh there are an insane amount of outfits and in tokyo specifically uh they they have them here and they're still like maybe between 12 and 20 but in tokyo it's out of control there are merchandise events uh they call it sweet duffy

it's a it's a like a shopping season i don't know exactly how long it lasts but they have introduced a whole new spring collection of duffy and shelly may and now gelatoni and the other characters costumes and like they're like especially the stuff in japan it's like little overalls and a little cardigan and a little like polo shirt. It's like, it's real fucking cute. Yeah. Like well-dressed dolls. Well-dressed little gentlemen.

Yeah. Here it's more like you can dress them up like Woody from Toy Story, but out there it's like, make them like, make them your little son. Like dress them like a little boy going to picture day. And people take them to the park. There's seats and perches for Duffy in the park. No, when we were there, there was one person with a double wide stroller, which I don't know if those will be banned in Tokyo. There was no mention of that because they're now banned in Florida and California.

Not if you've got a Duffy and a Gelatoni in there. But yes, if you uh your plush children your adoptive plush children will that be okay as long as you bought your kids here it's fine um so yeah so it's a whole thing and so having this little guy duffy in your apartment though started me down a rabbit hole of of exploration and. And I think I remember vaguely of like, do you know, this is really popular in Japan, like insanely popular,

like maybe more popular than Mickey is. And then like this started the whole, my whole fascination with this whole thing and, and going down message boards and you say, as you nervously rub your legs, and the obsession, you are stressed i am stressed about this episode for sure there's too much stuff i'm like are we going to get to all of it

didn't you talk to somebody oh yeah we talked about there's an interview coming up as well so i'm i am nervous that we're not gonna i shouldn't have litigated the problem with jason at the top that was so i can't imagine it helps to keep bringing up the whole duffy for my birthday story let's tell it one more time here we go i guess that but i feel like we needed the context of you on because you were because you were witness to my madness which is why you're here yes also just so you know the problem is gonna get worse at that point well i thought it was a fun gift for me but but much like Homer buying Marge a bowling ball, I guess that that was really a Michael present. Yeah, I guess that is. I will agree with that.

I should have gotten Duffy lessons from a handsome Frenchman. It's much bigger. Like in Tokyo, Duffy has like all about Eve to Mickey. Like Duffy was the young star. And now he's he's the draw he's the eve harrington let the wolf into the hen house so then that is when the forum diving began well yeah so so eventually i so pretty quickly i think i was like did you know that duffy has a lady bear and she was and was like and i was of course the answer probably was like, no, I don't.

I don't care. I mean, pretty much, do you know that Duffy dot dot dot, it's always going to be no. With anyone. You have to try really hard to stay awake from that point on. When we went to Florida the first time, which is about five years ago already, together, I mean, I called, this is just how much,

how willing I was to double down on a bit i called because there was a number that said well if you want anything like sort of like special in your room when you get there let us know you know because usually they would put like some flowers in there like uh maybe a bottle of wine and i said hey uh there's a bear uh in tokyo named shelly may and i know it's not available in the u.s parks but is there any way i could have that bear waiting for us and then she was like i don't i don't know like she was like really not even a disney like magic answer like what a good idea sir i wish that we could she was come on lady we love making dreams come true right yeah she was very nice but she didn't

and i'm i'm probably um remembering it uh in a much more curt way than she actually said it but there was no like oh let me ask someone about that or let me see if that would be possible because we'd like to go the extra mile because also money would be involved i'm sure like give us 200 and we'll ship a shelly may whatever you want you maniac she had both your disney ids open with your birthdates and was just thinking like you gotta be fucking kidding me too old yeah if it was like for my daughter or something they were like all right well maybe we can make this happen for this they google imaged you saw you had a beard and said no way are we getting this guy girl bear cancel his hotel reservation cancel all of it he's not allowed in the park not let this man into florida uh did you get

then a wine or chocolate or something no oh my god the end of that story is there was no nice thing i mean it also it wasn't my birthday or anything. Yeah, yeah. It was just like, well, it was just a trip. We'll have plenty of wine and chocolate when we get there. It's just that there's waiting for us would be Shelley May would be really I would have. Yeah, I would have been so self-satisfied with that. Yeah, but there's no way it would have occurred to you to go. OK, well, then I will instead get something else. Can I get you something else? Nice. Like that adults would want. No, I've got to go okay well then i will instead get something else can i get you something else nice

like that adults would want no no gotta go click no i'll just go to fucking publics on the way in i do i do remember that first trip we went we were at the all one of the all-star resorts and we went straight to the cafeteria because i wanted to try a rainbow dessert that was a big deal that rainbow cake at the time jason and i think had been texting i was like you know i'm gonna what's our first stop there we're gonna go check out that rainbow because you were only staying there for one night yes before you went somewhere else the famous rainbow cake of aught 14 hotel pop century yeah where i immediately kicked my suitcase and then spent the whole rest of the trip limping around Florida. Oh, my God. I have very bad luck when it comes to going on vacations. Yeah, you got injured in Tokyo.

Tokyo episode. Yeah, you bruised your back. Yep. In Tokyo. And forgot my meds. You can go back and listen to that episode, everyone. That is it for the Yakuza. Yeah.

I was just drug smuggling. It didn't work out. I forgot the drugs. Did the other orlando trip did you get sick no it's sort of what goes what tends to happen with me is the first time i go anywhere i either get lost or i injure myself and then all the times after that are fine okay so that yeah that orlando trip was not no everything was fine just don't go to a place for the first time ever again. Just know that I will hurt myself. Right.

So, yeah. So, I recall then like Duffy providing hours of entertainment for us. I would make Duffy dance to house music. I recall doing that a lot. There's a really good video that we have to post. Yeah. Yeah. You have to admit that was fun.

That was a funny thing that I did. It wasn't just I post that. We have to post. Yeah, yeah. You have to admit that was fun. That was a funny thing that I did. It wasn't just I was crazy. You have to. Got a counterpoint, Lindsay? If it had only not come on my 30th birthday. Everything after this has been fine. Everything's fine now. All right, everything's good.

I am in this relationship of my own free will. Don't send any hidden signals to the listeners that they need to save you or anything. That's really hard on a podcast. I'll just start going. Were those sounds a signal Lindsay was sending or is that you adjusting the mic? That's up to the listener to decide. You'll never know. Why did it sound like dot, dot, dot, dash, dash, dash, dot, dot, dot.

So, okay. Message boards. Yeah, we got to the message boards. And here's what I'll say. I really thought about how to sort of talk about this. I won't say what boards they are. I won't announce any usernames. But I got very deep into Looking at the Duffy message board

Specifically it was about Duffy And this is already I was looking at these posts These posts are six years old already A lot of them Some of them predate that Because you were reading these When I was still in my old apartment

Before we moved in together Yes I think many a night We would be going to sleep And I would be on my phone Scrolling through You talked about this the first time We hung out proper in 2014 Any night we would be going to sleep and I would be on my phone scrolling through. You talked about this the first time we hung out proper in 2014. That was my big sell. I was like, you know.

The ace I got up my sleeve. Guess how weird I am. We were either at the park or like at an improv practice and you were explaining this to me. And I feel like you came in beaming. Like, guess what I found? The fun with real audio, like Mike, just a continuous run of saying these message board posts at the bank, at a birthday party, in heaven.

I mean, these are a real find, but sorry. Yeah, no, I was just going to say, it has been in a decade of change for both personally and for the country and the world it has been a comforting constant in the 20 teens i'm assuming even more so for you because you know them by heart sure yes i would agree with that i also forgot that duffy is named after duffel bag what we just figured that out. Yes. What?

After all that sweet shit? Yeah. It's Duffel Bag? That's what it's, yeah. Oh, because he can like go in your Duffel Bag on the trip home? It's not named after Troy Duffy, director of Boondock Saints? That's what I thought. Oh, I really wanted it to be named after Troy Duffy, director of Boondock Saints.

So anyway, so there's these message boards. And I have, and I did this like five years ago. I screenshotted some of my favorite posts because this was a very active board. And people, and this is mostly Americans and mostly people that were sort of upset with Duffy not being embraced by the American audience. And I love this so much because it's also like, what's actually now funny is reading these now is that I see myself more in them than I did then. A little bit. You're like're like yeah you crass american back then it was like i didn't have a podcast about theme parks where i you know we had a deep dive on anything like that and it would just be like aha this is funny these people they they're so silly they like these things these insane things so much this is crazy they haven't been talking about this for an

hour straight already you laughing at these people doing this became the first thing that you started to collect like the first weird thing that now is your thing

that's interesting maybe yeah I guess like mcgruff um i mean you know all your other bullshit whatever uh that's fair duffy and buffett duffy and buffy that's an idea you need a teddy bear looks like jimmy buffett so okay okay so that is amazing the margaritaville companies have not come up with a free idea for them yeah so okay let me get let's get to this okay there's there's there's a few posts here and i'll skip a lot of this um there's a whole section of of postings about how people don't understand and there's a backlash against them for carrying their bears around and uh there's

just a backlash yeah i didn't remember that yeah it's like uh i'm starting to get flack from friends and family about bringing shelly places and taking pictures they bring up how i'm 21 and why do i like to bring a teddy bear with me and take photos with her i also like to hold her so she can see and not put her in a duffel bag has anyone else experienced this and then there are just posts of people saying yes i have experienced this and then there's like a post with somebody just this is one of my favorites just that says my parents don't support it and it's like it's like it's crazy uh it's just over and over again everyone like and some people like a lot of people have a sense of humor about it uh there's one

person that said they bring the bear to the biker bar that her boyfriend and her go to and that everybody likes it because they dress duffy in a little leather jacket that's nice and that's like so it's not like every like so anyway so you're like we got a sense of especially back then of like these people obsessed with duffy and especially not knowing all the tokyo context it seemed extra crazy um but here let me get to the uh the club the special club which i think you know what i'm talking about yes i do um so someone on this board they wanted Basically to encourage Art to be created Inspired by Duffy and his friends

So I'm going to read Some of this post it is very long And just stop me When I've been too annoying So this person says So I've been noticing two things for a while now And haven't had time or focused energy To do anything about it I still really don't things for a while now and haven't had time or focused energy to do anything about it.

I still really don't yet. But a break is in sight. First off, we've got a lot of new people. That's a lot of untapped talent and energy. Second, buying stuff, especially Tokyo Disney Cape Cod Duffy stuff is fun and supports Duffy. But I'm a little worried we're becoming too consumer without enough creator. So here's some motivation Starting

With Halloween and running through Sweet Duffy 2014 which is the Merchandising event folks who actively Contribute truly impressive fan Creations to the Duffeteer community Will get a gratuity rate of just 20% flat now I think what That is is that there was some sort of

Buying program where somebody in japan would buy merchandise for you and they're saying that you can get a discount on this if you do high quality duffy related art i'm confused by the economics of all this yeah well it's not clear in this post also 20 so like the person going to to Disney buying Duffy stuff would have a charge on top of that for their troubles. Right. But the discount is just bringing that charge down to 20%. So who knows what the initial charge is. Right.

That's unclear. I'm sure that was in a different post, which I think is not important. This might be the person that is in charge of that. But they're saying that basically in some in service getting a promo code yes in service to making duffy a bigger presence in the world you will get a bit of a discount on whatever you'd like to buy from japan now back to the post just a cute photo will not be enough you'll have to do a photo story with high quality photographs, great lighting, settings, compositions, costume and props.

Professional quality. You'll need a good camera. And they'll have to be made into a book with something like Mixbook so that we can all order one. Really high quality calendars would work too. Maybe through Zazzle? If you're a good illustrator, let me know. I have two

stories that need to be illustrated. By good, I mean at least as good as the U.S. storybook. Although the Tokyo Disney Sea style or your own original, but equally detailed, style is even better. Illustrators might make calendars, too, and post on DeviantArt to help promote Duffy in that thriving community. I will say, just to interrupt for a moment and not go on a tangent is I am disturbed at how much more of this language I understand now like Sweet Duffy and Tokyo Disney Sea

and DeviantArt and what they mean by like putting a book together which is like what you were saying. One might say you went clear. There's a lot of parallels between Duffy and L. Ron Hubbard Now that we're really thinking about it

Boats for one Sailor suit Boats for one, sailor suits for second Cults for third Well that's why I was saying too when I was looking through all these I was much more like I'm like one step away from this person Posting

Like we need more Batman 66 Toys in these toy stores I want an Egg I want an egghead toy okay We tell won't make an egghead toy I need all iterations of the Ninja Turtles in figure form yes that is There's a super seven is gonna remake all the

Ninja Turtles and I'm like I want wingnut I want Screw loose I want to like I'm exactly like This person and now I can see it With a little perspective At the time we're like these fucking nuts Right you eased I want to like I'm exactly like this person And now I can see it with a little perspective You have a platform And you You eased our audience Into this craziness and now you've got an army

Backing you up A navy This goes I got it there's so many things Okay so it goes on A couple more paragraphs of different ideas. And then this is my favorite sentence. I will be the final judge of quality.

How could I forget my favorite line? Perhaps your first attempt is good, but not good enough. You'll have the opportunity to revise and improve. We have to start doing more. We have to start doing more we have to start doing we are letting duffy down yeah so i want to know is um i will be the final judge of quality all caps or no no it's not all caps wow all these years i thought it was all caps well it was the delivery yeah that's what i mean it just reads harsher. You know, like Jason's text. A little bit of Jewish.

Edwin looked at me just then like I had offended him. Yeah. I will be the final judge of quality existing is like a, I mean, that's a meme worthy phrase. I will be the final judge of quality. I put that challenge to the listeners. Take your favorite villainous screenshot from your Game of Thrones or your Star Wars or your Jafar or what have you be creative and and guess what i will be the final judge of quality i put this to the listeners create that storybook of mike giving me duffy for my 30th birthday i will be the final judge of quality oh man um i did want to make that request that just seemed that one

seems like a lot of work that one seems like we have a 20 commission has to be do more we have to do more for the podcast i would check these every once in a while and there would be new posts and in this specific thread somebody started to make art of Duffy. And I'll show you this. And it's Duffy and there's a snowman and he's got his little winter coat on and a scarf and it's very cute. Yeah. And the person who made the first post writes that they love it. The colors are beautiful.

In case you actually want some constructive feedback, I'd say Duffy's hands are too small. Duffy doesn't have elbows or wrists. He doesn't have joints or bones. There shouldn't be a difference there. The arms should just round out. The same is true of the legs. And Duffy doesn't have

ankles. I mean, this is just a fact. And the legs are a bit too long and wide also while duffy has a round bottom he doesn't really have hips and definitely doesn't have a waist and there are four or five six more paragraphs oh you know what there's more context for this now too because they're changing the design of Sonic. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Sonic definitely doesn't have human teeth.

The entire world did that to an actual movie production. Now, if there was a Duffy movie and they gave Duffy human teeth, I certainly would not stand for that. They would be hearing from me. I would be the final judge of quality in that case. The whole world is just posts now. The whole world is just message board posts. Look at our president. He never stops posting.

I find this innocent that it was this madness was contained to the Duffy message board in 2014. And then we thought it was strange. And then, so after this person posts another version of it that's honestly to me looks about the same, the creator of the post writes, wow, the legs and hips are now perfect in both weight and length. And by length, I mean short stubbiness. The torso still feels a bit too long and seems kind of extra stretch now because the legs are so perfect. But isn't necessarily something you'd redraft for just maybe consider for the next one Duffy's right arm which was too

long before is now also perfect and you totally nailed the bend and then I kid you not there are about 12 more paragraphs to discuss this children's style picture of Duffy making a snowman.

And we don't have time for all of it. And this person just keeps taking the notes. And I'm like, what? And you're doing revisions? Yes. What? She's turning around, New. Yes.

She's turning. I believe the original poster at some point in response to concerns about their rules and regulations did say, well, everyone to each your own abilities, you know. Yeah, I think that does appear somewhere. If you're not good enough, I will allow mistakes. Yeah, yeah. If you're dumb or something, but otherwise.

But I will need to see a report card from your latest year of schooling. Even that, though, felt like they were annoyed that people, like, well, clearly you've misunderstood me like so you have made it yet another mistake if the grand reveal at the end of this was that this was all exchanges between like mother and daughter mother and son

you just know it'd be mother and son almost there dear this is a Munchausen but by proxy situation it is really fun situation Almost there, dear. This is a Munchausen but by proxy situation. It is really fun. The act situation. Yeah.

But for Duffy drawing. But for Duffy, yeah. I've seen people post their fan art when they started out and then later years and then what it looks like now. And it is really fun to see that like oh they really kept at it like these people are not going into animation they're just doing fan art of other shows and they come really far oh yeah sure so i wonder what this person's art looks like now they may be making like uh just incredibly detailed paintings of Duffy and Shelly May or making Snowman. What if I work with them?

It's very possible. What if they work on Infinity Train? I don't know. Do any of your animators know how to perfectly draw bear hips? Or the lack thereof. Or can they get the bend just right? Can they get the bend just right? If they hear the phrase wish list, they shudder.

Sweet Duffy. Lock themselves in a closet for two hours. But they're not pleased. They get a check with the suggestion, you know, they have the suggested tip amount percentages on the bottom and they see 20% gratuity and they just start sweating like, oh no. Can we make it 19? Please so there's okay so i'm just jumping around here there there was a thread here when duffy was so at a certain point duffy went away from uh california venture as far as being a walk like a character you could take a

picture with yeah and they still have duffy in the parks. But like he was his presence was being drawn back clearly because it was just not working. And this one person on the board was very a lot of people, obviously very upset about it. And then this person chimed in saying that the thread of people commenting was really demonstrating what a poor job was done introducing Duffy to the American public. If people had been presented with Duffy's charms, if the actual backstory had been told effectively, if Disney fans understood the artistic sincerity and creative integrity that defines Duffy in Japan, there would be no question of Duffy's Disney pedigree and history making significance. Sadly, he has been handled like a commodity

instead of a force of nature. And many have responded with disinterest. It's not Duffy's fault, though. Duffy will always be legendary. Duffy is unstoppable no matter what happened in the U.S. Duffy is pure Disney, transcendently so, that the U.S. team failed to convey that is a genuine disappointing shame that disney that disney fans would rather be dismissive which i guess this person would think we were being very then educate themselves is truly their loss it's all very unfortunate and very sad like this should be given as a monologue for theater students to do in class. Very well written.

It is so dramatic and builds and has tension and an arc. Yeah. It's very good. Sort of start like you reasonable step into the logic pool before it gets extremely a streetcar named desire. But like what of the backstory do they think was not conveyed that's the thing we were trying to figure out history making significance what are what i mean did they explain about mickey was a sailor did they say did they say mickey had a crew say the part

about him having a dream yeah we i think that was especially without seeing it in tokyo which doesn't in tokyo it's still not like he has some rich backstory it does help to see the reaction in tokyo because like reading this in the vacuum of america california adventure we were baffled but then when you go over there and you see everybody buying a stuff and there is a live show with duffy while you eat it it's like okay this exists whereas when we're reading it here it may as well be just the rantings of crazy people about something i've never heard of yeah it's crazy it's fun in japan it's fun and cute and there's a culture around it and of course the american interpretation is rorschach's journal from watchmen it would be exactly that yeah but

it would be like if you just like went to somebody who had never heard of disney and you went look at this mouse and they were like okay you're like no you don't okay so like there is a history making significance to this mouse like what you don't understand is that so the first time you see him he's on a steamboat okay it's on a steamboat so like okay there's this man his name was walt disney he came up with him him. And then he just like changed everything. He was on a train. I don't know what you're talking about. You would think that person was crazy.

But the mouse is a cypher because he's on a steamboat, but he's also a sea captain. And sometimes he's a ghost hunter. Sometimes he's the mayor of Toontown. Sometimes he appears with his girlfriend who will never marry. And you'll see him in a lot of different outfits. Sometimes he appears with his girlfriend who will never marry. And you'll see him in a lot of different outfits. Does that sound like someone we know? He has two dogs in his life.

One is his pet dog. One is a dog man friend. He has an exact double, but you don't find out about him until 1990. And no, it doesn't stay important. So, yeah, we're saying like that that like we really didn't get it but seeing in tokyo and going there and then learning all the friends it is different now and it's almost like i do sort of see what they're saying on the boards about oh it is kind of cool that they're this is only like a thing in the parks it's obviously like a big part of the culture and then it's like now i look for even in our American parks

Like a gelatoni little bag somebody's Carrying yeah like if you see A little keychain on somebody's Bag or they have a Duffy backpack we'll both be like Duffy backpack yes and like The more obscure Duffy character the better for Pointing out it gets very exciting sure

So it is interesting Our arcs with Duffy so you know before we finish this there's more message board we have an interview with somebody because we're trying to find like a true duffy super fan and yeah so now we're gonna pair this person with that craziness what's it of like understanding the legend Having your own relationship with him Sure What is a functioning American Duffy fan like? Right and also

I was trying to say that before though Look we have all of them So I am a legit Duffy fan Well not all of them Excuse me I don't see the bunny Okay Jason don't press on the wound I'm just saying

Yeah you're missing an Olu We have to take a trip to Hawaii I don't see the bunny. Okay, Jason, don't press on the wound. I'm just saying. I know a couple. Yeah, you're missing an Olu. We have to take a trip to Hawaii. Yeah. That's all. We do. Only for that.

Stella Olu. And then leave, go to a store and turn around. So on Twitter, I noticed Brandi Rhodes, who is a professional wrestler. She's a chief brand officer of AEW Wrestling, which is coming soon to some TV. And there's a big event at the end of May, at the end of this month in Las Vegas called Double or Nothing. She is constantly posting photos of Duffy and his friends in various places in their house. Like, I think I saw her post like on airplanes she's bringing Duffy with.

So we reached out and she was gracious enough to talk to us. Not about wrestling. not about wrestling not about wrestling this should say like aew is one of the biggest things to happen in the world of wrestling yes years we just talked to her about duffy and her relationship with duffy and the universe she doesn't want to think about work yeah yeah so uh here we go so folks we are joined today by a very special guest. She's a professional wrestler. She's the chief brand officer for All Elite Professional Wrestling.

And most importantly, she's a huge Duffy super fan. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show, Brandi Rhodes. Oh, yeah. No, I was really excited for somebody to want to talk to me about Duffy the Disney bear um as opposed to wrestling so sure yeah excited to be on uh yeah so yeah we're thrilled to have you is it safe to say you've done a lot of press lately but this is the first Duffy specific interview that you've done this is the first Duffy interview I've ever done oh like so I'm I'm happy for humanity in this point because most of the time when I talk about Duffy, people ask me, who is that?

So it's starting to grind my gears a little bit. But I'm really glad that I'm starting to come across people who understand the Duffy fandom and appreciate him. Yes. One of our missions on the podcast is to spread more Duffy awareness. So that is part of our mission. Beautiful. Beautiful. So yeah, let's start at the beginning. Where and when does your Duffy fandom start? Disney Sea in Tokyo. And it actually started off as a hatred. I went to the park for the first time and I saw

all of these people decked out. I mean, babies, kids, service animals, adults, everybody was decked out in Duffy gear. And I mean, like, from Duffy gloves to the Duffy hat to Duffy puppets, full size Duffy dolls, Duffy George.

And I was just getting angry because, you know, I'm kind of a Disney purist. Where was Mickey? I was so confused. And I was like, why? Why is there no representation of Mickey Mouse here? This is kind of nuts. So I ended up looking into it while I was standing in one of the lines, because I know, you know, people are familiar with Disney. See, you're always in line there. There's no way to avoid it. And so I started looking into the story and how, you know, Duffy was invented for the Japanese audience, not for us. So me being kind of the, that person that you can always tag as wanting to be different in some kind of way, immediately my heart started to turn

because I realized I could take Duffy home and he could be for me and not all the other kids running around the park at Disneyland and Disney World in the States. So I got, you know, immediately when I got online, I went into one of the Duffy stores and I got a Duffy puppet. My thinking in doing that was that the Duffy puppet would, I would use it to play with my dog. And, um, that was history. Now I have a lot of Duffy stuff, but I have all of the puppets for all of the friends as well. It's a situation over here.

Wow. So you have not only like all of the plushes of Duffy's friends, but you also have all of the puppets as well. Is that what you're saying? No, I just have the puppets. I don't have the plushes. I don't want the plushes. Oh, interesting. I just want the puppets I don't have the plushes. I don't want the plush. I just want the puppet because that was my original thing.

So I feel like if I were to get the plushes, I would, there would be some lack of authenticity on my end there. But you know, as far as like other Duffy things, I mean, I have like Duffy backpack. I got the Duffy mittens. I got Duffy jewelry uh i have a duffy purse i got duffy coming out every nook and cranny of this house except for the actual bear sure do you have the uh limited run duffy chuck taylors they made uh what what are these where are these uh how do i acquire these the classic converse shoes um i i knew nothing about this so now i'm gonna be as soon as we get off the phone or maybe while we're on the phone i'm gonna maybe just hit the speaker and look i mean that's fine my other favorite duffy

uh specificity or oddity did you ever ever ride in the Duffy Disney transportation bus? No, I've never seen it. Now, I've seen the Minnie Mouse ones that we have here in Orlando. And that one I've been jealous of because I want to be in there. But so in Tokyo, they have Duffy buses? Yeah, I think that may also have been a limited time one yeah oh man that's a bummer yeah no i never i've not had that opportunity now i'm getting jealous yeah feel free to browse feel free to browse for merch while we're talking it's okay um so so do you have so so there's a lot

of characters now a couple years ago it was just duffy and then shelly may and now it feels like we're getting a new character every three months do you have a ranking an official ranking of your favorite characters or is it all are they all equal in your eyes? Oh, no, no, they're not. So all of my all of my my characters, they're I'm very childlike with them. I'll say they all have different personalities. They have different voices. They're nothing like what you read in the storybooks about Duffy and his friends. So Duffy himself is kind of like a little bit hood. Like he's kind of like,

he's a little bit of a G and a little bit like of a smooth guy. So he's kind of smooth. Whereas Shelly, she's a little bit more, I don't want to say anything. This is too crazy, but she's a little more like your typical city girl. So like she likes to shop. She likes Louis Vuitton. She loves the Mac store. That's her thing.

And then Stella, she's true to the fact that she's a dancer, but she's also a devout Christian. And she likes to talk about Christianity a lot and how blessed she is. And then Jelatoni is French, and he always speaks with a French accent, and he's just a ladies' man. Right, of course. Which he is Italian, I think, in the canon, official canon. So he's French in your narrative. Yeah, I totally blew that. No, it's okay. What I think is interesting is that if you go on, like I have for years now,

the Duffy message boards, there's specific Duffy message boards, and a lot of people have, because there's not so much story out there, have created their own narratives, which will lead me into this question, which is very controversial, I think, on the message boards. Are Duffy and Shelly Mae a couple? Are they lovers, or are they just good friends? In my world, they're a couple. Shelly is his girlfriend. I see that. Absolutely.

Yeah, I like that better. But there's people on the message boards that want to keep their love pure and make it sure it's just between friends. So I think that that, and there were like people arguing against it. So I think in the Duffy community, there's a lot of contention about. But look, that's the fun of Duffy is you get to choose your own adventure. I think that's sort of what I feel. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like that's part of the fun in Duffy being not such a U.S.

match is that I can kind of make him whoever I want him to be to people when I'm introducing him, you know? Oh, yeah. When I first I first bought Duffy for my girlfriend years ago, and it was a little bit of a bit, it was sort of to be funny. And then I would make him dance to like EDM music for like five minutes. So I think Mike Duffy, he started out as more of a raver, but now he's a little bit more domesticated.

Do you think, I guess this is a question for both of you, do you think they would do a story where Duffy and Shelly may get married? Because Mickey and Minnie famously have never been married. But Duffy and Shelly may, I feel like there's less history there where maybe they could get away with that. They could certainly sell a lot of outfits of, you know, a little tuxedo and dress. I don't really know because I think you kind of run into that. Once they're married, then what, you know, then are they going to have a little duffy, you know, babies? And then we got a lot of,

we got a lot to think about if they decide to get married, you know? Yeah. So I don't know. I think I'm cool with them just having, you know, their happy domesticated relationship without taking it too far. Yeah, I agree with that, because I think also like, you know, with Jim and Pam on The Office, once they got married, you sort of run out of some narrative possibilities, I think. So you kind of want to keep the possibilities, I think, alive for the two characters. So that's my official stance. Yeah, I agree with you. I feel like that as well.

Yeah, thank you. I'm glad we're in agreement. Let's talk clothes real quick. There's another controversy on these message boards. Some people dress their Duffys in Build-A-Bear outfits. Do you think that's okay? Or are you against that? I mean, that just depends on who duffy is to you is duffy you know your walmart guy or

is duffy your neiman marcus guy for me he's neiman marcus so he wouldn't be wearing you know build a bear walmart you know i'm sorry now i do have a yoshi from Build-A-Bear that is wearing a figure skating outfit because I used to be a figure skater. I'm totally okay with that. But I don't think I would be okay with Duffy wearing a Build-A-Bear skating outfit. Sure. But if there was like maybe if Neiman Marcus started their own like high-end build-a-bear would you take clothes from there maybe and put them in put them on duffy i don't i don't think so i think uh there's just some things that you you got to keep keeping that right frame of mind like um you know if you've got

a bunch of authentic louis vuitton bags you can't go get a knockoff and set it on the shelf with them. Got it. Because, you know, maybe somebody else doesn't know, but you can always know. Right. Yeah. I'm not being true to myself here. Yeah. No, I hear that.

Yeah. So, yeah, keep it. I get it. I totally agree. So, yeah, we were talking a little bit before about uh how it's expanding so you know they have oh is it olu now is a turtle is in the duffy universe who's a he's exclusive to hong kong no is that right oh excuse me he's exclusive to the alani resort in hawaii cookie the dog who makes waffles is exclusive to hong kong do you have cookie or olu yet or are you do you have

any plans to visit and go to these places and get the characters? So, I didn't know about Olu, but I know about Cookie. And I have some real hope about going to Hong Kong hopefully sometime this year.

And so, Cookie is absolutely on the radar completely. But Olu sounds like a great reason for me to go to Hawaii. So now that you've opened this can of worms up, the first thing I'm going to do is get off the phone. And after I finish looking at merchandise that I'm going to order, that's Duffy,

then I'm going to start looking at tickets to Hawaii to book a trip so that i can meet olu for sure great great i'm glad we're doing the lord's work here spreading the word about these yeah and i'm just gonna tell i'm just gonna tell my husband like this all spawned from this conversation so when you start to get like eight tweets from him just ignore those it's gonna be okay okay we'll just block him from our account so we won't even see it just block him just block him mute him whatever sure um so i we have one listener question and then we'll wrap up um this is from our listener matt cardona aka zach rider uh he has a question for you his Oh, God. His question was, how can you take Duffy to Universal? Which I think is a specific question he might know. Like he has experiences.

I think he's upset that you've taken Duffy into a Universal park. Oh, man. So Matthew Cardona, really hilarious story, by the way. The first time Cody and I hung out with him on a uh a disney trip um we we meant to went to meet him at the hotel and he had said yeah everything's under my name but we're driving into the resort we get stopped and we asked who are we coming to meet and all i knew his name was zach rider so sure so i almost got denied denied at Disney getting in because I didn't, I knew his name was Matt something, but I didn't know it was Cardona.

We had all kinds of drama from the beginning. So that, that gives you a little bit of what our relationship with Zach is like. Um, but yes, Zach formatted me. I posted a picture outside of Hogwarts a couple weeks ago, holding Dusty up in front of the castle. And Zach freaked out about it. He does not like to cross brands at all. He thinks that's disgusting. And, you know, I do think it's controversial, but sometimes you've got to do you got to have a little bit of controversy. I mean, you got to have a little bit of fun, you know, he immediately texted me and asked me if I was, um, not from the United States because he says constantly that people who are from other countries are the ones that do this and that they don't know any better. And so he, he was very, very upset with me, very angry. And, um, I plan on bringing Duffy when we go to Halloween Horror Night this year, too. So he's going to be really mad.

Oh, well, you know, I think I'll be honest. I think he's wrong about this, too, because it's like going to a Rolling Stones concert and you wear an Aerosmith shirt. That's kind of the cool move to do, actually. I kind of agree. I kind of agree. It gets people talking like oh hey what's that oh duffy oh yeah i forgot about that i i'm all for it i think duffy can go anywhere i think you may be pushing it a little bit if you're wearing fake uh universal that might be a little bit much

if you're wearing your harry potter robe at a disney. That's a little bit much. But if you just got Duffy hanging out the top of your bag, I think it's okay. Sure. I'm sure we'll have this argument for months on end and then I'll do something else that makes them super angry. Especially if you're taking Duffy to Halloween Horror Nights, I would need at least a Duffy to make it through Halloween Horror Nights. Oh, come on.

Halloween Horror Nights for everyone, man. You know, Zach used to hate Halloween Horror Nights. He was scared of them going. And I made him go. And now he loves it. Now he acts like it's his thing when it really was mine. Oh, okay. Yes, this is the same situation with me.

I recently have gotten into The Haunt, so now I will be going to the Horror Nights. So I'm very on board now. Well, now you've got to bring your duffy. Oh, yeah. No, I'll bring him. I've brought him to different places before. I was going to say, also, to make Zach mad, maybe you bring, like, a Minion doll to Disney World.

Oh, my gosh. He would get so so offended i think he wouldn't even want to walk around together like he'd be that angry about it or maybe like try to steal it and throw it away or something like he's very very vindictive in these such an angry person to love disney like happy parts, you know? There is one thing that I want to say about Disney here in the States is, man, they really showed Duffy no love whatsoever. He has one meet and greet at Epcot like once a year. Every time I'm there, he's never out for a meet and greet.

I think it's terrible. Yeah, I agree. He used to be out here because we're in California and he used to have a little meet and greet spot and that's just gone now. So you can still buy him, but yeah, you can't. It was a California adventure on the pier. Something's got to happen. Do they still have

Oswald at California Adventure? He's hanging around. Yeah. But less of a chance of seeing him. It used to be you'd always see him out and now it's less of Oswald I think I saw Oswald one time and it was um where I was kind of on the fence of like getting behind Oswald like I was thinking maybe maybe I'm an Oswald fan and then I walked into the park and there he was and I went running towards him because I wanted to get a

picture and he left he just waved at me and left and I wanted to get a picture and he left. He just waved at me and left. And I thought to myself, Oswald, how many people do you actually have out here that give a damn that you can turn me away like this? So that was it with me and Oswald. Like we're not friends anymore. I made the change that day, that moment. No more Oswald. That happened to me with some of the three caballeros said it still kind of burns me up hurtful it's very hurtful yeah no for sure so okay so yeah to sum up down with oswald up with duffy and friends yeah um so we will say thank you so much for for joining us brandy roads you have survived podcast The Ride.

As usual, we will have our guest now, what we call Exit to the Gift Shop. So plug away Twitter, plug AEW, anything you have coming up. Go ahead. Do you guys have anything coming up? Oh, I have no idea what you could be referring to. But obviously, yes, we have a huge show May 25th at MGM Grand Garden Arena I think it's sold out no obviously definitely sold out

but you know it's going to be a super great time check out All Elite Wrestling on Twitter and Instagram and if you want to check me out I'm on both Twitter and Instagram awesome yeah I will be at Double or Nothing. It's going to be very fun. I have a feeling it's going

to be fun. I was at All In as well. Very, very fun. So, I implore everyone, every Duffy fan to attend if they can or watch on TV or a streaming service of some kind. Oh, absolutely. So, yeah. Again, thank you so much for doing this and we will

mute your husband and also yell at Zack Ryder for you. Please. You guys made my day. Thank you so much. Well, thanks to Brandy, Brandy Rhodes for just talking to us about Duffy the Disney bear. And honestly, like I was so happy to hear about like the narratives about her Duffy's and stuff like I couldn't. Oh, our dog. I have to wake the dog up real quick. Our dog is having a nightmare on Lindsay's lap. Oh, and now he's surprised and embarrassed.

Just like me. Yeah, I think Brandy's relationship with Duffy is like a lot of us. We all have our boundaries. We all have our like tastes our boundaries with popular culture but I think honestly and it's a thing that you see on these message boards is that the fact that Duffy and his friends

don't have such a specific personality is fun because I've created my own narrative in my head about Duffy and his friends and obviously she has as well and I think that is a very common thing among Duffy collectors around the world you have you always do with your dolls yes it is it is true i mean not i mean one always does with one no me specifically i heard what you said let's read back the copy my dolls had very complicated relationships my uh duffy was in he liked dance music and he would uh regularly

dance to edm um it's true i used to do that as a kid my sister and i would take the dolls and they would we would give them like different weird personnel like bar our bar her barney doll would be like i guess we thought it was funny like you'd be a drunk or whatever but that's we were kids we didn't know that was a weird thing to do like we go in like her uh fisher price kitchen and like i give him like a non like a non-specific bottle and you like that would be funny for us to do a regular game of mine as a kid was pretending that i was showing up to a bar and getting drunk because my husband was sleeping with his secretary how old were you 11 my goodness you weren't familiar with this dynamic no my me and my friend would uh basically perform a dramatic

improv scene of me showing up to their bar to complain about my uh horrible husband cheating on me jeez lindy and i were both big turner classic movies kids in the fourth grade apparently i told my mom that my favorite movie was sunset boulevard oh my god third grade that seemed like jason said that third grade too i remember watching that at a very young age on tv and being excited because i knew it was like a big thing because of the great movie ride because there was like in the queue or in the montage or something i knew i'm ready for my close-up mr deville and you dreamed about coming out to la and ending up face down in norman desmond's pool i wanted to go to the poker game with all of the ancient uh silent film stars playing it and then yes ending up in the pool um so we'll talk a little so so anyway so there are

now how many total uh duffy characters there's duffy there's shelly may uh there's gelatine the italian painter cat there's cookie the dog chef there'sy Blue, the bird brain to mailman. Olu, the turtle. Turtle who loves to play his ukulele. Turtle who loves to play his ukulele. And Gelatoni uses melted ice cream, uses his tail to paint with. That's right. Dips it in melted ice cream. And then Stella Lou, who's a rabbit.

She's a dancer. She's also a ballet dancer. Well, I think it's kind of neat that they're releasing them. Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah yes yeah yeah encourages artistic expression uh i think it's neat that these characters are in different that some of them are like park exclusives to hong kong or outlani or whatever that you have to go travel to meet them or to get them uh now is that a little crass like what's a way we can trick people into coming to the parks potentially but also like i think we people love exclusivity yeah and we keep coming

back to this whether it's it's rex or whatever like a somebody you have to go to a place to i think that's why we love park specific characters botanica's like you can only meet this person in this place. So there's this collect them all type mythology to the Duffy characters. It's not unlike the sea. I feel like the mythology of sea, these, these Disney explorers is like encouraging people to travel the world. Don't just stick to the American parks, go to all of them.

Is that more money for us? Yes. But you could also view it as like as we both went we went to japan and experienced lots of other cool stuff like perhaps lured by disney it's like encouraging people to be world travelers uh in general yeah uh sail the seas as mickey did with duffy they tricked us into getting culture yep yeah all right we better do some culture while we're there a little bit. It's going to have like robots in it, though.

Yeah, for sure. So, look, if I don't there's no way to post all of these screenshots. I'm just going to find one of our favorites. One of the old favorites Lindsay and I had was when. Greatest hits. And I mentioned this a little bit with Brandy Talking about Duffy and Shelley Mays relationship This might be my favorite Oh boy

And I'm having trouble finding the exact quote I know that's in your head right now And it's a boyfriend girlfriend scenario? Well Well It's funny you should ask that Okay Because Insert phrase that's in my head right now

Well all I know is the phrase is that somebody, a lot of people are very adamant that Duffy and Shelley May are not lovers, that they are just. It's platonic. They have their perfect love. Their love is a perfect love. Is a perfect love, but it's platonic. It is nothing romantic or sexual. There's a poll on the message board of

okay well duffy's relationship to shelly may what do you think um and there were four different choices and i will go around the room and we'll all decide what we think uh each uh sweethearts brother slash sister which that's i don't even um uh anyway just friends or other this is like the jack and meg white debate yes it is it's exactly the same just as cool as that too yes uh so jason i'll start with you in your mind in your narrative of duffy and shelly may what is their relationship well i i i think it's all very wholesome so i think sweethearts like uh that sounds right to me imagining them sharing a milkshake but sweethearts can lead to sex well look wherever that milk starts with a milkshake who knows where it goes from there wherever that milk leads boys to the yard sometimes i'm just saying wherever that

milk where that milk you know look at archie look at how archie started uh in the early 20th century and look at fucking riverdale now i mean my god they're singing milkshake on the top of the the fucking uh pops chocolate shop i can't watch it It's too unwholesome for me. Duffy Dale. Duffy Dale. Soon they're going to be teens and fucking. You know, I got to say, because when they first introduced Stella Liu, I had a bad feeling about her. She seems like a little bit of a homewrecker to me. I got to say.

Slut shaming. Stella Liu. I'm not slut shaming. I'm saying like, I don't know I feel like I feel like Shelly May was going to you know Their friend who hasn't been Introduced yet who's a private investigator And like can you poke her like nothing

Official but can you ask around She just showed up in town She just showed up in town Who shows up in town in Riverdale? Stella Lou. Huh? Stella Lou shows up in Riverdale. No, this is like mystery story.

They have to break Stella Lou out of jail in Riverdale. I thought you were like, there's a direct line to Riverdale. No, but there is lots of mystery elements to Riverdale. So that probably happened. Like Sherry Blossom shows up with a- Cheryl Blossom. Cheryl Blossom, excuse me. Probably shows up with like a briefcase full of cash at some point.

Sure. So your answer is really other sweethearts that could lead to more. Sweethearts and what people do on their own time is their own business. I'll say this, the thing that keeps me up at night is Cookie the dog is a dog who makes waffles. But her name is Cookie? I don't know about that. She can probably make waffles and cookies I feel like they emphasize though that she makes cookies

Well I do feel like a lot of Like diners Back in the day or In prison or at camp or whatever You call the cook Cookie Interesting It's a nickname for a chef

I guess I could see that. Yeah. Okay. Well, Lindsay, what is your preference? What are my options again? Sweethearts, brother and sister, just friends or other. Sweethearts. So, sweethearts.

Okay. But it only goes as far as chaste kisses. Oh, I like that. That's nice. I like that. That's nice. Yeah. Scott.

I realize we're talking about teddy bears here, but there's sweethearts. It is not an option for sweethearts to go beyond being sweethearts. Well, I think. Not okay. I think sweethearts. That's what other would be. Other would be day fucking. I guess these teddy bears are not currently fucking.

But if there's a possibility that they will fuck they can't be sweethearts I well I would sweethearts to me especially on this message board they probably meant like oh they're going steady and they're just you know they kiss a little bit but it's not like but they're not married it doesn't say lovers it doesn't say married because of married

boyfriend girlfriend but you just eliminated you put up a wall between if they one day consummate that can't mean sweethearts now oh i just think that's what you told jason i think the omission i think you were just asking jason his definition of sweethearts well i think sweethearts itself on this does omit a strong sexual relationship if the in the current state given what that i know about them which is I'm gleaning from them Being stuffed animals sitting on your couch

Right now and teaching some And holding hands I might add Holding hands they are in fact Mike made them old hands I also Saw them in the Easter show at Disney Sea where they teach some Oh now Gelatoni's holding hands With oh this changes everything

Their love is a perfect love. Yeah, it's not at all like they're popular in a country where they have things called love hotels. Japan's love is a perfect love. Sweethearts is the answer. You say sweethearts? We're all sweethearts. I think they're just friends.

So you're on the their love is a perfect love perfect love just friends i don't think there's anything romantic going on now if you were to ask me about gelatoni do i think joe yo gelatoni he's a tomcat for sure gelatoni fucks i mean you look at these two what are they what could gelatoni can get it. Yeah, Gelatoni can get it is really what I'm trying to say. With who? If you're backpacking through Europe, if you are a cat undergrad who is backpacking through Europe and you meet Gelatoni.

He's got a cool beret. Yeah, he is. He is. And someone says, how was your backpacking trip? Well, let me start by telling you about Gelatoni. We know who's backpacking. It's that bird. Well, I...

No, he's delivering mail. Oh, that's a boy? Well, hey, on vacation's a good time to experiment. You know, Tippy Blue, as I've alluded before, I think Tippy Blue's really getting buried, and I wish they would kind of bring Tippy Blue back to the fold a little more. Let's do that with the backstory that they're lovers tippy blue and gelatoni are together

the tippy yeah the tippy blue other for them okay a real sense that scott hates the relationship talk about these characters like sure well then why don't we pair these two up no no no i know now that you know actually mike empowered me to create my own stories. There you go. Now I'm playing like you and the Barney as a kid. No, I'm enjoying it. I'll say this. Gelatoni and the bird have fun together, guys.

Go to Switzerland. The Disney Sea show, live show, The Tippy Blue Always Rings Twice, did not run for very long. That was a very erotic show. What a reach. What a reach. That is a film noir reference, everybody. It's been remade a couple times. That's true.

So look, I've gotten to about 25% of material I have. We have to obviously end the show. Let's just final thoughts of all the characters. thought you were gonna like read like a definitive answer let me read what the definitive answer from the board is you're right i guess we get that thank you um so the with four percent of the vote other with eight percent of the vote brother and sister. No, that's wrong. 32% of the vote just friends. And 56% say sweethearts. Correct. Absolutely.

Something about the suggestion that they are brother and sister does make me think that they're fucking. But only if they're brother and sister. Sweethearts, nothing but chased kisses. But brother and sister, that's not right. Brother and step sister. It doesn't feel right to me. They look so similar. They do look very similar.

They look weird about them being sweethearts to me. They both have Mickey faces. They have the same birthmark, a giant Mickey Mouse face on their face. And they have Mickey on their feet. We forgot to bring that up. All of them have Mickey on their feet. Or Mickey mickey on their their feet we forgot to bring that up all of them have mickey on their feet it is oh yeah tippy blue as well wow still on the tiny little bird legs on the tiny bird legs um so yeah they're all related so any pairing between any of them is against god's will again and god in this case is mini against minnie's will god in this

case is me because i am the final judge of quality i do think though that with duffy based shopping seasons if they did a wedding season duffy and shelly may are getting married i think that would be the biggest oh my biggest money maker we'd have to go we'd have to go get those clothes to fly there i who's who's the best man who's the maid of honor oh well jello tony is is coming solo to the wedding and he doesn't have any job he doesn't have a new job they aren't even sure he's gonna make it yeah right we'll give him a seat but he's probably not gonna show he's the best man or is tippy blue the best man mickey is the best man i think so i think he has to be and then he is maid of honor mini Minnie of honor.

The tippy blue is the ring bearer. Yeah. Oh, he's flying the ring. He's delivering it. What's that bunny doing? Stella Lou, obviously, flower girl. She got the tutu, which I don't know why that makes any sense. Cookie is catering.

Cookie is catering. Olu is the entertainment. Olu plays his ukulele oh this is a grand what a great affair we did it and then like uh in the audience michael eisner bob eiger all the different heads paul pressler paul pressler bob chapek all the different people that k-pop band that i wish i could pull out of my hat right now that Mickey dance with that is. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Oh, right. You five, seven, one. That's like BTX. I think they were just here. Something. Anyway, wouldn't that have been nice? So I'd remember that.

So, yeah, this is this is really we have to we're coming to the end of obviously part one of a multi-part Duffy saga. So yeah, we can't sum up our thoughts. I will just say that the Gelatoni, there's a whole other section where people were upset that Gelatoni brought a vibe to this dynamic. People were thinking that he was like a little lascivious and they didn't care for it because these two are so like. Sarah Love is a perfect perfect love but they're also very like low-key feeling he's aggressive he's a painter a painter and a dancer like him and stella lu are bringing some mood he brought mood gelatoni brought an

energy to the group that was not comfortable to a lot of the message i forgot about that i like it i like the expansion this universe i think disney plus let's uh let's do it it's crazy they haven't tried because it could help you know expand the brand in America but it's also isn't it sort of Hello Kitty-esque in that uh huge in Japan exists primarily as merchandise there are Hello Kitty cartoons and shows but there isn't like the famous one there isn't the movie right it does it also in addition to initially being them trying to do build-a-bear it feels like them trying to do hello kitty yeah i think yeah that's that is a good point valiant uh ted boy it's it's working there they yeah sit nicely next to each other in uh in japan so and on our couch and on our couch and usually upstairs by on my like toy

shelves you know it's uh in in just stray duffy thoughts um the when i was in japan i went to a the first disney store i went to i was like oh look it's duffies uh because up on the shelves there were like teddy bears of chip and dress like chip and dale dress like the beast you helped me uh decipher uh because it's it's getting a red and a purple cape and a kind of a goatee uh i was like okay so these are duffies uh that is not correct what i was looking at was something called unibarsity and unibarsity is okay let's be very clear these are not duffies these are disney's who these are disney bears who dress like the characters not like you have a costume of duffy as uh uh lightning mcqueen so this is a whole other so like we not only have duffy to do unibarcity is an entire

other thing we have to grapple with i mean were you familiar with unibarcity before i knew because you sent me those pictures, but I did not know that was the name of it. I don't know the scope of the merchandise. This is a second Disney bit. There's a whole other. Now, are they friends? What vibe do they bring to the group? Well, and then there's the Tsum Tsums. That was short term.

And then I saw someone. God, I can't remember the name now. There was a bunch of Tsum Tsums on like clearance or at the outlets and stuff. It's like, oh, they've already been replaced by the Cutles or something. Like there's another cute thing. And there's a lot of the characters specifically on their tummies sleeping, like kind of in baby form. Like you'll see like Peter Pan pluto or whatever in baby form taking a nap so there's that too so we got to deal with university we gotta deal with naps the nap crew

uh it's overwhelming how much there is there's so much um but i think disney plus is the place to uh do an avengers of bears yeah because i mean in like downtown disney like they've already we've already seen multiple true like duffy duffy's been pushed out the build-a-bears even been pushed out for like craft burgers and beer and then upstairs it's fucking uh or craft shakes downstairs craft beer upstairs like the trends have already turned over yeah under 10 years what it's turning into what's that i'm liking what it's turning into. What's that? I'm liking what it's turning into because it was definitely in need of a what people are into now update. Yeah.

Eating okay food. Yeah. That's a trend of 2019. Reasonably good $50 burgers. Yeah. I also, I mean, my other big takeaway from Disney Sea was, well, so I got lucky. I got to see the Duffy side of the easter show like all like it's a show where three barges are coming for you and are you gonna get mickey and minnie are you gonna get chip and dale are you gonna get duffy crew i got duffy crew i didn't end up seeing a separate duffy show because that felt like the duffy show

to me so i feel like i got to spend a lot of good time with him that helps me understand them more seeing them in action teaching chicken creatures how to dance but in waiting for that I saw a Gelatoni dressed as the female Aristocat the white fur

and this is the cutest thing I've ever like this made me fall so wow like great 80 percent did my heart for duffy and friends jump i think gelatoni is my favorite another like right next to another pal playing with gelatoni right next oh and oh i'm sorry and she is also wearing a little beret and ears uh so she is dressed like gelatoni with a doll dresses with a gelatoni in a costume uh i just i'm like every every character combo please you just said avengers of duffy like every marvel character available as a costume for these cats and bears would be wondrous um yeah i do think going to tokyo changes because he is a character

in that park and not at all in ours like seeing the duffy show at the oh yeah i mean we really talked about that yeah we saw the duffy show and his origin story i loved i'll just steal the percentage from you i don't know how much of a percent it was though like i love duffy 80 more when he was an adorable japanese bear yeah sure speaking in japanese yeah oh i was like oh i am very much behind duffy being japanese oh now how did that change things no we haven't talked about duffy sounds what kind of characters yeah i've never heard duffy except in japan and i was like he better only sound like this ever he sounds cute he just sounds fucking cute he's real cute if it was a more complicated answer than that that'd be a bummer so i'm glad um i also forgot to mention earlier in the episode lindsey did ebay shelly may for me Yes that Shelly May That is how eventually I got Shelly May

And my sister eBayed Gelatoni for me Oh so they're all gifts None of them were just bought for you That's true Marissa Strickland got me Jason and I tippy blue like five years ago from Japan And then a listener said that's cookie So the mini spirit is alive that's really nice

these are all gifts really so yes i have all of these so i'm waiting for someone to give to me still aloo and aloo but i would be good if we went we should go to buy them but one of you has to give it as a gift to the yes that's true in the spirit of it yeah you will hand me the money to buy it and then i will hand it to you as though I'm giving it to you and I will sell it like I'm like that's how it happened That you were just giving it to me for An occasion let me ask you this did someone give

You what appears to be a four inch Car plot which is down at Ankle level Jason Is referencing a toy down there That I bought when I was buying a gift for a friend's birthday the other day. He has incorrectly identified that Star Wars character as Unkar Plutt. It is not Unkar Plutt.

It is Dexter Jexter, the space diner owner from Attack of the Clones. We were in a writing once. You fucking idiot. Oh, no. We're wrapping up the show with me being owned just when we started. You are wrong. Go out on a hard note. We were in a Rite Aid once and there was

a rack of Star Wars toys of just Unkar Plutz. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. So anyway, if anyone wants to know. It's a good cereal, just Plutz. Yeah. Have you talked about the Mickey that I got you from Japan? No. Oh, well, have we talked about that on the show we did we did talk about that yeah we did talk about that that's the best gifts i've

ever gotten uh crazy exclusive mickey from tokyo oh the it looks like a mascot or that looks like the character the walk-around character yes and it's only available to uh special disney uh like tokyo disney club members that pay a fee they have to have an address in japan and then they have to go to the park in a certain couple weeks to get the exclusive merchandise uh so all this stuff is on ebay and yeah anyway that's that's a scheme worthy of the message boards. Who got the 20% uptick convenience fee, whatever it was. So yes, that was a very good gift. The best gift. So Duffy is a very cute character who is very complicated to get and complicates people's lives.

Drives them insane. Duffy does have a rich backstory with us that is personal to us. Here's a picture of him that's very coy. That also kind of looks like a headshot. That was the Duffy we saw everywhere. And we were like, who the fuck is this? Yeah, yeah. It changes things.

That Duffy is not as cute as Japan Duffy. That Duffy is a hastily thrown together, the initial thing that we all, the initial impression we all got from it. That Duffy was like the root supporting lead in like the second Dabney Coleman sitcom where America was like, no, thank you. No more Dabney, please. I will say, now that I have said such horrible things about that photo, I feel very, I feel like very bad about saying all those mean things about that duffy really immediately yeah he's too cool he's too cool i got really sad throwing away my uh lufa my shower poof does it have eyes and a face or anything? No. Oh, that's enough of a character to you? Yeah.

Yeah. I was like, oh, I'm sorry. I could, I don't know why I didn't, I, you're pretty new. I didn't really need to go and buy a new one. You served me well. I get that. I feel bad. I feel bad when I sell things or throw things away.

I once made my sister, I had my, right before we went on vacation to disney world i made all of her stuffed animals talk and say we're gonna miss you we want to go with you so she stuffed them all into the suitcase without my mom knowing and then my mom opened the suitcase and there were like 10 stuffed animals then she's like what is this she's like mike made me feel bad but like obviously i felt bad like i wanted to take them i felt like they were gonna be left behind yeah so what's wrong you took uh the queen mattress that i got for my first apartment back in la we were already planning on replacing it and you already took it off the bed and hauled it down to the dumpster so that when I came home and I was like, I didn't even have a chance to say goodbye to it.

I felt really sad. You're living in Pixar worlds where everything is alive. It might be mad that you're... It's like a nightmare of Marie Kondo having to thank everything for what it's done for me. I was going to ask what your thoughts were on her. Like,

does it help? Or are you just like, no, absolutely not. It's what I already thought. Yeah. It's how I already felt. Yeah.

All right. Well, let's end the episode. That's why I can't throw away books. Hey, what else does Jason do? Jason does a lot of weird shit. Let's talk about that.

So naturally, I spent a lot of time on the ocean. Naturally. I'll salute you on your next voyage. Edwin is a part of the dummy film. I know. Some wait. Someone take a picture of this while it's before he throws away. Oh, show round up and I'll get.

You take care of photos oh my god I will oh my god I will say Lindsay K. Tell You Survived Podcast is the right

for the second time I think so if you can make it out a little easier than saying goodbye to your mattress or your loofah thanks for being here

hey let's we said your stuff at the top but let's exit to the gift shop too what's where people find you

You can find my podcast Teen Creeps Wherever you typically listen to podcasts We talk about YA pulp fiction Of the 80s and 90s And then we also throw in Like a fun cult classic movie Every now and then

Like The Craft or Lost Boys I host that with my friend Kelly Nugent. And keep on looking out for Infinity Train. Just Google Infinity Train once every month or so. Yeah. Hopefully we get to talk about it soon. But that will be premiering this year. It will be this year.

Yeah. This year it will be this year Yeah it's a Show on Cartoon Network about a girl Who gets on a mystical train with an Endless number of cars each one Its own pocket universe you can find this short On YouTube Does one of the cars have like a bear though I can't fucking say Scott

How many times I just don't want her to be alone On her journey She might make a couple of friends okay hopefully uh as as for us uh check us out at the second gate at patreon.com slash podcast the ride check us out at podcast right on twitter instagram we got a facebook group as reddit you can buy our shirts on t public uh and there will be no 20 uptick service charge for what was that i still don't understand the math there's no smuggling involved if you want to buy our shirts that's

what i can tell you yeah there's no smuggling fee additional smuggling fee yeah it's just straight what you see is what you're paying for no extra shipping in hand unless somebody's making rare podcast red shirts in japan oh yeah maybe which case cool yeah that would be cool i would buy one of those not be obsessed and 118 dollars on my shirt for your show a bootleg botanicus shirt a bootleg of a bootleg looking shirt yes the ripoff of the ripoff oh yes yes all right well and there were a lot of good like arts and crafts opportunities. I think we presented during this episode. Go back and listen to them and send them back to us.

Lots of homework. Get to it. Bye. Bye. Forever. Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey.

Engineered and mastered by Alex Arche. For more original podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcast.com and subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Keep up with the latest Forever Dog news by following us on Twitter and Instagram at Forever Dog Team and liking our page on Facebook.