Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Chia Pet

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

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So, there is a ton of stuff they don't want you to know. Yeah, like does the US government really have alien technology? Or what about the future of AI? What happens when computers actually learn to think? Could there be a serial killer in your town? From UFOs to psychic powers and government cover-ups, from unsolved crimes to the bleeding edge of science, history is riddled with unexplained events. Listen to stuff they don't want you to know on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your favorite shows. [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ [♪ [♪ Hey, yeah, it's Josh and Chuck and Jerry here too and this is short stuff. That's right. Another one of our pop culture icons episodes.

That wasn't quite big enough to do an entire episode on. In the old days we might have stretched it. We definitely would. No, that's why we kill up a short stuff because we're like, hey, there's a lot of stuff out there that just isn't quite big enough. So hence short stuff and hence our episode on the Chiapet. That's right. And thank you, Patty Rasmussen of howstuffworks.com plus our friends at Mental Floss too.

Of course, always love the Mental Floss folks. The Chiapet, everyone knows what a Chiapet is, right? If you don't, look it up because it is an adorable little planter tera cotta planter shaped like a little figurine like a maybe a mr. T or a Homer Simpson or maybe just a dog or a kitty cat and If you buy this thing and if you and we'll talk about how to do it later and if you buy this thing and if you, and we'll talk about how to do it later, and if you spread the, spread your seed, spread your seed on it, it will grow chia sprouts that end up looking like

hair on the thing on the figurine. Well put, I think that's actually verbatim the description on the box, Chuck. Yeah, so Mr. T, the Mohawk would be green chia. The cleverest one I've seen Chuck is a zombie hand, like stretching out of the box. Yeah, so Mr. T, the Mohawk would be green chia. The cleverest one I've seen, Chuck, is a zombie hand like stretching out of the ground and the chia seeds grow around the arm. Like it's coming out of grass, like in the cemetery.

I love it. I like the, I was looking at their more recent offerings. And as you will see, they have, they got in like a mention Homer Simpson or Mr. T. They got into licensing and we'll tell that story here in a sec. But I like the Grogu Star Wars Cheapet. It's really, really cute, like all things Grogu. Is that Baby Yoda?

Uh-huh. Okay, did not know that was the name of that thing. Yeah, the name came later. We found out in the name later. I saw a Guardians of the Galaxy 3 in the theater yesterday. That is really good. I loved that movie. I loved the three.

It's my favorite of the Marvel stuff, but that movie was so upsetting for the animal stuff. Yes. Almost tough to sit through. Oh, it was super tough to sit through, but, but there's a whole generation of PG-13 going moviegoers that are that age that now have a really bad view of animal testing and animal experimentation. True.

And I think it could be worth it because it was really tough, but that was a huge message in that movie. Like, that's not good stuff. Yeah, agreed. Yeah, very hard though. I told Emily, and she loves Guardian, so I was like, you're not gonna want to see the third one. No, definitely not.

Don't even bother. All right, well, back to the, that was movie crush with Josh Clark. The Chea planners are TeraCotta, like I said. They used to make them in Wohaka, Mexico. Yeah, who knew? Well, Joe Petot did. Because Joe in the 1970s was the founder

of Joseph Enterprises. He went to a trade show in Chicago. These little chia pets, I don't know what they were called at the time, were selling like hotcakes. And he said, I want to buy a bunch of those and brand them and sell them as chia pets. Yeah, apparently he went to department stores and drug stores at that trade show and said, Hey, you got anything that sells out reliably every year and a couple of them pointed to those.

Yeah, I don't know what they were called before either, but what would come to be known as chia pets. Uh-huh. And they figured out that these things sell themselves with very little advertising. And if you stop, I did not realize, I thought I saw them throughout the year, but if you stop and think about when you see Chiapet ads, it's almost strictly around the holidays. And that's for a reason. They sell over 80% of their inventory that they sell every year around the holidays. And they figured out that they just need to advertise a little bit around Christmas and

Hanukkah and Quanza and Tet and there you go. That's all that that's all they need to do. It's all they need to do So the first of these Chiapets were the first actual animals were the Chiapul and the Chiapram But the very first one period I think was a dude right like a Chiaguy. Yeah, our friends at the very first one period I think was a dude, right? Like a chia guy. Yeah, our friends at Menonflox kind of nailed it. They said he looks like a cross between Homer Simpson and Woody from Toy Story and he looks exactly like that.

Yeah. It's like a goofy looking guy with a big nose, but apparently that was the first chia pet. Yeah, a chia dude. They got into licensing in the early 80s with loony tunes, characters, Taz, Elmerfoot, and Tweety. Oh, wait, Chuck, before we move on, I love this. How stuff works? Article, put in parentheses, Taz, parentheses, Tasmanian devil. I know.

I thought that was adorable. That was pretty funny. And then, you know, licensing became a big deal. They, I think they license like three or four things a year, generally, and then they always have their stable of little animals. Yeah, they also are known for predicting presidential elections, actually, like they'll release the,

like, chia versions of the presidential candidates each year. And usually the one that sells the most is the candidate that goes on to win the presidency. Yeah, it's one of those. Yeah, I think there's a few little weird cultural predictors like that. Yeah, like, and they're an octopus that can predict the world cup.

Yeah, and I feel like there was something else for the Super Bowl. There's a hedgehog that can produce for they can predict the weather. Yeah, whether There's a hedgehog that can produce, um, pretty good. They can predict the weather. Yeah, whether it's going to turn to spring or not. I heard about him. Uh, the other thing they do to make money, uh, the chia folks is they will license it out. Uh, they'll like partner up with pro sports teams, like you might get a, a chia LA Dodger or something like that. Uh, and then I didn't know this.

You could, if you're a company, you can imagine it's not cheap, but you can get a chia pet logo of your company made on less. In that neat, I did not realize that. Yeah, I ran across instructions for growing chia on your chia head Bryce Harper. It just like, all right, this works. It probably applies to all of them, as we'll see. All right, should we take a break? Let's take a break.

All right, we'll come right back, talk a little bit more about these little pets right after this. It's the future. It's the future. Did you know that GoodRx has resources to support better mental health? For educational tools, to prescription savings, GoodRx is here to help along your mental health journey. That's right, and GoodRx is also the free, fast, and easy way to find the prescriptions you need at a lower price. With GoodRx, you can instantly find discounts, compare prices, and save up to 80% at the pharmacy. Yep, all you need to do is search for your prescription on the GoodRx website or app, and show your discount at the pharmacy counter. It's that easy.

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Does the US government really have alien technology? And what about the future of artificial intelligence, AI? What happens when computers learn to think? Could there be a serial killer in your town? From UFOs to psychic powers and government cover-ups, from unsolved crimes to the bleeding edge of science, history is riddled with unexplained events. We spent a decade applying critical thinking

to some of the most bizarre phenomenon civilization and beyond. Each week, we dive deep into unsolved mysteries, conspiracy theories and actual conspiracies. You've heard about these things, but what's the full story? Listen to stuff they don't want you to know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Okay, Chuck.

So we're talking about Cheapets. It turns out. And I think we just talk about how you grow them. I've never had a Cheapet of you. Nope. We should exchange Cheap pets when you're. My friend, you have one on your, on its way. The delivery window begins in 10 minutes.

Are he serious? It's a chia Richard Simmons. He has like, oh my god. I saw it and I was like, Chuck's getting this. Oh, so the exchange is half done. All right, well, I gotta step up Richard Simmons tying in episodes, I love it. Gonna be tough. All right. Well, I got to step up Richard Simmons tying in episodes. I love it. Gonna be tough All right, I'm gonna

Hey, man, take you time. I think you're time If you grow one of these and I guess I could wait either 10 minutes or several hours and read it off the box But I think what you want to do is you want to completely soak that planner for a few hours, right? Yes, and the reason why you want to do this with any tarot pot that you're growing stuff in is tarot pot will suck water right out of the dirt. In this case, right out of the water holding cavity

for itself, and it pulls it away from the plants that need it. Whereas if you soak it, it's like, okay, I'm satiated. But literally stuff with water, I don't need any more. And so any water you put into it is going to not get sucked into the tarot cotton. So this is an essential step for chia pets in particular. That's right. You also want to soak the seeds. It is chia, chia is a kind of sage. And I think you eventually make like a sort of like a paste.

And you spread that paste on there I've seen them talk about like rubber spatules and things like that But I would just use my fingies if I was doing and when I do my Richard Simmons I'm gonna do my thingies use my thingies. Okay, good good but Chuck do not lick your fingers afterwards These aren't chia seeds and people eat chia seeds. I put chia seeds in my smoothies, because they're full of omega-3. Although I was disappointed to find there's not a lot of studies that show conclusively that we get that omega-3 from the chia seeds. But anyway, these particular chia seeds

are not grown for human consumption. They're grown to grow on your chia pet. That's right. So use whatever spreader you want if you don't feel comfortable using your digits. And once that thing is covered up to your likeness, you want to put that chia pet in the sun, and you want to water it, and then just sit back and let the fun begin. Yeah, and I was like, okay, so if this is these chia plants grow to be like six feet tall and flower and everything.

Yeah. And I wanted to see, like if you just keep your chia going, like will it get to that point? I saw one site reference that your chia pet would crumble like eventually is under the weight of the plant. I think the bigger thing is the sprouts that grow just aren't viable to grow into actual plant. So apparently after about six weeks, maybe four weeks, the all turn brown, you pull off the old growth, dump out the water, and start over again.

Oh, you can do they, you can reuse the same one. I saw on their site that you can reuse them indefinitely. You just need chia seeds. Okay. And I guess it makes sense that they won't just eventually, you won't have like a chia pet that looks like, like Richard Simmons won't end up looking like Greg Ollman. Right. That'd be pretty cool though. That's a great crossover. It's a good crossover.

Because you would need like soil to keep everything stable. That's what I'm thinking. I think they just don't have the nutrients to grow beyond the sprout stage. Yeah. That's got to be it. So who knows? Maybe you could add nutrients and grow them like hydroponically and see what happens. All right.

Well, the nerdiest things I've said this month. Regardless, Gias have become very, very popular over the years that they are, like I said, sort of an iconic fun gift that you can get someone so much so that the Smithsonian National Museum of American History requested and I assume received some of this stuff from the Joseph company. Yeah, in particular the advertising tapes because that's one of the reasons Chea pets were so huge. Somebody's either at an advertising meeting or at a bar one night said chuchu chuchia and apparently Joe Pradat said that's perfect. I'm going to turn that into the jingle. And that was, I

mean, I would attribute most of the chia pet success to that jingle. It was so catchy that people were just walking around going chuchu ch-ya. Were they really? All of my friends were. Oh, but no, Ohio. I guess that's so high on them. That is so high on them. And that's kind of it. I mean, they're in the, like I said, the Smithsonian. And I think they're in a time capsule in New York City.

There's gonna be an earth in 3,000, the year 3,000. In the year 3,000. Very nice. What a great bit that was So you know, it's it's one of those things if you're gonna include it in the Smithsonian and at a time capsule Then it is done its job as far as a cultural staple Absolutely, so hats off to you Chiapets. We love you. That's right and I will I promise I will I will do an Instagram series following the growth of my Richard Simmons. Oh, great idea.

Fantastic. At what? Chuck the podcaster? Chuck the podcaster. Great handle. So again, heads off to you, Chiapetz. We love you. Wait, you have to say short stuff to us, I'll say it then.

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