August 5, 2014 • 41 mins
Do you love Play-Doh? Chuck and Josh certainly love to talk about it, from its interesting history as a wall cleaner, to its more scientific chemical properties. It's everything you ever wanted to know about the pliable children's toy.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and this is the first
of two Stuff you Should Knows that we're recording today.
My voice already sounds weird to me. What do you
(00:22):
mean it doesn't sound a little weird, you know how
like when we get towards the end of the second one,
or it gets a little like worn out or something. Yeah,
like it's been extruded through a Plato fun factory. What's
all that is set up? Or do you really feel
that way that was off the cuff? Baby, Okay, No,
it doesn't sound weird to me. Your voice never sounds weird.
Mus you're sick, Jerry Judge McCall, Yeah, Jerry Brooklyn Ti
(00:46):
she sided with me. Well, Jerry, were headphones. But you
and I fight the broadcasting business by being the only
people that don't wear headphones or cans. I never get it,
like your two ft from me when my headphones, I know,
and I don't want to hear myself anyway. I don't
want to hear myself better. No, it's terrible. It sounds
like torture that. How about this for a new s
Y s K T shirt? No more cans just have
(01:09):
a little X through some headphones. I think when you
make a step, you should know a decree from now
we should have like a fairy wand sound effect. We
just like, here's this for a new T shirt. I
decreate be made into existence. Yeah, we get. We're gonna
by the way, since I mentioned it, we're gonna have
some new shirts coming soon. Yeah, some good like some
fan designs even yep, exciting. Yeah, we and we do
(01:33):
have some now that people can go by if I
like those first designs we had, and I well, let's
just have this out on the air. It's not an argument,
but let's have this discussion. Are we going to retire
the original six from the contest or should we just
let them keep going in perpetuity? Oh, unless there's a reason.
I think perpetuity is the way to go. But someone
might like the dancing uh you know what we call that,
(01:55):
the skeleton would cut Yeah, perfect parade of dancing skeletons,
the maccab parade, That's what I would call it. Doesn't
give him All six of them were excellent. The baby
with the fly on its forehead. Still my altime paper.
Good stuff. If you don't know what we're talking about,
go to stuff you should know dot com are venerable
website and uh in the top navigation there's a store
button and it will take your store and you can
(02:17):
see with your own very eyes, what the heck we're
talking about? That was off the cuff. Yeah it was.
I wasn't like, oh, we gotta plug the T shirts. No, no, no,
You very rarely say things as fretfully as that, chuck. Yes,
do you want to talk about Plato? Yeah, we promised
to do this recently, and here we are. If, in
(02:39):
my defensive, is already on the list. Oh well, so
it's not like, you know, I'm at the beck and
call of anybody's like, do Plato do this? Do that? No,
it was already on the list. Um did you play
with Plato a lot when you're a kid? Oh? I
played with it. I ate it. I don't recall eating it.
I do specifically recall eating the paste that was an
(03:04):
off brand that had a purple pirate on it. Oh,
he was. He was a pirate wearing a purple hat.
And I think maybe it an orange parrot. Yeah, it
was the paste. Did I have a on the inside
the lid? Did I have a applicator attached to it? Yeah?
I totally ate that paste. That was the best tasting
paste on the planet. As a matter of fact, I
think that paste might have been manufactured in part to
(03:24):
eat like it's served to like kids, some bad kids. Yeah. Actually,
I want to revise my statement. I take I licked
and tasted Plato. I don't remember like swallowing it, but
I remember, like, you know, tasting it and then maybe
you can put it in my mouth and spitting it
back out. But I don't think I got you. Yeah. Um,
(03:45):
I never. I don't think I ever ate Plato in
any form or fashion. But the scent of it, it's unmistakable, unmistakable.
It's so unmistakable in fact that apparently back in two
thousand and six, plato Or has growth a year long
celebration for Plato, which it owns, which it bought off
of Kenner, which Kenner bought from a dude named Joe McVicker's.
(04:09):
Actually they bought it from Tonka. Talk about it from Kenner?
Oh yeah, how do I forget Tonka exactly? Um? And
for this fiftieth birthday party, they had a a cent
a Plato perfume released that smelled just like Plato. Can
you buy that? Wonder? I looked, and I think you
can get it, but I don't think as easy as
(04:29):
you could. Back in two thousand six. Yeah, I wouldn't
want to wear it. I was just curious. I think, yeah, nostalgia,
I like them. I would like to smell it, but
don't spread that stuff on me. I don't think you're
supposed to wear it. Was it just like, yeah, one
of those things, the mood stabilizer. Okay, you know what
I mean. Yea spray in front of your face and
you just go, oh yeah, okay, should put this lead
pipe down and rethink things? Right? Remember when I was
(04:52):
a kid and let's violent, somebody give me some paste
to eat? They should do that. Well back when you
were a kid, Um, did you know much about the
origin and play Plato? Oh? No, not at all. I
didn't either until today. You're yesterday when I started researching
this Plato everyone and in this article by Tracy Wilson,
(05:12):
who hosts Stuffy miss in History class Um, she says
that it's lower, but I've seen it all over the place,
and from what I understand, it's the truth. I think
it's the truth. There was a dude named Joe mcvickers
who had a company and his company, uh produced, from
what I understand, mc vicker's invention, which was wallpaper cleaner. Yeah.
(05:35):
They his his father and uncle started it and they
were called Coutole Products and it was a soap company,
and but their big seller was this wall cleaner because
when we heated our homes with coal, your house would
get coal sit on the walls, which is really weird
to think of now. Yeah, but it's true. And your
wallpaper can still get dirty, grease from cooking things, food fights,
(05:59):
what ever, your wallpaper can get dirty. Let's just face facts, everybody.
And mc vicker's company had this putty. It was kind
of a pliable, gooey putty that you slapped up against
the wallpaper and rolled up and down and it just
took that suit or that grease or that spaghetti sauce
clean off. And it was wallpaper cleaner and it was
(06:22):
doing okay. I guess I don't think they were like
hurting necessarily. But Joe was married to a woman, or
was his sister in law. Was a teacher. Yeah, it
was Cincinnati. Yeah. They they sold a lot of this
stuff for a while, but then natural gas came around
and so they fell upon hard times. But um Joe
(06:44):
took over from Cleo. Uh as Cleo's was his father
and his sister in law, cash Fall of New Jersey,
read about kids that were making Christmas ornaments out of
that stuff and she said out of the wallpaper cleaner. Yeah,
and uh, much like kids do today with Plato. And
she said, hey, you know we're hurting, why don't we
(07:06):
try and turn this stuff into a toy. And they
did so, and in ninet he made a non toxic version,
added some almond scent, and you had your first little
off white Plato. Yeah. Kind of exactly what you would
think of when you think of a gummy colored like dough. Yeah,
off white khaki almost yeah. Um and mc vicker was
(07:31):
a pretty smart dude as far as business goes. He
um donated a bunch of cans to the Cincinnati City
school system. Very smart, and so got these little kids
hooked on Plato. It was a huge hit, but it
it might have just been a regional hit. Uh. And
if he hadn't have approached a dude named Captain Kangaroo. Yeah,
(07:52):
he went to, Uh, what does Keptain Kangary's name Bob,
Bob Keashan. I think Bob Keashan nice memory, Chuck I
pulled out from I don't know how many years ago
heard that name. He well, did you watch Captain Kangaroo?
Me too, love Captain Kangaroo. I like Captain Kangaroo more
than Mr Rogers. I liked them both, but yeah, I
think I might have been Yeah, Captain Kangaro a little
(08:13):
bit more. It was a haircut and I was Electric
Company over Sesame Street Amon. Yeah, I like both, but
I like the Electric Electric Company more. But I like
Pinwheel most. I didn't watch that. It was for real
little kids. Um. Anyway, Captain Kangaroo had a show and
Joe mcvickers somehow got in contact with Captain Kangaroo and said, hey,
(08:36):
I have a little deal for you. We've got this
awesome stuff. The kids in Cincinnati are crazy for it. Um.
We're calling it Plato right now. It's an off white
where it used to be, but now we have four colors, red, blue, yellow,
and white. Those are the four original colors of Plato.
By the way, and he gave someone to Captain Kangaroo said,
I will give you two percent of gross sales if
(08:58):
you mentioned this on your show two times a week
he played with it. Bob Keashon was a money grubber.
That's so we all know he I think he believed
in this product. Yeah, and as he's a smart guy,
he is. And uh, he believed in it so much
that he upped the number of mentions without any additional compensation,
from two times a week to as many as three
times a week. He would play with Plato on TV
(09:21):
and it just took off like a rocket from there.
That was his additional compensation that he got free Plato. No,
he had a percentage. So, oh yeah, you're you know
what I'm saying. You're right, But it suggests that he
believed in it. That's right. He did believe in it.
And do not shatter my image, Captain Kangaroo. I'm not
saying he just wanted to make more money, of course not.
Isn't that the show that Mr green Jean's was on.
(09:44):
Big fan of that guy too. Uh. They formed the
Rainbow Crafts Company. Um, you know, they wanted to take
it out from under the Cotole Products banner and got
famous wildlife artist John Ruthven to design that first package
with Originally it was very briefly it was an elf. Yeah,
and those I think you're probably if you have a
(10:05):
can of that, you probably it's probably in a museum
or something that wasn't around long. And then they went
to Plato pete Um the kid with the smock in
the beret, because all little kids wore berets and smocks
back then, or you wore your dad's dress shirt like backwards.
That made a good smock too. Yeah, the one he
didn't want anymore, or that you thought he didn't want anymore,
(10:28):
but he really got mad at you. He got paint
on it. That's my good short sleeve dress shirt. Uh.
And finally it took all the way until two thousand
two did the Herbal Elvis wear short sleeve dress shirts
with slacks and ties. Yeah. My dad usually as a
principal wore a coat. But when you take off the
(10:50):
jacket and you've got the short sleep that's something else.
With a blue felt tippin, a red felt tippin, and
green felt tip pin in his pocket front pot it
that was your dad. Yeah, he's a mechanical engineer. Oh
so each one had a different use. I think he
also just thought they were pretty Yeah, like they kind
of they made it. They made a shirt pocket. Pop.
(11:13):
That's where you get it with your shirt pocket thing, right,
all right. It took it until two thousand two for
that beret to become a baseball cap, and then now
he's just gone. Yeah I was looking like somebody anymore
at not at all. Now it's a can with arms
and the lids kind of pulled back, and in between
the rim of the can in the top of the
(11:33):
litter a couple of eyes. It looks a bit like
a garbage can, but it's obviously a Plato can, but
just kind of I don't like it. I like Plato Pete,
the kid with the beret, Yeah, me too. He was great.
That's what we grew up with. His nostalgia. Yeah, but
he was around for a really long time. And just
do away with him like he's nothing. That's another shirt.
(11:56):
Bring back Plato Pete. Yeah, we'll get sued, although I
didn't get the impression that they were too terribly litigious. Well,
plus we could tell him we sold nine T shirts.
You're sure seventy three dollars two percent. So Plato, we
all played with it. It was fun, uh for modeling,
but it was not like if you were like me,
(12:19):
your your hopes were dashed a bit when you modeled
something and left it out overnight because you thought it
would make it into a permanent um exhibit. Yeah, but
it would really just kind of break apart. It's not
like you can't cure it like you do modeling clay. No.
I was on Plato's site and they readily admit that
as a matter of fact. They say, if you want
(12:41):
a permanent thing, go get your some modeling clay. You
get some sculpie. Um. I don't want to buzz market,
but sculpies a lot of fun. Okay, um, we're talking
about Plato though. Yeah, that sculpie is fun. Um So,
but they say modeling clay. They don't say sculpie. But
they say, if you want to make a permanent thing,
go get some molling clay. It's not what Plato's for.
It's it's or being in the moment making fun things
(13:03):
and then put smashing those and then putting it back
in the can, doing it all over again every day,
and driving your mom crazy because she can't stand colors
to be mixed together. She sits there and pick them
apart or whatever. Or it's in the orange sad carpet,
which again has bro has some some helpful suggestions for
how to clean this stuff up. Um number one, and
(13:25):
you will understand eventually by the end of this podcast.
Why do not use warm water when you're cleaning up
Plato from the carpet. Yeah, it will make everything a
million times worse what they say, if possible, if you
have the patients of job, just go ahead and let
this thing dry, turn brittle, use a stiff brush and
(13:46):
just kind of brush it out of the carpeting, vacuum
it up boom, or do the reasonable thing and get
hardwood floors. All right, Well we'll discuss that very soon,
um after this message. Alright, So Plato is fun enough
(14:10):
on its own. Like when I was a kid, I
had zero, a couch rum all to go along with
my Plato. I don't recall having anything but just the
Plato to All I had was the Plato in my imagination.
And uh, I said, you know what, let's get a
couple of engineers from General Electric to design what's going
to be called the fun Factory. That's like, that was it.
(14:32):
That was it. Then you could put Plato into various
forms and molds and press it and have it come
out like sausage or spaghetti or just whatever they decided
to design. Like, have you been to the site recently?
There are hundreds of different things that you can buy
now with your Plato, of course, yes, and different types
of Plato to to make different looking things as well. Yeah. Um,
(14:55):
but the original fun Factory things basically just a hand
pushed lever that shoved the Plato inside through a hole
a sausage and then basically and then in front of
the hole. Um, you had just kind of like different
um shapes that you could make this thing into what
did you say, spaghetti and the rope. Speaking of the rope,
(15:18):
all of these are basically what it is. An extruder.
This is a Plato extruder. Is what what these guys
came up with. And I guarantee they had colored felt
tip pens in the front of their pockets too when
they designed this thing. But this, if you took all
the Plato. By the way, here's a Plato fun fact.
If you took all the Plato ever created, and ran
(15:38):
it through the fun factory and extruded it into one
long rope. It would wrap around the earth three thousand
times how many big maxes that no, I'm sorry it
were wrapped around there? Or three hundred times let's not
let's not go crazy on. Yeah, and you could go
to the moon and back ten times with that rope.
You could make a pretty good little break that would
(16:00):
be kind of crumbly by the next day, but it
would be colorful. That's right. That's a little lot of Plato, man. Yeah,
they've sold nine hundred and fifty million pounds of this stuff,
more than two billion cans since nineteen fifty six. Yeah,
and they apparently make about a hundred million cans every year.
What I find heartening is those are current statistics that
(16:22):
are not rated for inflation, you know. But um, this
article that Tracy wrote was apparently written in two thousand
and six. She said that they make nine million cans,
so they've up their production by five million cans a year,
which means Plato is not going anywhere. That's right. I'm
pretty psyched about that. Yeah, and all the stuff they
have now, like, um, they've got all sorts of licensing
(16:42):
deals like they have like the Plato Disney Princess set
and you can make dresses for your Disney princess out
of Plato. And um they have a longstanding tradition too
of making fake food. Like I was, I was watching
some UM. I wouldn't really call it documentary. It is
almost just a compilation of Plato ads over the years.
And um there's one from the eighties where you could
(17:04):
make pizza hut pizzas out of Plato. I think I
remember that. Nowadays they have UM like a kind of
a sweet shop I think is the name of the line.
And like I said, they have different types of Plato
summer squishy here and thinner and more pliable, so you
can use those to make the frosting, use regular Plato
to make the actual cupcake. That's because the cupcake graze
(17:25):
I bet yeah, probably has filtered down to kids. And
with the gluten free craze UM on your website it
says contains gluten yeah, has wheat yeah. But they have
to advertise that now because your child will want to
eat the Plato and if you have your kid off gluten,
they can't eat the Plato. No mommy has to explain
that or daddy. But if your kid has a peanut
(17:48):
allergy or um milk allergy, yeah you're fine. That's right. Water,
salt and flour is the general I mean to. It's
a very proprietary recipe obviously, right, it's a U S.
Patent number six seven one three six two four. But
(18:08):
if you look that up, you're not going to find
the ingredients. No, Like you said, it's proprietary. Um. They
they do give kind of like a general um ingredient
list somewhere I guess in the patent itself. Um. But yeah,
they're not gonna tell you like how to make it,
but we'll list those really quickly, and then we're gonna
(18:29):
talk about chemistry. Yeah, we're gonna get to the chemical
molecular basis of Plato itself. But in broad terms, at
his water, you got a starch based finder. You have
a retrograde aation inhibitor because you have to inhibit that
retrograde aation salt an they're salt in there. In fact,
at one point it was too salty and they had
(18:49):
to get a new uh chemist to remove some of
the salt. Is there, right? Yeah, but you remember how
salty it tasted. No, I didn't. I never tasted it.
Oh you didn't know, I said, you said you tasted it.
I said, I never did. I ate the paste. Okay,
I've never tasted it. But the smell was the paste.
The salty no, no, no, it had a weird sweet
(19:11):
taste to it. It wasn't overly sweet, but of all
of the tastes, that's sweet enough to get a kid
to eat it. Right. Uh, salt, you got your lubricate, um,
and all this will make sense in a bit. A surfactant, preservative, hardener,
a humicant, a fragrance of course in color. Uh. I
know we used almond for the first fragrance, but I
(19:32):
wonder if it's still an offshoot of that smell like almond.
From what I saw, they've admitted to vanilla. That's all
I've seen. And they're saying like that, that doesn't tell
us anything. That's all they admitted to. Yeah, under question. Um.
But the colors, we should also say chuckers. Um. They
originally had red, yellow, and blue primary colors. Then they
(19:54):
added white, and this is all in the fifties and
those are the only colors until the eighties, and they
added a couple more than they had eight colors total,
and then now today it's like a whole rainbow, a
whole galaxy of different colors. I never got the white
because it just it looked dirty so quickly. I never
really understood the purpose of the white. I liked it.
(20:15):
I thought it was a nice juxtaposition with the primary colors.
You're a artist, No, I was just a kind of sure,
all right, So now, um, the rest of the show,
we're gonna talk about chemistry. You're not happy about this? Sorry, Well,
what do you think about this article? I thought it
was It was good, you know, because that's what how
stuff works does, is they tell the story behind things,
(20:37):
Like we can't just talk about surfing. We have to
talk about the physics of a wave. I get that. Um,
but yeah, chemistry, it was not my bag, baby, this one. Um,
this one. Kissing and roller coasters. You're kind of like
you had a little bit of protests going on, like,
come on, this is fun stuff. Yeah, when you're talking
about kissing, you want to talk about Remember the title
(20:58):
of it was a rigid, sterile lucket. Well, I don't
know if the title for this will end up being
what I wanted but it was going to be taking
the fun out of Plato. No, let's call how Plato works.
All right, but you heard it here. That was my
working title. Yeah, alright, Well I will kick the chemistry
off and maybe I will spark your interest. Are you ready?
(21:22):
Do you have your beret and your smock on. This
isn't even the fun chemistry you get to burn things. No,
this is the chemistry of compounds. You're just adding them together.
You know. There's a little heat involved, as we'll see,
so you could start that flame. Okay, okay. So um,
the whole basis of Plato, it turns out, is an
interaction between starch and water. That's right, and starches are um,
(21:48):
they're polysach rides, which are sugar molecules. And there's basically
two varieties or two types that combine. There's amlos and
there's a melo pecton that's right, and analyst is like
a string. A melo pecton is branched, and when they
get together they form a starburst shape. They form a
molecule in a starburst shape, and it's arranged around a
(22:11):
central area hollow called the highland h I l u
M the highland and UM it's all held together thanks
to hydrogen bonds. And then you have all that these
polysach ride chains all mixed together with hydrogen bonds forming
a starburst. And my friend, you have a starch molecule.
And when you have the starch molecule, you have one
(22:32):
of the two bases of Plato. Yeah, and this one,
this article does have some pretty handy illustrations. If um hearing,
this doesn't make as much since you can follow along
on your own computer. Look at the illustrations. H If
you add cold water to starch um, the granules are
gonna absorb some. But when things really get interesting is
(22:55):
when you add warm water or when you heat up
that cold water to be warm water. Like you can
mix it ahead of time and then warm it up,
and basically what you're doing is making a gelatine, just
like when you make jello. It's gotta be warm water. Right.
Like if you've ever had like corn, starch or flour
or whatever um and you add cold water to it,
they just kind of separate, right. It's really untoward. It
(23:18):
doesn't do much. It's almost like the starch protects itself
against the cold. It's like brd you stay over there
cold water. But when you use warm water or a
mechanical action of mixing together, it forms, like you said,
it gelatinizes, and now you're starting to get the basis
of play dough. But the problem is um. When you
just add warm water and the starch in this case
(23:41):
it's wheat starch that they use, right, because they have
to war against gluten um. When you add those two things,
they mix together well, they form a nice gelatinous goo,
but as it dries, you've got the problem of retrogradation.
That's right, and that's that's trouble, yeah, because it really
depends on the breakdown of amlos to a melopecton is
(24:06):
the key. If you have a lot of amlos, it's
gonna take more swelling to gelatonizes, right. But you get
a nice robust gel when you have a lot of amylose.
But the problem is that excess amlos separates some from
the water, binds to itself, and then you have something
that's not a full compound anymore. It's basically like a
(24:28):
couple of it's it's like you've got that gel and
then some extra amulose and it's dry and brittle, and
it's not good. Well, yeah, and in the case of
making a product for kids to play with, it's too firm,
Like they had to get this recipe just right to
make it firm but still appliable, and a lot of
a lot of work went into this, I'm sure, yeah,
because at any time, like they started with the starch
(24:48):
and the water, put it together fantastic, but then that
created this problem. And then when they went to solve
this problem, it created this problem. So then they had
to solvate this problem. And then after adding like seven things,
they finally have this like precariously balanced compound. That's perfect.
That's perfect, but it's pretty neat. It's really complicated, and
(25:08):
it it's self complicating, which I find very interesting it is.
And what they ended up settling with as far as
percentages goes for that weed starts was amlose a melopecton.
They found that to be the secret sauce, right, as
our buddy Chad likes to say. And the reason they
have the a melo pecton is because the amelo pectin
(25:29):
is a waxy starch and it keeps the amlose from
binding to itself, so you have, um, you've prevented that
retrogradation problem. Right where the amlose separates from the water
and just binds to itself. The problem is now that
you have this extra a melo pecton, the a melo pectin.
It keeps the whole thing together, but it doesn't too much,
(25:51):
And now you have a sticky tacky compound. You don't
want it sticky. No, And anybody's ever played with Plato
and tried to make something. You can't make it sticky.
I'll stick to your hands or stick to itself. It's
not gonna make a cheeseburger like that. No. Um, So
they added something else, a lubricant that's right in this case. Uh.
I don't know if it's that's part of them the
(26:13):
secret or not, but it's probably some sort of a
vegetable oil or mineral oil. Well they think possibly it's
a it's a mineral oil which is derived from petroleum,
which petroleum which is why it's non toxic. Basically, shouldn't
eat it. Yeah, I didn't see that there was petroleum.
I bet you they're going to come out with a
gluten free play though I'm surprised they haven't already. But
that would almost be like admitting your child is eating
(26:35):
this or can't eat it. Well, some of that new stuff,
like the Sweet Shops stuff. I'm actually I would be
very surprised if they hadn't done some R and D
of different flavored play dough, you know, because if they
have the different colors and this is supposed to look
like this frosting, that's supposed to look like this frosting.
So I wonder if they were like, well, we can't
(26:56):
make this taste like vanilla or or you know, cotton
candy or whatever. But yeah, and then they kind of
shook their heads off and we're like, wait, we can't
have kids eating this stuff. Or I wonder if they've
done R and D on how much of it you
can eat before it makes you sick. Surely, Like if
they're making something that looks like a cupcake, some kid
is probably gonna eat that entire thing at some point.
And like we said, they've pretty much always been like,
(27:18):
you can make fake food with this pizza Hug gave
us money to do this, but don't eat it. Right,
it's a weird mixed message. It is a totally mixed message.
But you were saying they used the petroleum oil for
as a lubricant. Yeah, and that keeps it from being
all sticky. So if you've ever played with it, you
know it like it's very pliable, um and moist, but
it's not going to stick your fingers, which is the key.
(27:40):
So you have added the mineral oil or some sort
of lubricant to prevent the extra a melo pectin from
making it sticky. And the whole reason you added amlo
pecton was because too much amlose can cause retrogradation. So
you've got all these solutions, and you've got the lubri
con solution. The problem is you can't just put like
(28:03):
you can't just drop it into lubricant and expected to stick.
The lubricant will won't bind within this compound, so you
have to add yet another thing, the surfactant. Yeah, surfactants
you'll see in a lot of household cleansing products if
you use that chemical junk to clean your house. But
(28:23):
a surface active agent is another name for it, and
it basically, uh, they're artificially manufactured their molecules, but it's
gonna suspend something in water. It's the whole key to
being a surfactant. Imagine, a surfactant has two ends, and
one end is hydrophilic. Which means it attracts water and
is attracted to water, and the other is hydrophobic, which
(28:45):
means it repels water. And it's actually attracted to fats lipids,
right or afraid of it. Even The cool thing about
a surfactant is that if you take it and you
throw it into a solution of water and oil, fats
and waters, right it, one end will attract the fat
molecules and another end will attract the water molecules. And
(29:05):
what the end result of all of this is that
you can basically suspend fats in water or water and
fats um so that you have effectively, molecularly speaking, something
a compound that's all mixed together. It's not going to
separate like oil and water, because the whole thing is
being held together by surfactants. That's right, that's pretty amazing.
(29:28):
It actually binds to the molecules of the lubricantants the
chemical reaction is taking place and keeps them all mixed together.
It won't allow them to separate. So we've got the
lubricant in there. The whole thing is being held in
place by their surfactant. We've got a little extra water
chuck where we're gonna do. Uh well, I don't think
we mentioned earlier the reason it dries out to begin with,
(29:49):
if you leave it out overnight, it's just because evaporation, right,
And has Burrow recommends that if this happens, you take
your plate modeling clay and you um rapid like a
damp paper towel, put it back in the camp. But
to cover on it, leave it overnight should be good
as new. Yeah, and I've seen you can also add
a little water to it as well, um, but I've
never tried that. So that, my friend is it's a
(30:11):
very fine tuned mixture, like you said, they had to sure.
It took a lot of work over the years to
get it just exactly right. And we're gonna learn how
you can make your own right after this break, So Chuck,
we should have said. There's a couple of other things
that they add, Like you get excess water, so they
(30:32):
added a little salt, and apparently for the excess salt
they brought in a new chemist. So it's just fine,
perfectly fine tuned stuff. And they got a colored of course,
and and give it its sent yeah um, and then
uh possibly make it taste in the future. Who knows.
I'm betting on that. Yeah. And you know, the salts
(30:53):
also adds a little anti microbol element to it, which
is nice. It was so it has acts as a
preservative as well. Um And to make Plato, you just
put all this stuff in these um in the right
measurements and apply heat to it and mix it together
and package it and that's Plato. Yeah, and it's got
to have that shelf life like this is. It's really
(31:14):
hard to come up with a product like this that
meets all those needs. And we'll still like, you know,
I'm sure there were times early on we're like, oh,
this stuff is two weeks old on the shelf. It's
like a brick back to the drawing board, put on
your beret, in your smock. Remember in our How Twinkies
Works episode, they dealt with that initially, the shelf life, right,
(31:35):
so they just made it infinity. Man, that was such
a good episode. That was good, one of my all
time favorites. Agreed, We still get emails from people they're like,
I found the banana Twinkies. Yeah, they have them in
like um limited release from once in a while. Yeah,
I have yet to try one. I remember trying one
years ago, but it wasn't my bag. I don't like
banana flavorite things, but I like bananas. You're a very
(31:57):
complex man, Chuck. Well, they don't. They don't quite get
it right. Don't think ever. I've never tasted a banana
flavor thing that got it right. I'm hard to please, so,
um man, you just totally threw me off. What were
we talking? We were I think we were a chap
point where we're gonna make our own right. Right. So
it's very tough to make until you come upon the recipe.
But apparently a lot of people, even though it's a
(32:19):
proprietary recipe, a lot of people have come up with
their own recipes for Plato. Sure, and it's fun to
do with your kid, you know, like if they like
playing with it, then you can teach them a little
chemistry along the way, right if at a learning moment,
if you um, want to save some money, or you
don't want to feed the corporate beast, that too, um
or yeah, you just want to do something with your
(32:40):
kid and make it. You can do all this stuff.
It just takes a little elbow grease and work. And
there's recipes all over the internet. There's some for like
glowing the dark plato. There's some for glittery plato. Um.
There's a couple of recipes in this article on how
stuff works. But basically you're doing the same thing. You're
adding starch to water, you're adding some sort of lubricant
(33:03):
to it, something to hold the whole thing together. Uh.
And this recipe, it's a cream of tartar which stiffens
eggs and gives plato homemade plato. It's it's firmness. But
there's a lot of recipes online that if you want
to not only just play with plato with your kid,
but make it. That's a great chemistry teaching experience. I think, agreed.
(33:25):
And you can explain, um, you know what what each
ingredient is doing, and then at the very end you're
gonna have plato and your kid's gonna say this plato stinks.
It's not nearly as good as the real thing, unless
it's the peanut butter variety. When I'll bet you're like, oh,
this is tasty plato. Do they have that? Yeah, there's
a recipe for it in this article. It's the peanut
(33:46):
butter is one of the ingredients. Yes, interesting, Yeah, or
you know what you could make it with your kid. Wow.
You listen to us stumble through the explanation and to
everybody who's doing that right now? Hello, hello everyone and
your kids. Canna say? Who are these jerks? And why
does my Plato not work? Can we just go to
(34:07):
the store and buy some Plato please? Yeah? Well we're portable.
We go around on MP three players, so we can
go to the store with the exactly what else you got?
And then you can listen to our episode on temper
tantrums on the way to the store. That was a
good one too. It was what else you got? I've
got nothing else? Um? I got plenty more? Oh please
(34:29):
Mr Bill remember him from Sorry Life? Of course he
was made a Plato. Yeah, they made the first Mr
Bill short for twenty bucks. That's pretty good stuff. What
else you got? There's a there's not not just one,
but two at least Plato three D printers on the
market right now. Really, Yeah, it's pretty awesome. You put
(34:52):
a hunk of it in there, different hunks in there,
and no, no, no no, and it and it uh. I
was about to say a hunk in there and then
it whittles it down. But that's the opposite three D
p No, no, it extrudes it, it builds up. Yeah,
that's crazy. There's one on think Geek for like fifty
bucks that um plugs into your iPad so that's where
your schematics are and it tells it what to do
and it makes pretty cool little three D plato stuff.
(35:13):
That's kind of fun. It is. At the same time,
it's kind of like, you know, I mean, you're really
building a little geek there, but the imagination and the
hands on things kind of taken out of it a
little bit. Well, I think that that's the new imagination,
my friend, I guess. So to follow forms and schematics
to a t it would be cool is if you
(35:35):
could design your own schematic and then which I'm sure
you can yeah. Um. And then Plato has one called
the do vinci Um and that's a three D printer too.
And then one other thing I found we were talking
about plato ads earlier, there is a series of band
plato ads that were published in Singapore a couple of
(35:59):
years back. Oh, band is and I thought you meant
like bands recorded music. No, no, like band and any
D taboo plato ads that are very adult centrically. Yeah that, Um,
can you say, what? Well, how about this? I made
a slide show of them on our site. You can
go check them out. They're pretty crazy. Um they're not
(36:21):
like naked or and not adult in that way, but
like kind of violent and a little dark. Um that
this ad agency made basically without the approval of Hasbro.
Um And uh, Hasbro came in and like denounced it
and everything. But they're pretty great. So if you go
to stuff you should dot com and search banned Plato ads,
(36:41):
it will come up. And Hasbro had a news Releases
says we don't endorse this use of Plato brand multiple
clay right, they just kept working the name in there. Yeah,
it's pretty crazy. I learned all about something called scam ads,
where um advertising agencies basically create ad campaigns based around
brand names without the brand names permission, simply to submit
(37:04):
them for awards consideration to expand their prestige. Interesting. Well,
and uh, if you want to be a TV commercial director,
you have probably made some spec or fake ads yourself
just to have on your reel. Like you know, I'm
gonna make a Dirito, Well doritos I said cost over year, right,
So this is that same thing, but sometimes they really
(37:25):
run a foul of like the spirit of the brand. Um,
and there's scam ads. Yeah, they're like European commercials, which
are always way better and risque and like funny. Yeah,
get with it, America. So if you want to learn
more about Plato, including a few Plato recipes, you can
type Plato into the search part house stuff works dot
(37:46):
Com and and say said search parts time for a
listener mail. I'm gonna call this another m p a
A called the Golden f Bomb. Hey, guys, I discovered
your show, um and he says a little Jerry and
spilled her name to which doesn't happen aten the spelling
that is, I discovered your podcast while looking for something
(38:07):
interesting to listen to while I worked on my organic
farm in Kauai. I heard the mp A show and
I just had to write. In Growing up, my friends
and I were always looking for a way to sneak
into movie theaters. He had the exit door, having an
older friend or parent, biased tickets, using a ticket single
ticket stub passed back through to get in on the
same ticket, etcetera. He had all sorts of ways of
(38:28):
stealing our goal was to get into an R rated
movie underage, with n C seventeen being the ultimate prize.
PG thirteen always felt like we had failed or were settling,
So to make it fun we would count how many
expletives were we heard and compare notes after the movie.
He really took things to a different level. It must
(38:49):
have been a time when movies weren't as good as
they are today in the theaters in the movies have
never been this bad. It is really out of terrible. Uh.
One pattern we soon realized was that PG thirteen movies
are allotted one F bomb. Listening for that one F
bomb became the looked for a moment making the PG
thirteen movie experience. It's had more interesting and something I
(39:11):
look out for to this day. Still. There are some
real classics, including Ron Burgundy's an Anchorman, most recently in Skyfall,
when Judy Ditch uses that naughty word she did, I
don't remember that, Judy, the first one in the Bond
series and Judy, Judy, I just saw Filimino. By the way, finally,
what did you think it was fantastic? Was that just
(39:33):
an amazing change of pace for her? She always plays
like the short pulled together like yeah, like Boss Lady
and this when she was just kind of just working class.
That was a good movie. That was really good. Love
that movie, highly recommended um And then I noticed the
rating rule is not ironclad, however, because recent examples of
Lincoln and Filomena. Hey, how about that had two of
(39:56):
those naughty words a piece. Lincoln had it in there,
hunts that's o bird gets away with anything. Well, he's
the one that had the whole thing changed. Oh yeah,
he was the one that created it. Yeah, and then
he ran a foul of it. Anyway, My absolute favorite
PG thirteen Golden Goal naughty word uh not mentioned anywhere
(40:16):
else that I've researched, was the one that got me
out of my seat cheering, like the President's speech and
Independence Days from Oblivion. Tom Cruise's character awaits to the
very end of the movie to deliver the perfectly timed
line to his enemy. That movie stunk, did it? Yeah?
I heard the other one was pretty good though, Edge
of Tomorrow, Yeah, that was really good. Oblivion stunk. And
(40:38):
he closes by saying, Mahalo Nuela, thank you very much
for all you do to in Photinous and that is
evans On Kauaii. Uh yeah, sorry, Evans, Oblivion was no good.
He said that he liked it a lot, but you know,
to each their own, I'm not gonna poopoo his taste.
Good for you, Chuck, Thanks for your your game and
your fevery. If you want to talk to me and
(41:01):
Chuck about movies, we are always down for that. We
love talking about movies. We should just like do an
episode where we just just say have you seen this movie? Oh? Yeah,
I love that one for like a half hour. There'll
be a couple of people out there they're like, this
is a good episode. There are podcasts like exactly like that.
You know that? Mm hmm um, what was I just saying?
(41:23):
Oh yeah. If you want to get in touch with
us for whatever reason, movies or otherwise, you can tweet
to us at s YSK podcast. You can join us
on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You
can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how
stuff Works dot com, and you can join us at
our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
(41:46):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
it how Stuff Works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and this is the first
of two Stuff you Should Knows that we're recording today.
My voice already sounds weird to me. What do you
(00:22):
mean it doesn't sound a little weird, you know how
like when we get towards the end of the second one,
or it gets a little like worn out or something. Yeah,
like it's been extruded through a Plato fun factory. What's
all that is set up? Or do you really feel
that way that was off the cuff? Baby, Okay, No,
it doesn't sound weird to me. Your voice never sounds weird.
Mus you're sick, Jerry Judge McCall, Yeah, Jerry Brooklyn Ti
(00:46):
she sided with me. Well, Jerry, were headphones. But you
and I fight the broadcasting business by being the only
people that don't wear headphones or cans. I never get it,
like your two ft from me when my headphones, I know,
and I don't want to hear myself anyway. I don't
want to hear myself better. No, it's terrible. It sounds
like torture that. How about this for a new s
Y s K T shirt? No more cans just have
(01:09):
a little X through some headphones. I think when you
make a step, you should know a decree from now
we should have like a fairy wand sound effect. We
just like, here's this for a new T shirt. I
decreate be made into existence. Yeah, we get. We're gonna
by the way, since I mentioned it, we're gonna have
some new shirts coming soon. Yeah, some good like some
fan designs even yep, exciting. Yeah, we and we do
(01:33):
have some now that people can go by if I
like those first designs we had, and I well, let's
just have this out on the air. It's not an argument,
but let's have this discussion. Are we going to retire
the original six from the contest or should we just
let them keep going in perpetuity? Oh, unless there's a reason.
I think perpetuity is the way to go. But someone
might like the dancing uh you know what we call that,
(01:55):
the skeleton would cut Yeah, perfect parade of dancing skeletons,
the maccab parade, That's what I would call it. Doesn't
give him All six of them were excellent. The baby
with the fly on its forehead. Still my altime paper.
Good stuff. If you don't know what we're talking about,
go to stuff you should know dot com are venerable
website and uh in the top navigation there's a store
button and it will take your store and you can
(02:17):
see with your own very eyes, what the heck we're
talking about? That was off the cuff. Yeah it was.
I wasn't like, oh, we gotta plug the T shirts. No, no, no,
You very rarely say things as fretfully as that, chuck. Yes,
do you want to talk about Plato? Yeah, we promised
to do this recently, and here we are. If, in
(02:39):
my defensive, is already on the list. Oh well, so
it's not like, you know, I'm at the beck and
call of anybody's like, do Plato do this? Do that? No,
it was already on the list. Um did you play
with Plato a lot when you're a kid? Oh? I
played with it. I ate it. I don't recall eating it.
I do specifically recall eating the paste that was an
(03:04):
off brand that had a purple pirate on it. Oh,
he was. He was a pirate wearing a purple hat.
And I think maybe it an orange parrot. Yeah, it
was the paste. Did I have a on the inside
the lid? Did I have a applicator attached to it? Yeah?
I totally ate that paste. That was the best tasting
paste on the planet. As a matter of fact, I
think that paste might have been manufactured in part to
(03:24):
eat like it's served to like kids, some bad kids. Yeah. Actually,
I want to revise my statement. I take I licked
and tasted Plato. I don't remember like swallowing it, but
I remember, like, you know, tasting it and then maybe
you can put it in my mouth and spitting it
back out. But I don't think I got you. Yeah. Um,
(03:45):
I never. I don't think I ever ate Plato in
any form or fashion. But the scent of it, it's unmistakable, unmistakable.
It's so unmistakable in fact that apparently back in two
thousand and six, plato Or has growth a year long
celebration for Plato, which it owns, which it bought off
of Kenner, which Kenner bought from a dude named Joe McVicker's.
(04:09):
Actually they bought it from Tonka. Talk about it from Kenner?
Oh yeah, how do I forget Tonka exactly? Um? And
for this fiftieth birthday party, they had a a cent
a Plato perfume released that smelled just like Plato. Can
you buy that? Wonder? I looked, and I think you
can get it, but I don't think as easy as
(04:29):
you could. Back in two thousand six. Yeah, I wouldn't
want to wear it. I was just curious. I think, yeah, nostalgia,
I like them. I would like to smell it, but
don't spread that stuff on me. I don't think you're
supposed to wear it. Was it just like, yeah, one
of those things, the mood stabilizer. Okay, you know what
I mean. Yea spray in front of your face and
you just go, oh yeah, okay, should put this lead
pipe down and rethink things? Right? Remember when I was
(04:52):
a kid and let's violent, somebody give me some paste
to eat? They should do that. Well back when you
were a kid, Um, did you know much about the
origin and play Plato? Oh? No, not at all. I
didn't either until today. You're yesterday when I started researching
this Plato everyone and in this article by Tracy Wilson,
(05:12):
who hosts Stuffy miss in History class Um, she says
that it's lower, but I've seen it all over the place,
and from what I understand, it's the truth. I think
it's the truth. There was a dude named Joe mcvickers
who had a company and his company, uh produced, from
what I understand, mc vicker's invention, which was wallpaper cleaner. Yeah.
(05:35):
They his his father and uncle started it and they
were called Coutole Products and it was a soap company,
and but their big seller was this wall cleaner because
when we heated our homes with coal, your house would
get coal sit on the walls, which is really weird
to think of now. Yeah, but it's true. And your
wallpaper can still get dirty, grease from cooking things, food fights,
(05:59):
what ever, your wallpaper can get dirty. Let's just face facts, everybody.
And mc vicker's company had this putty. It was kind
of a pliable, gooey putty that you slapped up against
the wallpaper and rolled up and down and it just
took that suit or that grease or that spaghetti sauce
clean off. And it was wallpaper cleaner and it was
(06:22):
doing okay. I guess I don't think they were like
hurting necessarily. But Joe was married to a woman, or
was his sister in law. Was a teacher. Yeah, it
was Cincinnati. Yeah. They they sold a lot of this
stuff for a while, but then natural gas came around
and so they fell upon hard times. But um Joe
(06:44):
took over from Cleo. Uh as Cleo's was his father
and his sister in law, cash Fall of New Jersey,
read about kids that were making Christmas ornaments out of
that stuff and she said out of the wallpaper cleaner. Yeah,
and uh, much like kids do today with Plato. And
she said, hey, you know we're hurting, why don't we
(07:06):
try and turn this stuff into a toy. And they
did so, and in ninet he made a non toxic version,
added some almond scent, and you had your first little
off white Plato. Yeah. Kind of exactly what you would
think of when you think of a gummy colored like dough. Yeah,
off white khaki almost yeah. Um and mc vicker was
(07:31):
a pretty smart dude as far as business goes. He
um donated a bunch of cans to the Cincinnati City
school system. Very smart, and so got these little kids
hooked on Plato. It was a huge hit, but it
it might have just been a regional hit. Uh. And
if he hadn't have approached a dude named Captain Kangaroo. Yeah,
(07:52):
he went to, Uh, what does Keptain Kangary's name Bob,
Bob Keashan. I think Bob Keashan nice memory, Chuck I
pulled out from I don't know how many years ago
heard that name. He well, did you watch Captain Kangaroo?
Me too, love Captain Kangaroo. I like Captain Kangaroo more
than Mr Rogers. I liked them both, but yeah, I
think I might have been Yeah, Captain Kangaro a little
(08:13):
bit more. It was a haircut and I was Electric
Company over Sesame Street Amon. Yeah, I like both, but
I like the Electric Electric Company more. But I like
Pinwheel most. I didn't watch that. It was for real
little kids. Um. Anyway, Captain Kangaroo had a show and
Joe mcvickers somehow got in contact with Captain Kangaroo and said, hey,
(08:36):
I have a little deal for you. We've got this
awesome stuff. The kids in Cincinnati are crazy for it. Um.
We're calling it Plato right now. It's an off white
where it used to be, but now we have four colors, red, blue, yellow,
and white. Those are the four original colors of Plato.
By the way, and he gave someone to Captain Kangaroo said,
I will give you two percent of gross sales if
(08:58):
you mentioned this on your show two times a week
he played with it. Bob Keashon was a money grubber.
That's so we all know he I think he believed
in this product. Yeah, and as he's a smart guy,
he is. And uh, he believed in it so much
that he upped the number of mentions without any additional compensation,
from two times a week to as many as three
times a week. He would play with Plato on TV
(09:21):
and it just took off like a rocket from there.
That was his additional compensation that he got free Plato. No,
he had a percentage. So, oh yeah, you're you know
what I'm saying. You're right, But it suggests that he
believed in it. That's right. He did believe in it.
And do not shatter my image, Captain Kangaroo. I'm not
saying he just wanted to make more money, of course not.
Isn't that the show that Mr green Jean's was on.
(09:44):
Big fan of that guy too. Uh. They formed the
Rainbow Crafts Company. Um, you know, they wanted to take
it out from under the Cotole Products banner and got
famous wildlife artist John Ruthven to design that first package
with Originally it was very briefly it was an elf. Yeah,
and those I think you're probably if you have a
(10:05):
can of that, you probably it's probably in a museum
or something that wasn't around long. And then they went
to Plato pete Um the kid with the smock in
the beret, because all little kids wore berets and smocks
back then, or you wore your dad's dress shirt like backwards.
That made a good smock too. Yeah, the one he
didn't want anymore, or that you thought he didn't want anymore,
(10:28):
but he really got mad at you. He got paint
on it. That's my good short sleeve dress shirt. Uh.
And finally it took all the way until two thousand
two did the Herbal Elvis wear short sleeve dress shirts
with slacks and ties. Yeah. My dad usually as a
principal wore a coat. But when you take off the
(10:50):
jacket and you've got the short sleep that's something else.
With a blue felt tippin, a red felt tippin, and
green felt tip pin in his pocket front pot it
that was your dad. Yeah, he's a mechanical engineer. Oh
so each one had a different use. I think he
also just thought they were pretty Yeah, like they kind
of they made it. They made a shirt pocket. Pop.
(11:13):
That's where you get it with your shirt pocket thing, right,
all right. It took it until two thousand two for
that beret to become a baseball cap, and then now
he's just gone. Yeah I was looking like somebody anymore
at not at all. Now it's a can with arms
and the lids kind of pulled back, and in between
the rim of the can in the top of the
(11:33):
litter a couple of eyes. It looks a bit like
a garbage can, but it's obviously a Plato can, but
just kind of I don't like it. I like Plato Pete,
the kid with the beret, Yeah, me too. He was great.
That's what we grew up with. His nostalgia. Yeah, but
he was around for a really long time. And just
do away with him like he's nothing. That's another shirt.
(11:56):
Bring back Plato Pete. Yeah, we'll get sued, although I
didn't get the impression that they were too terribly litigious. Well,
plus we could tell him we sold nine T shirts.
You're sure seventy three dollars two percent. So Plato, we
all played with it. It was fun, uh for modeling,
but it was not like if you were like me,
(12:19):
your your hopes were dashed a bit when you modeled
something and left it out overnight because you thought it
would make it into a permanent um exhibit. Yeah, but
it would really just kind of break apart. It's not
like you can't cure it like you do modeling clay. No.
I was on Plato's site and they readily admit that
as a matter of fact. They say, if you want
(12:41):
a permanent thing, go get your some modeling clay. You
get some sculpie. Um. I don't want to buzz market,
but sculpies a lot of fun. Okay, um, we're talking
about Plato though. Yeah, that sculpie is fun. Um So,
but they say modeling clay. They don't say sculpie. But
they say, if you want to make a permanent thing,
go get some molling clay. It's not what Plato's for.
It's it's or being in the moment making fun things
(13:03):
and then put smashing those and then putting it back
in the can, doing it all over again every day,
and driving your mom crazy because she can't stand colors
to be mixed together. She sits there and pick them
apart or whatever. Or it's in the orange sad carpet,
which again has bro has some some helpful suggestions for
how to clean this stuff up. Um number one, and
(13:25):
you will understand eventually by the end of this podcast.
Why do not use warm water when you're cleaning up
Plato from the carpet. Yeah, it will make everything a
million times worse what they say, if possible, if you
have the patients of job, just go ahead and let
this thing dry, turn brittle, use a stiff brush and
(13:46):
just kind of brush it out of the carpeting, vacuum
it up boom, or do the reasonable thing and get
hardwood floors. All right, Well we'll discuss that very soon,
um after this message. Alright, So Plato is fun enough
(14:10):
on its own. Like when I was a kid, I
had zero, a couch rum all to go along with
my Plato. I don't recall having anything but just the
Plato to All I had was the Plato in my imagination.
And uh, I said, you know what, let's get a
couple of engineers from General Electric to design what's going
to be called the fun Factory. That's like, that was it.
(14:32):
That was it. Then you could put Plato into various
forms and molds and press it and have it come
out like sausage or spaghetti or just whatever they decided
to design. Like, have you been to the site recently?
There are hundreds of different things that you can buy
now with your Plato, of course, yes, and different types
of Plato to to make different looking things as well. Yeah. Um,
(14:55):
but the original fun Factory things basically just a hand
pushed lever that shoved the Plato inside through a hole
a sausage and then basically and then in front of
the hole. Um, you had just kind of like different
um shapes that you could make this thing into what
did you say, spaghetti and the rope. Speaking of the rope,
(15:18):
all of these are basically what it is. An extruder.
This is a Plato extruder. Is what what these guys
came up with. And I guarantee they had colored felt
tip pens in the front of their pockets too when
they designed this thing. But this, if you took all
the Plato. By the way, here's a Plato fun fact.
If you took all the Plato ever created, and ran
(15:38):
it through the fun factory and extruded it into one
long rope. It would wrap around the earth three thousand
times how many big maxes that no, I'm sorry it
were wrapped around there? Or three hundred times let's not
let's not go crazy on. Yeah, and you could go
to the moon and back ten times with that rope.
You could make a pretty good little break that would
(16:00):
be kind of crumbly by the next day, but it
would be colorful. That's right. That's a little lot of Plato, man. Yeah,
they've sold nine hundred and fifty million pounds of this stuff,
more than two billion cans since nineteen fifty six. Yeah,
and they apparently make about a hundred million cans every year.
What I find heartening is those are current statistics that
(16:22):
are not rated for inflation, you know. But um, this
article that Tracy wrote was apparently written in two thousand
and six. She said that they make nine million cans,
so they've up their production by five million cans a year,
which means Plato is not going anywhere. That's right. I'm
pretty psyched about that. Yeah, and all the stuff they
have now, like, um, they've got all sorts of licensing
(16:42):
deals like they have like the Plato Disney Princess set
and you can make dresses for your Disney princess out
of Plato. And um they have a longstanding tradition too
of making fake food. Like I was, I was watching
some UM. I wouldn't really call it documentary. It is
almost just a compilation of Plato ads over the years.
And um there's one from the eighties where you could
(17:04):
make pizza hut pizzas out of Plato. I think I
remember that. Nowadays they have UM like a kind of
a sweet shop I think is the name of the line.
And like I said, they have different types of Plato
summer squishy here and thinner and more pliable, so you
can use those to make the frosting, use regular Plato
to make the actual cupcake. That's because the cupcake graze
(17:25):
I bet yeah, probably has filtered down to kids. And
with the gluten free craze UM on your website it
says contains gluten yeah, has wheat yeah. But they have
to advertise that now because your child will want to
eat the Plato and if you have your kid off gluten,
they can't eat the Plato. No mommy has to explain
that or daddy. But if your kid has a peanut
(17:48):
allergy or um milk allergy, yeah you're fine. That's right. Water,
salt and flour is the general I mean to. It's
a very proprietary recipe obviously, right, it's a U S.
Patent number six seven one three six two four. But
(18:08):
if you look that up, you're not going to find
the ingredients. No, Like you said, it's proprietary. Um. They
they do give kind of like a general um ingredient
list somewhere I guess in the patent itself. Um. But yeah,
they're not gonna tell you like how to make it,
but we'll list those really quickly, and then we're gonna
(18:29):
talk about chemistry. Yeah, we're gonna get to the chemical
molecular basis of Plato itself. But in broad terms, at
his water, you got a starch based finder. You have
a retrograde aation inhibitor because you have to inhibit that
retrograde aation salt an they're salt in there. In fact,
at one point it was too salty and they had
(18:49):
to get a new uh chemist to remove some of
the salt. Is there, right? Yeah, but you remember how
salty it tasted. No, I didn't. I never tasted it.
Oh you didn't know, I said, you said you tasted it.
I said, I never did. I ate the paste. Okay,
I've never tasted it. But the smell was the paste.
The salty no, no, no, it had a weird sweet
(19:11):
taste to it. It wasn't overly sweet, but of all
of the tastes, that's sweet enough to get a kid
to eat it. Right. Uh, salt, you got your lubricate, um,
and all this will make sense in a bit. A surfactant, preservative, hardener,
a humicant, a fragrance of course in color. Uh. I
know we used almond for the first fragrance, but I
(19:32):
wonder if it's still an offshoot of that smell like almond.
From what I saw, they've admitted to vanilla. That's all
I've seen. And they're saying like that, that doesn't tell
us anything. That's all they admitted to. Yeah, under question. Um.
But the colors, we should also say chuckers. Um. They
originally had red, yellow, and blue primary colors. Then they
(19:54):
added white, and this is all in the fifties and
those are the only colors until the eighties, and they
added a couple more than they had eight colors total,
and then now today it's like a whole rainbow, a
whole galaxy of different colors. I never got the white
because it just it looked dirty so quickly. I never
really understood the purpose of the white. I liked it.
(20:15):
I thought it was a nice juxtaposition with the primary colors.
You're a artist, No, I was just a kind of sure,
all right, So now, um, the rest of the show,
we're gonna talk about chemistry. You're not happy about this? Sorry, Well,
what do you think about this article? I thought it
was It was good, you know, because that's what how
stuff works does, is they tell the story behind things,
(20:37):
Like we can't just talk about surfing. We have to
talk about the physics of a wave. I get that. Um,
but yeah, chemistry, it was not my bag, baby, this one. Um,
this one. Kissing and roller coasters. You're kind of like
you had a little bit of protests going on, like,
come on, this is fun stuff. Yeah, when you're talking
about kissing, you want to talk about Remember the title
(20:58):
of it was a rigid, sterile lucket. Well, I don't
know if the title for this will end up being
what I wanted but it was going to be taking
the fun out of Plato. No, let's call how Plato works.
All right, but you heard it here. That was my
working title. Yeah, alright, Well I will kick the chemistry
off and maybe I will spark your interest. Are you ready?
(21:22):
Do you have your beret and your smock on. This
isn't even the fun chemistry you get to burn things. No,
this is the chemistry of compounds. You're just adding them together.
You know. There's a little heat involved, as we'll see,
so you could start that flame. Okay, okay. So um,
the whole basis of Plato, it turns out, is an
interaction between starch and water. That's right, and starches are um,
(21:48):
they're polysach rides, which are sugar molecules. And there's basically
two varieties or two types that combine. There's amlos and
there's a melo pecton that's right, and analyst is like
a string. A melo pecton is branched, and when they
get together they form a starburst shape. They form a
molecule in a starburst shape, and it's arranged around a
(22:11):
central area hollow called the highland h I l u
M the highland and UM it's all held together thanks
to hydrogen bonds. And then you have all that these
polysach ride chains all mixed together with hydrogen bonds forming
a starburst. And my friend, you have a starch molecule.
And when you have the starch molecule, you have one
(22:32):
of the two bases of Plato. Yeah, and this one,
this article does have some pretty handy illustrations. If um hearing,
this doesn't make as much since you can follow along
on your own computer. Look at the illustrations. H If
you add cold water to starch um, the granules are
gonna absorb some. But when things really get interesting is
(22:55):
when you add warm water or when you heat up
that cold water to be warm water. Like you can
mix it ahead of time and then warm it up,
and basically what you're doing is making a gelatine, just
like when you make jello. It's gotta be warm water. Right.
Like if you've ever had like corn, starch or flour
or whatever um and you add cold water to it,
they just kind of separate, right. It's really untoward. It
(23:18):
doesn't do much. It's almost like the starch protects itself
against the cold. It's like brd you stay over there
cold water. But when you use warm water or a
mechanical action of mixing together, it forms, like you said,
it gelatinizes, and now you're starting to get the basis
of play dough. But the problem is um. When you
just add warm water and the starch in this case
(23:41):
it's wheat starch that they use, right, because they have
to war against gluten um. When you add those two things,
they mix together well, they form a nice gelatinous goo,
but as it dries, you've got the problem of retrogradation.
That's right, and that's that's trouble, yeah, because it really
depends on the breakdown of amlos to a melopecton is
(24:06):
the key. If you have a lot of amlos, it's
gonna take more swelling to gelatonizes, right. But you get
a nice robust gel when you have a lot of amylose.
But the problem is that excess amlos separates some from
the water, binds to itself, and then you have something
that's not a full compound anymore. It's basically like a
(24:28):
couple of it's it's like you've got that gel and
then some extra amulose and it's dry and brittle, and
it's not good. Well, yeah, and in the case of
making a product for kids to play with, it's too firm,
Like they had to get this recipe just right to
make it firm but still appliable, and a lot of
a lot of work went into this, I'm sure, yeah,
because at any time, like they started with the starch
(24:48):
and the water, put it together fantastic, but then that
created this problem. And then when they went to solve
this problem, it created this problem. So then they had
to solvate this problem. And then after adding like seven things,
they finally have this like precariously balanced compound. That's perfect.
That's perfect, but it's pretty neat. It's really complicated, and
(25:08):
it it's self complicating, which I find very interesting it is.
And what they ended up settling with as far as
percentages goes for that weed starts was amlose a melopecton.
They found that to be the secret sauce, right, as
our buddy Chad likes to say. And the reason they
have the a melo pecton is because the amelo pectin
(25:29):
is a waxy starch and it keeps the amlose from
binding to itself, so you have, um, you've prevented that
retrogradation problem. Right where the amlose separates from the water
and just binds to itself. The problem is now that
you have this extra a melo pecton, the a melo pectin.
It keeps the whole thing together, but it doesn't too much,
(25:51):
And now you have a sticky tacky compound. You don't
want it sticky. No, And anybody's ever played with Plato
and tried to make something. You can't make it sticky.
I'll stick to your hands or stick to itself. It's
not gonna make a cheeseburger like that. No. Um, So
they added something else, a lubricant that's right in this case. Uh.
I don't know if it's that's part of them the
(26:13):
secret or not, but it's probably some sort of a
vegetable oil or mineral oil. Well they think possibly it's
a it's a mineral oil which is derived from petroleum,
which petroleum which is why it's non toxic. Basically, shouldn't
eat it. Yeah, I didn't see that there was petroleum.
I bet you they're going to come out with a
gluten free play though I'm surprised they haven't already. But
that would almost be like admitting your child is eating
(26:35):
this or can't eat it. Well, some of that new stuff,
like the Sweet Shops stuff. I'm actually I would be
very surprised if they hadn't done some R and D
of different flavored play dough, you know, because if they
have the different colors and this is supposed to look
like this frosting, that's supposed to look like this frosting.
So I wonder if they were like, well, we can't
(26:56):
make this taste like vanilla or or you know, cotton
candy or whatever. But yeah, and then they kind of
shook their heads off and we're like, wait, we can't
have kids eating this stuff. Or I wonder if they've
done R and D on how much of it you
can eat before it makes you sick. Surely, Like if
they're making something that looks like a cupcake, some kid
is probably gonna eat that entire thing at some point.
And like we said, they've pretty much always been like,
(27:18):
you can make fake food with this pizza Hug gave
us money to do this, but don't eat it. Right,
it's a weird mixed message. It is a totally mixed message.
But you were saying they used the petroleum oil for
as a lubricant. Yeah, and that keeps it from being
all sticky. So if you've ever played with it, you
know it like it's very pliable, um and moist, but
it's not going to stick your fingers, which is the key.
(27:40):
So you have added the mineral oil or some sort
of lubricant to prevent the extra a melo pectin from
making it sticky. And the whole reason you added amlo
pecton was because too much amlose can cause retrogradation. So
you've got all these solutions, and you've got the lubri
con solution. The problem is you can't just put like
(28:03):
you can't just drop it into lubricant and expected to stick.
The lubricant will won't bind within this compound, so you
have to add yet another thing, the surfactant. Yeah, surfactants
you'll see in a lot of household cleansing products if
you use that chemical junk to clean your house. But
(28:23):
a surface active agent is another name for it, and
it basically, uh, they're artificially manufactured their molecules, but it's
gonna suspend something in water. It's the whole key to
being a surfactant. Imagine, a surfactant has two ends, and
one end is hydrophilic. Which means it attracts water and
is attracted to water, and the other is hydrophobic, which
(28:45):
means it repels water. And it's actually attracted to fats lipids,
right or afraid of it. Even The cool thing about
a surfactant is that if you take it and you
throw it into a solution of water and oil, fats
and waters, right it, one end will attract the fat
molecules and another end will attract the water molecules. And
(29:05):
what the end result of all of this is that
you can basically suspend fats in water or water and
fats um so that you have effectively, molecularly speaking, something
a compound that's all mixed together. It's not going to
separate like oil and water, because the whole thing is
being held together by surfactants. That's right, that's pretty amazing.
(29:28):
It actually binds to the molecules of the lubricantants the
chemical reaction is taking place and keeps them all mixed together.
It won't allow them to separate. So we've got the
lubricant in there. The whole thing is being held in
place by their surfactant. We've got a little extra water
chuck where we're gonna do. Uh well, I don't think
we mentioned earlier the reason it dries out to begin with,
(29:49):
if you leave it out overnight, it's just because evaporation, right,
And has Burrow recommends that if this happens, you take
your plate modeling clay and you um rapid like a
damp paper towel, put it back in the camp. But
to cover on it, leave it overnight should be good
as new. Yeah, and I've seen you can also add
a little water to it as well, um, but I've
never tried that. So that, my friend is it's a
(30:11):
very fine tuned mixture, like you said, they had to sure.
It took a lot of work over the years to
get it just exactly right. And we're gonna learn how
you can make your own right after this break, So Chuck,
we should have said. There's a couple of other things
that they add, Like you get excess water, so they
(30:32):
added a little salt, and apparently for the excess salt
they brought in a new chemist. So it's just fine,
perfectly fine tuned stuff. And they got a colored of course,
and and give it its sent yeah um, and then
uh possibly make it taste in the future. Who knows.
I'm betting on that. Yeah. And you know, the salts
(30:53):
also adds a little anti microbol element to it, which
is nice. It was so it has acts as a
preservative as well. Um And to make Plato, you just
put all this stuff in these um in the right
measurements and apply heat to it and mix it together
and package it and that's Plato. Yeah, and it's got
to have that shelf life like this is. It's really
(31:14):
hard to come up with a product like this that
meets all those needs. And we'll still like, you know,
I'm sure there were times early on we're like, oh,
this stuff is two weeks old on the shelf. It's
like a brick back to the drawing board, put on
your beret, in your smock. Remember in our How Twinkies
Works episode, they dealt with that initially, the shelf life, right,
(31:35):
so they just made it infinity. Man, that was such
a good episode. That was good, one of my all
time favorites. Agreed, We still get emails from people they're like,
I found the banana Twinkies. Yeah, they have them in
like um limited release from once in a while. Yeah,
I have yet to try one. I remember trying one
years ago, but it wasn't my bag. I don't like
banana flavorite things, but I like bananas. You're a very
(31:57):
complex man, Chuck. Well, they don't. They don't quite get
it right. Don't think ever. I've never tasted a banana
flavor thing that got it right. I'm hard to please, so,
um man, you just totally threw me off. What were
we talking? We were I think we were a chap
point where we're gonna make our own right. Right. So
it's very tough to make until you come upon the recipe.
But apparently a lot of people, even though it's a
(32:19):
proprietary recipe, a lot of people have come up with
their own recipes for Plato. Sure, and it's fun to
do with your kid, you know, like if they like
playing with it, then you can teach them a little
chemistry along the way, right if at a learning moment,
if you um, want to save some money, or you
don't want to feed the corporate beast, that too, um
or yeah, you just want to do something with your
(32:40):
kid and make it. You can do all this stuff.
It just takes a little elbow grease and work. And
there's recipes all over the internet. There's some for like
glowing the dark plato. There's some for glittery plato. Um.
There's a couple of recipes in this article on how
stuff works. But basically you're doing the same thing. You're
adding starch to water, you're adding some sort of lubricant
(33:03):
to it, something to hold the whole thing together. Uh.
And this recipe, it's a cream of tartar which stiffens
eggs and gives plato homemade plato. It's it's firmness. But
there's a lot of recipes online that if you want
to not only just play with plato with your kid,
but make it. That's a great chemistry teaching experience. I think, agreed.
(33:25):
And you can explain, um, you know what what each
ingredient is doing, and then at the very end you're
gonna have plato and your kid's gonna say this plato stinks.
It's not nearly as good as the real thing, unless
it's the peanut butter variety. When I'll bet you're like, oh,
this is tasty plato. Do they have that? Yeah, there's
a recipe for it in this article. It's the peanut
(33:46):
butter is one of the ingredients. Yes, interesting, Yeah, or
you know what you could make it with your kid. Wow.
You listen to us stumble through the explanation and to
everybody who's doing that right now? Hello, hello everyone and
your kids. Canna say? Who are these jerks? And why
does my Plato not work? Can we just go to
(34:07):
the store and buy some Plato please? Yeah? Well we're portable.
We go around on MP three players, so we can
go to the store with the exactly what else you got?
And then you can listen to our episode on temper
tantrums on the way to the store. That was a
good one too. It was what else you got? I've
got nothing else? Um? I got plenty more? Oh please
(34:29):
Mr Bill remember him from Sorry Life? Of course he
was made a Plato. Yeah, they made the first Mr
Bill short for twenty bucks. That's pretty good stuff. What
else you got? There's a there's not not just one,
but two at least Plato three D printers on the
market right now. Really, Yeah, it's pretty awesome. You put
(34:52):
a hunk of it in there, different hunks in there,
and no, no, no no, and it and it uh. I
was about to say a hunk in there and then
it whittles it down. But that's the opposite three D
p No, no, it extrudes it, it builds up. Yeah,
that's crazy. There's one on think Geek for like fifty
bucks that um plugs into your iPad so that's where
your schematics are and it tells it what to do
and it makes pretty cool little three D plato stuff.
(35:13):
That's kind of fun. It is. At the same time,
it's kind of like, you know, I mean, you're really
building a little geek there, but the imagination and the
hands on things kind of taken out of it a
little bit. Well, I think that that's the new imagination,
my friend, I guess. So to follow forms and schematics
to a t it would be cool is if you
(35:35):
could design your own schematic and then which I'm sure
you can yeah. Um. And then Plato has one called
the do vinci Um and that's a three D printer too.
And then one other thing I found we were talking
about plato ads earlier, there is a series of band
plato ads that were published in Singapore a couple of
(35:59):
years back. Oh, band is and I thought you meant
like bands recorded music. No, no, like band and any
D taboo plato ads that are very adult centrically. Yeah that, Um,
can you say, what? Well, how about this? I made
a slide show of them on our site. You can
go check them out. They're pretty crazy. Um they're not
(36:21):
like naked or and not adult in that way, but
like kind of violent and a little dark. Um that
this ad agency made basically without the approval of Hasbro.
Um And uh, Hasbro came in and like denounced it
and everything. But they're pretty great. So if you go
to stuff you should dot com and search banned Plato ads,
(36:41):
it will come up. And Hasbro had a news Releases
says we don't endorse this use of Plato brand multiple
clay right, they just kept working the name in there. Yeah,
it's pretty crazy. I learned all about something called scam ads,
where um advertising agencies basically create ad campaigns based around
brand names without the brand names permission, simply to submit
(37:04):
them for awards consideration to expand their prestige. Interesting. Well,
and uh, if you want to be a TV commercial director,
you have probably made some spec or fake ads yourself
just to have on your reel. Like you know, I'm
gonna make a Dirito, Well doritos I said cost over year, right,
So this is that same thing, but sometimes they really
(37:25):
run a foul of like the spirit of the brand. Um,
and there's scam ads. Yeah, they're like European commercials, which
are always way better and risque and like funny. Yeah,
get with it, America. So if you want to learn
more about Plato, including a few Plato recipes, you can
type Plato into the search part house stuff works dot
(37:46):
Com and and say said search parts time for a
listener mail. I'm gonna call this another m p a
A called the Golden f Bomb. Hey, guys, I discovered
your show, um and he says a little Jerry and
spilled her name to which doesn't happen aten the spelling
that is, I discovered your podcast while looking for something
(38:07):
interesting to listen to while I worked on my organic
farm in Kauai. I heard the mp A show and
I just had to write. In Growing up, my friends
and I were always looking for a way to sneak
into movie theaters. He had the exit door, having an
older friend or parent, biased tickets, using a ticket single
ticket stub passed back through to get in on the
same ticket, etcetera. He had all sorts of ways of
(38:28):
stealing our goal was to get into an R rated
movie underage, with n C seventeen being the ultimate prize.
PG thirteen always felt like we had failed or were settling,
So to make it fun we would count how many
expletives were we heard and compare notes after the movie.
He really took things to a different level. It must
(38:49):
have been a time when movies weren't as good as
they are today in the theaters in the movies have
never been this bad. It is really out of terrible. Uh.
One pattern we soon realized was that PG thirteen movies
are allotted one F bomb. Listening for that one F
bomb became the looked for a moment making the PG
thirteen movie experience. It's had more interesting and something I
(39:11):
look out for to this day. Still. There are some
real classics, including Ron Burgundy's an Anchorman, most recently in Skyfall,
when Judy Ditch uses that naughty word she did, I
don't remember that, Judy, the first one in the Bond
series and Judy, Judy, I just saw Filimino. By the way, finally,
what did you think it was fantastic? Was that just
(39:33):
an amazing change of pace for her? She always plays
like the short pulled together like yeah, like Boss Lady
and this when she was just kind of just working class.
That was a good movie. That was really good. Love
that movie, highly recommended um And then I noticed the
rating rule is not ironclad, however, because recent examples of
Lincoln and Filomena. Hey, how about that had two of
(39:56):
those naughty words a piece. Lincoln had it in there,
hunts that's o bird gets away with anything. Well, he's
the one that had the whole thing changed. Oh yeah,
he was the one that created it. Yeah, and then
he ran a foul of it. Anyway, My absolute favorite
PG thirteen Golden Goal naughty word uh not mentioned anywhere
(40:16):
else that I've researched, was the one that got me
out of my seat cheering, like the President's speech and
Independence Days from Oblivion. Tom Cruise's character awaits to the
very end of the movie to deliver the perfectly timed
line to his enemy. That movie stunk, did it? Yeah?
I heard the other one was pretty good though, Edge
of Tomorrow, Yeah, that was really good. Oblivion stunk. And
(40:38):
he closes by saying, Mahalo Nuela, thank you very much
for all you do to in Photinous and that is
evans On Kauaii. Uh yeah, sorry, Evans, Oblivion was no good.
He said that he liked it a lot, but you know,
to each their own, I'm not gonna poopoo his taste.
Good for you, Chuck, Thanks for your your game and
your fevery. If you want to talk to me and
(41:01):
Chuck about movies, we are always down for that. We
love talking about movies. We should just like do an
episode where we just just say have you seen this movie? Oh? Yeah,
I love that one for like a half hour. There'll
be a couple of people out there they're like, this
is a good episode. There are podcasts like exactly like that.
You know that? Mm hmm um, what was I just saying?
(41:23):
Oh yeah. If you want to get in touch with
us for whatever reason, movies or otherwise, you can tweet
to us at s YSK podcast. You can join us
on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You
can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how
stuff Works dot com, and you can join us at
our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
(41:46):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
it how Stuff Works dot com.
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com