Stuff You Should Know - SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: Etch A Sketch!

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

The Etch A Sketch is yet another classic toy that Josh and Chuck love and respect. Learn all about this Hall of Fame entry today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to the brothers Ortiz on the IHeart Radio. have Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. It's time for our episode on Etchusketch, the little tablet that you could draw on using two dials for some reason, and then when you made a masterpiece, you would shake it up and start over again. Or if you're a real jerk, you could shake up someone else's masterpiece when they weren't ready to shake it up yet.

This is a good one. I guess all of our toy episodes were good ones, so it goes without saying, but it is a good one. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from How StuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuckie Bryant and there's Jerry, the delicious dish rolling. And this is Stuff You Should Know,

the vintage nostalgia edition that went off to China and then got sold to a different company edition. So do you want to, I have a rough list of classic toys we've covered. You want to hear it? Oh, lay it on me, Charles. I'm sure I've missed something, but it did help me think of some more that we should do. Slinky? We did slinky?

Oh, yeah, we did slink. Okay, yeah. Lego. Oh, yeah, of course. Barbie? Sure. Her boyfriend, G.I. Joe. Yeah, that was a good one.

Sorry, Ken. Wait a minute. Wait a minute, I'm sorry. Did we specifically do a GI Joe one or an action figures one? I think both. We definitely did action figures. Although, maybe not. Okay, go ahead.

I'll cross-check that. Hot wheels. So this is a made-up list is what you're saying. Hot wheels? Yeah, I'm glad you didn't call it Hot Wheels. Easy Bake Oven. Play-Doh. Silly Puddy.

Do you count boomerangs? Sure. Do you count Monopoly? Yeah. Yo-yo's. Of course. Hula Hoops? I knew Hula Hoops was after yo-yo's.

I just knew it. Teddy Ruxpin, we covered him in our Christmas show this year. Oh, yeah, that's a deep cut right there. And then that's all I have, but I could have sworn we did it on Frisbees, but I cannot find it. Yeah, I feel like we did it. Frisbee's, too, because I think we talked about, like, fralph or something at some point. Yeah, I don't know.

Maybe it's out there, and I just didn't, or maybe it's under Flying Disc or something. Oh, that's possible. Because, yeah, we made that joke about calling it a novelty flying disc because Frisbee, like, used to sue everybody who called anything else a Frisbee. Maybe. I'll have to look.

But there's probably more out there, but that's a solid, you know, 12 or 13. That's pretty good. Which leads us to Etch a sketch. Yes, one of the top 100 toys of the century, according to, I want to say, not the Toy Hall of Fame, it's just in the Toy Hall of Fame. I think according to some Snottnose Kid who makes lists online. Right. This is the 100 Best Toys of the Century.

This is the 100 Best Guitar Solos of the 70s. Oh, man, I'd love to do a show on that. That would be pretty cool. I can't remember who named that, who made that list. But it's a high honor. It's a high accolade, even if we can't remember who came up with it. Like the Etchusketch. It's a ubiquitous toy.

Everybody knows what in Etchusket is, unless you go to France. And then they'll say, oh, you mean La Croix Magique. Right. And you might say, like, well, why would they have anything to say about the Exche Schatch in France? Turns out, buddy, the Etchisketch is actually French in origin. Did you know that before this? I did not. I didn't either.

Because it seems like super American, you know, it looks like a TV and just feels like pure Americana. So when I realized it had some French stank on it, my dreams were dashed. You're like, it smells like champagne and cheese, which is kind of pleasant. No, I didn't really care. I thought it was great. Sketch erase and sketch again, the log line that will forever be tied to this really interesting. little toy and I can't remember who it is in this article but they were interviewing different folks I think it was someone from the company commented and I totally agree that like it's amazing

that today in the digital world and Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and video gaming as it is that this little lo-fi toy that doesn't even have batteries in it much less hook up to the internet is still like super popular and still has a little bit of mystique and I agree with them and I think the reason why one of them is like you look at it and you're still kind of like how does this thing work right well we're going to ruin that mystique for everybody because we're going to explain how it works actually in this episode that's right but hopefully it won't affect etchice sales because we love etchisketch you know all right should we go to france we will go to France. Sometime, it's apparently not clear whether it was

1955 or 1956, but in a little town called Vitry Sir Sin, which means Vitri on the Sen River, there was a company called, what was the name of the company, Chuck? Lincrusta Company. Right. Terrible name. It is a terrible name, but the reason they call themselves that is because Lynn Krusta is a type of wall covering that was really popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries. You know, like, have you ever been into an old creepy abandoned house

and, like, the walls are covered in what looks like dimpled tin with, like, some weird patterns to it or whatever? No, but keep going. Okay, so where if you could rub your hand over, it's very much, it's like heavily embossed. Okay. Sometimes it's painted, and it's, it just, Just imagine that is like wainscoting in the house.

That is Lincrusta. And so that is one of the two things that this company made in the 50s, linkrusta wall coverings and artificial leather. That is really neither here nor there, but I was with you. I was like, what kind of a name is that for a company? I looked it up, and they just, it basically be like if you and I called our podcast, podcast, because that's what we did was make podcasts. Or called it, Podcrest.

Pog Krusta. Just the name Krust, anyway. I think I know what you're talking about because I have a pie safe that has that metal tin stuff, but I've never seen it on a wall. But I bet it's about the same thing. Virtually the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So that's Link Krusta. And that's where this guy worked. His name was Andre Kasagnes. Kasagnes. What are you going with? Well, if it's French, wouldn't it be Kassagnas? Is that G-pronounced? Yeah, I think you just nailed it, actually.

Andre Casal. Well, that's what we're going to call them. And we have gone back in time. You didn't know 55 or 56. I say we go to 54 just to play it safe, set up shop in France, and maybe get some emails done. All right, for a couple of years? Sure.

Why not? We could use a break. Okay. Because, you know, podcaster burnout's a real thing. It really is. As we've talked about. We're dropping like flies. All right, so he's working in this factory.

It's north of Paris, and they are making these wall coverings like you're talking about. And he, this is a little confusing how this actually happens, if he asked me. Or at least the way the first article put it, it's confusing. Oh, oh, you're leaving it to me if I noticed by your balls after that? Well, I mean, no, let's, I'll start it, but I just still don't. quite get it. He marked up with pencil on a see-through decal. So like he was putting on an electrical plate, like a light switch. And on that plate, like many things, has like a little see-through plastic that you peel off. So he was writing on that. He peeled it off. But then that's where

it loses me as to exactly what magic took place. So, okay, remember this is Ling Krusta and they make metal wall coverings, which means there's metal dust in the air, metal shavings everywhere. Yeah, and he's just breathing that stuff in. Right, all of them are. What's crazy is the guy made it to that ripe old age of 86 after breathing that for years.

So there's metal dust everywhere, including on this electrical switch plate that he's installing, and I guess the decal against the plate. And I think what happened was when he marked on the decal and pulled the decal off, he'd seen

that he had disturbed the metal shavings that were stuck to the underside of the decal. Oh. You see what I mean? Yeah. So, like, he had disturbed the shape. So there was, like, the whole decal is coated in a metal dust. He marks on it with a pencil, and the impression that he makes, like, gouges out lines on the backside of the decal. I know.

It's really tough. It was magic. Basically, this man witnessed a feat of magic that still cannot be explained to this day, and that's where he got his idea for the Etchus sketch. Amazing. So a big, big moment, he has that literal light bulb that goes off of his, or I'm not literal, of course, light bulb above his head. Although you never know. There may have been a light bulb in that factory right above his head.

Why not? And he said, all right, this can be. something. He, however, did not have a lot of money to sink into this weird idea. And so he had to partner with somebody with money, a man named Paul Chez, C-H-A-Z-E, or maybe Shaz, if he's French. Oh, that's good. And this guy had some dough because he owned a plastic injection molding company. And this is like early on. I wonder if we could count that as a toy. The the little plastic machines that spit out little plastic guitars in Chicago

and at zoos? Oh, yes, yes, Moldorama. Does that count? Yeah, that goes on the list, yeah. So he didn't, it wasn't Molderama, but it was plastic injection molding that this guy made his money from. And this where things get a little confusing

historically because the man who, his accountant, his name was Arthur Grangerin. You were nailing the French today try to run french people you can't chuck is pronouncing your words just beautifully so his accountant uh is actually given credit a lot of times because he filed the patent uh under uh his name which i'm curious about how that works legally uh he so he was do you remember the first time we did south by southwest and on the sign it had like somebody i can't remember whose name it was But whoever had, like, filed the application to get us into South by Southwest,

it said that, like, that's who was performing in the room that day. I don't remember that at all. I think this is the same, basically the same thing, where as, like, the U.S. government bureaucracy, the patented trademark office basically said, whoever's name is on there, that is who is the patent holder. And since Grand Jean, who was the accountant of Shea's, who was the partner of Kessian, Since he was the one who actually filled out the application and paid for the application for the patent, as far as the government was concerned,

he was the person who patented the Etchusketch in the United States. Even though Grandin made no claim on it whatsoever, immediately transferred the title over to Shea's. For decades, everybody thought Arthur Grangene was the guy who invented the Etchusketch. Interesting. All right, so that was July 23rd, 1959. was when this patent was granted.

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

And then to keep that from clumping up there, little tiny plastic beads, and then the two knobs control, again, from the patent, a movable tracing stylus, although initially it was a joystick, isn't that right? Yeah, yeah, basically like an Atari, but it served the same purpose, and it was held together the same way through an intricate system of pullies and gears that moved the stylus either upward or downward, and then if you combine the upward and downward together, you could make diagonals and circles and stuff like that. But it's really tough to describe what's going on in an Etchusketch, but there's a House Stuff Works article from years back called Inside

an Etchusketch where the people at Howstaff Works like took one apart and photographed it and explained it step by step. And it really becomes much simpler and ruins any bit of magic there is to it when you see inside an Etchusketch. But it's still kind of wondrous, you know, like the engineering you is like, wow, that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's sort of like, I mean, it's not a negative image, I don't think, but what's going on when you're moving those knobs, there's a stylus that's actually removing, like the screen is coated with this powder. So it's actually removing powder, not adding something to the screen. Yes, exactly. And, of course, if you want to get that away and start a new picture, you just shake that thing up, and that recodes the screen once again.

with that powder. Yeah. So, like, you know how your TV screen always has tons of dust on it, no matter how often you dust it? Sure. So that's because, like, that dust is attracted electrostatically through an electrical charge to the glass. That's, they take advantage of that same thing

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

And that's an etchusketch, like, at its core. And what's interesting, Chuck, is, like, that is how an etchusketch today works. That's how an etchusket worked in 1962, too, like the two meaning like also. Sure. But that dude, Andre Cassanier, said, this is how this is going to work. And it's basically the same thing. That's pretty awesome. Let's take a break.

we're going to come back and talk about coming stateside right after this No one can resist a rule of culture So here's one for the dating files Rule of Culture number 72 Chemistry isn't just vibes, it's values Because what's the point of matching with someone If you can't talk about the shows you binge

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This message is intended for audiences 21 and older. Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, Boone County, Kentucky. For more on Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, please visit gentleman's cuthuburn.com. Please enjoy responsibly. I'm sorry, Joshua, Chuck. All right, so Chuck, so how did we agree on his last name? I think I'm butchering it still, and I even took years of French in high school.

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

He was like, this is a great idea. This is a prototype I made. This is worth something. So he and Cruz, I guess, funded a trip to the Nurember Toy Fair in 1959 and it was there that Casson was walking around saying, check this thing out. It is yours for a mere $100,000, which at the time was a lot of money. I think it was $870,000 today. And that's what this guy wanted for the right to produce this. And every toy maker at the place said, no.

a little toy maker called Ohio Art. Everybody turned it down, and Casson went home from the toy fair empty-handed. But he didn't give up. He still persisted, but that was a big strikeout for him right out of the gate. Yeah, so Ohio Art eventually settles on a number of 25 grand for the rights to make this thing. In the United States, it is still called Le Grand Magique in France, because they had a different licensing deal over there. from the get-go. And Ohio art company is pretty interesting. It started, did you see that thing?

Yeah, they started out in 1908, founded by a man named a dentist named Dr. Henry S. Winsler in Archibald, Ohio. He gets out of dentistry because he's like, hey man, toys is the future. Toys is the future. There's no future in teeth. In a decade, no one in America is going to. have teeth. It's just a losing trade to be in his dentistry. Yeah, so he saw the way forward. He rented a musical, hired 15 women, and they were making metal picture frames at first to great, great success. Yeah. So they use something called the metal lithography, which is a type of

printing. And I think the metal refers to like the medium that you're using to print. print with like the like you carve a picture out of metal and you put ink on it and then you print on whatever you want but they were printing onto metal like they had like these um picture frames and pictures that were like a huge seller of a cupid it was a pair of like oval plates basically but they were metal printed printed pictures on them of like a cupid hanging out and then the same cupid sleeping and it's just kind of like whatever like these days it seems kind of it's got a tinge of old-timey creepiness. But in the first half of the 20th century, there were 50 million sets of those things sold in the United States, which is an astounding amount. That's basically every house

in America had a pair of this. And that really kind of made Ohio art like a very viable business. But they eventually got into things like sand pails and little trucks and that kind of thing. Anything that was printed with metal before the time that plastic toys came along, they were into. So it wasn't a huge leap. into the etch of sketch but the etch of sketch was definitely different than anything that they'd ever kind of messed around with before did you know i've done metal lithography no yeah it was one of our uh in industrial arts it was you know at least at my school each quarter you did a different medium or whatever and uh lithography was something we did one quarter do you remember what you

printed uh i'm trying to remember what i printed It's funny. I can remember that because we also, one quarter was screen printing. And I remember the T-shirts. I did monkeys' t-shirts. Like the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil monkeys? No, the band, the monkeys. Their logo with the guitar spelled out as monkeys. Like, wow, did you draw it yourself? No, no, no, of course not. But we did metal sheet lithography. I don't remember all of the process.

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

and apply this like image with like this gel onto a metal sheet and use this combination of chemicals that would burn that into like make it part of the metal and then all of a sudden you would have a metal sheet with a thing on it like a negative image and then you would use that in the printing process to print a positive image right and you could use that to print on to anything including other metal right well hey man that's where my knowledge and again this was ninth grade me so I've forgotten a lot of things over that time period. Right.

And I'm sure I just but that's my one little dance with metal lithography. Well, I'll tell you who would be able to tell us exactly how metal lithography works. It's anybody who works at Ohio Art because not only was that

their bread and butter before the etches sketch, it still is today, actually. So Ohio Art, like, I guess gets in touch with Andre Casson and either he got in touch with them again

or they got in touch with him. I think it was the latter of the two and said, hey, we heard you're selling this for 100 grand. It's way too rich for our blood. How about either 15,000 or 25,000, depending on who you ask in the future? And Casson is like, what are you talking about? They're like, just take the money. And so they either got it for 15,000 or 25,000, which is still substantial. I mean, it was like around 100K or 200K,000, something like that, depending on which one it was.

And Casson was quite a happy man. There was a story where the guy who was running the show at Ohio Art and his wife went over to meet Andre Casson and just kind of have like an initial meeting and like shake his hand and all that and buy the license from him. And Casson was like welcome and had like this huge spread of baguettes and champagne and everything at his house, which is pretty cute. Because he was just like this humble guy who came up with a really great idea for a toy and was finally like selling it for a wad of cash. Interesting. A little on the nose. What, the baguettes in champagne? Yeah, but, you know, what are you going to do?

When in France, right? So he is, once he's on board with Ohio art, he gets together with their chief engineer, Jerry Berger, and says, and Berger's like, listen here, Frenchie, you need to drop the joystick. It's all knobs these days. And he said, what is a knob? And he was like, well, let me show you.

And he introduced the idea of the same system like you were talking about, but knobs instead of a joystick to move that little line horizontal or vertical. Or, as you pointed out, if you're really talented, and you can master both at once, you can actually do root-it-well, if you're really good, you can do very nice curved lines. Yeah, beyond rudimentary. No, neither am I. I can make a line go up and a line go to the left or right.

Yeah, we'll get to the... I can't even make it go down. We'll get to the art of it, maybe at the end, but because there are some serious artists out there doing some cool stuff. But at any rate, Etchusketch, it was rebranded as Etchusketch in the United States, Ohio Arts producing them for the 1960 holiday season,

and they sold about 600,000 of these that year, which is a... It's a lot. Yeah, and they sold it for a lot of money, too. they went for sale at $2.99 a piece, which is $2564 in today's money. But, I mean, if you go buy an Etchusket today, it's between $10 and $15. So that was a lot of money, especially to sell $600,000 of these things. Especially if you were selling, like, creepy metal wastebaskets with an unsettling clown painted on it or printed on it, like, right before this.

This is a huge, it was a good move by the people. at Ohio Art to buy the license to this thing, in other words. And they say, Chuck, that it coincided really perfectly with television, so much so that they believe, like, that is one of the reasons why Jerry Berger was like, you need knobs. This thing needs to look like a TV set because that's what's all the rage with the kids right now. Yeah, and he, it was one of the first toys to actually do a TV commercial. And so if it's 1960 and you're a child watching,

First of all, your mind is blown because you're watching a television to begin with. It's just like, I can't believe this. I can't believe what's going on right now. Then a TV commercial comes on for a toy, and this toy has animation in it to where, like, they would etch-a-sketch a little rocket ship, and then that rocket ship would animate and take off. And this was like, these kids might have, I mean, keep in mind, kids in 1960 were idiots, but they might as well have been dosed with LSD. you know they just kept fainting over and over again throughout the commercial because they could not believe what they were seeing and it's just it's just an etchus sketch you know yeah but it's genius i love it it is but it really i think the the point was though that like taking advantage of the novelty of tv and also now having a way like if you, we just tried to explain an Etchusketch over a podcast. Prior to TV, if that

Etchisket could come out during like the Little Orphanian radio era, they would have had to have done the same thing. It wouldn't have landed quite as well. The fact that a kid could see this happening on their TV screen was pretty awesome. And then also to say, and then you just shake it, turn it upside down and shake it and coat the glass screen again and your drawing is gone forever, like to be able to see that, TV made the etchice sketch what it was, like, for sure. It definitely ushered it into a position where it could become like a cultural icon of nostalgia. Yeah, I mean, you know, they perfected it by the time they started rolling off in 1960.

Prior to that, like any product like this, it was a lot of R&D. One of the people who worked there talked about the mountain of red frames behind the factory while they were trying to get it right. And it was such a huge smash hit out of the gate That as legend has it They were manufacturing up until noon on Christmas Eve Just to get them to the West Coast in time for Christmas morning Yeah, that's pretty cool

I mean they really wanted those kids to have those Etcher Sketches They really wanted that money Should we take another break? Yeah All right, we'll talk about some ways etch-a-skechets Ebbed and Flood in popularity and pop culture over the years read for this No one can resist

a rule of culture So here's one for the dating files Rule of Culture number 72 Chemistry isn't just vibes, it's values Because what's the point of matching with someone If you can't talk about the shows you binge The books you dog ear Or all the hot takes you'll defend it brunch

I mean you definitely have friends who have met their partners on Bumble, and it makes sense. It's not just about matching with someone. It's about finding someone who gets your references, your obsessions, your whole vibe. With shared interests and prompts, you don't just see a profile. You get a glimpse of someone's personality, which makes it even easier to start conversations that actually lead somewhere. Plus, with photo and ID verification, you can trust that the person you're talking to is real.

With that added peace of mind, it's so much easier to show up as your full self. So whether your rule of culture is, the best first dates start with the shared hot take on Renaissance, or compatibility as having the same hometown bodega order, download Bumble and turn those connections into something bigger. Download Bumble and start your love story. It's 5.23 p.m. One of your kids is asking for a snack. Another is building a fort out of your clean laundry.

And you're staring at a half-empty fridge and thinking, what are we even going to eat tonight? Or you could just hello-fresh it. With over 80 recipes to choose from every week, including kid-friendly ones, even for picky eaters, you'll get fresh. ingredients and easy step-by-step recipes delivered right to your door.

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But somehow, they tend to eat the vegetables they made themselves. Try HelloFresh today and get 50% off the first box with free shipping. Go to Hellofresh.com and use promo code dinner 50. That's hellofresh.ca promo code dinner 50, Hellofresh.ca.

Hellofresh. Canada's number one meal kit delivery service. I'm Stefan Curry, and this is Gentleman's Cut. I think what makes Gentleman's Cut different is me being a part of developing the profile of this beautiful finished product with every sip you get a little something different. Visit gentlemen's cut bourbon.com

or your nearest Total Wines or Bevmo. This message is intended for audiences 21 and older. Gentleman's Cup bourbon, Boone County, Kentucky. For more on Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, please visit gentleman's cut bourbon.com. Please enjoy responsibly. Chuck, I don't know if we said it or not,

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

Yeah, like the Mitt Romney one increased sales like 30%. I guess everybody was like, oh, it's just sketch. I forgot about that. I think I'll go buy one right now. Well, they actually branded after that Republican and Democrat Etchish sketches, though, didn't they? Yeah, so you could

buy a red one or a blue one, but both of them came with a sticker, which I'm I'm assuming that they printed on their metal lithography presses of a donkey and an elephant like playing Tugawar on the front of the White House lawn. Yeah, that's just crazy. It is, but it's also, that's smart, you know. That's how you make the money. And then, of course, in the movie Toy Story from Pixar, that was one of the characters' name was Etch and had the fastest knobs in the West. Yeah.

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

is the fact that they have tried stuff with batteries and, like, like things that connect to your computer over the years. And nothing has managed to improve on the original Etchusketch. Like there was, do you remember the Etchusket animator? No. So I couldn't quite place it either, but I went and watched an old ad. It was big in the 80s. And it was basically like an Etchus sketch, but there was nothing mechanical about it.

It was digital. You're creating like a bitmap digital picture. And then you'd press like, I guess, play or something like that, and it would just kind of run it like a flip book over and over again. So your etchice sketch drawing, like, came to life. But kids were like, nah, I'd rather have the original Etchus sketch because the Etch Sketch animator went away, and the Etchusketch is still available today.

Yeah, I mean, there have been other variations. They had the Doodle Sketch, the plug-in play, which this sounds like a bad idea. A plug-in play allows you to draw on the TV screen. that's just asking for trouble as a parent. Sure. And then the mobile app, which I've been playing with today. Oh, how's it going? Well, I mean, what do you think of this picture?

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

works much better than something with a lot of stuff in the background but it's fun. Right. Yeah. You know, I like it. I was reading reviews of the app. I didn't try it myself like you, but it did say

like if it's a basic picture, it'll look way more etchice sketchy. Yeah, so my official review is eh, not bad. So three stars out of six? Sure. I mean, for something that down unloaded it in 30 seconds and was free.

Right. I'm going to give it a half a thumb up. There you go. So one of the things that has kind of kept Etchusketch alive for, like, the younger kids, I read this article about Etchusketch, and it was right before they sold. So a lot of people don't know that Ohio Art doesn't make Etchisketch anymore. They sold it to a brand called Spin Master. I didn't see that.

Yeah, it's not Ohio Art. Ohio Art, said, we're going back to metal lithography, and that's what they did. So they sold Etchusketch off to Spin Master. Spin Master was like, that's fine with us. Baby, thanks for all these licenses. I mean, etchusketch, a frozen-branded etch-sketch is, it might as well just be like a printing press for money, right? Yeah. So it was probably a pretty good buy for Spin Master.

And Ohio Art was like, this thing is great. It was a good run while it lasted, but they also had to oversee it through some really dark times. Because, well, for one thing, like, Etchisketch, is it landing with the millennials, I get the impression like it used to with the baby boomers? That was one thing. And Ohio Artos almost went bankrupt because of it back in, like, 2001. They managed to get some more money back into the business and stay afloat. But part of that also was they had to send the manufacturing of the Etchusketch off to China, which they were really unhappy about. because they lost like 35 jobs in tiny little Brian, Ohio.

But eventually, like 15 years later, they said, you know what? We're getting out of the Etch-Sketch business and sold it off to Spin Master. Which is a weird name. But one of the things, it's a little weird. Ohio art's a little weird, too. You don't associate Ohio with art, you know? Oh, uh-oh. You just don't.

I'll say it again. Tell that to Chrissy Hind, the Black Keys. No, Chrissy Hein gets what I'm saying, for sure. So one of the things, though, that is keeping Etchusketch relevant, the reason why, like, if you walk up to, like, a 17-year-old and say, what do you think about Etchusketch? They say, oh, yeah, I've heard of that. Because every once in a while you'll see on the Internet's a photo or two

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

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

which looks like something a toddler did. Yeah, and I mean, like, that's a really good point. When you're making a good etchice sketch drawing, it is all one single line. Frequently doubled back over, and etchice sketch artists will use like that frame. They'll create a line frame. around the edges that they can travel back out to and move around the picture like that.

Pretty brilliant. Yeah, there's a guy named George Vlosich III, who's known for some pretty amazing portraits of Muhammad Ali, Barack Obama, and Brown James. There's an artist named Jane Labovich, or Labovich, maybe. She calls herself Princess Etchusketch. She's done some amazing, like, architectural detail with it. And then there's a guy named Ryan Burton who does Erotic Simpson's art. there you go

with the etch-a-sketch and all three of them are like really good at the etch-sketch drawings yeah the fanfic of etch-a-sketch are artists interesting

and then apparently when you're very satisfied with your etch-a-sketch and you don't want anything to happen to it you drill a hole in the back and get the aluminum powder out and then you lock

the knobs to keep them from being turned then you have an etch-a-sketch-masterpiece that you can hang in a museum oh so that makes it permanent Yeah. So when a kid comes in the museum and rips it off the wall and shakes it, nothing happens. No.

No. And I think by law you're allowed to pick up that kid and shake it. Yes, I think so. As long as it's not a baby. Don't shake a baby. Right, no, never shake a baby. Come on. Yeah.

I would never advocate shaking a baby, everybody. I just want to go on record as saying that. You know the comedian Nate Bargazzi? No. He's great. He's got a very funny bit about shaking babies. Oh, yeah? Believe it or not.

It takes a lot to turn that into something funny. Yeah, he did it, man. Good for him. Nate Bergatsi, huh? Nate Bergotsi, dude, you would love him. He's great. So Nate Bergazzi just became a cultural icon because we did not see him coming up in this episode. That's right.

Well, if you want to know more about Nate Bergotsi, you should go check him out on the internet like I'm going to. And since I said Nate Bergotsie, it's time for listener mail. Man, I hope someone tells Nate we're plugging him. I'm plugging away Plugging Nate All right here I'm going to mention This is about Jerry

And her eating And this is from Kim Cooper Did you see this Jerry? She says no Hey guys I notice that you often mention What Jerry is eating a lot During the podcast

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

You could dip your thumb in her soup. And sometimes I threaten to. I don't know how she close she is to your microphones, but I never hear her eating, which is good for your fans with misophonia. But I'm curious why she chooses this time to eat. Do you guys spend all day podcasting, and that's the only time she can fit it in? No. No. A silly question that popped into my head listening to this week after Josh said,

and there's Jerry eating, God knows what. Anyway, guys, she's got me interested in trying miso Tell her she's doing a great job Because I don't know Because I know she doesn't get too many shoutouts And Josh and Chuck, you guys are pretty great too That is from Kim Cooper Thanks Kim

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

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

Okay. What do you just add that to, is it an ingredient? Yeah, for like soups and miso soup. Stuff like that, yeah. But you can just eat the paste. Okay. And live to tell about it. I'm proof.

Well, if you want to get in touch with us to talk about Jerry, we're always fine with that. You can go to Stuff You Should Know.com, find out all of our social links. And you can always send us an email. Attention, everybody. We have a new email address. Wow, wow. Wahoo. It is Stuff Podcast at iHeartPodcastnetwork.com.

How about that? For more on this and thousands of other times. Topics, visit How StuffWorks.com. I know he has a reputation, but it's going to catch up to him. Gabe Ortiz is a cop. His brother Larry, a mystery Gabe didn't want to solve until it was too late. He was the head of this gang. You're going to push that line for the cause.

Took us under his wing and showed us the game, as they call it. When Larry's killed, Game Must Untangle a dangerous past, one that could destroy everything he thought he knew. Listen to the Brothers Ortiz on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Stefan Curry, and this is Gentleman's Cut. I think what makes Gentleman's Cut different is me being a part of developing the profile of this beautiful finished product. With every sip, you get a little something different. Visit Gentleman's Cut Bourbon.com or your nearest total wines or bell. of Mo. This message is intended for audiences 21 and older.

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