Selects: What Is A Mold-A-Rama?

Hey, everybody, Chuck here on a Saturday. I hope you're enjoying some breakfast cereal and maybe watching cartoons on the Telly, but maybe take a pause and listen to this curated episode from February twenty eighteen. What is mold Rama. I'm not even gonna tell you what moldarrama is if you don't know. It's not gross. It's not something that lives on your walls when it's too humid. It's actually a pretty cool, fun machine from.

Days gone by. So I hope you enjoyed this episode all over again.

Right now, welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there, and this is Stuff you Should Know a rama.

You know, it's kind of funny that you did that little Do Do to Do, because I'm gonna go ahead and plug this right off the top. Okay, we're doing this show on Moldorama, which spoiler is a machine that makes that made and still makes these little plastic things, but.

Has maybe one of the worst trade names.

Ever, Moldorama.

Yeah.

So I'm gonna go ahead and plug this. There's a YouTube video from this young lady where she shows off her Moldorama little plastic toys that she's collected. Carpetbagger dot Org. Oh yeah, Moldorama. Just look up that YouTube. She is adorable and she's the best. And when she shows her suitcase full of Moldorama plastic toys, she does a little song and it's just adorable and great.

I gotta check that out. I saw her use one of the Disney Disneyland toy factory Moldoramas. Yeah, I saw that, so I know who you're talking about.

She's great.

So that was nice of you, Chuck. Well, let's wait for everybody to come back from watching her YouTube video show.

Okay, let's wait for I think five or six minutes and done.

Yes, time passes faster here at stuff you should know, doesn't it.

It does. I'm eighty years old.

So so with you. Like you said, mold Rama, it is a I've seen it described as a factory in a case. Okay, I thought that was a pretty apt description. But for those of you who don't know, it is basically an odd demand injection blow molded plastic toy dispenser. That is the that's a technical definition for it. And while that might not make sense yet, it all will make sense in about thirty or so minutes.

All right, how about this picture?

This?

All right, let's start over. Should we wait? Should we edit my part out?

Oh no, let's leave this all in. All right, good picture this. You walk into a room.

Let's say it's the tower now Willis Tower? Is it Willis? Oh?

Yeah, that was Willis Tower, Sears Tower? Who keeps calling it Willis Tower? Stop that Sears Tower? Or a world's fair or something. And there is a machine that looks sort of like a jukebox from fifty feet away. Oh yeah, that's a good, good way.

And then you walk up closer to it and you're like, oh wait, what is this weird mechanical thing? Let me put in fifty cents, and right before your very eyes, it will mechanically create a little plastic toy of an alien or a building or a lion at a zoo, and it will spit it out. And you'll say, that was just melted from plastic and molded and shaped and given to me right in front of my eyes.

What a fun neat thing.

Right, and you'll say all this after you recover from fainting from the fumes of melted plastic, and then get up and get your toy out, which is good because they say that you should wait half a minute for your toy to cool before you grab it from the Molderama, right. I think that was a pretty good job. You just did it describing it.

And I think this is super neat because this reminds me of a bygone era, like where I went to Nashville recently and went to Jack White's Third Man Records, and he has one of those booths where you can go in and.

Record a record.

Would you record?

Well, I didn't do it. I chickened out.

Okay.

What I wanted to do was go in and sing a little song for my daughter and give it to her as a record. And I was thinking, like, what could I do? What do I know in my brain by heart? Because they have a little guitar you can take in there, and it was such a small room and it was in the room with everything else, and I just got weirdly shy, like I don't want to you to hear me.

You got shy? Jack White made you shy? Huh? Yeah?

I didn't want to do it in front of people. Like, if there was literally no one in there, I would have cut ten records.

Oh I got it. You should have stuck your head on and been like, can you als leave for a little while?

Just trust me?

Wow.

But anyway, this reminds me of those days gone by where you could cut your own record or you know, they had these really cool machines at fairs and things that they just I mean, now, I guess you can still get your picture taken and printed digitally.

Or the Penny smasher that's still around two. I see that compared to this, A get a lot. Yeah those are cool, not really, but still it's an app comparison.

I will just say, I'm surprised that my brother doesn't have a Molderama in his basement.

So I am too, because there's a guy who collects these things called Moldville, and I saw videos of his collection. Did you see this, Yeah, it's like a warehouse full of mint conditioned Molderama machines. This guy must be richer than an astronaut. He's got so many of these machines. And you're right about this. It evoking the memories of a bygone era. But what's crazy, Chuck, is that these things are still in use today. You can find them

Should we talk about the history, Well, first.

Let me ask you this do you have Did you ever use a Moldorama when you were a kid? No? Oh you didn't.

No, And I'm dying now to go do one as an adult.

So they're still around. Yeah, they're still around. Okay, I actually I got one that there's this thing in Toledo called well actually it's in mallme which is a suburb of Toledo, but it's called Children's Wonderland and it's like this amazing three D Christmas walk through diorama. Basically that just nothing can put you in the Christmas spirit as a kid better than Children's Wonderland. And at the end of this there was a Moldorama machine and it made

Well.

I think that's the cool thing about these as a kid is it's not putting your quarter in a gumball machine and seeing all those things and one of them falls out right. This is made just for you, right in front of your face.

Yep. Pretty cool.

All right? So now can we go back in time?

Yeah? Yeah, I'm I'm done nostalgizing? All right? Wait, what is it reminiscing?

Sure, Okay, nostalgizing. I think it's a word, right it is?

Now all right, we're going back to nineteen thirty seven in the winter when one J. H. Miller Tyke is his nickname. I don't know what that comes from.

Was he little?

I don't know, not that I saw.

Well, because it's spelled differently. T ik. Yeah, I don't know what it means anyway, of.

Quincy, Illinois, he was he made figurines. He and his wife made figurines, and they needed a replacement for his Nativity scene. I guess his little baby Jesus was decapitated by his dog. He needed a new one, and he couldn't find a place to sell him just one little piece. Yeah, you gotta buy the whole Nativity scene. And he was like, well, what am I going to do with that?

Yeah, he said, I just needed one. And you could understand the department stores position, like if they sell you just one piece, there's a whole set that they can't sell because who wants that set without the one piece.

Right, unless it's like maybe a.

Donkey maybe I remember the donkey. That was a good one though. That was one of my favorites as a kid.

But anyway, he and his wife said, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna take these lemons and make them into lemonade in the form of making our own little plaster replacement figure. And apparently they were pretty good at it, because they ended up doing this for a living and founding a company doing this. Because the Germans evidently had the market cornered on nativity pieces, and when World War two came around, they said nine for you, right, and we had a shortage.

Yeah. All we wanted was liberty figures is what they called them during World War two, not nativity because the Germans had supplied us with nativity figures, so American main ones you could call liberty figures.

That like freedom fries, right.

I think they actually called sauerkraut liberty cabbage. I'm not kidding. So the tyke and his wife established this company and in World War Two that really kind of grew because they cornered the market and they just kept going from there. And then about ten years after World War Two they decided to move from plaster and by the way, he started selling nativity figures into visual ones to those same department stores who would only sell them sets before, which

Yeah, and I mean they did pretty well for a little while. I guess.

I'm not sure exactly when the company was founded, but if in nineteen thirty seven he came up with this idea and they went bankrupt in nineteen fifty nine, they sounds like they added some good years in there.

Yeah they did. But I and I did not see why they went bankrupt. I saw they were nothing but successful. I don't know. I don't know if maybe they sunk a bunch of money into these machines and it just didn't quite make it or what. But he was very successful. And he had a line of plastic toys that kids would buy by the fistfol at like the local five and dime or novelty store or something like that. And he had lines of like dinosaurs, I think, toy soldiers.

I think it was the other way around.

I don't think so. I think the song was based on the figure.

It says here the Purple people Eater was inspired by the hit.

Song Oh I saw. I read that as the opposite. Thanks good cat.

I think that's the case because that song was a big hit and they were all manner of Purple people Eater souvenirs and things.

Gotcha.

It was a big business back then.

Thank you for that one.

No problem.

We would have gotten some email from like three people on that.

Tyke's great grandson, little Tyke.

So in fifty nine or sixty they went bankrupt, and it was right around this time where he said, all right, I've got this idea for an actual vending machine that could make these things on demand.

And he was successful.

He licensed this thing actually to what would eventually become a Merra Mark, which everyone knows that that company is still. Around the time, they were called the Automatic Retailers of America, and he developed these machines with them, and in nineteen sixty two at the Seattle World's Fair, they premiered there doing little space needles and monorails and buddhas and buddhas for like fifty cents, which is about four bucks today.

Right, No, they were definitely expensive, but they were a huge hit at that Seattle World's Fair. That was what nineteen sixty two.

Yep.

So in nineteen sixty four at the New York World's Fair, they blew up. They went from a couple of machines in Seattle, I guess three machines in Seattle to as many as one hundred and fifty at the New York World's Fair from nineteen sixty four in nineteen sixty five. And even more than just having that many more machines,

Yeah, So, like you said, anywhere from Disneyland to Montreal's World Expo. And that's the cool thing, is that disney World or a Disneyland there could be. I think they were some of the characters that were actually acting like they were working the machine, right, it's kind of clever. Or if you know in you're in Montreal, it's going to be Canadian mounties or maybe an Eiffel Tower, right.

If you could contact the company, get them to make you your own like signage I guess, to put on the machine, and then most importantly, they would sculpt and then manufacture a mold from that sculpture whatever you wanted, say your logo or your brand or something like that, some sort of statuette that had that you could set it up and people would take home your little branded chotchkey.

That's right.

And in the end they manufactured about two hundred of these machines over a seven year period. But by nineteen seventy one they said, you know what Aar said, we're getting out.

Of this moldoramabizeh. Should we take a breaking.

Yeah, we're going to go press together our own little mouldi dinosaur and be right back.

Shop, all right, chuck.

So Aar gets out of the biz, and it's kind of understandable. So why there's a couple of big problems with Molderama machines. One, they're expensive to manufacture. They were like apparently thirty six hundred bucks per at the time. That was back in nineteen sixty two, so just under thirty thousand dollars today your machine h machine. And then also once you set these things up, they required almost

Yeah.

I mean, this is a mechanical like hydraulic machine that required like oil and anti freeze.

There was it was no uh.

I mean if it sounds like and I mean, I guess we can go into the process a little bit. It gets a little wonky for my taste, Okay, but I guess we should talk a little bit about how these actually work, right.

Yeah, we kind of have to and it'll be fun, I promise you.

Ready, Well, I will say this. First of all, there are hydraulics.

Yeah, and there are these these two molds, and you can go to on YouTube and look at how these things work.

It's pretty neat. They these two molds.

It's basically one half of the little toy on each side.

Oh yeah, there like a three dimensional sculptured statuette.

Yeah, So they move toward each other with these hydraulics and they're pressed together forms a big seal and it ends up it ends up being hollow on the inside. That's kind of a big point to make.

It's a negative of the sculpture.

Yeah.

So then there's a couple of holes in the bottom that lead into that sculpture cavity, and into that you inject hot plastic. Because one thing that a lot of people don't realize about the mold thematic is just beneath this the work surface that is the floor of what you can see below that is a vat of two hundred and twenty five to two hundred and fifty degree Farrent height molten plastic just sitting there, bubbling hot.

Yeah, little pellets.

They feed it in little colored pellets, right, although for a little while they actually had just kind of neutral pellets that they use colored powder. Right, But they at least wised up there and said, why don't we just color the pellets and just stick with the one color yep.

And then so the system has a closed steam system that runs hot steam through crazy that runs through these plastic pellet vat, this plastic pellet vat and it melts the pellets and then keeps a molten So then when that when the the the mold seals up above come together and form that seal, hot plastic is injected into the mold and fills it up.

That's right, hot plastic injection. Great band name.

Yeah.

And then these things obviously have to be cooled pretty quick like in order for them to I mean, what solidify is that the right word? But when they do come out, like you said, they are warm, and I'm surprised. I mean, this seems like something that you could not create today without there being so much liability on your hands.

Well, again, they still are in use. You can still go to the Toledo Zoo, to zoos all over the Midwest and Florida and tourist attractions and rest stops and you will find these things still in use.

It's just so funny to me that, like it literally says on the little door that you open, hold upside down while it cools, don't let the molten plastic drip on little Timmy's hand.

That's exactly right. So we got the injection molding part done, but there's one step that we missed, and that's the blow part that makes it injection blow molding. And this is how these companies manage to actually make money. And one of the reasons why the molderama chatchkeys are so fragile is that they're hollow inside. So the mold is filled with the hot plastic and then compressed air is

That's right.

The smell, chuck. You've never smelled anything like it.

Do you remember the smell?

Yes, I can remember the smell it was. It's it's at the same time pleasing and totally noxious. Interesting, Like as a kid, you're like, this smells weird and cool, But as an adult, I'm sure you'd be like, this is going to kill my whole family and it's going to kill my great grandchildren somehow.

Well, back then, no one cared. No, they didn't, you know, and like we said, tons of upkeep. You know, you've got steam, you've got hydraulic fluid, you have anti freeze, sometimes cold water, but I would suspect anti freeze in most cases. Yeah, And until the nineteen seventies, like I said, you had powdered coloring. I mean, this whole thing is I'm surprised they didn't explode at any point.

Yeah. One of the other things that I really admire about this is that, again, the machines that are still in use today, that still work just as well as ever today, were built exclusively from nineteen sixty two to nineteen sixty nine when Ara Mark was making them, and then these things also because they put off these terrible fumes, they're kept outside, so they've been sitting in the elements for fifty plus years and they still work. They're pretty pretty well built machines, for sure.

I think they've they've got some now that they have been able to move indoors.

Yeah, from using a different type of plastic. I think.

Yeah, it's crazy that these things had to be outside.

Yeah, and they still are. Most of them are a lot of them have like kind of built in little canopies over them or something like that. But if you look at the canopy you can tell they're kind of new. They've been outside basically for fifty years.

I'm so going to be on the lookout for these now.

So there is a website Chuck called Waymarking way m A r KI NNG dot com. They have a comprehensive list of every single MOLDERAMA in use today in the United States, and they they have like actual like longitude and latitude coordinates. If you want to, I guess geocash your way to them.

Well, what I want is an app that will text me when I'm within five hundred feet of one.

Oh that's a that's a good idea.

There's a ten dollars app and by ten dollar app, I mean you would make ten dollars.

Yeah, although people are crazy for these things still is We'll.

See they're none in Atlanta, right, not that.

I saw no, But again, there's a bunch of Toledo. I found the machine that I almost certainly got my angel from.

Oh wow.

They keep it in storage at Tama Shanner, which is an ice skating rink in I guess a Scottish ice skating rink. I don't know, in Mome, which is where they have Children's Wonderland. But I saw a picture of it, and now it looks like the most recent thing it makes is polar bears.

And your DNA is on that machine.

Still somewhere in the form of a lot of gum.

All right, Well, let's take another break.

We'll come back and talk a little bit about some of these fun figures and the people that are still trying to keep this traditional alive.

All right, So.

Here's the thing that I wanted to know, and that our article didn't get to till three quarter the way through. I was like, can do they have different things for each machine. The answer, sadly is no. If it spits out a dinosaur, it can only spit out a dinosaur unless you change up that mold.

Yes, but you can change the color and you'll have a different colored dinosaur.

Well until they started using the single color pellets.

Right, Well, no, then they just put in a different color when they refill the thing, and all of a sudden it went from a purple dinosaur or a green dinosaur.

Right, But could you say purple and hit a purple button? No, or it's whatever the kid who worked there decided to put in that morning.

That's exactly right. The thing is though, and again it's not even just the toy that comes out. The toy is, especially as a kid, invariably disappointing, sure, but it's the process. It's watching this thing happen, and the MOLDERAMA machines will have like little different lights that light up like now we're cooling, now we're about to launch the toy to you.

Stand back right now, because if I were to explode, it would be during this next eight seconds.

Right, all right, your mom who's standing there missing her one arm from saving you in a car wreck. It's like you probably should stand back exactly.

No one knows exactly how many of these molds were made, but they're, like we said, our enthusiasts who collect these. And this one dude, Bill Bolman, who owns one and runs moldville dot com. Bad bad You are all there, right.

Yeah, it is bad. And I got to say, I looked it up and it's a dead domain. But he's got a Facebook thing that he does. Now that's where he's moved to.

Yeah, that's where he went. My Space and then he went Facebook. But there will never be another site better than Facebook. So I'm sure it's all over right, probably so he his estimate is about three hundred designs us more than that.

I don't know. This guy knows what he's talking about. He counted one hundred and ninety six original ones. And then he said after the sixties more people started to make them. They weren't just commissioned by Aerra Mark who was keeping track of these things. And I would I would say this guy's probably the person on earth who could estimate how many there are the closest.

And not just me guessing randomly. But it's more.

And what's cool though also is again like if you were you could be anybody, if you wanted a Moldorama thing at your event, you could, it could happen. Sure I found there was a Circleville, Ohio Pumpkin Festival Moldurama figure.

Wonderful.

So one of the three hundred molds is a pumpkin from Circleville, Ohio's pumpkin Fest in the seventies. Another one, so apparently Toledo was crazy about these things, because again there's ten at the Toledo Zoo. There's the one at Tamlashan that I got a mine from. There was one in the eighties at the Toledo mud Headens Stadium, and there's a mud Hen's figure, which is pretty cool actually. And I looked and there's like zero for sale anywhere, but now I'm kind of on the lookout for that thing.

Right, and you two could have a snowman or a Gramman's Chinese theater, or a space lab or a Lawrence Welk.

Yeah, or a Titan missile.

Yeah, and NASA had a lot of these things. Actually, I'm sure what else was there?

Well, the Lawrence Welk. None of those were jokes. Those are real.

Oh yeah, for sure, there was.

A Titan three C missile in a Lawrence Welk says. Other famous people. I'm kind of curious.

I didn't see anybody besides President and Lawrence Welk. There's one of the Georgia State Capitol building. Oh really, Yeah, there were some cool ones. Actually, the Saint Louis arch is surprisingly cool. You wouldn't think it'd be that cool. The Oscar Meyer Wiener mobile, this one was kind of random. It was it's a high Ali player and then at the base it says, hi, a lie in Miami.

Okay.

The water Skier from Cypress I think Cypress Gardens, Florida. And the Mermaids from Wikiwachie Springs, Florida.

Oh, we talked about them. Oh, here's one. Universal Studios had one that made a Frankenstein coinbank.

That's kind of cool.

It is very cool, Like, a lot of these are actually super cool, especially the original retro ones. You can actually see like I can't remember the woman's name, but there is a woman who was hired by one of the companies that still operate these things to start making molds, and she's been making them for the last twenty five years and compare to some of the ones from the sixties, like she's just head and shoulders above the people who

Should we talk about a couple of these companies that are still still going strong.

Yeah, for sure, at least going No, they're going strong man, Okay, good.

There are a couple of them one called Replication Devices, one called mold A Rama Incorporated Replication Devices, founded by Elden Irwin, who bought a bunch of these. It has dozens in the early sixties, eventually passed down through his family, and right now his grandson and his wife, the Strigowls in Florida are operating sixty or seventy of these.

Yeah, and let's think about this for a second. So Elden Irwin bought dozens, now they're up to sixty, maybe seventy, And those Molderama machines have supported three generations of this family fully from what I understand, Yes, okay, I saw an interview with Tim Strigou and he said he was surprised that the business was still going when his parents took it over. And now he the grandson and his wife operate it. And yes, from what I understand it

Two bucks a pop. That's two high undred and sixty thousand gross.

Times sixty or seventy, So yeah, they're doing just fine.

This other one Molderrama Ink like, we're not asking one to open their books for us.

No, for sure, and I certainly don't want to shine a light on these people's finances. But I'm just saying, like it's it's astounding to me that these machines built in the sixties, left out in the elements for fifty years, are managing to support three generations of the families who have been operating them. I just think that's super cool.

Yeah, I mean, it sounds like it's kind of like people are own car washes. Sure, isn't it like a front always to launder money from drug sales?

I would guess. I think it's low hanging, easy to buy.

I'm just kidding everyone out there that owns car washes. I've watched too much Breaking Bad.

Oh that's right, that's right. But I think that is like a legitimate thing.

Like, yeah, cash businesses are ripe for the picking.

I forgot they bought that car wash.

Yeah, so Moldorama Inc. Like I said, William A.

Jones Company's changed their name in twenty eleven, but they got into this in nineteen seventy one when William A. Jones bought some of these from one of the guys who worked for the original Moldorama. Then they expanded, bought more machines and it is still a family business again.

They got about sixty of them.

Yep, and they were William A. Jones Company. And then I guess they got their hands on the Moldorama trademark in twenty eleven and they changed the name of the company to Moldorama, Inc. Again because that's originally what it was called back when Era Mark was running it.

Yeah, they're mainly in the Midwest, Minnesota, Michigan, a bunch of them in Illinois and one in Texas.

It looks like right, not bad.

And then every once in a while you have just some independent operators like Knoxville Zoo owns their own. They apparently got there from Dollywood, which man, Moldorama is at Dollywood. That make your wig spin.

There's this one cool thing I wanted to shout out. This toy store in Chicago, Roto Fugi or Rotafuji, I'm not sure how you pronounce it. They repurposed their own Moldorama. They bought one and repurposed it that was originally the La Zoo and they call it the Roto a Mattic. And they have something called the Helper Dragon you can get for six bucks. And if you look up the Helper Dragon and these dudes, it is clear that they are Simpsons fans.

Did you see this thing?

Yeah? I did. I saw a video of it, but it was kind of out of focus.

Yeah, like just google image of the Helper Dragon rodo omatic and it is to me at least clearly the cyclops alien from The Simpsons.

With its oh yeah.

With its head stuck on the body of a winged lion.

Nice.

That's my take on it.

Very nice.

And then there is this one other guy. He is a Disney World imagineer named James Durand, and he has built his own moldorama called the Mini Molder. And you just look at this guy. You know, he's an imagineer. You look at this machine and you're like, I would hire that guy to build and do anything, because he's clearly a brilliant genius.

Yep, really cool looking thing.

And a bit of a show off. Frankly, you think, So, I've got two more things, all right. The Moldorama used to be fifty cents in its original incarnation in nineteen sixty two, which, again thanks to our friends at West Egg inflation calculator tells us is about four dollars and twelve cents in twenty seventeen money. Today you can get a Moldorama for two bucks, which means that the price has gone down by half over the last fifty years.

God blessed all those people.

Yep. So there you go, Nativity figures plastic. If you want to know more about Mulderama Man, you can fall down a rabbit hole just looking at pictures of him on the internet. So why don't you go do that? Take some time for yourself, you know, why do you always have to work? Work?

Work?

Since I said that it's time for a listener mail, I'm.

Going to call this just kind of a quick shout out.

We don't do these a lot because we get a lot of shout out requests, but this one was adorable because this little kid. So this is from Ginny, she's the mom. She says, how about a shout out or my son Jake. He listens to every episode more than once. Nic He's got me and many others into the show

Chuck Bryant, why did you do that?

Yep? Well, Jake, we have a really big surprise for you if you will go to your back door. I think you're gonna find something pretty special out there. No, I'm just kidding.

No, We're just kidding, Jake.

There's not a puppy at your back door unless your mom Jenny heard this beforehand and is the best.

Mom in the world. Yeah, and your mom.

Yeah, that was pretty cool of her to write in and let us know. So way to go, Jake for listening to us. Thank you, Thank you very much.

Yeah, thank you, Jake, Thank you Jenny. We count literally count on people like you to spread the words, so we appreciate it.

Good luck with your eventual puppy too named Charles W.

Chuck Bryant when he's bad.

If you want to tell us about well, your cute kid, we want to hear about him or her, you can send us an email. The Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.

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