Short Stuff: Chia Pet

Hey, yeah, it's Josh and Chuck and Jerry here too, And this is short stuff.

That's right, another one of our pop culture icons episodes.

That wasn't quite big enough to do an entire episode on.

In the old days, we might have stretched it.

We definitely would have. No, That's why we came up with short stuff, because we're like, hey, there's a lot of stuff out there that just isn't quite big enough. So hence short stuff, and hence our episode on the chia pet.

That's right. And thank you Patty Rasmussen of HowStuffWorks dot com.

Plus our friends at me too.

Of course, I always love the mental floss folks. The chia pet. Everyone knows what a chia pet is, right if you don't look it up, because it is an adorable little planter, terra cotta planter that is shaped like a little figurine like a maybe a Mister t or a Homer Simpson or maybe just a dog or a

Well put, I think that's actually verbatim the description on the box.

Yeah, so, mister T. The mohawk would be green chia.

The cleverest one i've seen, Chuck is a zombie hand like stretching out of the ground, and the chia seeds grow around the arm like it's coming out of grass, like in a cemetery. I love it.

I like the I was looking at their more recent offerings, and as you will see, they have they got in like a mentioned Homer Simpson or mister T. They got into licensing. And we'll tell that story here in a second. But I like the Grogo Star Wars chia pet. It's really really cute, like all things grow gou is.

That baby Yoda?

Uh huh?

Okay, did not know that was the name of that thing.

Yeah, the name came later. We found out the name later.

I saw Guardians of the Galaxy three in the theater yesterday. That is really good.

I loved that movie. I loved the three. It's my favorite of the Marble stuff. But that movie was so upsetting for the animal stuff. Yes, almost tough to sit through.

Oh, it was super tough to sit through. But but there's a whole generation of PG thirteen going moviegoers that are like that age that now have a really bad view of animal testing and animal experimentation, and true think it could be worth it because it was really tough. But that was a huge message in that movie, like that's not good stuff.

Yeah, agreed, Yeah, very hard though. I told Emily is like just and she loves Guardians. I was like, you're not gonna want to.

See the third No, definitely not.

Don't even bother. All right, Well back to the That Was movie with Josh Clark. The chia planters are terra cotta. Like I said, they used to make them in Wojaca, Mexico. Yeah, who knew, Well, Joe Pettot did, because Joe in the nineteen seventies was the founder of Joseph Enterprises. He went to a trade show in Chicago. These little chia pets, I don't know what they were called at the time, were selling like hotcakes, and he said, I want to buy a bunch of those and brand them and sell

Apparently he went to department stores and drug stores at that trade show and said, hey, you got anything that sells out reliably every year, and a couple of them pointed to those. Yeah, I don't know what they were called before either, but what would come to be known as chia pets. And they figured out that these things sell themselves with very little advertising. And if you stop,

That's all they need to do. So the first of these chia pets were the first actual animals, were the chia bull and the chia ram. But the very first one, period I think, was a dude, right, like a chia guy.

Yeah. Our friends at Mental Floss kind of nailed it. They said, he looks like a cross between Homer Simpson and Woody from Toy Story, And he looks exactly like that. Yeah, it's like a goofy looking guy with a big nose. But apparently that was the first chia pet.

Yeah at chia dude. They got into licensing in the early eighties with Looney Tunes characters Taz, Elmer Fudd and Tweety.

Oh wait, Chuck before we move on, I love this house stuff works article put in parentheses, Taz parentheses, Tasmanian Devil. I thought that was adorable.

That was pretty funny, and then you know, licensing became a big deal. They I think they license like three or four things a year generally, and then they always have their stable of little animals.

Yeah. They also are known for predicting presidential elections. Actually, like they'll release the like chia versions of the presidential candidates each year, and usually the one that sells the most is the candidate that goes on to win the presidency.

Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. I think there's a few little weird cultural predictors like that.

Yeah. Like, and they're an octopus that can predict the World Cup.

Yeah, and I feel like there was something else for the Super Bowl.

There's a hedgehog that can produce some predictable where they can predict the weather. Yeah, whether it's going to turn to spring or not. I heard about him.

The other thing they do to make money, the chia folks, is they will license it out. They'll like partner up with pro sports teams, like you might get a chia La Dodger or something like that. And then I didn't know this. You could if you were a company. You can imagine. It's not cheap, but you can get a chia pet logo of your company made.

Yes, isn't that neat? I did not realize that. Yeah. I ran across instructions for growing chia on your Chiahad Bryce Harper. It was like, all right, this works. It probably applies to all of them, as we'll see.

All right, shall we take a break.

Let's take a break.

All right, we'll come right back. Talk a little bit more about these little pets right after this.

Okay, Chuck. So we're talking about chia pets. It turns out, and I think we should talk about how you grow them.

I've never had a chiapet of you. Nope, we should exchange cheapets.

When you're my friend, you have one on your on its way. The delivery window begins in ten minutes.

Are you serious?

It's a chia Richard Simmons, he has like a chest head. I saw it and I was like, Chuck's getting this. Oh so the exchange is half done.

All right, Well I got to step up. Richard Simmons tying in episodes, I love it. Gonna be tough, all right, I'm gonna hey, man, got me, Okay, your time? Uh if you grow one of these, and I guess I could wait either ten minutes or several hours and read it off the box. But I think what you want to do is you want to completely soak that planner for a few hours, right, yes.

And the reason why you want to do this with any terra cotta pot that you're growing stuff in is terra cotta, we'll suck water right out of the dirt in this case, right out of the water holding cavity for itself, and it pulls it away from the plants that need it. Whereas if you soak it, it's like, Okay, I'm satiated, literally stuffed with water. I don't need any more. And so any water you put into it is going

That's right. You also want to soak the seeds. It is chia. Gia is a kind of sage, and I think you eventually make like a sort of like a paste and you spread that paste on there. I've seen them talk about like rubber spatuls and things like that, But I would just use my fingies if I was doing and when I do my Richard Simmons, I'm gonna do my fingies.

Use my fingers, okay, good, good butt chuck, Do not lick your fingers afterwards. These are chia seeds, and people eat cheeseeds. I put gia seeds in my smoothies because they're full omega three, although I was disappointed to find there's not a lot of studies that show conclusively that we get that omega three from the seeds. But anyway, these particular chia seeds are not grown for human consumption. They're grown to grow on your chia pet.

That's right, So use whatever spretterer you want if you don't feel comfortable using your digits. And once that thing is covered up to your likeness, you want to put that chia pet in the sun, and you want to water it and then just sit back and let the fun begin.

Yeah. And I was like, Okay, so if this is these chia plants grow to be like six feet tall and flour and everything. Yeah, and I wanted to see, like, if you just keep your chia going, like, we'll it get to that point. I saw one site reference that your chia pet would crumble like eventually. It's like under the weight of the plant. I think the bigger thing is the sprouts that grow just aren't viable to grow into actual plants. So apparently after about six weeks, maybe

Oh, you can do they you can reuse the same.

I saw on their site that you can reuse them indefinitely. You just need chia.

Seeds, Okay. And I guess it makes sense that they won't just eventually you won't have like a chia pet that looks like like Richard Simmons, won't end up looking like Greg Almon.

That'd be pretty cool though. It's a great crossover.

It's a good crossover because you would you would need like soil to keep everything stable.

That's what I'm thinking. I think they just don't have the nutrients to grow beyond the sprout stage.

Yeah, that's gotta be it.

So who knows, Maybe you could add nutrients and grow them like hydroponically and see what happens. All right, That's one of the nerdiest things I said this month.

Regardless, gias have become very very popular over the years that they are, like I said, sort of an iconic fun gift that you can get someone, So much so that the Smithsonian National Museum of American History requested and I assume received some of this stuff from the Joseph Company.

Yeah, in particular the advertising tapes, because that's one of the reasons Chia Pets were so huge. Somebody either at an advertising meeting or at a bar one night said chu Chi Chi Chia, and apparently Joe Purdat said that's perfect. I'm going to turn that into the jingle, and that was I mean, I would attribute most of the Chia pets success to that jingle. It was so catchy that people were just walking around going ch ch Chichiya were they really? All of my friends were up in Ohio.

That is Ohio, uh, And that's kind of it. I mean they're in the like I said, the Smithsonian, and I think they're in a time capsule in New York City that's going to be unearthed in three thousand, the year three thousand.

In the year three thousand.

Very nice. What a great bit that was. So you know, it's it's one of those things. If you're going to include it in the Smithsonian and of time capsule, then it has done its job as far as a cultural staple.

Absolutely, so hats off to you, Chia Pets, we love you.

That's right, and I will, I promise, I will, I will do an Instagram series following the growth of my Richard Simmons.

Oh, great idea, fantastic at what Chuck the podcaster, Chuck the podcaster, great handle. So again, hats off to you, Chia Pets, We love you. Wait, you have to say short stuff. I'll say it. Then short Stuff is out.

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