Now really.
Really now, really well and welcome to really know really with Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden, who remind you we are constantly trying to source a large crowd of subscribers and hoping you will be one. And speaking of crowdsourcing, many industries, including toy and game makers, increasingly depend on crowdsourcing for fresh ideas. Outsourcing creativity to the masses can offer valuable feedback, but that data can also be misinterpreted, misunderstood,
or create just plain bogus ideas. That said, the annual toy business in the United States is one hundred billion dollar industry, by far the biggest toy market in the world.
But apparently the little elves and.
The toy making factories are running out of ideas, so now they're turning to all of us to do the creating for them.
Seems we've become the elves. Really no really.
To break down the inner workings of today's toy and game world, Jason and Peter turned to an old friend, David Fuhrer, who has created and licensed more than three hundred toys games in household products, generating retail sales of a one billion dollars and he's also the holder of the Guinness World Record for being the fastest backwards talker. So now backwards here are nasaug Rednecks, len rettap Netlett.
Episode number seven, five, nine or three six.
I don't, I have no idea. I have no idea.
I do.
We've done a lot of these.
We have done at least win no, Mark Maren, I've never heard that phrase about us, you Mark, We've probably into this by way. And when I say this number people listening really no, really really know. We're about seventy or eighty episodes in.
Yeah, yeah, look at us, and we are a cottage indust.
So this episode was again the generation of this episode is I'm seeing New York Time article and the headline has got an idea for toy toy makers want to hear from you, And I'm thinking of.
That, is that just restricted to the toy industry. I got an idea for a rocket science project. Rocket scientists would like to hear from all the industry, exclusive to all these industry are doing it.
But I saw it in the toy industry and I thought to myself the Sebastian amount of skopkale joke where you said, he goes into the supermarket and now you've got to scan your items, And he said, it's like they all got together one and said, you know what you do it? Yeah, that's it's like the toy companies. I would think, and we have a specialist here knows
from the toy business. But I would think like if you called if I called, like a toy company in the seventies and said, hey, I got an idea for a game, they say, hey, kid, yeah, thanks, ye, thank you so much. We have professionals doing this now because you can crowd source people. It's ideas that it's easy to put it out there and say, yeah, it's crowdsourcing that idea for.
Me, for me, because I'm being serious now, I know what like a kickstarter is, that's crowdfunding.
Crowdsourcing his ideas getting finding a group of people who are fascinated by this kind of thing that can help you develop stuff or you can actually test ideas out, like is this we're going to limited edition freedom chip with liquorice that somebody recommended? Twenty thousand more people responded, we like this idea you put out and you lose your sure, but there you go, But that's crowdsourcing. Thank you well, but crowdsourcing ideas.
Remember, I think every project we've ever done, it sounds like it must have been crowdsource.
Then under that you're using the public today with AI now, but also the opportunity because of the Internet to get quick response times. You can test stuff out. You used to focus group stuff when you did games or anything with a group of twelve people, and you may be lucky to do a bunch of focus groups and see what. Hopefully their real answer was sure, because focus groups are tough too, because somebody always takes over and dominates. You
never know if it's the real thing. I asked the question. There was a very many people hated the girl. Focus groups can be obviously very detrimental, so I wanted to find out, especially in the toy world, because it's so quickly changing how you come up with the toy. So you and I didn't know you knew this girl.
Also, there's also anything but having a grand little grand child. You can go out and spend one thousand dollars on Fisher Price and the ever been research and this is developmental can put a marble and an empty plastic bottle and that kid will play with that, you know.
Okay, to your point, we'll find out about that. But I remember years ago somebody said, I bought a three hundred dollars toy from my son. He's playing with the box to sit in the pay. David fere is somebody I knew from way back when I first got out here. David, I think came on because of his skill set, and we'll do a little of that later on, where he has a Guinness WORL Burke of Records, ability to talk backwards,
which is mad, it's insane. But I met him because I think he came on the radio show when I launched, because he had just launched the nerve football that had the vortex that had the tail on it, which I think has sold more than just about any toy.
And I saw it was John Ellen john Away through it like seven football fields or something like that, one of the football guys, and I think David realized that, and I go, well, of course he can do it.
David had friends like you and I. He'd see them throw football and go these are and that more.
Yeah, so we're going to make a ball that even a guy like that.
Could throw exactly. And since I've seen David, he has either license or created over a billion dollars in sales or with the toys that he has done.
You think he keeps any of that?
Oh yeah, I think the clothing looks good, shoes look good. Shot. Okay, you know he's sitting right here.
Oh I love that you loved you sneaking into the mic like this right estimating his he's four feet from us, you know, because if he's like me on Celebrity net Worth, they always get it right.
It's a David fear. Thank you for coming. Welcome sir. Good to see your my old friend Dave. I haven't seen you, David in quite a while, but we met and I think eighty eight or eighty.
Now look exactly the same, Peter, because your eyes.
Are drying out. What's that about the time that you came out with the football?
Football was nineteen ninety two, so it would be about the right time exactly.
And how many of those suckers did you sell?
You know?
Well, it's in its thirtieth year and I think we're at something around forty five million?
Did they do?
Is it like the record business? Other businesses? Will you got to sue to get an audit that shows what they were.
So they do a quarterly royalty report, so you know, every and I never know what's going to be in the envelope, and every quarter I always think it's the last.
But it's gone on for thirty years.
So how is it? Alway?
By the way, Elway was the spokesperson, and yeah, I mean at the very beginning, it was a rather simple product and I showed it to twenty four companies. Everybody rejected it. And then I was at a trade show in Japan and I was sitting across the table from this gentleman named John Barber, who was president of a small toy company in northern California. And John said, oh, you had an inventor. He was a Scottish guy, and I do a poor accident, and he said.
He's going to say you that it was from the very Jewish section.
He said, you have one product that you think is great, and that's the one I want to see.
And I thought about it.
I said, I told him about this product that everyone had rejected, and he actually called me two days later and said send me that product, and I overnighted it and the next day he called me and he said, we love this product, we want to do it, and they actually improved the product. They put it through wind tunnel tests at Stamford, and then they hired John Elway at the height of his career to promote the toy, and it became the best selling toy football in the world.
But you know what's crazy about that is not that this is going to be what the whole episode is about, but look at that. So what I think has to happen, But I don't know in what order is somebody has to look at a football and go, boy, that's most people can't throw that damn thing. Then I want to fix that problem. Then here's how you fix that problem. Then here's my first I guess with glue, you stuck a tail on a small I mean, how us through?
You know?
Two, I've got a thing I can show somebody.
Yeah, I mean you identified it correctly as I couldn't throw a football. So I you mentioned before and a net moron in the football field.
I was that guy.
So I was actually at the time working with a couple of other inventors and we were trying to come up with aspirational sports toys. What are things that kids want to do that they can't ordinarily do. I hit a home run, dunk a basketball, throw a long bomb with the football. And we were working on ideas to try to accomplish those things, and one of them was the football, and it actually the you know, it was solving an everyday problem with a basic play pattern, which
is sort of behind a lot of the inventions. But in this case, I had a nerf javelin in my office, which was a foam javelin, and I had a foam football, and one.
Day we drilled a hole through this football. We stuck the.
Javelin and we had a giant version of the vortex football and started throwing it around and.
I just saw that it increased the distance.
Yeah, I mean it was aerodynamic. It straightened out automatically in the air, and no matter how poorly you threw it, it went into a perfect spiral. And so I, who couldn't throw football, it would suddenly heave this thing and it would go three quarters of the way across the football field.
But this is like the movie business, where you've got to convince somebody there are toys that don't get made. They could be huge hits. Because the guys who are the gatekeepers, yeah, just decide for some reason, is there a method to the madness in the toy industry or is this crowdsourcing a gift now because you can get almost immediate response from people and ideas from people, it's.
A little of both, you know.
And the toy companies they've become most of the big ones have become very bureaucratic and retail is very limited, so we have Walmart and Target and Amazon selling most products. So the bigger toy companies have become brand oriented, so for example, Mattel, you're gonna have Barbie and Hot Wheels.
You know, Hasbro's g I Joe, Spinmaster has a lot of brands, and so there's a lot less innovation and unless you know, what they're looking for is products that fill out their brands, and a lot of the innovation that comes from the inventors often ends up at smaller, more entrepreneurial companies.
Now are the mom and pop brick and mortar stores still around that you can have a regional breakthrough that breaks out and.
Then they're out there, but they're limited. Now there's fewer and fewer of those stores that are out.
There, So you have to take anything you come up with now to those three places. That's it.
Well, I don't go directly to retail, So as an inventor, we typically go to the toy companies and the big ones all have inventor liaison people and they put out wish lists, so you have some parameters in which you might be working.
But if I'm competing, like I know a Marvel toy, it's another Marvel toy. We know what that does, as opposed to pick up David's thing, which could grow into a brand, but it's easier just to do another Marvel toy. Does that happen or are you.
Talk absolutely absolutely, because.
That's the thing I was picking up. But you said they know the parameters looking for it, and I go that that hits my business tu in a way that always wrangled me. So when I thought I had a good idea for a show, or Peter and I thought we had a good idea for show, and we go to pitch and then network would say, well, that's not what we do, and I go, I mean, that's not what you do. All you want to do is make something that people are interested in and want to watch.
What you're saying, oh, we don't do comedies that have a house in them. It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. So when, for instance, no toy company would have said to you, our parameters are, we're looking for something like a beanie baby, a little stuffed animal that does nothing. You can't play with it. It sits on the shelf, and any single one of them is worth three thousand anything like that.
And then no one's going to ever say that I have no value and the guy's going to be worth a trillion dollars. And by Santa Barbara, Yeah, I mean.
You're one hundred percent right.
And I always try to tune that out and and try to just you know, like what I like to do is look at concepts that solve an everyday problem or add an innovation to a classic play pattern.
And that's what we did with the football.
Okay, could give some of your other examples of some of your other big things, because people will know. Awwad aqueduquidodle. Yeah.
So aquadoodle is a drawing activity preschool drawing activity toy, and it uses an interesting technology, a hydrochromatic ink, which was a water activated color change and This was actually created by the Pilot Pen company from Japan. So basically what aquadoodle is, it's a matt that's about the size of a small table, and the parent fills a pen with water and when they write on this mat, it's
like a colorful marker. So it was the first time that a preschool child could create on a large surface without making a mess, because after a few minutes it dries and goes away. And so this was the concept that I collaborated with Pilot on. But I would say the brilliant part of this invention and the patented part of this invention was theirs And so I was, you know, my responsibility was to try to come up with a marketable idea.
Wait with the product, Yeah.
What else? You had a couple of the hw mongst ones that went gigantic.
I've had, you know, about three hundred. Most recently, we had something called Twisty Pets, which is a bracelet that you can bend and twist like a balloon animal and it turns it into a little pet. And that was the best selling girls collectible.
In the world until the pandemic hit.
When you say selling world's collectible, how many.
Oh tens of millions, So, and what was the retail price? The retail price was low, it was it was about seven ninety nine to fourteen ninety nine, depending how many were configured in a package.
Seven ninety nine times tons of millions is still a big number.
It was a big number.
It was.
Yeah. Do you ever take something like that? It was a couple of hundred million.
Do you go to a Taylor Swift and say she does bracelet's why don't we come up with something that we can do with Taylor Swift for young girls that are in her dember effic that she may approve as her own item.
Yeah, Away, that's a great idea.
A wing Jason and Peter on the phone, tell him the hole.
Don't let her hang up her she's in the showers. She'll be right back.
Yeah.
Do you ever do that reverse interineting? You think about it. But you know what I usually do is I've chose. You know, there's different ways.
To launch a product, and the business model that I've always used was licensing. We're all go to a company and I would license them the product in exchange for a royalty, as opposed to launching it myself. And then trying to do the marketing, the manufacturing, the distribution, because we've.
Known her since she's thirteen fourteen, and the bracelet thing has always been her deal. So bracelet it turns into something else.
Well, if you can introduce me to Tyler Swift.
Good, Sorry, don't know it, not even a good idea.
I'll tell me when you get her what year that would be the partner.
David's a lot of toys. I'm curious back to the crowdsourcing thing. Is that the is that? I mean? I know, notice like Jason and I saw Starbucks is using Ikea, Disney, Nestley. But toy companies seem to be doing it more than the other because I guess people have certain ideas on what they think a good toy will be. Do they know what? Does the average person know what a good toy will be? Or doesn't have a clue? You know?
No, I think the average person does, and I think the collective you know, brains of everybody is better than just one. But I mean, I've always heard great ideas over the years from moms and dads like of you new parents, you know, the toy industry, there's been a contraction of age so because of video games and so on, the toy industry is mostly a preschool business now.
And that's what I was going to ask. It would seem to me that not only in the toy industry, but in the game industry. Yeah, that electronic or computer based gaming has usurped what I thought of as traditional gaming when I was a kid, or even when I go to a friend's party and they go, we're gonna have a game night. You know, we're not turning into a like tronic stuff, but it seems like it has usurped.
Yeah, all the games have made a huge comeback games and puzzles since the pandemic.
Really, that electronic or computer based gaming has usurped what I thought of as traditional gaming when I was a kid, Or even when I go to a friends party and they go, we're gonna have a game night. You know, we're not turning to electronic stuff, but it seems like it has usurped.
Yeah, all the games have made a huge comeback games and puzzles since the pandemic. Really, And also there's been a lot more of your talk about crowdsourcing, but you also, you know crowdfunding, so there's an opportunity now for game inventors to launch things on Kickstarter and these other platforms, and then the world tells you whether the product's going to work or not.
It's funny because David Gumenheim don't our producers and always adds their show at the end. When we were prepping for this, this one young girl crowds funded almost a million bucks for a Dungeons and Dragons type game. And it's a pamphlet. I mean has the world in there, but it's a pamphlet, And I go, so, what you do with the other nine hundred and seventy three thousand dollars? How does a booklet like that? Or how does a game that you're creating that it's like a Dungeons and
Dragons type game? What do you how's a out a million bucks?
She must have made an amazing video that explained the product. Because most of them don't succeed, but when they do, they can be wildly successful. And that's also when the bigger toy companies will come in often and license the product from that inventor.
But I boy, I'm so such a lodite stuff that I'm sure is obvious. It eludes me. What is the incentive for me other than maybe ragging rights. If you, if I crowdsource something, they get nothing, right, I mean if I you, if you.
Crowdsource the idea, you mean, take somebody's idea, Do you have to give somebody something?
At some point they get Sometimes it's just getting the product itself or some kind of gift you right, But they don't necessarily No, it's just the world who wants to support an inventor.
They want to support.
Innovation that to me, would I would be so I guess I've just been burned too many times. I'd been nervous about developing something that way. Other than yes, it's something to do, Yes, you want to be but people, But if I had invented, you know, if I had been on the crowdsource team that came up with beanie babies and so they made five billions, surely I must get more than a piggy.
I mean, yeah, but it's the rare piggy.
It is risky for inventors too, because you know, they're exposing their idea and often they don't really have intellectual property that will protect them.
So so kids and preschool is it and anything over that is really the dungeons and dragons and role playing games and internet stuff.
Yeah, or you know sports innovations or bracelets, that's what I I You know, we did Twisty Pets for example.
You do commercial It used to be with three networks, you do commercials. Nobody sees it Saturday morning.
Yeah, and now it's all where do you now? Well, it's mostly YouTube.
So it's all YouTube? Is it? Influencers?
A lot of influencer marketing in the toy industry.
You gotta find a seven year old you can afford. Yes, I mean the unboxing kids making like two hundred million dollars a year he wanted.
He won't even come to the phone for It's much harder to reach kids down Yeah.
Who we got that?
You don't want to he's not talking to you.
Oh that's very funny.
Well, you know the problem. The thing is it's probably really accurate. I had Laura Lauren. We've been trying to get the kid who unboxes, and I think they laugh every time we call because he's visiting opening a box for fifty million dollars, right exactly? Do you know about that?
Right?
All the unboxing? Yeah?
Absolutely, so if they unbox.
Money, your game.
He knows about it backwards.
Yeah, yeah, the first game. Talk about the first game, because that's.
How it was, the backwards game.
Yeah, explain. Explain your skill in the game, because it's so bizarre.
So growing up, I had this unusual ability that you know, I used to get yelled at by my parents to shut up, and then I wasn't able to go on television. And then they were very proud of the fact that I talked backwards the first time, the first time. Do you remember your first backward phrase?
Probably mom and Dad.
No, it's a balance drum.
Yeah, I got it what I did?
You mentioned what was wall, which is slow, but I didn't think you got it.
Okay, do this.
In school, I would call all my friends by their names backwards, and then, uh, you know, nobody paid much attention. I went off to summer camp when I was ten years old, at Camp Eagle Cove and Upstate New York. Got on the stage at the talent at the Camp talent show, and I sang the Star Spangled Banner backwards and then I took words from the audience and and I from that day forward, I was I was Camp famous.
And then the game Camp, so I took that same little act, and then I would do it at school, and then in college, I would perform at Boston University, where Jason also went. And a classmate of mine started working for the David Letterman Show after we graduated, and I got a call one day what I like to be on the David Letterman Show, and that it was actually as a regular guest spot. And so the funny thing is is I broke the record of being bumped more than any guest ever on the David Letterman Show.
They flew me to New York six times. I was going to be the last guest, and they ran out of time each time. They put me in a hotel, and I was making a living after I graduated college by being bumped off The Letterman Show because they'd pay the It was like five hundred dollars something like that.
Whatever the union set on.
So I got on, and then he had me on a couple more times as the guy who sings backwards, and I started thinking, how can I commercialize this idea? And I met a game inventor and he suggested, let's create a game around talking backwards, and then Random House licensed this game. It was a backwards talking game where players would hear word backwards with a clue and then they had to shout out the answer forward. So I'll test you out. It's a six letter fruit that begins with B a nanab banana.
Do me a favor, Let's do this. I got some phrases. Okay, see how they sound backwards? Okay, absolutely, they're actually phrases you may know from a TV show that was somewhat popular.
Okay, do me a favorite, Let's do this.
I got some phrases. Okay, see how they sound backwards?
Okay, absolutely, they're actually.
Phrases you may know from a TV show that was somewhat popular.
Okay, here we go.
What does this sound like? I'm disturbed, I'm depressed, I'm inadequate.
I've got it, my debrus, debrust it is.
I'm disturbed. I'm depressed as my dessert head. And what's that? What was the last one?
I'm an adequate, herb, I'm depressed, I'm inadequate.
My knee is inadequate.
You're giving me. It's not you, it's me.
Routine m Tom mc why in a two R? In a two R was routine? If you're trying to follow along in I T U O R when.
You do this, are you seeing it backwards? How?
Yeah? So I'm seeing it very quickly exactly the way that it's spelled backwards.
I'm not reversing sounds.
Right, So are you when you're seeing it in your head? Are you seeing it forward but saying it backwards?
Yeah?
I'm kind of.
You know, It's like if you're I was writing on an invisible blackboard, like as I'm hearing it. It's kind of a combination of a hearing and a visual thing. It's hard for me to explain, but it's instant. It's almost like translating another language.
Become any other. So the thing that makes your brain able to do that, does it have another wrinkle of some kind?
Is it?
I'm still trying to figure it out, you know. I I always think it's a completely useless ability, but uh, maybe you know I visualize things very well. I'm not very talented as it comes to drawing or painting or anything, but I can kind of see what I want and that's why I think it's It's helped me a lot in my business.
It's not a lie if you believe it.
Ste Ton of eelfiroy develop m it's his d s T. I not was ton a lie? Was eel eel being lie? If I believe it was, that was it.
If you have fi as, if you as oy and believe was a vel eb and it was.
T Oh yeah, Well the jerk store called they're running out of you.
Oh hi, hey at krige erots de loch to not tea can nor faux again. I could go back and prove that I'm doing.
I felt the what your parents felt when you did it. Oh my god.
Usually usually somebody will say, like super califragilist to guests yellow days. That's just something you've done a million times, say said all, said Cela jar for like repus or I get tongue twisters, or their names like Jason Alexander no sech Rednick Cila.
Do you have a middle name Jason?
Well that's not my real name, so Jay Scott Greenspan, I know.
Are the naps all right?
Here we go? Thanks for listeningte So to another episode.
Of Ratona Epos d Foe Jill are On, Yilli, are.
You know what we should have called it? Y are On?
We are going to be calling ear there well thank you David for coming in with you than you comes ons? Yes, Google Home, what do you think? Hello? Where are we? Where are we?
I don't even know?
You guys really nailed the accuracy today.
You should be really.
Proud of yourself.
Spot.
I have a quiz for you today to test your toy knowledge.
Okay, oh, okay, all right, so here you go.
Name one of the most popular toys of all time released in nineteen eighty that sold four point five million units of this puzzle toy that year.
Cute.
Yes, well, okay, that was I didn't know it was a buzz in show. I was waiting. You know, when you play Jeopardy, if you buzz in before Rebecca finishes the question, you're locked out. Did you know that? Did you know that? Mister game?
Yeah?
Yeah, all right, David, go ahead.
All right, well Jason push said bell in the middle. There, so it's fair.
So all right, all right.
Here comes another one. What children's plush toy was released.
In July nineteen teen ninety.
Six, Cabbage scrash Doll, Tickle Me Elmo, Tickle Me Elmo.
Correct, Tickle Me Elmo.
The second one, tickle me Yeah.
I was gonna say first came into Tycho Toys as a tickle me monkey. Oh and there was an executive there named Stan Clutton who had the idea, well, why don't we put it Sesame Street, make Elmo good character.
Except they didn't come out that light. It came out this is how it went, tickle me Monkey. What kind of an idiot would put out a thing called tickle me monkey? Tickle me elmock?
Did stand? Now, when you work for a toy company like that and your stand and you come up with that, do you get bonus or do you created it while you work for the company, so you don't get.
You work for the company, you work for hire.
So every time one of those cells he goes damn. So yeah, I hand open my tickling a monkey.
I walked out of here with with my tickle.
Big bird could have been tickled big bird.
Nobody would have bought it, all right, You had to master the tickle technology, all right. Now they're getting harder, they're getting harder. What was Nintendo's first breakout toy?
Nintendo's first breakout toy? Would that be the game Boy Electronic Palm Palm?
No, I don't know, say okay, don't put judgment on the answer. I'm taking a shot here, you know.
I you know, David, I'm trying to think with the first breakout toy. I just remember the original box that they had. It was a baseball game.
It's not it's not the time of got you would have come way late. No, it's not electronic.
It's the ultra hand.
Sorry, now, the ultra hand. About that on the family.
How dare you.
Was in jail?
It'll be out next year? First year for good?
What was the lt I don't I don't know.
The ultra It was an extendable contraption designed to pick up things from a distance.
It's basically what the gift the old people because.
Used that to get the mailing from a high shelf.
Then need to be read Richards.
From the Fantastic four. I can get the cup without getting out of my chair.
I could use that at buffets. You know, when you reach over something, you bet it.
I dropped my toast. Where's the extended arm?
All right?
Right?
All right? Break out the long shoehorn?
Very good? Okay, what would you pay?
All right? All right? The comb over?
Okay, now here was the what was what.
Was legos first tour Legos first toy.
Lego's first toy.
Uh, Legos first A long and I don't want to go there.
You're not going to guess if you don't know what you're not.
It's the Lego Duck, released in nineteen thirty five.
It was the first toy marketed by Lego.
It was made of birch wood.
And did you have to assemble it together or it was just a duck?
It was a ducket had wheels. I think the wheels were like.
Oh, is this like the little pull toy duck that?
Yeah, the wooden duck that was on wheels.
Yeah, but that was like a child's Pulto Yeah, like as they were learning to walk.
Yeah.
Lego, as we know, while first came up with the binding bricks is what they initially called them, but that didn't come until nineteen forty nine.
Well, you don't come up with binding bricks, which is yeah, yeah, you got right out a duck or too before.
You get all right, well this one, this one is our final question.
Yeah, it's a b C or D Okay.
So what was the most popular toy from last year? From twenty twenty three, according to the Toy.
Zone, A Barbie b Lego c PS five or D Ludo that was Lulo.
I know Cludo, I don't know Ludo.
M M again one more time, barb.
A Barbie Harbenheimer b Lego CPS five that would be play station const consoles.
And D Ludo.
I think it's Lego, but I think I read that somewhere. I think good.
I think it's Lego too.
Ludo seems like it's a trick question, so maybe it's whatever Ludo is, but I'm sure that it's Uh.
I believe it's Lego. Google.
It was according to and I don't want to go against our guests, but according to the Toy Zone, it.
Was Ludo as a worldwide best seller.
It's a board game, a very very simple board game, and apparently it did very.
Well in places that are not necessarily here.
I just kind of bring this up before we go, because it's crackcasing me up. The deadliest toys ever made were lawn darts, Peepy Klorus, a slip and slide which you know, clackers, which could kill you one blackers.
I had a terrible tragic blacker accident face or whatever. Oh, I almost took out an eye.
I mean with two balls of crack, but the best ones. And it just made me laugh. There was a vacuum form where you actually put a hot it's a hot plate. You get a get to hot place a blasting on. But the Gilbert you never heard of this. I bet the Gilbert glass blowing set in the nineteen fifties was
a mister Gilbert came up with it. Whose other famous story other than the Gilbert glass miloning set was the atomic energy lab where you actually had a briefcase type thing which is only available for in it was a radioactive place that was a Geiger counter, and you ray pieces of uranium, radioactive uranium.
And on the package he said safe for eight out of ten?
Is that the best he gave out uranium? And then he also came up with the erector, said Gilbert, but the two the two.
Uranium was such a hard, terribly difficult thing to get. He's giving it away.
And it's.
Remember our creepy crawlers, you know, when you just burned yourself.
By the way, just had three types of urandium, three different types. So when you went to kitch your good kid good night and you say turn off the.
Nightlight, and you said, that's not the night we became the Easy Bake Oven.
But you could see your kid all night long because he's glowing as he goes to the bathroom. Google him. Thank you, David.
It's good for Halloween, David, Halloween.
Thank you very much for coming in. Good luck with the laugh Factory. Thank you the Laugh Factory. Your next great game or toy? Well, he's he's always in the nine million things.
Thank you for joining us on Thank you We no really Yillier on Yillier. I like it, I think with no sug Red Cela and.
Right where what else are you saying? Would you add?
I said, with no saj Rednick Cela to not read up ned lit with Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden and our special guest Lace Ups Davad raherhaff Me the backwards Talker.
There you go.
Time as another episode of Really No Really he comes to a close. I know you're wondering, what is the best selling toy of all time? Well, I will snap that answer together for you in a moment, but first let's thank our guest, David Feuer. You can follow David on X where he is at fun Enough one, two, three, that's f u n A n UF one two three.
Find all pertinent links in our show notes, our little show hangs out on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and threads at really No Really podcast, And of course you can share your thoughts and feedback with us online at really noreally dot com. If you have a really some amazing fact or story that boggles your mind, share it with us and if we use it, we will send you a little gift.
Nothing life changing, obviously, but it's the thought that counts.
Check out our full episodes on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and take that bell. So here updated when we release new videos and episodes, which we do each Tuesday, so listen and follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And now the answer to the question, what's the best selling toy of all time? Well, she makes a popular movie, but it's not Barbie. They drive a lot of sales, but it isn't Hot Wheels. They're fun and soft and won't put
out in an eye, but it isn't Nerve. Although all of those are in the top ten with huge sales, but the all time sales leader is Lego which was founded by Ole Kirk Christensen in nineteen thirty two and grew from a small workshop that made wooden toys to a global powerhouse. The name comes from the Danish phrase
leg go, which means play well. Initially manufactured as wooden blocks, Lego created the iconic plastic interlocking bricks in nineteen fifty eight, and those bricks are the biggest selling toy of all time.
Lego makes around seven hundred million bricks annually.
To date, it's estimated they've made well over six hundred billion Lego pieces. The brand has expanded to include board games, retail stores, video games, films, and theme parks, and the size of their individual Lego kits have ballooned as well. In twenty twenty, the largest was the nine thousand piece replica of the Roman Colisseum that was topped by the Titanic at nine thousand ninety pieces, and finally they achieved ten thousand pieces with the replica of the Eiffel Tower.
Congrats Lego, which said backwards is starg knock Ogel.
Which I'm sure means something fascinating in Danish as well.
Now really no realist production of eye Heart Radio and Bloise entertainment
MHM,
