Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Toy Testing Works

Episode Date: August 26, 2023

It's every kid's dream - a job playing with toys that pays in toys. It's a real thing and has been around for a long time. Then there's the other side of the testing process, companies who ensure that toys are safe. It takes both of these testing techniques to successfully bring a toy to market these days. Dive into the ball pit with us today and learn all about toy testing in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is ICT. Over the years, I've compiled thousands of inspiring and thought-provoking quotes. And now, I'm passing that knowledge onto you and my new daily podcasts. ICT's Daily Game. In less than five minutes, I'll break down why these words matter and reveal personal stories that show them in action in my life. Listen to ICT's Daily Game every weekday on the I.H.R.D. Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast and start your morning with me. From I.H.R.T. podcasts, these are the whistle blowers. I wasn't just going to sit silently by. Somebody needs to just give everybody the whole truth. You take your question in black self and get it on up out of my facility. If you speak out, you won't pay.

Take your question in black self and get it on up out of my facility. If you speak out, you won't pay. It should be prosecuted. When power corrupts, conscience is the last line of defense. I'm Miles Taylor. Listen to the whistleblowers every Thursday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, it's your friend Josh. And for this week, Selective Chosen the November

2017 episode on Toy Testing. It's a kid's dream job, definitely, supposing they can circumnavigate the confusing world of child labor laws, but it's a nightmare to that kid's parents as I stress multiple times in this episode. So I hope I really got that across. Enjoy it and good health. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry Rowland in there and this is Stuff You Should Know. For all the kiddies out there. For the cats? The kiddies, there was a D, D. Oh, gotcha. Two D's in an IE. Not kitties.

No, not kitties. Not the meow meow. Nice call back, man. Yeah. Oh, that was a good one. Bath salts. Probably shouldn't mention that on the one for the kitties. Hahaha.

Uh, Chuck. Yes? Have you ever tested a toy? Um, no. Did you ever want to? Well, yeah, I mean, I've done some product testing before because I have a friend, or had a friend that worked in market research and she would occasionally hit me up for a burger taste or a beer drink

or a tool test, but never toys. Wow. I'll bet the beer drink was fun. That's great. Drink a little beer and you get paid like a hundred bucks. But she's like, no, you can't swallow. You have to swish it around and your mouth and spit it out.

Actually most of the beer ones, the only one I did, I think it was the only one that was a taste. A lot of times it's just like, what do you think of this logo type of thing? Oh really? Yeah. So like the beer wasn't even in the room with you? No. Oh, what a tease.

Yeah, they just throw things up and I just go boring. Yeah. Where you like, you probably could have explained this better when you asked me to test the beer. Well, you get that little envelope of the hundred bucks of, so it cares. Oh, nice. Is that how much that pays? It's sometimes more. Wow. Sometimes fifth, I did a frozen yogurt one for 50 bucks one time. But it, it ranged between 50 and a couple of hundred. Very cool. Yeah Yeah cash money. Yeah, why not? You know, you can go buy a lot of beer with that totally. Well, I remember hearing about the idea of toy testing as a kid and just being like, How how do I do this? My parents were like, I don't know. We both work. We're busy. Go be a latchkey kid. Yeah, especially after the movie big.

especially after the movie Big. Oh yeah, there was like a lot of toy testing in that, right? Yeah, I mean, that was his job. I forgot about that. Totally forgot about that. I just remember the piano scene and then the scene at the end. Well, don't spoil it. Okay, I did and I said the scene at the end.

Hopefully he didn't spoil it for anybody that big ends eventually. Yeah, don't spoil it, but it has something to do with a dirty bomb. That's the index step. It's the big surprise eventually. Yeah, don't spoil it, but it has something to do with a dirty bomb. Right. That's the index step, this is the big surprise ending. So anyway, I remember wanting to be a toy tester and it never panned out for me. Now that I have grown up a little bit and I've read this article, especially doing a

little research, toy testing still sounds awesome if you're a kid. Oh, yeah. But if you're a parent, it does not sound all that great. What do you mean? Like if your kid does that? Yeah, it sounds like a lot of work, man. What? Like getting the toy and having your kid play with it?

Yeah, I mean, it's not like that's the end of it. Like there's a lot of extra stuff you have to do. You have to pay attention to your kid while they're playing with it. You have to, you've got to write reports and stuff. There's like, it's, there's work to it if you're the parent for sure. So in other words, you have to take them out of their, their small plane brick room and actually let them play. Yeah, take off their Hannibal Lecter face mask and their straight jacket. I never thought

about it that way. It's a good to work. And then put them back in after they're done with their toy. Right. No, this, again, if you're the kid, great job. If you're a parent, it seems tough. Plus, also, one of the things that's tough about it is that this is not something that is easily come by. I think although it's a lot easier today to get a job for your kid as a toy tester, than it was say, in 1990.

Yeah, I think back then you had to literally depend on someone getting in touch with you. Right. Or you had to, like, go show up at headquarters and be like, hey, what do you think you kid, huh? Right. You know, all right, well, let's go a little further, a little further back.

Chuck. Because there's a lot of different testing that goes on with toys. There's the kind I was just talking about, research, market research, right, like you and your beer logos. Yeah, like play with this toy kid, what do you think? Does it stink? There's also the kind that has to do with like actually making sure it's safe, which is another kind of toy testing.

And we're going to cover both. But the idea of testing toys to make sure that they didn't, which is another kind of toy testing. And we're gonna cover both. But the idea of testing toys to make sure that they didn't disembowel the kid that was playing with them with some weird sharp edge or a missile that was actually, you know, would stick in your gut and catch fire or something like that. That's actually a relatively new concept,

like surprisingly new, actually. Yeah. I mean, toys have been around for thousands of years. Like, they found toys that are potentially 4,000 years old. I saw a rattle that was from Turkey that maybe like 4,000 years old. Yeah. And by all accounts, this Italian find was a sort of like an early easy bake-up in Kit. Yeah, it was like a toy kitchen, basically. Kitchen set. Yeah, so like little kids have always wanted to play with stuff. It's just part of being a child, whether it took, took junior or, you know, all the way

up to modern times. Right. And in the 18th century, it became a thing to where the Enlightenment philosopher said, you know what, learning through play is a really valuable thing. So like legit toys started being developed for the first time. Yeah, I think this is about the time, maybe a little before, but this is probably the seeds of where childhood came from. And we need to do an episode just on childhood, I think, man. Like was allowed. Yeah like this is not it's not like a a natural it may be

natural but observing it is not a longstanding thing among humans. Well sure because before it was like well you're five years old time for you to get to work. Exactly like here you get a little more cold dust on your face you You look jobless. Yeah. So the idea of kids playing, especially to kind of learn and grow into adults, that's like finds its roots in the enlightenment. And so you've got that one branch or that one sapling coming up, and it starts to integrate and merge with another one that comes up later on in the 19th century industrialization.

So now you have the idea that kids should play with toys because prior to industrialization, families may have made them themselves. Like the kid may have been just playing with a kitchen utensil, forced to use this imagination. Yeah. And I just realized to keep referring to the kid is it. Yeah. His or her imagination, like a broom becomes a horse pretty easy. Yeah, or, you know, I mean, look at stick ball. Sure. Is there anything simpler than cutting a broom into a broom stick and playing baseball? Right.

Or a nice ladle can become an electric guitar. Sure. That's always my thing. I always played air guitar whenever I could. I would give entire God, man, when I'm like, now that I am older, how torturous must this have been? I would give entire concerts of like, Bon Jovi's slippery one wet. Oh boy. But like, it would be either an air guitar or a drum set made of like,

country crock lids for symbols, and then the tubs for the drum themselves, or like a quick roast box or something like that. But I have like a whole like Tommy Lee drum kit made up. All right, so I got some questions here. Okay. I wasn't done. I was on a whole... Oh, there's more? Yeah, I would give this whole concert and everybody would come into my room and sit there and listen to the first song and be like,

okay, one more, and I'd try to go through at least one whole side of the tape. Okay. I don't think I ever made it through a whole side, but my aim was to do the whole album. All right, well, that answered all my questions, actually. Okay. I want to know how long were these performances who you subjected them to? My family. And they were long.

They must have been excruciatingly long. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Right. So I'm not even sure how I got on that, what my point was. Well, because of your imagination of turning household items into fantastical toys. That's right.

So thanks to industrialization and mass production, toys could be made and sold and distributed. And all of a sudden, now you have something like the beginning of a consumer culture, especially in America. Yeah. And we're talking 1950s. It became a real thing, except back then,

the toys were highly likely to injure or kill your child. Right. Not highly likely, but a lot of them were pretty dangerous. What's the other? I found this one stat from 1968, and like, I've seen it like question, no one was keeping track. Apparently no one really started keeping track To toy injuries and deaths until like the 21st century until the great well-end art incident of 4th of July

Isn't that jaw dropping man? One year century is when they started releasing reports with injury and death statistics from toys. Yeah So I saw this one it was a a guesstimate, but I saw 700,000 injuries from toys in 1968. And that's not including jungle gyms and swing sets, bikes, trampolines probably, scooters, nothing like that. These are just straight up toys. By 2012, I saw that there were 11 children who died in the US. Five of them were from tricycles, two of them were from scooters, two were from balloon, so really technically only two children died from what you would consider like just a straight

up toy, like a dollar stuff toy or something like a crane or a play-doh. I think both of them were a fixation. So the idea that there was this huge change from very, very, very dangerous toys into actually a pretty safe industry that has to do largely with toy testers. Yeah, and it was 1969 that they finally passed what's known as Well the first federal safety standards for toys into law and then the National Commission on Product Safety That same year said all right. We've got eight recommendations for banning toys and I look these up in picture because they're kind of fun to look at Sure the Empire lady Empire little lady stove which is basically an easy bake oven mixed with a pottery kiln.

600 degrees Fahrenheit, the sink would get. It's 316 degrees Celsius. Your home oven doesn't get up to 600 degrees, probably. It genuinely does not. I think mine goes to 550. Maybe in cleaning self-cleaning mode, it gets up that high, but this is not something a little toddler needs to play with.

Right, in self-cleaning mode, it locks itself shut so you can't open the door even. Right. What else? The bird of paradise slingshot, which looked innocuous enough, but the deal with that one was I had these sharp missiles that could make you bleed.

Yeah, I think slingshot, it just begins and ends at that as far as the safety is concerned. I looked up slingshot today because I had, remember the wrist rockets? Yeah, I do. Those things were so dangerous. Did you have one? No, I was never allowed to have one. So I had a wrist rocket. And I looked up today, after this article,

I was like, I wonder what's going on in the world of slingshots. And dude, you should see some of the slingshots on the market today. Are they even more dangerous than the wrist rocket? Oh, yeah. Wow. And like, there are YouTube videos with people with these things that

They look like little musket balls that you can fire sure and I mean this guy was shooting these balls with a slingshot through like half inch plywood It's like a gun that is a dangerous toy Wow, yeah, it's it's really just look up extreme sling shots at some point and and go get one Yeah, if you're 18 or older and don't have like some, you know Grudging against anybody this last one the Zulu blow gun was was that Period in America

where you could have some kids toy that was highly racist and very dangerous. All in one convenient box. Yeah, I can't imagine what the packaging looked like on that one. It looks like what you think it looks like. So kids were choking on the darts. I'm sure like putting the dart in and then taking a deep breath. Exactly.

They were like, I should have thought this through first. Pretty much. Our grit, nothing. And that was that, right? So that was 1969? Yep. That was the first time they started taking toy safety seriously.

And prior to that, the last time they had looked out for little kids was I think in the 50s, because in the 40s there was a lot of like flashfire deaths among children wearing like pajamas, because pajamas were made of ray on this new material at the time, and I guess no one had ever tested it around a flame, and it turns out that it could burn up real quick, and not only could it burn the kid badly, possibly to death, it could also kill them from smoking inhalation from their pajamas, right?

Yeah. And even if they survived, they were, again, very badly burned. So Congress passed the flammable, not flammable, flammable fabric act, I think is what it's called, not flammable, flammable fabric act, I think is what it's called. Not flammable. Can I go off here for a second? Sure. Can we all come together and just agree to drop the word in flammable altogether?

Oh, that again. There's no reason for it. It's just a dangerous word. Yeah, it's weird. I'm still beating the drama on that one. Wouldn't that a Simpson thing, too? Yeah, it's Dr.'m still i'm still beaten the drama that one what did a simpson think too uh... yes doctor nicky's like right flammable means flammable uh... okay so they the so congress passed this act to basically say

you all kids where um... needs to be flame retardant now problem is is the chemicals they use to make the closed flame retardant was... Were flammable? They were not. They were the opposite of flammable in their credit. But they supposedly were linked to kids in increase in hyperactivity and a decrease in IQ. Oh wow. And still today, it's very, very tough to get kids pajamas that aren't flame retardant with those same chemicals in them.

But apparently in the mid-90s, Congress allowed a loophole to keep going, where if the pajamas were of a snug fit, they could be not flame resistant, right? They didn't have to have the flame retardant chemicals because To to burn fire needs oxygen and if there's no oxygen really between the kids skin and the pajamas because they're snugly snug fitting pajamas Yeah, then The fire is probably not gonna happen so they don't have to have flame retardant chemicals. That's the one loophole Oh, isn't that fascinating? Well, yeah, And now we can get back to the long-standing tradition of leaving a lit candle in your baby's crib for the first month. Well, there was one other thing I saw chucked too. There is a long-standing rumor that it

was actually the tobacco industry that got the Flammable Fabrics Act pushed through because they were trying to deflect the blame for death by fire, accidental fire, from cigarettes to the actual fabric manufacturers. Even though a lot of people died in their beds from their mattress going up because they fell asleep with a cigarette in their mouth. Smoking a bed. It seems like such a such a thing that nobody would do anymore, but I know people still do it. Yes. But it's still shocking when you see it in a movie or TV show, which you used to see that all the time in movies.

But now when you see it, you think, do people really smoke in bed? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know either. I don't smoke. All right, well let's take a break. And we will come back and talk a little bit more about different kinds of toy testing right after this.

All right, so there are mechanisms in place and regulatory bodies in place now that are in charge of making sure toys are safe. And these are constantly, it's not like they wrote the book on it and said, all right, we're good. As toys Expand and are developed the Safety standards need to be changing all the time and they do which is great. So One thing I saw ironically enough is that somebody actually did write the book on this. Well, yeah, but it's not a finalized version, right? Oh, oh, I see what you mean like Like they, they updated as new science comes in. Yeah. Yeah. I agreed. Agreed. But even that, you know, just the idea of creating

standards again is pretty new because I think until like the 90s, the, they didn't really update the toy safety requirements for a while. It started to finally pick up, I think, in the 90s. the toy safety requirements for a while. It started to finally pick up I think in the 90s and then in the 2000s there is a group an organization called ASTM could not for the life of me find what that stands for, but they created the standard consumer safety specification for toy safety, which apparently is the universal guidelines for toy safety. American standards for toy manufacturers? Oh, my.

Maybe? That's not bad, Chuck. All right, that was my first step at it. That's pretty good. You also have companies like in our article here at Health Stuff Works, it's called InterTech, not InterTech. What's InterTech? I think that was Office space, wouldn't it?

Oh, is it? I think so was office space, wasn't it? Oh, was it? I think so. InterTech, which basically they're professional toy testers. They have laboratories where they have technicians that say, here, let me see if I can bite the eyes off of this doll into my mouth. Let me see if it's so small that I can swallow that eye. Let me rip it apart. Let me light it on fire In England they have I think oh actually not even just England and all of Britain they

They have a rule that a toy burn rate can be no more than one inch per second With the idea that if a toy does catch on fire at least your kid has enough time to throw it away Throw it toward the gas can and run. Right. And then the EU has their own set of standards too. So with that burn thing I should say at least. Yeah.

If a toy burns faster than 30 millimeters a second, which is a little over an inch, then it can't be sold in the EU, right? And then if it burns between 10 millimeters a second and 30 millimeters a second, it still has to have a warning that says, warning, keep away from fire. Yeah, can get a burning. Right, right.

And yeah, the whole idea is like if that kid sees a thing, I'm fire, they're gonna throw it and run. And the household can't have fire, but the kid's not gonna burn up, right're going to throw it and run and the household can't even fire, but the kid's not going to burn up, right? Unless the kid goes and tells it grown up. I think that should be in the warning too. Throw, doll, run, tell grown up. Right.

Don't go make like a ham sandwich. I saw this really great video from InterTech and it's called Teddy Bear Testing. Oh yeah. Did you see it? I did. It is great. They clearly are aware of what they're doing is bizarre and morbid. They're just standing there watching it as an observer. But the point to the whole thing is actually quite noble and heroic. But one of the things that they did was there's this like three-pronged,

it was almost like you know those things that a jeweler uses to pick up diamonds with, tweezers? Kind of, but they have one that's like a three-pronged thing where you push down on the end and the prongs extend and open a little bit and you pick something up and then release the end and it draws it up and tightens it and holds it snug. Tricers. Tricers, that's going to be in the OED one day, I think. But with this, there was a little bigger and much sturdier and they hooked the dolls, the teddy bears eye up to this thing and then pulled the teddy bear back to see how many

pounds of pressure it could withstand before it came off. That's the other thing too. They're not just pulling this and having fun. They're making measurements and they're using standardized force that they're applying to this. The seams, the sewing, has to be able to withstand one kilogram of weight for 10 seconds without opening up. Just things like that, right? And it's thanks to these groups like the EU or the ASTM and who have gone through and said, this is like if your toy makes a sound,

it should be no louder than this. Or if you are manufacturing a toy gun, it should be marked like this. So it's obviously a toy and not a real gun. Like just comprehensive standards that everyone could adhere to to keep little kiddies to D's safe. Yes. I just think it's great that there's people out there doing that because it's a kind of a new thing. Well, sure. And they ostensibly have done the research on like they really cover all their bases.

Like what could we imagine a child doing with this thing you know I suspect that even as much time as they spend doing that oh sure kids still yeah come up with some lack stuff to do with toys yeah I mean I told the story during the evil con evil thing we used to make a yeah co-hanger hoops and dip them in gasoline to jump people through I i mean i told the story at the end of the evil can evil thing we used to make uh... co-hanger hoops indipement gasoline to jump people through i wish i would have known you back then so i could stand and watch that

well you would have been put on your we would have been running the pyrotechnic for your bongi obi concert right oh wow good thinking that i would have been all over that you know not too late uh That's true. All right, so that's toy making sure toys are safe. Once a toy is safe, then there's this whole second thing that we were kind of talking about from the movie Big, like the great scene when Tom Hanks is first in the grown up Josh Baskin is in the office. Wait a minute. What? Did you look up his name or do you just walk around knowing it?

No, no. I know the movie big inside and out. Wow. Is that one of your favorites? Oh, sure. I, you've been running around asking people a movie crush with their favorite movies. What's yours?

Is big it? No, no, no. But it's up there. I love the movie big. I've seen it that doesn't times or more got you easily josh baskins yes a little josh baskins all grown up in the office and um what's his name was it john heard that he recently passed away he's the

the evil corporate executive that has his idea and i remember his famous line stop having fun yeah and he he makes his big presentation. I think it was like a building that turns into a robot. And Tom Hanks very sweetly just raises hands and said, I don't get it. He's like, what do you mean you think? I don't get it.

And that's basically what they want to ask kids. Like, do you want to play with this? Is it fun? Like adults design these things. And they might, I would assume that if you're a toy designer, you have a mind of a child to a certain degree, but you're still not a kid. It's gotta pass that test.

Right, exactly. That's the whole point of having toy testers. It's kids, like they're not adult toy testers. Maybe their parents are there or something like that, but the whole point of actual market development toy testing is by just giving kids some toys and seeing what they do with it. That's right. And there's a lot of places that do this, right?

Like, apparently, Mattel has something called the Mattel Imagination Center in El Segundo. And if you live around El Segundo or willing to travel to El Segundo and you have a child at zero to thirteen, there's a pretty high likelihood that you will be able to get into the door and your kid will be able to play with some toys and be watched by scientists behind two way mirrors. But that's pretty, I mean, that's a little, I think that's pretty close to reality. I think the places where you go to actually test on-site with toys are a little more fun than like a room

with a two-way mirror, but it's still the same principle generally. You're being observed while you're playing with toys as a kid. Yeah and there's to get these gigs the dream job for a kid or I guess you think the job from hell for a parent. Pay attention like sometimes they might get in touch with you, sometimes you might can follow the social media page of like the Mattel Imagination Center. They, I mean if you just Google toy testing jobs, there are pages and pages on places where you can submit your name and uh... you know from there it's probably a bit of a lottery like experience

uh... depending on what exactly they're looking for like you might fit your kid might fit a demographic but there's still a lot of kids in that demo that uh... they have to sit through so it's not like you can say you know don't promise your kid You can get them a job as a toy tester right? Oh, yeah, you may find it If I don't even tell them that that's a job right until you've secured it

Just don't even say the word toy around your kid. Yeah, that exactly So there's that's there's the old school way is like going directly to the company like to go to Mattel or Fisher Price maintain something called its play lab. And you can email these companies directly and basically send your kids resume, maybe a video of your kid playing with a toy, what they would be looking for.

Like you said, they might be looking for a certain demographic, but they more often than not, if they're just looking for like a go-to toy tester to where your kid actually has the job of being a toy tester, where some company or companies are mailing your kid toys to test, you basically need to audition for that. You would want to include a video and that your kid in the video would want to be using coherent words that express how he here she's feeling about that toy at that moment. Yeah.

And you make it picked up. That's the old school way of doing it. Although if you want to do super old school, like use a video camera and send in like a VHS tape of your kid playing with the toy. That's the old school way of doing it. Now you can go on to social media like you were saying Chuck and There's a lot. Well, it's a lot easier for companies to reach out in a targeted way to Basically tap kids to become toy testers. Yeah, if you are a mom mommy blogs are huge

They are huge on the internet and And they get sent everything from, you know, baby products that they can use to mommy products to toys. So tell your mom, start a blog, become a top blogger, and she'll thank you because then she'll be rich. Yeah. Say mom, start a viral blog today. Who is it? Ellen DeGeneres has a show feature where she has these kids that come out and test toys on TV. You're not going to get that job because these two kids already have it. Well, that one of the kids, I'm not sure what Tray Hart's background was, but Noah Ritter, he was the apparently kid on Ellen. Remember him? Nope. He came off ride and was asked by a local news person like what he thought of the ride.

And he's like, well apparently my thought it was great. And he scared half to death. You've never seen the video of that kid? Oh, it's beyond adorable. Yeah. He's one of the two toy testers now. So that's how he got that gig.

Yes. Good for him. What else? You can start a YouTube channel. There are actual kids out there with their own YouTube channels where they test toys. And beyond that, I want to recommend, have you ever seen our buddy Joe Randazzo's Lego Dude Reviews? Yeah, I have.

I don't know if you have to be a friend of Joe or not, but go out there and look at Lego Dude reviews, Lego City logging truck, and our friend Joe formerly of the onion and formerly of at midnight fame, our comedian, writer, friend, it's just the funniest thing I've ever seen. And it doesn't translate to everyone because there are comments like is this guy for real? Right. Yeah, because of me doing it straight. But it's like all those reviews like they start off with the box that it comes in and said Joe starts off with the box and how well taped up it is.

It's just really funny. Yeah, he's a nice, nice spoof. Lego dude reviews. Lego dude reviews. And there are all kinds of those but specifically Lago City logging truck. And you'll just see that sweet face of Joe's and you'll know him. But there is a boy called, well, I don't know what his full name in, was Evan Tube HD.

Uh-huh. He's a YouTube channel. Yeah, he and his sister do reviews. Yeah, and he is, he has four and a half million subscribers. Is that as of today? Yeah, yeah, 4.6. I noticed they did a pizza challenge where they just put weird stuff on pizza.

And it has like 65 million views. Unbelievable. It is unbelievable. It's crazy, Chuck. If you ask somebody back in 1982, conceive of what TV's in in the future and they said It's people just opening up toys on on

TV and that's it Yeah, you'd be like that's a pretty good pretty good description. I would buy that well the future is now Well, there's the other one the Disney collector BR right this. Right, this is who I'm talking about. Nine and a half million subscribers. And like you said, it is literally nothing, but the hands of some woman, some anonymous robot, AI creature. Right. No, it's a real person's hands, opening up toys and playing with them and talking a little bit in a very

creepy voice if you ask me. I think it's great. You think the voice is great? Dude, yeah. Peppa pig. It creep me out. Oh, I liked it. Her, okay.

So her name probably is Vera Creditio. You mean Vera Moneybags? Yeah. A woman, yeah, get this. She's even more wealthy than you realize. She's a woman in Winter Park, Florida. If that's her, then that's, that's supposedly her. And her husband, Messias, Cretidio, he has something called Blue Toys Club Surprise, which is the boys version basically of Disney Collector VR. And together, they seriously are probably clearing $20 plus million a year, making a video

every day and uploading it. And she will say, Peppa Pig or something like that and say what it is, the product that she's holding, or opening, or playing with, or whatever. And that's it, man, it's like you were saying, like, all you see are her hands, she's opening the packaging, she's actually really good at opening packaging. She never gets frustrated. I didn't see her, like, I didn't see them have to cut.

And like, there was no jump cut or anything like that. She's really good at opening packaging. And then she kind of says what it is out loud. And then just sets it down to the side. And I was watching it like this is ridiculous. This is the first 10 seconds. This is ridiculous. People actually watch this. I can't believe this.

And then the next thing I knew, the next four minutes were me sitting there with my mouth kind of open a little bit. Yeah. Just zoned out watching this. I think that's the whole point. It's um, kids love it. Toddlers love watching that stuff. I can see why. Yeah. Her husband though, or I should say, blue toys club surprise. He didn't talk at all. And that I find a little creepy. He just breathes heavily. He just plays with

them. He plays with them more than she does. She just opens them. He opens them and plays with them, but he doesn't talk. But again, you just see that he has 20 million dollars a year. What a world. It is quite a world. It's the future. All right. Should we take another break? Yes. All right, let's do that and we're going to come back and finish up with a little fun with some of the most dangerous toys of all time right after this. Okay, we're back, man. Are you ready? I'm ready.

So this list could go on for years. Yeah, there are lots of lists like this out there. So in this, and it's not meant to be comprehensive. This is just a selection of some of our favorites, du jour, huh? Sure. So, um, I think we're going to have to go back to the list. I'm going to go back to the list. I'm going to go back to the list. I'm going to go back to the list. I'm going to go back to the list. Yeah, there are lots of lists like this out there. So in this, and it's not meant to be comprehensive, this is just a selection of some of our favorites,

do you or huh? Sure. So one that I saw was the snack time kid cabbage patch doll. Yes. Which you could feed real stuff to it. In the ad, they feed like the cabbage patch kid a French fry or two. Or maybe I think it came with food.

That's what it was, it came with food. And you could feed it, and it would just keep chewing and swallow and then bam, the plastic french fry was gone. And your cabbage-patch kid, just ate a french fry, can you believe it? And that was the whole thing, right? Yeah.

But they would chew, no matter what, was placing their mouth. Yeah, like fingers. Or hair, right? And they wouldn't stop either. Yeah. So your little kid could end up with like a crushed finger, lose a big tough to hair.

And the cabbage patch kid would just be all fits in elbow, saying more and more and more. Give me more. Yeah, that's something for your nightmares. Is a cabbage patch kid just chewing their way toward you? I hate exactly, connected by your hair to you. So that was recalled by Mattel in 1997. Yep. So they did the right thing there.

Yeah, they did. Probably the most famous one of all time is Laundards. Yeah, Laundards, I played it when I was a kid. If you haven't seen Lawn Darts, just you're of a newer generation, just Google it. And they were, you would have two big kind of Hula hoop rings, kind of like a horseshoe game. And you would launch these large plastic sharpish darts. Plastic on one end.

Yeah, the fins were plastic. Yeah. The stick part or the, what would you call that? The dead end? The piercer. Sure, yeah. Was metal and it was sharpish. It wasn't like a, you know, like a razor or anything.

But it was sharp enough to worry if you launch this thing from across the yard and you look up and go, I can't see it, it's in the sun. That was sudden, it's in your eyeball and you're blind. Yeah, that happened to some people like people were getting injured by these things. Apparently there were 7,000 reported injuries from lawn darts. What'd you call them, jarts? No, whatever said that.

I thought you'd call them Jarts earlier. No. Okay. That is a thing, no, I've heard of Jarts, what are those? I thought that was the same thing. It may be. It may be. So maybe that was the brand name?

Maybe, I'm not sure. But they were banned actually. They didn't even have a chance to be recalled. They were banned in 1988. So it is illegal to manufacture, sell, possess, and certainly play with law and darts in the US by punishment of death by law and darts. Yes, I just looked it up quickly. By the way, Jarts was the brand name for at least one of the numps, or there was more than one kind. They're definitely was because the one

I saw was Franklin Yard Darts. Franklin, they made the shuttle cocks that my family used to play badminton with. Did you know I was like a world class badminton player? I'm learning so much today. Now they think about it. World class is probably misleading. Neighborhood class? Neighborhood class for sure. Yeah. I could destroy the neighborhood at least. Yeah, I will still play a game of badminton. My brother set one up a couple of years ago. Of course. How'd you do?

I was okay. Good enough. Yeah. So have you ever watched like Olympic badminton? Oh, it's awesome. It is. It's so cool. It's amazing.

It is amazing. I can't even follow it. They might as they could be out there faking. Like there is no shadow cock and I would never even follow it. They might as they could be out there faking like there is no shadow cock and I would never know. Yeah. The only way it could get better is if Disney collector BR commented on it, but didn't even talk about what was going on. She just said, Pepepe, extra squishy. All right. So this next one, actually these next two are legit scary. The Atomic Energy Laboratory in 1951, AC Gilbert invented the erector set and he released

this energy lab, it was sort of like a little chemistry lab set thing, but it actually had uranium. It had real radioactive materials. So you could see like, you could create mistrails and things. Yeah, it was like a chemistry set for kids, but with radioactivity, that was the point of it. This is at a time when the government was like, no, no, it's all radioactivity's fine.

It's good for you. It gives you a healthy glow. Yeah, and the next one, the CSI fingerprint examination kit, this was on IO9's list. It was the number two most dangerous toy of all time. Yes, I think also, thanks for saying that the last three were from the Band Toy Museum online. Yeah, and like we said, all these, and I looked at a bunch of these lists and it's mostly the same stuff, which is good to know that it's not, you know, like there's really a hundred

things and we're just picking our favorites. Right, exactly. which is good to know that it's not, you know, like there's really a hundred things and we're just picking our favorites. Right, exactly. So the CSI fingerprint examination kit, you could play CSI, you could dust for fingerprints with trimelight, which is one of the deadliest kinds of asbestos, the powder that you use to dust had about 7% trimelight and this was really scary and it's amazing that

it got through because this was not the 1950s. Yeah, no, it was just like the early 2000s I believe because it was a CSI brand fingerprinting kit. And I guess, so I saw that that that what is tremolite? Yeah. It's an actual like, I think that used actual fingerprint dust. And that's like part of something that fingerprint technicians have to work with is asbestos, but they packaged it up and sold it for kids. And the company went bankrupt pretty quickly. Yeah, I would imagine so. What about Buckyballs? It's kind of a legendary one. Do you remember those? Yeah, I would imagine so. What about Bucky balls? It's kind of a legendary one.

Do you remember those? Yeah, I didn't know that these had a bad ending because I remember my nephew and niece got Bucky balls for Christmas, whenever, I mean, not too long ago. And they were awesome and cool. And I played with them like crazy at their house. Yeah, they're fun. They were great.

They're like ball bearings that are super strong magnet, right? Yeah, it's really neat. So far so good, you can build stuff out of them. You can hold stuff to a refrigerator with them. Whatever you want to do, it's just a great round magnet. But the problem is that if you swallowed more than one, you could be in big trouble because these things were very strong magnets.

If you had one in your intestine and another one in a different part of your intestine, they would come together and your intestine would be pinched off right there. Yeah. This actually happened to the extent where about a thousand or so kids required surgery to get these out. They were a big hit. It was just one of those Christmas toys that really captured... Must have?

Yeah, must have Christmas toy. I guess the inventor did not want to acknowledge this. He basically said, I'm not recalling these. These are a hot item. The federal government sued him he dissolved his company instead of funding a recall and so they went after him

personally to try and get fifty seven million bucks out of them yes supposedly settled for about one percent of that one percent i know fifty seven million down to what five hundred seventy thousand right yeah that's that was my calculation to but i was like that's so small. I'm not very confident about saying it out loud.

Thank you for swooping in. Well, I think that's right. I didn't calculate it, and I'm terrible at math. We'll find out. I am too, buddy. And look how far we've gotten in life. Yeah, it's 570,000. Okay, yeah.

So thank you for using the calculator. Sure. And then lastly, Chuck, we've mentioned it yeah. So thank you for using the calculator. Sure. And then lastly, Chuck, we've mentioned it before. We mentioned the prototype for it that was banned. The EasyBake oven itself, the famous one that was in the national toy Hall of Fame in 2006, was itself banned. Yeah, this one did not. So was that the deal with the other one that was a prototype?

No, no, I mean, there's like a predecessor to it. I guess that is what I mean. Yeah, because the easy bake-up and never got up to 600 degrees. No, but it got up to 200 degrees Celsius. 400 degrees Fahrenheit. That's, that's, you don't bake anything that like that much. Like that high, that is hot. Yeah, like you could cook a pizza and that thing. Yes. Not well, but you could. Yes. If you had time. Sure. But they had some problems with them over the years.

I mean, this is a, like you said, a Hall of Fame toy that's been around forever and beloved by boys and girls for generations. And 250 incidents reported uh... sixteen cases of second or third degree burns but it was yeah and it was specifically a design flaw that that got little kids fingers trapped in the oven when it was hot yeah uh... and one one little girl apparently had to uh... undergo a partial

finger amputation says I-O-9. Very sad. It is sad. But we would know about this stuff if it weren't for consumer protection. I guess that's the moral of the story. That's becoming the moral of the story lately. Our restaurant inspector's episode. Oh yeah. Now toy testing. Yeah. There you go. Good point. If you want to know more about toy testing, you can type those two words into the search bar at houseofworks.com and it'll bring up an article. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail.

I'm going to call this something we missed in the FOIA episode. Hey guys, long time, Listener, First Time Writer. Just listen to the Freedom of Information Act episode, I know that he's a little behind, and I wanted to bring something to your attention. Many states have laws modeled after the FOIA, and there's a disturbing trend the last few years. There are many special interest groups and activists out there that have begun using FOIA requests to stall legitimate research. This sounds familiar. Yeah, exactly. With facilities having hundreds of terabytes of data to potentially sift through, complying with a request, or say every

inter-departmental email from 2000 to 2017, they can completely shut down an operation with only a handful of researchers. Another tactic is to cherry pick from tons upon tons of data to attempt to piece together an argument to discredit unfavorable study results. The group is making the request notice, so it's a win-win for them. They get tons of private emails to look through to spend into something nefarious, and even if and when they find nothing, they still throw a wrench into legitimate research and endeavors. How about that?

Man. He said he was a little disappointed we didn't mention it but first of all, Brandon, I didn't know about this. Yeah, same here, Brandon Leon. That's why. But he said you guys, I realize you focus more on the federal version so that's not much of an issue there. But you let us off the hook. Yeah, he says you guys are awesome, keep up the great work.

Sincerely, guy you should know, Brandon Binsack. Thanks a lot, Brandon. That was pretty smart. Thanks for letting us know so we could internally let everybody else know. Terrible stuff. Yep. I got to look into that now.

If you want to alert us to something that we walked right past, please do. We always want to know that kind of thing. You can send us an email to stuffpodPodcast at iHeartRadio.com Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart radio visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is ICT. Over the years, I've compiled thousands of inspiring and thought-provoking quotes. And now, I'm passing that knowledge onto you and my new daily podcast. ICT's Daily Game.

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