Toys, Part 1

before we started recording? We were listening to the Smashing Pumpkins Christmas song. We were yeah, which wasn't bad I did. I didn't dislike it, No, I actually kind of love it.

It's hilarious though, hearing Billy Corgan gushing breathlessly about how there are toys for everyone on Christmas Day, Uh, which is funny because like you can totally believe it, like you know, he's in I guess I wouldn't normally think of The Smashing Pumpkins as music for children, but like the the obsession, Like even as an adult, I can remember what it felt like to to believe that toys

were incoming. Like how exciting that was that you would have new objects to play pretend with incoming presence hurtling towards your ship as they're thrown by the Bronze Age Automaton tell us, well, you know, I would say that even as an adult, I still know what it's like sometimes to want things. But there's nothing as an adult that I feel that is equivalent to the way that

I wanted toys as a child. Oh yeah, I mean I've I've spoken on the show before about how you know, you would want a toy so badly they would dream about it and see it in your bed with you when you woke up in the morning. And uh yeah, it's a it's a different realm of of of wants and needs when you're that age. But toys are fascinating, you know, they've they've been with us since very ancient times.

We have evidence of you know, toys dating back to so you know, have things like the wonderful horse toys of ancient Egypt. Uh. And they speak to the timeless nature of play and the use of physical objects in our play, and not only in our play, also in our instruction. But they also fit very much into uh,

into the archaeological picture of ancient technology. The earliest physical evidence of wheels I think in the Western hemisphere, definitely in the America's is wheeled toys like you know, like little statuettes of of horses and stuff found in ancient Mesoamerica and South America. I believe that have wheels for moving around on yeah, and then you know, also they

have often have dual purposes as well. I was when I was in Hawaii most recently, I went to a few different museums that were devoted to you know, you know, oceanic technology and oceanic culture, and they pointed out that model ships were essential to ship builders. You know, they showed in miniature what the larger product would be and helped you instruct others in how to build it. And in the reverses, you've also kind of made a wonderful

toy in the process. But also I think toys are we shouldn't think of them as frivolous as far as inventions go, because play is not frivolous. The play that children do shapes the I mean, it's like the most important part of a child's education, I think, far more even than the technical subjects they learn as they grow up. I mean, you've got to be able to explore the physical world and manipulate things. Uh, And and toys are

an important part of that. Yeah. In some cases toys are are actually training you know, young bodies and young minds for the manipulation of important tools. You know. Other times, especially in modern age, they can be more specifically educational. Though generally when you look at the history of toys, that is is kind of like the history of how we think about children, right. The idea that this is a time to educate them when toys is more or less uh, you know, a modern uh discovery if you will.

But but also you know, there are always to think about toys, such as you know, thinking about them as products. I was reading an article by Edward a Newmark titled British Toys, which is just all about British toys. But he points out that you know, these are unique as items created for sale. Most toys are aimed at an individual who will not be a repeat customer, not until some twenty years later when they perhaps buy the same

toy again for their own children. Most toys have an active life of a mere you know, a couple of years, and the test of a great toy is whether it will still be on the market a decade after its release. And so many toys pass into history only to to only possibly be resurrected twenty years light or on an updraft collective nostalgia. And yet other toys have become true

classics and stand the test of time. They are the sort of iconic toys that you'll see Santa Claus bringing to children in um, you know, in cartoons and whatnot. The kind of toys that even modern Santa Claus fictions will will show Santa Claus making in his workshop. Yeah, totally this year, in twenty nineteen, Santa will not be bringing children POGs mostly, and will not be bringing children

tickle me elmos unless there's some strange revival. But lots of kids all over the place are probably gonna be getting toy trucks and dolls and blocks. I mean, there are certain toy forms that stand the test of time. Yea, the sort of generic classic toys that that still show up under under the Christmas tree. There're still part of our our lives. Um see how we've touched on some of the roles that toys play, you know, they you know, we sometimes they educate. Sometimes it's a it's about tool use.

Other times there you just see toys emerged sort of peeling off from technological advancements of the day, and uh, you know, and others are examples of specific designs intended to teach. So history is full of philosophical toys, educational toys, sports toys, war toys, adult toys, pointless toys, and more. Right, and for that reason, we thought it might be fun to do a couple of episodes here where we just look at a series of different toys throughout history, where

they came from and what made them so popular. Right, And this will be great because these are inventions. These uh, these are things that people created and they're part of our our technico history, but they're not necessarily items that benefit from an entire episode's treatment. So let's let's throw open uh Santa Talos's bag and see what kind of

toys we have to discuss here today. All right, First, it looks like we've got before some kind of strange lament configuration of box, except it's got a handle you can crank. Ye, I don't know what what is this year? It's a delightful little clockwork box. And and if I open it it has such sights to show me. It is, of course the Jack in the Box a classic toy. Again, this is one of those that you see in Santa

Claus cartoons. You see Santa Claus making an old timey Santa Claus movies, and and indeed it still shows up under the tree, sometimes with a franchise character jumping out of it instead of kind of a generic old timey clown. Okay, so how does the Jack in the Box work for

those those youngsters who have never actually held one. Well, one winds a crank on the side of the box to power a music box inside, generally playing something like pop goes the Weasel, you know something that's do and it means the faster you crank at, the faster the song goes. That's still under copyright. Are we gonna get in trouble? Uh? Actually, that's fair, you see even if it were. But at any rate, um, eventually it's going to trigger the box to pop open, generally at the

end of the song. And when it pops open, a coiled spring is going to launch a clown puppet into action. And generally it is the equivalent of a small hand puppet, very much in the style of Punch and Judy, uh, the the old timey puppets. They have different names in different languages, but this would be the street puppet show to amuse children and adults, where Punch and Judy kind of just beat the crap out of each other and

also encounter of various authority figures they encounter the devil. Um. It's often been compared like Punch is basically scratching aging Scratchy and pun. Punch is also kind of Homer Simpson. It's more violent Homer Simpson. Um, maybe it's more of a bender. I don't know. But but also in fact, I've read that Punch in a Box was a predecessor where you would actually just have Punch himself jump out

of the box once you're done cranking it. This, according to Antonia Fraser, is a history of toys, but a history of to is by Fraser also stresses that the exact origins of the Jack in the box are unknown. Now I'm trying to think about categorizing this toy, like does it count as a toy? I mean, I guess it, I guess it must. But like how does one play with it? Right, Like, what is the act of playing? Once the thing is already popped out once and you

know what's going to happen. Yeah, it's a it's a clockwork amusement, right, It's it's not necessarily something that I imagine factors into a lot of children's imagination play. It is kind of a spectacle that is unleashed, that is surprising, and it's also kind of a trick. Another toy item that that is very similar is, of course the canister of peanuts. That's what I was going to bring up. Yeah, the spring snakes again, to go back to the Simpsons,

the can of beer nuts, all beer nuts. But then of course you lift the lid and the snakes pop out, and it's still hilarious. I just watched an episode of Stephen Colbert where he goes to New Zealand and he gives this to I think he gives it to Lord the Musician, telling her that it is an American tradition and she opens it and the snake scares her and it's delightful. Part of the joke being that there are

no snakes in New Zealand. Oh, in New Zealand, Okay, well I've been thinking Australia and I was like, what's gonna happen The funnel web spider comes out. Now we'll get a little into possible origins here, but basically this is this has been with this for quite a while. Um and improve materials and technology made the toy a more widespread success in the eighteenth century, meaning that you know, it wasn't just going to be the uh, you know,

something that would m please very wealthy children. It wasn't like this, this clockwork philosophical toy that the children would get to look at occasionally. But it does seem to emerge from this world of of of clockwork ingenuity. Yes, so we talked about this in our episode on the Canard de Gierra Tour The Pooping Duck um or the digesting Duck. I guess we put a lot of emphasis

on the poop for some reason. But yeah, it was this era where there were people who were becoming increasingly good at mechanical engineering and creating these clockwork devices that had complex inner workings and thus could generate complex outward behaviors based on things that were hidden. You know, you couldn't see what was going on inside, but it was

doing complex stuff. And this was part of a history of philosophical debate about whether, in fact living things were somehow like this, we're living things somehow machines in which all the individual parts could be identified and stuff, or were there sort of indivisible and ineffable elements that made actual life forms in nature different from the machines built

by the clockmakers. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And and part of this whole effort, this whole movement was was the the emergence of music boxes, which were tremendous uh success and uh and still are are very popular. Also self playing instruments, which we got into a little bit in our saxophone episode. There are part of this this whole world as well. But essentially you can also think of the jack in the box as a is a music box that packs

some punch, sometimes literally. Uh. Now, in terms of where it this actual technology that like, like where the first jack in the box arises from, I've seen some i would say shaky sources attributing the invention to a German clockmaker of the sixteenth century named Klaus, just Klaus Klaus or Clause perhaps, which of course has leaved a little suspect because of Santa Claus. But I can't I cannot

find a firm source on this. Perhaps it's out there, perhaps somebody can can bring it to my attention, but in my research I cannot find a firm source saying yeah, we think that a sixteenth century German clockmaker made the first Jack in the box. In fact, as previously mentioned, some sources state the origin is unknown. And I've noticed several toy history books that seemingly don't explore the history

of the Jack in the Box at all. But in looking at Gary Martin's excellent phrase finder website, which which is is wonderful, I do recommend people check it out. He has an entry on the back in the Box. And I also was looking at a at a book titled Gothic Effigy by Saved Unwin Jones, and uh, and something becomes increasingly clear. The toy seems to have been named after some turn of phrase that pre existed it.

So jack in the box you might have what called somebody a jack in the box before there was a Jack in the box toy exactly. Martin points to usages of the phrase jack in the box and sometimes lack in the box from the sixteenth century. That suggests that Jack in the box or lack in the box was sort of like pig in the poke. Now, if you're not familiar with that, pig in the poke means like a pig in a bag, and the idea is don't

buy a pig in the bag. You know, don't buy a pig site unseen, because you don't know what you'll get, something might be wrong with it. Yeah, this seems to have negative implications for the Jack in the Box restaurant. Yeah. I don't know if they really did, you know, like a full history. They just thought about the pleasant surprise,

I guess the box. But yeah, so the ideas that Jack in the box would would mean, you know, something unpleasant that was purchased site unseen, or indeed, it might mean the swindler who sells boxes they either don't contain what they're supposed to contain or contain nothing at all. And that seems to play pretty well with the basic experience of the Jack in the box, right. The box contains a fright rather than any kind of material goods. It's and and again it's not even something you can

play with inside. It's just a puppet that jumps out at you and startles you, and you know it is again not unlike its toy, Ken the snake in the canister of nuts. Now, by asking that question earlier though about whether it's a toy, I didn't mean to undermine its role. I guess I was just asking, like, what

actually constitutes a toy. I think it's clear that these the Jack in the boxes as a toy or whatever you want to call it, are popular with children, have been for a long time, and they do even after they've been surprised once repeat the experience. There's something intellectually interesting going on there, developmentally interesting that they've already had it pop out once, they're not going to be surprised, but they'll still keep playing with it. They'll crank the

handle again and like manipulate the speed of playback and stuff. Yeah. And let's face it, if you came into work one day and there was a Jack in the Box closed on your desk, what would you do. You'd have to crank it and see what pops out? Right, Yeah, So it does continue to have liked. Any anybody that's new to the Jack in the Box will have to invoke

the experience and then they might invoke it again. Now, there is another potential origin story that sometimes makes the rounds um and that is the tale of a thirteenth century Norfolk Christian saint like figure, not an actual saint, but an individual by the name of Sir John Shorn, who is said to have captured the devil in a boot um and he was also said to be blessed

in the healing of gout. And of course this is where it gets kind of complicated, right, because the um gout, of course, is an inflammatory arthritis that might well be described as a devil in the boot and has been illustrated, you know, various times through history as a monster or devil that choose on a person's foot. The idea that the gout can affect multiple parts of the body, but it often manifests in like somebody's big toe, right, yeah,

but you could also get it in your elbow or whatever. Right, And then of course there's like pseudo gout as well, which is which is different. But but classic gout has long been been with with humans and uh, and so that's kind of complicated because on one hand, he this particular individual was sometimes shown as having a boot with

the devil peeking out of it. And so the argument is like, this is kind of the basis for the box that contains uh a what might have actually been a devil in some cases, but then becomes a clown or other figures as the you know, as it is adapted more for children. But I should point out that Martin, in looking at this, thinks that the historical historical connective tissue between Shorn and the Jack in the Box is pretty much non existent, so there's there's not a lot

to actually go on there. But he he does point to a firework of the seventeen hundreds known as Lack in the Box. And uh, and this was mentioned in John Babington's Pyrotechnia, which was published in Sive And and this this, uh, this might well be be where the name comes from as well. So would this be a firework that pops out of a box in some way or at least is a it is a I get the the idea that maybe it had some sort of box, or maybe it was just the idea that it was

a surprise that it it pops at all. And uh and therefore, you know, this could be something they got the name for this firework from the pre existing phrase, and then both of these helped to inform the naming of this strange box that has a puppet that jumps out of it, because again it is a shock and it is also literally a lack in the box, right, Jack in the box? Is a jack in the box supposed to be scary? Is it supposed to kind of

startle the child? I think it is supposed to art all the child now and now is it scary as well as startling? I think that depends on what jumps out. Is it a clown which is delightful? Yes, clowns are delightable. Clowns are for children. It's only adults by and large who think the clowns are scary. But if it's a devil, then I think you could definitely make the argument that isn't it is intended to frighten the child or the

or humorously frightened the adult that opens it. Now and looking at that book gothic effigy by Jones, Jones, however, contends that the devil is still present in the Jack in the box as quote horned jack bursting from his side of confinement unquote is the key idea toned down to a clown in the toy, and this would Their argument here is that this UH would have emerged from

Gothic fascination with devils. Ornamental boxes UH, such as one that puts out was in Sheridan LeFanu's Wilder's hand In from eighteen sixty four, and he ties all of this in with the the ongoing influence of Gothic traditions on culture and children's costumes, toys, books, and more. Okay, so some intentional scary elements here or associate or at least yes, yeah, that's that's the argument. But then again, those scary elements may have been removed to make it just merely startling

to the child. But it is, I think, without a doubt, it is meant to be a startling toy. It is meant to be something you give to a small child and watch their faces. They are shocked, surprised, and then hopefully they will laugh because of course it was it was startling, But then there is no actual threat present.

You know, my thinking has developed over the past few minutes when asking why is it that you see a child playing with the jack in the box repeatedly cranking it over and over and having the thing pop out even after they've already done it, you know, once or twice,

they know what's going to happen. I wonder if these are sort of like experiments with object permanence, much the same way the game of he Kaboo plays a developmental role with children, like establishing that an object or a person can be hidden but will emerge again when the barrier division is removed. That's a good point. Another thing that I'm thinking about is that the second time you do it, especially, the child is probably more aware that

they have control over when the startling moment occurs. They know it's going to occur at the end of that song, for instance, and there's probably something empowering there and realizing that they are the master of the fright they're about

to receive exactly, and I would see that. I would say that really comes through in the way that you see children manipulate the speed of the crank when they do it, like they will often either speed way up or slow way down right towards the end of the song, as the song lets you know how much more time is left before the thing emerges, Like rushing towards the thrill and then maybe backing off a little bit. Uh, yeah, it's interesting. It makes me kind of want to pick

up a Jack in the box. We don't. I don't think we have one in an household right now anyway, but I almost I want to find like a good one one with one with a devil inside, or a cramp us that would be nice, or a quartet of cinemabites. Sure no, surely somebody has made a lament configuration Jack in the box that would be That's perfect. It's so perfect, it has to have been done already. Right if you haven't, If that doesn't exist, whoever's got the right at c

shop out there, you get on it. Yes, yeah, I know there have been people have adapted Rubik's cubes into the limit configuration, but Jack in the Box is just a must have. All right, I think maybe we should take a quick break and the when we come back we can discuss the flying disc. All right, we're back. What is this marvelous flying disc that that it now emerges from Santa Talos's sack? Well, of course it is to use the semi branded term the frisbee. Robert, were

you a frisbee kid? When you were a kid, I mean we always had frisbees. You know, I never got into like frisbee golf or anything like that, but if a frisbee as a must have and still do today, Like we I threw frisbee or on a Robie maybe some variation on the frisbee design with my son, like literally just this weekend. So yeah, the I feel like the family the family tossing cliche is like the father and the son throwing the baseball right with the baseball gloves.

I don't think that happens all that much except among like dedicated people who are actually into baseball. Well, I'm not into baseball, and I've done it because it's such a cliche. I'm like, you feel that your resistible tug off it, uh, and you and I and so we ended up getting the baseball glove the softball and we threw it back and forth, and I'm like, yes, I feel like a Norman Rockwell painting. This is great. You know,

we don't. We've only done it, like, you know, two or three times, but I'm still it was it was neat to be a part of that Norman Rockwell experience. Well maybe my impression is mistaken, but I generally think that that you've got this cliche of people throwing the baseball, but what what is actually way more common is throwing the frisbee. The frisbee, in my opinion, is far more fun, yes, and less likely to break a window, though I remember from my childhood that somehow I always ended up getting

hit in the mouth with a frisbee. But that's great that you're throwing a frisbee instead of a baseball. There because the frisbee is nice and lightweight and its modern plastic form. So the frisbee is a toy that has both ancient and uniquely twentieth century origins. As for the ancient origins, we know that humans have been throwing circular disc shaped objects for sport for thousands of years, at least at least as far back as the eighth century BC.

For instance, we know that the discus throw was one of the five sports of the ancient Greek pentathlon, which consisted of a foot race, a javelin throw, a discus throw, a long jump, and finally wrestling. And I think training for this multi event competition held some association with military training.

You can see how there would be some overlap with the skills on display there, but the discus competition seemed to involve athletes throwing a heavy, circular disc, not in the way we generally throw a frisbee today with a flick of the arm, but by flinging it through a whole body twisting or spinning motion where you would spin the body around or twist the body around, and then transfer the angular momentum of the spinning body into a throw when you release the disk, and so physically the

discus throw sort of turns the body into a sling, you know, like the weapon traditionally associated with shepherds, where you would generally generate momentum and a rock or something by spinning it around in a circle. You do this with your whole body for the discus. There are mentions of disc throwing events in Homer's Iliad. Sometimes it's used as a measure of distance, so like you could just say that something was as far away as a young man can fling a discus. That's in there, which is

a great unit of measure. Uh. There also appears to be a reference to some form of discus throwing as one of the funeral games after the death of Patroclus. It's a Patroclus burns on the funeral Pyre, and then they have games in his honor. Uh, And so I wanted to read this section. This is in the Samuel Butler translation, though in the translation I'm about to read from the thing being thrown is not called a frisbee

or a discus. It's called a quoit, which can mean like a disc, but can also I think mean a ring rather than a solid disc. But anyway, the account goes like this. Then uprose the two mighty men, Polypoides and Leontius, with Ajax, son of Telemon, and noble Epius.

They stood up one after another, and Epius took the quoit, whirled it, and flung it from him, which set all the Achaeans laughing after him, through Leontius of the race of mars A jax son of Teleman through third, and sent the quite beyond any mark that had been made yet. But when mighty Polypodies took the quoit, he hurled it as though it had been a stockman stick, which he sends flying among his cattle when he's driving them. So

far did his throwout distance those of the others. Again, with point of comparison that it's not very helpful to me. I don't know what you do with the stockman stick, but apparently that means you could throw it really far. And then of course it shows up again in the works of Homer, like in the Odyssey, there's a section where Odysseus embarrasses some dudes, I think the Phaeacians, by throwing a huge discus farther than any of them can.

Uh so. The discus throw is also depicted in a famous bronze sculpture from classical Grease, the disco Bolus, which just means disc thrower by the sculptor my Run of luther Ae and the The original work is lost, but there are a ton of copies from the Roman period, and it's the famous post. You've probably seen it depicted somewhere where the discus thrower is sort of leaned over with the body twisted with the arm out, and of

course most people probably know. The discus throw is also part of the modern Olympic Games, and they use sort of a lens shaped disc of about two kilograms or about four point four pounds for the men's competition and a discus of about one kilogram or two point two pounds for the women's event. Know, when I was thinking about the Olympics, I started thinking like, well, what is it that makes the discus special as a thing to throw?

Like there are other types of throwing competitions, I mean, just competitions of people seeing how far they could throw a rock or a javelin or something. Go way back into history, there's the shot put event where you're just throwing a heavy ball. What is it that makes the discus special as a thrown object? And it turns out that the discus actually does have a lot of very

interesting unique properties that they're based on its shape. So to get into those from moment, I was reading an article by the North Carolina State Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Larry Silverberg, talking about the physics of the Olympic discus throw event, and he mentions that a lot of the skill in the discus throw is actually controlling the release of the discus. You know, it's not it's not all in just like how hard you can whirl

your body, how strong you are. It's very tightly controlling how the disc is oriented and what what happened is when it leaves your hand. And I would say the same thing is actually very true of throwing a frisbee. I don't know how experienced you are with trying to like aim a frisbee super carefully or get it to sail as far as possible, But like I think a lot of the skill actually comes down to what's happening

right when you release it from your fingers. Yeah, I feel like, you know, I'm not one that is usually especially skilled at throwing things, but I feel like there is there's something about throwing, you know, a frisbee or frisbee like toy that feels very intuitive. You know. I again, I haven't played frisbee golf and try like that level of accuracy, but I find that when I throw a frisbee to someone, I have a much better ability to actually get it get it to them. You know what

I'm saying. Well, yeah, I know exactly what you mean this intuitive property, which is funny because at the same time, I think, more so than like a javelin or a baseball or a shot put, the discuss is it's fickle.

It's dependent on air and wind conditions. You know that they can be the discus or the frisbee can be unpredictable in how it travels in ways that these other objects are not, even though in some ways it feels very gentle and easy and intuitive to throw it somewhere, right, Like if you're just throwing the shock put or or a larger rock, you probably don't have to account for wind all that much. Yeah, I mean maybe a little bit, but not nearly to the extent that you would with

a flat object like a discus or a frisbee. Uh. And silver Bird writes that it's really important to control the angle of release, like you want to get it at the perfect angle to make it travel the farthest. He identifies a range between thirty seven and forty two degrees as optimal. And just think about like trying to find tune the release of a discus while you're whirling your whole body around to get it to an like

a slice of the angle that's small. And then of course you have to, as we were saying, account for wind, like if the head wind is blowing in your face, you want throw it probably flatter, which makes sense, right, because you don't want the headwinds blowing the like catching under it and blowing it back towards you. You want to maximize the angle at which it gets lift but

doesn't get blown back in the opposite direction. I was also reading a good twelve article in re Reuters by Sharon Begley which summarizes some of the basic aerodynamics uh and some recent sports biomechanics research about the discus event. So a few key takeaways. Because of its shape, throwing a discus is different from throwing a round object like a baseball or throwing a javelin. A discus is at

its core a wing. It's an aerofoil it as it travels, it stays aloft by generating lift, similar to how the wings of an airplane generate lift to keep the plane in the air. And like with airplane wings, the physical design of the discus matters. A flatter design with more surface area generates more lift. But once you've already picked out your discus, you know you can't like bring a

huge different shape discus to the Olympic event. As you know, once you've got the physical dimensions of the discus lockdown, in order to generate maximum lift, you need to mess with a couple more main variables. One is that you want to maintain a high speed of the throw, and this is also the same way that an airplane needs horizontal speed to maintain lift via its wings. Right. If an airplane slows down, it will lose altitude, right because

it can't generate as much lift under the wings. A discus needs to maintain horizontal speed to maintain that lift under its body as it slows down due to drag. As it travels through the air, the lift it generates will decrease and it will fall. But then also again what's super important is getting just the right angle. You want the front edge of the discus raised slightly higher than its back edge to generate the most lift, and you also want to keep the disc rotating, of course,

to stabilize the angle. The faster the discus is spinning, the flatter and more stable its angle will stay. And you might think about why that be, But I bet a lot of people have done the physics experiment in like a high school physics class, where you hold a spinning bicycle wheel by a little handle on its hub, and then you try to rotate the wheel against its plane of against the plane on which it's spinning, you know,

trying to twist your wrist or something. There's a huge amount of resistance it's like really hard to turn it because rapidly spinning objects resist changes to the plane of their rotation, like the angular momentum of the spinning wants

to keep it flat. It's interesting to apply that to some of like the fictional spinning weapons you see sometimes utilized in films on things specifically One of the Three Storms and Big Trouble and Little China, as these spinning gadgets that are like spinning blades, and granted that's a blender hands. Yeah, granted that's a sorcerer, so you know, we can we can give them a little credit. But in reality, like that would be difficult to actually use

a weapon like that, right because it's spinning. Oh yeah, yeah, Jine. If the spinning very fast, you would get some resistance to trying to move your hands around. Likewise, I think other examples here you can see a robot using one like Maximilian in the Black Hole. But again, high powered robot. We can cut it some swack, I guess. Yeah. So, so you want the right angle, you want high speed,

you want rapid spinning to stabilize the angle. And also in this article, there's a counterintuitive finding that's conveyed by somebody named Mont Hubbard who's a director of the Sports Biomechanics Lab at the University of California, Davis. And basically what this person says is that you can actually get the farthest possible throw by throwing into a slight headwind.

That seems you wouldn't think that, but this is because you can maximize the relative wind speed and generate more lift that way, which means more lift means it stays higher in the air longer and travels farther. Now it's clear that the Olympic discus is a competition instrument. It's made for solo distance throwing and of course made for humiliating your inferiors in ancient Caspotamia. So it's rather different from the frisbees or throwing discs that that kids toss

around for fun. The East tendu in in the twentieth century to be made of plastic. They're much lighter. They're designed to glide softly and generate tons of lift for long distance travel with minimal throwing force. You don't have to be really strong or spin your whole body around and generate the angular momentum to throw a frisbee right and then it'll it'll generally bounce off of a window

instead of going through it. That sort of thing. Yeah, or you know, as often happened hitting me in the mouth. I mean, if you can imagine getting hit in the mouth with a four and a half pound discus, that's not good. So where did the frisbee come from? This different variation on the model? Uh? For that, we need to meet a dude named Walter Frederick Morrison, known as Fred,

and I'm gonna use as a few sources here. One, uh an obituary for for Morrison from twenty in the l A Times by Dennis McClellan, UM, an article I found in Time by Jennifer Latson, and also a summary of his life I found by somebody named Phil Kennedy who was a co author with Fred Morrison of an autobiographical account of the creation of the frisbee. But so. Fred Morrison was born in the town of Richfield, Utah,

on January twenty third, nineteen twenty. At the age of eleven, his father, who was an optometrist, moved his practice and thus the whole family, to California. As an adult, Morrison worked as a carpenter and later as a building inspector in the l A area. But in nineteen thirty seven, when Fred Morrison was around the age of seventeen, he and his girlfriend Lucille, who would later become his wife, were at a Thanksgiving celebration at the house of Lucille's uncle.

And at this party, guests just started throwing a popcorn can lid around, uh, tossing it to each other in the backyard, which somehow sounds like either a very awesome party or a horrible party, Like how do you end up that way? You're either having a really good time or things are going terribly just desperately searching for fun. Either way, it fits perfectly with the in the spirit

of Thanksgiving. But but I I guess I'm imagining like one of those big tins of popcorn like we still have today, and you know, sometimes there's different flavors of popcorn. You pull the lid off of it, sucker, and yeah, it's kind of a perfect frisbee. And apparently Fred and Lucille had so much fun they kept throwing the popcorn lit around for the following weeks. They played with it so much that it suffered a lot of wear and tear and eventually got some kind of sharp edges and

became dangerous, so they retired the popcorn can lid. They stole a cake pan from Fred's mother's kitchen and started throwing that around instead, and it looks like this started a cake pan tossing tradition. About a year later, Fred and Lucille took the cake pan to the beach in Santa Monica, where they were just tossing it for fun.

But apparently on this beach trip, somebody else thought that what they were doing looks like fun and came up to them and offered to pay a quarter for the cake pan so they could have it, take it and toss it with their friends. And Fred Morrison, i think, speaking to the Virginia Pilot said quote that got the wheels turning, because you could buy a cake pan for five cents, and if people on the beach were willing to pay a quarter for it, well, there was a

business ding ding dang flipping the cake pans. So first they just straight up bought cheap cake pans from the store took him out to the beach to flip for a profit. So I guess there's really originally no value add here, right, except perhaps for the insight that it might be fun to throw a cake pan. Uh and maybe you know, that might not have occurred to people otherwise, so maybe there is an added value there. Yeah. I mean it's kind of like selling overpriced umbrellas on a

rainy day for people who forgot their umbrella. It's it's very convenient, and yes you get to overcharge them, right or you know, selling bottles of water on a hot parking lot or something. You know, people just didn't think

to bring their own. Uh So Fred and his father apparently considered designing a custom metal disc for throwing, but this never came to fruition and they kept selling cake pans at the beach until Fred Morrison went away to serve in the Army Air Corps or during the during World War Two in the European Theater, where he flew

bomber missions over Italy. He was ultimately captured and held as a prisoner of war, and after being freed and returning home, Morrison came up with a design for a new kind of throwing disc, which he called the Whirlow Way. And I think this was named after some kind of racing horse. He was a fan of horses the whirlow way. That's what the Freeman used to overturn the rule of ar harconins the yeah yeah, the wording way. So I must assume Fred Morrison consumes some spice and saw over

the sands of time. Yeah. But so, Over the next few years, together with a partner named Warren Franscioni, Morrison worked on a number of different designs and prototypes for disks made out of that most wonderful of twentieth century consumer materials, plastic. So now instead of metal discs, you've got plastic discs. And because of the sudden UFO craze that gripped America beginning in nineteen forty seven, they called

their product the Flying Saucer. Apparently Morrison was a great salesman, and he would attract crowds during flying saucer demonstrations at fair grounds, like demonstrating how far the disc would glide with a gentle toss. Apparently they would make jokes about you know, uh, you know, how could it really travel so far? Are there hidden wires? Can you see the hidden wires? And they were able to sell some of the toys, but not enough to justify the business, and

Morrison and Fransky only parted ways around nineteen fifty. Well, you know, I'm I'm realizing just how ingenious this product is now that I think about my own usages of the frisbee, because there are other products and other toys that are very much in line with that. Uh, you know those stats we gave earlier about you know, one to two years of play life and then it's shelved and then if you don't sell another one to that individual until they're grown up. But the frisbee can be

used by children and adults alike. And even though frisbee is probably pretty durable, you can break a frisbee, and more to the point, you can land of frisbee in a place from which you cannot retrieve it. Yes, and then what do you have to do either way? You have to buy any frisbee? Right, Well, the the unpredictability of frisbee is the way they can get caught on

a breeze or sail off into the neighbor's yard. That sort of makes you, yeah, it makes it more likely that you'll end up having to buy a new one, right And then, of course that's not even getting into the fact that you can print your company's logo on it and hand it out. So good. I just wonder how many like Dow Chemical Frisbees and Raytheon Frisbees are out there. But so around nineteen fifty four, Fred Morrison

wanted to get back into the game. He was interested in giving the flying saucer another try, So the following year Morrison had a new model that he renamed the Pluto Platter, again going with the space theme. I think he was like, Pluto, that's the most recently discovered planet. Let's name the name the toy after it. Uh And you can see a patent for Morrison's model that you can actually look up from I think filed in nineteen fifty seven, awarded in nineteen fifty eight. But it looks

a lot like a frisbee you would see today. It's sort of a plastic disc with a lip that curves under. But in nineteen fifty seven Morrison struck gold because that was the year he sold the rights to the Pluto Platter to a toy company called Wammo. Wammo Inc. And Wammo from this point on took care of the manufacturing and sales. I think they also helped him secure his patent, and then Morrison collected royalties on his design. But of course we don't call these things pluto platters today, So

so what happened already? In nineteen fifty seven, the toy had come to be known as a Frisbee, a name which Morrison apparently originally hated, but he warmed two over time as he collected his millions. Uh so where did the name come from? Well, it turns out Fred and Lucille were not the only kids throwing baking pans at

each other. In eighteen seventy one, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a guy named William Frisbee spelled f r I s b i E, not b E open the Frisbee Pie comp Any, which amazingly sold pies, and apparently it was something of a local tradition for students at various East Coast universities like Yale, which is also in Connecticut, to throw Frisbee pie tins at each other and yell. Frisbee and the Wammo Company learned about this tradition and named their new

acquisition after it. So that's where the name comes from. It's a pie company. Uh and uh. And once Frisbee the frisbee belonged to Wammo, it underwent some more design improvements. Crucially, in nineteen sixty four, a WAMMO employee named ed Headrick added a series of ridges or grooves on the surface that helped the thrower grip the plastic and also increase the weight of the rim to help the frisbee fly with greater stability. And this is actually a thing in

the design of of discus or frisbee. If you distribute more of the weight to the outer edges, that helps it spin faster, have more angular momentum in spinning, which again is good for helping it maintain a stable angle. And that that Time article I mentioned earlier includes an amazing quote from an earlier Time article, one from nineteen seventy two about frisbee groupies of the period a k a. Frupies. And I've got no words for this. It goes quote.

Dr stancl Johnson, a long haired Santa Monica psychiatrist who serves as Frisbee's official historian, has an apparently sober explanation for the discs popularity they are. He says, quote the perfect marriage between man's greatest tool his hand and his greatest dream to fly. That seems like he's kind of reaching a bit there. But then again, I don't know waxing poetic a little bit about the frisbee, but it's

possible we could catch ourselves saying something like that. So, of course, now we know that frisbee is not just a toy to toss with your family and your friends. But there's all this, you know, frisbee sports of a million different kinds. There's ultimate frisbee. There's frisbee golf, which, uh that I admit that I've played these sports and actually kind of enjoyed them. And yeah, I mean I frisbee golf looks fun. Is there frisbee sports stigma? I

sent stigma? I don't know why. Um, I mean, I think it's just they're varying individuals who engage in frisbee golf, and some are undoubtedly going to be um, you know, miscreants, sure, just but others are going to be you know, fine frisbee enthusiasts. Well, I confess I've played frisbee golf and I liked it. All right, We're gonna take another break. When we come back, we will reach once more into

the gift bag, all right, we're back. I'm gonna reach into the bag once more and Wammo, here's another one. This is a hula hoop. You mean the Wammo toy company. Yes, yeah, okay, yeah, because they're gonna factor into this invention as well. So this is a really fun toy to discuss. Actually wrote an entire how stuff Works article about this back in

the day, how hula hoops work. And I'm not going to blow through all the info in that article because in that I got to get into a lot of fun things like performance art with barbed wire hula hoops and so yeah, flaming hula hoops. The role of who it was it was it was really cool, and it was one of those where it was assigned to me and I kind of groaned a little at first, and then by the end of it in the but I

was like, oh, yeah, hula hoops are amazing. It also gets into the physics far more than I'm not really gonna get into the physics here today, but I'm gonna touch on the key history. So hoop toys themselves are quite ancient, uh, just lost in the midst of history. Because all you need are some dried vines uh, in the ability to sort of you know, loop them together and to make a loop. And as such, you know,

the ancient Egyptians had hoop toys. Now I understand that a lot of the ancient hoop toys were used for for vertical rolling. Yes, yeah, and then granted we still do that today. One of my favorite things to do with the hula hoop is to do the trick. I don't know if you know that it has a name where you take it and you fling it out vertically but in a way so that it will be rolling back to you. Yeah, you put backspin on it, tossed it with backspin and it rolls too. I love that too. Yeah,

it's a fabulous trick. I feel like I'm I'm performing magic every time I do it, and I'm a little shocked that everyone around me isn't isn't commenting on how marvelous this trick is. But of course we all know it. We all we all know the trick. And then of course they're simply too. You know the act of rolling a hoop around, usually using a stick to propel it, which I often think is being kind of the kind of thing you would see in a film or a TV show like you would see Opie Taylor or Tom

Sawyer doing this. Yeah, kind of just an old timey, simple toy, but something that would be fun to do. And so hoop rolling and hoop games were popular amid the ancient Greeks and the ancient Romans. The hoop is also a potent as a physical symbol representing cyclical, yawnick and cosmic concepts. The hero Ganymede is often depicted with a hoop, and in North America, the Taos Peblo people of what is now New Mexico used hoops and sacred dances and rituals to represent, you know, the cilical nature

of life. Various cultures, including the ancient British and the Cahokia people of the Mississippi River Valley. These are the mound builders who reached their peak in the thirteenth century and declined before the coming of Europeans. They engaged in what we often referred to as kill the hoop games. This is kind of a combination of two different throwing acts. Someone will roll a hoop and then someone will throw a spear or some other object, but often it's a

spear through the hoop. So it's you know, you're gonna hit an artificial moving target with your weapon or thrown object. Kind of skei shooting. Yeah, yeah, kind of like an early version of ski at a skeat shooting. But most agree that in playing with hoops like this, the discovery of what we think of as as hula hooping was

sure early experimented with. So if you have children, even ancient children, uh, in any of these cultures we've discussed messing around with hoops, killing the afternoon with a hoop, undoubtedly somebody is going to realize that you can put it on your arm and spin it around, you can put it on your neck and spin it around, and you can put it on your waist and spinning around. It's just how we we were curious creatures and in

our tool use, we're going to get there. Uh, We're going to spin that hoop around our body at some point. And we also know that from just from military history, the concept of a hoop weapon in the form of the Chockram weapon of India, which we have an older episode of stuff to blow your mind about. Uh, you know this is something that is sometimes spun around a finger before launching. Kind of like a sharp roby toy, but used as a shock weapon on the front lines.

And I believe it still remains a a ritual weapon, like a holy item for the sikhs Uh. You'll sometimes see it presented as such. But but that in that we see like the idea of spinning a hoop type

item around your body was already known now. According to Charles Penalates extraordinary origins of everyday things, there was a medieval hoop craze, apparently during the fifteen hundreds, an Edwardian craze that resulted in the reports of dislocated backs and heart failure, and then hula itself for hula hoop, because again these were not called hula hoops. Hula enters the Western world in the seventeen hundreds with the knowledge of

Polynesian cultures. Hoop dancing for fitness became a European craze in the late eighteen hundreds, in early nineteen hundreds, and then in nineteen fifty eight Whammo enters. The picture gives us the hula hoop as created by Richard near an author Spud that Melon, who were said to have been inspired by tales of Australian children playing with bamboo hoops.

But this one, of course, the Whamo hoop is a plastic hoop, and it cost uh I was reading something like a dollar ninety eight and in and it's sold something like twenty five million units in two months and by the end of fifty eight and made forty five million dollars. So it was a colossal hit for Wammo. But it was also a craze, so it did not last as long like the hula hoop. Sometimes the hula

hoop and a human engage in a lifelong relationship. You know that you really get into it, you're performing hula hoop dances, etcetera. Other times, the hula hoop is something you play with a little bit and then it gets thrown in the garage and forgotten about. And and also, unlike the frisbee, uh, it's it's harder to destroy a hula hoop. You've really got to you've really got to try to destroy who. I don't have you ever destroyed a hula hoop? Not destroyed one. I'm just not sure.

It's harder. Oh, you're you're much less likely to lose a hula hoop into a neighbor's yard or something. Yeah, so I can't help but think that also attributed the fact that sales of the hula hoop really fell off. But luckily this was exactly the same time when WAMO moved on to the Frisbee. Uh so they really had a one to punch on inventions or reinventions that they could target towards the uh know, the toy hungry American consumer, right,

making tens of millions off of just basic round objects. Yeah, recreate it, give it a fancy name, and market it. That's something we see time and time again. And in fact, when we do our next episode, which will be another reach into the toy bag, we'll see this again where something ancient and well known simply gets a new name and gets marketed a whole lot and it becomes this new invention. Um as for the hula hoop. Again, sometimes we forget about the hula hoop, but it has remained

with us. You can still buy a hula hoop, but you know, wherever you are, there's a store around you where you can buy one, probably, and it even is as far as holidays go. It even factors into our Christmas songs. There's the which one is that horrible chip monk monk song? Uh? Me, I want a hula hoop? Yeah, I want to plan that loops the loop Me, I want a hula hoop. There you go, Classic toy. I would think a chipmunk is too small to use a

hula hoop. Yeah, now we'd have We definitely would have to get into the physics of it, because a small hoop is going to be far more um energy intensive. And I'm not sure that a chipmunk. As much as I love chipmunks and squirrels, and I know our listeners do, to wait a minute now now that I'm thinking about it, aren't the chipmunks in the Chipmunks not regular chipmunks size? They are more the size of human children that they are the size of human children, which is that's a

grotesque blasphemy against nature. But still that might make them more able to use an actual hula hoop. All right, So we're gonna go ahead and call this episode here, but we will be back next week with more toys, generally like classic toys, I think, and we'll will explore their history where they came from. Do they have ancient roots, they have modern roots? Inevitably do they have both. In the meantime, we'd obviously love to hear from anyone who

has thoughts on these various toys. And also, are you a discus thrower? Have you experience with the sport of throwing a discus? Do you have thoughts on Joe's commentary on on on the physics of throwing the discus? What's your experience with those physics? We would love to hear from you, absolutely please share, all right, If you want to listen to more episodes of Invention, head on over to invention pot dot com. That's the uh, that's that's

the I guess the homepage for the show. But of course you can find this podcast anywhere you get podcasts, wherever it is. Make sure you've subscribed that way you will definitely get part two of our toy exploration and leave us a nice rating if you have the power to do so, you know, whatever the page is, because that helps us out in the long run. Also, be

sure to check out Stuff to Blow your Mind. That is our other podcast and uh and there's you know, years and years worth of great content there as well. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get into for us with feedback on this episode, to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello, you can email

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