Toys, Part 3

of I Heart Radio. Hey you, welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part three of our exploration of invented toys. In the previous episodes, we talked about stuff like the frisbee, the Jack in the Box, the slinky, the hula hoop. What else do we do? Oh? We did jigsaw puzzles. We did uh uh yeah, Jack in the Box? Uh number let's um, we can't remember what we talked about on here? Yeah, who hoop, frisbee? Uh, A number of

different toys. I mean, really, you just gotta go back in the bag and started digging around to see what we discussed. But today I wanted to start off by talking about one of the most basic toys you could possibly have. You know, when I was a kid, I had lots of favorite toys. I remember being very partial to some branded Jurassic Park action figures, and actually I had the car, you know, like the car that the t Rex steps on. So there's like a Sam Neil

action figure. Oh yeah, totally sammyl action figure. He's got the hat on and he One of the funny things about the Jurassic Park action figures is that they would come with weapons that they did not possess at all in the film. So they've got like an Ellie Sattler action figure Laura Dern's likeness, with like a grappling hook gun, like I don't remember the scene in the movie where she had that. Well, this was sort of this was the late nineties, um, and I was you're you're a

little younger than me, so I was. I wasn't at at action figure age at this point anymore. So maybe I was beyond it, but still still going, well, I don't know, that's a that's a whole another discussion, because ultimately my take is you can get action figures anytime you want during your life, because all they are ultimately their their deities. They're they're little icons that inspire you and you can you can play with them or just be inspired by them at any point in your life.

But um, at that point in my life, they weren't really on my radar. But now I'm excited by the idea of having a Jeff Goldblum action figure. Yeah, what weapon did Jeff Goldblum have? I think maybe he had he had like a gun that shot a net or something. How would he have that? Maybe it was shooting like a like a graph for like mapping the grids of his is parabolas and all that when he's doing his calculations.

There is that that theme and action figures, especially where it's like it's not enough that you have the likeness of a person or a creature or an entity to the it's not enough that you can then engage in imagination, play with it, and and even and even pose it. I like having a posable figure. I grew up in that, you know, the air of g I. Joe's and it was nice to have all those those joints move. But but then there's this level of like, Nope, it needs

some sort of gun. It needs something to have a gun. It's got to have some sort of not only something looks like a gun, a functional projectile implement that can fire the grappling hook or the net at another action figure. And I think it's largely about so you can have the action moment in the commercial where one figure does something to knock over another. Yes, that that's totally it.

I think it may also be driven on the supply side sometimes, like, oh, we figured out how to make this little shooter thing, what action figure can we pair that with? Yes? Uh? And and we'll come back to this discussion of action figures and and movie and TV properties towards the end of the episode. Right, But I want to go way simpler than that. So this has no guns, no moving parts, no likenesses of Sam Neil

or Laura Dern. I had lots of favorite toys, But what did I get the most sustained enjoyment out of I think it's got to be blocks, right, Like I spent more time with building blocks than any other kind of toy. Because of course blocks can be anything. So there's like an infinite amount of play that you can do with them, though I still remember the pain of trying to build with blocks in a room completely covered

in soft carpet. That wayalizes death, you know, like you build a tower, but then you smite its ruin on the carpeted stair because it's just unstable. It's true, yeah, I I also have a lot of fond memories of playing with this one set of standard wooden blocks. Well most of them were standing, but you also had some specialty pieces. I was especially pleased with these these double arches that you could use that you'd be used to make a bridge, or you could put them together to

make like a circular entrance in something. And I think a lot of my imagination play with them was based on Raiders of the Lost Dark, those scenes where Indiana Jones and others are going into these you know, ridiculously unrealistic tim spaces, these uh you know, anti chambers and uh and so forth, and you know, I just had to reconstruct those and send some g I Joes down there.

I think blocks are very interesting as toys because building with blocks is a kind of play that combines the ultimate in freedom and the ultimate in constraint, right, it has like no established goals rules, no winning conditions unless it's not really a game, and yet it has extremely tight and non negotiable constraints based in physics and materials.

And so it's a very different kind of play than a lot of the imagination play that you would do where you know, you might have action figures there, where uh, you know, your action figure play is just not very limited by physics. Usually a lot of it's just like happening in the imagination with the action figure as a prop. A different thing is going on with the blocks, Like you're trying to stack them on top of each other. You're trying to get them to behave to like stand

up in a certain way. You know. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, you're you have like this this basic physical enterprise at the heart of your your play, no matter how much imagination you then put on top of that. Yeah. So, asking the question when toy blocks were invented, obviously we don't know that. It seems that people have been using various kinds of homemade toy building materials for centuries, maybe even thousands of years, but we just frankly don't know

when it began. Um So I was reading a great article in the history of blocks as tools for learning and as toys by an author named Karen Hewitt, who is a scholar of education. Um she's a toy designer and she has curated museum exhibitions on the history of

educational toys. This article was called Locks as a Tool for Learning Historical and Contemporary Perspective, published in the journal Young Children in two thousand one and so um Here it begins by observing that building based play among children probably predates dedicated block toys, because you can even watch children today improvised with building based play using natural materials like rocks and sticks, or constructor or like constructed or

artificial materials often discarded by adults, you know, like construction, scrap containers, boxes. I remember getting so much enjoyment out of empty boxes when I was young. Oh yeah, empty boxes are are loads of fun. And on top of that, of course, you know, the the children of builders will inevitably not only play with the debris leftover from building, but they will imitate the building activity that they see

in the parents. Sure so, yeah, just watching the way kids pick up things that are not specifically intended as toy filding materials and then turn them into toy building materials. That makes it pretty clear that construction play probably long predates having dedicated toy blocks. I mean, even you can think about sand castles. How long have people been making sand castles where you know, Neolithic people's making sand castles as possible? Absolutely, yeah, I mean the sand castle is

just playing in the sand, digging in the sand. There's just something irresistible about it. Yeah. So I think it's clear that building blocks are not a toy that invents a fundamentally new kind of play the way say a slinky or a jack in the box would. There's no way to play with a slinky before the slinky existed. There's no way to play with the jack in box jack in the box before that existed. But you could basically have blocks in nature, you know, rock sticks, all

that kind of stuff. Rather, I think toy blocks offer a clean, safe, and convenient way of facilitating the kind of construction play that children pick up naturally without any prompting, whenever random materials are available. Though I do have a question about this, and I couldn't find an answer to this. Does Homo sapiens have a building instinct that would manifest even without any exposure to a culture of construction and

artificial structures. Or do children need to see artificial structures and witness adults building things in order to get the urge to build as play. Yeah, that's that's a tough one to I mean, almost an impossible one to investigate. Yeah, it's like studying on language children. You have to you have to. It would require, you know, an act of extreme deprivation in order to study what it would be like. It's like to deny a child access to like blocks or the idea of plocks, to the idea of play.

You know. That's says something that's very difficult, if not impossible, to study. I'm not suggesting we try it, No, absolutely not so. Hewitt points out that thinkers have long connected children's orientation towards construction based play with learning and the

needs of a developing brain. She mentions Plato comminists uh Pestelozzi and Jehan Pierg and apparently this even came up with the English Enlightenment philosopher John Locke in s and a treatise called Some Thoughts concerning Education, John Locke wrote, quote, the chief art is to make all that children have to do sport and play too. Learning anything they should be taught might be made as much a recreation to

their play as their play is to their learning. So specifically, Lock here points to children's play with what we now know today as alphabet blocks. They existed at the time too, that they didn't I don't think they were being like mass manufactured at the time. They weren't like you know, big toy companies putting these out. But some kids just had blocks they were playing with that had letters inscribed

on them. This reminds me of the origins of the jigsaw puzzle, or more specifically, the the dissected map that we discussed in the last EPISOD. So it's something that began as not even a mass reduced toy, but like an educational aid. Yes, and this would have been not always as fully accepted and intuitive as it is just today. Like so, Locks actually trying to make a case for using a child's natural tendency towards play as a means

of education. Like you know, he's saying, if the child automatically wants to play with alphabet blocks, it is no chore, and thus the child better learns the alphabet and to put this in context, a lot of the prevailing sentiment about childhood education in late seventeenth century England would have focused on like hard work and discipline through threats of punishment, and uh a Lock instead emphasized that children could learn through play and enjoyment, and he Witt suggests that this

view contributed to a sort of reevaluation of toys, with more adults coming to see them, uh, To see toys less as like sinful icons of idleness and more as tools for informing and exercising and developing mind, something that's actually a social good and useful. I'm not sure if the same would apply to Laura Dern's grappling hook guns, but I think you could definitely make the case with

building blocks. Uh So. Hewitt writes that in the mid to late nineteenth centuries, some manufacturers in Europe in the US actually then began to mass produce building block toys. Uh And this could often be kind of a side business of something like. Imagine you've got a woodworking company and you're cutting wood for you know, whatever it is that you're mainly selling. You tend to have a lot of small scraps of wood left over. Could you actually

turn those for a profit? Could you shape them into building blocks and make money off of what would otherwise be a waste product? And hew ittt writes that since the mid nineteenth century, there have been three main avenues linking learning and play with respect to toy blocks. So the first one is what we're already talking about. It's building itself. It's learning about basic physics and material properties with hands on building experience. Uh. This is, of course

one of the most important parts of education. Sometimes it gets under emphasized when we think about education because it's not a technical subject you really learn in school. It's something that children just have to learn intuitively with hands on experience in the world. Absolutely, it just allows for further experimentation with the natural properties of reality. Sure. Uh. And then okay, So the second thing is surfaces of blocks as a place to represent symbols like letters, numbers, words.

Of course, we already talked about the example of alphabet blocks and thus using the blocks as a way of learning how to manipulate those symbols. Like Hewitt says that this pairing of abstract symbols with blocks really exploded in the mid eighteen hundreds, and it it seems like a very relevant type of learning today, Like allowing the child to physically move symbols around in real space. This sort of is a is a physical model of the way

we metaphorically move symbols around in mental space to manipulate them. Yeah, and basically and engaging. Are you know, are the visual processes of our brain as well? Um? Yeah? Yeah, these these are still tremendously helpful. You see them sometimes to aid in uh, acquisition of foreign languages, etcetera. I was wondering, did you ever when you were a kid us like those um sort of balancing scale games with physical objects to learn algebra, Like, so you're trying to balance two

sides of an equation in math? That no, No, I feel like my math education was very based in just wrote memorization of things, uh, you know, memorizing tables, uh, learning tricks and so I really with with a second grader who's going through like modern math education, it's been very interesting to see just this seemingly drastic different approach to learning how numbers work and uh and how quantities compared to each other. It's a at times it's difficult

for me to even help him with it. Because I feel like our our math educations are so different. But but the way they're teaching him, I think is far superior to what I had. Oh, you're not going to be one of those adults complaining that kids aren't learning stuff the same way you learned it. No, No, I'm thank goodness they're learning in a different way because the way I learned it, I feel like did not give me a true appreciation for mathematics. Yeah, I feel much

the same way. But I think that's such a funny impulse people have, Isn't it Like it's they're they're not learning it the way I did. The way I did has got to be superior. Somehow they're not learning it poorly like I did. I will not stand for it. No. I want my kid to be able to actually think about numbers in ways that have eluded me my whole life. Yeah. And then there's one third main way that Hewitt mentions that blocks have been linked with learning, and that's the

transmission of cultural heritage through blocks. An example here would be quote building a model of an important architectural structure, and through this, pro says learning architectural styles. In fact, an example, I was just thinking of was the original Lincoln logs. You know, these were created by Frank Lloyd Wright's son. I can't remember his first name, but one of the sons of Frank Lloyd right, uh yeah. He

got a Lincoln log business going. And one of the original things that you were supposed to do with Lincoln logs, like you got these instructions on how to build Abraham Lincoln's log cabin. Yeah, Lincoln logs. Okay. I'll acknowledge that Lincoln logs do succeed as an educational toy, in in the educating you in the basic way that a log cabin is constructed, but that's pretty much. Yet I always

found them to be a very boring toy. Like you played with them once and you're like, oh, yeah, that's okay, that's all I can do with this. I'm gonna go build something out of a block that allows me to engage my mind a bit more. I was reading an old New York Times article in about blocks by the Canadian American architect and you pen professor v Told rib Chinsky, and his comment about Lincoln logs was it was something like, well, at least they smelled good. Yeah, I mean they were wouldn't.

I mean, I don't hate Lincoln logs, but I just they never really resonated with me. But they certainly survived due to that. And I think the first episode we did on toys, we talked about this idea that toys have a twenty year cycle that you you and you have a certain toy as a child, and then twenty years later, you know, give or take. If you have children or their children in your life at all, you're likely to give that toy anew if it's still on

the market, still available. And Lincoln logs are exactly like that. My my son received Lincoln logs from members of the family just because of that nostalgia. And how do they smell? I smell fine, and you can still build a little cabin out of it and then set him aside to

go do something more fun. But of course, another thing points out is that there are plenty of cases of blurring of the lines between these categories, right because, uh, for example, a thing that was I think very common in the nineteenth century was like you have a set of blocks that you sold as a as a set

that would represent elements of Bible stories. And this combines using the blocks themselves as a representation space for symbols or referring to things somewhere else, but then also transmitting cultural heritage through the Bible story aspect. I don't think I've ever seen these. Would it have been essentially it wasn't sequential art, right, it wasn't. I think there was some sequential art like that, like Bible story sequential art. And I think it was also like, you know, build

build Noah's Arc or something. Well, that sounds like a good fit. Noah's Ark is the the most child friendly portion of pretty much the whole Bible. So do they have blocks of all the other people on the earth getting drowned to death? No, No, we just focus on the animals. It's the main thing. Uh. So she goes into the history of a lot of individual block manufacturers and their businesses. I decided I'm not going to go into all that here to touch on a couple more

broad issues. Uh though, it is actually interesting and this paper is worth looking up and giving a read if you want to go deeper on just like what some of these manufacturers were doing individually. But um uh. Hewitt points out that despite the attempts to use blocks for education, in numbers and letters and so forth. Children most often play with blocks in terms of pure form like that.

When you actually watch the way children and engage with blocks, most of the time they ignore the symbolic representations, they ignore the letters on the alphabet blocks, and instead they use them to build. They build little towers and little cities. Usually the form and the physical base of construction play seems more relevant to the child's mind than the abstract content does. I don't know how that squares with your experience, but yeah I would, I would say, so, yeah, it

does with mine. Yeah, Like if I had the Bible blocks, I think I would just be trying to build like an Indiana Jones temple out of them. Yeah, I think that was my experience with with alphabet blocks as a kid. I would use them to a certain extent to build with, but they didn't They didn't provide as much flexibility in terms of what you ultimately built compared to an actual block set that had varying sizes. There's only something you

can do with identical cubes. Likewise, remember we were gifted a very nice set of wooden alphabet blocks and character blocks of when my son came into our life because uh, they were they would have Mandarin characters on them, which was very cool, and you know, you get kind of excited about Ah, he has the learning tool that that

are that that is, that is this block set. But then you know, ultimately the kids not that interested in them and just wants to do uh, you know, age appropriate things with them, which I guess he was like like one one and a half at that point, and you know, he just wants to knock them over or throw them. Uh, he doesn't want to actually build and much less think about the characters all that much. Oh but that's actually interesting because another thing he talks about.

She makes a point about the importance of the tearing down own aspect of block play. She says, this is a crucial element that's under emphasized in some of the you know, pedagogical theory, or maybe underappreciated by even some parents. Uh. There's a section where she says, quote the destructive or deconstructive activity characteristic of block play, an integral part of this activity makes some adults uncomfortable. However, as in all learning,

we cannot understand until we take apart, examine, and rebuild. Um. So you know, She's making a point that a lot of parents might look at their child's tendency to want to like knock over a tower of blocks and smash it and everything, and you say, oh, no, is my child some kind of you know, little King Kong and little Godzilla? Are they just pure destructive impulse? But she's suggesting, no, this, this is also an important part of learning. It's not

something to be afraid of. No, yeah, not at all, but I mean it can it can be frustrating. I've been frustrated with it when when when my son was was much younger, you know, because you want you want to engage with him, you want to play with them, you want to play blocks with with your your child.

But in doing that you're like, let's build something together, and then the kid maybe is not that didn't much into building or is not very good at it, but then wants to destroy it at every level of construction. Or sometimes you encounter it to where you have different age groups and children and so you have like the kid who's old enough to really want to build stuff, be it with blocks or sand castle or what have you, but the younger kid just wants to godzilla the heck

out of that sand city. U. Um. Yeah, and you just have to realize that that is that I mean, that's kind of how they learn. They're at a dissection stage of architecture. Sure, like both phases are important. Yeah, they're all about destroying new buildings, ironstruts into new button. You know. One last thing that was in this paper that I just point out because it's funny, is that

there's a part where she talks again. This was published in two thousand one, and she talks about the sort of recent development of digital construction environments, which are like computer aims that are marketed as an alternative to physical blocks. And the way she writes about it, it seems like she's a little bit skeptical that these would, you know, replace physical blocks, because you know, if you're two thousand one, you're thinking, what kids want to play with their hands?

Why would you have digital three D blocks? But then I was thinking, like, wait a minute, Minecraft, Yeah there are plenty of examples of it. Um, But I too am skeptical because yeah, there's something about the physical act of the building, and even if you have great physics in a virtual setting, which many of these games do, uh, there's nothing like having the actual block. Oh sure, yeah, yeah,

you gotta have the physical objects there. Especially for younger kids, I think maybe it's once you get older that you can like abstract that level of play out to a you know, an imagined space or to come back to the jack in the box. Let's not discount the alarming noise of a an epic wooden block tower falling onto the kitchen floor that I think that's also an important

part of the experience. Another disadvantage of playing on carpeted floor, right, So, so it's harder to build because the floor is less stable, but also when it finally falls over, you don't even get the clatter. Yeah, you don't scare everybody in the house and the dog and the cat boat horrible. This is my p s A for this episode. Find a place with solid, hard floors for your children to play with blocks. Don't make them play on carpet. All right, it's time to take a quick break, but we'll be

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choose one audio book and plus two audible originals absolutely free. Uh. This is a great thing. I actually I use the Audible app all the time and in my personal life. I was just traveling the other day. I was on an airplane and I was listening to the old classic audio book of of Lord of the Rings. It was in the Two Towers, listening to the Rob Inglish reading. I don't know if there are others, but that one's great.

You know, he like sings all the songs. It's wonderful. Yeah, that's a great one to check out if you want to roam Middle Earth. I love the way he sings the Tom Bombadil song. Yeah, we're super into the never Ending story right now, which, yeah, you will also find on Audible. And and this is important too because it will come up in the next section that we're going to discuss on the show. No really, well I'm excited for that. But so yeah, you the listeners, start listening.

Get Audible. Start with a thirty day Audible trial. Choose one audiobook and two Audible originals absolutely free. Visit audible dot com slash invention or text invention to five hundred five hundred Again, that's audible dot Com slash Invention or text Invention to five zero zero dash five zero zero. All right, we're back. So we just talked about traditional blocks, wooden blocks, a little bit of uh, you know, log

cabin action in there, some alphabet blocks as well. But I think we all know that there is sort of a final form of blocks in principle, you know, like how the Power Rangers continually morph up into bigger and better robots. The ultimate robot that they could achieve, I think would have to be the Lego. Absolutely Legos. These were a huge part of my childhood growing up in

the eighties and nineties. These interlocking plastic bricks and the various building accessories that come with them allow you to construct everything from castles to helicopters to spaceships. And I would generally build what the instructions told me to, you know, I'd follow the instructions once, then i'd throw the directions away and then I would just free build whatever I wanted, usually more castles, helicopters, and spaceships, but you know, of

my my own design. For instance, I remember watching the helicopter film Blue Thunder, and what was almost certainly, you know, far too young an age for an R rated action film, and I became a cessed with the two choppers in the film as a police attack chopper piloted by Roy Scheider from Jaws. Yeah, and then the huge five hundred schopper piloted by Evil test pilot Malcolm McDowell. Of of course, you know Caligula and a clockwork orange fan. How have

I never seen this? And then oh, I should also point out that Daniel Stern also had a role playing a voyeuristic creep. Of course, of course what he man? He was really getting typecast as creeps in the like late eighties period. Yeah, I guess this would have been earlier. And so like, how did he bust out of creep phase and become the narrator of the Wonder Years? Well maybe like a site unseen casting because he has a

great creep look and plays a fantastic creep. I mean, why, you know, why try and get away from what works? And Daniel Stern is is a natural You just it's that that the six pack life that he's living. Okay, But so this movie got you building lego helicopters. Yeah, and and going back to our our destructive aspect of play. One of my favorite things to do was to was to build the two Blue Thunder helicopters and have them dual and then uh, you know, they didn't have one

of them crash. And that's the great thing about a Lego constructed vehicles. When it crashes, it breaks into pieces. You have this believable you know, destruction, and then you can perhaps have a little pilot have to put that chopper back together so that he can get back in the sky and defeat Malcolm McDowell once and for all. Wow. Again, destruction an important part of play. Yeah, Like going back to blocks real quick. I remember one thing that I

would do a lot with my wooden blocks. Would build a wall, and then I had a battery power g I Joe tank that would just would just basically just move forward on these cool tracks and just have that drive into the wall and see see if I could build a wall strong enough to keep the tank from plowing through it, and then also figure out how to make the tank approach the wall so as to bust through. I think I did something almost exactly like this with

the with the controlled car. Yeah, trying to build something that it like couldn't get through. Yeah. Yeah, So, um, you know, say what you know about war toys and we'll have something to say about that. In a minute, like a nice remote control remote control or just powered tank toy or vehicle toy. It's great to send it at a wall of blocks. So, uh, legos. Fast forward twenty years via the twenty year rule we've been talking about, and I have introduced my own sign to the joy

of legos, and he's into them big time. He's he's more obsessed with instructions than I was, but he does some freconstruction as well. He likes to make creatures out of them, and most recently he made a falcore from the Never Ending Story. Yeah. He also loves the Harry Potter kits, especially the ones that have creatures in them. Um. Also some of the Lego dinosaur kits he really digs. Uh. And and I should also drive home that's stepping on legos is still absolutely no fun but and but an

important part of the experience. So we've got to have the backstory of the Lego. Right, where does this wonderful, delightful toy come from? Well, it ties in nicely with the history of building blocks themselves, because of course you cannot have Lego building blocks without all the all the

forms that came before, especially just basic wooden blocks. And it does begin in a carpenter shop with pretty much the same scenario we're talking about earlier, where a carpenter might construct toys out of uh, you know, leftover materials, etcetera, and uh. In this particular master carpenter and joyner was a man by the name of Ole Kirk Christensen who

worked in the village of bill And, Denmark. So he opened a shop in nineteen thirty two, selling mostly household wooden goods like ladders and things, but he also sold some toys on the side, but the toys became increasingly important to his business. In nineteen thirty four, the company ends up adopting the name Lego from the Danish leg gaunt, which means play well and by accident it also a lego also means I put together in Latin nicely. And then in nine five they marketed a wooden duck toy.

They had a construction game that sort of thing, uh, and they just kept continually building on this. In nineteen forty six the company bought a plastic injection molding machine, and by ninety nine the company was putting out two hundred different plastic and wooden toys mostly I understand you know, for sell in Denmark, and one of the toys that

they put out were automatic binding bricks. These were interlocking bricks made out of plastic and if you look at pictures off them, there pictures of them available on the in the history section of Legos website, you'll see that they mostly resemble Lego the Lego blocks of today, with some you know, some noticeable differences, but the basic design is there, the little cylindrical bits on the top that

allow them to interlock. You know, it's funny, I would think with Legos that they must actually have some pretty tight design parameters to to fit as well as they do. You know, they don't have like parts that like lock in place with any moving mechanisms, right, so they just have to lock in place by pure rigid shape alone.

And this involves like them being just like the pegs on the top fitting into the things on the bottom just well enough that they stay together, but you know, not so tightly that it's tough to put them together or tough to put them pull them apart. Right, Yeah, they they have to they have to work, and they apparently worked pretty hard experimenting with them over the years to to really get the fit. Uh, you know, tight and dependable. Uh. They were experimenting with the plastic and

the plastic construction. They were not the first interlocking block or brick, however, the key predecessor to all this would have been Uh. I was reading that the Kitty Craft self locking building brick, which was invented by Hillary Fisher Page You Live nineteen o four through n seven. But the automatic binding bricks of Lego were the immediate predecessor

to the like blocks we know today. They were only sold in Denmark at first, and then in ninety three they got a new name, Lego Merston or Lego Bricks, and they steadily extended from their hitting the US and Canada in sixty one, they go from a regional toy to an international success. Now, one thing I was thinking about regarding Lego and my own history of playing with Lego Blue Thunder toys choppers blowing each other out of the sky. Obviously, there was never an actual Blue Thunder

movie tie in Lego kit. I know, it's hard to imagine a time when there were not a million Lego movie tie ends on the shelf, But I started thinking about it and I was like, oh, you know, um, I don't know that I ever saw saying apache helicopter Lego or any kind of a military helicopter Lego or a tank or or you know, anything of that matter.

I mean, you'll see some science fiction, um, you know, battle type stuff, some fantasy stuff, and to a certain extent, medieval weapon read with the castles, But you don't really see any war toys, despite the fact that there would

there would clearly be a market for that. Sure if you if say Lego were to put out Lego models of say, you know, stealth fighter, stealth bomber, uh, you know, you know, the the osprey whatever the military aircraft happens to be their neat planes, that would make neat kits, right, It seems like a no brainer. So I was looking into this and uh a little bit more, and I ran across an excerpt from a two thousand ten progress report that really drives home some of the key decision

making that goes on here. And I do think this does get into the idea of destructive play, constructive play, etcetera. Lego post these kind of reports, uh every year, addressing a variety of topics that you might expect a major toy manufactured to tackle, including social and environmental issues on top of you know, more business level stuff. And this particular progress report spelled out their key philosophy on weapons in war in their toys, and so I just want

to read this again. This is coming directly from Lego, So just bear in mind you're hearing like corporate messaging here, but I think it does reveal a lot quote. A large number of Lego Mini figures use weapons and are assumably regularly being charged by each other's weapons as part of children's role play. In the Lego Group, we acknowledge that conflict in play is especially prevalent among four to

nine year old boys. An inner drive and a need to experiment with their own aggressive feelings in order to learn about other people's aggressions exists in most children. This in turn enables them to handle and recognize conflict in nonplay scenarios. As such, the Lego Group sees conflict play as perfectly acceptable in an integral part of children's development. We also acknowledge children's well proven ability to tell play

from reality. However, to make sure to maintain the right balance between play and conflict, we have adhered to a set of unwritten rules for several years. In two thousand ten, we have formalized these rules in a guideline for the use of conflict and weapons and Lego products. The basic aim is to avoid realistic weapons and military equipment that children may recognize from hot spots around the world, and to refrain from showing violent or frightening situations when communicating

about Lego products. At the same time, the purpose is for the Lego brand not to be associated with issues that glorify conflicts and unethical or harmful behavior. So the idea is that they are comfortable with allowing conflict conflict play, including you know, uh, weapons and stuff in say historical settings or fantasy settings or sci fi settings, but not having like guns that you would recognize on you know,

being used in violence and armed conflict today. Correct. Yeah, And I looked around at some of the more recent reports to see if they, uh they had a more recent voicing of this philosophy, and I was now not able to come across it. It might exist out there. Lego has a puts out a lot of communication, but but it seems to be this, this seems to be the standard they're still operating by. UH. And and I think that's I acknowledge that this this makes sense for

a especially for an international uh company. You know that that doesn't That doesn't say just situated in the United States, for instance, say for instance, Lego put out a predator drone kit, that would be that would be awful because the context would be different and obviously in different parts

of the world. Uh and and uh and and arguably like this, this particular kit, if it were to exist, would bring a lot of ethical baggage with it that you wouldn't necessarily want to inflict upon a child who just wants to engage in the kind of play we're

discussing here. Yeah, this has got me thinking. I think conflict, conflict play and violence and play could be something we come back to and do an episode on and stuff to blow your mind, because it's something that again it's kind of like with the destructive play with blocks, you know, like knocking down towers and stuff. It's the kind of thing that I can totally understand why parents would look at it and say like, this can't be healthy something,

something's wrong here. And yet you know, obviously millions of people around the world grow up playing at games in which the children pretend to kill each other and you know, use toy guns and all that kind of stuff, And it doesn't necessarily translate to you know, real aggressive or violent behavior in adults. Maybe in some cases it does, but it doesn't appear to UH to necessarily lead to that conclusion. So I wonder what the actual research says

about that. Yeah, it would be fun to do a deeper dive in it, because on another level, what children are doing in imagination plays, they're making up stories, telling

stories and retelling stories. For instance, if you're if you're playing with UH that there is a particular lego kit that is a small one and it's just about one of the showdowns between Harry Potter and Voldemort, which is a battle which is a fight between a a murderous villain and UH in the hero of the tale, which of course is central to That's the kind of conflict you have in so many men, so many legends, so many important stories, and so you know, conflict played to

a certain extent is about embracing this aspect of our our narratives. Yeah, it seems to me impossible that you could like remove a child's desire to explore themes of conflict in their play and in their imagination. I guess the question is just like what types of physical toys and models Actually, I don't know what drive development in unhealthy directions, and I don't know if we actually have any answers about that, Like, uh, I mean a whole

other issue. Of course, it's gun toy guns, you know, and toy guns when I was a kid, Oh yeah, I have some very realistic looking like you would just have a water gun that just looks like a straight up oozy black and everything, you know, and not not brightly colored so that it's obvious. And nowadays, like we've we've you know, for a few different reasons, we've we've not let our son play with with toy guns. But

then on the other hand, he's into Harry Potter. He has the wands, and so he'll go over to play with a friend and they're just shooting straight um death curses. That just a gun. Yeah, it's like they're treating kind of like a gun. And there they are flinging um forbidden curry what are they called the I don't know anyway, the bad curses you're not supposed to use, the death curses, the Crucio curses. Yeah, we were right, yeah, like we were.

In fact, he was dressed as is Harry Potter. When we were trick or treating, we went past a house and he was like, Oh, we should go to that one. And I'm like, I don't think that one's open. They don't have the lights on, they don't have any candy. And he he just points his wand to the house and says uh in Cyndio very coldly. I was like, like, man, man,

that's that's cold, all right. But back to Legos. Another interesting angle that I came across regarding Legos has to do with what these blocks are constructed out off, and of course they are made out of plastic. I was reading a two thou eighteen New York Times article by Stanley read titled Lego wants to completely remake its toy bricks with out anyone noticing Now that title gives pretty

much everything away. There's no mystery what that article is about, but the main point is that Lego wants to eliminate its dependence on petroleum based plastics and build its toys entirely from plant based or recycled materials by and this is quite a challenge because the Lego block, which hopefully everyone listening has some familiarity with it, like, these are durable blocks, they stand the test of time. I'm able to use blocks from my childhood and build things with

my my son using new blocks. And you can't really tell the difference unless it's you know, unless a block has been chewed on by a dog or something. They held up really well. They hold their color. Uh, They're able to dependently in interlock with each other. They can be stepped on, they can go through the wash, you name it. But at the end of the day, they are plastic products that are made from petroleum, and so

Lego has been eyeing plant fibers, recycled bottle uh. And they want to they want to get away from that petroleum based origin. Namely, they want to get away from a BS plastic which they've depended on. This is the kind of plastic you find in computer keys and in many mobile phone cases. It's tough, it's slightly elastic, and

it has a polished surface so it looks nice. Read Read points out in this article that at the time of its publication, Lego had already experimented with something like two hundred different alternatives to a BS plastic, and at that point nothing had really worked. So so a particular solution might be too brittle, it might break, and if it broke, in some cases it might break into sharpened pieces,

which is no good for a children's toy. In other cases, it might be aesthetic, the colors wouldn't look right, et cetera. So the quest continues at Lego, apparently to find a proper a BS plastic substitute, something that is more sustainable, that is less dependent on petroleum. But it is another interesting thing to think about when it comes to toy it's the toys that we make, the toys that we have as part of our childhood and then recreate again and share with children in our lives. Is that they

know they are made out of materials. And uh, you know, we've talked a lot about older toys that are made out of wood and so forth, but so many of our toys in the modern age are made out of plastic. Well yeah, I mean whatever kind of like large scale or maybe environmental downsides you might point to. I mean, it's it's clear why plastic is so dominant in the market. I mean, has undeniable material benefits for especially the kinds

of uses you want in a children's toy. It's easy to form and two different shapes and mass produced like that. It's relatively safe. Yeah, it it makes it really has made lego possible. Like you go back to that woodworker's origin. Uh it was it was not really possible to make an interlocking brick that works as well as a as a plastic brick with with wooden materials. Oh man, trying to imagine wooden legos. I wonder if somebody's out there

doing that. That's like somebody's uh, you know, passion craft. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guess I could be completely wrong here, but I'm guessing you could make some form of metal lego. But that also doesn't sounds like a great idea. Man, you think stepping on the plastic One's wait, you step on the the steel the steel lego. All right, we're gonna move on to another toy here.

This next one is not going to be as as much of an in depth discussion, but I decided to look into the origin of a toy that I don't know if anyone feels anybody feels particularly strongly about in a like a positive manner. But I'm talking about the symbol banging monkey. That mechanical it is. If the jack in the box is a toy, then the symbol banging monkey is. I think of it as a prop in a horror film. Yeah, it's mainly what it does these days,

so I'm sure everyone's familiar with it. It is a chimpanzee, generally in a setting or squatting position. It is wearing some sort of baby clothing. Generally it has a pair of symbols which it crashes together over and over again. Mechanically. Sometimes there's you know, there's movement to the eyes into them, like the teeth, and its eyes generally have this kind of like red rimmed appearance to them that makes it look like it is completely insane. It has the devil

inside it. Yes, yes, as I was looking into this, like where did this come from? And uh, basically it seems to go back to the idea of organ grinders. But you would have something, you know, somebody a street musician essentially, with a performing monkey that may be dressed in small clothing, you know, doll clothing or children's clothing, maybe brandishing some sort of an instrument it's all about amusing people and getting them to give you some money, uh,

you know, for the amusement. And then this would be the mechanical version of it. And I've seen it traced back to the musical Jolly Chimp created by the Japanese company uh Dashian c K and then I teen fifties, but then with additional versions popping up in Japan as well and making their way to the US and other markets, again with a number of different names, but generally revolving around the fact that you have a clashing mechanical noise and the likeness of a chimp. And indeed, especially with

those reddened eyes, they often provoke a sense of uneasiness. Uh. They summoned both the spirit of the be steal chimp and uh the idea of just mindless uh, you know, automated behavior. There's not a lot of variations. The chimp is not a music box, It is not playing a song. It is just clashing symbols and uh. And it has shown up in a number of different horror properties. The best example is probably this short story by Stephen King

titled The Monkey. I remember this one. Yeah. The basic idea here is that there's this cursed toy symbol monkey, and every time it clashes its symbols, somebody dies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember this. Uh it was? Does the climax involved of somebody like trying to go out on a lake to throw it in the bottom or trying to get away from it, but without without raising the suspicions of the monkey? Um this This story again came out in nineteen eighty. It was published in a magazine called Gallery,

which I believe was some sort of fine art magazine. Okay, now I'm kidding is a skin magazine. But most of us, probably most of us probably know it from a revised version that was featured in nineteen eighty five Skeleton Crew, which was one of Stephen King's great short story collections

of the day. Another source that some some people maybe remember remembering the story from a nineteen eighty four film titled The Devil's Gift, which tells the exact thing that pretty much exactly the same story as the King short story, but without any attribution to Stephen King. And most of us know it from the MST three k Rift. Merlin Shop of Mystical Wonders features an edited down cut of this film that like it ends up like turn people on fire and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's it's

terrible but also good and also creepy. There's something about this monkey that is legitimately creepy. And I should also point out Stephen King's Skeleton Crew first edition and many editions that came out afterwards. That collection had the symbol banging monkey on the cover. And that's how I've got on the symbol banging monkey. I mean, maybe not a deep story. Maybe somewhere out there in the world we have listeners who know a deeper tale of the monkey.

And uh, perhaps we'll even dare to share it with us, providing that the dark, simple, clinging monkeys will allow you to without smiting you with their satanic power. All right, on that note, we're going to take another break, but when we come back, we will discuss paper doll theaters and some cartoon transformations. Alright, we're back. Okay, it seems like we're doing paper dolls now. Yeah. I wasn't really expecting to talk about paper dolls because I don't have

a lot of nostalgia for them. Um, like some some toys, you know, they tend to have sort of gendered marketing, and I don't think I was. I was ever, Like, they were never really marketed for me or purchased for me when I was a child. Oh, I should have brought up that earlier. There's actually one one mentioned in Hewitt's paper about blocks, how that there's some egregiously gendered marketing in the history of of blocks, you know, like advertising blocks as for the boy constructor you know, which

is just like obviously girls like playing with blocks too. Yeah, I mean, I think gender targeting on toys tends to be a bit dumb, but especially with with blocks, if there was ever a truly gender neutral toy. Blocks are real because it's not like physics is you know, it's only Yeah, it's like it's it's part of the human experience. So don't you know when a girl makes a tower of things, it just can't fall over. Yeah, it's that's ridiculous.

So with paper dolls, I don't have a lot of I remember my sisters had them, and I think I would check them out from time to time, and they were neat, you know, especially when you get into costume changes on them. But I found an interesting rite up on paper doll theaters in particular, and so that's mainly what I want to talk about here. But but paper dolls in and of themselves selves can be pretty cool.

And also if you expand that a little bit and think also of things made out of cardboard, cardboard, cutouts, folded paper that is used to create some sort of likeness of a creature or a being. But of course for to have these different types of toys, you have

have to have paper first. Now, if paper itself has been with us for a long time since at least the second century BC in China, spreading more broadly through the Middle East in Europe in the thirteenth century, and we'll have to come back and do a full invention episode just on paper itself because it has a fascinating history totally. But but of course it proved extremely important for the conveyance of written language. It also was something

of a value treated as such. For instance, in Western traditions we see see it in the value of books, in the reuse of parchment. Oh yeah, that's one thing that people often don't understand when dealing with like archaeology today. It's like, why do we have all these old documents where people would like write something on top of something else that it doesn't make any sense, But it does if you consider that writing media, the stuff you'd be writing on was like expensive and hard to come by.

I mean, we live in a day of very disposable paper, a day when, for instance, my son can come in and just he can just go up to the printer, grab a stack of blank sheets and just start drawing dinosaurs. You know, the time was when that would be completely unacceptable. Paper is not a plaything. Paper. In some cases, paper was sacred. I mean paper was used uh in in

various you know, rituals and ceremonies. We see that in Eastern examples especially, and there was there was something sacred about It was a place where you you put the

written word, for example. Uh. And then of course in the East we see origami arising, you know, an art form that is about creating three dimensional entities humanoid or animal or otherwise out of paper, and these date back to around eight hundred C. We also see traditions of paper puppetry in Asia, which also resonates with the sacred, because puppetry at heart is a kind of magic to imbue created likenesses with the animation of life. And then

then then to use these animations to tell stories. And so we come back to the idea of European paper dolls, which seemed to have popped up in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century, becoming basically widely more available and popular as paper itself became more affordable, because that's the key fit. For there to be, you know, toys made out of paper, and then for there to be widespread toys met out of paper, you've got to get the price point down. Sure.

So I was reading an article by Amelia soft for j Store Daily titled paper Theaters the home entertainment of Yesteryear, and it discussed, uh, you know, another detail of paper doll history that I think I was largely unaware of. I'm pretty sure I'd seen some reprinted paper theaters at Atlanta's own Center for Puppetry Arts, but I didn't really appreciate what I was looking at and realized that this is essentially an entire puppetry art form that was very

popular at one point. So basically during the eight hundreds, live theater was that was you know, was was all the rage. It was extremely popular in Europe, especially in England. It was the TV of the nineteenth century. If you wanted if you wanted to see a story, if you wanted to watch your stories, you needed to go watch someone present them to you on a stage. But you have to leave the house. True. Uh, and we'll get to a way around that. But but performance was huge

soft rights. Uh that that theater goers at the time rebelled against Covent Garden Theater over high ticket prices by ringing bells during the show to disturb the actors, and by bringing live pigs to the theater. Which fabulous. This this gives me some ideas I think that we can all use in dealing with, say, the likes of Ticketmaster and so forth. Okay, you don't like those high prices, you don't like those scalpers coming in. Everybody, bring a

bring a live pig and some bells to the next concert. Uh. So you also have people attending unlicensed and illegal theaters that were called blood tubs to feed their need for live performance. People could not get enough of it. Wait why were they called blood tubs? We have any idea? I think they were just considered um potentially dangerous and or violent. I mean, imagine going to an unlicensed venue for I'm thinking like like a hard rock concert, punker metal,

you know, and some of the complications that could ensue. Yeah, those punk house shows can get kind of rough. But then there was the home version, often for children, paper theaters, and you could at the time you could buy them colored or uncolored for a manner of sense, and then you could they would you everything you needed for a for a stand up miniature performance. You'd have a stage,

a set character, striking dramatic poses. You know, you you have to cut them out, uh, and then stand them up. And of course it would also come with the script, often times edited so that the child you know, could handle it. If there was something, you know, body in there, it would be removed. Amazing. So like instead of going to the store and like buying a DVD, you could you'd buy a set to do a paper puppet play that comes with a script that tells you what to do. Yeah,

which which is amazing. Especially again, think of a time when you didn't have DVDs, you didn't have vhs, you weren't able to just catch the movie again on television later. Uh, this might be the way to to re experience it right in a way. It's very much like the like a novelization of a film, uh, except more physical and

requiring your direct interaction to put on the performance. Yeah, and so they were very popular, and according to saw It, they likely lead to imagination play as well, much like legos in this regard, I'd wager, you know, run it one, run it through once, maybe with the script, and then maybe you do a sequel to Uh. I don't know much to do about nothing, much to do about nothing to the revenge right first first his tragedy and then his comedy. Yeah. Uh, now the price by the way, uh,

you know, manner of sense. It's actually referenced in the title of a Robert Louis Stevenson essay about their appeal, where he's kind of, you know, waxing nostalgic about his his love of these when he was a Child's called penny Plane twopence colored because the the plane version of everything was cheaper, and if you got it already colored in, you'd have to pay a little bit more, Okay, Uh Stevenson, I was looking at this original piece. I looked it up.

It's available online if you just do a search for that title. And Robert Louis Stevenson. He writes about the joy of coloring the pages himself. Uh that sometimes he would get the colored version for the extracent, but it would just it would feel wrong. He would feel like he was cheating. Uh. And he would you know, he'd

stage your performance with the paper of figures. But then he would end up studying the contents of the script booklet a lot obsessively and uh and and his parents would not necessarily understand, like why he wasn't playing with it anymore. And He's like, Oh, it's like a big meal that I've consumed. I've already consumed that I can't I can't do it again. Mom and dad. You don't understand the level of energy I'm putting into this, uh,

this paper theater. Uh. Soft also points out that Gotha's son August would put on shows in a paper theater and the quote the family cat always served as one of the performers. Oh like getting in there and swatting at the puppet. They would love that, so Soft concludes. Quote. The magic of the paper theater was not that it allowed children to replicate a beloved play in their home. It was that it provided them with the raw materials, either to copy or create to follow, or some vert

as they saw fit. So it gave children a full cast and setting of physical representations for imagination play. And in some cases, I imagine you know, it made you know, such an array possible given that some children, um, you know, many children even would not have had access to, say a toy story for sue cast off material characters. You wouldn't have like a toy chest of animals and people representations thereof with which to do this kind of imagination play.

But one of these sets for a mere penny, you would have good guys and bad guys in a setting everything you need in the script, I mean the script that seems like a huge part of it. I mean I think about how actually this is seeming so weird to me, But at the same time, I'm like, well, that's sort of what I did with my action figures, Like you know, when I played with like Jurassic Park action figures or whatever, I could like have them sort

of put on a play. Yeah. Another thing that I read was that people like Igmar Bergman and Orson Wells would use toy theaters to stage things out uh in miniature for actual for actual performances or productions. So you know this in and of itself too. It's just a useful exercise to be able to create in miniature what you may one day create in real life as a as an actual theatrical production or a cinematic production. Um. Yeah,

these were. These were super popular for for quite a while. Now, among other things, television helped to decrease the appeal of these paper theaters and toy theaters in general. But they live on to this day. Uh, sometimes in a nostalgic form and old toy kind of form. But then you also see them utilized as a as a true craft by some individuals, or even as a performance already, even as a way of performing through a type of puppetry.

I feel like I want to get one of these things. Yeah, I again, I have seen them for sale, or I've seen updated versions of them for sale, let's say the Center for Punctry Arts. So next time I go, I have to check it out. Maybe they make a Jurassic

Park paper puppets set. It would be great, actually, you know, because just think of it, instead of buying all these big pieces of plastic or building amount of legos or what have you, and then building things for the dinosaurs to knock down out of bricks and blocks, what have you. In paper form, you could have everything. You could have all the major dinosaurs, all the major players. You can even have a who's the lawyer in the first Jurassic Park?

Gennaro or what the actor's name? Well, I don't know about either one. You can have that guy and you could even rip him in half. He even comes into two pieces. That's right. Yeah, very easy to dismember paper puppets. You know what I'd do? What's that flip script? Then you have dinosaurs make a park with humans, and then the humans get loose. There you go, See, this is exactly it like. It allows you to to make all the changes, all the alterations that you you might be

inspired to to to create. Now, Robert, you promised me that we would end up talking about some kind of cartoon transformation. What's the deal here? All right? Yeah? I have one final thing that you have to talk about here, and it's something that I never thought that I would I would really come up on the show. I'm gonna what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna list several different Japanese cartoon characters made that were indeed each of them made into some sort of toy, and I want

you to figure out what they have in common. You have mum Rabbi Ever Living from ThunderCats. You remember Mama I actually never watched, okay, So mom Raw is like an old decrepit mummy like kind of a cat person mummy. Uh. And then at a certain point in the show, he's gonna have to battle, so he has to transform into mum Rabi Ever Living, which is this big, like supermuscular cat creature with like sort of Fulsa Doom esque Egyptian inspired garb. It's like in Stephen Summers Mummy movies when

the skeleton critter turns into Arnold Oslou. Yeah, very similar. I imagine they might have even been inspired by Mamra. Another example Monstar Silverhawks. This was a villain and it was a sci fi sort of counterpart to ThunderCats. Then, of course we had Vultron. I definitely remember Vultron, and then you had Sailor Moon aware of it, but I never watched it, Okay, So what do they all have in common? Well, I know the answer because I can see your notes, but I haven't I don't know if

I would have gotten it otherwise. Clearly now that I know the answer, it's that they all have like a scene where they go like power up and then they transform into their their higher form. That's right, Yeah, lengthy transformation scenes. Um. And again I was not familiar with all these properties. I don't think I've ever watched sailor Moon and probably you know that gets into gendered marketing, I'm sure. But I was a big ThunderCats and Vultron

fan growing up. I would catch silver Hawks when it was on. I always found it like a little weird. It was it was, it was didn't have the true magic of ThunderCats. But these were fun shows. And yes, the transformation scenes were awesome, and they sometimes would would

use like a full trans in sformation. Sometimes they would use a shorter version of its seemingly depending on how much you know, how much they had to pad out the episode, because because that really seems to seem to have been key here, right, because it's a great way to pad out an animated series, especially when you consider a show like ThunderCats, which went four seasons one hundred

and thirty episodes. Uh, silver Hawks only went one season and it still has sixty five episodes, so they're really turning these puppies out. Yeah, but you film a transformation scene, you can basically just use the same one every time, right, you can bank Like generally most of these were looking at You're talking twenty seconds, which you know, maybe doesn't seem about a lot when you but when you get into the cost of animation, etcetera. Uh, it makes a difference.

It's a it's called the bank method apparently. Uh. By the way, Sailor Moon five seasons, two hundred episodes. Wow. So yes, on one hand, you can look at and say, well, this is a good way to to to fill up an episode. Just have have twenty seconds or so that you can depend on, not counting the intro and the outro to the episode. Would you're already going to be pretty stationary. I was looking at j Store Daily again and I ran across a post titled selling toys with

the Sailor Moon transformation sequence. And this was very insightful and made me think about this in a new way. This was by Jacqueline Manski in October of twenty nine, and it was largely a look at the work of Comiko Sito in the Journal of Asian Studies the the So this all points out that the transformation scenes like the ones we've discussed, but more specifically like the one in Sailor Moon are are more than we might imagine

they are. So in Sailor Moon, we have a normal Japanese school girl girl and she transforms into the pretty Guardians Sailor Moon, the Pretty Guardians. Yes. Uh, And apparently this was like a standard part of magical girl animation prior to Sailor Moon. And one presumes that, you know, it connects to the transformations in the ThunderCats and Vultron shows again just sort of like a differently gendered version

of the same thing. It dates back at least to the N two animated series Minky Momo, which was a magical princess show that featured a standard twenty three second transformation scene. By the time Sailor Moon comes around, though, they get that transformation scene up to forty seconds. This is interesting that you've got this, you know, animation production padding technique that is being used over and over in all these different series to make the cartoon production more affordable.

But how does this connect to toys? All right? This is what the Saito has to write about it. She says a quote. Although the technique of reusing cells in multiple episodes was not a new concept in itself, Momo, by which she means Minkey Momo from A D two successfully incorporated the well exploited robot animes bank method, in which mechanical parts are captured in the camera's dynamic tracking

motion for the maximum effect of promoting the target merchandise. So, in other words, if I'm understanding this correctly, it's you ever see these scenes where it's like the show room for an automobile. It's on this circular stage that's revolving and all the fancy lights are on it to just give you this three sixty fabulous uh, you know, NonStop view of just how wonderful this vehicle is from every angle. It's like the character creation screen and a wrestling video

game exactly. They'll let you rotate to every angle, you know, inspect the feed, all all that stuff. Right. So, yeah, if I'm understanding this correctly, the argument is that that is what this is. Like, Yes, it's a it's a banking method. Yes it's a it's part of each story there. It's part of the imaginative element of the of the tail.

But so like you're trying to sell Vultron action figures or sailor Moon action figures, and this allows you to do that within every episode of the show, to have like a merchandise show off segment that gives you lots of different angles and stuff to examine the toy that you want to buy. Yeah, so mum Raw does his twenty second transformation scene up. I think I tried to clock it. I think it's like twenty three seconds, and and you look at it and you're like, man, Mama

is amazing. This is the centralvilla one of the show is the best, and I simply must own the toy. And I did own the toy of Mamra, Like I remember, I didn't connect the two. But it's like I had to have mom Raw. I had mam Raw. I had none of the other ThunderCats, but I had to have Mmra. And I probably would have gotten Monstar as well, but I couldn't really move my eight year old funds around enough to make it happen. But but this is a

couldn't get an injection of capital for that, right right? Yeah, But but I think this is a really fascinating take on on on it. I mean, obviously we know that if there is a cartoon that has a toy line, and sometimes the cartoon comes first, sometimes the toy line comes first. Sometimes they're part of the same effort, we know on some level that cartoon is about selling the toys.

Oh yeah, I mean it's totally the case was like Transformers, right, the cartoon was there to sell the toys, but I had not really considered something about the transformation, saying about how this this might be a key uh tool in the toy makers the toy marketers toolbox. Well that's funny because now that I'm thinking of Transformers of course, duh, I mean also extended transformations. Yeah, you see this once

you you sort of clued into this idea. You see it in so many shows yet Transformers, even some shows that are perhaps you know, not cartoons, I guess in Power Rangers, stuff had to come together, some sort of transformation had to happen. It becomes and part of this too is it becomes a trope of such shows. Right, It becomes a thing that people expect and they get excited about, and maybe to a certain extent, the creators don't even realize the ways that it can be used

that it has this this uh this marketing effect as well. Yeah, this is really interesting. I've never considered this before. Now again, I I only have personal experience with with mem Ras

and Monstar and Voltron. But I would love to hear from anyone out there who can really speak to Sailor Moon and some of these other princes transformation shows and and and provide a little insight on this, you know, now that I'm thinking about it, I actually have come across other examples of this where like specifically cinema like

cinema techniques being used to emphasize toy selling aspects. The main example I'm thinking of are in Batman movies, like in the uh in the second Joel Schumacher Batman movie Batman and Robin from I guess it was the late nineties. I remember, there's all this talk after the film came out about how like the film had been shaped by the need to market toys that would be sold in

conjunction with the film. Uh so, like, you know, to to emphasize the bat vehicles and stuff in certain ways that would make it they thought more appealing for a toy market. Yeah, I have to absolutely, you know, I don't know if I ever saw that one all the way through. But but even the earlier Batman movies, I mean clearly you got to move some batmobiles and so you feature the batmobile prominently. But then again, would it be a Batman film if it didn't have a batmobile

in it? It becomes kind of hard to, uh, you know, to to pull these elements apart again, right, I've been trying to think of like an Arnold Schwarzenegger price ice pun it did, it didn't didn't come together right. It was such hilarious, uh and awful casting. As as as

Mr Freeze, It's one of the all time grades. Yeah, because I remember even at the time I was already I was always a Mr. Freeze fan, even like the really crappy Mr Freeze, that version that you had in the old Adam West uh series, I was still I would still get excited for him when he was on the screen. Oh, I didn't know that. I remember he was always so scary and tragic in the animated series.

He's wonderful in the animated series. I fell in love with him again, Uh, fell in love with him anew when when that came out and then here comes Arnold and you're like, who did this? Like who so completely missed you know, missed the mark on what this character is and what they should be cinematically. But they saw a lot of toys though. That's true, and and it is at least comedically noteworthy. All right, So there you have it. I think this is good. I think we're

gonna close the toy bag for the year. It's been a heck of a hall it has. Obviously there were tons of toys we did not get to, but we can always come back in the future, especially if these are popular. And then of course, uh, you know, we're gonna cover more invention inventions in the new year. We'd love to hear from everyone out there. What do you want to hear about, what technologies, what specific inventions, big inventions,

small inventions. Really I would love to hear from everyone regarding like what you like about the show, if you if you like invention, if you want Invention to keep going. What sort of topics and content are are you finding the most engaging. Do you like multi episodes that deal with something bigger like photography? Do you like self contained episodes that are looking at a singular invention. Do you

like grab bag episodes like these toy episodes? I would just love to know what you think as a listener. In the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts. You can go to invention pod dot com and that I'll take you to our to a page for us, and uh yeah, wherever you get the show, just make sure you rate and review. That is a great way to support the show. Also subscribe. That way you'll always get

new episodes when they arrive. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you'd like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at invention pod dot com. Invention is production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio because the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Two