Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - Flexi Discs

Episode Date: June 13, 2026

This week, we look at a humble marketing tool.The Flexi Disc.These razor-thin, flexible vinyl records had poor sound quality, but they helped sell cars, hit songs, chewing gum, soap operas and even Beatle records.And in one case, a family won a million dollars with a flexi, and it nearly destroyed them.We know you want to listen to all the ads in this show. On the off-chance you don’t, subscribe ad-free here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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That's a spicy meatboard. What love doesn't conquer. Alka-Seltzer will. What a relief. You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. 1969 was a great year for music. Songs like Honky Talk women, Elvis's suspicious minds, and Neil Diamond's classic Sweet Caroline topped the charts.

But one song outsold all those classic tunes. It was named the Song of the Year in 1969. But here's the thing. The group behind the song didn't really exist. And that was 20 years before Millie Vanilli. Don Kirshner was a music promoter. He had a talent for spotting talent. He and a partner started a publishing company called Alden Music.

At various times, Alton had some of the top songwriters under contract, including Carol King and Jerry Gougham, Neil Sedaka, Paul Simon, Neil Diamond, and Bobby Darren. Kirchner was also a music consultant for a number of TV shows, including The Monkeys sitcom. From his stable of writers in the Brill building, Kershner had hits written for the monkeys, including Last Train to Clarksville, and the Neil Diamond penned, I'm a believer. When the fictional monkeys began to get irritated at being micromanaged by Kershner,

it led to a clash that got Kersner fired. Kersner still craved creative control, but he didn't want a repeat of the monkey's fiasco. Then one day, he had an idea. Kershner decided to create a group that didn't exist. He had been hired as a music consultant to the new Archie's cartoon series. So Kershner struck a deal with the producers. He would supply songs to the show,

and he would create a fictional band called the Archies, ostensibly made up of the animated Archie characters. But the band would actually consist of studio musicians and session singers. If anyone rebelled, Kershner could easily replace them. The first song Kershner supplied was, was Bang Shang-Lang, which went to number 22 on the Billboard chart. Next came, feeling so good, which didn't feel so good, peaking at number 53. Then came a huge hit, composed by Jeff Berry and Canadian Andy Kim.

It was titled Sugar Sugar, Sugar. Sugar Zoomed to number one on the Billboard Hot 100, where it stayed for four straight weeks, hip-checking honky-talk women off the top spot. According to some reports, Sugar Sugar sold upwards of 6 million copies. It was named the top song of 1969. Part of the reason the song became such a monster hit

had to do with an unusual marketing strategy. A cardboard flexi of the song was embossed on post-sereal boxes of Sugarcrisp, Honeycomb, and Alphabets. So kids could cut the Flexi out of the actual cereal box and put it on a turntable. The cardboard cereal records gave Sugar Sugar a huge boost, as it's estimated the song was put on over 5 million cereal boxes.

Flexi discs hold a unique spot in the world of marketing. These razor-thin, poorly-sounding records became a cheap way to sell a lot of products. Flexys also helped sell a lot of records, as flexies would often be, the very first records that kids ever owned. Flexi disks were also a novel way to promote contests. And in one of our stories today, a family won a million dollars and a million heartaches. You're under the influence. The flexi disc is an unusual little item. They are ultra-thin, flexible vinyl sheets, sometimes round, often square records, the size of a 7-inch 45. They have poor sound quality, can only be played a small number of times before wearing out,

and you usually needed to place a coin on the flexi to add weight so it would spin at the same speed as the turntable. For all its drawbacks, flexies were a powerful marketing tool. Believe it or not, flexi disks have been around for more than 100 years. Back in 1903, European inventors took out patents on something they called, called Talking Postcards. They were actual postcards that had a thin, almost transparent piece of resin attached to it with a spindle hole punched into the middle. A short voice message could be recorded onto the phonographic grooves of the resin.

The postcard could then be mailed and played back on a turntable. And the lightweight of the postcard didn't cause any appreciable increase in postage costs. They were a hit in Germany and the UK. A few years later in the United States, patents were filed for something called phonogram cards. These were small cards with miniature thin phonographs attached, but unlike Europe, they were mostly used for advertising purposes. They were cheap to produce and easy to ship.

In the 1930s, the Duriam Company created a hit of the week, week series of very popular cardboard records. Even though the only sold for a couple of nickels at newsstands, the first golden age of flexi disks was stopped in its tracks by the Depression. The post-World War II boom brought many manufacturing companies back to life, including the recording industry. This time, instead of selling the flexi discs, companies saw them as inexpensive yet powerful promotional tools. For just pennies apiece, flexies were an ideal way to get an audio message out to the masses. The best thing about flexies was how flexible they were when it came to formats.

They could even be stamped onto old X-ray films. Because there was a vinyl shortage behind the Iron Curtain, black market entrepreneurs transferred the forbidden music of the West onto X-ray films that had been discarded from hospitals. Called Bone Records, the grooves of the audio were imprinted into the thin X-ray film. They were then hand cut into a circular shape, and a center hole was created using the lid end of a cigarette. Meanwhile, in North America, Wrigley's gum-produced flexes of a radio program it sponsored

called Mert and Marge. It was a soap opera that featured two chorus girls. who apparently competed for the same parts and the same men. By distributing the flexies, Wrigley hoped to attract more people to the radio show. Riggley presents Merck and Mars. How do you do? May we come in? May I present Merce?

How do you do? And Mars. How do you do? We've come to see you for just a moment to let you hear Merchant Marge in action. May we use your home for a studio? Thank you. Carmaker Dodge mailed out Christmas Flexis

to promote its upcoming 1958 model line, hiring TV host Lawrence Welk to deliver a wonderful, wonderful Yuletide message. Hello, folks, this is Lawrence Welk, bringing you special Christmas greetings from all the champagne music makers on behalf of your nearby Dodge dealer. Chevrolet knew a good thing when they heard it and issued its own Flexi, starring Canadian actor Lorne Green. Hi, this is Lauren Green. You know, Ben Cartwright of Bonanza.

The boys and I are sure you're going to find this mighty good listening. The Flexi was mass mailed to people hoping to prompt a visit to their nearest Chevy dealer. Bing Crosby was a big fan of promotional discs and created a company to manufacture them called Bing Crosby Phonocards, Inc. One of the flexi discs he created was found on the plastic lid of Borden's, creamed country-style cottage cheese. One of the most popular Flexi Disc series in the 1960s came courtesy of the Beatles. Every year, the Fab Four would issue an exclusive Christmas message for their fan club members. The idea came from Beatles' PR manager Tony Barrow.

The Flexys featured photos of the Beatles and gave Barrow an opportunity to tuck a newsletter inside the sleeve. The first flexi was sent out to 30,000 loyal fans in 1963. Hello, this is John speaking with his voice. We're all very happy to be able to talk to you like this on this little bit of plastic. This record reaches you at the end of a really gay year for us, and it's all due to you. George thanked Fan Club Secretary Anne Collingham, even though there was, in fact, no such person. Anne Collingham was a pseudonym for all the secretaries who handled the endless bags of fan mail. I'm George Harrison. Nobody else has said anything together about our fan club secretaries and

calling him and Bettyina Rose. Not to mention Frieda Kelly in Liverpool. With the exception of 1965, the Beatles put out a Christmas flexi every year from 63 to 69. Because the Fab Four flexis were never sold in stores, they're worth quite a bit of money today. Breakfast cereals also featured a form of flexies. In the 1950s, Wheaties issued a number of cereal box records. A micro-grove plastic film was stamped onto the side of the actual cereal box itself. Kids could cut the cardboard record out of the box and pop it on the turntable. It's a record of Mickey Mouse singing Happy Mouse.

And here's where you can get this famous Walt Disney's Mousketeer record. It's part of the front of this special Wheaties' Box. and it's a real record, not just a picture, but an actual record you can play over and over again. Just cut it out, punch out the center hole, and look, all ready to play on any 78 RPM manual control record player. Later, starting in the 60s, popular band started marketing songs with cereal box records. It was a smart way to market music, as record labels could bypass the cost and politics of radio programming, and market new records directly to fans.

Record labels were able to groom their next target fan base, as these cereal box records were often the very first records kids ever owned. Once the Flexys wore out, kids would then buy the singles and albums. Along with the aforementioned Archie's serial box record, other groups used Flexis to attract new fans. For example, the Jackson 5 song ABC could be found on boxes, of alphabets. The sound quality wasn't very good,

but kids cut them out by the thousands. In 1970, four different monkeys hit songs appeared on post-serial boxes, keeping the monkeys popular, even though their TV show had ended two years earlier. And that was for all the kids at Central High. And kids, if you enjoy good music and good cereal, here's an offer you won't want to miss.

Now you can get all the monkeys' greatest hits free on post-alphabets. Honeycombs and frosted rice crinkles. Let's lesson. Hey, hey, with a monkey. Twelve great songs. Four on apple. That's, four on honeycombs, four on new rice crinkles.

One song, three on each box. The monkey's greatest hits. Free from those music lovers at post. When we come back, Mad Magazine creates a mad flexi disc idea. If you're enjoying this episode, you might also like The Pompatiss of Skippy. When brand names show up in hit songs from our 2019. season. We tell the story of how the kinks had to re-record one word in their hit song, Lola, because they mentioned a brand name in the original lyric. You'll find the episode

in our archives on your favorite podcast app. Mad Magazine put out an interesting flexi disc in 1979 titled It's a Super Spectacular Day. The Flexi had eight different parallel grooves, so depending on where you drop the needle, you got eight different stories. Drop it here and it's a great big, beautiful, wonderful, incredible super spectacular day and your heart is humming with good times coming and you've got that happy feeling things are going your way. Bird singing while he sits on your windowsill saying yes sirry

I can surely see it'll plainly be most definitely a super spectacular day. Oh, you tell? But if you drop the needle here... You develop a twitch and a horrible itch and you're covered with spots and you're getting the trots and your feet start the swelling that's easy to tell from this hideous wheeze and some awful disease. So you call an MD and he says, don't ask me.

If it gets any worse, you can speak to my nurse and you manage to say as you wither away that it's not just a super spectacular day. Inventive madness from the folks at Mad. In the 1980s, every kid's meal at Burger King came with one of several paper flexies, titled The Many Faces of Elf, the songs were sung by Alf from the sitcom Alf. As you may remember, Alf, ALF stood for alien life form, as Alf was an alien from the planet

Melmac who crashed landed in the garage of a middle-class family. In this Burger King promotion, each Flexi came with an Alf hand puppet, and kids could get a $3 rebate on Alf plush toys by sending a mail-in coupon that came with the flexies. This flexi features Alf singing about Melmac girls. Burger King distributed 4.5 million Alf flexi discs, and today they are collector's items. Flexi discs were also a great vehicle for contests. In 1986, Quaker Oates produced five flexi discs, which were tucked inside specially marked packages of granola dips. The contest was called Great Moments in Rock and Roll, and the discs featured stories and

songs from Bon Jovi, the Bengals, the alarm, the psychedelic furs, as well as a tribute to John Lennon. Over 20,000 prizes were given out, and you had to listen to the very end of the Flexi to see if you were a winner. One of the most infamous flexi stories was for the McDonald's menu song contest. Back in 1989, McDonald's put their entire menu into a song, then mounted a large advertising campaign to promote it. I may take your order, please.

Big Mac, McDLT, a quarter pounder with cheese, fillet, a fish, a hamburger, a cheeseburger, McChicken, and McNuggets, tasty gold and French fries, regular, and larger size of salad, chef for garden or chicken salad, Oriental, and for breakfast, steak, big buff and hot a cake, and sausage, Baby, um, I'll let big buffins, all three kinds of Danish hashmas, two and four dessert, hot apple pies, and sundays, three varieties, three varieties, three kinds of shakes and chocolate, and chip cookies, and a drink, a Coca-Cola, diet, coconeries, drink, is priding coffee, and a chocolate, also apple, and grapefruit juice, I love McDonald's, good and great taste, and I get this all at one place.

Now let me get this straight, you want to be... The tune was based on a 1974 hit song titled, Life is a Rock, but the radio rolled me. To roll out the contest, McDonald's ran a commercial telling people that they were putting special coupons and a flexi disc inside local newspapers. McDonald's has put something amazing in this week's newspaper, valuable McDonald's menu song food coupons that might win you thousands of dollars and a free record of McDonald's menu song.

Just listen to it, and you could win a million dollars instantly. Big MacDLT, a quarter pounder with some cheese filet, a fish, a hamburger, a cheeseburger, a happy moment. McDonald's million dollar menu song and menu song food coupons in this week's paper. The FlexiDisc featured a teacher telling a class about the contest. Good morning, class. Today we're going to learn the McDonald's menu song

and give a listener out there a chance to win a million dollars. So, repeat after me. Big Mac MacDeele, a quarter pounder with some cheese. The class learns the song, then the teacher asks them to sing it back. Got it? Got it. Okay, now you do it. Big Mac MacDLT, a quarterfinding, with some cheese,

and chish and a lot, too bad. And here was the key detail. McDonald's sent out 80 million flexes, 80 million. But only one single flexi had the class singing the menu song all the way through with no mistakes. So the chances of winning were one in 80 million.

For context, 80 million flexes outnumbered Michael Jackson's thriller album, which is the biggest selling album in history with 70 million sold. In other words, this was a big promotion from McDonald's. One cold February day in the small town of Galax, Virginia, a 13-year-old boy named Scotty Landreth was looking for something to start a fire with in his family's old wood stove. His mother, Charlene Price, had chucked a bunch of old Galax Gazette newspapers into a box for burning, so Scotty grabbed one.

As he started ripping the paper up, he noticed something. There was a shiny black Flexi record tucked inside it. His family didn't have much. There was no running water in the house, and Scotty's clothes were all hand-me-downs, but they did have a second-hand record player. Scotty didn't own any records himself, but he took the Flexi and put it on the turntable. It was the McDonald's menu song Flexi. As Scotty listened, the class started singing the song and finished it successfully.

That's when the teacher came back on and said, You have just won a million dollars. Contact McDonald's at this number for verification. Scotty ran to the phone and called his mom who worked at a local grocery store. She raced home, called the number, and was told the family had indeed just won a million dollars. Because the winner had to be 16 years of age or older, Scotty couldn't claim the prize.

So McDonald's flew Charlene out to Chicago, her first time on a plane, put her up in a fancy hotel room, filmed a commercial as the contest winner, and Oprah's stylist did her hair. Charlene Price felt like she was on another planet. When she got back home, her life changed completely. She married the love of her life.

She bought the grocery store where she worked and renamed it The Price is Right. Her boss became her employee, and she hired various relatives to work in the store. At some point, she gave Scotty and his sister $10,000 each. A few years after she bought the store, things started to go downhill. Charlene sold the store at a loss. Some say she took too many lavish vacations that family members stole from her and that she found it difficult to manage that much money.

The million dollars was being paid in monthly installments, and at some point Charlene sold the annuity to somebody else for a lump sum up front. Her marriage fell apart. She met another man from out of town. One day he emptied both bank accounts. accounts, left town and was never seen again. The family was left penniless. Ironically, Scotty ended up working at the local McDonald's just to get by. Charlene eventually got ill,

moved into her sister's trailer, and passed away not long after. Today, Scotty Landrith works at various odd jobs in Galax, and he and his sister had a falling out over the money. In an interview recently, Scotty said that the only reason he put the flexi on the turntable that fateful day was because he didn't own any records himself. And if he had, he probably would have thrown the flexi into the fire. When we come back, Jack White literally launches a flexi into the sky. Flexi discs still take flight in promotions to this day. Three weeks before the release of Jack White's debut solo album Blunderbuss,

his label Third Man Records was looking for an inventive way to launch the album and decided to take the word launch literally. They made 1,000 flexi disc copies of the album track, Freedom at 21. Then, attached the flexis to 1,000 biodegradable helium balloons. Ben Blackwell at Third Man Records. For a long time, we've been excited about non-traditional forms of record distribution. So it's with great excitement that we released Jack White's Freedom at 21 on a flexi disc, only available via helium balloon launch from our headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee.

Hope you can find one. With that, 1,000 helium balloons were launched from the record company's Nashville office. It was an unusual idea. The balloons attracted press. and it was a novel way to get the record into the hands of people who don't visit record shops. 17 days later, a Jack White Flexi sold on eBay for $4,238. It was the highest price ever paid for a Flexi. For a flimsy item with plenty of drawbacks,

the humble Flexi disc has an honorable place in the history of marketing. It has helped sell cars, hit songs, chewing gum, beetle records, soap operas, million-dollar contests, and alien plush toys. Flexies were more than flexible. They existed on razor-thin vinyl, on postcards, paper, cereal boxes, plastic cottage cheese lids, and even discarded x-rays. Above all, flexi disks offered two key aspects that marketers loved. First, the They were cheap to make and easy to ship, could be slipped into a thin envelope, or go airborne with a balloon. But the second and most seductive thing about flexi disks was the fact they were free. And everybody likes something free.

And when something's free, all you have to do is scratch the surface to find the marketing. When you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded in the Terstream Mobile Recording Studio. Producer Debbie O'Reilly, Chief Sound Engineer Jeff Devine. Research, Shea Grinden. Theme music by Casey Pick, Jeremiah Pick, and James Aiton. Tunes provided by APM Music, follow me at Terry O. Influence.

This podcast is powered by ACAST. Terry's top slogans of all time. Number three. TimeX. Takes a licking. and keeps on ticking. See you next week.