9 Incredible Classic Toys (and How They've Changed)

call it a toy. But not only did it come in a plastic egg for some reason, which is really the world's best carrying case, you asked me, but you know you could stretch it, it bounced, And the weirdest and maybe best thing of all was that if you pressed it against the newspaper, it actually picked up the text and images right off the page. Did you ever

do this? Yeah, with like the funny pages. And to me, that just like elevated it from just another like piece of slime or a bouncy ball to a spy gadget like you could almost imagine Carmen San Diego carrying one of these in her pocket. Well, today kids just don't get that joy because Silly Putty no longer picks up newsprint. Now. Apparently it isn't because the silly Putty formula has changed.

It's because newspapers have started using a different kind of ink. Now, I don't know if this is just so silly putty can't pick it up. I think maybe it's because they don't want reader's hands to pick up the print. But it made me wonder, like, how have classic toys changed over the years. And that's what today's nine Things is all about. So let's dive in. Y Hey, their podcast listeners,

welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend Man Guesh Ticketer and sitting behind the soundproof glass djaying music on his old Teddy Ruxman doll. That doll looks pretty worn out at this point. That's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. So Teddy Ruxman is such an old reference, you know.

I actually had this memory from when I was a kid in the summertime, and I want to say it was like nine or ten at the time, and I remember staying up to watch Johnny Carson and he did this joke I just thought was hilarious. Uh. He was like on stage doing his monologue and he goes, Hasbro's just come out with a Milli Vanilli talking doll? But it had to be pulled off the shelves because it was using Teddy Ruxpin's voice and as a kid. For some reason, that joke was so funny to me, like

it's a throwaway joke, but I always recycle it. I mean, if admit it's not a bad joke, though it is funnier to me think about how old these references are, like Johnny Carson, Milli Vanilli, Teddy Ruxman, And I will say the timing on this is really weird because, as you know, this past weekend, I went camping with our family and it was raining one day and I started singing Blame It on the rain, and the kids didn't know the reference, and so I actually pulled up a

Milli Vanilli song. I love the fact that we were in the middle of nowhere listening to Milli Vanilli on Spotify, But anyway, we were listening to this and it hit me like, it's not as though that I thought this had been a great song or a great group, like whoever was doing the actual singing, but it is so much worse than I remembered it. Like it is bad. So I'm encouraging anyone to pull up Milli Vanilli and just appreciate how terrible it is. It makes sense that

Teddy Rux been saying. It makes sense that Teddy Ruxy say But anyway, none of those references mean anything to kids anymore at this point. Well, I do hope some of the toys on this list are still things people play with. You know, you talked about silly Putty at the top of the show. But I thought it was fascinating that the reason we have this ridiculous invention in the first place is because during World War Two we had to ration rubber because of the limited access to

rubber plants. And it was this unexpectedly delightful thing that came out of this search for synthetic rubber. And this was during wartime desperation. Oh, that is pretty interesting. I feel like maybe you're stalling Omego what do you do? You have a fact you prepared for this episode. I did bring some facts, so I wanted to talk a little bit about the etch A sketch first, and and this is actually an invention that comes from France. It

was originally called Lecron Magic. I don't French, obviously, and then when it debuted at toy fairs, it had a slightly different design because instead of those two white knobs, it actually had a joystick on it, which is how none of us remember it, of course. But the other weird thing about the edge of sketches that toy companies were very lukewarm on the idea, like almost all of them passed on it. In fact, all of them did.

And then finally Ohio Art decided to take a second look at it, and they picked it up in nineteen sixty. They decided to make it more sleek. They changed the control to those two infuriating white knobs now and and they started advertising it on TV and it flew off shells. Over a hundred million EG sketch have actually sold ever since. You know, it was never very good at them, and I'm still not any good at them, But I do like looking at those galleries of portraits and you know

the other artwork that an ETA sketch can do. Yeah, it's it's pretty cool that you can preserve those things by like drilling through the back and you take out the powder and it makes those drawings permanent. But for me, like the ability to shake the pictures and rest art is the best thing about it. Like I can't imagine saving any artwork I've ever created on cane. Alright, well, going in a very different direction and something that I have no memory of, but it was interesting to read about.

Did you know that the precursor of My Little Pony was called My Pretty Pony? No, so what's the difference? Well, color and size for starters. So My Pretty Pony was brown and about ten inches tall, and according to an article in Gizmoto, it was part of Hasbro's Romper Room line. And it also wiggled its ears and its tail and it winked at you, apparently very very contemperent. But you know, the big attraction was the main and the tail, and

they were both extra long. And you can imagine kids really enjoying this because they could just brush it for days and days. But it really was just like a toy horse. So it debuted in nine and then the following year they decided to shrink it down. They took out some of the movable features, added all those colors that we associate with them, and make them a little

bit more like the ponies that we know today. So every time I hear My Little Pony now, I I think about how people thought Bill Clinton was a brony because he answered like three questions straight on. Wait, weight, don't tell me about My Little Pony friendship is magic? I had forgotten all about. Well, obviously, how you play with My Little Pony is different than the kids who have the original, and you know, then it was more of like a horse toy and less of this magical

horse boy. But you know, the other thing I'd forgotten is that My Little Pony cartoon that came out in the mid nineteen eighties. It was actually called My Little Pony and Friends because half the animated show was really used to market these ponies to kids, and then the other half was reserved to sell toys for for other things like I was just looking back on this, like

Glow Worms, which I remember, and Potato Head Kids. I don't remember this cartoon, but Gizmodo recapped it as quote a bunch of potato children being marginally watched over by Mr potato Head with a lazy dad. So I vaguely remember glow Worms, but I have no memory of that

Potato Head cartoon. But speaking of Mr potato Head, Uh, there's an old fact which always blows me away, and we've mentioned on the program before but it's that the original potato heads were just parts that you stuck into any produce you had around the house, like it was funny eyes, felt mustaches, hats and whatever. And the packaging actually read any fruit or vegetable makes a funny face man. So as I O. Nine puts it, it was b y O P or bring your own potato. And apparently

the sales killed. It was one of, if not the first toy to advertise on TV, and in ninetift two they did over four million dollars in sales. I mean that's actually about thirty seven million dollars in today's money. But the thing is, like I always wondered, like when did they stop this and and shift over to putting

these plastic bodies into the boxes? And this is according to Ion nine again, but apparently in ninety eight some of the toys got really elaborate and also really sharp, and that's because they put out a Mr. Potato Head on the Moon Set. I guess this was capitalizing on the Space Race. But it came with super sharp plastic parts that fixed into a cucumber to make it stand

up as a rocket. So you had potato parts, cucumber parts, and uh, it's pretty cool to look at, but by the nine seventies, all those sharp parts were just deemed too unsafe for kids. You know, I've definitely seen a few photos of those boxes, but I'm curious if you can still get them on eBay. So so after we finished the episode, let's look that up. Let's see. All, Well, here's another classic toy that's changed over the years, and

that's the Magic eight Ball. Now, one of the questions I've always had about the magic eight ball was like, why is it an eight ball? And it feels like a weird choice for a kid's toy, But it turns

out there's a marketing reason behind it. So the toy itself has this long, weird story and apparently was invented by a kid whose mom was a fortune teller, I think, And so she used to have some sort of rig that she called the psycho slate, and she would ask a client some questions and then the answers would be

magically produced on a magic chalkboard. And I don't quite understand the setup of this, but it influenced her son, his name was Albert Carter, to come up with a product where you kept the fortune telling, but you took the human consultant out of the picture, and so the toy provided the answers directly. Those ninety four and he invented what was called the psycho Sere, which was this long tube with liquid in it and then a couple of dice that floated up with different phrases on it.

And basically the concept of the magic eight ball was there. And anyway, this this toy went through these various iterations. They turned from a tube into a crystal ball. But then it was Brunswick Billiard Tables. They were looking for this promotional gimmick back in nineteen fifty and Carter's partner redesigned the crystal eight ball into an eight ball, and

that idea just kind of stuck from there. That's crazy, you know, it's funny to think of fortune telling being the family business for for Albert Carter, but it's also funny that this is just like a marketing tool. It's ridiculous. Yeah, it was just supposed to be this paper weight for adults, really nothing more than that, and something kind of sit on their desk. It when it caught on with kids, it was remarketed as a toy and and obviously really

took off from there. That's fascinating. I've actually read something about like the psychology of eight balls and how they wait the answers with positive ones. I think they're like, uh ten positive answers and then like five negative and five and different ones, So like you keep playing for

those answers. Yeah, I mean, I guess it makes sense if you think about having that perfect mix that keeps us wanting to flip it over and over, kind of getting those those different answers and knowing we might get positive ones more often then we get negative ones. So all right, what do you have next, Mengo? So I'm going to talk a little bit about Lincoln logs and

how they were originally built to withstand earthquakes. So I had heard the story that Lincoln logs were created by Frank Wood rights son John, and I thought it was cute that there was this architectural connection between them. But it's actually deeper than that. So according to history dot com, the first Lincoln logs weren't toys at all, but architectural models, and they kind of come out of the father's son designed for Tokyo's Imperial Hotel. Apparently, John used to work

for his father. In fact, at age twenty four, he was his chief assistant. And when they were in depend they were trying to come up with the system that would help the building with stan tremors and also earthquakes. So they built a model of interlocking logs that could

bend with the sheiks. And you know, the father and son had falling out, and while Frank concentrated on building the hotel, which actually managed to survive major earthquakes, John Wright took that model, tweaked it and made a toy that doesn't fallow when your kid, brother, kid's sister thumps around right next to it. That's pretty cool. I had never heard that story before. All right, well, very different toy. Here's a quick story about transformers, which have outlasted gobots

and Voltron. You remember those two, remember all of these very well. But the funny thing is that transformers weren't actually the original. You know, Gobots had come to the market before them, and there was also a line of these mass toys that transformed, and they were like dozens of other transforming toys. And at the time, regulations had changed, and so TV was flooded with cartoons basically were king as these advertisements for toys like he Man or we

were talking about before with My Little Pony cartoons. So Transformers got in on this too. But the thing that really set them apart was, you know, first of all, their price. They were actually pricier than other toys of the same genres. So newspapers referred to Transformers is it's almost like being the status symbol that you'd have on playground or the sandboxes. You know, the cool kids had these. But more importantly, they took a lot of care in

the packaging. So every box came with this backstory for the character, elaborately written by a Marvel Comics writer, so the kids really got invested in these stories from the start. And they also had those stickers that warmed with your hand to tell if they were good guys or not an autobot or what were the others called the Decepticons.

But and this is how the toys have changed. The Transformers also came with these cards that had power levels secretly written on them, and you can only tell a Transformer strengths and weaknesses by putting a red plastic It was like a three D glasses type limb is over it, and then you could read the numbers, and so, you know, just like kids obsess over Pokemon stats for characters, those three D readers gave Transformers kind of that nerdy fun

quality that kids could obsess over, you know, in addition to just transforming into things and crashing them into one another. We almost forget what they actually did. But anyway, I know, we've got two more facts for you. But before that, let's take a quick break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're talking nine classic toys and how they've changed over the years. All right, mano, you got one last fact of the day. What is it? So I think I want to talk about or No, Rubik who invented

the Rubik's Cube. So you and I have both heard a lot of this story before that Ruby was Hungarian and a communist country, and he designed this cube partially because he was just curious if there was a way to create a cube with moving parts. He figured that you'd need a round core inside and and he only did this after contemplating the pebbles under his feet while

he was on this long walk. But kind of like with Lincoln logs, this was originally supposed to be a model, like in this case, it was something to teach geometry and spatial relations. But once he put stickers on the thing and then twisted it, it became something totally different. So mental Floss found this unpublished memoir of his and in it he writes quote only after a few turns the colors became mixed. It was tremendously satisfying to watch this color parade. And of course, when he tried to

reset the colors, he couldn't like it. Took Rubik a full month and a half to put the cube back in order. But here's the funniest part. Like when he finally did, he went home to brag to his mom about it, and her reaction was that he was just thrilled he was no longer wasting his time working so hard on this ridiculous puzzle. I'm curious that, like, how did Rubik's cube become such a phenomenon? Basically when he took his colored version into his class and saw the

kids going crazy for it. When Rubik knew you had something more than a math model on his hands, it's pretty fun, all right. So I thought i'd end this on cabbage patch dolls, and I guess what's surprising to me isn't that the toys have really changed that much, but more that they started out as this mix of

craft and art. So according to Collector's Weekly, when Xavier Roberts started making the dolls in nineteen seventy seven, it was based on a German fabric sculpture technique, the idea of adopting dolls they were they were called little people at the time. That was there from the start, and so he charged forty dollars for these sculptures and then hand you a certificate with them. It's hard for me

to think of these dolls as sculptures. But after one of his pieces, called Dexter One, first place at an art show in Florida, he realized there was something there. So he and a few friends formed this collective, and then they renovated an old medical center in Georgia and turned it into an art and performance space where the little people were born from cabbages and delivered by licensed nurses.

I mean, it's it's all a little bit straightage, but people could watch as they occasionally did cease actions or cabbage sections kess and of course you could buy the sculptures there Anyway, the hospital was featured on this documentary and a national press picked it up, and people just went bananas for these things. So Colleco licensed the dolls, made them smaller, lower the prices some and the fat

just took off. That's crazy, you know. I always think about the Snack Time cabbage Patch dolls that had to be returned because they kept chomping on kids hair instead of just the plastic snacks you had for them. Like, those things give me nightmares. All right, well, we've got to pick a winner, and there were a ton of great facts today, but I really like that Lincoln Logs fact and the idea that you built this little log cabin it might just withstand an earthquake. So ango, I'm

going to give you today's trophy. Thank you so much, and thank you guys for listening. We'll be back with a full length episode tomorrow