Stuff You Should Know - Should Advertising to Kids Be Banned?

Episode Date: November 24, 2016

As kids’ buying power in America has exploded in recent decades, so too has the amount companies spend advertising to them. But because of a quirk of brain development, kids aren’t equipped to understand ads are manipulating them. Should they be banned? 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.

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from house.works.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there. It's nice and cool in here in the studio, Studio 1A. It's election day. It is, yeah.

Don't tell us what happens if you're listening to this after Tuesday. Right, spoiler-free zone. Right. Hey, feeling nervous, tense, by the puke? Nope, none of the above. Well, good, man. You look like you're gelling like a felon.

Chuck, that means. Don't you remember those, it doesn't matter. Do you remember being a child? Sure. Do you remember about two weeks ago when we released our action figure episode? I do. Well, we talked a lot about being a child and about toys

and we even touched on advertising and deregulation, which we'll get into again a little bit here, but if you were a child and you watched television basically at any point from the 1940s on, you were probably advertised to in some form or fashion. Sure. But early on, it was kind of clunky, right? Like the first day, I think the first day I'd ever on TV

was a bowl of a watch ad and it just showed a bowl of a watch ticking off 60 seconds. Hey, what more do you need? Apparently nothing, right? Yeah. And then they thought, well, hey, people love to tune in to watch the hosts. So we'll have the hosts just pitch, you know,

colt brain firearms or whatever, you know? I thought you can say malt liquor. No, that came later. First was the firearms. Gotcha. They go well together actually. Right. One makes the other go off.

So they would have like hosts read this stuff. So when kids programming came into the fold, that followed that kind of natural progression where like an ad was just this, the host suddenly saying like, hey kids, by the way, you will love these firecrackers that have my picture on it, right? Who was that?

Kind of hokey. There was actually, I found this one really great article on advertising to children and it talks about this 1950s show called Ms. Francis's Ding Dong School. Yeah. And Ms. Francis, she would like read to the kids, talk to them like they were kids, but just basically it was a cute little kids show

from what I can gather. Sure. Then every once in a while she would say, kids, it's time for a very special message. Go get your parents and bring them in to hear this special message and the kids would run and get their parents and bring them in to see the TV and Ms. Francis would fool everybody

by pitching an ad basically. So these are like the early ads, right? Sure. It wasn't until I think 1952 that the actual first ad for a kid's product, a toy, by the name of Mr. Potato Head first hit the airwaves. That's right. You know, 1952, wasn't that long ago,

but things have really, really changed since then. And one of the big reasons why it's changed is because companies and corporations and toy makers and fast food chains and candy, candy years. Candy, yeah. Sure. Is that a word? Sure.

It is now. We're descriptivists. Tathy makers. They all know that kids, there's a lot of money, not only in what kids want to buy for themselves, but the influence kids have on their family and what they do. It's blockbuster. And not only that, but like, you know,

we're gonna talk about this a little bit later, but indoctrinating these kids at a very young age as brand loyalists. Yeah. Because- Like get them while they're young. Yeah, and if you do that, you're kind of like planting seeds that will hopefully grow

into something where you're like, well, Colgate toothpaste love me. I remember that from being a kid. So when I- I don't want your mouth. Right, exactly. I remember the cartoons. I want to be loved by Mother Colgate.

Yeah. So that's what you buy as an adult. What was the, we put holes in teeth. Remember that? Vaguely, I don't, who was that? It might have been a little before your time. It was, I don't remember the toothpaste. It may have been Colgate.

It didn't work. Or no, I think it was the Crest team. But it was just a full on superhero team of cavity fighters. I remember them. Wedged into cartoon programming. Yes, I remember that. And, you know, as a, well, we'll talk about it, but I couldn't tell the difference between that

and the cartoon I was watching. I remember being at school and being taught how to brush my teeth with those same guys. Yeah. The Crest cavity fighters or something like that. Yeah. And of course we're talking about fighting cavities. And as you'll see in some of this material,

like sometimes these brands try and push things for good, but they're still pushing their brand. Yeah. That's the thing, man. It's so easy to just be like, oh wow, Colgate really does love my children. Or Crest really does care about my kids teeth. No, they don't.

They do not. They don't love you or your family. They don't actually care about your kids teeth. They care about creating this kind of relationship between the brand and your family. They care that your kids have teeth. Yeah. There you go.

Because they could sell toothpaste. It's true. So when we talk about influence, you found a study from about eight years ago. Yeah. This is the most recent stuff I could find. Some of it seems a little oldish, but this is as new as I could find, man.

I'm sorry, Chuck. Oh, that's right. So the influence basically is what we're talking about of kids over their family. These little power-wielding monsters, three-foot-tall power-wielding monsters. Yeah, man, you're in for it, you know. That apparently 97% of the time,

they will influence the breakfast choice. I see that. 95% the lunch choice. Sure. Going out to eat, 98% of the time, you're gonna go where your kid wants to go. Yeah, and 34% of kids have a say every time. Okay.

All right, I think the 98% was just casual family meal. What's the difference between that and the choice of restaurant? So like I wanna eat hamburgers, or specifically I wanna eat, you know, in and out burger? I think, no, I think the 34% of kids, every time the family goes out to eat, the kid has a say in 34% of families.

Okay. Whereas overall, 98% of restaurant choices have a kid saying it. Okay. That doesn't mean every kid gets a say every time. It's a bit confusing. Maybe even unnecessary one could argue. I think we could just agree

that kids have an undue amount of power. Sure. What else? Software, 76% of the time, they're gonna influence what kind of software you're buying in the family. And 60% of the time, what kind of computer? Sure.

Family outings, 94%, family trips and excursions. That's a depressing stat. I didn't have any choice of where we went as a child. Yeah. No, I was told where we were going on vacation. I was never asked. I don't remember being asked either. I mean, like they, my parents mostly planned family trips

that like we would enjoy. Sure. But I remember them being like, do you wanna go here, here? No, that never happened. It was like, this is where we're going. Yeah, and I was, I mean, it was always camping for us and a lot of times in Florida or mostly in Florida.

Well, yeah, you grew up in Georgia, Florida. Why would you not? Did a lot of beach camping. Sure. Yeah, we certainly never got any say like, I wanna go to Disney World. Right. You've been told to shut up.

They'd be like, that's great. Why don't you wish in one hand? Yeah, exactly. So you take that influence that kids have over their parents' purchases and you combine it with their actual like allowance or lawn mowing money or whatever, the money that they actually spend from their own pockets

and what you have is called kids buying power. And it is staggering, right? Back in 2000, kids buying power equaled about $500 billion a year. Chump change. In the United States. Yeah, it's just got more and more, higher and higher. 2005, it had gone up to $700 billion, right?

Chump change. You wanna hit them with the 2012 stat? And this is almost five years ago now. $1.2 trillion. That's how much money kids directly or indirectly spend in the United States. It's amazing. It is.

So there's one more factor too that makes advertisers really want kids. They will eventually grow into adult consumers. They're already kid consumers. They're already influencing their parents' buying choices, but they'll eventually grow up. And like you said, if you can hit them young and get that brand loyalty developed,

then they will grow up and remember that affiliation to it, that nostalgia, you know? And you will buy that product throughout your lifetime. I think I use Crest toothpaste. Sure, I still go to Colgate. Do you? Yeah, that's what I was raised on. So I looked up something that's called Pester Power.

Have you ever heard of that? That is, well, it's exactly what it sounds like. It's how kids manipulate their parents into getting them things. And it's by bothering them. Right. And they did some, the YouGov Omnibus parent survey got some stats and 57% of parents

think their children are successful persuaders. And the top tactic for a kid, according to 71% of parents is verbal negotiation. 50% said they were bartered. Like, I'll do more chores or I'll get better grades. If you get me this stuff. Whereas it should be like, no, you should get better grades anyway.

You know, not really gonna buy you this garbage. 45% create wish lists. That was big when we were kids. That was one of the funnest things to do. Going through that catalog. Yeah, man. All those kids always look so happy in there too, you know. Do you, I've showed you that like wishbook web before

where they just go through and scan old catalogs. Talk about nostalgia. Oh man, it's wonderful. John Hodge won't even look at that and like I would see a slight smile. A tear creep over his face. A tear goes down his cheek and a drop of blood goes out of his ear.

Right, and then that tear turns to acid and then burns through the floor. He's like, stop. No, I won't give in. Parents say some kids list pros and cons or write letters or PowerPoint presentations. Nice. 14% of kids write PowerPoint presentations.

That's the lobby for a gift. I'd be like, good for you buddy. You're learning some future skills. You're gonna be a salesman, a robe warrior. And apparently 42% of parents said that they buckled. And bought the item at an average purchase cost of $233. Whoa.

Talk about Pester Power. I would make a PowerPoint presentation for a $230 item. Yeah, but first you have to lobby for the PowerPoint software. So you can make your presentation to get your garbage toy. That reminds me, Yumi told me when she was a kid,

she made this basically this menu of stuff that her parents would pay her money for. It'd be like, didn't put salt on my food at dinner. You give me 15 cents or whatever. Oh, like penalties, penalties? Not penalties, it was stuff that she was doing. And then they would just pay her for it. And her parents looked at it and were like,

this is a really great idea, except like you said earlier. It's extortion. You're supposed to be doing this anyway. We'll tell you if you can put salt on your food. We're not gonna give you money to not put salt on your food. You just can't automatically, no money involved. But yeah, pester power.

You know what my allowance was? Do you remember what your allowance was? Oh yes. What? $5 a month. Well, this is back in 1976, right? Yeah. 77, well that's like $100,000 today.

I should look that up. I'm curious what that would be in today's dollars. $5 a month, huh? $5 a month. That does seem small. What'd you do with it? I think I probably saved it if I remember correctly and saved up to buy things.

I mean, I got my first job when I was 13. Whoa. Because I was like, I want my money to buy things. Well, to buy Star Wars guys, right? My own stuff. I knew that, you know, my parents were teachers. In fact, at the time, my mom wasn't even working. Oh yeah.

So it was a single parent teacher household. Yeah. So we were fine, but they didn't throw money at a lot of stuff. Right. So the socks are good. Just sew them together and make a new sock and wait for two more socks to get holes in the frugal. And they didn't give me $100 a week.

And I had friends that got allowances like that. And I was just like, that's not. Even when I was a kid, I remember being like, that seems wrong. Yeah. Like, why are you getting that? You're not doing anything for that money. Like, the kids who got the $100 a week allowances

were the ones who did the least of all. Yes. You know? Like, I would cross the board. I worked around my house. I'll tell you that. I'd sit on my face all the time. I didn't get $100 a week.

Sweepin' that, Jimny. All right. So all this equals a lot of spending. And then on the flip side of that, you're going to have a lot of spending on advertising. In the US, in 2009, the company spent $17 billion on advertising directly at children. And kids in America, this is horrifying.

Kids in the United States today see 40,000 ads a year. Yeah. Wow. So $17 billion, that sounds like a lot. And it is, right? But in 1983, just in 1983, they spent $100 million on ads. It jumped up that much since 1983. And we'll see why in a little while.

40,000, that's 110 ads a day that kids are seeing. Could that be right? That's 110 ads that are out there on kids programming. It doesn't necessarily mean they see them all. They're just there for them to see. Oh, so when it says kids see an estimated, that just means they're out there for them to see. So here's something.

Here's something that I've run across. There is a huge body of research on advertising to kids that we'll get into. There are also some figures out there where it's like, I've seen this, but then I've also seen that. Yeah, sure. You know? So you said 110 ads a day?

Yeah. There's no way that any kid has ever seen 110 ads in a day. I don't know, man. Think about it. But we've billboards, internet, commercials. I guess that's entirely possible. I guess that's possible. You might see 25 ads on your way home from school.

But I have seen that 40,000 ads a year thing all over the place, for sure. I could buy that. So ads in school, which we'll get to. So yeah. So there's this whole idea that, yeah, oh man, that's a lot of ads. Or that's a lot of money being spent to advertise to children.

Maybe we should tone it down, or maybe we should think about how we're doing this a little differently. No, say some people. Yes. There's particularly a group called Commercial Free Childhood, Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood. And they say kids should not see ads at all. Yeah, even the good ones that say eat this healthy thing

or brush your teeth. Don't, because what they're saying is if you teach kids to identify with products through the kind of advertising, which is basically celebrity endorsement. Whether that celebrity is Don Mattingly or Tony the Tiger, like a made up celebrity, it's still a cult of personality that the kid is buying into not,

oh, these carrots actually are good to me or good for me. It's Don Mattingly says that I can be a world class home run hitter if I eat these carrots. You know what I'm saying? Sure. So the focus is still on mindless consumerism, even if they are being leaned toward like good commercial or good product or whatever.

Yeah, or good habits or whatever. Yeah, this one selection that you pulled here was really telling it says advertising in and of itself is harmful to children. Marketing targets emotions, not intellect. Trains children to choose products not for the actual value, but because of what's on the package of the celebrity, undermines critical thinking, promotes impulse buying.

That's like, it says it all. That was Susan Lynn of the campaign for commercial free childhood. Makes a lot of sense. Don't regulate it, get rid of it. Exactly, and there's been a lot of pushes over the years to do just that in the United States. Other countries have done it.

And as people have kind of battled over this, a lot of study has been done on what impact advertising has on kids' brains. And we'll dive into that right after these messages. Yes. On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude.

Bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to 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 non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

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All right. Before we broke, uh, well, earlier we were talking about, I was saying I couldn't, when I was a kid, I remember the Crest cavity fighters and I just thought it was another cartoon. Um, that's not because I was a dumb kid, it's because if you are, they've determined, this is through scientific study and inquiry, that if you are under four years old, you literally cannot tell the difference between a commercial and the program you're watching. No. Like not at all.

Even if they use, uh, commercial break techniques, like we'll be right back after these messages or whatever. Right, which they have to use. You notice you don't see that between, uh, you know, commercials for Seinfeld. No, no, no, it's true. We'll be back right after this. Can you believe it? But you have to have that stuff in kids programming,

even though if you're under the age of four, does no good. No. Like the kid literally cannot discern between the program they're watching and the ads. That's nuts to me. I didn't realize that until I started researching. Did you know that? Uh, well, we talked about it in a couple of weeks ago, but yeah. Oh, we did.

Yeah. Okay. Um, between four and five, as you start to get a little bit older, you might be able to tell a difference categorically, but you're still, it's more along the lines of, well, that's shorter. That look, that cartoon was really short. Or it was funnier. Yeah, or it looks different or whatever. Right.

So you can tell the difference, but you still don't know you're being, you know, No. shoveled and add on your tiny little throat. Right. Yeah. And there's two, there's two things that children lack that you need to be able to understand and add at its basis. Right.

And one is you have to number one, be able to differentiate it from the program. Yeah. So you have to be able to say, Oh, it's an ad. When they said after these messages will be right back, it means that the show went away. And now what I'm seeing is an ad. That's step one. Step two is that you have to be able to understand that in any kind of ad, you're being advertised to your, you're being persuaded and that the message that's coming

at you is biased. And therefore you should take it with a grain of salt. Right. That comes even later than understanding the difference between an ad and the program. Right. The, the idea that you're, you're being advertised to doesn't come until at least seven from what I've seen. You don't even know what grain of salt means.

You don't know what that expression means. No, no idea. Because you can't even say as a parent, Oh, take it with a grain of salt. It's an ad. They'll go, what are these words? What? I like salt. There's a Center for New American Dream.

And this is frightening. They said babies is young as six months old can form mental images of corporate logos and mascots. I, I, I didn't find what that's, how they figured that out. Was it like, here, baby, draw, draw a dime manningly. No, what is it? A dime manningly. Has he ever endorsed anything? He's like a top promoter right now, right?

Is he? I don't know. What year is this? It's like 86. Okay. And brand loyalties can be established by the age of two. And, um... Yeah, that one, that's crazy to me.

And apparently, and a British study at least, they found it, you have to be close to a teenager up to about 12 is when you can finally really discern an ad from content in its intent. On an adult level. Yeah. It's about where you're finally at threshold. And what's interesting is that the group that, that conducted that study and concluded that was an advertising lobbying group. So even they are like, yes, kids under the age of 12 are mentally incapable of discerning

the intent and content of ads. All they get is the overall message of the ad, which is you want this. Right. Go tell your parents that you want this. Go make your parents pass. Pester power. Exactly. Use a power point.

Yeah. And the American Psychology Association, they had this task force in 2004. And they basically looked at all the available literature over the last like, you know, several decades. I think it was the 60s where they really started looking into it. And the APA basically concluded, yes, kids are kids can't understand advertising. Yeah. It's unfair to advertise to kids.

This is the position of the APA. Like if it were up to us, it would be banned. Yes. They suggested that it should be banned. Right. That kids under the age of at least seven, I think the APA said should not see ads directed toward them. But like I say, not up to them, they can only recommend and be laughed at.

Corporations with these pockets. Hippies. You commies. Go work on a commune hippie. So when it comes to nutrition, this is a really big deal. There are a lot of advertisements for candy and junk food and fast food that are rammed down your kid's throat from a very early age and there's been, you can't provide a direct causation, of course.

No, everybody's like, give it to me. But there's a lot of correlation that watching these commercials and seeing these ads correlates to your kid eating more of the stuff and maybe gaining weight. Right. And maybe affecting overall childhood obesity. Yeah. And again, remember, the money spent on advertising to children in 1983 was $100 million. It went up to $17 billion in 2009. I'm sure in 83, they were like $100 million.

Yeah, but even still, I think it was still considered kind of paltry-ish. Yeah. I mean, especially if you adjust for inflation, it's still nothing like $17 billion. If you go back over time and look at the rates of childhood obesity, it tracks along the same graph. Yeah. So it's one of the factors. Sure. Can we just agree on that?

Yeah. And studies have found also, so not only are your kids being exposed to a high percentage of the ads that they see are junk food ads, but we've also, it's been shown that if you show kids junk food ads, and adults too, actually, but it really works on kids, they will eat more junk food while they're watching the ads. It's basically what's called the priming effect, where a kid will be sitting there seeing an ad for Twinkies. Well, there's no Twinkies in the house, but there's a box of Twix. I'll eat the box of Twix. And actually-

A box of Twix? I used to eat a box of Twix. My mom would hide it around the house. When I found them, I had to eat the whole thing because I knew that she'd find that I found them and hide them even better. You never knew where they were going to end up next. Right. I'd just be eating them like a little fat squirrel. So, as 2009 study found that kids who watched a program with commercials ate 50% more calories than the kids who watched the same program

without commercials. Yeah. So, the actual presence of the commercials gets kids to eat more food, and the food that they usually have at hand and they're being primed to eat is junk food. Well, here's a study. Boy, this is study and stat packed. I thought you'd like that. It's got my juices flowing. In Quebec, America's hat, one part of America's hat, they have the opposite effect.

They, for the past 32 years, have banned fast food advertising geared towards children online and in print. And that province has the least childhood obesity in Canada. Yeah. It's actually, it's even older than that, I should correct you. That was 1980 that they really ended. Oh, really? Yeah, they just said, no. No. Yeah, no, no.

Wait, that's America's pants. They said, no way, eh? Yeah, no. In Quebec, they said it in French. She said, no. Oh, okay. Me, no, no. D'accord. But I mean, how can you look?

I know there are still other factors, of course, but how can you look at these statistics and not just run screaming down the street like a crazy person? I don't know. Like companies are trying to make your kids fat? Yeah. Again, we come back to the Dorito effect. The book should read it. Because if you read it, even with me, it's taken malicious intent off the table. It's more just like, this is just the way it is. These people, these companies have products and they make money selling the product,

so they're going to advertise the product. And your kid's going to love it. And if you don't want your kid to eat it, tell your kid no, you lazy parent. Well, yeah. Which we'll get into later. Sure. This is what we should point out to. This is not just in traditional advertising.

Product placement has been booming for the past decade, for sure. But even before that. Yeah, I think it really started in the 80s. But, I mean, it's really like product placement is like it's never been before. They did a study in 2008. Why is every study in this thing at least eight years old? I couldn't find anything newer. It's crazy. Well, let's just say it's probably...

It's like New Gingrich came along and somehow cut off funding for it. Well, I think we can just say everything's worse than these studies then. I would guess. In 2008, there were nearly 35,000 food, beverage and restaurant brands in prime time TV programming. And that's not in commercials. That's product placement. Yeah. 35,000. Yeah, but apparently kids saw an average of 198 Coke product placements throughout the year during 2008.

That's about three to four a week. And that's just in a movie that you're watching, in a TV show that you're watching. Yeah. That's on top of all the ads that they're doing. Right. It's literally like indoctrination. So, not only are your kids incapable of understanding what ads are, the ads are having a pronounced negative effect on their health,

speaking through correlation. Right. Right. Again, there's no smoking gun that where some kid was like, that Oreo ad just made me eat this Oreo, everybody. Right. And then he was whisked off to Johns Hopkins to be raised in a cage for the rest of his life. That has not happened yet. We can only hope one day.

But the correlation is definitely there. And they're also becoming more and more ubiquitous. Right? Yes. So, there was this Yale study from 2012, Chuck, not that long ago. All right. In 2012, they looked at fast food marketing to children, fast food advertising specifically. Yeah.

And they found that McDonald's was far and away the biggest vendor on advertising to kids. Sure. Specifically with their Happy Meal brand, which is basically now a sub brand of McDonald's. Yeah. The Happy Meal is. I think I remember when the Happy Meal was invented. Yeah. And the Happy Meal...

That was 70s or 80s, right? Sure. And it was not invented for adults. No, no, no. The toy tie-ins, Ronald McDonald's, were not things that they developed to sell more hamburgers to adults or because the adults make the choice of where to go eat. It was for kids, right? Yeah.

It was a specific choice to sell more fast food to kids. Yeah. And in this 2012 study, in just that year alone, McDonald's spent $42 million on advertising just the Happy Meals in 2012. Here's one that'll shake you to the core. The average U.S. child between 2 and 11 saw 185 Chicken McNugget Happy Meal commercials on TV last year. Yeah.

185 ads for Chicken McNuggets. Yep. And then, so that's a lot, but to really put it in perspective, the number two advertiser to children for fast food was Burger King. They had a kid's meal. Kids saw an average of 23.4 of those per year, not 185. 23 was the second place contestant, which is why Burger King's never in first. They're not spending enough on advertising to kids.

There's a Burger King executive right now that just pulled over and made a note. Spend more. I remember how they got, I'm sure they still do this. I haven't, like I literally haven't looked at what a Happy Meal is. It's nothing like when we were kids. Remember it came in the box and like a bag. Is it not a bag anymore? No. It's in a bag, a paper bag.

Is it a special bag? Yeah, but we have to be a kid to really recognize it as special. You know what I mean? Where the box was like, it's its own thing. Yeah, it was a little gift. Yeah. But how they really got us back then, I don't know if they still do this, is Collect All 4. Oh, they still do that.

They do? No, it's like Collect All 16. Right. So it would be, I remember some stupid little car that you would put a penny in. Oh, those were great penny racers. Yeah, and you would like pull it back and it would spin or something or pop a wheelie. Or just take off like a rocket. And collect all four.

So it's like, it's not even enough. Like it's hard for me to not visualize the devil himself in an advertising room. El Fajina. Going like, yeah, well, we can sell this meal to kids more if we include a toy and some other guy saying, oh, well, how about if there's four different toys and they have to go back four different times to get a different color each time. Yeah. And I remember the drive-thru people would be like, you got what you got.

You have to go through and buy another happy meal if you want a different, you have to keep, you weren't guaranteed to get that toy. I know. Yeah. So yeah, way more than four trips to get your happy meal. What a time to be alive. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so advertising has actually gone down in some ways, kids.

By fractions of percentage points. Just little bits, yeah. But for the most part, it's trending upward. And apparently there's nowadays little tots that go on to websites to play. Yeah. Some of these websites like happymeal.com, not to pick on McDonald's, but man, they definitely have spread it out enough so that they're an enormous part of this. Dude, McDonald's had a website for preschool children.

Ronald.com. They shut it down finally. Yeah. But they literally had a website for preschoolers. Right. I know. Sounds like it was clown heavy. Happymeal.com in 2012 had 100,000 monthly uniques.

I don't even think how stuff works has 100,000 monthly uniques. And happymeal.com does, right? And these are little kids and they're going on and doing their thing, having a great time playing on happymeal.com. But this whole website is one big ad, right? Yeah. And even outside of happymeal.com on other websites like cartoonnetwork.com or nick.com, like Nickelodeon's website, you're going to see ad placements, banner ads or whatever kind of ads

on these other websites for happy meals. They're all over the place. Yeah. Of the top 25 advertisers, 19 of those 25 increased advertising to preschoolers, Domino's pizza, I guess they're more than pizza now. They sell them. They're just Domino's now. Kind of stuff, right?

Yeah. Domino's increased advertising to children by 44%. I think when was this, between 2009 and 2012, Wendy's by 13%. And McDonald's is the only restaurant that advertises more to children than teens or adults. Yeah. More. They advertise more to kids.

All right. Hard to believe. Plus also there's, I was looking at this, there's apps now too. So beyond the websites, you can also download apps that again, if you're a kid, you're just playing. You're on the McPlay app. Yeah. But if you go onto the McPlay app, so like their toy giveaway, the big tie in now, is the Trolls movie where it was recently.

And you would get your Trolls character out of the Happy Meal box. And you would scan it with your phone and upload it onto your McPlay app. And you could make your Troll character, the little real one that you have in real life, go play in the Troll game in the McPlay app. Was the Troll game like McDonald's Wonderland or something? Yes. Yeah. But it's also the Trolls movie.

So you're being like hit with this advertising, this joint advertising. God knows how much the Trolls production gave to McDonald's to host this whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. So there's this, the ads are not even ads anymore. They're not even websites anymore. They're games. I don't mean to get worked up.

It's just astounding. It is. When you start digging in, you just feel like you're drowning. Well, and I think once people listen to this, you start to notice things a little more around you. Like even reading the stuff over the past few days, I just start to see it everywhere all of a sudden. Right. I'm like, oh my God. Some parent out there was like, McPlay, I get it now.

Give me that phone. Here's something we mentioned earlier that is, well, you think that school would be the one place where your kids can go for eight or nine hours a day and escape this onslaught of advertising. But no, schools are, they have budget cuts increasingly across the country. And so who sweeps in? But corporations to say, hey, we'd love to get a computer center for you. We'd hate for your school to fail. Yeah.

So how about the new Jack in the Box computer center? Well, will Jack in the Box be there to cut the ribbon on the first day? Well, sure he will. I think he will be. A homeless man dressed as Jack in the Box will be. Well, every kid get a Jack in the Box antenna head. Oh, I think they will. So that's what's happening is corporations, they either have partnerships or they have

vending machine contracts. And you make, I don't know where you got this particular part. This was very well put together, by the way. Thank you. But they make the point here that you've got a captive audience. Kids are, it's like prison. Right. They're stuck there.

Can't leave. There's a cop that's making sure they stay there. Well, I didn't have a cop in my schools, but I don't think they're. They came along about my era. Okay. We had our guy, he wasn't a cop, but he was the resource officer. Yeah, we didn't call him that. Barney Fife.

Sort of. Yeah. He just basically kind of walked around the parking lots. With a billy bat. Looking for kids smoking or leaving in their car or doing whatever. And I remember he was always very easy to evade. I imagine. Only so much ground you can cover as one single man.

Sure. Single board man. Right. And this was before cell phones too. I imagine that guy now is just like parked somewhere playing on this McClay. I love this trolls game. But not only they're a captive, but that it implies the endorsement of the teachers and the educational system.

Yeah. Which is huge. Yeah. Yeah. And so much so that like remember we were talking about the crest cavity team. And I learned about like oral hygiene. What those two words put together are awful, by the way. Yeah, that's gross.

But I learned that through crest, right? And that came with free toothpaste and a toothbrush and all that. And there's like an activity book. And yes, I was learning about this stuff, but it was crest sponsored. But in my little brain, I'm like, well, I guess my school thinks crest is great. Therefore crest is great. Right. You know.

Or they might come out in a bunch of out of work actors dressed up as the crest cavity team. Sure. Might make an appearance at your school. Well, yeah. If you go to like Hollywood High or something. A rich school. That's pretty funny. If you've ever seen Hollywood High, it's like not very rich looking.

No. Nope. There's rich kids that go there, right? Dylan and. Becky or. That was Beverly Hills. That's what I mean. That's what I meant.

Oh, okay. That is a rich school. Yeah. I'll take you by Hollywood High next summer in LA. Okay. Get a laugh. It's right there in the middle of town. Think right next to the In-N-Out Burger, for the not mistaken.

Charles Buchowski stumbling out. So what else are you going to get in school? You might get a craft healthy eating kit. Again, maybe trying to teach you about eating healthy, but got their logo and products, all over it. No more than five boxes of craft brand macaroni and cheese a day. What else? There's exclusive contracts with companies.

Your high school is a Coke high school. You're not going to find a Pepsi vending machine in this high school district. And those are probably fairly lucrative. Straight up advertising on buses. Oh, really? Yeah. We didn't have that when I was a kid, but apparently they do now. How about this?

A reading program, uh, book it brought to you by Pizza Hut. I did that. Did you? Oh man. Reading enough to get a free personal pan pizza. Oh, is that what the deal was? Yeah. Oh.

I was like, just give me some books. See, and that's the thing though. It's like they're incentivizing reading. That's a good thing. Yeah. But incentivizing reading to eat their garbage food product. Right. And it was like the focus of the summer.

Yeah. To get to that point where you would get your free personal pan pizza certificate, man. How did you prove that you read the books? I was an honor system. Well, we were all very honorable kids apparently. Uh, all right. Should we take a break here? Yes.

All right. We'll pause for this ad that the irony is not lost on us. We'll be right back. 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 going to 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 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 Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. 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, 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. All right, Chuck. So this kind of stuff is making your blood boil. Some people out there totally understand it are saying,

man, hey, man, we live in a capitalist country. Sure. Should be able to advertise to kids you got a product to sell. Sell it the best way you can. Right. Okay. Other people out there are just so mad. They're trembling in their Birkenstocks.

Yeah. That's actually, that's terrible. They're just, uh, they're just upset at the thought of all this, right? And it does seem very overwhelming and unfair. Um, and for a while now in the U.S., we've got a long standing tradition of groups coming up and trying to fight the advertisers, getting almost somewhere and then failing. Yes. That's the history of it here.

Yeah. We talked a little bit about this in the action figures podcast. Um, and we'll go over some of that right now again. The, well, remember that inspired this episode. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, 1970s, the FCC communications commission, um, they said, you know what? We should ban advertising to young kids.

But they said, all right, well, maybe we shouldn't completely ban it. Maybe we should just limit it and limit the kinds of how much they see in the kind of things you can say and do. Right. Specifically host selling. Right. Like, uh, Ms. Francis and her little ding dong hour stopping and selling something. Yes.

That was off limits now. That's right. Then later on in the late 1970s, um, they once again, the FTC this time. Yeah. Considered banning all the advertising to kids, citing all the evidence that's always been out there all over the place that points 100% in the direction that kids can't tell the difference and it's unfairly takes advantage. Yeah.

Um, and Congress said, well, wait a minute now. We, we help, we got here based largely on, you know, Crest, they got deep pockets and they funded us as a whole. Yeah. Our congressional election campaigns. Right. So they stopped it. They put a stop to the FTC and the FTC said, fine, fine, do what you want.

You're Congress, but we're going to take a parting shot saying, if you look even cursorily at the, at the medical literature on kids and advertising, you will see that this is wrong and it's a public concern and should remain that way. And this is on you. Yeah. And they went, who cares? Yeah. Uh, and you talked about groups popping up.

There's one called the actions for children's television, ACT founded in 1968 by Evelyn Sarson and Peggy, uh, Charin, Charin. Charin. Charin. She's the boat keeper on the river sticks. What? Charin. The guy, the, the boat rower who would row you over to the underworld.

Yeah, I believe so. Man. Oh man. I hope so. Uh, I thought it was, um, old Skippy. Old man Skippy. That was, I mean, if you knew him, you call him that. If you were a neighbor boy.

Um, they're a big deal now, uh, 20,000 members. But back in the day when they were just getting going, they were a pretty small little grass roots unit and romper room of all things was squarely in their sites at first. Yeah. One of the first ones they took on. Romper room was like the least harmful, nicest show ever. I loved it. I did too.

Um, isn't that what Mr. Greenchains was on? No, that was, uh, Captain Kangaroo. Oh yeah, you're right. Yeah. I don't remember romper room then. I just remember I loved it. Romper room was one that had the magic, uh, magic mirror. No.

And at the end of the episode, the lady would look into the mirror and say, like, I see Josh and I see Jerry. Oh yeah. You just sit there being like, call my name. And I didn't get many chucks. So no. Did you say Charles? Did you count yourself for that?

I don't remember. It was sort of that feeling you get when you go to the, anything that had like the names printed. Keychain. Yeah. Keychains or the little license plates. Yeah. And it was always like, why isn't my name Mike or Josh?

Yeah. I'll just go with the number one astronaut one, the generic one. Not that Chuck is so random, but I didn't see it a ton. Sure. You know, I hear a lot of chucks these days. That name is out of fashion now. Yeah. That's cool.

It's a, it's not though. It's a retro. Yeah. It's vintage. I'll take it. So what did they do with romper room? They, they said you're host selling. Yeah.

Yeah. Apparently they had their own line of toys. And one of the things was, I guess she'd look in the mirror and say, I see this brand new line of romper room toys that you're going to buy. And the ACT said, hey, this is against the rules. Right. And they, they didn't even go to the FCC. They went to the station that produced romper room and said, knock it off. Yeah.

We're married. Yeah. And they listened to them. That was, I think their first real victory. Uh, so Ronald Reagan, we talked about in the action figures one, this is when things got real in the 80s. When Reagan specifically appointed Mark Fowler as commissioner of the FCC. Right.

Everything changed. Yeah. Cause Reagan, he liked the regulation. Sure. He believed in free markets. Yeah. And he appointed Fowler who believed in free markets just as much as Reagan did. Fowler had a, um, a saying as the FCC chairman, which is pretty rich, frankly,

because the FCC had long been tasked with basically overseeing broadcasting for the public interest. Yeah. Right. It's one of the big reasons why, um, broadcasters got licenses. They had to like have public interest programming certain amount of week. Yeah. Um, they were looking, they were supposed to be looking out for people.

Right. And Mark Fowler said the public interest would be decided by the public's interest, meaning that if somebody started doing something nefarious under this deregulation where the government wasn't paying attention anymore, well, then people would stop watching that network and they would go under the market would decide it and advertising to children fell squarely into this, this purview or this, this worldview of his. Yeah. And, uh, between 1984 and 1985, and this is what we touched on in the action figure show, was, uh, cartoons featuring licensed characters increased by 300%.

Yeah. It became the new, I mean, I don't think there almost were none that didn't have a tie in. No, there was, there, yeah. And before that, just a couple of years before there was none that did. Yeah. Because there was a, a rule against what are called program length commercials, which was what Jim was in My Little Pony and Pac-Man and, and Thundercats and He-Man, all of them were these, these shows that were created to sell the products and they tied into the products.

And it was just like open season on little kids minds. Yeah. I mean, you're, you loved He-Man, right? Sure. I definitely did. And Thundercats, Jason the Wheel Warriors, like all that stuff. I was just a total sucker for it. Smurfs, although I don't think Smurfs, I think they started out as an actual cartoon and then like their whole product line was launched as a result. Six months later, they were like, aren't we selling these things? Yeah. I was going to ask you that.

In 1990, the FCC finally had some rules pushed through that limited the airtime to 10.5 minutes per hour on weekends and 12 minutes per hour on weekdays for kids programming. And host selling was officially prohibited. Yeah. That was the Children, Children's Television Act. That's right. They also, the idea of having to break for commercials with we'll be right back or now a word from our sponsor that came out of that as well. Although I seem to remember it before 1990, maybe not.

All right. So you mentioned earlier that other countries are doing this. Australia, Canada, Sweden, the UK, they all have regulations on stuff like this. Yeah. By doing this, you mean actually doing something. Yes. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. There's a whole spectrum, right? Yeah. That has to do with how a country approaches advertising to children.

And the US actually represents one radical end of it, which is virtually nothing. Yeah. Yeah. On the other end, there's countries that have banned it, like Quebec, which again is a province, but yeah, it's also an occupied country. Norway and Sweden, big surprise there. Nordic countries coming in there, swinging the bat of justice. Swinging the reindeer rack of justice. They completely ban marketing to children under the age of 12 in those countries.

Right. And then a little more in the middle, you've got like the UK and Australia, where there's far more regulations than there is in the US, but there's also a large measure of self-regulation among the industry too. Yeah. I was really heartened to hear that in the UK. A lot of these aren't necessarily laws. They're just sort of unspoken rules among advertisers that you don't suggest that a child is lacking in loyalty or you don't encourage them to pester their parents. Or I mean, that's a big one.

You know, like a commercial that shows a kid like, Mom, can I have this? Right. There was this, I think it was like itchy and scratchy was up for an Emmy on the Simpsons once or something. And they were showing the other cartoons that it was up against in the category for best animated special. And one of them was like the action man holiday special, how to buy action man. And it showed some kid go, I want it. And the parent looks at the box is like, it's basically right there. Yeah. Another one in England, they say you don't make a child feel inferior or unpopular

for not buying a product. Yeah. That's a big one too. Yeah. And apparently these are just things that they think are decent that you shouldn't do. Because I remember too, like with, with advertising, I don't remember seeing too many like polo ads. I was very much aware of polo, but I also knew that polo was a great brand because my peers knew it was a great brand. Yeah.

Right. So there's that peer pressure that starts from a very young age, especially with things like clothing. So to remove that out of the equation a little bit by not letting advertisers like make a kid feel smaller inferior for not buying a product. I wonder how much it mitigates that at all. Yeah. Hopefully some. You know, our own TV show might not have come around if that hadn't been for

the conscience of our director and leader. What do you mean? Chad, our director was, he went and started his production company because he was an ad dude and he was on set one day. I remember him telling me this story, selling a, doing a commercial for a garbage junk food product for kids and was just like, had one of those moments. He's like, what am I doing? What am I doing with my life?

Yeah. And he quit it, quit his job and went and started his own production company to where they make a jump. That's why, huh? No, I'm just kidding. That's why he started it? Yeah. Nice.

Where you go, Chad? Yeah. He developed, he didn't develop a conscience. He had a conscience. And it was agitated. And it was agitated. Nice. It's pretty neat. Yeah.

So then our TV show came. Yeah, that ruined him. What about online? That's the big sort of new, brave new, not so brave new world. Yeah, like those apps we were talking about. Yeah, they're like all over the place, right? Yeah, they're all over the place, but they're also, they're interactive. So your kid is actively participating in something that has to do with the brain.

Five things on the couch. Right, yeah, right. I'm using their thumbs. But they're interacting with that brand, you know, in their head. They're also immersed into a branded environment for long periods of time. Sure. Plus also, a lot of the advertising, if not 100% of it, is targeted, right? They're using metadata based on your kid's other play habits, search history,

other apps it's downloaded, where your kid lives, any demographic information they can get. So creepy. To make the ad even more targeted to them. That works on adults. I can't imagine, it must be like utter magic on a kid. I'll bet you can be like, watch, I'll make that kid get off the couch right now. Watch this, I'll send him this ad.

The kid gets off the couch and goes to the fridge, you know? Yeah, there's a very Truman show element to it. Yeah, it seems like it. But then again, like you said, you hear the companies and the food industry and people saying, there's just consumer demand, it's up to the parents like, say no, don't let your child pester you into buying something. Yeah. Be a good parent.

Sure. And that's definitely, that seems to be their position. The counter to that is, well, if you guys think that the parent really has any kind of say over this, why are you spending $18 billion a year advertising directly to children? Why don't you spend that money on me? They're like, oh, we like a good fight. Right. We don't like money.

We like to waste it. We're trying to see a good competitive situation. Plus also, the advertisers have a tremendous amount of power when they're going directly to a kid to go around the parent. And a parent, any parent just by definition is harried as far as a human being goes. Yeah. Right? So they don't have time necessarily to keep up with everything their kids watching,

encounter every argument and every pester session that their kid comes at them with. Yeah. And advertisers know that. And it's, I mean, that's unfair as well. Yeah, it was a lot easier back in the day to regulate and monitor what kind of content your children were made available to you. Because you had TV and there were three channels. Yeah.

You know? Pretty much. And there was something called outside. Yeah. All right. So how you combat this? Well, again, if you can find time in your harried life, there are some techniques that you can use apparently magically talking to your kid.

Yeah. Kids are smart. Yeah. They, unless it comes to discerning ads. We always joke about dumb kids and that's always a joke because kids are very, very smart. Kids get things. And if you talk to your kids about what buying things means and what advertising is and the difference between wants and needs and how marketing works, like on very basic levels,

you can have these discussions from an early age. Yeah, it's true. And the value of spending smartly. Right. So that's actually, there's something, there's a concept called media literacy. And up until fairly recently, this was the prescription for combating advertising to kids among parents. And it was exactly what you just described, sitting down and explaining them, like, why

do you, why do you want that? Do you want it? Do you need it? Uh-huh. Yeah, like what, is there something better that's less expensive or the same thing that's less expensive? And just teaching them that, that's media literacy. And it's teaching them to create a cynical filter that when they're being advertised to,

they're being manipulated and they need to take it with a grain of salt. And then you have to go, okay, this is what a grain of salt means. Right. Take a step backwards, right? Cynical is such a bad word though, it's maybe discerning. That's another word for it, sure. The problem is, is people like the campaign for commercial free childhood says, again, what you're doing is teaching kids to be good consumers.

Right. You're focusing on consumerism. You're teaching them everything there is to know about consumerism. Let's just remove kids from the equation of consumerism. So media literacy's kind of fallen out of favor in the last few years. Yeah, I mean, it may be impossible. That's the conclusion I came to. Like our kids aren't living our childhood life.

And you can't expect that, you know? No, it's, and it's true, like if you're like, no, you can't watch TV or no, you can't play video games or no, you can't like use your YouTube app or whatever. Like would your kid have anything in common with any of his or her peers? Yeah, I want you to be a complete outcast. Yeah, an interesting one, but no one will know how interesting and charming you are because they won't talk to you. Yeah, they're like, but just wait.

When you're in your thirties, you're really going to blossom. Like what? Yeah, you're going to have a 401k already. Yeah, no, thanks. You're going to be a real catch. Setting limits on this exposure is obviously kind of a no-brainer. Screen time and phones and gaming and internet and all the things they're inundated with. And limiting your own screen time, it's, that's a big one.

Yeah, it's tough to tell the kid, you know, if you're constantly staring at your telephone as a parent, you know, it's, you can't see that stuff. Shut up Barney Miller's on. On your phone? Yeah, I guarantee you could find reruns of Barney Miller on a phone somewhere. Well, my Barney Miller app doesn't feature full-length shows. Oh, just video clips? Just clips.

Point of rip. And there's a game too. It's pretty fun. On. McBarney Miller. What else? Apparently there's a book called The Berenstain Bears Get the Gimmies. Yeah.

Have you read that one? I don't remember that one. I read The Berenstain Bears Get the Gimmies. Oh, okay. Well, this isn't an alternate universe. No, I never heard of that one. Apparently it's all about teaching, it's teaching kids how to not be little brats. Right.

And to just chill out and be happy with your two sticks that your parents gave you to rub together. This last one or this last bit I think was pretty interesting on how to be involved in what they're watching, the three ways, co-viewing. It just means you're not even discussing it, you're just sitting there and watching it with them. Menacingly. Yeah, menacing overlord. Just cross your arms and look at them every once in a while. Just relax, enjoy yourself.

Do you feel like you should be watching this? Active mediation or instructive guidance is when you are watching and discussing things and saying, you know, like what we're talking about, talking about these ads or whatever the content is. Right. And then there's restrictive mediation, which is you can't watch that. Yeah. And apparently active and restrictive mediation has been shown to decrease kids asking for stuff,

which is ultimately what the parent wants. It's like, I don't care how obese you get. I just don't want to hear you ask for another thing. That's what we're really after. If you get thin as a byproduct, great. You got anything else? I don't think so. Oh, I did think this final bit was pretty interesting that you had in here that they found that things,

the tactics to sell kids junk food have the same effect. So if you put carrots and celery in a McDonald's wrapper, the kids are going to be more apt to eat it than if you just gave them carrots and celery. That's frightening and I guess good. I guess, but again, it goes to that heart of that thing where it's like you're just teaching kids, McDonald's says, eat these carrots. Yeah. Not carrots are great in and of themselves.

Right. All right. Well, that's advertising the kids. Make of it what you will. Yeah. I'm going to go walk out into traffic. If you want to know more about advertising the kids, well, dig into the internet because it's all over the place. I found a great site called the PBS Kids Don't Buy It and it teaches kids how to discern ads at a younger age.

It's neat. You might want to start there. And since I said PBS Kids, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this first time writer from a new listener. Hey guys, new listener, first time writer. My boss used to work for Kenner in the 80s and early 90s and some interesting tidbits about Star Wars toys. Kenner had a Robin Hood Prince of Thieves collection. Remember the 92 Kevin Costner?

Kevin Costner, sure. The weird accent that kind of was a little British sometimes, a little Southern California. Kind of came and went. I have to say, though, I love that movie when it came out. It's good. It's terrible. It wasn't as good as Men in Tights. Oh, of course.

I remember Robin Hood and Point Break came out that same summer. I don't know why I remember that. I don't either. Whatever. The heck with summer. 50% of the Robin Hood Prince of Thieves line was repurposed. Can't imagine why. Into the 95 rerun of Return of the Jedi.

And at the time, new Power of the Forest line of toys. Most notable, the Sherwood Forest play set was simply rebranded the Ewok Village. And the Robin Hood battle wagon was altered slightly and made the Ewok battle wagon. Nice. It's pretty smart when you think about it. Yeah, they're all forest bandits. Also, there was one figure of the Robin Hood line. One figure that was repurposed from the original 83 Return of the Jedi line.

The Friar Tuck action figure was a more smoothed out version of the Gamorian Guard, the Pig Light Guard in Jabba's Palace. I remember him. With a new head plopped on. Sounds about right. There's another listener send in a video of Rick Springfield's Star Wars collection. Oh yeah, I saw that. Did you watch that? No, I haven't seen it yet.

Dude. I saw the email. I haven't seen the video. Rick Springfield is one of the most avid collectors of Star Wars figures. Yeah. Like, he literally has one of a kind figure. Oh, really? The only known one in the world. Wow.

He has. Is it that Boba Fett with the missile launcher? He does. He has several of those apparently. Oh, he's like, I used those toilet paper. Yeah, everyone swallows those up my butt. I was impressed. And he was used like from the time I was a kid. I collected them and I was a little bit older when the Star Wars things came out.

Like, he always collected things. Right. But when Star Wars came out, he was older. Right. So he started not opening them because he was overplaying with them, but he really just loved the packaging, thought they were beautiful and cool, and has this amazing collection.

I highly recommend just YouTube Rick Springfield Star Wars. I'll check that out. There's some really big Star Wars nerds in there, too. They're, like, very jealous of Rick Springfield. I wish that I had Ricky's collection. All right. Anyway, that was from... Well, he just says, cheers from Cincinnati, Ohio.

That doesn't count. That's dope. Thank you, anonymous listener, who apparently is worried about being fired for revealing Kenner from Secrets, maybe? From Cincinnati. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at... Well, you can hang out with me at JoshOmClark on Twitter. You can also go to S-Y-S-K Podcast.

You can hang out with Chuck at CharlesWChuckBriant and at facebook.com. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. There's always join us at our home on the web. Stuffyoushouldknow.com. 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. Listen to HeyDude the 90s called on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.