October 8, 2024 • 37 mins
Many industries, including toy and game makers, are increasingly depending on crowdsourcing for fresh ideas and to help decide what products to make. Outsourcing creativity to the masses can offer valuable feedback… but that data can also be misinterpreted, misunderstood or provide just-plain-bogus ideas.
The annual toy business in the United States is a $100 billion-dollar industry. It’s by far the biggest toy market in the world, but apparently the “titans of toys” are out of ideas. So now, their attitude about creating new “stuff” has shifted to an attitude of – you know what - you do it! Really, no really!
To breakdown the inner workings of today’s toy and game world, Jason and Peter turned to an old friend, David Fuhrer who has created and licensed more than 300 toys, games, and household products, generating retail sales of over $1 billion dollars. These include iconic products such as Nerf Vortex Football, Aqua Doodle, Twisty Petz, Guitar Hero Air Guitar, Bounce Around Tigger, Hershey’s S’mores Maker, and more. AND…he’s also the Guinness World Record holder for being the fastest backwards talker. Really, no Really.
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IN THIS EPISODE:
- 24 toy companies rejected one of the best-selling toys!
- How does an idea become a product, solve an everyday problem or innovate a classic?
- In 2024 is it possible to successfully pitch a Beanie Baby-like idea?
- The billion-dollar idea for a Tailor Swift product.
- The surprising new trends in toys and games.
- Why physical games and puzzles have made a comeback.
- How do crowd sourced ideas pay off for the idea creators?
- How David’s “backward talking” launched a career.
- We challenged David to translate classic Seinfeld lines…backwards.
- The deadliest toys ever put on the market!
- Googleheim: Test your toy knowledge!
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FOLLOW DAVID:
X: @funanuf123
***
FOLLOW REALLY NO REALLY:
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Now really.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Really now, really well and welcome to really know really
with Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden, who remind you we
are constantly trying to source a large crowd of subscribers
and hoping you will be one. And speaking of crowdsourcing,
many industries, including toy and game makers, increasingly depend on
crowdsourcing for fresh ideas. Outsourcing creativity to the masses can
(00:26):
offer valuable feedback, but that data can also be misinterpreted, misunderstood,
or create just plain bogus ideas. That said, the annual
toy business in the United States is one hundred billion
dollar industry, by far the biggest toy market in the world.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
But apparently the little elves and.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
The toy making factories are running out of ideas, so
now they're turning to all of us to do the
creating for them.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Seems we've become the elves. Really no really.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
To break down the inner workings of today's toy and
game world, Jason and Peter turned to an old friend,
David Fuhrer, who has created and licensed more than three
hundred toys games in household products, generating retail sales of
a one billion dollars and he's also the holder of
the Guinness World Record for being the fastest backwards talker.
So now backwards here are nasaug Rednecks, len rettap Netlett.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Episode number seven, five, nine or three six.
Speaker 5 (01:14):
I don't, I have no idea. I have no idea.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
I do.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
We've done a lot of these.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
We have done at least win no, Mark Maren, I've
never heard that phrase about us, you Mark, We've probably
into this by way. And when I say this number
people listening really no, really really know. We're about seventy
or eighty episodes in.
Speaker 5 (01:36):
Yeah, yeah, look at us, and we are a cottage indust.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
So this episode was again the generation of this episode
is I'm seeing New York Time article and the headline
has got an idea for toy toy makers want to
hear from you, And I'm thinking of.
Speaker 5 (01:50):
That, is that just restricted to the toy industry. I
got an idea for a rocket science project. Rocket scientists
would like to hear from all the industry, exclusive to
all these industry are doing it.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
But I saw it in the toy industry and I
thought to myself the Sebastian amount of skopkale joke where
you said, he goes into the supermarket and now you've
got to scan your items, And he said, it's like
they all got together one and said, you know what
you do it? Yeah, that's it's like the toy companies.
I would think, and we have a specialist here knows
from the toy business. But I would think like if
you called if I called, like a toy company in
the seventies and said, hey, I got an idea for
(02:21):
a game, they say, hey, kid, yeah, thanks, ye, thank
you so much. We have professionals doing this now because
you can crowd source people. It's ideas that it's easy
to put it out there and say, yeah, it's crowdsourcing
that idea for.
Speaker 5 (02:34):
Me, for me, because I'm being serious now, I know
what like a kickstarter is, that's crowdfunding.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
Crowdsourcing his ideas getting finding a group of people who
are fascinated by this kind of thing that can help
you develop stuff or you can actually test ideas out,
like is this we're going to limited edition freedom chip
with liquorice that somebody recommended? Twenty thousand more people responded,
we like this idea you put out and you lose
your sure, but there you go, But that's crowdsourcing. Thank
(03:03):
you well, but crowdsourcing ideas.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Remember, I think every project we've ever done, it sounds
like it must have been crowdsource.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Then under that you're using the public today with AI now,
but also the opportunity because of the Internet to get
quick response times. You can test stuff out. You used
to focus group stuff when you did games or anything
with a group of twelve people, and you may be
lucky to do a bunch of focus groups and see what.
Hopefully their real answer was sure, because focus groups are
tough too, because somebody always takes over and dominates. You
(03:32):
never know if it's the real thing. I asked the question.
There was a very many people hated the girl. Focus
groups can be obviously very detrimental, so I wanted to
find out, especially in the toy world, because it's so
quickly changing how you come up with the toy. So
you and I didn't know you knew this girl.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
Also, there's also anything but having a grand little grand child.
You can go out and spend one thousand dollars on
Fisher Price and the ever been research and this is
developmental can put a marble and an empty plastic bottle
and that kid will play with that, you know.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
Okay, to your point, we'll find out about that. But
I remember years ago somebody said, I bought a three
hundred dollars toy from my son. He's playing with the
box to sit in the pay. David fere is somebody
I knew from way back when I first got out here. David,
I think came on because of his skill set, and
we'll do a little of that later on, where he
has a Guinness WORL Burke of Records, ability to talk backwards,
(04:28):
which is mad, it's insane. But I met him because
I think he came on the radio show when I launched,
because he had just launched the nerve football that had
the vortex that had the tail on it, which I
think has sold more than just about any toy.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
And I saw it was John Ellen john Away through
it like seven football fields or something like that, one
of the football guys, and I think David realized that,
and I go, well, of course he can do it.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
David had friends like you and I. He'd see them
throw football and go these are and that more.
Speaker 5 (04:56):
Yeah, so we're going to make a ball that even
a guy like that.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Could throw exactly. And since I've seen David, he has
either license or created over a billion dollars in sales
or with the toys that he has done.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
You think he keeps any of that?
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Oh yeah, I think the clothing looks good, shoes look good. Shot. Okay,
you know he's sitting right here.
Speaker 6 (05:20):
Oh I love that you loved you sneaking into the
mic like this right estimating his he's four feet from us,
you know, because if he's like me on Celebrity net Worth,
they always get it right.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
It's a David fear. Thank you for coming. Welcome sir.
Good to see your my old friend Dave. I haven't
seen you, David in quite a while, but we met
and I think eighty eight or eighty.
Speaker 7 (05:43):
Now look exactly the same, Peter, because your eyes.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Are drying out. What's that about the time that you
came out with the football?
Speaker 7 (05:49):
Football was nineteen ninety two, so it would be about
the right time exactly.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
And how many of those suckers did you sell?
Speaker 6 (05:56):
You know?
Speaker 8 (05:56):
Well, it's in its thirtieth year and I think we're
at something around forty five million?
Speaker 5 (06:05):
Did they do?
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Is it like the record business? Other businesses? Will you
got to sue to get an audit that shows what
they were.
Speaker 8 (06:11):
So they do a quarterly royalty report, so you know,
every and I never know what's going to be in
the envelope, and every quarter I always think it's the last.
Speaker 7 (06:20):
But it's gone on for thirty years.
Speaker 5 (06:21):
So how is it? Alway?
Speaker 8 (06:22):
By the way, Elway was the spokesperson, and yeah, I
mean at the very beginning, it was a rather simple
product and I showed it to twenty four companies. Everybody
rejected it. And then I was at a trade show
in Japan and I was sitting across the table from
this gentleman named John Barber, who was president of a
(06:42):
small toy company in northern California. And John said, oh,
you had an inventor. He was a Scottish guy, and
I do a poor accident, and he said.
Speaker 5 (06:49):
He's going to say you that it was from the
very Jewish section.
Speaker 8 (06:54):
He said, you have one product that you think is great,
and that's the one I want to see.
Speaker 7 (06:59):
And I thought about it.
Speaker 8 (07:00):
I said, I told him about this product that everyone
had rejected, and he actually called me two days later
and said send me that product, and I overnighted it
and the next day he called me and he said,
we love this product, we want to do it, and
they actually improved the product. They put it through wind
tunnel tests at Stamford, and then they hired John Elway
at the height of his career to promote the toy,
(07:23):
and it became the best selling toy football in the world.
Speaker 5 (07:25):
But you know what's crazy about that is not that
this is going to be what the whole episode is about,
but look at that. So what I think has to happen,
But I don't know in what order is somebody has
to look at a football and go, boy, that's most
people can't throw that damn thing. Then I want to
fix that problem. Then here's how you fix that problem.
Then here's my first I guess with glue, you stuck
(07:48):
a tail on a small I mean, how us through?
Speaker 2 (07:53):
You know?
Speaker 5 (07:53):
Two, I've got a thing I can show somebody.
Speaker 8 (07:57):
Yeah, I mean you identified it correctly as I couldn't
throw a football. So I you mentioned before and a
net moron in the football field.
Speaker 7 (08:04):
I was that guy.
Speaker 8 (08:05):
So I was actually at the time working with a
couple of other inventors and we were trying to come
up with aspirational sports toys. What are things that kids
want to do that they can't ordinarily do. I hit
a home run, dunk a basketball, throw a long bomb
with the football. And we were working on ideas to
try to accomplish those things, and one of them was
(08:26):
the football, and it actually the you know, it was
solving an everyday problem with a basic play pattern, which
is sort of behind a lot of the inventions. But
in this case, I had a nerf javelin in my office,
which was a foam javelin, and I had a foam football,
and one.
Speaker 7 (08:42):
Day we drilled a hole through this football. We stuck the.
Speaker 8 (08:46):
Javelin and we had a giant version of the vortex
football and started throwing it around and.
Speaker 5 (08:52):
I just saw that it increased the distance.
Speaker 8 (08:55):
Yeah, I mean it was aerodynamic. It straightened out automatically
in the air, and no matter how poorly you threw it,
it went into a perfect spiral. And so I, who
couldn't throw football, it would suddenly heave this thing and
it would go three quarters of the way across the
football field.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
But this is like the movie business, where you've got
to convince somebody there are toys that don't get made.
They could be huge hits. Because the guys who are
the gatekeepers, yeah, just decide for some reason, is there
a method to the madness in the toy industry or
is this crowdsourcing a gift now because you can get
almost immediate response from people and ideas from people, it's.
Speaker 7 (09:31):
A little of both, you know.
Speaker 8 (09:32):
And the toy companies they've become most of the big
ones have become very bureaucratic and retail is very limited,
so we have Walmart and Target and Amazon selling most products.
So the bigger toy companies have become brand oriented, so
for example, Mattel, you're gonna have Barbie and Hot Wheels.
You know, Hasbro's g I Joe, Spinmaster has a lot
(09:53):
of brands, and so there's a lot less innovation and
unless you know, what they're looking for is products that
fill out their brands, and a lot of the innovation
that comes from the inventors often ends up at smaller,
more entrepreneurial companies.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Now are the mom and pop brick and mortar stores
still around that you can have a regional breakthrough that
breaks out and.
Speaker 8 (10:14):
Then they're out there, but they're limited. Now there's fewer
and fewer of those stores that are out.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
There, So you have to take anything you come up
with now to those three places. That's it.
Speaker 8 (10:25):
Well, I don't go directly to retail, So as an inventor,
we typically go to the toy companies and the big
ones all have inventor liaison people and they put out
wish lists, so you have some parameters in which you
might be working.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
But if I'm competing, like I know a Marvel toy,
it's another Marvel toy. We know what that does, as
opposed to pick up David's thing, which could grow into
a brand, but it's easier just to do another Marvel toy.
Does that happen or are you.
Speaker 7 (10:52):
Talk absolutely absolutely, because.
Speaker 5 (10:55):
That's the thing I was picking up. But you said
they know the parameters looking for it, and I go
that that hits my business tu in a way that
always wrangled me. So when I thought I had a
good idea for a show, or Peter and I thought
we had a good idea for show, and we go
to pitch and then network would say, well, that's not
what we do, and I go, I mean, that's not
(11:16):
what you do. All you want to do is make
something that people are interested in and want to watch.
What you're saying, oh, we don't do comedies that have
a house in them. It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
So when, for instance, no toy company would have said
to you, our parameters are, we're looking for something like
(11:36):
a beanie baby, a little stuffed animal that does nothing.
You can't play with it. It sits on the shelf,
and any single one of them is worth three thousand
anything like that.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
And then no one's going to ever say that I
have no value and the guy's going to be worth
a trillion dollars. And by Santa Barbara, Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 7 (11:53):
You're one hundred percent right.
Speaker 8 (11:55):
And I always try to tune that out and and
try to just you know, like what I like to
do is look at concepts that solve an everyday problem
or add an innovation to a classic play pattern.
Speaker 7 (12:07):
And that's what we did with the football.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Okay, could give some of your other examples of some
of your other big things, because people will know. Awwad aqueduquidodle. Yeah.
Speaker 8 (12:14):
So aquadoodle is a drawing activity preschool drawing activity toy,
and it uses an interesting technology, a hydrochromatic ink, which
was a water activated color change and This was actually
created by the Pilot Pen company from Japan. So basically
what aquadoodle is, it's a matt that's about the size
of a small table, and the parent fills a pen
(12:38):
with water and when they write on this mat, it's
like a colorful marker. So it was the first time
that a preschool child could create on a large surface
without making a mess, because after a few minutes it
dries and goes away. And so this was the concept
that I collaborated with Pilot on. But I would say
the brilliant part of this invention and the patented part
(12:59):
of this invention was theirs And so I was, you know,
my responsibility was to try to come up with a
marketable idea.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
Wait with the product, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
What else? You had a couple of the hw mongst
ones that went gigantic.
Speaker 8 (13:11):
I've had, you know, about three hundred. Most recently, we
had something called Twisty Pets, which is a bracelet that
you can bend and twist like a balloon animal and
it turns it into a little pet. And that was
the best selling girls collectible.
Speaker 7 (13:27):
In the world until the pandemic hit.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
When you say selling world's collectible, how many.
Speaker 8 (13:32):
Oh tens of millions, So, and what was the retail price?
The retail price was low, it was it was about
seven ninety nine to fourteen ninety nine, depending how many
were configured in a package.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
Seven ninety nine times tons of millions is still a
big number.
Speaker 7 (13:48):
It was a big number.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
It was.
Speaker 7 (13:50):
Yeah. Do you ever take something like that? It was
a couple of hundred million.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Do you go to a Taylor Swift and say she
does bracelet's why don't we come up with something that
we can do with Taylor Swift for young girls that
are in her dember effic that she may approve as
her own item.
Speaker 7 (14:05):
Yeah, Away, that's a great idea.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
A wing Jason and Peter on the phone, tell him
the hole.
Speaker 5 (14:12):
Don't let her hang up her she's in the showers.
She'll be right back.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (14:16):
Do you ever do that reverse interineting? You think about it.
But you know what I usually do is I've chose.
You know, there's different ways.
Speaker 8 (14:22):
To launch a product, and the business model that I've
always used was licensing. We're all go to a company
and I would license them the product in exchange for
a royalty, as opposed to launching it myself. And then
trying to do the marketing, the manufacturing, the distribution, because we've.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Known her since she's thirteen fourteen, and the bracelet thing
has always been her deal. So bracelet it turns into
something else.
Speaker 7 (14:44):
Well, if you can introduce me to Tyler Swift.
Speaker 5 (14:47):
Good, Sorry, don't know it, not even a good idea.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
I'll tell me when you get her what year that
would be the partner.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
David's a lot of toys. I'm curious back to the
crowdsourcing thing. Is that the is that? I mean? I know,
notice like Jason and I saw Starbucks is using Ikea, Disney, Nestley.
But toy companies seem to be doing it more than
the other because I guess people have certain ideas on
what they think a good toy will be. Do they
know what? Does the average person know what a good
(15:15):
toy will be? Or doesn't have a clue? You know?
Speaker 8 (15:19):
No, I think the average person does, and I think
the collective you know, brains of everybody is better than
just one. But I mean, I've always heard great ideas
over the years from moms and dads like of you
new parents, you know, the toy industry, there's been a
contraction of age so because of video games and so on,
the toy industry is mostly a preschool business now.
Speaker 5 (15:40):
And that's what I was going to ask. It would
seem to me that not only in the toy industry,
but in the game industry. Yeah, that electronic or computer
based gaming has usurped what I thought of as traditional
gaming when I was a kid, or even when I
go to a friend's party and they go, we're gonna
have a game night. You know, we're not turning into
a like tronic stuff, but it seems like it has usurped.
Speaker 8 (16:03):
Yeah, all the games have made a huge comeback games
and puzzles since the pandemic.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
Really, that electronic or computer based gaming has usurped what
I thought of as traditional gaming when I was a kid,
Or even when I go to a friends party and
(16:27):
they go, we're gonna have a game night. You know,
we're not turning to electronic stuff, but it seems like
it has usurped.
Speaker 8 (16:34):
Yeah, all the games have made a huge comeback games
and puzzles since the pandemic. Really, And also there's been
a lot more of your talk about crowdsourcing, but you also,
you know crowdfunding, so there's an opportunity now for game
inventors to launch things on Kickstarter and these other platforms,
and then the world tells you whether the product's going
to work or not.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
It's funny because David Gumenheim don't our producers and always
adds their show at the end. When we were prepping
for this, this one young girl crowds funded almost a
million bucks for a Dungeons and Dragons type game. And
it's a pamphlet. I mean has the world in there,
but it's a pamphlet, And I go, so, what you
do with the other nine hundred and seventy three thousand dollars?
(17:15):
How does a booklet like that? Or how does a
game that you're creating that it's like a Dungeons and
Dragons type game? What do you how's a out a
million bucks?
Speaker 8 (17:23):
She must have made an amazing video that explained the product.
Because most of them don't succeed, but when they do,
they can be wildly successful. And that's also when the
bigger toy companies will come in often and license the
product from that inventor.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
But I boy, I'm so such a lodite stuff that
I'm sure is obvious. It eludes me. What is the
incentive for me other than maybe ragging rights. If you,
if I crowdsource something, they get nothing, right, I mean
if I you, if you.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Crowdsource the idea, you mean, take somebody's idea, Do you
have to give somebody something?
Speaker 8 (18:02):
At some point they get Sometimes it's just getting the
product itself or some kind of gift you right, But
they don't necessarily No, it's just the world who wants
to support an inventor.
Speaker 7 (18:11):
They want to support.
Speaker 5 (18:12):
Innovation that to me, would I would be so I
guess I've just been burned too many times. I'd been
nervous about developing something that way. Other than yes, it's
something to do, Yes, you want to be but people,
But if I had invented, you know, if I had
been on the crowdsource team that came up with beanie
babies and so they made five billions, surely I must
(18:34):
get more than a piggy.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
I mean, yeah, but it's the rare piggy.
Speaker 8 (18:41):
It is risky for inventors too, because you know, they're
exposing their idea and often they don't really have intellectual
property that will protect them.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
So so kids and preschool is it and anything over
that is really the dungeons and dragons and role playing
games and internet stuff.
Speaker 8 (18:56):
Yeah, or you know sports innovations or bracelets, that's what
I I You know, we did Twisty Pets for example.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
You do commercial It used to be with three networks,
you do commercials. Nobody sees it Saturday morning.
Speaker 7 (19:06):
Yeah, and now it's all where do you now? Well,
it's mostly YouTube.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
So it's all YouTube? Is it? Influencers?
Speaker 7 (19:13):
A lot of influencer marketing in the toy industry.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
You gotta find a seven year old you can afford. Yes,
I mean the unboxing kids making like two hundred million
dollars a year he wanted.
Speaker 7 (19:26):
He won't even come to the phone for It's much
harder to reach kids down Yeah.
Speaker 5 (19:31):
Who we got that?
Speaker 4 (19:33):
You don't want to he's not talking to you.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
Oh that's very funny.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Well, you know the problem. The thing is it's probably
really accurate. I had Laura Lauren. We've been trying to
get the kid who unboxes, and I think they laugh
every time we call because he's visiting opening a box
for fifty million dollars, right exactly? Do you know about that?
Speaker 5 (19:53):
Right?
Speaker 4 (19:53):
All the unboxing? Yeah?
Speaker 7 (19:54):
Absolutely, so if they unbox.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
Money, your game.
Speaker 5 (19:56):
He knows about it backwards.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
Yeah, yeah, the first game. Talk about the first game,
because that's.
Speaker 7 (20:02):
How it was, the backwards game.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
Yeah, explain. Explain your skill in the game, because it's
so bizarre.
Speaker 8 (20:07):
So growing up, I had this unusual ability that you know,
I used to get yelled at by my parents to
shut up, and then I wasn't able to go on television.
And then they were very proud of the fact that
I talked backwards the first time, the first time. Do
you remember your first backward phrase?
Speaker 7 (20:23):
Probably mom and Dad.
Speaker 5 (20:24):
No, it's a balance drum.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
Yeah, I got it what I did?
Speaker 5 (20:34):
You mentioned what was wall, which is slow, but I
didn't think you got it.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
Okay, do this.
Speaker 8 (20:41):
In school, I would call all my friends by their
names backwards, and then, uh, you know, nobody paid much attention.
I went off to summer camp when I was ten
years old, at Camp Eagle Cove and Upstate New York.
Got on the stage at the talent at the Camp
talent show, and I sang the Star Spangled Banner backwards
and then I took words from the audience and and
I from that day forward, I was I was Camp famous.
(21:02):
And then the game Camp, so I took that same
little act, and then I would do it at school,
and then in college, I would perform at Boston University,
where Jason also went. And a classmate of mine started
working for the David Letterman Show after we graduated, and
I got a call one day what I like to
be on the David Letterman Show, and that it was
(21:24):
actually as a regular guest spot. And so the funny
thing is is I broke the record of being bumped
more than any guest ever on the David Letterman Show.
They flew me to New York six times. I was
going to be the last guest, and they ran out
of time each time. They put me in a hotel,
and I was making a living after I graduated college
by being bumped off The Letterman Show because they'd pay
the It was like five hundred dollars something like that.
Speaker 7 (21:47):
Whatever the union set on.
Speaker 8 (21:50):
So I got on, and then he had me on
a couple more times as the guy who sings backwards,
and I started thinking, how can I commercialize this idea?
And I met a game inventor and he suggested, let's
create a game around talking backwards, and then Random House
licensed this game. It was a backwards talking game where
(22:10):
players would hear word backwards with a clue and then
they had to shout out the answer forward. So I'll
test you out. It's a six letter fruit that begins
with B a nanab banana.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
Do me a favor, Let's do this. I got some phrases. Okay,
see how they sound backwards? Okay, absolutely, they're actually phrases
you may know from a TV show that was somewhat popular.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Okay, do me a favorite, Let's do this.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
I got some phrases. Okay, see how they sound backwards?
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Okay, absolutely, they're actually.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Phrases you may know from a TV show that was
somewhat popular.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Okay, here we go.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
What does this sound like? I'm disturbed, I'm depressed, I'm inadequate.
Speaker 7 (22:59):
I've got it, my debrus, debrust it is.
Speaker 8 (23:02):
I'm disturbed. I'm depressed as my dessert head. And what's that?
What was the last one?
Speaker 4 (23:07):
I'm an adequate, herb, I'm depressed, I'm inadequate.
Speaker 7 (23:10):
My knee is inadequate.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
You're giving me. It's not you, it's me.
Speaker 8 (23:16):
Routine m Tom mc why in a two R? In
a two R was routine? If you're trying to follow
along in I T U O R when.
Speaker 5 (23:27):
You do this, are you seeing it backwards? How?
Speaker 8 (23:31):
Yeah? So I'm seeing it very quickly exactly the way
that it's spelled backwards.
Speaker 7 (23:36):
I'm not reversing sounds.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
Right, So are you when you're seeing it in your head?
Are you seeing it forward but saying it backwards?
Speaker 4 (23:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (23:44):
I'm kind of.
Speaker 8 (23:44):
You know, It's like if you're I was writing on
an invisible blackboard, like as I'm hearing it. It's kind
of a combination of a hearing and a visual thing.
It's hard for me to explain, but it's instant. It's
almost like translating another language.
Speaker 5 (23:56):
Become any other. So the thing that makes your brain
able to do that, does it have another wrinkle of
some kind?
Speaker 4 (24:04):
Is it?
Speaker 8 (24:04):
I'm still trying to figure it out, you know. I
I always think it's a completely useless ability, but uh,
maybe you know I visualize things very well. I'm not
very talented as it comes to drawing or painting or anything,
but I can kind of see what I want and
that's why I think it's It's helped me a lot
(24:24):
in my business.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
It's not a lie if you believe it.
Speaker 7 (24:27):
Ste Ton of eelfiroy develop m it's his d s T.
I not was ton a lie? Was eel eel being lie?
If I believe it was, that was it.
Speaker 8 (24:40):
If you have fi as, if you as oy and
believe was a vel eb and it was.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
T Oh yeah, Well the jerk store called they're running
out of you.
Speaker 7 (24:50):
Oh hi, hey at krige erots de loch to not
tea can nor faux again. I could go back and
prove that I'm doing.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
I felt the what your parents felt when you did it.
Oh my god.
Speaker 8 (25:07):
Usually usually somebody will say, like super califragilist to guests
yellow days. That's just something you've done a million times,
say said all, said Cela jar for like repus or
I get tongue twisters, or their names like Jason Alexander
no sech Rednick Cila.
Speaker 7 (25:22):
Do you have a middle name Jason?
Speaker 5 (25:23):
Well that's not my real name, so Jay Scott Greenspan,
I know.
Speaker 7 (25:26):
Are the naps all right?
Speaker 4 (25:30):
Here we go? Thanks for listeningte So to another episode.
Speaker 7 (25:34):
Of Ratona Epos d Foe Jill are On, Yilli, are.
Speaker 5 (25:42):
You know what we should have called it? Y are On?
Speaker 4 (25:45):
We are going to be calling ear there well thank
you David for coming in with you than you comes ons? Yes,
Google Home, what do you think? Hello? Where are we?
Where are we?
Speaker 5 (25:57):
I don't even know?
Speaker 9 (25:58):
You guys really nailed the accuracy today.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
You should be really.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
Proud of yourself.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
Spot.
Speaker 10 (26:04):
I have a quiz for you today to test your
toy knowledge.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
Okay, oh, okay, all right, so here you go.
Speaker 10 (26:12):
Name one of the most popular toys of all time
released in nineteen eighty that sold four point five million
units of this puzzle toy that year.
Speaker 4 (26:27):
Cute.
Speaker 5 (26:29):
Yes, well, okay, that was I didn't know it was
a buzz in show. I was waiting. You know, when
you play Jeopardy, if you buzz in before Rebecca finishes
the question, you're locked out. Did you know that? Did
you know that? Mister game?
Speaker 7 (26:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (26:42):
Yeah, all right, David, go ahead.
Speaker 10 (26:44):
All right, well Jason push said bell in the middle. There,
so it's fair.
Speaker 5 (26:50):
So all right, all right.
Speaker 10 (26:53):
Here comes another one. What children's plush toy was released.
Speaker 9 (26:58):
In July nineteen teen ninety.
Speaker 5 (27:01):
Six, Cabbage scrash Doll, Tickle Me Elmo, Tickle Me Elmo.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Correct, Tickle Me Elmo.
Speaker 7 (27:10):
The second one, tickle me Yeah.
Speaker 8 (27:14):
I was gonna say first came into Tycho Toys as
a tickle me monkey. Oh and there was an executive
there named Stan Clutton who had the idea, well, why
don't we put it Sesame Street, make Elmo good character.
Speaker 5 (27:26):
Except they didn't come out that light. It came out
this is how it went, tickle me Monkey. What kind
of an idiot would put out a thing called tickle
me monkey? Tickle me elmock?
Speaker 4 (27:38):
Did stand? Now, when you work for a toy company
like that and your stand and you come up with that,
do you get bonus or do you created it while
you work for the company, so you don't get.
Speaker 7 (27:45):
You work for the company, you work for hire.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
So every time one of those cells he goes damn.
So yeah, I hand open my tickling a monkey.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
I walked out of here with with my tickle.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
Big bird could have been tickled big bird.
Speaker 10 (27:58):
Nobody would have bought it, all right, You had to
master the tickle technology, all right. Now they're getting harder,
they're getting harder. What was Nintendo's first breakout toy?
Speaker 5 (28:13):
Nintendo's first breakout toy? Would that be the game Boy
Electronic Palm Palm?
Speaker 4 (28:22):
No, I don't know, say okay, don't put judgment on
the answer. I'm taking a shot here, you know.
Speaker 8 (28:26):
I you know, David, I'm trying to think with the
first breakout toy. I just remember the original box that
they had. It was a baseball game.
Speaker 5 (28:36):
It's not it's not the time of got you would
have come way late. No, it's not electronic.
Speaker 9 (28:42):
It's the ultra hand.
Speaker 5 (28:44):
Sorry, now, the ultra hand. About that on the family.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
How dare you.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
Was in jail?
Speaker 4 (28:57):
It'll be out next year? First year for good?
Speaker 5 (29:01):
What was the lt I don't I don't know.
Speaker 10 (29:02):
The ultra It was an extendable contraption designed to pick
up things from a distance.
Speaker 9 (29:08):
It's basically what the gift the old people because.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
Used that to get the mailing from a high shelf.
Speaker 7 (29:16):
Then need to be read Richards.
Speaker 5 (29:18):
From the Fantastic four. I can get the cup without
getting out of my chair.
Speaker 7 (29:24):
I could use that at buffets. You know, when you
reach over something, you bet it.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
I dropped my toast. Where's the extended arm?
Speaker 5 (29:31):
All right?
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Right?
Speaker 5 (29:32):
All right? Break out the long shoehorn?
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Very good? Okay, what would you pay?
Speaker 5 (29:39):
All right? All right? The comb over?
Speaker 9 (29:41):
Okay, now here was the what was what.
Speaker 10 (29:46):
Was legos first tour Legos first toy.
Speaker 9 (29:51):
Lego's first toy.
Speaker 5 (29:54):
Uh, Legos first A long and I don't want to
go there.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
You're not going to guess if you don't know what
you're not.
Speaker 10 (30:06):
It's the Lego Duck, released in nineteen thirty five.
Speaker 9 (30:12):
It was the first toy marketed by Lego.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
It was made of birch wood.
Speaker 7 (30:18):
And did you have to assemble it together or it
was just a duck?
Speaker 9 (30:22):
It was a ducket had wheels. I think the wheels
were like.
Speaker 5 (30:25):
Oh, is this like the little pull toy duck that?
Speaker 9 (30:28):
Yeah, the wooden duck that was on wheels.
Speaker 5 (30:31):
Yeah, but that was like a child's Pulto Yeah, like
as they were learning to walk.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 10 (30:38):
Lego, as we know, while first came up with the
binding bricks is what they initially called them, but that
didn't come until nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 5 (30:47):
Well, you don't come up with binding bricks, which is yeah, yeah,
you got right out a duck or too before.
Speaker 9 (30:52):
You get all right, well this one, this one is
our final question.
Speaker 5 (30:56):
Yeah, it's a b C or D Okay.
Speaker 10 (31:00):
So what was the most popular toy from last year?
From twenty twenty three, according to the Toy.
Speaker 11 (31:08):
Zone, A Barbie b Lego c PS five or D
Ludo that was Lulo.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
I know Cludo, I don't know Ludo.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
M M again one more time, barb.
Speaker 10 (31:25):
A Barbie Harbenheimer b Lego CPS five that would be
play station const consoles.
Speaker 9 (31:36):
And D Ludo.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
I think it's Lego, but I think I read that somewhere.
I think good.
Speaker 7 (31:41):
I think it's Lego too.
Speaker 8 (31:43):
Ludo seems like it's a trick question, so maybe it's
whatever Ludo is, but I'm sure that it's Uh.
Speaker 7 (31:48):
I believe it's Lego. Google.
Speaker 10 (31:51):
It was according to and I don't want to go
against our guests, but according to the Toy Zone, it.
Speaker 9 (31:57):
Was Ludo as a worldwide best seller.
Speaker 10 (32:02):
It's a board game, a very very simple board game,
and apparently it did very.
Speaker 9 (32:08):
Well in places that are not necessarily here.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
I just kind of bring this up before we go,
because it's crackcasing me up. The deadliest toys ever made
were lawn darts, Peepy Klorus, a slip and slide which
you know, clackers, which could kill you one blackers.
Speaker 5 (32:22):
I had a terrible tragic blacker accident face or whatever. Oh,
I almost took out an eye.
Speaker 4 (32:27):
I mean with two balls of crack, but the best ones.
And it just made me laugh. There was a vacuum
form where you actually put a hot it's a hot plate.
You get a get to hot place a blasting on.
But the Gilbert you never heard of this. I bet
the Gilbert glass blowing set in the nineteen fifties was
a mister Gilbert came up with it. Whose other famous
(32:47):
story other than the Gilbert glass miloning set was the
atomic energy lab where you actually had a briefcase type
thing which is only available for in it was a
radioactive place that was a Geiger counter, and you ray
pieces of uranium, radioactive uranium.
Speaker 7 (33:04):
And on the package he said safe for eight out
of ten?
Speaker 4 (33:08):
Is that the best he gave out uranium? And then
he also came up with the erector, said Gilbert, but
the two the two.
Speaker 5 (33:15):
Uranium was such a hard, terribly difficult thing to get.
He's giving it away.
Speaker 4 (33:19):
And it's.
Speaker 8 (33:23):
Remember our creepy crawlers, you know, when you just burned yourself.
Speaker 4 (33:27):
By the way, just had three types of urandium, three
different types. So when you went to kitch your good
kid good night and you say turn off the.
Speaker 5 (33:35):
Nightlight, and you said, that's not the night we became
the Easy Bake Oven.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
But you could see your kid all night long because
he's glowing as he goes to the bathroom. Google him.
Thank you, David.
Speaker 9 (33:46):
It's good for Halloween, David, Halloween.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
Thank you very much for coming in. Good luck with
the laugh Factory. Thank you the Laugh Factory. Your next
great game or toy? Well, he's he's always in the
nine million things.
Speaker 7 (33:58):
Thank you for joining us on Thank you We no
really Yillier on Yillier. I like it, I think with
no sug Red Cela and.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
Right where what else are you saying? Would you add?
Speaker 8 (34:09):
I said, with no saj Rednick Cela to not read
up ned lit with Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden and
our special guest Lace Ups Davad raherhaff Me the backwards Talker.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Time as another episode of Really No Really he comes
to a close. I know you're wondering, what is the
best selling toy of all time? Well, I will snap
that answer together for you in a moment, but first
let's thank our guest, David Feuer. You can follow David
on X where he is at fun Enough one, two, three,
that's f u n A n UF one two three.
(34:44):
Find all pertinent links in our show notes, our little
show hangs out on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and threads at
really No Really podcast, And of course you can share
your thoughts and feedback with us online at really noreally
dot com. If you have a really some amazing fact
or story that boggles your mind, share it with us
and if we use it, we will send you a
(35:06):
little gift.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Nothing life changing, obviously, but it's the thought that counts.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Check out our full episodes on YouTube, hit that subscribe
button and take that bell. So here updated when we
release new videos and episodes, which we do each Tuesday,
so listen and follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And now the
answer to the question, what's the best selling toy of
all time? Well, she makes a popular movie, but it's
(35:32):
not Barbie. They drive a lot of sales, but it
isn't Hot Wheels. They're fun and soft and won't put
out in an eye, but it isn't Nerve. Although all
of those are in the top ten with huge sales,
but the all time sales leader is Lego which was
founded by Ole Kirk Christensen in nineteen thirty two and
grew from a small workshop that made wooden toys to
(35:54):
a global powerhouse. The name comes from the Danish phrase
leg go, which means play well. Initially manufactured as wooden blocks,
Lego created the iconic plastic interlocking bricks in nineteen fifty eight,
and those bricks are the biggest selling toy of all time.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Lego makes around seven hundred million bricks annually.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
To date, it's estimated they've made well over six hundred
billion Lego pieces. The brand has expanded to include board games,
retail stores, video games, films, and theme parks, and the
size of their individual Lego kits have ballooned as well.
In twenty twenty, the largest was the nine thousand piece
replica of the Roman Colisseum that was topped by the
(36:34):
Titanic at nine thousand ninety pieces, and finally they achieved
ten thousand pieces with the replica of the Eiffel Tower.
Congrats Lego, which said backwards is starg knock Ogel.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
Which I'm sure means something fascinating in Danish as well.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Now really no realist production of eye Heart Radio and
Bloise entertainment
Speaker 3 (37:06):
MHM,
Now really.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Really now, really well and welcome to really know really
with Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden, who remind you we
are constantly trying to source a large crowd of subscribers
and hoping you will be one. And speaking of crowdsourcing,
many industries, including toy and game makers, increasingly depend on
crowdsourcing for fresh ideas. Outsourcing creativity to the masses can
(00:26):
offer valuable feedback, but that data can also be misinterpreted, misunderstood,
or create just plain bogus ideas. That said, the annual
toy business in the United States is one hundred billion
dollar industry, by far the biggest toy market in the world.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
But apparently the little elves and.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
The toy making factories are running out of ideas, so
now they're turning to all of us to do the
creating for them.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Seems we've become the elves. Really no really.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
To break down the inner workings of today's toy and
game world, Jason and Peter turned to an old friend,
David Fuhrer, who has created and licensed more than three
hundred toys games in household products, generating retail sales of
a one billion dollars and he's also the holder of
the Guinness World Record for being the fastest backwards talker.
So now backwards here are nasaug Rednecks, len rettap Netlett.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Episode number seven, five, nine or three six.
Speaker 5 (01:14):
I don't, I have no idea. I have no idea.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
I do.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
We've done a lot of these.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
We have done at least win no, Mark Maren, I've
never heard that phrase about us, you Mark, We've probably
into this by way. And when I say this number
people listening really no, really really know. We're about seventy
or eighty episodes in.
Speaker 5 (01:36):
Yeah, yeah, look at us, and we are a cottage indust.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
So this episode was again the generation of this episode
is I'm seeing New York Time article and the headline
has got an idea for toy toy makers want to
hear from you, And I'm thinking of.
Speaker 5 (01:50):
That, is that just restricted to the toy industry. I
got an idea for a rocket science project. Rocket scientists
would like to hear from all the industry, exclusive to
all these industry are doing it.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
But I saw it in the toy industry and I
thought to myself the Sebastian amount of skopkale joke where
you said, he goes into the supermarket and now you've
got to scan your items, And he said, it's like
they all got together one and said, you know what
you do it? Yeah, that's it's like the toy companies.
I would think, and we have a specialist here knows
from the toy business. But I would think like if
you called if I called, like a toy company in
the seventies and said, hey, I got an idea for
(02:21):
a game, they say, hey, kid, yeah, thanks, ye, thank
you so much. We have professionals doing this now because
you can crowd source people. It's ideas that it's easy
to put it out there and say, yeah, it's crowdsourcing
that idea for.
Speaker 5 (02:34):
Me, for me, because I'm being serious now, I know
what like a kickstarter is, that's crowdfunding.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
Crowdsourcing his ideas getting finding a group of people who
are fascinated by this kind of thing that can help
you develop stuff or you can actually test ideas out,
like is this we're going to limited edition freedom chip
with liquorice that somebody recommended? Twenty thousand more people responded,
we like this idea you put out and you lose
your sure, but there you go, But that's crowdsourcing. Thank
(03:03):
you well, but crowdsourcing ideas.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Remember, I think every project we've ever done, it sounds
like it must have been crowdsource.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Then under that you're using the public today with AI now,
but also the opportunity because of the Internet to get
quick response times. You can test stuff out. You used
to focus group stuff when you did games or anything
with a group of twelve people, and you may be
lucky to do a bunch of focus groups and see what.
Hopefully their real answer was sure, because focus groups are
tough too, because somebody always takes over and dominates. You
(03:32):
never know if it's the real thing. I asked the question.
There was a very many people hated the girl. Focus
groups can be obviously very detrimental, so I wanted to
find out, especially in the toy world, because it's so
quickly changing how you come up with the toy. So
you and I didn't know you knew this girl.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
Also, there's also anything but having a grand little grand child.
You can go out and spend one thousand dollars on
Fisher Price and the ever been research and this is
developmental can put a marble and an empty plastic bottle
and that kid will play with that, you know.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
Okay, to your point, we'll find out about that. But
I remember years ago somebody said, I bought a three
hundred dollars toy from my son. He's playing with the
box to sit in the pay. David fere is somebody
I knew from way back when I first got out here. David,
I think came on because of his skill set, and
we'll do a little of that later on, where he
has a Guinness WORL Burke of Records, ability to talk backwards,
(04:28):
which is mad, it's insane. But I met him because
I think he came on the radio show when I launched,
because he had just launched the nerve football that had
the vortex that had the tail on it, which I
think has sold more than just about any toy.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
And I saw it was John Ellen john Away through
it like seven football fields or something like that, one
of the football guys, and I think David realized that,
and I go, well, of course he can do it.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
David had friends like you and I. He'd see them
throw football and go these are and that more.
Speaker 5 (04:56):
Yeah, so we're going to make a ball that even
a guy like that.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Could throw exactly. And since I've seen David, he has
either license or created over a billion dollars in sales
or with the toys that he has done.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
You think he keeps any of that?
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Oh yeah, I think the clothing looks good, shoes look good. Shot. Okay,
you know he's sitting right here.
Speaker 6 (05:20):
Oh I love that you loved you sneaking into the
mic like this right estimating his he's four feet from us,
you know, because if he's like me on Celebrity net Worth,
they always get it right.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
It's a David fear. Thank you for coming. Welcome sir.
Good to see your my old friend Dave. I haven't
seen you, David in quite a while, but we met
and I think eighty eight or eighty.
Speaker 7 (05:43):
Now look exactly the same, Peter, because your eyes.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Are drying out. What's that about the time that you
came out with the football?
Speaker 7 (05:49):
Football was nineteen ninety two, so it would be about
the right time exactly.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
And how many of those suckers did you sell?
Speaker 6 (05:56):
You know?
Speaker 8 (05:56):
Well, it's in its thirtieth year and I think we're
at something around forty five million?
Speaker 5 (06:05):
Did they do?
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Is it like the record business? Other businesses? Will you
got to sue to get an audit that shows what
they were.
Speaker 8 (06:11):
So they do a quarterly royalty report, so you know,
every and I never know what's going to be in
the envelope, and every quarter I always think it's the last.
Speaker 7 (06:20):
But it's gone on for thirty years.
Speaker 5 (06:21):
So how is it? Alway?
Speaker 8 (06:22):
By the way, Elway was the spokesperson, and yeah, I
mean at the very beginning, it was a rather simple
product and I showed it to twenty four companies. Everybody
rejected it. And then I was at a trade show
in Japan and I was sitting across the table from
this gentleman named John Barber, who was president of a
(06:42):
small toy company in northern California. And John said, oh,
you had an inventor. He was a Scottish guy, and
I do a poor accident, and he said.
Speaker 5 (06:49):
He's going to say you that it was from the
very Jewish section.
Speaker 8 (06:54):
He said, you have one product that you think is great,
and that's the one I want to see.
Speaker 7 (06:59):
And I thought about it.
Speaker 8 (07:00):
I said, I told him about this product that everyone
had rejected, and he actually called me two days later
and said send me that product, and I overnighted it
and the next day he called me and he said,
we love this product, we want to do it, and
they actually improved the product. They put it through wind
tunnel tests at Stamford, and then they hired John Elway
at the height of his career to promote the toy,
(07:23):
and it became the best selling toy football in the world.
Speaker 5 (07:25):
But you know what's crazy about that is not that
this is going to be what the whole episode is about,
but look at that. So what I think has to happen,
But I don't know in what order is somebody has
to look at a football and go, boy, that's most
people can't throw that damn thing. Then I want to
fix that problem. Then here's how you fix that problem.
Then here's my first I guess with glue, you stuck
(07:48):
a tail on a small I mean, how us through?
Speaker 2 (07:53):
You know?
Speaker 5 (07:53):
Two, I've got a thing I can show somebody.
Speaker 8 (07:57):
Yeah, I mean you identified it correctly as I couldn't
throw a football. So I you mentioned before and a
net moron in the football field.
Speaker 7 (08:04):
I was that guy.
Speaker 8 (08:05):
So I was actually at the time working with a
couple of other inventors and we were trying to come
up with aspirational sports toys. What are things that kids
want to do that they can't ordinarily do. I hit
a home run, dunk a basketball, throw a long bomb
with the football. And we were working on ideas to
try to accomplish those things, and one of them was
(08:26):
the football, and it actually the you know, it was
solving an everyday problem with a basic play pattern, which
is sort of behind a lot of the inventions. But
in this case, I had a nerf javelin in my office,
which was a foam javelin, and I had a foam football,
and one.
Speaker 7 (08:42):
Day we drilled a hole through this football. We stuck the.
Speaker 8 (08:46):
Javelin and we had a giant version of the vortex
football and started throwing it around and.
Speaker 5 (08:52):
I just saw that it increased the distance.
Speaker 8 (08:55):
Yeah, I mean it was aerodynamic. It straightened out automatically
in the air, and no matter how poorly you threw it,
it went into a perfect spiral. And so I, who
couldn't throw football, it would suddenly heave this thing and
it would go three quarters of the way across the
football field.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
But this is like the movie business, where you've got
to convince somebody there are toys that don't get made.
They could be huge hits. Because the guys who are
the gatekeepers, yeah, just decide for some reason, is there
a method to the madness in the toy industry or
is this crowdsourcing a gift now because you can get
almost immediate response from people and ideas from people, it's.
Speaker 7 (09:31):
A little of both, you know.
Speaker 8 (09:32):
And the toy companies they've become most of the big
ones have become very bureaucratic and retail is very limited,
so we have Walmart and Target and Amazon selling most products.
So the bigger toy companies have become brand oriented, so
for example, Mattel, you're gonna have Barbie and Hot Wheels.
You know, Hasbro's g I Joe, Spinmaster has a lot
(09:53):
of brands, and so there's a lot less innovation and
unless you know, what they're looking for is products that
fill out their brands, and a lot of the innovation
that comes from the inventors often ends up at smaller,
more entrepreneurial companies.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Now are the mom and pop brick and mortar stores
still around that you can have a regional breakthrough that
breaks out and.
Speaker 8 (10:14):
Then they're out there, but they're limited. Now there's fewer
and fewer of those stores that are out.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
There, So you have to take anything you come up
with now to those three places. That's it.
Speaker 8 (10:25):
Well, I don't go directly to retail, So as an inventor,
we typically go to the toy companies and the big
ones all have inventor liaison people and they put out
wish lists, so you have some parameters in which you
might be working.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
But if I'm competing, like I know a Marvel toy,
it's another Marvel toy. We know what that does, as
opposed to pick up David's thing, which could grow into
a brand, but it's easier just to do another Marvel toy.
Does that happen or are you.
Speaker 7 (10:52):
Talk absolutely absolutely, because.
Speaker 5 (10:55):
That's the thing I was picking up. But you said
they know the parameters looking for it, and I go
that that hits my business tu in a way that
always wrangled me. So when I thought I had a
good idea for a show, or Peter and I thought
we had a good idea for show, and we go
to pitch and then network would say, well, that's not
what we do, and I go, I mean, that's not
(11:16):
what you do. All you want to do is make
something that people are interested in and want to watch.
What you're saying, oh, we don't do comedies that have
a house in them. It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
So when, for instance, no toy company would have said
to you, our parameters are, we're looking for something like
(11:36):
a beanie baby, a little stuffed animal that does nothing.
You can't play with it. It sits on the shelf,
and any single one of them is worth three thousand
anything like that.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
And then no one's going to ever say that I
have no value and the guy's going to be worth
a trillion dollars. And by Santa Barbara, Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 7 (11:53):
You're one hundred percent right.
Speaker 8 (11:55):
And I always try to tune that out and and
try to just you know, like what I like to
do is look at concepts that solve an everyday problem
or add an innovation to a classic play pattern.
Speaker 7 (12:07):
And that's what we did with the football.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Okay, could give some of your other examples of some
of your other big things, because people will know. Awwad aqueduquidodle. Yeah.
Speaker 8 (12:14):
So aquadoodle is a drawing activity preschool drawing activity toy,
and it uses an interesting technology, a hydrochromatic ink, which
was a water activated color change and This was actually
created by the Pilot Pen company from Japan. So basically
what aquadoodle is, it's a matt that's about the size
of a small table, and the parent fills a pen
(12:38):
with water and when they write on this mat, it's
like a colorful marker. So it was the first time
that a preschool child could create on a large surface
without making a mess, because after a few minutes it
dries and goes away. And so this was the concept
that I collaborated with Pilot on. But I would say
the brilliant part of this invention and the patented part
(12:59):
of this invention was theirs And so I was, you know,
my responsibility was to try to come up with a
marketable idea.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
Wait with the product, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
What else? You had a couple of the hw mongst
ones that went gigantic.
Speaker 8 (13:11):
I've had, you know, about three hundred. Most recently, we
had something called Twisty Pets, which is a bracelet that
you can bend and twist like a balloon animal and
it turns it into a little pet. And that was
the best selling girls collectible.
Speaker 7 (13:27):
In the world until the pandemic hit.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
When you say selling world's collectible, how many.
Speaker 8 (13:32):
Oh tens of millions, So, and what was the retail price?
The retail price was low, it was it was about
seven ninety nine to fourteen ninety nine, depending how many
were configured in a package.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
Seven ninety nine times tons of millions is still a
big number.
Speaker 7 (13:48):
It was a big number.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
It was.
Speaker 7 (13:50):
Yeah. Do you ever take something like that? It was
a couple of hundred million.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Do you go to a Taylor Swift and say she
does bracelet's why don't we come up with something that
we can do with Taylor Swift for young girls that
are in her dember effic that she may approve as
her own item.
Speaker 7 (14:05):
Yeah, Away, that's a great idea.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
A wing Jason and Peter on the phone, tell him
the hole.
Speaker 5 (14:12):
Don't let her hang up her she's in the showers.
She'll be right back.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (14:16):
Do you ever do that reverse interineting? You think about it.
But you know what I usually do is I've chose.
You know, there's different ways.
Speaker 8 (14:22):
To launch a product, and the business model that I've
always used was licensing. We're all go to a company
and I would license them the product in exchange for
a royalty, as opposed to launching it myself. And then
trying to do the marketing, the manufacturing, the distribution, because we've.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Known her since she's thirteen fourteen, and the bracelet thing
has always been her deal. So bracelet it turns into
something else.
Speaker 7 (14:44):
Well, if you can introduce me to Tyler Swift.
Speaker 5 (14:47):
Good, Sorry, don't know it, not even a good idea.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
I'll tell me when you get her what year that
would be the partner.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
David's a lot of toys. I'm curious back to the
crowdsourcing thing. Is that the is that? I mean? I know,
notice like Jason and I saw Starbucks is using Ikea, Disney, Nestley.
But toy companies seem to be doing it more than
the other because I guess people have certain ideas on
what they think a good toy will be. Do they
know what? Does the average person know what a good
(15:15):
toy will be? Or doesn't have a clue? You know?
Speaker 8 (15:19):
No, I think the average person does, and I think
the collective you know, brains of everybody is better than
just one. But I mean, I've always heard great ideas
over the years from moms and dads like of you
new parents, you know, the toy industry, there's been a
contraction of age so because of video games and so on,
the toy industry is mostly a preschool business now.
Speaker 5 (15:40):
And that's what I was going to ask. It would
seem to me that not only in the toy industry,
but in the game industry. Yeah, that electronic or computer
based gaming has usurped what I thought of as traditional
gaming when I was a kid, or even when I
go to a friend's party and they go, we're gonna
have a game night. You know, we're not turning into
a like tronic stuff, but it seems like it has usurped.
Speaker 8 (16:03):
Yeah, all the games have made a huge comeback games
and puzzles since the pandemic.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
Really, that electronic or computer based gaming has usurped what
I thought of as traditional gaming when I was a kid,
Or even when I go to a friends party and
(16:27):
they go, we're gonna have a game night. You know,
we're not turning to electronic stuff, but it seems like
it has usurped.
Speaker 8 (16:34):
Yeah, all the games have made a huge comeback games
and puzzles since the pandemic. Really, And also there's been
a lot more of your talk about crowdsourcing, but you also,
you know crowdfunding, so there's an opportunity now for game
inventors to launch things on Kickstarter and these other platforms,
and then the world tells you whether the product's going
to work or not.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
It's funny because David Gumenheim don't our producers and always
adds their show at the end. When we were prepping
for this, this one young girl crowds funded almost a
million bucks for a Dungeons and Dragons type game. And
it's a pamphlet. I mean has the world in there,
but it's a pamphlet, And I go, so, what you
do with the other nine hundred and seventy three thousand dollars?
(17:15):
How does a booklet like that? Or how does a
game that you're creating that it's like a Dungeons and
Dragons type game? What do you how's a out a
million bucks?
Speaker 8 (17:23):
She must have made an amazing video that explained the product.
Because most of them don't succeed, but when they do,
they can be wildly successful. And that's also when the
bigger toy companies will come in often and license the
product from that inventor.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
But I boy, I'm so such a lodite stuff that
I'm sure is obvious. It eludes me. What is the
incentive for me other than maybe ragging rights. If you,
if I crowdsource something, they get nothing, right, I mean
if I you, if you.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Crowdsource the idea, you mean, take somebody's idea, Do you
have to give somebody something?
Speaker 8 (18:02):
At some point they get Sometimes it's just getting the
product itself or some kind of gift you right, But
they don't necessarily No, it's just the world who wants
to support an inventor.
Speaker 7 (18:11):
They want to support.
Speaker 5 (18:12):
Innovation that to me, would I would be so I
guess I've just been burned too many times. I'd been
nervous about developing something that way. Other than yes, it's
something to do, Yes, you want to be but people,
But if I had invented, you know, if I had
been on the crowdsource team that came up with beanie
babies and so they made five billions, surely I must
(18:34):
get more than a piggy.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
I mean, yeah, but it's the rare piggy.
Speaker 8 (18:41):
It is risky for inventors too, because you know, they're
exposing their idea and often they don't really have intellectual
property that will protect them.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
So so kids and preschool is it and anything over
that is really the dungeons and dragons and role playing
games and internet stuff.
Speaker 8 (18:56):
Yeah, or you know sports innovations or bracelets, that's what
I I You know, we did Twisty Pets for example.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
You do commercial It used to be with three networks,
you do commercials. Nobody sees it Saturday morning.
Speaker 7 (19:06):
Yeah, and now it's all where do you now? Well,
it's mostly YouTube.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
So it's all YouTube? Is it? Influencers?
Speaker 7 (19:13):
A lot of influencer marketing in the toy industry.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
You gotta find a seven year old you can afford. Yes,
I mean the unboxing kids making like two hundred million
dollars a year he wanted.
Speaker 7 (19:26):
He won't even come to the phone for It's much
harder to reach kids down Yeah.
Speaker 5 (19:31):
Who we got that?
Speaker 4 (19:33):
You don't want to he's not talking to you.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
Oh that's very funny.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Well, you know the problem. The thing is it's probably
really accurate. I had Laura Lauren. We've been trying to
get the kid who unboxes, and I think they laugh
every time we call because he's visiting opening a box
for fifty million dollars, right exactly? Do you know about that?
Speaker 5 (19:53):
Right?
Speaker 4 (19:53):
All the unboxing? Yeah?
Speaker 7 (19:54):
Absolutely, so if they unbox.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
Money, your game.
Speaker 5 (19:56):
He knows about it backwards.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
Yeah, yeah, the first game. Talk about the first game,
because that's.
Speaker 7 (20:02):
How it was, the backwards game.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
Yeah, explain. Explain your skill in the game, because it's
so bizarre.
Speaker 8 (20:07):
So growing up, I had this unusual ability that you know,
I used to get yelled at by my parents to
shut up, and then I wasn't able to go on television.
And then they were very proud of the fact that
I talked backwards the first time, the first time. Do
you remember your first backward phrase?
Speaker 7 (20:23):
Probably mom and Dad.
Speaker 5 (20:24):
No, it's a balance drum.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
Yeah, I got it what I did?
Speaker 5 (20:34):
You mentioned what was wall, which is slow, but I
didn't think you got it.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
Okay, do this.
Speaker 8 (20:41):
In school, I would call all my friends by their
names backwards, and then, uh, you know, nobody paid much attention.
I went off to summer camp when I was ten
years old, at Camp Eagle Cove and Upstate New York.
Got on the stage at the talent at the Camp
talent show, and I sang the Star Spangled Banner backwards
and then I took words from the audience and and
I from that day forward, I was I was Camp famous.
(21:02):
And then the game Camp, so I took that same
little act, and then I would do it at school,
and then in college, I would perform at Boston University,
where Jason also went. And a classmate of mine started
working for the David Letterman Show after we graduated, and
I got a call one day what I like to
be on the David Letterman Show, and that it was
(21:24):
actually as a regular guest spot. And so the funny
thing is is I broke the record of being bumped
more than any guest ever on the David Letterman Show.
They flew me to New York six times. I was
going to be the last guest, and they ran out
of time each time. They put me in a hotel,
and I was making a living after I graduated college
by being bumped off The Letterman Show because they'd pay
the It was like five hundred dollars something like that.
Speaker 7 (21:47):
Whatever the union set on.
Speaker 8 (21:50):
So I got on, and then he had me on
a couple more times as the guy who sings backwards,
and I started thinking, how can I commercialize this idea?
And I met a game inventor and he suggested, let's
create a game around talking backwards, and then Random House
licensed this game. It was a backwards talking game where
(22:10):
players would hear word backwards with a clue and then
they had to shout out the answer forward. So I'll
test you out. It's a six letter fruit that begins
with B a nanab banana.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
Do me a favor, Let's do this. I got some phrases. Okay,
see how they sound backwards? Okay, absolutely, they're actually phrases
you may know from a TV show that was somewhat popular.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Okay, do me a favorite, Let's do this.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
I got some phrases. Okay, see how they sound backwards?
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Okay, absolutely, they're actually.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Phrases you may know from a TV show that was
somewhat popular.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Okay, here we go.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
What does this sound like? I'm disturbed, I'm depressed, I'm inadequate.
Speaker 7 (22:59):
I've got it, my debrus, debrust it is.
Speaker 8 (23:02):
I'm disturbed. I'm depressed as my dessert head. And what's that?
What was the last one?
Speaker 4 (23:07):
I'm an adequate, herb, I'm depressed, I'm inadequate.
Speaker 7 (23:10):
My knee is inadequate.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
You're giving me. It's not you, it's me.
Speaker 8 (23:16):
Routine m Tom mc why in a two R? In
a two R was routine? If you're trying to follow
along in I T U O R when.
Speaker 5 (23:27):
You do this, are you seeing it backwards? How?
Speaker 8 (23:31):
Yeah? So I'm seeing it very quickly exactly the way
that it's spelled backwards.
Speaker 7 (23:36):
I'm not reversing sounds.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
Right, So are you when you're seeing it in your head?
Are you seeing it forward but saying it backwards?
Speaker 4 (23:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (23:44):
I'm kind of.
Speaker 8 (23:44):
You know, It's like if you're I was writing on
an invisible blackboard, like as I'm hearing it. It's kind
of a combination of a hearing and a visual thing.
It's hard for me to explain, but it's instant. It's
almost like translating another language.
Speaker 5 (23:56):
Become any other. So the thing that makes your brain
able to do that, does it have another wrinkle of
some kind?
Speaker 4 (24:04):
Is it?
Speaker 8 (24:04):
I'm still trying to figure it out, you know. I
I always think it's a completely useless ability, but uh,
maybe you know I visualize things very well. I'm not
very talented as it comes to drawing or painting or anything,
but I can kind of see what I want and
that's why I think it's It's helped me a lot
(24:24):
in my business.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
It's not a lie if you believe it.
Speaker 7 (24:27):
Ste Ton of eelfiroy develop m it's his d s T.
I not was ton a lie? Was eel eel being lie?
If I believe it was, that was it.
Speaker 8 (24:40):
If you have fi as, if you as oy and
believe was a vel eb and it was.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
T Oh yeah, Well the jerk store called they're running
out of you.
Speaker 7 (24:50):
Oh hi, hey at krige erots de loch to not
tea can nor faux again. I could go back and
prove that I'm doing.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
I felt the what your parents felt when you did it.
Oh my god.
Speaker 8 (25:07):
Usually usually somebody will say, like super califragilist to guests
yellow days. That's just something you've done a million times,
say said all, said Cela jar for like repus or
I get tongue twisters, or their names like Jason Alexander
no sech Rednick Cila.
Speaker 7 (25:22):
Do you have a middle name Jason?
Speaker 5 (25:23):
Well that's not my real name, so Jay Scott Greenspan,
I know.
Speaker 7 (25:26):
Are the naps all right?
Speaker 4 (25:30):
Here we go? Thanks for listeningte So to another episode.
Speaker 7 (25:34):
Of Ratona Epos d Foe Jill are On, Yilli, are.
Speaker 5 (25:42):
You know what we should have called it? Y are On?
Speaker 4 (25:45):
We are going to be calling ear there well thank
you David for coming in with you than you comes ons? Yes,
Google Home, what do you think? Hello? Where are we?
Where are we?
Speaker 5 (25:57):
I don't even know?
Speaker 9 (25:58):
You guys really nailed the accuracy today.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
You should be really.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
Proud of yourself.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
Spot.
Speaker 10 (26:04):
I have a quiz for you today to test your
toy knowledge.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
Okay, oh, okay, all right, so here you go.
Speaker 10 (26:12):
Name one of the most popular toys of all time
released in nineteen eighty that sold four point five million
units of this puzzle toy that year.
Speaker 4 (26:27):
Cute.
Speaker 5 (26:29):
Yes, well, okay, that was I didn't know it was
a buzz in show. I was waiting. You know, when
you play Jeopardy, if you buzz in before Rebecca finishes
the question, you're locked out. Did you know that? Did
you know that? Mister game?
Speaker 7 (26:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (26:42):
Yeah, all right, David, go ahead.
Speaker 10 (26:44):
All right, well Jason push said bell in the middle. There,
so it's fair.
Speaker 5 (26:50):
So all right, all right.
Speaker 10 (26:53):
Here comes another one. What children's plush toy was released.
Speaker 9 (26:58):
In July nineteen teen ninety.
Speaker 5 (27:01):
Six, Cabbage scrash Doll, Tickle Me Elmo, Tickle Me Elmo.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Correct, Tickle Me Elmo.
Speaker 7 (27:10):
The second one, tickle me Yeah.
Speaker 8 (27:14):
I was gonna say first came into Tycho Toys as
a tickle me monkey. Oh and there was an executive
there named Stan Clutton who had the idea, well, why
don't we put it Sesame Street, make Elmo good character.
Speaker 5 (27:26):
Except they didn't come out that light. It came out
this is how it went, tickle me Monkey. What kind
of an idiot would put out a thing called tickle
me monkey? Tickle me elmock?
Speaker 4 (27:38):
Did stand? Now, when you work for a toy company
like that and your stand and you come up with that,
do you get bonus or do you created it while
you work for the company, so you don't get.
Speaker 7 (27:45):
You work for the company, you work for hire.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
So every time one of those cells he goes damn.
So yeah, I hand open my tickling a monkey.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
I walked out of here with with my tickle.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
Big bird could have been tickled big bird.
Speaker 10 (27:58):
Nobody would have bought it, all right, You had to
master the tickle technology, all right. Now they're getting harder,
they're getting harder. What was Nintendo's first breakout toy?
Speaker 5 (28:13):
Nintendo's first breakout toy? Would that be the game Boy
Electronic Palm Palm?
Speaker 4 (28:22):
No, I don't know, say okay, don't put judgment on
the answer. I'm taking a shot here, you know.
Speaker 8 (28:26):
I you know, David, I'm trying to think with the
first breakout toy. I just remember the original box that
they had. It was a baseball game.
Speaker 5 (28:36):
It's not it's not the time of got you would
have come way late. No, it's not electronic.
Speaker 9 (28:42):
It's the ultra hand.
Speaker 5 (28:44):
Sorry, now, the ultra hand. About that on the family.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
How dare you.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
Was in jail?
Speaker 4 (28:57):
It'll be out next year? First year for good?
Speaker 5 (29:01):
What was the lt I don't I don't know.
Speaker 10 (29:02):
The ultra It was an extendable contraption designed to pick
up things from a distance.
Speaker 9 (29:08):
It's basically what the gift the old people because.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
Used that to get the mailing from a high shelf.
Speaker 7 (29:16):
Then need to be read Richards.
Speaker 5 (29:18):
From the Fantastic four. I can get the cup without
getting out of my chair.
Speaker 7 (29:24):
I could use that at buffets. You know, when you
reach over something, you bet it.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
I dropped my toast. Where's the extended arm?
Speaker 5 (29:31):
All right?
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Right?
Speaker 5 (29:32):
All right? Break out the long shoehorn?
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Very good? Okay, what would you pay?
Speaker 5 (29:39):
All right? All right? The comb over?
Speaker 9 (29:41):
Okay, now here was the what was what.
Speaker 10 (29:46):
Was legos first tour Legos first toy.
Speaker 9 (29:51):
Lego's first toy.
Speaker 5 (29:54):
Uh, Legos first A long and I don't want to
go there.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
You're not going to guess if you don't know what
you're not.
Speaker 10 (30:06):
It's the Lego Duck, released in nineteen thirty five.
Speaker 9 (30:12):
It was the first toy marketed by Lego.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
It was made of birch wood.
Speaker 7 (30:18):
And did you have to assemble it together or it
was just a duck?
Speaker 9 (30:22):
It was a ducket had wheels. I think the wheels
were like.
Speaker 5 (30:25):
Oh, is this like the little pull toy duck that?
Speaker 9 (30:28):
Yeah, the wooden duck that was on wheels.
Speaker 5 (30:31):
Yeah, but that was like a child's Pulto Yeah, like
as they were learning to walk.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 10 (30:38):
Lego, as we know, while first came up with the
binding bricks is what they initially called them, but that
didn't come until nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 5 (30:47):
Well, you don't come up with binding bricks, which is yeah, yeah,
you got right out a duck or too before.
Speaker 9 (30:52):
You get all right, well this one, this one is
our final question.
Speaker 5 (30:56):
Yeah, it's a b C or D Okay.
Speaker 10 (31:00):
So what was the most popular toy from last year?
From twenty twenty three, according to the Toy.
Speaker 11 (31:08):
Zone, A Barbie b Lego c PS five or D
Ludo that was Lulo.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
I know Cludo, I don't know Ludo.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
M M again one more time, barb.
Speaker 10 (31:25):
A Barbie Harbenheimer b Lego CPS five that would be
play station const consoles.
Speaker 9 (31:36):
And D Ludo.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
I think it's Lego, but I think I read that somewhere.
I think good.
Speaker 7 (31:41):
I think it's Lego too.
Speaker 8 (31:43):
Ludo seems like it's a trick question, so maybe it's
whatever Ludo is, but I'm sure that it's Uh.
Speaker 7 (31:48):
I believe it's Lego. Google.
Speaker 10 (31:51):
It was according to and I don't want to go
against our guests, but according to the Toy Zone, it.
Speaker 9 (31:57):
Was Ludo as a worldwide best seller.
Speaker 10 (32:02):
It's a board game, a very very simple board game,
and apparently it did very.
Speaker 9 (32:08):
Well in places that are not necessarily here.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
I just kind of bring this up before we go,
because it's crackcasing me up. The deadliest toys ever made
were lawn darts, Peepy Klorus, a slip and slide which
you know, clackers, which could kill you one blackers.
Speaker 5 (32:22):
I had a terrible tragic blacker accident face or whatever. Oh,
I almost took out an eye.
Speaker 4 (32:27):
I mean with two balls of crack, but the best ones.
And it just made me laugh. There was a vacuum
form where you actually put a hot it's a hot plate.
You get a get to hot place a blasting on.
But the Gilbert you never heard of this. I bet
the Gilbert glass blowing set in the nineteen fifties was
a mister Gilbert came up with it. Whose other famous
(32:47):
story other than the Gilbert glass miloning set was the
atomic energy lab where you actually had a briefcase type
thing which is only available for in it was a
radioactive place that was a Geiger counter, and you ray
pieces of uranium, radioactive uranium.
Speaker 7 (33:04):
And on the package he said safe for eight out
of ten?
Speaker 4 (33:08):
Is that the best he gave out uranium? And then
he also came up with the erector, said Gilbert, but
the two the two.
Speaker 5 (33:15):
Uranium was such a hard, terribly difficult thing to get.
He's giving it away.
Speaker 4 (33:19):
And it's.
Speaker 8 (33:23):
Remember our creepy crawlers, you know, when you just burned yourself.
Speaker 4 (33:27):
By the way, just had three types of urandium, three
different types. So when you went to kitch your good
kid good night and you say turn off the.
Speaker 5 (33:35):
Nightlight, and you said, that's not the night we became
the Easy Bake Oven.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
But you could see your kid all night long because
he's glowing as he goes to the bathroom. Google him.
Thank you, David.
Speaker 9 (33:46):
It's good for Halloween, David, Halloween.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
Thank you very much for coming in. Good luck with
the laugh Factory. Thank you the Laugh Factory. Your next
great game or toy? Well, he's he's always in the
nine million things.
Speaker 7 (33:58):
Thank you for joining us on Thank you We no
really Yillier on Yillier. I like it, I think with
no sug Red Cela and.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
Right where what else are you saying? Would you add?
Speaker 8 (34:09):
I said, with no saj Rednick Cela to not read
up ned lit with Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden and
our special guest Lace Ups Davad raherhaff Me the backwards Talker.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Time as another episode of Really No Really he comes
to a close. I know you're wondering, what is the
best selling toy of all time? Well, I will snap
that answer together for you in a moment, but first
let's thank our guest, David Feuer. You can follow David
on X where he is at fun Enough one, two, three,
that's f u n A n UF one two three.
(34:44):
Find all pertinent links in our show notes, our little
show hangs out on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and threads at
really No Really podcast, And of course you can share
your thoughts and feedback with us online at really noreally
dot com. If you have a really some amazing fact
or story that boggles your mind, share it with us
and if we use it, we will send you a
(35:06):
little gift.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Nothing life changing, obviously, but it's the thought that counts.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Check out our full episodes on YouTube, hit that subscribe
button and take that bell. So here updated when we
release new videos and episodes, which we do each Tuesday,
so listen and follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And now the
answer to the question, what's the best selling toy of
all time? Well, she makes a popular movie, but it's
(35:32):
not Barbie. They drive a lot of sales, but it
isn't Hot Wheels. They're fun and soft and won't put
out in an eye, but it isn't Nerve. Although all
of those are in the top ten with huge sales,
but the all time sales leader is Lego which was
founded by Ole Kirk Christensen in nineteen thirty two and
grew from a small workshop that made wooden toys to
(35:54):
a global powerhouse. The name comes from the Danish phrase
leg go, which means play well. Initially manufactured as wooden blocks,
Lego created the iconic plastic interlocking bricks in nineteen fifty eight,
and those bricks are the biggest selling toy of all time.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Lego makes around seven hundred million bricks annually.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
To date, it's estimated they've made well over six hundred
billion Lego pieces. The brand has expanded to include board games,
retail stores, video games, films, and theme parks, and the
size of their individual Lego kits have ballooned as well.
In twenty twenty, the largest was the nine thousand piece
replica of the Roman Colisseum that was topped by the
(36:34):
Titanic at nine thousand ninety pieces, and finally they achieved
ten thousand pieces with the replica of the Eiffel Tower.
Congrats Lego, which said backwards is starg knock Ogel.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
Which I'm sure means something fascinating in Danish as well.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Now really no realist production of eye Heart Radio and
Bloise entertainment
Speaker 3 (37:06):
MHM,
Hosts And Creators
Peter Tilden
Jason Alexander
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