SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: Etch A Sketch!

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Speaker 1 Hey everyone, it's time for our episode on Etcha Sketch, the little tablet that you could draw on using two dials for some reason.

Speaker 1 And then when you made a masterpiece, you would shake it up and start over again. Or if you're a real jerk, you could shake up someone else's masterpiece when they weren't ready to shake it up yet.

Speaker 1 This is a good one. I guess all of our toy episodes were good ones, so it goes without saying, but it is a good one.

Speaker 1 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com.

Speaker 1 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chucky Bryant.
And there's Jerry.

Speaker 1 the delicious dish Roland.

Speaker 1 And this is Stuff You Should Know, the vintage nostalgia edition that went off to China and then got sold to a different company edition.

Speaker 2 So do you want to? I have a rough list of classic toys we've covered.

Speaker 1 You want to hear it? Oh, lay it on me, Charles.

Speaker 2 I'm sure I've missed something, but it did help me think of some more that we should do.

Speaker 1 Slinky?

Speaker 1 We did Slinky? Oh, yeah, we did Slinky. Okay, yeah.
Lego?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, of course. Barbie?

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 2 Her boyfriend G.I. Joe?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that was a good one. Sorry, Ken.
Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
I'm sorry. Did we just specifically do a G.I.
Joe one or an action figures one?

Speaker 2 I think both. We definitely did action figures.

Speaker 1 Although, maybe not.

Speaker 1 Okay, go ahead.

Speaker 2 I'll cross-check that.

Speaker 1 Hot wheels.

Speaker 1 So this is a made-up list, is what you're saying.

Speaker 2 Hot wheels?

Speaker 1 Easy bake ovens. Yeah, I'm glad you didn't call it hot wheels.

Speaker 2 Easy bake oven.

Speaker 2 Play dough.

Speaker 2 Silly putty.

Speaker 2 Do you count boomerangs?

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 2 Do you count Monopoly?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yo-Yos?

Speaker 1 Of course. Hula Hoops.

Speaker 1 I knew Hula Hoops was after Yo-Yo's. I just knew it.

Speaker 2 Teddy Ruxbin, we covered him in our Christmas show this year.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, that's a deep cut right there.

Speaker 2 And then that's all I have, but I could have sworn we did it on Frisbees, but I cannot find it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I feel like we did Frisbees too, because I think we talked about like frolf or something at some point.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's out there and I just didn't, uh, or maybe it's under flying disc or something.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's possible. Uh, because yeah,

Speaker 1 we made that joke about calling it a novelty flying disc because frisbee like used to sue everybody who called anything else a frisbee.

Speaker 2 Maybe I'll have to look, but that there's probably more out there, but that's a solid, you know, 12 or 13.

Speaker 1 That's pretty good,

Speaker 2 which leads us to Etcha Sketch.

Speaker 1 Yes, one of the hundred top 100 toys of the century, according to,

Speaker 1 I want to say, not the Toy Hall of Fame. It's just in the Toy Hall of Fame.

Speaker 2 I think it was according to some snot-nose kid who makes lists online.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 This is the 100 best toys of the century. This is the 100 best guitar solos of the 70s.

Speaker 2 Oh, man. I'd love to do a show on that.

Speaker 1 That would be pretty cool. I can't remember who named that, who made that list, but it's a high honor.
It's a high accolade, even if we can't remember who came up with it.

Speaker 1 Like the Etcha sketch, it's a ubiquitous toy. Everybody knows what an etcher sketch is, unless you go to France and then they'll say, Oh, you mean La Crane Magique?

Speaker 1 And you you might say, like, well, why would they have anything to say about the Etcha sketch in France? Turns out, buddy, the Etcha sketch is actually French in origin. Did you know that before this?

Speaker 2 I did not.

Speaker 1 I didn't either.

Speaker 2 'Cause it seems like super American. You know, it looks like a tv

Speaker 2 and just feels like pure americana so when i realized it had some french stank on it uh

Speaker 2 my dreams were dashed

Speaker 1 you're like it smells like champagne and cheese which is kind of pleasant no i didn't really care i thought it was i thought it was great sketch erase and sketch again

Speaker 2 uh the the log line that will forever be tied to this really interesting little toy and um

Speaker 2 i i can't remember who it is in this article article, but they were interviewing different folks. I think it was someone from the company.

Speaker 2 Commented, and I totally agree that it's amazing that today

Speaker 2 in the digital world and Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and video gaming as it is, that this little

Speaker 2 lo-fi toy that doesn't even have batteries in it, much less hook up to the internet, is still like super popular and still has a little bit of mystique. And I agree with them.

Speaker 2 And I think the reason why, one of them, is like you look at it and you're still kind of like, How does this thing work?

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 Well, we're going to ruin that mystique for everybody because we're going to explain how it works actually in this episode. That's right.

Speaker 1 But hopefully, it won't affect Etcha Sketch sales because we love Etcha Sketch, you know.

Speaker 2 All right, should we go to France?

Speaker 1 We will go to France. Sometime, it's apparently not clear whether it was 1955 or 1956, but in a little town called Vitry-sur-Sine,

Speaker 1 which means Vitry on the Seine River, there was a company called,

Speaker 1 what was the name of the company, Chuck?

Speaker 2 Lyncrusta Company.

Speaker 1 Right. Terrible name.
It is a terrible name, but the reason they call themselves that is because Lincrusta is a type of wall covering that was really popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Speaker 1 You know, like, have you ever been into an old, creepy, abandoned house and, like, the walls are covered in what looks like dimpled tin with like some weird patterns to it, or whatever.

Speaker 1 No, but keep going. Okay, so where

Speaker 1 if you could rub your hand over it, it's very much, it's like heavily embossed. Okay, sometimes it's painted, and it's it just imagine that is like wainscoting in the house.

Speaker 1 That is Linkrusta, and so that is one of the two things that this company made in the 50s: Lincrusta wall coverings and artificial leather.

Speaker 1 That is really neither here nor there, but I I could, I was with you, I was like, what kind of a name is that for a company?

Speaker 1 I looked it up and they just, it'd basically be like if you and I called our podcast podcast because that's what we did was make podcasts. Or call this company.
Crust.

Speaker 1 Podcrusta.

Speaker 2 Just the name Crust anyway. I think I know what you're talking about because I have

Speaker 2 we have a pie safe that has that metal tin stuff, but it's I've never seen it on a wall, but I bet it's about the same thing.

Speaker 1 Virtually the same thing. thing yeah yep okay so that's link cresta and that's where this guy worked his name was andre casagnes casagnes

Speaker 1 i bet

Speaker 2 well if it's french wouldn't it be

Speaker 2 cassan

Speaker 2 is that g pronounced

Speaker 2 yeah i think you just nailed it actually andre casson well that's what we're gonna call him and we have gone back in time you didn't know 55 or 56 i say we go to 54 just to

Speaker 2 play it safe set up shop in France, and maybe get some emails done.

Speaker 1 For a couple of years?

Speaker 2 Sure, why not? We could use a break.

Speaker 2 Because, you know, podcaster burnout's a real thing.

Speaker 1 It really is. As we've talked about.

Speaker 1 We're dropping like flies.

Speaker 2 All right. So he's working in this factory.
It's north of Paris. And they are making these wall coverings like you're talking about.

Speaker 2 And he, this is a little confusing how this actually happens, if you ask me. Or at least the way the first article put it, it's confusing.

Speaker 1 Oh, you're leaving it to me by notice by your pause after that? Well, I mean,

Speaker 2 no,

Speaker 2 I'll start it, but I just still don't quite get it. He marked up with pencil on a see-through decal.
So like he was putting on an electrical plate,

Speaker 2 like a light switch. And on that plate, like many things, has like a little see-through plastic that you peel off.

Speaker 2 So he was writing on that. He peeled it off.

Speaker 2 But then that's where it loses me as to exactly what magic took place.

Speaker 1 So, okay, remember this is Lynn Crusta, and they make metal wall coverings, which means there's metal dust in the air, metal shavings everywhere. Yeah, and he's just breathing that stuff in.

Speaker 1 Right, all of them are.

Speaker 1 What's crazy is this guy made it to that ripe old age of 86 after breathing that for years.

Speaker 1 So there's metal dust everywhere, including on this electrical switch plate that he's installing, And I guess the decal against the plate.

Speaker 1 And I think what happened was when he marked on the decal and pulled the decal off, he'd seen that he had disturbed the metal shavings that were stuck to the underside of the decal.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 Do you see what I mean? So like he had disturbed the shavings. So there was like the whole decal is coated in a metal dust.

Speaker 1 He marks on it with a pencil, and the impression that he makes like gouges out lines on the backside of the decal. I know, it's really tough.
It was magic.

Speaker 1 Basically, this man witnessed a feat of magic that still cannot be explained to this day, and that's where he got his idea for the Etcha sketch.

Speaker 2 Amazing. So a big, big moment.
He has that literal light bulb that goes off of his, or not literal, of course, light bulb above his head.

Speaker 2 Although you never know, there may have been a light bulb in that factory right above his head.

Speaker 1 Why not?

Speaker 2 And he said, all right, this is,

Speaker 2 this, this can be something. He, however, did not have a lot of money to

Speaker 2 sink into this weird idea.

Speaker 2 And so he had to partner with somebody with money, a man named Paul Chase,

Speaker 2 C-H-A-Z-E, or maybe Shaws, if he's French.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's good.

Speaker 2 And this guy had some dough because he owned a plastic injection molding company.

Speaker 1 And this is like early on.

Speaker 2 I wonder if we could count that as a toy.

Speaker 2 The little plastic machines that spit out little plastic guitars in Chicago and at zoos. Oh, yes, yes.

Speaker 1 Moldorama. That would definitely count.
Yeah, that goes on the list.

Speaker 2 So he didn't, it wasn't Moldorama, but it was plastic injection molding that this guy made his money from.

Speaker 2 And this is where things get a little confusing historically because

Speaker 2 the man who, his accountant, his name was Arthur Grangin.

Speaker 1 You are nailing the French today.

Speaker 1 Try to run, French people. You can't.
Chuck is pronouncing your words just beautifully.

Speaker 2 So his accountant is actually given credit a lot of times because he filed the patent

Speaker 2 under his name, which I'm curious about how that works legally.

Speaker 1 He so he was, do you remember the first time we did South by Southwest? And on the sign,

Speaker 1 it had like somebody, I can't remember whose name it was, but whoever had like filed the application to get us into South by Southwest, it said that like that's who was performing in the room that day?

Speaker 1 I don't remember that at all. I think this is the same, basically the same thing where as like the U.S.

Speaker 1 government bureaucracy, the patent and trademark office, basically said whoever's name is on there, that is who is the patent holder.

Speaker 1 And since Gran Jean, who was the accountant of Shays, who was the partner of Kesayen,

Speaker 1 since he was the one who actually filled out the application and paid for the application for the patent, as far as the government was concerned, he was the person who patented the Etcha sketch in the United States.

Speaker 1 Even though Granjean made no claim on it whatsoever, immediately transferred the title over to Shays.

Speaker 1 For decades, everybody thought Arthur Grande was the guy who invented the etch sketch.

Speaker 2 Interesting. All right, so that was July 23rd, 1959, was when this patent was granted.
And

Speaker 2 I guess we should just look at the little guy itself, the little TV-looking, that iconic red frame with the two dials, which it didn't have initially. We'll get to that.

Speaker 2 But the underside of this screen here has what's known in the patent as a pole virulent material, such as aluminum powder.

Speaker 1 Is that French as well? I don't know.

Speaker 2 And then to keep that from clumping up, there are little tiny plastic beads. And then the two knobs control, again, from the patent, a movable tracing stylus.

Speaker 2 Although initially it was a joystick, isn't that right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, basically like an Atari.

Speaker 1 But it served the same purpose, and it was

Speaker 1 held together the same way through an intricate system of pulleys and gears that move the stylus either upward or downward.

Speaker 1 And then if you combine the upward and downward together, you could make diagonals and circles and stuff like that. But

Speaker 1 it's really tough to describe what's going on in an Etcha sketch.

Speaker 1 But there's a How Stuff Works article from years back called Inside an Etcha Sketch, where the people at How Stuff Works like took one apart and photographed it and explained it step by step.

Speaker 1 And it really becomes much simpler and ruins any bit of magic there is to it when you see Inside an Etcha sketch. But it's still kind of wondrous.

Speaker 1 You know, like the engineer in you is like, wow, that's pretty cool.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's sort of like, I mean, it's not a negative image, I don't think, but what's going on when you're moving those knobs,

Speaker 2 there's a stylus that's actually removing, like the screen is coated with this powder. So it's actually removing powder, not adding something to the screen.

Speaker 1 Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2 And of course, if you want to get that away and start a new picture, you just shake that thing up and that recoats the screen once again with that powder.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so like you know how your TV screen always has tons of dust on it, no matter how often you dust it?

Speaker 2 Sure.

Speaker 1 So that's because like that dust is attracted electrostatically through an electrical charge to the glass.

Speaker 1 They take advantage of that same thing with the underside of the Etcha sketch and that aluminum dust, which sticks to everything.

Speaker 1 Like it wants to stick to the glass because I think it's missing some electrons or something. And then when you move the stylus through it, you're just removing that dust, like you said.

Speaker 1 It's not a negative. It's the removal of dust.
And that's an Etcha sketch, like at its at its core. And what's interesting, Chuck, is like that is how an Etcha sketch today works.

Speaker 1 That's how an Etcha sketch worked in 1960, too. Like the

Speaker 1 two, meaning like also. Sure.
But that dude, Andre Cassagne,

Speaker 1 said, this is how this is going to work. And it's basically the same thing.

Speaker 2 That's pretty awesome. Let's take a break.
Yes. We're going to come back and talk about Coming Stateside right after this.

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Speaker 1 All right, so Chuck, so how did we agree on his last name? I think I'm butchering it still. And I even took years of French in high school.

Speaker 2 I think he said Casserole.

Speaker 1 All right. Andre Casserole.

Speaker 1 That seems wrong.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm still going to go with Casson.

Speaker 1 Okay, there you go. Andre Casson.

Speaker 1 He knew he was onto something. Like, this guy was an electrician.
He was like, this is a great idea. This is a prototype I made.
This is worth something.

Speaker 1 So he and Cruz, I guess, funded a trip to the Nuremberg Toy Fair

Speaker 1 in 1959.

Speaker 1 And it was there that Casson was walking around saying, check this thing out. It is yours for a mere $100,000,

Speaker 1 which at the time was a lot of money.

Speaker 1 I think it was $870,000 today. And that's what this guy wanted for the right to produce this.

Speaker 1 And every toy maker at the place said no, including a little toy maker called Ohio Art.

Speaker 1 Everybody turned it down, and Kassan went home from the toy fair empty-handed. But he didn't give up.
He still persisted, but that was a big strikeout for him right out of the gate.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so Ohio Art eventually settles on a number of 25 grand for the rights to make this thing in the United States.

Speaker 2 It is still called La Crom Magique in France because they had a different licensing deal over there from the get-go.

Speaker 2 And Ohio Art Company is pretty interesting. It started, did you see that thing?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I did.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they started out in 1908, founded by a man named, a dentist named Dr. Henry S.
Wentz Winzler in Archibald, Ohio. He gets out of dentistry because he's like, hey, man, toys is the future.

Speaker 1 Toys is the future.

Speaker 1 There's no future in teeth. In a decade, no one in America is going to have teeth.
It's just a losing trade to be in, is dentistry.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so he saw the way forward. He rented a

Speaker 2 music hall, hired 15 women, and they were making metal picture frames at first to great, great success.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 so they use something called metal lithography, which is a type of printing. And I think the metal refers to like the medium that you're using to print with, like

Speaker 1 you carve a picture out of metal and you put ink on it and then you print on whatever you want. But they were printing onto metal.

Speaker 1 Like they had like these picture frames and pictures that were like a huge cellar of a cupid. It was a pair of like oval plates, basically, but they were metal,

Speaker 1 printed pictures on them of like a cupid hanging out, and then the same cupid sleeping. And it's just kind of like whatever.
Like these days, it seems kind of got a tinge of old-timey creepiness.

Speaker 1 But in the first half of the 20th century, there were 50 million sets of those things sold in the United States, which is an astounding amount.

Speaker 1 That's basically every house in America had a pair of this. And that really kind of made Ohio art like a very viable business.

Speaker 1 But they eventually got into things like sandpails and little trucks and that kind of thing. Anything that was printed with metal before the time that plastic toys came along, they were into.

Speaker 1 So it wasn't a huge leap into the Etch of Sketch, but the Etch of Sketch was definitely different than anything that they'd ever kind of messed around with before.

Speaker 2 Did you know I've done metal lithography?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was one of our

Speaker 2 in industrial arts. It was, you know, at least at my school, each quarter you did a different medium or whatever.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 lithography was something we did one quarter do you remember what you printed

Speaker 2 uh i'm trying to remember what i printed it's funny i can remember that because we also one quarter was uh screen printing and i remember the t-shirts i did monkeys t-shirts

Speaker 1 like the see no evil hear no evil monkeys no the band the monkeys they're they're

Speaker 2 their uh logo with the guitar spelled out as monkeys

Speaker 1 like wow did you draw it yourself? No, no, no, of course not.

Speaker 2 But we did metal sheet lithography. I don't remember all of the process, but what I do remember was it essentially was like burning,

Speaker 2 chemically burning images onto metal plates, and then that metal plate was used to print.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 So the metal and metal lithography does

Speaker 1 it talks about the metal press that you're using to print with.

Speaker 2 Like at the end of, there may be different processes, but in my class, we would

Speaker 2 do this thing and apply this like

Speaker 2 image with like this gel onto a metal sheet and use this combination of chemicals that would burn that into, like, make it part of the metal.

Speaker 2 And then all of a sudden, you would have a metal sheet with a thing on it, like a negative image. And then you would use that in the printing process to print a positive image.

Speaker 1 Right. And you could use that to print onto anything, including other metal, right?

Speaker 2 Well, hey, man, that's where my knowledge. And again, this was ninth grade me, so I've forgotten a lot of things over the time period.
Right.

Speaker 2 And I'm sure I just butchered that, but that's my one little dance with metal lithography.

Speaker 1 Well, I'll tell you who would be able to tell us exactly how you could, how metal lithography works.

Speaker 1 It's anybody who works at Ohio Art, because not only was that their bread and butter before the Etches sketch, it still is today, actually.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 Ohio Art, like, I guess, gets in touch with Andre Cassan, and either he got in touch with them again, or they got in touch with him.

Speaker 1 I think it was the latter of the two, and said, Hey, we heard you're selling this for $100,000. It's way too rich for our blood.

Speaker 1 How about either $15,000 or $25,000, depending on who you ask in the future? And Kassan is like, What are you talking about? They're like, Just take the money.

Speaker 1 And so they either got it for $15,000 or $25,000, which is still substantial. I mean, it was like around $100K or

Speaker 1 200K, something like that, depending on which one it was. And Cassan was quite a happy man.

Speaker 1 There was a story where the guy who was running the show at Ohio Art and his wife went over to meet Andre Cassan and just kind of have like an initial meeting and like shake his hand and all that and buy the license from him.

Speaker 1 And Cassan was like, welcome and had like this huge spread of baguettes and champagne and everything at his house, which is pretty cute because he was just like this humble guy who came up with a really great idea for a toy and was finally like selling it for a wad of cash.

Speaker 2 Interesting.

Speaker 1 A little

Speaker 1 too,

Speaker 1 what the baguettes in champagne? Yeah, but you know, what are you going to do? Well, you went in France, right?

Speaker 2 So he is, uh, once he's on board with Ohio Art, uh, he gets together with their uh chief engineer, Jerry Berger, and says, and Berger's like, listen here, Frenchie, you need to drop the joystick.

Speaker 2 It's all knobs these days.

Speaker 2 And he said, what is a knob? And he was like, well, let me show you.

Speaker 2 And he introduced the idea of the same system like you were talking about, but knobs instead of a joystick to move that little line horizontal or vertical.

Speaker 2 Or as you pointed out, if you're really talented and you can master both at once, you can actually do

Speaker 2 rudimentary. Well, if you're really good, you can do very nice.
curved lines.

Speaker 1 Yeah, beyond rudimentary. No, neither am I.
I can make a line go up and a line go to the left or right. Yeah, we'll get to that.
You can't even make it go down.

Speaker 2 We'll get to the art of it

Speaker 2 maybe at the end, but because there are some serious artists out there doing some cool stuff.

Speaker 2 But at any rate, Etcha Sketch, it was rebranded as Etcha Sketch in the United States. Ohio Arts producing them for the 1960 holiday season.
And they sold about 600,000 of these

Speaker 2 that year, which is a

Speaker 1 lot.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and they sold it for a lot of money, too. They went for sale at $2.99 a piece, which is $2,564 in today's money.

Speaker 1 But I mean, if you go buy an Esther sketch today, it's between $10 and $15. So that was a lot of money, especially to sell $600,000 of these things, especially if you were selling like creepy...

Speaker 1 you know, metal wastebaskets with an unsettling clown painted on it or printed on it, like right before this. This is a huge,

Speaker 1 it was a good move by the people at Ohio Art to buy the license to this thing, in other words.

Speaker 1 And they say, Chuck, that it coincided really perfectly with television, so much so that they believe like that is one of the reasons why Jerry Berger was like, you need knobs.

Speaker 1 This thing needs to look like a TV set because that's what's all the rage with the kids right now.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and he, um,

Speaker 2 it was one of the first toys to actually do a TV commercial. And so if it's 1960 and you're a child watching, first of all, your mind is blown because you're watching a television to begin with.

Speaker 1 It's just like, you know, I can't believe this. I can't believe what's going on right now.

Speaker 2 Then a TV commercial comes on for a toy.

Speaker 2 And this toy has animation in it to where like they would etch a sketch a little rocket ship and then that rock and that rocket ship would animate and take off.

Speaker 2 And this was like, these kids might have, I mean, keep in mind, kids in 1960 were idiots, but they might as well have been dosed with lsd

Speaker 1 you know they just kept fainting over and over again throughout the commercial because they could not believe what they were seeing mindset and it's just it's just an etcha sketch you know

Speaker 1 yeah but it's genius i love it it is but it really i i think the the point was though that like

Speaker 1 taking advantage of the novelty of tv and also now having a way like if you, like we just tried to explain an Etcha sketch over a podcast.

Speaker 1 Prior to TV, if the Echo Sketch had come out during like the Little Orphan

Speaker 1 radio era, they would have had to have done the same thing. It wouldn't have landed quite as well.
The fact that a kid could see this happening on their TV screen was pretty awesome.

Speaker 1 And then also to say, and then you just shake it, turn it upside down and shake it and coat the

Speaker 1 glass screen again and your drawing is gone forever. Like to be able to see that, TV made the Etches Getch what it was, like, for sure.

Speaker 1 It definitely ushered it into a position where it could become like

Speaker 1 a cultural icon of nostalgia.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, you know, they perfected it by the time they started rolling off in 1960. Prior to that, like any product like this, there was a lot of R ⁇ D.

Speaker 2 One of the people who worked there talked about the mountain of red frames behind the factory while they were trying to get it right.

Speaker 2 And it was such a huge smash hit out of the gate that, as legend has it, they were manufacturing up until noon on Christmas Eve just to get them to the West Coast in time for Christmas morning.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's pretty, that's pretty cool. I mean, they really wanted those kids to have those Echa sketches.
They really wanted that money.

Speaker 2 Should we take another break?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 All right. We'll talk about some ways Etcha sketches ebbed and flowed in popularity and pop culture over the years.
Right for this.

Speaker 3 Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously.

Speaker 5 On Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI.

Speaker 4 It all starts with your prompt.

Speaker 10 From renewable energy companies with high-free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work.

Speaker 7 It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-a-kind index, and lets you backtest it against the S ⁇ P 500.

Speaker 14 Then you can invest in a few clicks.

Speaker 13 Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's.

Speaker 15 Go to public.com slash podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio.

Speaker 7 That's public.com slash podcast.

Speaker 16 Paid for by Public Investing. Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc., member FINRA and SIPC.

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Speaker 12 Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool.

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Speaker 1 You know, everyone living with a rare autoimmune condition has their own story to tell.

Speaker 1 And that's why, in season five of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio Production, in partnership with Argenix, you'll hear powerful, real-life perspectives.

Speaker 2 That's right. This podcast explores stories of what life is really like with MG or CIDP.

Speaker 2 Host Martine Hackett sits sits down with people who faced it all: the early signs and symptoms, the search for answers, and the strength it takes to keep moving forward.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and this season, the stories go even deeper, showing us what resilience truly looks like through setbacks, breakthroughs, and the communities that make all the difference.

Speaker 1 So, listen to Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 1 Chuck, I don't know if we said it or not, but from what I've seen, more than 175 million Etcha sketches have been sold since 1960.

Speaker 2 And we should point out, we're not just like ticking off a list of pop culture references. Like every time this happened, Etcha sketch sales would go up.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like the Mitt Romney one increased sales like 30%.

Speaker 1 I guess everybody was like, oh, Etcha sketch, I forgot about that. I think I'll go buy one right now.

Speaker 2 Well, they actually branded after that

Speaker 2 Republican and Democrat Etcha sketches, though, didn't they?

Speaker 1 Yeah, so you could buy a red one or a blue one, but both of them came with a sticker, which I'm assuming that they printed on their metal lithography presses, of a donkey and an elephant playing tug-of-war on the front of the White House lawn.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's just crazy.

Speaker 1 It is, but it's also that's smart, you know? That's how you that's how you make the money.

Speaker 2 Um, and then, of course, in the movie Toy Story from Pixar, uh, there was um one of the characters' name was Etch and had the fastest knobs in the West. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And that was always a very fun character, I think, to see him drawing things out really fast to communicate.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and you know, you said something earlier.

Speaker 1 You were talking about how, like, despite the fact that it doesn't even have batteries, it's had the staying power for 50-something years, almost 60 years, it's been around.

Speaker 1 And it's a really simple thing that the design hasn't changed. And I think even more of a testimony to

Speaker 1 the staying power of the Etcha sketch is the fact that they have tried stuff with batteries and like

Speaker 1 things that connect to your computer over the years, and nothing has managed to improve on the original Etcha sketch. Like there was, you remember the Etcha Sketch animator?

Speaker 1 No. So

Speaker 1 I couldn't quite place it either, but I went and watched an old ad. It was big in the 80s.
And it was basically like an Etcha sketch, but there was nothing mechanical about it. It was digital.

Speaker 1 You're creating like a bitmap digital picture, and

Speaker 1 then you'd press like, I guess, play or something like that, and it would just kind of run it like a flipbook over and over again. So your etch a sketch drawing like came to life.

Speaker 1 But kids were like, Nah, I'd rather have the original etchis sketch because the etch sketch animator went away, and the etches sketch is still available today.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, there have been other variations. They had the doodle sketch,

Speaker 2 the plug-in play,

Speaker 2 which this sounds like a bad idea. Plug-in play allows you to draw on the TV screen.
That's just asking for trouble as a parent. Sure.

Speaker 2 And then the mobile app, which I've been playing with today.

Speaker 1 Oh, how's it going?

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, what do you think of this picture?

Speaker 1 Oh, that's not bad. It looks kind of etch a sketchy, you know?

Speaker 2 Yeah, so what you can do is it's kind of fun.

Speaker 2 You can upload or take a photo on your smartphone, plug it into the app, and then it will instantly etchify it. And what I've learned is that it's

Speaker 2 the more basic, like a picture of your face works much better than something with a lot of stuff in the background.

Speaker 2 But it's fun.

Speaker 1 Right. Yeah.
You know, I like it. I was reading reviews of the app.
I didn't try it myself like you, but

Speaker 1 it did say like if it's a basic picture, it'll look way more etch a sketchy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so my official review is, yeah, not bad.

Speaker 1 So three stars out of six?

Speaker 2 Sure. I mean, mean, for something that downloaded in 30 seconds and was free, I'm going to give it a half a thumb up.
There you go.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 one of the things that

Speaker 1 has kind of kept Etcha Sketch alive for the younger kids, I read this article about Etcha Sketch, and it was right before they sold. So, a lot of people don't know.

Speaker 1 Ohio Art doesn't make Etcha Sketch anymore. They sold it to a brand called Spin Master.

Speaker 1 I didn't see that. Yeah, it's not Ohio Art.
OhioArt said, we're going back to metal lithography, and that's what they did. So they sold Etcha Sketch off to Spin Master.

Speaker 1 Spin Master is like, that's fine with us, baby. Thanks for all these licenses.

Speaker 1 I mean, an Echisket, a frozen-branded Etcha Sketch,

Speaker 1 it might as well just be like a printing press for money, right? Yeah. So it was probably a pretty good buy for Spin Master.
And OhioArt was like, this thing is, it was great.

Speaker 1 It was a good run while it lasted, but they also had to oversee it through some really dark times because,

Speaker 1 well, for one thing,

Speaker 1 like Etcha Sketch isn't landing with the millennials, I get the impression, like it used to with the baby boomers. That was one thing.

Speaker 1 And Ohio Art also almost went bankrupt because of it back in like 2001. They managed to get some more money back into the business and stay afloat.

Speaker 1 But part of that also was they had to send the manufacturing of the Etcha Sketch off to China, which they were really unhappy about because they lost like 35 35 jobs in tiny little Bryan, Ohio.

Speaker 1 But eventually, like 15 years later, they said, you know what? We're getting out of the Etcha Sketch business and sold it off to Spin Master.

Speaker 2 Which is a weird name.

Speaker 1 But one of the things, it's a little weird. Ohio art's a little weird, too.
You don't associate Ohio with art, you know? Oh, uh-oh. You just don't.
I'll say it again.

Speaker 2 Tell that to Chrissy Hind in the Black Keys.

Speaker 1 No, Chrissy Hind gets what I'm saying for sure.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 one of the things, though, that is keeping EtchaSketch relevant, the reason why, like if you walk up to like a 17-year-old and say, what do you think about EtchaSketch?

Speaker 1 They say, oh, yeah, I've heard of that. Because every once in a while, you'll see on

Speaker 1 the internets a photo or two of somebody who is really, really good at EtchaSketch. And it just kind of makes the rounds on social media.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, everything from like the Mona Lisa to just like portraits of people to landscapes.

Speaker 2 What's really fun is you can go on YouTube and look at time-lapse renderings, etch a sketch renderings, which when you're seeing it done super fast like that, you kind of think like,

Speaker 2 I feel like I could do that, but you really have to be a master with those knobs. Like what I found is the thing you really need to master to do everything

Speaker 2 that you want to do is being able to retrace well. Because as everyone knows, it's not like a pencil.
You can't pick it up off the paper and start somewhere else.

Speaker 2 You have to, if you want to go somewhere else, you have to retrace as closely to that original line as you can all the way back to that point that you want to be at.

Speaker 2 Or else it's just going to look like something

Speaker 2 that I did, which looks like something a toddler did.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I mean, like, that's a really good point. When you're making a good EtchaSketch drawing, it is all one single line.
It's frequently doubled back over.

Speaker 1 And Etcha Sketch artists will use like that frame. They'll create a line frame around the edges that they can travel back out to and move around the picture like that.
Pretty brilliant.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's a guy named George Vlosich III, who's known for some pretty amazing portraits of Muhammad Ali, Barack Obama, LeBron James. There's an artist named Jane Labowich, or Labowich, maybe.

Speaker 1 She calls herself Princess Etchisketch. She's done some amazing architectural detail with it.
And then there's a guy named Ryan Burton who does erotic Simpsons art

Speaker 1 with the Etchisketch. And all three of them are like

Speaker 1 really good at the Etcha sketch drawings.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the fanfic of Etcha Sketch artists.

Speaker 1 Interesting.

Speaker 1 And then apparently, when you're very satisfied with your Etcha sketch and you don't want anything to happen to it, you drill a hole in the back and get the aluminum powder out, and then you lock the knobs to keep them from being turned, then you have an Etcha Sketch masterpiece that you can hang in a museum.

Speaker 2 Oh, so that makes it permanent? Yeah.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 when a kid comes in the museum and rips it off the wall and shakes it, nothing happens.

Speaker 1 No. No.
And I think by law, you're allowed to pick up that kid and shake it. Yes, I think so.
As long as it's not a baby, don't shake a baby. Right.
No, never shake a baby. Come on.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I would never advocate shaking a baby, everybody. I just want to go on record as saying that.

Speaker 2 There was, you know, the comedian Nate Bargazzi?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 2 He's great. He's got a very funny bit about shaking babies.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Believe it or not. It takes a lot to turn that into something funny.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he did it, man. Good for him.

Speaker 1 Nate Bergatzi, huh?

Speaker 2 Nate Bergatzi, dude. You would love him.
He's great.

Speaker 1 So, Nate Bergatzi just became a cultural icon because we did not see him coming up in this episode. That's right.

Speaker 1 Well, if you want to know more about Nate Bergatzi, you should go check him out on the internet like I'm going to.

Speaker 1 And since I said Nate Bergatzi, it's time for listener mail.

Speaker 2 Man, I hope someone tells Nate we're plugging him.

Speaker 1 I'm plugging away.

Speaker 2 Plugging Nate. All right, here.
I'm going to mention, this is about Jerry and her eating. And this is from Kim Cooper.
Did you see this, Jerry? She says no.

Speaker 2 Hey, guys, I noticed that you often mention what Jerry is eating a lot during the podcast. A lot.
I don't know

Speaker 2 how close she is to your microphones. Well, I'll go ahead and say that from your side over there, she's about five feet.

Speaker 1 Like, all I have to do is lean in my seat a little bit, and I can touch Jerry's miso soup.

Speaker 2 That's right. You could dip your thumb in her soup.

Speaker 1 And sometimes I threaten to.

Speaker 2 I don't know how close she is to your microphones, but I never hear her eating, which is good for your fans with mesophonia. But I'm curious why she chooses this time to eat.

Speaker 2 Do you guys spend all day podcasting, and that's the only time she can fit it in?

Speaker 1 No. No.

Speaker 2 Silly question that popped into my head listening to this

Speaker 2 week after Josh said, and there's Jerry eating God knows what.

Speaker 2 Anyway, guys. She's got me interested in trying Miso.
Tell her she's doing a great job because I don't know.

Speaker 2 Because I know she doesn't doesn't get too many shout outs. And Josh and Chuck, you guys are pretty great too.

Speaker 1 That is from Kim Cooper. Thanks, Kim.
That's funny. She went all the way around to just basically say, I guess what I'm trying to say is I've always wanted to try miso.
Yeah, pretty much.

Speaker 1 Well, go try some miso, Kim. I mean, you can buy it at like any grocery store.
Just go get a tub of it, get a big old spoon, try your first spoonful, and go from there.

Speaker 1 Do you ever eat just miso paste?

Speaker 1 No. It's good.
If you're craving something salty and savory and umami, let's just say,

Speaker 1 it's good. But you can't eat very much of it.
I'm just teasing Kim. Like, a spoonful is a lot of miso paste.

Speaker 2 Okay. What do you just add that to is it an ingredient? Yeah, for like soups, miso soups, stuff like that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but you can just eat the paste. Okay.
And live to tell about it. I'm proof.
Well, if you want to get in touch with us to talk about Jerry, we're always fine with that.

Speaker 1 You can go to stuffyushouldknow.com, find out all of our social links, and you can always send us an email. Attention, everybody.
We have a new email address.

Speaker 1 Wowie, wow. Wowoo.
It is stuffpodcast at iHeartPodcastNetwork.com. How about that?

Speaker 1 For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

Speaker 3 Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously.

Speaker 4 On Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI.

Speaker 4 It all starts with your prompt.

Speaker 10 From renewable energy companies with high-free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year-over-year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work.

Speaker 7 It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-a-kind index, and lets you backtest it against the S ⁇ P 500.

Speaker 14 Then you can invest in a few clicks.

Speaker 13 Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's.

Speaker 15 Go to public.com slash podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio.

Speaker 7 That's public.com slash podcast.

Speaker 16 Paid for by Public Investing. Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc., member FINRA and SIPC.

Speaker 17 Advisory Services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC Registered Advisor.

Speaker 12 Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool.

Speaker 18 Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures.

Speaker 2 Living with an autoimmune condition isn't easy, and every journey is different.

Speaker 2 That's why season five of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition from Ruby Studio and Argenix shares powerful first-hand stories from people with conditions like MG and CIDP.

Speaker 2 Hosted by Martine Hackett, these conversations dive into what resilience really looks like through setbacks, breakthroughs, and finding strength in community.

Speaker 2 Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When it comes to small business, people want to talk to people, not bots, not voicemail.

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