Stuff You Should Know - What is a Mold-A-Rama?

Episode Date: February 6, 2018

In the 1960s, a very cool machine debuted at the Seattle World's Fair - the Mold-A-Rama. It made real plastic toys on-demand from melted plastic pellets, to the delight of children and adults alike. They didn't last too long, but can still be found at various locations all over the United States and their retro-cool stylings are still a hit. Learn all about these cool machines today. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

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

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

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, if you live in Boston, D.C., St. Louis, Cleveland, and Denver, we are coming to see you. That's right, stuff you should know live, brand new topic. So if you're traveling from a nearby state

where you've seen us before, this will be new and exciting and awesome. Yep, on March 4th and 5th, we're gonna be in Boston and D.C. On May 22nd and 23rd, we're gonna be in St. Louis and Cleveland. And then on June 28th, we're going to be in Englewood, meaning Denver, Colorado.

So come see us and you can get tickets and information at sysklive.com. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry over there. And this is Stuff You Should Know, Arama.

There you go. You know, it's kind of funny that you did that little doot-doot-doot-do because I'm gonna go ahead and plug this right off the top. Okay. We're doing this show on Mold Arama, which, spoiler, is a machine that makes, that made and still makes these little plastic things.

But it has maybe one of the worst trade names ever. Mold Arama? Yeah. So I'm gonna go ahead and plug this. There's a YouTube video from this young lady where she shows off her Mold Arama little plastic toys that she's collected. CarpetBagger.org, Mold Arama, just look up at YouTube.

She is adorable and she's the best. And when she shows her suitcase full of Mold Arama plastic toys, she does a little song and it's just adorable and great. I gotta check that out. I saw her use one of the Disneyland Toy Factory Mold Aramas. Yeah. I saw that.

So I know who you're talking about. She's great. So that was nice of you, Chuck. Well, let's wait for everybody to come back from watching her YouTube video, shall we? Okay. Let's wait for, I think, five or six minutes. And done.

Yes. Time passes faster here at Stuff You Should Know, doesn't it? It does. I'm 80 years old. So with, like you said, Mold Arama, it is a, I've seen it described as a factory in a case. Okay.

I thought that was a pretty apt description. But for those of you who don't know, it is basically an on-demand injection blow molded plastic toy dispenser. That's a technical definition for it. And while that might not make sense yet, it all will make sense in about 30 or so minutes. All right, how about this?

Picture this. All right, let's start over. Should we, wait, should we edit my part out? No, no, no, let's leave this all in. All right, good. Picture this, you walk into a room, let's say it's the Sears Tower, not Willis Tower. Is it Willis?

Oh yeah, that was Willis Tower. Sears Tower, who keeps calling it Willis Tower? Stop that. Sears Tower or a World's Fair or something. And there is a machine that looks sort of like a jukebox from 50 feet away. Oh yeah, that's a good way. And then you walk up closer to it and you're like,

oh wait, what is this weird mechanical thing? Let me put in 50 cents. And right before your very eyes, it will mechanically create a little plastic toy of an alien or a building or a lion at a zoo and it will spit it out and you will say, that was just melted from plastic and molded and shaped and given to me right in front of my eyes.

What a fun, neat thing. Right, and you'll say all this after you recover from fainting from the fumes of melted plastic and then get up and get your toy out, which is good because they say that you should wait a half a minute for your toy to cool before you grab it from the mold aroma. Right.

I think that was a pretty good job you just did of describing it. And I think this is super neat because this reminds me of a bygone era like where I went to Nashville recently and went to Jack White's Third Man Records and he has one of those booths where you can go in and record a record.

What'd you record? Well, I didn't do it, a chickened out. What I wanted to do was go in and sing a little song for my daughter and give it to her as a record. Oh. And I was thinking, like, what could I do? What do I know? And my brain, by heart,

because I have a little guitar you can take in there. And it was such a small room and it was in the room with everything else. And I just got weirdly shy. Like, I don't want people to hear me. You got shy, Jack White made you shy, huh? Yeah, I didn't want to do it in front of people. Like, if there was literally no one in there,

I would have cut 10 records. Oh, I got you. You should have stuck your head out and been like, can you all just leave for a little while? Just trust me. Wow. But anyway, this reminds me of those days gone by where you could cut your own record

or, you know, they had these really cool machines at fairs and things that they just, I mean, now I guess you can still get your picture taken and printed digitally. Or the penny smasher that's still around too. I see that compared to this a lot. Yeah, those are cool. Not really, but still, it's an app comparison.

I will just say, I'm surprised that my brother doesn't have a Moldorama in his basement. So I am too, because there's a guy who collects these things called Moldville, and I saw videos of his collection. Did you see this? Yeah. It's like a warehouse full of mint conditioned

Moldorama machines. This guy must be richer than an astronaut. He's got so many of these machines. And you're right about this, it evoking the memories of a bygone era. But what's crazy, Chuck, is that these things are still in use today. You can find them all over the country.

Yeah. And they're still working, and this is what's amazing to me. They are the original machines that were made for about a seven year period during the 1960s. Every Moldorama machine that you might encounter, including 10 at the Toledo Zoo, by the way. That's awesome.

We're built in the 60s and have been operational ever since. Should we talk about the history? Well, first let me ask you this. Did you ever use a Moldorama when you were a kid? No. Oh, you didn't? No, and I'm dying now to go do one as an adult. So they're still around?

Yes. They're still around. I actually, I got one that there's this thing in Toledo called, well, actually it's in Maumee, which is a suburb of Toledo, but it's called Children's Wonderland. And it's like this amazing 3D Christmas walkthrough diorama basically that just nothing can put you

in the Christmas spirit as a kid better than Children's Wonderland. And at the end of this, there was a Moldorama machine and it made a gold, smelly, plasticky angel. It was kind of boring, a boring Christmas angel, but it was mine and I was so glad to have it. And I have no idea what happened to it. I'm sure it broke pretty quickly,

but I was like, holy cow, I've had one of these before. I had no idea what it was called that it was Moldorama, but I looked it up and actually found the angel. Well, I think that's the cool thing about these as a kid is it's not putting your quarter in a gumball machine and seeing all those things and one of them falls out. This is made just for you right in front of your face. Yep, pretty cool.

All right, so now can we go back in time? Yeah, yeah, I'm done. I'm done nostalgizing. All right. Wait, what is it, reminiscing? Sure, okay. Nostalgizing, I think that's a word, right? It is now.

All right, we're going back to 1937 in the winter when one J.H. Miller, tyke is his nickname. I don't know what that comes from. Was he little? I don't, not that I saw. Well, because it's spelled differently, T-I-K-E. Yeah, I don't know what it means. Anyway, of Quincy, Illinois, he was,

he made figurines, he and his wife made figurines and they needed a replacement for his nativity scene. I guess his little baby Jesus was decapitated by his dog. He needed a new one and he couldn't find a place to sell him just one little piece. Yeah. You gotta buy the whole nativity scene. And he was like, what am I gonna do with that?

Yeah, he said, I just needed one. If you could understand the department store's position, like if they sell you just one piece, there's a whole set that they can't sell because who wants that set without the one piece, right? Unless it's like maybe a donkey. Maybe, I remember the donkey, that was a good one though. That was one of my favorites as a kid.

But anyway, he and his wife said, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna take these lemons and make them into lemonade in the form of making our own little plaster replacement figure. And apparently they were pretty good at it because they ended up doing this for a living and founding a company doing this because the Germans evidently had the market cornered

on nativity pieces. And when World War II came around, they said, nine, four, you, and we had a shortage. Yeah, all we wanted was Liberty figures is what they called them during World War II, not nativity because the Germans had supplied us with nativity figures. So, American main ones, you could call Liberty figures.

Is that like Freedom Prize? Right, I think they actually called Sourcrout Liberty Cabbage. I'm not kidding. So, the tyke and his wife established this company and in World War II, it really kind of grew because they cornered the market and they just kept going from there. And then about 10 years after World War II,

they decided to move from plaster. And by the way, he started selling nativity figures, individual ones to those same department stores who would only sell them sets before, which I think is kind of sweet revenge. But they moved from plaster figures to plastic and got into a type of injection molding where air is blown into it, which saves on plastic

and creates a lightweight plastic figurine. And really honestly, nothing says 1950s Midwest more than plastic nativity figures, you know? Probably so, yeah. Made by a man named Tyke. Yeah, and I mean, they did pretty well for a little while. I guess I'm not sure exactly when the company was founded, but if in 1937 he came up with this idea

and they went bankrupt in 1959, it sounds like they added some good years in there. Yeah, they did. And I did not see why they went bankrupt. I saw they were nothing but successful. I don't know. I don't know if maybe they sunk a bunch of money into these machines and it just didn't quite make it or what,

but he was very successful. He had a line of plastic toys that kids would buy by the fistful at like the local five and dime or novelty store or something like that. And he had lines of like dinosaurs, I think toy soldiers, but the one that really put his company on the map as far as kids were concerned were called Earth Invaders. Also known as Miller Aliens.

And there was a line of tons of them, but the one that is still today the most prized of all was the purple people eater. And it actually inspired that song from the 50s, which I didn't realize that song was quite that old, but the song about the one-eyed one-eared flying purple people eater, that was based on Tike Miller's creation from the 50s.

I think it was the other way around. I don't think so. I think the song was based on the figure. This says here, the purple people eater was inspired by the hit song. Oh, I saw, I read that as the opposite. Thanks, good catch, Chuck. I think that's the case,

because that song was a big hit and there were all manner of purple people eater, souvenirs and things. Gotcha. It was a big business back then. Thank you for that one. No problem. We would've gotten some email from like three people on that.

Tike's a great grandson. Yeah. Little Tike. So in 59 or 60, they went bankrupt and it was right around this time where he said, all right, I've got this idea for an actual vending machine that could make these things on demand. And he was successful, he licensed this thing actually

to what would eventually become AmeriMark, which everyone knows that company's still around, the time they were called the automatic retailers of America. And he developed these machines with them. And in 1962, at the Seattle World's Fair, they premiered there doing little space needles and monorails. And Buddhist.

And Buddhist for like 50 cents, which is about four bucks today. So it was not a little cheap thing. It's not like sticking a dime in a machine today. Right, no, they were definitely expensive. But they were a huge hit at that Seattle World's Fair. That was what, 1962? Yep.

So in 1964, at the New York World's Fair, they blew up. They went from a couple of machines in Seattle, I guess three machines in Seattle, to as many as 150 at the New York World's Fair from 1964 and 1965. And even more than just having that many more machines, they also had branded machines, right? So like, if you were a company like Sinclair Oil or Disney,

and you wanted to just kind of give people an extra little amazing experience, you could license and brand your own Moldorama. And they had plenty of those at the World's Fair. Some pretty cool ones too. Yeah, so like you said, anywhere from Disneyland to Montreal's World Expo. And that's the cool thing is that Disney World

or Disneyland, there could be, I think they were some of the characters that were actually acting like they were working the machine. Right. It's kind of clever. Or if, you know, and you're in Montreal, it's gonna be Canadian Mounties or maybe an Eiffel Tower. Right, if you could contact the company,

get them to make you your own like signage, I guess, to put on the machine. And then most importantly, they would sculpt and then manufacture a mold from that sculpture, whatever you wanted, say your logo or your brand or something like that, some sort of statuette that had that, you could set it up and people would take home

your little branded Chachki. It was pretty cool. It was a big hit in the 60s. And to Aremarker, ARA at the time, they were like, well, this is great. But apparently they were just looking at the whole thing as a proof of concept because they had their sights on not just like on-demand novelties,

but on-demand everything, like on-demand dishware, on-demand jewelry, on-demand combs, on-demand ashtrays, that they felt like this was the future. Because at the time, you know, the early 60s, plastics was the future. It was pretty soon everything was gonna be made in plastic and no one was ever gonna have cancer from it a day in their life.

Right. You know, it was a plastically optimistic time. That's right. And in the end, they manufactured about 200 of these machines over a seven-year period. But by 1971, they said, you know what? ARA said, we're getting out of this Moldorama biz. Yeah.

Should we take a break? Yeah. We're gonna go press together our own little moldy dinosaur and be right back. MUSIC On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker

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

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper,

because you'll 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.

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

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

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

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Oh, stop, you should know. All right, Chuck.

So ARA gets out of the biz. And it's kind of understandable why. There's a couple of big problems with Moldorama machines. One, they're expensive to manufacture. They were, like, apparently $3,600 per at the time. That was back in 1962. So just under $30,000 today per machine. Per whole vending machine.

And then also, once you set these things up, they required almost constant attention. You had to go refill them with plastic. You had to top off the fluids. You had to fix any parts. You had to keep them clean. You had to get gum off of them. Because, again, these are interfacing with little kids.

So there was a lot of maintenance and upkeep to them as well. So ARA, ARAMark said, we're done. In the 70s, they sold off their machines to a couple of different groups. Yeah, I mean, this is a mechanical hydraulic machine that required oil and antifreeze. It was no, I mean, if it sounds like, and I mean, I guess we can go into the process a little bit.

It gets a little wonky for my taste. But I guess we should talk a little bit about how these actually work, right? Yeah, we kind of have to. And it'll be fun, I promise. You ready? Well, I will say this. First of all, there are hydraulics.

And there are these two molds. And you can go on YouTube and look at how these things work. It's pretty neat. These two molds, it's basically one half of the little toy on each side. Oh, yeah, like a three-dimensional sculptured statue, right? Yeah, so they move toward each other with these hydraulics.

And they're pressed together, forms a big seal. And it ends up being hollow on the inside. That's kind of a big point to make. It's a negative of the sculpture. Yeah. So then there's a couple of holes in the bottom that lead into that sculpture cavity. And into that, you inject hot plastic.

Because one thing that a lot of people don't realize about the mold-o-matic is just beneath this work surface that is the floor of what you can see, below that is a vat of 225 to 250-degree Fahrenheit molten plastic, just sitting there bubbling, hot. Yeah, little pellets. They feed it in little colored pellets.

Although for a little while, they actually had just kind of neutral pellets that they used colored powder. But they at least wised up there and said, why don't we just color the pellets and just stick with the one color? Yep. And then so the system has a closed steam system that runs hot steam through coils

that runs through these plastic pellet vat, this plastic pellet vat. And it melts the pellets and then keeps them molten. So then when the mold seals up above come together and form that seal, hot plastic is injected into the mold and fills it up. That's right. Hot plastic injection, great band name.

Yeah. And then these things, obviously, have to be cooled pretty quick in order for them to, I mean, what, solidify? Is that the right word? But when they do come out, like you said, they are warm. And I'm surprised. I mean, this seems like something that you could not create today without there being

so much liability on your hands. Well, again, they still are in use. You can still go to the Toledo Zoo, the zoos all over the Midwest in Florida and tourist attractions and rest stops. And you will find these things still in use. It's just so funny to me that it literally says on the little door that you open, hold upside down

while it cools. Don't let the molten plastic drip on little Timmy's hand. That's exactly right. So we got the injection molding part done. But there's one step that we missed. And that's the blow part that makes it injection blow molding. And this is how these companies manage to actually make money. And one of the reasons why the moldorama,

Chachkes, are so fragile is that they're hollow inside. So the mold is filled with hot plastic. And then compressed air is blown into it. And the compressed air does two things. One, it pushes the plastic against the mold. So it completely covers it. And it takes on this shape of the mold, right? And then it also blows the excess plastic out the bottom.

So it's hollow. And then that excess plastic goes back into the vat. And it's reused, right? Reused, exactly. So it might use enough plastic at first to make 10 of these things or five or something. I'm just totally guessing here. But then it reuses it by blowing it out the bottom

and making it a hollow object rather than a solid one. Right. OK. And then it comes out hot. They say, wait 30 seconds or half a minute, I think is how they put it. And the reason why they say hold it upside down is because there's still that hole at the bottom

that that little hot plastic can, like you said, burn Timmy's hands. That's right. The smell, Chuck, you've never smelled anything like it. Do you remember the smell? Yes, I can remember the smell. It was at the same time pleasing and totally noxious. Interesting.

Like as a kid, you're like, oh, this smells weird and cool. But as an adult, I'm sure you'd be like, this is going to kill my whole family. It's going to kill my great-grandchildren somehow. Well, back then no one cared. No, they didn't. You know, and like we said, tons of upkeep. You know, you've got steam.

You've got hydraulic fluid. You have antifreeze, sometimes cold water. But I would suspect antifreeze in most cases. Yeah. And until the 1970s, like I said, you had powdered coloring. I mean, this whole thing is, I'm surprised they didn't explode at any point. Yeah, one of the other things that I really admire about this

is that, again, the machines that are still in use today, that still work just as well as ever today, were built exclusively from 1962 to 1969 when Eremark was making them. And then these things also, because they put off these terrible fumes, they're kept outside. So they've been sitting in the elements for 50-plus years. And they still work.

They're pretty well-built machines, for sure. I think they've got some now that they have been able to move indoors. Yeah, from using a different type of plastic, I think. Yeah, it's crazy that these things had to be outside. Yeah, and they still are. Most of them are. A lot of them have built-in little canopies over them

or something like that. But if you look at the canopies, you can tell they're kind of new. They've been outside, basically, for 50 years. I'm so going to be on the lookout for these now. So there is a website, Chuck, called Waymarking, W-A-Y-M-A-R-K-I-N-G.com. They have a comprehensive list of every single Moldorama in use today in the United States.

And they have actual longitude and latitude coordinates, if you wanted to, I guess, geocache your way to them. Well, what I want is an app that will text to me when I'm within 500 feet of one. Oh, that's a good idea. There's a $10 app. By $10 app, I mean you would make $10. Yeah.

Although people are crazy for these things still, as we'll see. They're not in Atlanta, right? Not that I saw, no. But again, there's a bunch in Toledo. I found the machine that I almost certainly got my angel from. Oh, wow. They keep it in storage at Tamo Shanner, which is an ice skating rink, in, I guess, a Scottish ice

skating rink? I don't know, in Maumee, which is where they have children's wonderland. But I saw a picture of it. And now it looks like the most recent thing it makes is polar bears. And your DNA is on that machine still. It's somewhere in the form of a wad of gum.

All right, well, let's take another break. We'll come back and talk a little bit about some of these fun figures and the people that are still trying to keep this traditional life. 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.

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

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

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

Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Oh, stop, you should know. All right, so here's the thing that I wanted to know,

and that our article didn't get to till three quarters the way through. I was like, do they have different things for each machine? The answer, sadly, is no. If it spits out a dinosaur, it can only spit out a dinosaur unless you change up that mold. Yes, but you can change the color, and you'll have a different color dinosaur.

Well, until they started using the single color pellets. Right, well, no, then they just put in a different color when they refill the thing, and all of a sudden, it went from a purple dinosaur to a green dinosaur. Right, but could you say purple and hit a purple button? No. Or it's whatever the kid who worked there decided to put in that morning.

That's exactly right. The thing is, though, and again, it's not even just the toy that comes out. The toy is, especially as a kid, invariably disappointing. Sure. But it's the process. It's watching this thing happen. And the Molderama machines will have

little different lights that light up. Now we're cooling. Now we're about to launch the toy to you. It tells you what's going on, so you're following the process, which is at least probably 80% of the appeal of the whole thing. Stand back right now, because if I were to explode, it would be during this next eight seconds. You're right.

All right, so your mom who's standing there missing her one arm from saving you in a car wreck, it's like you probably should stand back. Exactly. No one knows exactly how many of these molds were made, but they're, like we said, our enthusiasts who collect these. And this one dude, Bill Bowman, who owns one and runs moldville.com, bad, bad URL there.

Right? Yeah, it is bad. I got to say, I looked it up, and it's a dead domain, but he's got a Facebook thing that he does now. That's where he's moved to. Yeah, that's where he went my space, and then he went Facebook. But there will never be another site better than Facebook,

so I'm sure it's all over, right? Probably. So his estimate is about 300 designs. I bet it's more than that. I don't know. This guy knows what he's talking about. That's true. He counted 196 original ones.

And then he said after the 60s, more people started to make them. They weren't just commissioned by Eremark, who was keeping track of these things. And I would say this guy's probably the person on Earth who could estimate how many there are the closest. And not just me guessing randomly.

But it's more. And what's cool, though, also is, again, like if you were, you could be anybody. If you wanted a mold aroma thing at your event, you could. It could happen. I found there was a Circleville Ohio Pumpkin Festival mold aroma figure.

Wonderful. So one of the 300 molds is a pumpkin from Circleville, Ohio's pumpkin fest in the 70s. Another one. So apparently, Toledo was crazy about these things. Because again, there's 10 at the Toledo Zoo. There's the one at Tamashana that I got a mind from. There was one in the 80s at the Toledo Mudhend Stadium.

And there's a Mudhend's figure, which is pretty cool, actually. And I looked and there's like zero for sale anywhere. But now I'm kind of on the lookout for that thing. But all you had to do was just make a mold, get your hands on one of these, and bam. Circleville, Ohio's pumpkin fest went from zero to hero. Right. And you too could have a snowman or a Grumman's

Chinese theater or a space lab or a Lawrence Welk. Yeah. Or a Titan missile. Yeah, NASA had a lot of these things, actually. I'm sure. What else was there? Well, the Lawrence Welk, none of those were jokes. Those are real.

Oh, yeah, for sure. There was a Titan 3C missile in a Lawrence Welk. It says other famous people. I'm kind of curious. I didn't see anybody besides President and Lawrence Welk. There was one of the Georgia State Capitol building. Oh, really? Yeah.

There were some cool ones, actually, the St. Louis Arch is surprisingly cool. You wouldn't think it'd be that cool. The Oscar Mayer Wiener Mobile. This one was kind of random. It's a Hyalai player. And then at the base, it says, Hyalai in Miami. OK.

The water skier from Cyprus, I think Cyprus Gardens, Florida. And the mermaids from Wikiwachi Springs, Florida. Oh, we talked about them. Oh, here's one. Universal Studios had one that made a Frankenstein coin bank. That's kind of cool. It is very cool. Like, a lot of these are actually super cool, especially

the original retro ones. You can actually see, I can't remember the woman's name, but there is a woman who was hired by one of the companies that still operate these things to start making molds. And she's been making them for the last 25 years. And compared to some of the ones from the 60s, she's just head and shoulders above the people who

were sculpting them then. These are really, really well-made sculptures, not only in the actual sculpture that she's making, but the decisions she's making produces just a better mold aromatoid. Because again, you're dealing with melted plastic in a mold that is two halves pressed together. There's a lot of details that can go wrong.

And this great sculptor is taking all of them into account, making some really boss ones. Like the Wiener Mobile, it's art to behold. There's the detail in it. It's really, really nice. Should we talk about a couple of these companies that are still going strong? Yeah, for sure.

Or at least going? No, they're going strong, man. OK. Good. There are a couple of them. One called Replication Devices, and one called Moldorama Incorporated. Replication Devices founded by Eldon Irwin, who bought

a bunch of these. It says dozens in the early 60s, eventually passed down through his family. And right now, his grandson and his wife, the Strigals in Florida, are operating 60 or 70 of these. Yeah, and let's think about this for a second. So Eldon Irwin bought dozens. Now they're up to 60, maybe 70.

And those Moldorama machines have supported three generations of this family. Fully? From what I understand, yes. I saw an interview with Tim Strigal, and he said he was surprised that the business was still going when his parents took it over. And now he, the grandson and his wife, operate it.

And yes, from what I understand, it fully supports it. The San Antonio Zoo estimated that they make 130,000 figurines a year from their one Moldorama. $2 a pop, that's 260,000 gross. Times 60 or 70. So yeah, they're doing just fine. This other one, Moldorama Inc. Like we're not asking anyone to open their books for us.

No, for sure. And I certainly don't want to shine a light on these people's finances. But I'm just saying, it's astounding to me that these machines built in the 60s, left out in the elements for 50 years, are managing to support three generations of the families who have been operating. I just think that's super cool.

Yeah. I mean, it sounds like people own car washes. Sure. Isn't it like a front always to launder money from drug sales? I would guess. I think it's low hanging, easy to buy. I'm just kidding.

Everyone out there that owns car washes. I've watched too much Breaking Bad. Oh, that's right. That's right. But I think that is like a legitimate thing. Like car washes are like. Yeah, cash businesses are ripe for the picking. I forgot they bought that car wash.

Yeah. So Moldorama Inc., like I said, William A. Jones Company, changed their name in 2011. But they got into this in 1971 when William A. Jones bought some of these from one of the guys who worked for the original Moldorama, then they expanded, bought more machines, and it is still a family business. Again, they got about 60 of them.

Yep. And they were the William A. Jones Company. And then I guess they got their hands on the Moldorama trademark in 2011, and they changed the name of the company to Moldorama Inc. again. Because that's originally what it was called back when Aremark was running it. Yeah.

They're mainly in the Midwest, Minnesota, Michigan, a bunch of them in Illinois and one in Texas, it looks like. Right. Not bad. And then every once in a while, you have just some independent operators like Knoxville Zoo owns their own. They apparently got theirs from Dollywood, which, man, Moldorama is at Dollywood.

They make your wig spin. There's this one cool thing I wanted to shout out. This toy store in Chicago, Roto Fuji, or Roto Fuji. I'm not sure how you pronounce it. I don't know. They repurposed their own Moldorama. They bought one and repurposed it that was originally the LA Zoo, and they call it the Roto-O-Matic.

And they have something called a Helper Dragon that you can get for six bucks. And if you look up the Helper Dragon in these dudes, it is clear that they're Simpsons fans. Did you see this thing? Yeah, I did. I saw a video of it, but it was kind of out of focus. Yeah, just Google image the Helper Dragon, Roto-O-Matic.

And it is, to me at least, clearly the Cyclops alien from the Simpsons with its head stuck on the body of a winged lion. Nice. That's my take on it. Very nice. And then there is this one other guy. He is a Disney World Imagineer named James Durand.

And he has built his own Moldorama called the Mini Molder. And you just look at this guy, you know he's an Imagineer, you look at this machine, and you're like, I would hire that guy to build and do anything because he's clearly a brilliant genius. Really cool looking thing. And a bit of a show off, frankly.

You think? No, I'm just kidding. So I've got two more things. The Moldorama used to be 50 cents in its original incarnation in 1962, which, again, thanks to our friends at West Egg Inflation Calculator, tells us this is about $4.12 in 2017 money. Today, you can get a Moldorama for $2, which means that

the price has gone down by half over the last 50 years. Oh, interesting. Pretty cool. And then lastly, so after Tike Miller got out of the Plastics Injection Molding business, he had another invention that he called the Golden Goat. And it was this big machine that apparently he invented to put out in parking lots at grocery stores.

And it would take up about two parking spaces. And customers would come in and put in their used aluminum cans. And then the Golden Goat would weigh it and then give them some money in return. And then it would compact those cans. And then later on, that aluminum would be sold as scrap for recycling.

The thing is, this was years before the green movement was ever even thought of. That's how ahead of his time this guy was. And I don't think the Golden Goat ever made him a lot of money, but it's a pretty cool invention that this guy had. He was one of those great Midwestern tinker inventor guys. Yeah.

Hats off to him. God bless all those people. Yep. So there you go. Nativity figures, plastic. If you want to know more about Moldorama, man, you can fall down a rabbit hole just looking at pictures of them on the internet.

So why don't you go do that? Take some time for yourself, you know? Why do you always have to work, work, work? Since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this just kind of a quick shoutout. We don't do these a lot because we get a lot of shoutout requests. But this one was adorable because it's a little kid.

So this is from Ginny. She's the mom. She says, how about a shoutout? My son Jake, he listens to every episode more than once. He's got me and many others into the show. And we love it. So young Jake is out there spreading the word. And we appreciate that, Jake.

And you love the show so much, you named, well, not quite yet, but Jake says he wants to get a puppy and call it Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And he says this, most of the time he will be called Chuck. But when he does something wrong, I'll be like, Charles W. Chuck Bryant, why did you do that? Well, Jake, we have a really big surprise for you. If you will go to your back door, I think you're going to

find something pretty special out there. I'm just kidding. No, we're just kidding, Jake. There's not a puppy at your back door unless your mom, Ginny, heard this beforehand and is the best mom in the world. Yeah, but your mom is the best mom in the world. Yeah, that was pretty cool of her to write in and let us know. So way to go, Jake, for listening to us.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you, Jake. Thank you, Ginny. We count, literally count on people like you to spread the word, so we appreciate it. Good luck with your eventual puppy, too. And Charles W. Chuck Bryant.

When he's bad. If you want to tell us about your cute kid, we want to hear about him or her. You can tweet to us at joshumclark or at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can post it on facebook.com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant or slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com And as always, join us at our home on the web,

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