November 12, 2019 • 42 mins
When French photo collector Jean-Marie Donat stumbled upon his first vintage picture of a German dressed as a polar bear, he initially thought it was just an odd historical anomaly -- at least, that is, until he found a second one. And then a third. And on, and on. Eventually Donat realized he'd stumbled across a bizarre photo trend: For decades Germany was obsessed photographs of people dressed as polar bears. So how did this trend get started, and why did it disappear? Listen in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show Ridiculous Historians. We are, as we often do,
coming to you. Live sort of from Atlanta, Georgia, the
home of Coca Cola, which is a controversial company. It's
one of the largest plastic polluters in the world, according
to several recent studies. It's also responsible for our, uh like,
our cultural image of Santa Claus in the West. It's
(00:50):
also responsible for popularizing polar bears in a very endearing way. Hi,
I'm Ben, Hey Ben, I'm no all. Basically, Cocola invented
Santa Clause essentially for all intents and purposes, right, the
visual of it. Yeah, I think that's just bonkers, Like
how far reaching marketing is. Like it just like a
company that old has the power to literally change the
(01:13):
course of like the Zepe guys and the way people
view a mythological figure. That's what I love about the
Coca Cola Museum. They're transparent about it. They're pretty much like,
this was Santa Claus beforehand, and then we got involved.
When was the last time you went to the Cocola
Museum been, Oh, it's it's been a number of years.
That they've done some extensive retrofitting or renovations, rather than yeah,
(01:36):
when's the last of you went. I think I went
on a school trip when I was a kid. I
just remember there's the rum where you can taste all
of the coke products from around the world at the
very end, and the worst one for anyone who hasn't
been there yet, the worst one is an Italian Uh
did you Steve called Beverly? What does it taste like?
It tastes like crime, you know, really, yeah, punishment, It's
(01:59):
a crime in your mouth. Okay. Is this sort of
like a ma Lord or like, you know, like like
an herbal kind of vibe? Yeah, I think it's a
it's an herbal vibe. Excuse me, it's not just Steve.
It's an appertif, I say so, turn that on its
head and as if. Is it fizzy? Yeah, it's carbonated.
It's a soft drink. And you know, an appertif is
(02:20):
something you drink before meal to help you digest. Right.
It has been described as tasting of grapefruit rind leaning
into the bitter. That's what Malord tastes like. Oh, okay,
the Lord is like the Chicago the famous Chicago. Uh,
liquor liquor. Ye, people love it in Chicago and sort
of like a rite of passage for folks visiting or
(02:43):
folks moving there to try it. And it's very grapefruity,
but like absurdly heavy on the better tell you, uh,
someone else that Chicago loves. That's a super producer, Casey
Pegram and he loves Chicago. I love the deep dish pizza.
Yeah it's good, I said, Pets. Yeahzza, your Southern boy
really came out there deep dish pizza. Um, probably just
(03:06):
because you know, I only end up in Chicago once
every decade or so, so that's a pretty good pace
for the deep dish I think. Um, I mean, I
genuinely enjoy it, but I couldn't eat it like all
the time. Oh no, I kill you. Your heart would explode. Yeah,
what's the best deep dish pizza in Chicago? I had
a lou loumin al lose something um oh no, no, no,
(03:29):
I had um Georgana's organ is what I had? Georgano's
is well known. Yeah, I've had that before. Chicago listeners
right in and tell us your favorite Chicago deep dish
pizza joint. We were dying to know Philly listeners right
in and tell me your favorite Philly cheese steak. I
feel way more comfortable asking people, not on stage, asking
from the safety of a studio. But we're not talking
(03:52):
about cheese steaks, nor Deep dish pizzas, nor Chicago. Um.
We let off talking about Coca Cola. We talked a
little bit about Santa Claus to lead a bit with
polar bears. Yeah, that's where I was setting us up. Yeah,
polar bears. So if you are in the West and
familiar with things like TVs or advertisements, then you have
probably seen the famous Coca Cola polar Bear. It's very
(04:16):
prominent three D animation now, but the polar Bear actually
dates back to nineteen twenty two. It's a very old
Coca Cola ad and they're they're advertising is super effective.
Oddly enough, around the time this was being invented, UH,
Coca Cola was not alone in their obsession with polar bears.
(04:41):
It turns out that across the pond in Germany, the
German people for several decades had an obsession with polar
bears themselves, not just polar bears, but specifically dudes wearing
polar bear costumes. Yeah, and just really quick. The first
advertisement featuring the Cocola polar Bear, or at least one
(05:04):
of from from nine two, as you said, is a
polar bear, uh, sitting kind of on his back, haunches
in a in a ice mound, um with some Coca
Cola is on ice and said mound, and he or
she is feeding Dare I say, squirting a bottle of
coke into the mouth of the sun, right, which uh,
(05:26):
Megan the Stallion would for any hip hop fans would
call driving the boat. Is that a thing? Yeah, when
you pour a drink into someone's mouth. Yeah, from what
I could tell, it's when it's when that MC pour
shots into people's mouths and it's become a thing. Case here,
you're aware of this. I am not aware of this.
Well maybe maybe we're not plugged in enough, but yes, yeah,
(05:48):
it's very for anybody's fan of hip hop. Looked up
that poster Noel described. I think the one we found
is in French, but it's very much the picture. He
did great job describing that. So that's one of the
reasons that this whole polar bear obsession hit. Another one,
possibly the more close to home. Reason was that in
the nineteen twenties there was a family of polar bears,
(06:08):
live polar bears that were sent to the Berlin Zoo,
and folks got really jazzed about it, and the zoo
um decided they wanted to really lean into this, and
so they dressed up a man in a polar bear
suit and had him, you know, posed like you do
there like the Atlanta Aquarium, they've got a person in
(06:30):
a penguin suit because the penguins are are a big
attraction there. Um. But you would get these commemorative photos
and these things were like printing money because at the time, UM,
folks didn't really have their own cameras, they weren't portable,
so to get one of these photographs was kind of
a big deal. And photography was experiencing a tremendous moment
(06:50):
here in the interwar years of Germany, and there were cabarets,
so many amazing automobile races and so on, and people
posing with polar bears, fake or real. Was was part
of this. I like that you point out that there
was not the proliferation of photographic technology that we are
(07:12):
so fortunate to experience today. Instead, people would go to
a professional photographer. Having a camera at this point was
a way to make a living. Just possessing that technology
could gain you entry into a livelihood. What's weird about
these polar Bear photos is that it went beyond the zoo, Right,
(07:33):
it makes sense for people to get a photograph of
the mascot or maybe the actual polar bears in the background,
But soon enough these photos began proliferating outside of the
zoo and there were no set patterns. You would see
people in swimsuits on the beach and then some dude
in a polar Bear costume with them, uh, polar Bear
with people of fancy parties, are hanging with the military.
(07:57):
And it went across all demographics, all classes, generations, and
so on. It's weird because most of these photos, and
you can see several examples online, most of these photos
are not only black and white, but they're close up,
so it's kind of difficult to guess exactly where they
were taken. But we have some clues, and we have
(08:17):
some lovely firsthand accounts that we are getting from a
blog called German Girl in America dot com, a young
woman recounting some of her memories as a child, and
this was something that was very much part of that experience.
Her name is Karen Ann. By the way, recommend checking
out her blog Lots of cool stuff about German culture
and history. Um And it's true, Uh, they were. They
(08:40):
became very popular attractions at vacation destinations. Resorts in a
town called ker were very popular and a gentleman by
the name of Carl bitter Ling in rugen Um created
his own version of this in his photography studio that
was specifically set up to stage these polar bear photographs
(09:02):
for folks that were there on holiday. And he would
get about five marks per um one of these photo setups,
and that was that was no no, no chump change
at the time. Right. And what I love about this
this blog is that our author goes on to say,
especially for notoriously frugal Germans, I guess you can say
(09:23):
that German girl in America dot com. I don't know
if we can. I don't know if I don't know
if I feel comfortable going to a European stereotype. But
I do feel comfortable exploring the weird history of Coca Cola.
It's very much from our native land so we have
that first theory about the zoo, right and the pair
of polar bears that that come to this German zoo.
(09:45):
We have this other theory that you can see proposing
in a number of different places that says these polar
bear outfits. This craze came out of an advertising campaign
for Fanta. As you know, Fantas was created as a
replacement soda during World War Two because there were Coca
(10:05):
Cola syrup shortages in Germany. I did not know that well.
Fanta is made from apple fiber and a couple of
other fruit syrups that were easier to get together. Let's
look at the timeline. As we said at the top,
Coca Cola used a polar bear for ads back in
nineteen two, and Fanta wanted people to think of Fanta
(10:27):
when they think of Coca Cola, so they asked the
Stiff company to make a polar bear costume, and the
bear would pose with regular people doing regular things, and
it became this sort of reminder of what life after
wartime could be. Things could be normal again. And then,
(10:47):
of course, because people connect Coca Cola with a polar bear,
they see a polar bear and they see a Fanta,
you know, logo or can and then they they associate
the two and all of a sudden, Fanta becomes like
a stand in for coke. That was their mission. It's
funny we think of Fanta in the States is pretty
exclusively orange, an orange drink. There's a great fantasis, right.
(11:10):
But yeah, when I think of fantasy, I typically think
of orange soda. And it wasn't that. That's not where
its roots began at once another orange soda crush, Maybe
that's it, slice maybe? Yeah, Yeah, there were a few.
There were a few orange sodas really like orange gina. Yeah,
I was mispronouncing it for a year or two. Possibly.
Friend didn't tell me this was in this was in X.
(11:35):
But we didn't break up due to the my mispronunciation
of orangina. I'm I'm not gonna give the mispronunciation on
the air, but you will all know what I was
accidentally saying, uh speaking of segways, uh nineteen thirty three.
Al Right, we're talking about the interwar years in Germany.
And even if we talk about something that's cute and
(11:57):
innocuous as polar bears, we all know who is going
to show up that's right, Hitler. Yeah, yeah, he's always
lurking just around the corner and these cute stories. Um.
In nine three, when the Nazis assumed power, a man
by the name of Max Kite spelled like Keith but
pronounced kite Um. He took over the German subsidiary of
(12:18):
Coca Cola UM, and he decided to score some points
with you know, the Nazis, UM by really leaning into
uh Coca Cola as like a lifestyle thing and emphasizing
this German way of life, which of course included uh
Nazi rule, arianism, all that jazz. Yeah. And here's the thing.
(12:42):
Back in the States, the Coca Cola Company, which was
led by Robert Woodroffe at the time, did not discourage
this at all. They kind of tacitly approved of it.
And we're getting some of this information from a fantastic
Atlas Obscura article called how Fanta was Created for Na
Germany by Matthew Blitz. I cannot say enough good things
(13:05):
about Atlas Obscura. I love it. They've got a hard
back out about the hard Back, and it's great. It's
great reading, really really great. So here's what goes down
as we know, history buffs. On December seven, Japan bombed
Pearl Harbor. The US enters World War two, And when
the US enters World War two, that means that legally speaking,
(13:28):
all American companies have to cut all business activities with
the enemies with Germany. So Coca Cola headquarters here in
Atlanta followed the letter of the law. They cut off
communications with Mr Kite in Germany, and they stopped exporting
their seven X flavoring. And the flavoring is like this syrup, right,
(13:49):
and you add the carbonation and the water later when
you're making a coke, and that is the famous secret ingredients. Supposedly,
like only a couple of executives have it and they
can be part of it exactly be on the same
plane at the same time. I think that's accurate. That's right. Um.
But yeah, so I mean basically, uh, Coca Cola g
(14:10):
M b H is what it was called. Um was
left cold and there was the threat of the Nazis
actually seizing taking control of the company. But he had
a brilliant idea that that just might save his company.
Because again it's a subsidiary, right, so it's like a
franchise kind of or how would you consider that. I mean,
obviously they were working in league with the Americans, but
(14:32):
he was sort of independent and there was probably some
licensing fees that he paid, right, But the infrastructure, the factory,
the bottling apparatus and so on, that's technology that is
now solely in his possession until the Nazi Party nationalizes it.
And just because the businesses have cut ties, it doesn't
(14:55):
mean that these factories are this manufacturing capacity goes away. Hmm.
So here's what Kite does. It's it's pretty clever. He
gets together with his chemists, his eggheads and stuff, and
he says, let's take what we can find here in
the midst of this horrible war, and let's try to
(15:18):
using those ingredients in those constraints. Let's try to get
as close to coke as we can in terms of taste.
Here's what they were left with, though this is uh
a story of ingenuity. There's some geiver action going on here.
They essentially took the leftovers of other food manufacturers. So
fruit shavings, leftover apple fibers, and pulp um beat sugar,
(15:43):
even a cheese by product. Did you see that part
that gives me the Williams, you're you're not into cheese
soda and and this is we we tease this earlier
in the episode, but this was the makings of fanta
and he got that from the shorthand for the German
word for fantasy, and it it did quite well. So
Fanta was from the very beginning a German invention. And
(16:07):
even though he was doing this in step with the
Nazi Party, after the end of World War Two here
in Atlanta, Mr Kite was hailed as a hero from
across the Atlantic because he had kept the fires burning
for Coca Cola and Germany. How do you think that
worked with profits at the time, you know, I think
(16:29):
they were just glad that the factory didn't get bombed.
I think that's probably true. And then they they they
had somewhere to start back over once uh, you know,
once the war A war ended and the Nazis were defeated,
it would be it would be really tough to be
an accountant for international corporation at that time. You know,
I can only imagine so Coke's VP of sales at
(16:49):
the time as a fellow named Harrison Jones, and Harrison
Jones is over the moon about Mr kite, and he says,
you know, he's a great man, who knows how he
did it. He prated in the trenches. Uh, he is
our pick. He He shouldn't just be in charge of
this company in Germany, he should be in command of
(17:11):
all of Coca Cola in Europe. Yeah, it's true. And UM,
that original recipe, which obviously was made in dire circumstances,
you know, under duress, with kind of whatever they could
get their hands on. UM decided not to stick with
the cheese beat juice soda and they went for what
we now know as the orange Fanta, which is kind
(17:33):
of just classic Fanta, right, And it made a huge
splash in Italy and then came to the US in
nineteen fifty eight. Yep, apparently they revived the name Fanta
because it was already kind of a sunk cost. You
know that we we'd already put in the leg work.
I say we. By we, I mean the company that
(17:55):
was doing this way before I was born. They had
already had name record nition, which is one of the toughest,
most important things to get, and Coca Cola, of course
already had the copyright. So this polar bear that's showing
up in the pre wartime Coca Cola ads, and this
polar bear that's showing up in the German interwar and
(18:18):
wartime ads. Uh, it becomes this symbol for the aspirational
non wartime life, you know what I mean. Even though
there's death and destruction and fire raining down from the sky,
people get this comfort of warm, fuzzy feeling when they
(18:38):
pose with a drink and furry friend, whether a real
polar bear honestly dude in costume. I don't know if
you guys ever saw this. I may have sent it
to you before. One of my favorite ad campaigns of
the past several years is for an Egyptian cheese. It's
like made out of hesh. I can't remember what's called. Oh,
it's panda panda cheese. And the commercials are a series
(19:02):
of vignettes where there's a incredibly violent panda. Have you
seen these? I gotta send them. They're gonna make your day. Also,
Eden will love them because they're they're that kind of
anti humor that that the young folks dig. Oh yeah,
she's she's definitely an't got that absurdist sense of humor
for sure. So this polar bear I know we got
a little sidetracked into the story of Fanta, but don't
(19:24):
don't worry. We we are getting back to the polar bear.
And here's how, because you see, it turns out that
we as a species were very close to completely forgetting
the mysterious trend of polar bear photos in Germany. In fact,
this may have been lost to history entirely were it
(19:45):
not for a single French photo collector, yeah man by
the name of Jean Marie Donna Casey. Yeah, Casey on
the case. But I did an okay job to start with.
But it's nice to have It's nice to have confirmation,
Like Ronald Reagan said, trust but verify. Indeed, so this uh,
this photo collector started coming across these images. There were
(20:09):
tons of them, photos taken on the streets all around Germany,
particularly in the capital of Berlin, and he was fascinated
by just how strange this whole phenomenon was and then
wanted to know why, you know, what was going on
here that led to this? So he knew there was
a bigger story, and he collected these photos in a
(20:30):
book called Teddy Bar No Teddy Beer because it's an
oom loud over day. So it's Teddy Beierre. So it
sounds like an Ikea product. It absolutely does. And Ben,
we were talking a little bit off air about how
kind of terrifying and surreal these photos are. Didn't age, Well,
it's weird because I'm I'm really into it and strange
We're doing an audio podcasts about this bear. The bear
(20:53):
costumes all looks sort of similar. But the thing that
makes it weird, I think, is that the bear has
beady little eyes. Clearly the person wearing the costume is
seen out of the mouth or maybe just under the jaw,
and the bear's mouth is always open with these prominent fangs.
So it's got like dead Kirsten dunn sties and it's
(21:13):
got this cavernous, carnivorous mouth. What do you have against
Kirston dunst Ees. Nothing. I just think the dead eyes. Yeah,
I don't think there's much feeling. I've never heard that
said before. I'll have to take a look next time
I watched one of her movies. I'm not saying it's
a bad thing. It's a great thing for an actor,
especially in interview with a vampire. That's true. That's true.
She was a creepy vampire child. But now there are
(21:34):
dozens of these photos and I highly recommend. There's an
article on Vice called Polar Bears and black Face. Jean
Marie donat Is collected over ten thousand creepy old photos. Actually,
Jean Marei donat Is interviewed for this piece. Yeah, and
I would say the polar bear photos or that collection,
I would say that's definitely the more comfortable of the two, agree,
(21:56):
because black face has such a is you know, black
faces and atrocity of course, of course, but that's also
a really interesting snapshot of Germany during a really surreal
and strange transitional period. Like some of these photos, for example,
there's one here I'm seeing with two Nazi s S
officers posing with a quite horrific bear. Um reminds me
(22:18):
of the dude and the dog costume and uh in
the shining a little bit. Yeah, there's there's also pictures
of children wearing Nazi regalia. There's one with a girl
who's sitting on a Polar bears lap, sort of the
way kids was sent on Santa's lap or the Easter
Bunny's lap. And also I have to wonder too, am
(22:38):
I the only one who thinks that all of those
old photos with animal costumes are creepy. I haven't seen
one that doesn't look creepy. Like have you ever seen
the old nineteen fifties pictures of the Easter bunny horrific
or even just Halloween costumes in general? They they look
very demonic and like the kind of thing you'd see
in like Texas chainsaw massacre or something. It's it's very,
(23:00):
very very unsettling stuff. And this book, which is a tome,
it's two hunter pages. It shows the bears with everyone
that we have mentioned, including the Nazi soldiers and stuff,
and the time frame of the book goes from about
the nineteen twenties to the nineteen sixties. There's also a
(23:22):
think piece from a philosopher named Klaus Peter Spadel who
adds some context to this, and he says that, well, well,
it's weird. He does. He does sort of a thought
exercise is probably the best way to describe it, where
he tries to imagine the perspective of the people in
the costumes, these German interwar elmos, that's kind of what
(23:46):
they were, you know what I mean? Like if you
go to Times Square in New York. They're all these
sketchy it's it's almost a trope here. There's sketchy elmos
that will come up to you, maybe smelling a booze
or maybe just trying to support their acting rears, and
they'll they'll try to get a picture with you and
charge you for Yeah. And some of the folks that
are in these uh, these costumes are really leaning into
(24:06):
like the I Am a polar bear vibe and they're
actually crawling on all fours and doing that kind of
gir tiger hand you know what I mean, that whole thing. Um.
Some of these are very very strange and uh and
disturbing images. But again, such a fascinating look into this
time period in this history. So we have one big
question though, whether it started due to Fanta or whether
(24:28):
it started due to the polar bears at the zoo.
I bet both played a role. Why did it stick
around for almost half a century? Like why why did
the polar bear thing become a thing? And then why
did it die when it did? I don't know. Germans
just in general are really fond of a good gimmick,
you know, they have a hard time letting it go.
(24:50):
Um again from that from that wonderful German girl in
America blog. First of all, I love this polar bear
in German is ice ba e I s b a are.
And by the way, UM, one of those famous polar
bears at the Berlin Zoom who was absolutely beloved was
Canute the polar bear, who UM sadly died of a
(25:10):
mysterious autoimmune disease um that has only been known to
occur in humans, and this was only just recently solved. Yeah,
people identified with these creatures and anthropomorphized them to no
small degree, and so that was that was part of it.
This comfort right, who doesn't want to be friends with
(25:32):
a cool Ursus maritimus, which is the scientific name for
polar bear. I love that. And it's so crazy how
we can kind of track the specially thanks to the
exhaustive work done by um our photo collector friend or
not um. The last dated photo that we have of
of someone posing with the polar bear was at an
(25:54):
October fest from nineteen sixty two. Because this trend kind
of faded a and while we cannot concretely, definitively trace
the death of the polar bear photo trend to a
single cause, we do have one very very good guess,
and it goes back to technology. Just like we said
in the beginning, uh, cameras were very uncommon. They were
(26:18):
not a thing that the average person would have in
their wallet or in their satchel for their stick and
bindle their valise. I'm just naming old containers. They wouldn't
have a camera in their Cameras were specialized gear for
a certain trade. But by the nineteen sixties, cameras are
becoming more and more common. People have their own cameras.
(26:41):
They don't have to pay for souvenirs, you know. So
now these novelty photograph studios are having a tougher time.
Why would I pay three to five marks to stand
next to a polar bear when I have my own
camera and just take a picture of the kids and
the spouse by my health, That's absolutely true, um, And
(27:02):
I think one thing that is interesting to talk about
is the whole You know, people really have strong feelings
about zoos one way or the other. I tend to
be more okay with them if the animals couldn't survive
in the wild, which I have been told is the
case that the Atlanta Zoo for most of the animals
that are there, but apparently um. According to the German
(27:25):
Animal Welfare Association, polar bears shouldn't be kept in zoos
at all, largely because of how far they like to travel. Right.
Polar bears have a huge, huge range, a huge territory,
and that's how they evolved to survive. Do you want
(27:48):
to know what I think about zoos vampire rules? You
have to invite me in, uh and you have so
some people call zoo's animal jail. That's that's something that
I've heard here at the Atlanta Zoo. They do a
lot of good work, um, but there's there's a price
to pay. So the merchandise and stuff that they'll sell
at a lot of western zoos goes directly into conservation efforts.
(28:12):
For a time, I don't know if this is true anymore,
but for a time, the population of tigers in captivity
in Texas was larger than the population of tigers in
the wild across the planet. So wild animals may very
well be a thing of the past by the time
you have grandchildren, and you may be telling your grandkids,
(28:33):
you know, once I saw a bear in the woods,
or I saw a turkey and it was a jerk,
and they'll be like, what an animal just walking around here?
Get out of here. That's like typing with your hands.
It's an old myth, and we do need zeos, But
there are also a lot of great conservationist organizations. Polar
bears are a special case because they're not only adapted
(28:56):
or acclimated to a huge swath of territory, it's also
a spece if a kind of territory, you know what
I mean. Like we can take an animal that's used
to a more temperate climate and put it in a reserve,
a preserve of some sort, right, and it'll it will
adapt more easily than something that was bred to be
out in the waste lands of the frozen North. It's
(29:18):
a shame. You know. One interesting thing that is happening
though with polar bears they're breeding with grizzly bears as Yeah,
they're hybrid looking up where where they become beige. Yeah,
it's they're called piz les p i z z l
y plar grizzlies. Uh. They're huge and they kind of
look like they have ombre. Uh, you know the hair
(29:40):
thing where an ambre is like a hair thing where
the I guess the hair is lighter or darker. I'm
not a cosmotolic. I don't know. Man Um, they look
like they have weird highlights. Lick it up. It's it's interesting.
They kind of you. If you wanted to be negative,
you could say they look like dirty polar bears. Yeah,
it's negative, like dirty blonde. There we go, here we go.
(30:02):
What's their insting dirty blonde and strawberry blonde. I don't know.
I think strawberry blond's got a little bit more of
a of a highlight, like a fiery highlight to it,
and dirty blonde is a little more beige blonde. Interesting. Well,
today I learned something. Hopefully, Yeah, hopefully we ended on
a not too down note. Pisley's Uh, this this ends
(30:23):
our episode, but not our show. We want to hear
about more strange trends. So just to recap on the
things we asked to hear from you about today, we
had several deep dish pizza, uh, Philly cheese steaks in
philadelphiabably preferably, and uh. We want to hear also about
the strange historical trends that you have found that may
(30:47):
have been lost to the modern day. Polar bears in
Germany had no idea that was the thing same. You
can write to us at Ridiculous at I Heart radio
dot com. You can hit us up on the social
media where we're Ridiculous History on Insta Graham, and you
can join our Facebook group Ridiculous Historians. Additionally, you can
find us as individual human people on the social media.
(31:08):
I am exclusively on Instagram at how Now Noel Brown.
You can find me sipping on my branded Ridiculous History
coffee mob. If you can get a t public dot
com slash Ridiculous History right, you can find me doing
this my own personal Instagram. In between bouts of getting
kicked into and kicked out of various countries, communities and regions,
(31:29):
I am in a burst of creativity at ben Boland.
You can also find me on Twitter where I'm at
ben Bowland hs W. The h s W stands for
how Stuff Works. Big, big thanks to Casey Pegram Casey,
I can see you in the studio today. That's pretty cool.
We've got this window situation happening. Let's get that direct
eye contact. Yeah, yeah, it's true, it's true. Spoiled Thanks
(31:50):
also too, oh Man, I forgot yeah, it's time. Told
them then. I can't believe we almost made it to
the end. Jonathan Strickland aka The Quister. Actually, it's past time,
you jerks. It's just trying to just trying to barrel
(32:10):
through it. Now, are you what are you implying that
we like invite you to do this? You don't. I'm
sitting at the same table, and you're just thinking that
if we just if we just put our noses down,
surely and don't give him an opportunity. There's no way.
But Casey has the hook up, he has the button
that please the quiz to sound effect. Do it again
(32:31):
in case that's all, put it in the post. You
know this right, don't destroy the labouci is playing both sides.
I see you, man, see you. This eye contact studio
is a dangerous thing. Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister.
It has been quite some time. We had a streak where,
for one reason or another, you weren't you weren't showing up,
(32:51):
You did not deign to grace us with your presence.
We were frequently in different time zones, yes, and then
now we are all together and because of that, this
this this sea of humanity within this increasingly stuffy studio.
We're going to have a quiz to segment the most
cringe worthy segment in all of podcasting, whereupon I give
(33:12):
you a historical scenario and you two have three minutes
to determine whether or not said scenario is in fact
a real historical fact or if I made it up.
Seas and also as all the ways, we have to
have an arbitrary rule in the in the case that
(33:32):
either of you have a question for me where you
want some clarification, I have a question, are you the
reason these studios are stuffy? That's the kind of low
level mischief I wouldn't put past. I will say that
I've been through the entire process where this studio was
like a deep freezer and then became stuffy, and the
other studio, the stuff you should know studio did the opposite.
(33:57):
So apparently, if one studio is going to be stuffy,
the other one is an ice box. Right. I would
describe the the thermostats in these rooms is ornamental. You
know what I mean? They look good? Yes, I would.
I would call the duct work arbitrary, which is why
I love it so much. Well, let me give you
the scenario. Then I will give you your arbitrary rule.
(34:17):
And as I recall today, you were talking about photography
and polar bears. Yes, that's correct, and thank you for
pronouncing that correctly. They're welcome. So we're going to have
a photography related historical fact here. You are, all right.
If you were to look at old photographs from the
very early days of photography, you notice something peculiar. Some
(34:42):
of those images appear to have both children and ghosts
in them, not orbs floating around or transparent figures looming
in the background, but rather the classic sheet ghost. Now,
this was due to a superstition that children would be
extremely so sceptible to having their spirits affected by the
(35:02):
strange process of photography. So to distract any potential malicious forces,
an adult would pose in the photo as well, ostensibly
to attract the evil attention towards them instead of the children.
But because the goal was to capture the photographs of
the children, not the adults, the adults would attempt to
(35:25):
hide themselves under sheets and throws so as not to
pull focus, so to speak, from the children themselves. Accent
is really wandering, well, so do I. So that is
your scenario, and of course your obitrary rule is that
if you wish to ask a question, you have to
proceeded with can you picture that? From the Muppet movie?
(35:48):
Begin the time? Hang on? This is gonna take me
a second because the grandfather clocks in the other room.
Yeah this so um so? No, yes, how's it going?
It was? It's it's been better. Yeah, no, I hear
you man, Yeah, I mean you have to be you
(36:09):
you know, I know, I know, I know. And plus
on top of that, this coffee machine we have now
it's the worst. Is the worst? Okay? Guys? Ready, yeah,
they do it? Okay, now you must what what's the
what's the rule? Sorry? Can you picture that? Can you
picture that? Yes? No? What was the It was the
(36:31):
actual query? The query is, is this, in fact a
real thing that happened whereat group deflection NINT children and
adults underneath these sheets posing together with the purpose of
the adults being there to pull the evil, malicious potential
spirits towards them instead of towards the child. Pull focus.
(36:52):
As you could not stop yourself from saying, so, they're ghosts,
They're they're the ghost. There's also a ghost in the picture.
It's just a person underneath a sheet. It looks like
a ghost. If we were to look at the photographs
in a series, if we had a scrap book of
these photographs and we were to flip through them, we'd say,
why are all these Victorian children posing with Charlie Brown
styled ghosts? I see, So it's another it's it's another
(37:12):
photographic trend if this is true. And still confused about
you said the children are hiding under sheets, so the
adults are hiding under the sheets. The children are posing,
so that so the adults are the ghost. Okay, I see,
and they're supposed to be kind of a paranormal lightning
rod right, that's a good, good way of putting it.
(37:34):
I should have written that part down. No, no, don't
worry about it, man, I'm just pretty great and humble.
So okay, So I don't like it, Ben, Yeah, I'm not.
I don't like I do want to, real quick, give
a shout out to our friend on Ridiculous his storians
who actually added up the tally because I believe it's ten. Yeah, yeah,
(37:57):
I'm aware. Uh heng on, let me find the name
of the guy real quick. Um but um, well, let
us know, we can't dig through the thread right now
because we're on this three minute timer, but let us
know who you are so we can give you a
shout out on air. Someone did go back through and
add this up. We're three behind. We also have fifty
(38:19):
three seconds to go here. I stand by not liking it.
What do you want to know? Why? Yeah? Yeah, I
don't know. I just it seems kind of arbitrary and
made up, and like he saw the episode we were
doing and just sort of like made up a similar scenario. Well,
he just saw the summary. That's why I didn't send them,
like all of our notes. What is your gut? What
(38:41):
is your gut? You know, I'm I'm tempted to say true,
but I'm very like at this point, I don't know.
I'm so shell shocked. He actually showed up again too.
I thought we were done with him. All right, you
want to rock paper scissors for it? You're doing You're falsome? True?
One shot? All right? One to three shoot? Good audio. Okay,
(39:02):
So we're going with the coin flip situation. You're so
so incredibly confident of your answer. You're right. As it
turns out, it is in fact false. However, photographs do exist.
There are photographs of Victorian children posing with adults who
are underneath sheets, but it was not to pull focus
(39:25):
of some malicious So there's the lies the motivation exactly,
because why this was happening is that you remember an
old photography, the exposure time for a camera was incredibly long.
Do sit perfectly still, and that's why you don't see
people smiling in those old photographs, because holding a smile
that long is unnerving and unsettling at the best. Untrue.
(39:49):
They were just gangster. The smile was not invented until
everyone knows. Also, to another thing company is that that
children are little, tiny brats and they squirm like crazy
all the time. So in an effort to keep the
children from moving like crazy during a sitting for a photograph,
(40:10):
the adults would sometimes hide themselves underneath a sheet to
act as a reassuring presence towards the child for the
process of photography. There's actually an entire photographic display called
hidden Mothers, where it's moms who have been have a
sheet draped over them as if they are a chair
(40:31):
or perhaps an arm wak, a chaise lounge, an ottoman
from the empire, perhaps and the child is posing right
next to them. So now we're at thirteen eleven. Yeah
or too down. But and I hope you don't regret
showing up to hand this victory. This was a fun one.
I enjoyed learning about the hidden mothers, and so I
(40:55):
was very I debated on whether or not to give
you the real reason, but I thought that one's so mundane.
I was, you know, that's that's where I think, that's
where I was misled, because I knew that there was
this trend, but I was not certain of the motivation.
Authoritative you say, reassuring, but I think we both know
(41:15):
as an authoritative presence to keep them standing still. But
be that as it may, win or lose. It's always
a pleasure, uh slash disaster to have you on the show.
Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister. It looks like
we're coming back, you know what I mean. We may
be able to turn this around. Yeah, and feel free
to come back again, you know, sooner than later, to
(41:37):
give us a chance to to to even the score.
Oh yeah, now we've got the taste of victory. So
now we no longer hate them. Fear of this segment exactly.
You're telling me to bring it Yes, bring it on.
I think we made it almost all the way through.
We made through the social media bits, but uh, what's
that's the start? We think to Casey, because we think Casey,
(41:57):
and that's when that's when everything when everything be um big.
Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Thanks to
Thanks thanks Jonathan um Christoper Raciots here in spirit, not
a ghostly presence, but more of a He's sort of
like Mufasa the Lion King. He gave us a cool
lead on exploding muffins recently. Thanks also to Eve's Jeff Coat.
(42:21):
Thanks to Gabe Louisier, our research associate who has such
a good nose for good stories he absolutely does. Thanks
to the Coca Cola company. Thanks to Anthropomorphized the Polar
Bears the world over love to see that trend to
come back. Maybe we could bring it back. What do
you say? Yeah, I'm in let's do it. I got
a friend who was in one of those Polar Bear outfits.
(42:42):
Tight see you next time, FOLX. For more podcasts for
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show Ridiculous Historians. We are, as we often do,
coming to you. Live sort of from Atlanta, Georgia, the
home of Coca Cola, which is a controversial company. It's
one of the largest plastic polluters in the world, according
to several recent studies. It's also responsible for our, uh like,
our cultural image of Santa Claus in the West. It's
(00:50):
also responsible for popularizing polar bears in a very endearing way. Hi,
I'm Ben, Hey Ben, I'm no all. Basically, Cocola invented
Santa Clause essentially for all intents and purposes, right, the
visual of it. Yeah, I think that's just bonkers, Like
how far reaching marketing is. Like it just like a
company that old has the power to literally change the
(01:13):
course of like the Zepe guys and the way people
view a mythological figure. That's what I love about the
Coca Cola Museum. They're transparent about it. They're pretty much like,
this was Santa Claus beforehand, and then we got involved.
When was the last time you went to the Cocola
Museum been, Oh, it's it's been a number of years.
That they've done some extensive retrofitting or renovations, rather than yeah,
(01:36):
when's the last of you went. I think I went
on a school trip when I was a kid. I
just remember there's the rum where you can taste all
of the coke products from around the world at the
very end, and the worst one for anyone who hasn't
been there yet, the worst one is an Italian Uh
did you Steve called Beverly? What does it taste like?
It tastes like crime, you know, really, yeah, punishment, It's
(01:59):
a crime in your mouth. Okay. Is this sort of
like a ma Lord or like, you know, like like
an herbal kind of vibe? Yeah, I think it's a
it's an herbal vibe. Excuse me, it's not just Steve.
It's an appertif, I say so, turn that on its
head and as if. Is it fizzy? Yeah, it's carbonated.
It's a soft drink. And you know, an appertif is
(02:20):
something you drink before meal to help you digest. Right.
It has been described as tasting of grapefruit rind leaning
into the bitter. That's what Malord tastes like. Oh, okay,
the Lord is like the Chicago the famous Chicago. Uh,
liquor liquor. Ye, people love it in Chicago and sort
of like a rite of passage for folks visiting or
(02:43):
folks moving there to try it. And it's very grapefruity,
but like absurdly heavy on the better tell you, uh,
someone else that Chicago loves. That's a super producer, Casey
Pegram and he loves Chicago. I love the deep dish pizza.
Yeah it's good, I said, Pets. Yeahzza, your Southern boy
really came out there deep dish pizza. Um, probably just
(03:06):
because you know, I only end up in Chicago once
every decade or so, so that's a pretty good pace
for the deep dish I think. Um, I mean, I
genuinely enjoy it, but I couldn't eat it like all
the time. Oh no, I kill you. Your heart would explode. Yeah,
what's the best deep dish pizza in Chicago? I had
a lou loumin al lose something um oh no, no, no,
(03:29):
I had um Georgana's organ is what I had? Georgano's
is well known. Yeah, I've had that before. Chicago listeners
right in and tell us your favorite Chicago deep dish
pizza joint. We were dying to know Philly listeners right
in and tell me your favorite Philly cheese steak. I
feel way more comfortable asking people, not on stage, asking
from the safety of a studio. But we're not talking
(03:52):
about cheese steaks, nor Deep dish pizzas, nor Chicago. Um.
We let off talking about Coca Cola. We talked a
little bit about Santa Claus to lead a bit with
polar bears. Yeah, that's where I was setting us up. Yeah,
polar bears. So if you are in the West and
familiar with things like TVs or advertisements, then you have
probably seen the famous Coca Cola polar Bear. It's very
(04:16):
prominent three D animation now, but the polar Bear actually
dates back to nineteen twenty two. It's a very old
Coca Cola ad and they're they're advertising is super effective.
Oddly enough, around the time this was being invented, UH,
Coca Cola was not alone in their obsession with polar bears.
(04:41):
It turns out that across the pond in Germany, the
German people for several decades had an obsession with polar
bears themselves, not just polar bears, but specifically dudes wearing
polar bear costumes. Yeah, and just really quick. The first
advertisement featuring the Cocola polar Bear, or at least one
(05:04):
of from from nine two, as you said, is a
polar bear, uh, sitting kind of on his back, haunches
in a in a ice mound, um with some Coca
Cola is on ice and said mound, and he or
she is feeding Dare I say, squirting a bottle of
coke into the mouth of the sun, right, which uh,
(05:26):
Megan the Stallion would for any hip hop fans would
call driving the boat. Is that a thing? Yeah, when
you pour a drink into someone's mouth. Yeah, from what
I could tell, it's when it's when that MC pour
shots into people's mouths and it's become a thing. Case here,
you're aware of this. I am not aware of this.
Well maybe maybe we're not plugged in enough, but yes, yeah,
(05:48):
it's very for anybody's fan of hip hop. Looked up
that poster Noel described. I think the one we found
is in French, but it's very much the picture. He
did great job describing that. So that's one of the
reasons that this whole polar bear obsession hit. Another one,
possibly the more close to home. Reason was that in
the nineteen twenties there was a family of polar bears,
(06:08):
live polar bears that were sent to the Berlin Zoo,
and folks got really jazzed about it, and the zoo
um decided they wanted to really lean into this, and
so they dressed up a man in a polar bear
suit and had him, you know, posed like you do
there like the Atlanta Aquarium, they've got a person in
(06:30):
a penguin suit because the penguins are are a big
attraction there. Um. But you would get these commemorative photos
and these things were like printing money because at the time, UM,
folks didn't really have their own cameras, they weren't portable,
so to get one of these photographs was kind of
a big deal. And photography was experiencing a tremendous moment
(06:50):
here in the interwar years of Germany, and there were cabarets,
so many amazing automobile races and so on, and people
posing with polar bears, fake or real. Was was part
of this. I like that you point out that there
was not the proliferation of photographic technology that we are
(07:12):
so fortunate to experience today. Instead, people would go to
a professional photographer. Having a camera at this point was
a way to make a living. Just possessing that technology
could gain you entry into a livelihood. What's weird about
these polar Bear photos is that it went beyond the zoo, Right,
(07:33):
it makes sense for people to get a photograph of
the mascot or maybe the actual polar bears in the background,
But soon enough these photos began proliferating outside of the
zoo and there were no set patterns. You would see
people in swimsuits on the beach and then some dude
in a polar Bear costume with them, uh, polar Bear
with people of fancy parties, are hanging with the military.
(07:57):
And it went across all demographics, all classes, generations, and
so on. It's weird because most of these photos, and
you can see several examples online, most of these photos
are not only black and white, but they're close up,
so it's kind of difficult to guess exactly where they
were taken. But we have some clues, and we have
(08:17):
some lovely firsthand accounts that we are getting from a
blog called German Girl in America dot com, a young
woman recounting some of her memories as a child, and
this was something that was very much part of that experience.
Her name is Karen Ann. By the way, recommend checking
out her blog Lots of cool stuff about German culture
and history. Um And it's true, Uh, they were. They
(08:40):
became very popular attractions at vacation destinations. Resorts in a
town called ker were very popular and a gentleman by
the name of Carl bitter Ling in rugen Um created
his own version of this in his photography studio that
was specifically set up to stage these polar bear photographs
(09:02):
for folks that were there on holiday. And he would
get about five marks per um one of these photo setups,
and that was that was no no, no chump change
at the time. Right. And what I love about this
this blog is that our author goes on to say,
especially for notoriously frugal Germans, I guess you can say
(09:23):
that German girl in America dot com. I don't know
if we can. I don't know if I don't know
if I feel comfortable going to a European stereotype. But
I do feel comfortable exploring the weird history of Coca Cola.
It's very much from our native land so we have
that first theory about the zoo, right and the pair
of polar bears that that come to this German zoo.
(09:45):
We have this other theory that you can see proposing
in a number of different places that says these polar
bear outfits. This craze came out of an advertising campaign
for Fanta. As you know, Fantas was created as a
replacement soda during World War Two because there were Coca
(10:05):
Cola syrup shortages in Germany. I did not know that well.
Fanta is made from apple fiber and a couple of
other fruit syrups that were easier to get together. Let's
look at the timeline. As we said at the top,
Coca Cola used a polar bear for ads back in
nineteen two, and Fanta wanted people to think of Fanta
(10:27):
when they think of Coca Cola, so they asked the
Stiff company to make a polar bear costume, and the
bear would pose with regular people doing regular things, and
it became this sort of reminder of what life after
wartime could be. Things could be normal again. And then,
(10:47):
of course, because people connect Coca Cola with a polar bear,
they see a polar bear and they see a Fanta,
you know, logo or can and then they they associate
the two and all of a sudden, Fanta becomes like
a stand in for coke. That was their mission. It's
funny we think of Fanta in the States is pretty
exclusively orange, an orange drink. There's a great fantasis, right.
(11:10):
But yeah, when I think of fantasy, I typically think
of orange soda. And it wasn't that. That's not where
its roots began at once another orange soda crush, Maybe
that's it, slice maybe? Yeah, Yeah, there were a few.
There were a few orange sodas really like orange gina. Yeah,
I was mispronouncing it for a year or two. Possibly.
Friend didn't tell me this was in this was in X.
(11:35):
But we didn't break up due to the my mispronunciation
of orangina. I'm I'm not gonna give the mispronunciation on
the air, but you will all know what I was
accidentally saying, uh speaking of segways, uh nineteen thirty three.
Al Right, we're talking about the interwar years in Germany.
And even if we talk about something that's cute and
(11:57):
innocuous as polar bears, we all know who is going
to show up that's right, Hitler. Yeah, yeah, he's always
lurking just around the corner and these cute stories. Um.
In nine three, when the Nazis assumed power, a man
by the name of Max Kite spelled like Keith but
pronounced kite Um. He took over the German subsidiary of
(12:18):
Coca Cola UM, and he decided to score some points
with you know, the Nazis, UM by really leaning into
uh Coca Cola as like a lifestyle thing and emphasizing
this German way of life, which of course included uh
Nazi rule, arianism, all that jazz. Yeah. And here's the thing.
(12:42):
Back in the States, the Coca Cola Company, which was
led by Robert Woodroffe at the time, did not discourage
this at all. They kind of tacitly approved of it.
And we're getting some of this information from a fantastic
Atlas Obscura article called how Fanta was Created for Na
Germany by Matthew Blitz. I cannot say enough good things
(13:05):
about Atlas Obscura. I love it. They've got a hard
back out about the hard Back, and it's great. It's
great reading, really really great. So here's what goes down
as we know, history buffs. On December seven, Japan bombed
Pearl Harbor. The US enters World War two, And when
the US enters World War two, that means that legally speaking,
(13:28):
all American companies have to cut all business activities with
the enemies with Germany. So Coca Cola headquarters here in
Atlanta followed the letter of the law. They cut off
communications with Mr Kite in Germany, and they stopped exporting
their seven X flavoring. And the flavoring is like this syrup, right,
(13:49):
and you add the carbonation and the water later when
you're making a coke, and that is the famous secret ingredients. Supposedly,
like only a couple of executives have it and they
can be part of it exactly be on the same
plane at the same time. I think that's accurate. That's right. Um.
But yeah, so I mean basically, uh, Coca Cola g
(14:10):
M b H is what it was called. Um was
left cold and there was the threat of the Nazis
actually seizing taking control of the company. But he had
a brilliant idea that that just might save his company.
Because again it's a subsidiary, right, so it's like a
franchise kind of or how would you consider that. I mean,
obviously they were working in league with the Americans, but
(14:32):
he was sort of independent and there was probably some
licensing fees that he paid, right, But the infrastructure, the factory,
the bottling apparatus and so on, that's technology that is
now solely in his possession until the Nazi Party nationalizes it.
And just because the businesses have cut ties, it doesn't
(14:55):
mean that these factories are this manufacturing capacity goes away. Hmm.
So here's what Kite does. It's it's pretty clever. He
gets together with his chemists, his eggheads and stuff, and
he says, let's take what we can find here in
the midst of this horrible war, and let's try to
(15:18):
using those ingredients in those constraints. Let's try to get
as close to coke as we can in terms of taste.
Here's what they were left with, though this is uh
a story of ingenuity. There's some geiver action going on here.
They essentially took the leftovers of other food manufacturers. So
fruit shavings, leftover apple fibers, and pulp um beat sugar,
(15:43):
even a cheese by product. Did you see that part
that gives me the Williams, you're you're not into cheese
soda and and this is we we tease this earlier
in the episode, but this was the makings of fanta
and he got that from the shorthand for the German
word for fantasy, and it it did quite well. So
Fanta was from the very beginning a German invention. And
(16:07):
even though he was doing this in step with the
Nazi Party, after the end of World War Two here
in Atlanta, Mr Kite was hailed as a hero from
across the Atlantic because he had kept the fires burning
for Coca Cola and Germany. How do you think that
worked with profits at the time, you know, I think
(16:29):
they were just glad that the factory didn't get bombed.
I think that's probably true. And then they they they
had somewhere to start back over once uh, you know,
once the war A war ended and the Nazis were defeated,
it would be it would be really tough to be
an accountant for international corporation at that time. You know,
I can only imagine so Coke's VP of sales at
(16:49):
the time as a fellow named Harrison Jones, and Harrison
Jones is over the moon about Mr kite, and he says,
you know, he's a great man, who knows how he
did it. He prated in the trenches. Uh, he is
our pick. He He shouldn't just be in charge of
this company in Germany, he should be in command of
(17:11):
all of Coca Cola in Europe. Yeah, it's true. And UM,
that original recipe, which obviously was made in dire circumstances,
you know, under duress, with kind of whatever they could
get their hands on. UM decided not to stick with
the cheese beat juice soda and they went for what
we now know as the orange Fanta, which is kind
(17:33):
of just classic Fanta, right, And it made a huge
splash in Italy and then came to the US in
nineteen fifty eight. Yep, apparently they revived the name Fanta
because it was already kind of a sunk cost. You
know that we we'd already put in the leg work.
I say we. By we, I mean the company that
(17:55):
was doing this way before I was born. They had
already had name record nition, which is one of the toughest,
most important things to get, and Coca Cola, of course
already had the copyright. So this polar bear that's showing
up in the pre wartime Coca Cola ads, and this
polar bear that's showing up in the German interwar and
(18:18):
wartime ads. Uh, it becomes this symbol for the aspirational
non wartime life, you know what I mean. Even though
there's death and destruction and fire raining down from the sky,
people get this comfort of warm, fuzzy feeling when they
(18:38):
pose with a drink and furry friend, whether a real
polar bear honestly dude in costume. I don't know if
you guys ever saw this. I may have sent it
to you before. One of my favorite ad campaigns of
the past several years is for an Egyptian cheese. It's
like made out of hesh. I can't remember what's called. Oh,
it's panda panda cheese. And the commercials are a series
(19:02):
of vignettes where there's a incredibly violent panda. Have you
seen these? I gotta send them. They're gonna make your day. Also,
Eden will love them because they're they're that kind of
anti humor that that the young folks dig. Oh yeah,
she's she's definitely an't got that absurdist sense of humor
for sure. So this polar bear I know we got
a little sidetracked into the story of Fanta, but don't
(19:24):
don't worry. We we are getting back to the polar bear.
And here's how, because you see, it turns out that
we as a species were very close to completely forgetting
the mysterious trend of polar bear photos in Germany. In fact,
this may have been lost to history entirely were it
(19:45):
not for a single French photo collector, yeah man by
the name of Jean Marie Donna Casey. Yeah, Casey on
the case. But I did an okay job to start with.
But it's nice to have It's nice to have confirmation,
Like Ronald Reagan said, trust but verify. Indeed, so this uh,
this photo collector started coming across these images. There were
(20:09):
tons of them, photos taken on the streets all around Germany,
particularly in the capital of Berlin, and he was fascinated
by just how strange this whole phenomenon was and then
wanted to know why, you know, what was going on
here that led to this? So he knew there was
a bigger story, and he collected these photos in a
(20:30):
book called Teddy Bar No Teddy Beer because it's an
oom loud over day. So it's Teddy Beierre. So it
sounds like an Ikea product. It absolutely does. And Ben,
we were talking a little bit off air about how
kind of terrifying and surreal these photos are. Didn't age, Well,
it's weird because I'm I'm really into it and strange
We're doing an audio podcasts about this bear. The bear
(20:53):
costumes all looks sort of similar. But the thing that
makes it weird, I think, is that the bear has
beady little eyes. Clearly the person wearing the costume is
seen out of the mouth or maybe just under the jaw,
and the bear's mouth is always open with these prominent fangs.
So it's got like dead Kirsten dunn sties and it's
(21:13):
got this cavernous, carnivorous mouth. What do you have against
Kirston dunst Ees. Nothing. I just think the dead eyes. Yeah,
I don't think there's much feeling. I've never heard that
said before. I'll have to take a look next time
I watched one of her movies. I'm not saying it's
a bad thing. It's a great thing for an actor,
especially in interview with a vampire. That's true. That's true.
She was a creepy vampire child. But now there are
(21:34):
dozens of these photos and I highly recommend. There's an
article on Vice called Polar Bears and black Face. Jean
Marie donat Is collected over ten thousand creepy old photos. Actually,
Jean Marei donat Is interviewed for this piece. Yeah, and
I would say the polar bear photos or that collection,
I would say that's definitely the more comfortable of the two, agree,
(21:56):
because black face has such a is you know, black
faces and atrocity of course, of course, but that's also
a really interesting snapshot of Germany during a really surreal
and strange transitional period. Like some of these photos, for example,
there's one here I'm seeing with two Nazi s S
officers posing with a quite horrific bear. Um reminds me
(22:18):
of the dude and the dog costume and uh in
the shining a little bit. Yeah, there's there's also pictures
of children wearing Nazi regalia. There's one with a girl
who's sitting on a Polar bears lap, sort of the
way kids was sent on Santa's lap or the Easter
Bunny's lap. And also I have to wonder too, am
(22:38):
I the only one who thinks that all of those
old photos with animal costumes are creepy. I haven't seen
one that doesn't look creepy. Like have you ever seen
the old nineteen fifties pictures of the Easter bunny horrific
or even just Halloween costumes in general? They they look
very demonic and like the kind of thing you'd see
in like Texas chainsaw massacre or something. It's it's very,
(23:00):
very very unsettling stuff. And this book, which is a tome,
it's two hunter pages. It shows the bears with everyone
that we have mentioned, including the Nazi soldiers and stuff,
and the time frame of the book goes from about
the nineteen twenties to the nineteen sixties. There's also a
(23:22):
think piece from a philosopher named Klaus Peter Spadel who
adds some context to this, and he says that, well, well,
it's weird. He does. He does sort of a thought
exercise is probably the best way to describe it, where
he tries to imagine the perspective of the people in
the costumes, these German interwar elmos, that's kind of what
(23:46):
they were, you know what I mean? Like if you
go to Times Square in New York. They're all these
sketchy it's it's almost a trope here. There's sketchy elmos
that will come up to you, maybe smelling a booze
or maybe just trying to support their acting rears, and
they'll they'll try to get a picture with you and
charge you for Yeah. And some of the folks that
are in these uh, these costumes are really leaning into
(24:06):
like the I Am a polar bear vibe and they're
actually crawling on all fours and doing that kind of
gir tiger hand you know what I mean, that whole thing. Um.
Some of these are very very strange and uh and
disturbing images. But again, such a fascinating look into this
time period in this history. So we have one big
question though, whether it started due to Fanta or whether
(24:28):
it started due to the polar bears at the zoo.
I bet both played a role. Why did it stick
around for almost half a century? Like why why did
the polar bear thing become a thing? And then why
did it die when it did? I don't know. Germans
just in general are really fond of a good gimmick,
you know, they have a hard time letting it go.
(24:50):
Um again from that from that wonderful German girl in
America blog. First of all, I love this polar bear
in German is ice ba e I s b a are.
And by the way, UM, one of those famous polar
bears at the Berlin Zoom who was absolutely beloved was
Canute the polar bear, who UM sadly died of a
(25:10):
mysterious autoimmune disease um that has only been known to
occur in humans, and this was only just recently solved. Yeah,
people identified with these creatures and anthropomorphized them to no
small degree, and so that was that was part of it.
This comfort right, who doesn't want to be friends with
(25:32):
a cool Ursus maritimus, which is the scientific name for
polar bear. I love that. And it's so crazy how
we can kind of track the specially thanks to the
exhaustive work done by um our photo collector friend or
not um. The last dated photo that we have of
of someone posing with the polar bear was at an
(25:54):
October fest from nineteen sixty two. Because this trend kind
of faded a and while we cannot concretely, definitively trace
the death of the polar bear photo trend to a
single cause, we do have one very very good guess,
and it goes back to technology. Just like we said
in the beginning, uh, cameras were very uncommon. They were
(26:18):
not a thing that the average person would have in
their wallet or in their satchel for their stick and
bindle their valise. I'm just naming old containers. They wouldn't
have a camera in their Cameras were specialized gear for
a certain trade. But by the nineteen sixties, cameras are
becoming more and more common. People have their own cameras.
(26:41):
They don't have to pay for souvenirs, you know. So
now these novelty photograph studios are having a tougher time.
Why would I pay three to five marks to stand
next to a polar bear when I have my own
camera and just take a picture of the kids and
the spouse by my health, That's absolutely true, um, And
(27:02):
I think one thing that is interesting to talk about
is the whole You know, people really have strong feelings
about zoos one way or the other. I tend to
be more okay with them if the animals couldn't survive
in the wild, which I have been told is the
case that the Atlanta Zoo for most of the animals
that are there, but apparently um. According to the German
(27:25):
Animal Welfare Association, polar bears shouldn't be kept in zoos
at all, largely because of how far they like to travel. Right.
Polar bears have a huge, huge range, a huge territory,
and that's how they evolved to survive. Do you want
(27:48):
to know what I think about zoos vampire rules? You
have to invite me in, uh and you have so
some people call zoo's animal jail. That's that's something that
I've heard here at the Atlanta Zoo. They do a
lot of good work, um, but there's there's a price
to pay. So the merchandise and stuff that they'll sell
at a lot of western zoos goes directly into conservation efforts.
(28:12):
For a time, I don't know if this is true anymore,
but for a time, the population of tigers in captivity
in Texas was larger than the population of tigers in
the wild across the planet. So wild animals may very
well be a thing of the past by the time
you have grandchildren, and you may be telling your grandkids,
(28:33):
you know, once I saw a bear in the woods,
or I saw a turkey and it was a jerk,
and they'll be like, what an animal just walking around here?
Get out of here. That's like typing with your hands.
It's an old myth, and we do need zeos, But
there are also a lot of great conservationist organizations. Polar
bears are a special case because they're not only adapted
(28:56):
or acclimated to a huge swath of territory, it's also
a spece if a kind of territory, you know what
I mean. Like we can take an animal that's used
to a more temperate climate and put it in a reserve,
a preserve of some sort, right, and it'll it will
adapt more easily than something that was bred to be
out in the waste lands of the frozen North. It's
(29:18):
a shame. You know. One interesting thing that is happening
though with polar bears they're breeding with grizzly bears as Yeah,
they're hybrid looking up where where they become beige. Yeah,
it's they're called piz les p i z z l
y plar grizzlies. Uh. They're huge and they kind of
look like they have ombre. Uh, you know the hair
(29:40):
thing where an ambre is like a hair thing where
the I guess the hair is lighter or darker. I'm
not a cosmotolic. I don't know. Man Um, they look
like they have weird highlights. Lick it up. It's it's interesting.
They kind of you. If you wanted to be negative,
you could say they look like dirty polar bears. Yeah,
it's negative, like dirty blonde. There we go, here we go.
(30:02):
What's their insting dirty blonde and strawberry blonde. I don't know.
I think strawberry blond's got a little bit more of
a of a highlight, like a fiery highlight to it,
and dirty blonde is a little more beige blonde. Interesting. Well,
today I learned something. Hopefully, Yeah, hopefully we ended on
a not too down note. Pisley's Uh, this this ends
(30:23):
our episode, but not our show. We want to hear
about more strange trends. So just to recap on the
things we asked to hear from you about today, we
had several deep dish pizza, uh, Philly cheese steaks in
philadelphiabably preferably, and uh. We want to hear also about
the strange historical trends that you have found that may
(30:47):
have been lost to the modern day. Polar bears in
Germany had no idea that was the thing same. You
can write to us at Ridiculous at I Heart radio
dot com. You can hit us up on the social
media where we're Ridiculous History on Insta Graham, and you
can join our Facebook group Ridiculous Historians. Additionally, you can
find us as individual human people on the social media.
(31:08):
I am exclusively on Instagram at how Now Noel Brown.
You can find me sipping on my branded Ridiculous History
coffee mob. If you can get a t public dot
com slash Ridiculous History right, you can find me doing
this my own personal Instagram. In between bouts of getting
kicked into and kicked out of various countries, communities and regions,
(31:29):
I am in a burst of creativity at ben Boland.
You can also find me on Twitter where I'm at
ben Bowland hs W. The h s W stands for
how Stuff Works. Big, big thanks to Casey Pegram Casey,
I can see you in the studio today. That's pretty cool.
We've got this window situation happening. Let's get that direct
eye contact. Yeah, yeah, it's true, it's true. Spoiled Thanks
(31:50):
also too, oh Man, I forgot yeah, it's time. Told
them then. I can't believe we almost made it to
the end. Jonathan Strickland aka The Quister. Actually, it's past time,
you jerks. It's just trying to just trying to barrel
(32:10):
through it. Now, are you what are you implying that
we like invite you to do this? You don't. I'm
sitting at the same table, and you're just thinking that
if we just if we just put our noses down,
surely and don't give him an opportunity. There's no way.
But Casey has the hook up, he has the button
that please the quiz to sound effect. Do it again
(32:31):
in case that's all, put it in the post. You
know this right, don't destroy the labouci is playing both sides.
I see you, man, see you. This eye contact studio
is a dangerous thing. Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister.
It has been quite some time. We had a streak where,
for one reason or another, you weren't you weren't showing up,
(32:51):
You did not deign to grace us with your presence.
We were frequently in different time zones, yes, and then
now we are all together and because of that, this
this this sea of humanity within this increasingly stuffy studio.
We're going to have a quiz to segment the most
cringe worthy segment in all of podcasting, whereupon I give
(33:12):
you a historical scenario and you two have three minutes
to determine whether or not said scenario is in fact
a real historical fact or if I made it up.
Seas and also as all the ways, we have to
have an arbitrary rule in the in the case that
(33:32):
either of you have a question for me where you
want some clarification, I have a question, are you the
reason these studios are stuffy? That's the kind of low
level mischief I wouldn't put past. I will say that
I've been through the entire process where this studio was
like a deep freezer and then became stuffy, and the
other studio, the stuff you should know studio did the opposite.
(33:57):
So apparently, if one studio is going to be stuffy,
the other one is an ice box. Right. I would
describe the the thermostats in these rooms is ornamental. You
know what I mean? They look good? Yes, I would.
I would call the duct work arbitrary, which is why
I love it so much. Well, let me give you
the scenario. Then I will give you your arbitrary rule.
(34:17):
And as I recall today, you were talking about photography
and polar bears. Yes, that's correct, and thank you for
pronouncing that correctly. They're welcome. So we're going to have
a photography related historical fact here. You are, all right.
If you were to look at old photographs from the
very early days of photography, you notice something peculiar. Some
(34:42):
of those images appear to have both children and ghosts
in them, not orbs floating around or transparent figures looming
in the background, but rather the classic sheet ghost. Now,
this was due to a superstition that children would be
extremely so sceptible to having their spirits affected by the
(35:02):
strange process of photography. So to distract any potential malicious forces,
an adult would pose in the photo as well, ostensibly
to attract the evil attention towards them instead of the children.
But because the goal was to capture the photographs of
the children, not the adults, the adults would attempt to
(35:25):
hide themselves under sheets and throws so as not to
pull focus, so to speak, from the children themselves. Accent
is really wandering, well, so do I. So that is
your scenario, and of course your obitrary rule is that
if you wish to ask a question, you have to
proceeded with can you picture that? From the Muppet movie?
(35:48):
Begin the time? Hang on? This is gonna take me
a second because the grandfather clocks in the other room.
Yeah this so um so? No, yes, how's it going?
It was? It's it's been better. Yeah, no, I hear
you man, Yeah, I mean you have to be you
(36:09):
you know, I know, I know, I know. And plus
on top of that, this coffee machine we have now
it's the worst. Is the worst? Okay? Guys? Ready, yeah,
they do it? Okay, now you must what what's the
what's the rule? Sorry? Can you picture that? Can you
picture that? Yes? No? What was the It was the
(36:31):
actual query? The query is, is this, in fact a
real thing that happened whereat group deflection NINT children and
adults underneath these sheets posing together with the purpose of
the adults being there to pull the evil, malicious potential
spirits towards them instead of towards the child. Pull focus.
(36:52):
As you could not stop yourself from saying, so, they're ghosts,
They're they're the ghost. There's also a ghost in the picture.
It's just a person underneath a sheet. It looks like
a ghost. If we were to look at the photographs
in a series, if we had a scrap book of
these photographs and we were to flip through them, we'd say,
why are all these Victorian children posing with Charlie Brown
styled ghosts? I see, So it's another it's it's another
(37:12):
photographic trend if this is true. And still confused about
you said the children are hiding under sheets, so the
adults are hiding under the sheets. The children are posing,
so that so the adults are the ghost. Okay, I see,
and they're supposed to be kind of a paranormal lightning
rod right, that's a good, good way of putting it.
(37:34):
I should have written that part down. No, no, don't
worry about it, man, I'm just pretty great and humble.
So okay, So I don't like it, Ben, Yeah, I'm not.
I don't like I do want to, real quick, give
a shout out to our friend on Ridiculous his storians
who actually added up the tally because I believe it's ten. Yeah, yeah,
(37:57):
I'm aware. Uh heng on, let me find the name
of the guy real quick. Um but um, well, let
us know, we can't dig through the thread right now
because we're on this three minute timer, but let us
know who you are so we can give you a
shout out on air. Someone did go back through and
add this up. We're three behind. We also have fifty
(38:19):
three seconds to go here. I stand by not liking it.
What do you want to know? Why? Yeah? Yeah, I
don't know. I just it seems kind of arbitrary and
made up, and like he saw the episode we were
doing and just sort of like made up a similar scenario. Well,
he just saw the summary. That's why I didn't send them,
like all of our notes. What is your gut? What
(38:41):
is your gut? You know, I'm I'm tempted to say true,
but I'm very like at this point, I don't know.
I'm so shell shocked. He actually showed up again too.
I thought we were done with him. All right, you
want to rock paper scissors for it? You're doing You're falsome? True?
One shot? All right? One to three shoot? Good audio. Okay,
(39:02):
So we're going with the coin flip situation. You're so
so incredibly confident of your answer. You're right. As it
turns out, it is in fact false. However, photographs do exist.
There are photographs of Victorian children posing with adults who
are underneath sheets, but it was not to pull focus
(39:25):
of some malicious So there's the lies the motivation exactly,
because why this was happening is that you remember an
old photography, the exposure time for a camera was incredibly long.
Do sit perfectly still, and that's why you don't see
people smiling in those old photographs, because holding a smile
that long is unnerving and unsettling at the best. Untrue.
(39:49):
They were just gangster. The smile was not invented until
everyone knows. Also, to another thing company is that that
children are little, tiny brats and they squirm like crazy
all the time. So in an effort to keep the
children from moving like crazy during a sitting for a photograph,
(40:10):
the adults would sometimes hide themselves underneath a sheet to
act as a reassuring presence towards the child for the
process of photography. There's actually an entire photographic display called
hidden Mothers, where it's moms who have been have a
sheet draped over them as if they are a chair
(40:31):
or perhaps an arm wak, a chaise lounge, an ottoman
from the empire, perhaps and the child is posing right
next to them. So now we're at thirteen eleven. Yeah
or too down. But and I hope you don't regret
showing up to hand this victory. This was a fun one.
I enjoyed learning about the hidden mothers, and so I
(40:55):
was very I debated on whether or not to give
you the real reason, but I thought that one's so mundane.
I was, you know, that's that's where I think, that's
where I was misled, because I knew that there was
this trend, but I was not certain of the motivation.
Authoritative you say, reassuring, but I think we both know
(41:15):
as an authoritative presence to keep them standing still. But
be that as it may, win or lose. It's always
a pleasure, uh slash disaster to have you on the show.
Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister. It looks like
we're coming back, you know what I mean. We may
be able to turn this around. Yeah, and feel free
to come back again, you know, sooner than later, to
(41:37):
give us a chance to to to even the score.
Oh yeah, now we've got the taste of victory. So
now we no longer hate them. Fear of this segment exactly.
You're telling me to bring it Yes, bring it on.
I think we made it almost all the way through.
We made through the social media bits, but uh, what's
that's the start? We think to Casey, because we think Casey,
(41:57):
and that's when that's when everything when everything be um big.
Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Thanks to
Thanks thanks Jonathan um Christoper Raciots here in spirit, not
a ghostly presence, but more of a He's sort of
like Mufasa the Lion King. He gave us a cool
lead on exploding muffins recently. Thanks also to Eve's Jeff Coat.
(42:21):
Thanks to Gabe Louisier, our research associate who has such
a good nose for good stories he absolutely does. Thanks
to the Coca Cola company. Thanks to Anthropomorphized the Polar
Bears the world over love to see that trend to
come back. Maybe we could bring it back. What do
you say? Yeah, I'm in let's do it. I got
a friend who was in one of those Polar Bear outfits.
(42:42):
Tight see you next time, FOLX. For more podcasts for
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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