Stuff You Should Know - Etch A Sketch!

Episode Date: March 28, 2019

The Etch A Sketch is yet another classic toy that Josh and Chuck love and respect. Learn all about this Hall of Fame entry today.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chucky Bryant,

and there's Jerry, the delicious dish rolling. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the vintage nostalgia edition that went off to China and then got sold to a different company edition. So do you wanna, I have a rough list of classic toys we've covered. You wanna hear it? Oh, lay it on me, Charles.

I'm sure I've missed something, but it did help me think of some more that we should do. Slinky? We did Slinky? Oh yeah, we did Slinky, okay, yeah. Lego? Oh yeah, of course. Barbie?

Sure. Her boyfriend, G.I. Joe? Yeah, that was a good one. Sorry, Ken. Wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm sorry. Did we specifically do a G.I. Joe one or an action figures one? I think both.

We definitely did action figures, although maybe not. Okay, go ahead. I'll cross check that. Hot Wheels. So this is a made up list is what you're saying. Hot Wheels? Easy Bake Oven. Yeah, I'm glad you didn't call it Hot Wheels.

Easy Bake Oven, Play Doe, Silly Putty. Do you count Boomerangs? Sure. Do you count Monopoly? Yeah. Yo-yos? Of course. Hula Hoops?

I knew Hula Hoops was after Yo-yos, I just knew it. Teddy Ruxpin, we covered him in our Christmas show this year. Oh yeah, that's a deep cut right there. And then that's all I have, but I could have sworn we did it on Frisbees, but I cannot find it. Yeah, I feel like we did Frisbees too, cause I think we talked about like Frawl for something at some point.

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's out there and I just didn't, or maybe it's under Flying Disk or something. Oh, that's possible. Cause yeah, we made that joke about it calling it a novelty Flying Disk cause Frisbee like used to sue everybody who called anything else to Frisbee.

Maybe, I'll have to look, but there's probably more out there, but that's a solid, you know, 12 or 13. That's pretty good. Which leads us to Etch-a-Sketch. Yes, one of the top hundred toys of the century, according to, I wanna say, not the Toy Hall of Fame, it's just in the Toy Hall of Fame. I think according to some snot-nosed kid

who makes lists online. All right, this is the hundred best toys of the century. This is the hundred best guitar solos of the 70s. Oh man, I'd love to do a show on that. That would be pretty cool. I can't remember who named that, who made that list, but it's a high honor, it's a high accolade even if we can't remember who came up with it.

Like the Etch-a-Sketch, it's a ubiquitous toy. Everybody knows what an Etch-a-Sketch is unless you go to France and then they'll say, oh, you mean La Croix Magique. And you might say like, well, why would they have anything to say about the Etch-a-Sketch in France? Turns out, buddy, the Etch-a-Sketch

is actually French in origin. Did you know that before this? I did not. I didn't either. Because it seems like super American, it looks like a TV and just feels like pure Americana. So when I realized it had some French stank on it, my dreams were dashed.

Are you like, it smells like champagne and cheese, which is kind of pleasant. No, I didn't really care. I thought it was great. Sketch, erase and sketch again. The log line that will forever be tied to this really interesting little toy. And I can't remember who it is in this article,

but they were interviewing different folks. I think it was someone from the company commented. And I totally agree that like it's amazing that today in the digital world and Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and video gaming as it is, that this little lo-fi toy that doesn't even have batteries in it, much less hook up to the internet,

is still like super popular and still has a little bit of mystique. And I agree with them. And I think the reason why one of them is like, you look at it and you're still kind of like, how does this thing work? Right, well, we're going to ruin that mystique for everybody because we're going to explain

how it works actually in this episode. That's right. But hopefully it won't affect etch-a-sketch sales because we love etch-a-sketch, you know? All right, should we go to France? We will go to France. Sometime it's apparently not clear whether it was 1955 or 1956,

but in a little town called Vitry-sur-Sin, which means Vitry on the Sin River, there was a company called, what was the name of the company, Chuck? Lincrusta Company. Right. Terrible name. It is a terrible name,

but the reason they called themselves that is because Lincrusta is a type of wall covering that was really popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries. You know, like, have you ever been into an old creepy abandoned house and like the walls are covered in what looks like dimpled tin with like some weird patterns to it or whatever? No, but keep going.

Okay, so if you could rub your hand over, it's very much, it's like heavily embossed. Sometimes it's painted, and just imagine that as like wine scotting in the house. That is Lincrusta, and so that is one of the two things that this company made in the 50s, Lincrusta wall coverings and artificial leather. That is really neither here nor there,

but I was with you. I was like, what kind of a name is that for a company? I looked it up and they just, it basically be like if you and I called our podcast, podcast, because that's what we did was make podcasts. Or called it podcast. Podcasta. Just the name crust anyway.

I think I know what you're talking about because I have, we have a pie safe that has that metal tin stuff, but it's, I've never seen it on a wall, but I bet it's about the same thing. Virtually the same thing. Yeah. Yep. Okay, so that's Lincrusta, and that's where this guy worked.

His name was Andre Casagnes. Casagnes. What are you going with? Well, if it's French, wouldn't it be Casson? Is that G pronounced? Yeah, I think you just nailed it actually. Andre Casson. Well, that's what we're going to call them.

And we have gone back in time. You didn't know 55 or 56. I say we go to 54 just to play it safe, set up shop in France and maybe get some emails done. For a couple of years? Sure, why not? We could use a break. Cause you know, podcasts to burn out is a real thing.

It really is. As we've talked about. We're dropping like flies. All right, so he's working in this factory. It's north of Paris. And they are making these wall coverings like you're talking about. And he, this is a little confusing

how this actually happens. If you ask me, or at least the way that the first article put it, it's confusing. Oh, you're leaving it to me. I noticed by your balls after that. Well, I mean, no, I'll start it, but I just still don't quite get it. He marked up with pencil on a see-through decal.

So like he was putting on an electrical plate, like a light switch. And on that plate, like many things, has like a little see-through plastic that you peel off. So he was writing on that. He peeled it off, but then that's where it loses me. It's exactly what magic took place. So, okay, remember this is Linkrusta

and they make metal wall coverings, which means there's metal dust in the air, metal shavings everywhere. Yeah, and he's just breathing that stuff in. Right, all of them are. What's crazy is this guy made it to that ripe old age of 86, after breathing that for years. But so there's metal dust everywhere,

including on this electrical switch plate that he's installing. And I guess the decal against the plate. And I think what happened was when he marked on the decal and pulled the decal off, he'd seen that he had disturbed the metal shavings that were stuck to the underside of the decal. You see what I mean?

So like he had disturbed the shavings. So the whole decal is coated in a metal dust. He marks on it with a pencil and the impression that he makes gouges out, lines on the backside of the decal. I know, it's really tough. It was magic. Basically, this man witnessed a feat of magic

that still cannot be explained to this day. And that's where he got his idea for the etch-a-sketch. Amazing. So a big, big moment, he has that literal light bulb that goes off of his, or I'm not literal, of course, light bulb above his head. Although you never know. There may have been a light bulb in that factory

right above his head. Why not? And he said, all right, this can be something. He however did not have a lot of money to sink into this weird idea. And so he had to partner with somebody with money, a man named Paul Chase, C-H-A-Z-E, or maybe Shaz if he's French.

Oh, that's good. And this guy had some dough because he owned a plastic injection molding company. And this is like early on. I wonder if we could count that as a toy. The little plastic machines that spit out little plastic guitars in Chicago and at Zeus. Oh, yes, yes.

Yes, Moldorama, that would definitely count. Yeah, that goes on the list, yeah. So he didn't, it wasn't Moldorama, but it was plastic injection molding that this guy made his money from. And this where things get a little confusing historically because the man who, his accountant, his name was Arthur Grandjean.

You are nailing the French today. Try to run French people. You can't, Chuck, is pronouncing your words just beautifully. So his accountant is actually given credit a lot of times because he filed the patent under his name, which I'm curious about how that works legally. So he was, do you remember the first time we did South by Southwest and on the sign?

It had like somebody, I can't remember whose name it was, but whoever had like filed the application to get us into South by Southwest, it said that like that's who was performing in the room that day. I don't remember that at all. I think this is the same, basically the same thing where as like the US government bureaucracy,

the patented trademark office basically said whoever's name is on there, that is who is the patent holder. And since Grandjean, who was the accountant of Shea's, who was the partner of Kessa Yand, since he was the one who actually filled out the application and paid for the application for the patent, as far as the government was concerned, he was the person who patented the etch-a-sketch

in the United States. Even though Grandjean made no claim on it whatsoever, immediately transferred the title over to Shea's. He's, for decades, everybody thought Arthur Grandjean was the guy who invented the etch-a-sketch. Interesting. All right, so that was July 23rd, 1959, was when this patent was granted.

And I guess we should just look at the little guy itself, the little TV looking that iconic red frame with the two dials, which it didn't have initially. We'll get to that, but the underside of the screen here has what's known in the patent as a pole virulent material, such as aluminum powder. Is that French as well? I don't know.

And then to keep that from clumping up, there are little tiny plastic beads. And then the two knobs control, again, from the patent, a movable tracing stylus. Although initially it was a joystick, isn't that right? Yeah, yeah, basically like an Atari. But it served the same purpose, and it was held together the same way

through an intricate system of pulleys and gears that moved the stylus either upward or downward. And then if you combine the upward and downward together, you could make diagonals and circles and stuff like that. But it's really tough to describe what's going on in an Etch-a-Sketch, but there's a House of Works article from years back called Inside an Etch-a-Sketch,

where the people at House of Works took one apart and photographed it and explained it step by step. And it really becomes much simpler and ruins any bit of magic there is to it when you see Inside an Etch-a-Sketch. But it's still kind of wondrous, like the engineer in you is like, wow, that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's sort of like,

I mean, it's not a negative image, I don't think, but what's going on when you're moving those knobs, there's a stylus that's actually removing, like the screen is coated with this powder. So it's actually removing powder, not adding something to the screen. Yes, exactly. And of course, if you want to get that away

and start a new picture, you just shake that thing up and that recodes the screen once again with that powder. Yeah, so like, you know how your TV screen always has tons of dust on it, no matter how often you dust it? Sure. So that's because that dust is attracted electrostatically through an electrical charge to the glass.

That's, they take advantage of that same thing with the underside of the Etch-a-Sketch and that aluminum dust, which sticks to everything. Like it wants to stick to the glass because I think it's missing some electrons or something. And then when you move the stylus through it, you're just removing that dust, like you said. It's not a negative, it's the removal of dust.

And that's an Etch-a-Sketch, like at its core. And what's interesting, Chuck, is like, that is how an Etch-a-Sketch today works. That's how an Etch-a-Sketch worked in 1962, like the two meaning like also. Sure. But that dude, André Cassagne, said, this is how this is gonna work.

And it's basically the same thing. That's pretty awesome. Let's take a break. Yes. We're gonna come back and talk about, come and state side right after this. ["Snowflake Show"] On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called,

David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll wanna be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in

as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael.

And a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen,

so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And it's like it got you up in shock. All right, so Chuck, so how did we agree on his last name? I think I'm butchering it still. And I even took years of French in high school.

I think he said casserole. All right, Andre Casserole. That seems, that seems wrong. Yeah, I'm still gonna go with Casson. Okay, there you go. Andre Casson. He knew he was onto something. Like this guy was an electrician.

He was like, this is a great idea. This is a prototype I made. This is worth something. So he and Cruz, I guess, funded a trip to the Nuremberg Toy Fair in 1959. And it was there that Casson was walking around saying, check this thing out. It is yours for a mere $100,000,

which at the time was a lot of money. I think it was $870,000 today. And that's what this guy wanted for the right to produce this. And every toy maker at the place said, no, including a little toy maker called Ohio Art. Everybody turned it down. And Casson went home from the toy fair empty-handed,

but he didn't give up. He still persisted, but that was a big strikeout for him right out of the gate. Yeah, so Ohio Art eventually settles on a number of 25 grand for the rights to make this thing. In the United States, it is still called Le Cran Magique in France, because they had a different licensing deal

over there from the get-go. And Ohio Art Company is pretty interesting. It started, did you see that thing? I see it. Yeah, I did. Yeah, they started out in 1908, founded by a man named, a dentist named Dr. Henry S. Winsler in Archibald, Ohio. He gets out of dentistry because he's like, hey man, toys is the future.

Toys is the future. There's no future in teeth. In a decade, no one in America is gonna have teeth. It's just a losing trade to be in his dentistry. Yeah, so he saw the way forward. He rented a musical, hired 15 women, and they were making metal picture frames at first to great, great success.

Yeah, so they use something called the metal lithography, which is a type of printing. And I think the metal refers to the medium that you're using to print with, like you carve a picture out of metal and you put ink on it and then you print on whatever you want. But they were printing on tube metal. Like they had like these picture frames and pictures

that were like a huge seller of a cupid. It was a pair of like oval plates basically, but they were metal printed pictures on them of like a cupid hanging out and then the same cupid sleeping. And it's just kind of like whatever. Like these days it seems kind of, it's got a tinge of old-timey creepiness.

But in the first half of the 20th century, there were 50 million sets of those things sold in the United States, which is an astounding amount. It's basically every house in America had a pair of this. And that really kind of made Ohio art like a very viable business. But they eventually got into things like sandpales and little trucks and that kind of thing.

Anything that was printed with metal before the time that plastic toys came along, they were into. So it wasn't a huge leap into the Etch-a-Sketch, but the Etch-a-Sketch was definitely different than anything that they'd ever kind of messed around with before. Did you know I've done metal lithography? No.

Yeah, it was one of our industrial arts. It was, you know, at least at my school, each quarter you did a different medium or whatever. And lithography was something we did one quarter. Do you remember what you printed? I'm trying to remember what I printed. It's funny, I can remember that because we also, one quarter was screen printing.

And I remember the t-shirts, I did monkey's t-shirts. You like the see no evil, hear no evil monkeys? No, the band, the monkeys, their logo with the guitar spelled out as monkeys. Like wow, did you draw it yourself? No, no, no, of course not. But we did metal sheet lithography. I don't remember all of the process,

but what I do remember was it essentially was like burning, chemically burning images onto metal plates. And then that metal plate was used to print. Okay, so the metal and metal lithography does, it talks about the metal press that you're using to print with. Like at the end of, there may be different processes, but in my class we would do this thing

and apply this image with this gel onto a metal sheet and use this combination of chemicals that would burn that into, make it part of the metal. And then all of a sudden you would have a metal sheet with a thing on it, like a negative image. And then you would use that in the printing process to print a positive image. Right, and you could use that to print onto anything,

including other metal, right? Well, hey man, that's where my knowledge, and again, this was ninth grade me, so I've forgotten a lot of things over that time period. Right. And I'm sure I just butchered that, but that's my one little dance with metal lithography. Well, I'll tell you who would be able to tell us

exactly how metal lithography works. It's anybody who works at Ohio Art, because not only was that their bread and butter before the Etch's sketch, it still is today actually. So, Ohio Art, I guess gets in touch with Andre Casson, and either he got in touch with them again, or they got in touch with him. I think it was the latter of the two,

and said, hey, we heard you're selling this for 100 grand. It's way too rich for our blood. How about either 15,000 or 25,000, depending on who you ask in the future? And Casson is like, what are you talking about? They're like, just take the money. And so they either got it for 15,000 or 25,000, which is still substantial.

I mean, it was like around 100K or 200K, something like that, depending on which one it was. And Casson was quite a happy man. There was a story where the guy who was running the show at Ohio Art and his wife went over to meet Andre Casson and just kind of have like an initial meeting and like shake his hand and all that and buy the license from him.

And Casson was like, welcome, and had like this huge spread of baguettes and champagne and everything at his house, which is pretty cute, because he was just like this humble guy who came up with a really great idea for a toy and was finally like selling it for a wad of cash. Interesting. A little on the nose.

I thought so too. What, the baguettes and champagne? Yeah, but you know, what are you gonna do? Well, you went in France, right? So he is, once he's on board with Ohio Art, he gets together with their chief engineer, Jerry Berger, and says, and Berger's like, listen here, Frenchy, you need to drop the joystick.

It's all knobs these days. And he said, what is a knob? And he was like, well, let me show you. And he introduced the idea of the same system like you were talking about, but knobs instead of a joystick to move that little line horizontal or vertical, or as you pointed out, if you're really talented

and you can master both at once, you can actually do, well, if you're really good, you can do very nice curved lines. Yeah, beyond rudimentary. No, neither am I. I can make a line go up and a line go to the left or right. Yeah, I can't even make it go down. We'll get to the art of it, maybe at the end,

but because there are some serious artists out there doing some cool stuff. But at any rate, Etch-a-Sketch, it was rebranded as Etch-a-Sketch in the United States, Ohio Arts producing them for the 1960 holiday season. And they sold about 600,000 of these that year, which is a, that's a lot. Yeah, and they sold it for a lot of money too.

They went for sale at $2.99 a piece, which is 25.64 in today's money. But I mean, if you go buy Etch-a-Sketch today, it's between 10 and 15 bucks. So that was a lot of money, especially to sell 600,000 of these things, especially if you were selling like creepy, you know, metal waste baskets

with an unsettling clown painted on it or printed on it like right before this. This is a huge, it was a good move by the people at Ohio Art to buy the license to this thing, in other words. And they say, Chuck, that it coincided really perfectly with television. So much so that they believe like that is one of the reasons why Jerry Berger was like, you need knobs.

This thing needs to look like a TV set because that's what's all the rage with the kids right now. Yeah, and he, it was one of the first toys to actually do a TV commercial. And so if it's 1960 and you're a child watching, first of all, your mind is blown because you're watching a television to begin with. It's just like, I can't believe this.

I can't believe what's going on right now. Then a TV commercial comes on for a toy. And this toy has animation in it to where like, they would Etch-a-Sketch a little rocket ship and then that rocket ship would animate and take off. And this was like, these kids might've, I mean, keep in mind, kids in 1960 were idiots, but they might as well have been dosed with LSD, you know?

They just kept fainting over and over again throughout the commercial because they could not believe what they were seeing. Mines blown. And it's just, it's just an Etch-a-Sketch, you know? Yeah, but it's genius. I love it. It is, but it really, I think the point was though that,

like taking advantage of the novelty of TV and also now having a way, like if you, we just tried to explain an Etch-a-Sketch over a podcast. Prior to TV, if that Etch-a-Sketch would come out during like the Little Orphan Era radio era, they would have had to have done the same thing. It wouldn't have landed quite as well. The fact that a kid could see this happening

on their TV screen was pretty awesome. And then also to say, and then you just shake it, turn it upside down and shake it and coat the glass screen again and your drawing is gone forever. Like to be able to see that TV made the Etch-a-Sketch what it was, like for sure. It definitely ushered it into a position where it could become like a cultural icon of nostalgia.

Yeah, I mean, you know, they perfected it by the time they started rolling off in 1960. Prior to that, like any product like this, it was a lot of R&D, one of the people who worked there talked about the mountain of red frames behind the factory while they were trying to get it right. And it was such a huge smash head out of the gate that as legend has it, they were manufacturing up

until noon on Christmas Eve, just to get them to the West Coast in time for Christmas morning. Yeah, that's pretty cool. I mean, they really wanted those kids to have those Etch-a-Sketches. They really wanted that money. Should we take another break? Yeah.

All right, we'll talk about some ways Etch-a-Sketches ebbed and flowed in popularity and pop culture over the years. Right for this. [♪ upbeat music playing On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses

and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references

to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. They're on its way to Joshua, shock.

Chuck, I don't know if we said it or not, but from what I've seen, more than 175 million etch-a-sketch-as have been sold since 1960. And we should point out, we're not just, like, ticking off a list of pop culture references. Right. Like, every time this happened, etch-a-sketch sales would go up.

Yeah, like, the Mitt Romney one increased sales, like, 30%. I guess everybody was like, oh, etch-a-sketch. I forgot about that. I think I'll go buy one right now. Well, they actually branded after that Republican and Democrat etch-a-sketch-as, though, didn't they? Yeah, so you could buy a red one or a blue one, but both of them came with a sticker,

which I'm assuming that they printed on their metal lithography presses of a donkey and an elephant, like playing tug-of-war on the front of the White House lawn. Yeah, that's just crazy. It is, but it's also, that's smart, you know? That's how you make the money. And then, of course, in the movie Toy Story from Pixar, that was, like, one of the characters' name was etch,

and had the fastest knobs in the West. And that was always a very fun character, I think, to see him drawing things out really fast to communicate. Yeah, and you know, you said something earlier. You were talking about how, like, despite the fact that it doesn't even have batteries, it's had the staying power for, you know, 50-something years, almost 60 years it's been around.

And it's a really simple thing that the design hasn't changed. And I think even more of a testimony to, you know, the staying power of the etch-a-sketch is the fact that they have tried stuff with batteries and, like, things that connect to your computer over the years, and nothing has managed to improve on the original etch-a-sketch. Like, there was, do you remember the etch-a-sketch animator?

No. So I couldn't quite place it either, but I went and watched an old ad. It was big in the 80s. And it was basically, like, an etch-a-sketch, but there was nothing mechanical about it. It was digital. You're creating, like, a bitmap digital picture.

And then you'd press, like, I guess, play or something like that. And it would just kind of run it, like, a flipbook over and over again. So your etch-a-sketch drawing, like, came to life. But kids were like, I'd rather have the original etch-a-sketch because the etch-a-sketch animator went away

and the etch-a-sketch is still available today. Yeah, I mean, there have been other variations. They had the doodle sketch, the plug-and-play, which this sounds like a bad idea. Plug-and-play allows you to draw on the TV screen. That's just asking for trouble as a parent. Sure. And then the mobile app, which I've been playing with today.

Oh, how's it going? Well, I mean, what do you think of this picture? Oh, that's not bad. It looks kind of etch-a-sketchy, you know? Yeah, so what you can do is, it's kind of fun. You can upload or take a photo on your smartphone, plug it into the app, and then it will instantly etch-ify it. And what I've learned is that it's the more basic,

like a picture of your face works much better than something with a lot of stuff in the background, but it's fun. Right, yeah, I like it. I was reading reviews of the app. I didn't try it myself like you, but it did say like, if it's a basic picture, it'll look way more etch-a-sketchy. Yeah, so my official review is not bad. So three stars out of six?

Sure, I mean, for something that downloaded in 30 seconds and was free, I'm going to give it a half a thumb up. That's amazing. So one of the things that has kind of kept etch-a-sketchy alive for like the younger kids, if I read this article about etch-a-sketch and it was right before they sold. So a lot of people don't know that Ohio Art

doesn't make etch-a-sketchy anymore. They sold it to a brand called Spin Master. And I didn't see that. Yeah, it's not Ohio Art. Ohio Art said, we're going back to metal lithography and that's what they did. They sold etch-a-sketch off to Spin Master. Spin Master was like, that's fine with us, baby.

Thanks for all these licenses. I mean, etch-a-sketch, a frozen branded etch-a-sketch might as well just be like a printing press for money, right? Yeah. So it was probably a pretty good buy for Spin Master. And Ohio Art was like, this thing is great. It was a good run while it lasted, but they also had to oversee it

through some really dark times. Because, well, for one thing, etch-a-sketch, is it landing with the millennials? I get the impression like it used to with the baby boomers. That was one thing. And Ohio Art almost went bankrupt because of it. Back in like 2001, they managed to get some more money back into the business and stay afloat.

But part of that also was they had to send the manufacturing of the etch-a-sketch off to China, which they were really unhappy about because they lost like 35 jobs in tiny little Brian, Ohio. But eventually, like 15 years later, they said, you know what, we're getting out of the etch-a-sketch business and sold it off to Spin Master.

Which is a weird name. But one of the things, it's a little weird. Ohio Art's a little weird too. You don't associate Ohio with art, you know? Oh, uh-oh. You just don't. I'll say it again. Tell that to Chrissy Hynde and the Black Geese.

No, Chrissy Hynde gets what I'm saying for sure. So one of the things that is keeping etch-a-sketch relevant, the reason why, like if you walk up to like a 17-year-old and say, what do you think about etch-a-sketch? They say, oh yeah, I've heard of that. Because every once in a while, you'll see on the internet a photo or two of somebody who is really, really good at etch-a-sketch.

And it just kind of makes the rounds on social media. Yeah, I mean, everything from like the Mona Lisa to just like portraits of people, to landscapes, what's really fun is you can go on YouTube and look at time-lapse renderings, etch-a-sketch renderings, which when you're seeing it done super fast like that, you kind of think like, I feel like I could do that, but you really have to be a master with those knobs.

Like what I found is the thing you really need to master to do everything that you want to do is being able to retrace well. Because as everyone knows, it's not like a pencil. You can't pick it up off the paper and start somewhere else. You have to, if you want to go somewhere else, you have to retrace as closely to that original line as you can all the way back to that point

that you want to be at. Or else it's just going to look like something that I did, which looks like something a toddler did. Yeah, and I mean, like that's a really good point when you're making a good etch-a-sketch drawing, it is all one single line. It's frequently doubled back over. And etch-a-sketch artists will use like that frame.

They'll create a line frame around the edges that they can travel back out to and move around the picture like that. Pretty brilliant. Yeah, there's a guy named George Vlossich III, who's known for some pretty amazing portraits of Muhammad Ali, Barack Obama, and Baron James. There's an artist named Jane Labovitch,

or Labovitch maybe. She calls herself Princess Etch-a-Sketch. She's done some amazing architectural detail with it. And then there's a guy named Ryan Burton, who does erotic Simpsons art. There you go. With the etch-a-sketch, and all three of them are like really good

at the etch-a-sketch drawings. Yeah, the fanfic of etch-a-sketch artists. Interesting. And then apparently if you, when you're very satisfied with your etch-a-sketch, and you don't want anything to happen to it, you drill a hole in the back and get the aluminum powder out,

and then you lock the knobs to keep them from being turned, then you have an etch-a-sketch masterpiece that you can hang in a museum. Oh, so that makes it permanent? Yeah. So when the little, so when a kid comes in the museum and rips it off the wall and shakes it, nothing happens.

No, no. And I think by law, you're allowed to pick up that kid and shake it. Yes, I think so. As long as it's not a baby, don't shake a baby. Right, you know, never shake a baby, come on. Yeah. I would never advocate shaking a baby, everybody.

I just want to go on record and say that. There was, you know, the comedian Nate Bargazzi? No. He has a, he's great. He's got a very funny bit about shaking babies. Oh yeah. Believe it or not. It takes a lot to turn that into something funny.

Yeah, he did it, man. Good for him. Nate Bargazzi, huh? Nate Bargazzi, dude, you would love him, he's great. So Nate Bargazzi just became a cultural icon because we did not see him coming up in this episode. That's right. Well, if you want to know more about Nate Bargazzi,

you should go check him out on the internet, like I'm going to. And since I said Nate Bargazzi, it's time for Listener Mail. Man, I hope someone tells Nate. We're plugging him. Plugging away. Plugging Nate.

All right here, I'm going to mention, this is about Jerry and her eating. And this is from Kim Cooper. Did you see this Jerry? She says no. Hey guys, I noticed that you often mention what Jerry is eating a lot during the podcast. A lot.

I don't know how close to you she, how close she is to your microphones. Well, I'll go ahead and say that from your side over there, she's about five feet. Like all I have to do is lean in my seat a little bit and I can touch Jerry's miso soup. That's right. You could dip your thumb in her soup.

Sometimes I threaten to. I don't know how close she is to your microphones, but I never hear her eating, which is good for your fans with misophonia. But I'm curious why she chooses this time to eat. Do you guys spend all day podcasting? That's the only time she can fit it in? No. No.

Silly question that popped into my head listening to this week after Josh said, and there's Jerry eating God knows what. Anyway, guys, she's got me interested in trying miso. Tell her she's doing a great job because I don't know, because I know she doesn't get too many shout outs. And Josh and Chuck, you guys are pretty great too. That is from Kim Cooper.

Thanks Kim. That's funny, she went all the way around is basically say, I guess what I'm trying to say is I've always wanted to try miso. Yeah, pretty much. Well, go try some miso Kim. I mean, you can buy it at like any grocery store. Just go get a tub of it, get a big old spoon,

try your first spoonful and go from there. I do ever eat just miso paste? No. It's good. If you're craving something salty and savory and umami, let's just say, it's good, but you can't eat very much of it. I'm just teasing Kim like a spoonful is a lot of miso paste.

Okay, what do you just add that to? Is it an ingredient? Yeah, for like soups and stuff like that. Yeah, but you can just eat the paste. Okay. And live to tell about it, I'm proof. Well, if you want to get in touch with us to talk about Jerry, we're always fine with that.

You can go to stuff you should know dot com, find out all of our social links, and you can always send us an email. Attention everybody, we have a new email address. Wowie wow. Wow woo. It is stuffpodcast at iHeartpodcastnetwork.com. How about that?

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the co-classic show, Hey Dude. Bring you back to the days of slipdresses and all the stuff you need to know about the world. Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the co-classic show, Hey Dude.

Bring you back to the days of slipdresses and all the stuff you need to know about the world. Slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bye-bye.