Wonderful! - Wonderful! 366: Great Grubby Hospital in the Sky

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Rachel's favorite not-bear from a faraway fantasy land! Griffin's favorite people-management game!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaWorld Central Kitchen: https://wck.org/ MaxFunDrive ends on March 28, 2025! Support our show now and get access to bonus content by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

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Music Playing! And Music Playing! And Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is Wonderful. Thank you for listening to our podcast called Wonderful. It's a show where we talk about things that we like, that's good, that we're into. Beep, beep, beep, beep.

And that sound, of course, means that one, Rachel's online course of mouth-based sound effects she's been taking with Coach Michael Winslow is paying off a big time, baby. The other thing it means is that it's the max fun drive. What's the max fun drive? Yeah, I'm asking you. Oh, okay.

It is the time of year where all of us content producers, creators, show makers. I like content producers a lot. That feels more, I don't know, fancy. We ask for a little support because you are able to access all of our stuff for free all year round, but you know, it's difficult to do things for free. Yeah, sure.

So occasionally we will come to you, specifically once a year and be like, hey, you know, like if you enjoy our show, if you believe in what we're doing and want to support us, here's a good time to do it. And maybe there'll be some fun stuff attached to that. Not maybe. I mean, there's gonna be fun stuff. Well, I wanted to like give a tease so people would listen later to see. Yeah, I mean, we can get deep into the pledge gifts later on.

But maximumfun.org slash join is where you can go to help us make this show and support the whole Max Fund network, which we are so honored to be a part of. It is, you know, we own the shows that we make. There's no like gross deals. It is a, you know, Max Fund is a co-op that is sort of employee owned. And it is a great organization and we are lucky

to be a part of it. And if you listen to the show and you enjoy it, you can incredibly directly support us and help us continue making and growing the show, especially now that ads have become a hard, I don't know if you've noticed that we haven't really run an ad on here since like Jan. You very?

If you listen to any of the like kind of celebrity based podcasts, you will hear these like really impressive businesses promoting their products and that's pretty much the only place they're doing it now. That's about it. So yeah, I mean, it's pretty much us relying on y'all at this point, not to put too fine a point on it. Maximumfund.org slash join is where you can go.

If you're already a member, you can boost your membership up to the next level five, 10, whatever dollars a month, or you can just upgrade it if you wanna just toss a buck or two on there. Also new this year, you can pay upfront for a year of support. If you don't wanna worry about the recurring thing, then you can just pay for it upfront.

Also, we do have lots of Boko. If you're already a member and you've never really known how to get at that stuff, there's a new page, maximumfund.org slash howtoboko, and it will explain exactly how to do it. Oh, that's good too. I mean, I think we should say what our Boko is this year. I think it's time for us to announce here.

We did, Travis read the title of our Boko for Wonderful this year while we were recording the Bim Bam and we got a good chuckle out of them. I don't know if you remember the subtitle. No. It's Hockey Talk Badoc-Doc with our pal and Stop Podcasting Yourself host, Dave Schumke. For those of you that also listen to Stop Podcasting Yourself host, Dave Schumke.

For those of you that also listen to Stop Podcasting Yourself, you've probably been thinking for years, Rachel always talks about how she loves the show, wouldn't it be nice if they all got together? Yeah. Well, we started with Dave, who knows? Who knows what's gonna happen from here?

But part of the reason that we picked Dave in particular is that we wanted to tap into his hockey expertise. That's a nice way of putting it. Gang, it's an hour of me and Rachel asking pretty rudimentary questions about what, it's a, guys, not to get too conceptual, but this is a huge idea. It's two adults asking another adult

what it's like to play this one sport. What the physical tactile experience of playing a sport is like. Specifically this one very slippery one sport. What the physical tactile experience of playing a sport is like. Specifically this one very slippery cold sport. Yes. It's so fun. We gave him no advance like heads up on what the questions were gonna be.

I didn't really know much about his relationship with hockey other than he had talked about playing it. Which is all I need to know, because that's crazy. It's crazy, we know now two people who play hockey. That's fucking wild, man. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and so he, I mean, if you have listened

to Stop Podcasting Yourself, he is a former standup comedian, very funny, and has also been hosting Stop Podcasting Yourself for even longer than my brother, my brother and me has been around. It's close though. And so, yeah, very, very fun conversation. We really had a good time. We also have lots of other, you know,

you can get all the past years of bonus content too. We had a year where Rachel got into Stardew Valley and we talked a lot about that. We've had a bunch of different, we had one where I got kind of high and we watched Dharma and Gregg. That was a good about that. We've had a bunch of different, we had one where I got kinda high and we watched Dharma and Gregg. That was a good one too. All of that, if you can help us out and support the show at maximumfun.org slash join.

We'll talk more later about some of the other stuff you can get with that. But do you have any small wonders to start us out with? There's a pretty obvious one. Yeah, I'm trying to think of maybe we can split it up. I mean, we could just both do it as a- We did two things last night. Check this out, medium wonder.

It's a new thing I've been kicking around. Oh no. And maybe we debut it here on the show. Why would you fix something that isn't broken? I'm just saying if we both have the same small wonder, upgrade it. Oh, okay. Just we had a nice date last night. We did?

Bundle it up into a Medium Wonder. Did you see what I did there? I did, yeah, but it, well, I mean. Had some yummy ramen. The thing I like about the Small Wonder is that I could potentially focus on the meal and you could potentially focus on the concert. You're right.

Fuck the Medium Wonder, I'm sorry that I even confused the plot. I'm open to it. You know how I get around the drive when I'm like, let's break things quickly. It sweeps, let's bring something new. And yeah, for sure. Yeah, no, I was thinking I would talk about the meal

and then you would talk about the concert. Okay, that's good. So we went to a restaurant close to the venue that we went to last night. It's called Toki Underground. Yes. Which is like a ramen shop. It's a very small restaurant.

There couldn't have been more than like 25 people in there. No. And had some really incredible ramen. Really very, very good. They apparently have a location in Baltimore too. Toki Underground. Toki Underground, yeah. Even though it's above, it is well above. Yeah, you definitely have to go up the stairs to get there.

But yeah, it was, I mean, it was delicious. We had not, I don't know that we'd really found good ramen in DC yet. Not yet, but we hadn't looked also very hard. We hadn't looked super hard either. Then we went to the fricking Boys Go to Jupiter show, maybe at the pie shop. Another upstairs bar situation.

Upstairs bar situation, corridor shaped bar. They packed the fucking house and absolutely tore it apart, gang. This is going to be the biggest band in the universe. They are still actively on tour. If you wanna look and see if they're gonna be near you, we would highly recommend it. Holy shit, probably the best,

I think it's the most fun concert I've seen since we moved here. Such stage presence. Electrifying. I told Griffin, they're like the kind of band where you can't picture them doing anything else because it just seems like this is so exactly what they were supposed to do.

Funny, good. But then they hit you with like some real shreds. Jesus Christ, they really, I was really banging my head last night. What a good time. Boys go to Jupiter, catch them. It's really delightful. I'm also gonna say I've been getting so,

I mean, now I follow her, but my algorithm served me up a lot of Gabby Wendy content, who Gabby from The Traders and Bachelorette. And Bachelorette. Bachelorette. No, Bachelorette. She was a contestant, I think, on The Bachelorette, and then I think she was the Bachelorette,

like a double Bachelorette situation. Yes. Yes. Anyway. Jesus, man. She's so funny. She's so funny. She was so funny on Traders, and so it's not surprising

that there's lots of funny Gabby content out there, but man, I am so glad that my algorithm got my back on this one thing. Yeah, she's been doing a lot of interviews now that the season of traitors has closed, and she's been asked a lot of questions on like the political climate, and her answers are always just phenomenal.

Really, really, really expertly crafted stuff. Yeah. You go first this week. What have you brought to this, our year's most important episode? Oh God. How dare you? How dare you do that to me?

No. I wanted to talk about Teddy Ruxpin. Yeah. Yeah. Here's the thing, all right, so Teddy Ruxpin came out before you were born. Yeah. So I am curious in the McElroy house,

do you remember there always being a Teddy Ruxpin? Yeah. Or did you have one? Yeah, we had one. Okay. And it always, its eyes wouldn't close. And something happened, he got dropped a couple of times or something where like the tape would play

at maybe three quarter speed. I'm so stupid, I'll just. Like, eyes staring at you in this sort of mask of death, just like, Peter Winnick went into that carriage, Pat. I didn't fuck with it too much because it's, I was a little afraid of Teddy Ruxpin. Now I appreciate it conceptually in a major way. It's just the one we had was haunted. Yeah, I also had one.

It was very much like a Christmas it toy one year. Yeah, for sure. And after learning more about it, I realized how impressive it was that my parents tracked one down and bought one for me. Oh wow. But you know, as a kid, I was like, oh, I wanted it and now I have it.

Yeah, for sure. It wasn't until I was in high school that I started to appreciate, the year they found the Nintendo 64, I was like, God damn, Clinton Leslie, that is really spectacular work. Cannot believe you threaded that particular needle. I also think Teddy Ruxpin so far ahead of its,

half the toys that get released now are just trying to be Teddy Ruxpin. Like a cyber Ruxpin. Yeah, or just versions of Teddy Ruxpin. Like a cyber Ruxpin. Yeah. Okay, so Teddy Ruxpin was created by former Disney employee Ken Forsey. Okay. And the more I talk about this, the more it will make a lot of sense.

So for much of the 60s and 70s, Forsey worked on rides like It's a Small World and Jungle Cruise, designing the animatronic creatures that would sing, wave, and interact. I had no idea. Not only that, he also sculpted the heads of the animatronic bears at the Country Bear Jamboree. Well, that, okay, there's a pretty direct through line.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now I'm looking at Teddy Ruxpin like he is some bastard child of the Country Bear Jamboree. I know, well, here's the thing. Teddy Ruxpin, not a bear. like he is some bastard child of the country bear jamboree. I know, well here's the thing, Teddy Ruxpin, not a bear. Man, can we not? It's already so hard and it's like there's, everything is so confusing all the time.

Can this one, can we just take a flyer on this one? So I have to tell you though, so in Forsee's mind, he wasn't a bear, he was a Iliop, a species native to the fantasy world of Grundo. So he's got a little Tolkien in there. I need you to say, first of all, you got a little Tolkien in there? What's that mean? Like he created a whole world of like fantasy creatures.

Okay, sorry. Can we pause because there's like five things that have happened in the last 10 seconds that I really wanna spend a little bit of time on. One, I thought you were saying that an Iliot from the world of Grundo was from Tolkien. No, no, no, no. And I know that your knowledge of that from the world of Grundo was from Tolkien. No, no, no, no.

And I know that your knowledge of that whole space and that universe is- Very limited. Limited, purposefully, and I appreciate that. I'm not the type of person to really give a shit about your media consumption or anything, but you know that it's not, you know Grundo is not a Tolkien. Oh, Tolkien. Yes. Okay, cool. Yes.

No, I am saying that it's not like, oh, he's not a bear, he's a capybara. It's like, no, he's a fantasy creature created by Forsee in a fantasy world called Grundo. Is there more Grundo content out there? Yeah, I mean, the books, the books that, like, there were all sorts of, like, creatures within Grundo that Teddy would interact with

The books would come with tapes that you could put in Teddy Ruxpin The books had all these narrative stories that existed in this world of Grundo So I must have never really used my Teddy Ruxpin. Yeah, I don't think so because I which isn't surprising because at the time You were like aware Your family had probably had that toy for a while and I can't imagine your brothers were playing with it as it was intended to be played with. God no. I cannot imagine that they did. So he would like rap on his own tracks

and tell stories about Grundo? Yeah, I mean you would get a tape and the tape would be associated with these books and you would put the tape in and you would read along with him in the book. That's cool. I just assumed the tapes were like literary classics. Like you, I didn't think about it clearly,

but that you would just like pop in Little Women or something and just- Quoth the Raven, nevermore. Yeah, except 75% speed. Staring at you. So, 4C had two parts to the Teddy prototype. One was a piece controlling the face. Yes.

And with FM radio signals. And- Wait, what? There's not like wires? What? This is the prototype I'm talking about right now. It says, as late as 1982, the puppets force

he constructed for Disney had radio controlled heads. As his early Teddy prototype was similar, it had two parts with one piece controlling the face via FM radio signals. Okay. We should point out to our younger listeners who maybe aren't familiar, Mr. Ruxpin was an Iliot from the planet Grundo, and his eyes blinked, right?

Yeah, and his mouth would move. His mouth moved. And you would put a tape in him and you would hear the story. And the way it was constructed, the mouth would move as soon as like sound was coming out of the tape. So you could put in an ace of base,

you could put in a boys to men, his mouth would move. Not like exactly in rhythm, it was more the sound that was creating the mechanism. A lot of people listening, younger people, probably think it's a Five Nights at Freddy's situation. I'm here to tell you it was not. He had no sharp teeth.

It was just a soft sort of padded surface in there. He could not turn his neck if memory serves, and I'm so glad for that. If you ever see one of them turn the neck, then you need to get out of there, mister. So the thing about it was there was like a cassette player in there and it felt basically like you had put fake fur around a cassette player because it was heavy.

Yes, hard. Not particularly cuddly. Not cuddly at all. Kind of thing that if you dropped on your foot, like it would hurt. It would hurt and It would hurt. Pretty bad. And he would break and you'd hear him break.

So Fisher Price passed and then he started shopping a live action series with HBO that also was not picked up. Worlds of Wonder. Fuck yeah. Got on board. And at the same time that Worlds of Wonder picked it up, Forsy also sold ABC on two live action Teddy specials

that would premiere in November and December of 1985, which is exactly when it came out. Okay. Yeah. I was trying to remember what I knew Worlds of Wonder from. They were, I think, the original distributor of the Nintendo Entertainment System in the US. Yes, there's a lot of crossover in this,

because they talk about the bankruptcy and how that impacted Teddy's future. Yeah, sure. So this thing cost between $59 and $79, which now is $200. Yowza. I mean, Yowza mostly at inflation. Like if I'm paying on, like Yowza, that's an expensive, what was it?

Iliop. Iliop, Iliop with a p on it? Yes, yes. But also it sucks that money has gotten like that. And then it also included, there were 60 different story books. 60 different story books. And those were like $13 each.

The bear was a huge hit, pulled in 93. I'm so sorry, baby, I hate to do this. You did just refer to him as a bear. When like, it's actually important that we- Teddy, a this. You did just refer to him as a bear when like, it's actually important that we- Teddy, Teddy. You can say Teddy, sure, you can call him by his name. What?

If you'd like. The Teddy Ruxpin version of Call Me By Your Name is abridged, it is abridged, it's extremely abridged, but it gets the job. You get sort of the, you could take a quiz about the movie. I thought you were talking about a film that starred Teddy Ruxpin in the lead. Yes, it's Teddy Ruxpin, it's Timothee Chalamet.

But you're saying the story is told through the mouth of Teddy. Yes, exactly. Okay, so. It's about a boy's wonderful summer vacation. That's how he sets it up. Yes, so Teddy resulted in 93 million in sales in the first year, which is like unprecedented.

Adjusted for inflation now, that's about $250 million. There were some bears that were returned and claimed to be defective, although Worlds of Wonder maintained that it was operator error. They returned them and they're like, "'These bears are defective.'" Where the people at the shops like,

"'Uh, it's an Iliop, you fucking dummy. "'Of course you think it's defective.'" Well, the manual apparently urged users not to poke Teddy with scissors or other sharp objects, nor was he to be submerged in a bath. But Teddy- Sorry, are people doing that with stuffed animals that don't have cassettes in them?

Good question. I don't know. I never knew anybody that took their stuffies in the bath with them. No. You would definitely do that with like a plastic figure, but I don't know. Anyway, the worlds of wonder informed the media

that the defective Ruxpens would be sent to quote, Grundo Hospital. That's such a good euphemism that I wanna adopt for so many things. It reminds me a lot of like the Cabbage Patch lore. Yes. Like this 1980s time of like putting a lot of background into a toy and then ultimately making a television show

after, like it follows a very specific formula. So there were 65 episodes of The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin. Wow. Who made that one? Was that a deke? Was that a deke joint? Maybe, I don't have that information in front of me. Seems like it was a deke joint.

So I will say that just before the 1987 holiday season, Worlds of Wonder filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, and by 1989, Teddy was discontinued. Off to that great Grundo hospital in the sky. Fast forward to 2017. Do you know they brought out another Teddy? I did know, I do remember that. He had LCD screens for eyes.

Nope. And what's funny, I pulled it up on Amazon because you can purchase one for $250. But when Teddy was not active, the screens would just go black. Yeah, it's the same thing. They make the little Lego Mario sets, right? And they're really cool

because you can make them jump around and run on courses and there's all these interactive elements, but their eyes and mouths are LCD. And so when you turn it off, he says, so long! And then two seconds pass, and then just, just his soul leaves his body. They sold him with a little sleep mask so that kids could like cover up the eyes.

Your product is so fucked up if you have to sell a little thing that hides how scary it is. I saw them interviewing this woman who was like behind the design of the 2017 model and in the interview she was saying Listen like kids don't get scared when the TV goes black or when their iPad goes black Like why would black eyes on a bear scare them or an iliop? Thank you so much. I'm sorry that I mean if we could edit that out Rachel if you don't mind editing If we could edit that out. Rachel, if you don't mind editing out all the time,

so Rachel said there. Yeah, so that's Teddy Ruxpin. Again, if you are interested in purchasing the new version, again, as of 2017, you can still find him online. I mean, it's supposed to be more cuddly. You can like touch the hand to like choose from a library. It pairs with your iPad. And so there's like Bluetooth technology.

I don't need that. And then you can play and pause by touching the other hand. Is there new, I guess I just wanna know if there's new sort of chapters in the Grundo kind of saga. I mean, I don't know. Do you wanna learn a little bit about Grundo? Like, cause I could give you some lore real quick. Yeah, if you don't mind busting me out

a little Grundo primer. Okay, the land of Grundo is the country where the adventures of Teddy Ruxpin takes place. So it's a country on earth? Bordered to the north by a range of rugged mountains known as the Treacherous Mountains that separate the country from neighboring Ying. Ying?

Okay. Yeah, again, part of the Teddy universe. To the south lies an unknown mountain range and to the southwest lies the Great Desert. Eastward lies an ocean bordered by Ben's Beach. Ben's Beach, the Beach of Ben? B-E-N apostrophe S. Cool.

And then to the far south is the land of Rilonia. Okay, but they haven't explored sort of beyond the, to them the world ends at the desert and the treacherous mountains, and it sounds like they haven't explored sort of beyond the, to them the world ends at the desert and the treacherous mountains. And it sounds like they haven't even been to Ying. Maybe they kick it on Ben's beach sometimes. Do you think xenophobia is an issue in Grundo? I don't know that Teddy's going to sort of volunteer

that information for free, but maybe there's some dark tapes we can get our hands on. Yeah, I mean, man, I really just wanna read this whole thing to you, but I recognize that's dark tape so we can get our hands on it. Yeah, I mean, man, I really just wanna read this whole thing to you, but I recognize that's maybe not the best use of our time. Yeah. But I would-

I mean, save it, we can definitely talk more about Grundo. Yeah. You know, maybe as a stretch goal later in the drive. I will just say that Grundo is a largely feudal agrarian country. Okay. Most of the residents of Grundo who are under direct

leadership are the Illipers and Perlunes that inhabit the land nearest to King Nogbert's castle. Okay, but what's a Perlune though? No, save it. Save it. Listen, it's the Max Fund Drive, and that means you have a chance to help us make this show and support us to help us keep making it

and keep it growing. Rachel and I have been doing, I mean, between this and Rose Buddies, we have been podcasting for, Jesus, a really long, I don't even know when we started doing- It was after we got married, I wanna say 2017. That seems late. No, we were doing it before Henry was born, for sure, I wanna say 2017. That seems late.

No, we were doing it before Henry was born, for sure, for sure. Oh yeah, you're right. I mean, maybe 2016. Who knows? Anyway, we've been doing this for a long time and the world of podcasting and the business of podcasting has changed like a half dozen times

in the span of time we've been doing it. And I would say now sort of more than ever, we could use your support, the listener support of this show and the other shows that we make to help keep things afloat. We have managed to hire people to help us make these shows and to do all the stuff that we like to do and make all the stuff that you like to do and make all the stuff

that you all, I hope, enjoy listening to and watching. And you can sort of become a part of that during the drive at maximumfund.org slash join. Do you wanna talk a little bit more about Boko? At $5 a month, you will get access to all the Boko libraries for all the shows throughout history. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of amazing. If you have never been a member of Max Fun, you are in for a real treat. Because a lot of times I will find myself entirely caught up on all

my podcasts and I will think, well, what am I going to do now? Start listening to a new show? No, you don't have to. Don't have to. Max Fun has archived every piece of bonus content that was created by any show on the network, years over years, including Rose Buddies, and there's a lot of stuff there to check out. Do you wanna hear us talk to the Bachelor at Canada,

Jasmine Lorimer, because we did that on one of our Boko episodes. We did do that, and we did try to decide which one of us was Dharma and which one of us was Greg. Yeah. Which was really fun, I think about that a lot. We've talked about Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley. Everything, anything you want.

We got other Boko episodes for the other shows too. This year from a bim bam we auditioned for Hot Ones. And it's- And that's a video, right? Or is it just audio? You can listen to it. It is in the audio feed. Okay.

But I believe it will be video as well. Oof, I mean, I don't know if you'll wanna see it, I guess. Yeah, no, spicy stuff, guys. But I mean, seriously, it's so much stuff. And that's just at $5 a month, which again, you can prepay for a year and just do it and get access to all the stuff and then not, you know, have to

sweat having a recurring payment. If you want to learn how to get that BoCo, if you are becoming a member or already a member, go to MaximumFun.org slash howtoboco. $10 a month, you get the BoCo. You also get your choice of enamel pin designed by Tom Deha of Bossman Graphics. The wonderful pin this year I adore, it is Jeff the Poetry Dragon. I don't think you've seen it yet.

I don't think I have either. I just remember we decided that's what it should be. It is Jeff the Poetry Dragon, the official mascot and moss cat of the poetry quarter. Oh man, what a cool dragon. Got a little beret. He's like a little beatnik dragon. Yeah, and you know what I love?

I love a pin like that is versatile, right? It is, goes with a lot of different. Somebody may see it and they will think like, oh, you listen to Wonderful. A lot of people will see it and just think, oh, that's a dragon that likes poetry. Yeah, absolutely. You don't need to explain anything else

to anyone who would say anything about it. But regardless of which pin you choose, there are options for all of the shows. Of course. So while we personally love the poetry dragon, if you see a pin that strikes your fancy. We won't hold it against you. Yeah, we welcome to pick whichever one you want.

But when you do choose to become a member that strikes your fancy. We won't hold it against you. Yeah, we welcome to pick whichever one you want. But when you do choose to become a member and give your support, you choose the shows that you listen to, and then some of it goes to Maximum Fun to help run this big ship, and the rest goes directly to the shows that you choose. It is a direct way of supporting the creators of these shows,

and I guess speaking personally, our shows that we create also, and providing financial support for us to continue making it and continue doing this. I am so, I get lost in the sauce a little bit doing these Max Fun Drive kind of like breaks because there's a lot to talk about,

but I never wanna skip over the fact that I am immensely grateful for all of the support that we have gotten in the past. Specifically, wonderful listeners have been truly amazing during past drives and have helped us meet our goals and always been so supportive of the show. And it truly, it means the world to me to get to make this thing and make it my livelihood

because of y'all. I don't know too many other people who get to say that in this space and it is because of you. So maximumfun.org slash join. Please consider going there. If you enjoy this show, it would really help us out even at five bucks a month. It truly is the reason why this show

and the other shows we continue to make exist now. Because if we were just relying on ads, this thing would have sunk years ago. Do you wanna know what I have to talk about this week? Yes, I do. The Sims. I'm familiar. Can talk about them.

This was one I don't think I have struggled more with, like we have to have talked about this before, but after running it through all of the different databases, all of the databases, I'm talking Nexus Lexis and all of the databases, apparently I haven't. So I'm gonna do a lot of the same. We went to the Library of Congress. I went to the Library of Congress.

We said, bring out all the tapes. Yes, they brought out all the Teddy Ruxpin tapes. We were like, not those ones. But yeah, actually we will sit here for 60 hours and listen to all of them. I have been playing a game, a new game, just like early playtest version of it. It's a Korean life sim game called Enzoi

and it's just the sims. Like it's just literally the sims but kind of fancier and newer. There has not been a new full sims like game in the mainline series. What platform is that on? On my computer, on my personal computer. Yeah, I can't imagine playing it like on a Switch.

No, it doesn't have controller support. So that would be hard. But it is kind of seizing a bit of an opportunity because the last mainline Sims game came out in 2014. Wowzers! Which is a long time ago. Why, why, people love the Sims. Well, because they've, I'll get into that,

but it's also because they've released about 30 expansions for it. Yeah, it's true. It has become something of a, what's called the games as service model. Anyway, I've been playing Enzoi and it really, it is, I don't know, it's fine. I haven't spent a ton of time with it,

but it has like it instantly, I don't know, scratched these deep dopamine centers in my mind that I have been scratching to some extent or another since the year 2000. And so I decided I wanted to talk about The Sims. If you have not played The Sims, that's weird. And it's not weird that anybody hasn't played The Sims, but specifically I feel like if you listen to this,

I feel like if I did a straw poll of the Facebook group, it would be batting about a thousand. Yeah, I mean, granted, I haven't played The Sims since I was a thousand. Yeah, I mean, granted, I haven't played The Sims since I was like a teen. And when I say teen, I mean, maybe like 14 or 15 tops. Early teen. But I definitely put some hours in for sure. Yes, so The Sims, if you're not familiar,

it's a long running series of life sim games developed by a studio called Maxis and created by a designer named Will Wright. It is difficult to say that man's name normally because he also made Spore, which Justin and I did a long Monster Factory series on where we invented a British accent for Will Wright, even though he's from Atlanta.

But he made that. He also made SimCity, and if it has Sim in the title, like he was probably involved. His first game that he designed was for the Commodore 64. It was called Raid on Bundling Bay. And it was just this sort of like unspectacular 2D shoot-em-up where you're in this helicopter flying around

doing like bombing missions on these, you know, simple super pixelated, it was like 1986 or something like that, like very simple maps. And what he realized after making that is that he liked making the cities more than he liked making the game where you flew around in a helicopter and blew stuff up. Like he just enjoyed making the different maps,

which inspired him to create his first sort of big breakout game, which is SimCity, which launched on Mac and like IBM PC and Commodore 64 in 1989, which is a lot longer ago than I assumed SimCity got started. I think I was first introduced to it. It was a huge success and it got ported to all these different platforms.

There was a Super Nintendo version of SimCity that was where I really played the most of, I think. SimCity fucking rules, and I could probably talk about it at length too, but to try and stay focused, in 1991, SimCity was big and other Sim games had sort of spun off of it. In 91, after releasing SimAnt, which I don't know if you, did you ever?

No. I remember we had that one in our talented and gifted computer lab classes because it was just a simulation of like, you have this ant hill and you have to attack all the fire ants and you have to manage it and make sure you're bringing home enough nutrients for the queen and stuff.

Anyway, he started workshopping the idea after SimAnt for The Sims inspired by a few things. The first was Little Computer People. Oh, I've talked about that. Which you talked about on this very program. Yes. Nobody knows about Little Computer People. Well, Wright knows about Little Computer People.

You mentioned that when you did the segment on Little Computer People, you're like the creator of The Sims, credited it for like inspiring The Sims, but that The Sims didn't come out until like almost 15 years after Little Computer People came out. And you were like, what took him so long? I forget what joking answer we came up with,

but the real answer is that like he pitched the idea to the board of directors of Maxis and they're like, this stinks, no way. And so the only way that he was allowed to kind of like continue prototyping the Sims was he was allowed a single programmer who he kind of siloed off of the rest of Maxis to like, so just the two of them were cranking away on this thing while they developed other SimCity games

for like nine years, for a long, long, long time. I just pictured these like clandestine meetings that they would have like at like lunch, they would like squirrel away and be like, have you built, have you built Jefferson yet? I mean, yeah, I mean, it sounds very much like a passion project. We decided on long pants, didn't we?

All right, I'm just making sure. I mean, it wasn't, I imagine, quite that granular. The Sims, it is hard to kind of like stress how groundbreaking it was on like a few levels, right? Like the ability to design architecture, right? Yeah. Is kind of wild. And that was also, he credits one of the other major

inspirations for the Sims was that his, Will Wright's home was destroyed in the Oakland firestorm of 1991. And so as he kind of like rebuilt his life from the ground up, it was kind of like inspiring to him to like, what is that process like inside of a video game. The other big thing is like interactions between all of the different Sims, right?

You had yours that you would make and you could make like a whole family of Sims, but then you had neighbors who would like walk up and you could either, I think maybe in later games, they added this, I don't know if it was there from the original Sims, but they would like interact on their own and they would follow their own kind of paths

depending on where their needs were. And that is such a complex, multifaceted sort of like artificial intelligence simulation. That term means something way different now than it did like back in old video game days. Back then it was like, how does the computer know what to do? Which I guess is kind of what it means. Anyway, I don't wanna get lost there.

It was so ahead of its time. It was so, so, so wild to have a simulation that operated with all of these different nodes moving around each other, all having their like complex sort of pathways that they were navigating. Yeah, cause little computer people was just one guy, the house was already built for you,

he had a set number of actions, he never interacted with anybody else, and he had like a cat. Yeah, no. And he would just go up and down the stairs and do different things in this house that was already like, you know, you couldn't customize it in any way.

And ostensibly in The Sims, there could be a fight happening between a married couple in a house down the street that you were not witness to, but next time you go visit, you know, there's a weird vibe. Their little diamond has changed. It is a staggering level of computation

to even consider now, let alone back in the mid-90s. And so I think one of the reasons it was so kind of like mind blowing when it came out is because for nine years, Will Wright and this other programmer who then went on to become the lead programmer of the whole Sim series were just kind of figuring out these pretty major things for the course of a decade without really showing it off. And then all of a sudden we're like,

okay, well, here's 10 years worth of work. And everyone was like, holy shit, man. This is really, really wild. He credits a lot of different studies and books, psychological and sociological studies that sort of form the foundation of that sort of interaction system. Unsurprisingly, Maslow's A Theory of Human Motivation,

which has the whole hierarchy of needs, is in there, which is represented by the eight, oh God, I forget what they're called, like needs, I think is what they were called, your social stat, your hygiene stat, hunger, fun, all of those. And there's a list of sort of cited works for how he, and this other programmer,

kind of designed the core foundation of how things would interact in this game. It's really, really impressive, really ahead of its time stuff. It's been 25 years since the game's release. The main line series has had four games, right? Sims 1 through 4, and between those, they have had 55 different expansion packs,

29 of which are just from The Sims 4, which came out 11 years ago. Yeah, can we talk a little bit about, so like what additional features did you get through the expansion packs? So, I mean, okay, past Sims game, I think there were like seven expansions for Sims 1, eight for Sims 2, and then three,

it started to get a little bit bigger. Is it just like new stuff that you could like put in your- So yeah, so there's different terminology for like the different scope of the different packs. Some of them were just stuff packs. And a lot of those would be themed to like outer space or like really, really specific genre-y wild theme. I feel like I always remember seeing

like a Sims party pack or something. Dude, if you walked into Babbage's or EB Games or GameStop, you would see, you know, back when they sold PC games in boxes, you would see literally, there would just be a shelf that was all Sims, like party life, space time, like dinosaurs, what? Sims 4 has gotten like quite a bit more granular where it's like college life.

And there's magic in this one. And this one's like apartment living. So they've gotten, but it is free to play now, right? Sims 4 is free to play. You can download it and play it for free. And then if you want this extra stuff, there's like ways of paying for that. Huh, I didn't know that.

Which is why I refer to it as sort of a games as service thing. That said, it has been 11 years since Sims 4 came out. Maxis, which did shutter, I don't remember exactly when, I think it was after they rebooted SimCity back in like 2016, I wanna say. They like did a, here's a new SimCity and it really didn't go very well

and Maxis kind of went under a little bit after that but then was revived and reformed fairly recently in the last few years by Electronic Arts who publishes all of the Maxis games. Anyway, they're working on a new one. It's called Project Renee. We know nothing about it. I'd place even money on it being called The Sims 5,

but who knows, maybe this Korean competitor will light a fire under their asses a little bit. I shouldn't say that. Developing games is fucking really hard. You all take all the time you need. But they announced they were working on it back in 2022 and we still don't know a whole lot about it. So, you know, hopefully more Sims

is coming down the pipe soon. If not, I guess we have Enzoi 2. Game was busy till then. But yeah, that's The Sims. It's a game series that I certainly used to play a lot. I played The Sims 4 a whole lot. I played The Sims Online a whole lot. That was a fucking wild one.

Do you know anything about Sims Online? No. Are you interacting with like- Other people, you just have the one Sim and then you can like build a business or whatever and people can come to your cafe or like casinos were really big. And it was really weird.

It was basically like a chat room, but with woohoo. Was everybody just trying to like- Pork all the time? Yeah. Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes for sure. It got weird in those rooms, y'all. I was looking because I know John Hodgman plays

like as part of the Max Fun Drive. He typically plays either the Sims or Sim City as like part of his like streaming. So I would encourage you if you are interested to watch John Hodgman play some kind of Sims related product, I'm pretty sure he does that for the drive. Yes, I think you are right.

I was trying to just look for it because I know that he has talked about it. We are recording this before the drive starts. So that information may not be quite out there yet. Do you wanna know what our friends at home are talking about? Yes. Okay, Kelly says, the small wonder

I would like to share this morning is the first stretch of the day when you wake up in the morning, it just feels so good. Oh, that is a good one. God, I love the first stretch. Sometimes it'll be like 11 a.m. and I'll be like, damn, I haven't stretched yet. But it still hits, like it still hits.

Sometimes it's like 3.30 PM and I'm like, I should stretch, it still hits. Maya says, I love biking around aimlessly and getting a bit lost and finding new biking paths in my town. A bike is so fast compared to walking that you really don't lose much time taking detours. And it's fun looking at a map when you get home

to try and figure out where the hell you were 30 minutes earlier. I'm sure that's exciting. That sounds fun in like an exploratory free wheeling kind of way. Before I got a little clip for my bike that I could put my phone and my map in, I would get three blocks away from my house

and be like, oh no, oh no. I got here and gone and lost really fast. I have no idea what to do about it. If I wait until it's dark, the North Star will be out. And then I can start making some steps in the right direction. One last time, MaximumFun.org slash join is where you can go to become a member

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It's a fun talk. Yeah, I mean, a lot of the questions we ask are like very basic, like, hey, what happens when they skate over the line at the wrong time? I asked him at one point, like, do you get scared out? Do you get scared out? And the response he gave was a little judgmental, I would say.

Yeah, he said something like- Do you need me to explain to you the basics? Yeah, I would say. Yeah, yeah, he said something like. Do you need me to explain to you the basic fundamentals? Yeah, I don't know how much of like sports you need me to explain to you. Anyway, all the bonus content at five bucks a month, 10 bucks a month, you get the pin of your choice in the bonus content, there's other levels higher than that with other really, really great gifts,

but whatever level you are able to support us at, it truly is the reason we're able to keep doing this. Oh yeah, and I just wanted to say that, you know, a lot of times now when you purchase something, you can't really speak to what is happening behind the scenes of the item you purchased, and I will just say that MaxFun, when you give to MaxFun, you can feel pretty confident

that you are supporting caring creators who are just trying to put things in the world to make people happy. Yeah, we're gonna be doing a bunch of stuff this week. I mean, it's Wednesday when we're hearing this, so some of it's already happened. I played Fuser on Monday, hopefully that went well. We haven't done it yet,

because it's Friday of the week before right now. But we're gonna be streaming basically every day. And that's on the McElroy YouTube channel? On the McElroy Family YouTube channel this week and next week. Got a bunch of really fun stuff. A great new video premiere that Rachel has watched of us going on our own adventure. Yeah.

The McElroy brothers on our own adventure that is very fun. But we're gonna, new stuff every day. We're gonna be, you know, doing a whole bunch of stuff to try and encourage people to, the McRoy Brothers on our own adventure that is very fun. But we're at new stuff every day. We're gonna be doing a whole bunch of stuff to try and encourage people to help us reach our goals. Yeah, and I would keep an eye on different stretch goals because the content starts to get real wild

the further we get. Yes, that is true. We will be announcing those stretch goals as we hit them. You can follow the McRoy family Instagram account and we'll be sort of announcing when we're gonna be streaming and doing everything. And it's gonna be a fun couple of weeks. So maximumfun.org slash join. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Thank you to Bo and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. I'm not gonna thank Maximum Fun because just they've gotten a lot of real estate. Do you know what I mean? Like they don't like, you all have already gotten your nut. You know what I mean?

That's it. That's it. That's all we got for you. So until next week, I've been Griffin McElroy. And I've been Rachel McElroy. But now, I'm Rachel McElroy. I refuse. Oh no, who is he? I'm Rachel McElroy. I refuse to be Griffin, is that okay? Why?

Is that not good improv? It's not good. Because then you're gonna make me do my Griffin impression and it's just not. So you're saying you don't wanna be me because to be me you would have to do an impression of me that would be so insulting. I didn't say it's insulting. I'm just not an impressionist.

You know what? I'm pulling back the skin mask. Oh, now you're not even me anymore. Oh man, I can never get it to fit back on right. I can never, sugar water. You should get the sugar. You put it in water. See, you're really good at impressions. Thanks babe. Hey! Work it on Hey! Money on Hey! Work it on

Hey! Money on Hey! Work it on Hey! Money on Hey!