February 6, 2018 • 39 mins
In the 1960s, a very cool machine debuted at the Seattle World's Fair - the Mold-A-Rama. It made real plastic toys on-demand from melted plastic pellets, to the delight of children and adults alike. They didn't last too long, but can still be found at various locations all over the United States and their retro-cool stylings are still a hit. Learn all about these cool machines today.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, if you live in Boston, d C. St. Louis, Cleveland,
and Denver, we are coming to see you. That's right,
Stuff you should know live, brand new topic. So if
you're traveling from a nearby state where you've seen us before,
this will be new and exciting and awesome. Yep. On
March fourth and fifth, we're going to be in Boston
and d C. On May twenty two and twenty three,
(00:21):
we're gonna be in St. Louis and Cleveland, and then
on June we're going to be in Englewood, meaning Denver, Colorado.
So come see us and you can get tickets and
information at s y s K live dot com. Welcome
to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
(00:45):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there, and
this is stuff you should know. A rama. You know,
it's kind of funny that you did that little do
to do, because I'm gonna go ahead and plug this
(01:05):
right off the top. We're doing this show in Molder Rama,
which spoiler is a machine that makes that made and
still makes these little plastic things but has maybe one
of the worst trade names ever, moldor rama. Yeah, so
I'm gonna go ahead and plug this. There's a YouTube
(01:25):
video from this young lady um where she shows off
her molder rama um little plastic toys that she's collected
carpet bagger dot org molder Rama. Just look up that YouTube.
She is adorable and she's the best. And when she
um shows her suitcase full of moldar Rama plastic toys,
(01:46):
she does a little song and it's just adorable and great.
I gotta check that out. I saw her use one
of the Disney Disneyland toy factory molder ramas. I saw that,
so I know who you're talking about. She's great. So um,
that was nice of you, Chuck. Well, let's wait for
everybody to come back from watching her YouTube video show.
(02:07):
Let's wait for I think five or six minutes and done. Yes,
time passes faster here. Stuff you should know, doesn't it?
It does. I'm eighty years old, so so with you.
Like you said, mold Rama, it is a I've seen
it described as a factory in a case. I thought
that was a pretty apt description. But for those of
(02:28):
you who don't know, it is UM basically an on
demand UM injection blow molded plastic toy dispenser. That is
that that's a technical definition for And while that might
not make sense yet, it all will make sense in
about thirty or so minutes. All right, how about this
(02:48):
picture this? All right? Let's start over? Should we wait?
Should we edit my part out? Don't know, Let's leave
this all in? Alright, picture this. You walk into a room.
Let's say it's the Sears Tower. Now Willis Tower? Is
it Willis? Oh? Yeah, that was Willis Tower, Sears Tower?
Who keeps calling it Willis Tower? Stop that Sears Tower?
(03:11):
Or a or a a world's fair or something. Um.
And there is a machine that looks sort of like
a jukebox from fifty ft away. Oh yeah, that's a good,
good way. And then you walk up closer to it
and you're like, oh wait, what is this weird mechanical thing?
Let me put in fifty cents, and right before your
very eyes, it will mechanically create a little plastic toy
(03:35):
of an alien or a building, or a lion at
a zoo, and it will spit it out, and you
will say that was just melted from plastic and molded
and shaped and given to me right in front of
my eyes. What a fun neat thing. And you'll say
all this after you recover from fainting from the fumes
of melted plastic, and then get up and get your
(03:57):
toy out, which is good because they say that you
should wait a half a minute for your toy to
cool before you grab it from the mold. Rama, right.
I think that was a pretty good job. You just
did it describing it. And I think this is super
neat because this reminds me of a bygone era, like
where I went to Nashville recently and went to Jack
(04:18):
White's Third Man Records, and he has one of those
booths where you can go in and record a record.
Would you record? Well, I didn't do it. I chickened out.
What I wanted to do was go in and sing
a little song for my daughter and give it to
her as a record. And I was thinking, like, what
could I do? What do I know in my brain
by heart? Because I have a little guitar you can
(04:39):
take in there, and it was such a small room
and it was in the room with everything else, and
I just got weirdly shy, like I don't want you
to hear me, you got shy. Jack White made you shy? Huh. Yeah.
I didn't want to do it in front of people.
Like if there was literally no one in there, I
would have cut ten records. Oh I got you. You
should have stuck your head on been like, can you
(05:00):
all just leave for a little while? Just trust me.
But anyway, this reminds me of those days gone by
where you could cut your own record, or you know,
they had these really cool machines at fairs and things
that they just I mean, now, I guess you can
still get your picture taken and printed digitally. Or the
Penny smasher that's still around two. I see that compared
(05:22):
to this a lot. Yeah, those are cool, not really,
but still there's it's an app comparison. I will just say,
I'm surprised that my brother doesn't have a molder Rama
in his basement. So I am too, because there's a
guy who collects these things called Moldville, and I saw
videos of his collection. Did you see this. It's like
a warehouse full of mint condition mold a Rama machines.
(05:45):
This guy must be richer than an astronaut. He's got
so many of these machines. Um, and you're right about this.
It evoking the memories of a bygone era. But what's crazy, Chuck,
is that these things are still in use today. You
confined them all over the country and they're still working
and there. This is what's amazing to me. They are
(06:06):
the original machines that were made for about a seven
year period during the nineteen sixties. Every mold Aama machine
that you might encounter, including ten at the Toledo Zoo
by the way, Um, we're built in the sixties and
have been operational ever since. Do we talk about the history, Well,
(06:26):
first let me ask you this, do you have did
you did you ever use a Moldorama when you were
a kid? No? Oh, you didn't know. And I'm dying
now to go do one as an adult. So they're
still around, they're still around. Okay, I actually I got
one that there's this thing in Toledo called well actually
it's in Mamma, which is a suburb of Toledo, but
(06:47):
it's called the Children's Wonderland and it's like this amazing
three D Christmas walk through diorama. Basically that just nothing
can put you in the Christmas spirit as a kid
better than Children's Wonderland. And at the end of this
there was a mold Arama machine and it made a gold,
smelly plastic e angel. It was kind of boring, boring
(07:10):
Christmas angel, but it was mine and I was so
glad to have it. And I have no idea what
happened to it. I'm sure it broke pretty quickly, but
I was like, holy cow, I've had one of these before.
I had no idea what it was called, that it
was molder Rama, but I looked it up and actually
found the angel. Well, I think that's the cool thing
about these as a kid is it's not putting your
(07:31):
your quarter in a gumball machine and seeing all those
things and one of them falls out. This is made
just for you, right in front of your face. Pretty cool.
All right, So now can we go back in time? Yeah, yeah,
I'm done. I'm done nostalgizing. Alright, Wait, what is it reminiscing? Okay,
nostalgizing I think it's a word, right it is? Now
(07:51):
all right, we're going back to seven in the winter
when one J. H. Miller Tyke is his nickname. I
don't of what that comes from. Was he little? I
don't know, not that I saw because it's spelled differently.
T I k E. Yeah, I don't know what it
means anyway, of Quincy, Illinois, Um, he was he made figurines.
(08:13):
He and his wife made figurines, and they needed a
replacement for his Nativity scene. I guess his little baby
Jesus was decapitated by his dog. He needed a new
one and he couldn't find a place to sell him
just one little piece. Yeah, you gotta buy the whole
Nativity scene. And he was like, what am I gonna
(08:33):
do with that? Yeah, he said, I just needed one.
And you couldn't understand the department stores position, Like if
they sell you just one piece, there's a whole set
that they can't sell because he wants that set without
the one piece, right, unless it's like maybe a donkey
maybe I remember the donkey. That was a good one though.
That was one of my favorites as a kid. But anyway,
he and his wife said, here's what we're gonna do.
(08:55):
We're gonna take these lemons and make them into lemonade
in the form of making our own little plaster replacement figure.
And apparently they were pretty good at it, because they
ended up doing this for a living and founding a
company doing this because the Germans evidently had the market
cornered on nativity pieces, and when World War two came around,
they said nine for you, right, and we had a shortage. Yeah.
(09:20):
We all we wanted was liberty figures is what they
called them during World War two, not in nativity because
the Germans had supplied us with nativity figures, so American
may once you could call liberty figures that like freedom
price right. I think they actually called sauer Kraut liberty cabbage.
I'm not kidding. So so the the tyke and his
(09:42):
wife established this company and UM in World War two.
That really kind of grew because they cornered the market
and they just kept going from there. And then about
ten years after World War two they decided to move
from plaster and by the way, he started selling UM
nativity figures individual ones to those same department stores who
(10:03):
would only sell them sets before, which I think is
kind of sweet revenge. UM. But they moved from plaster
figures to plastic and got into UM a type of
injection molding where uh air is blown into it, which
saves on plastic and creates a lightweight plastic figurine and really, honestly,
(10:24):
nothing says nineteen fifties Midwest more than plastic nativity figures,
you know, probably made by a man named Tyke. Uh Yeah,
And I mean they did pretty well for a little while.
I guess. I'm not sure exactly when the company was founded,
but if the seven he came up with this idea
and they went bankrupt in nineteen fifty nine, they sounds
(10:46):
like they added some good years in there. Yeah they did.
But I and I did not see why they went bankrupt.
I saw they were nothing but successful. I don't know.
I don't know if maybe they sunk a bunch of
money into these machines and it just didn't quite make
it or what. But he was very six festival. He
had a line of um plastic toys that kids would
buy by the fistful at like the local five and
(11:06):
dime or novelty store or something like that. And he
had lines of like dinosaurs, um, I think toy soldiers.
But the one that really put his company on the
map as far as kids were concerned, we're called Earth invaders,
also known as Miller Aliens, and there was a line
of of um tons of them but the one that
(11:28):
is still today the most prized of all was the
Purple People Eater and it actually inspired that that song
from the fifties, which I didn't realize that song was
quite that old. But the song about the one eyed,
one eared flying Purple People Leader, that was based on
Tyke Miller's creation from the fifties. I think it was
the other way around. I don't think so. I think
(11:50):
the song was based on the figure this says hear.
The Purple People Eater was inspired by the hit song
Oh I saw. I read that as the opposite thinks
a good catch. I think that's the case because that
song was a big hit and they were all manner
of Purple People Eater souvenirs and things. It was. It
was a big business back then. Thank you for that one.
(12:13):
No problem. We would have gotten some email from like
three people on that. Tyke's great grandson, little Tyke um
So in Fife or sixty they went bankrupt and it
was right around this time where he said, all right,
I've got this idea for an actual vending machine that
couldn't make these things on demand. And he was successful.
He licensed this thing actually to what would eventually become
(12:36):
a Merra Mark, which everyone knows that's that company is
still around. At the time, they were called the Automatic
Retailers of America. And he developed these machines with them,
and in in nineteen sixty two at the Seattle World's
Fair they premiered. They're doing little space needles and monorails
and Buddhists and Buddhists for like fifty cents, which is
about four bucks today. So it was not a little
(13:00):
cheap thing. It's not like sticking a diamond a machine
today right now. They were definitely expensive, um, but they
were a huge hit at that Seattle World's Fair. That
was what nineteen sixty two. So in nineteen sixty four
at the New York World's Fair they blew up. They
went from a couple of machines in Seattle, I guess
(13:21):
three machines in Seattle too, as many as a hundred
and fifty at the New York World's Fair from nineteen
sixty four in nineteen sixty five. And even more than
than just having that many more machines, they also had
Brandon machines. Right. So like if you were a company
like Sinclair Oil or Disney and you wanted to just
(13:42):
kind of give people an extra little amazing experience. You
could license in brand your own um mold a rama
and they had plenty of those at the World's Fair,
some some pretty cool ones too. Yeah. So, like you said,
anywhere from Disneyland to Montreal's World Expo. And that's the
(14:02):
cool thing, is that disney World or Disneyland that could
be I think they were some of the characters that
were actually acting like they were working the machine. It's
kind of clever. Or if you know, and you're in Montreal,
it's going to be Canadian mounties or maybe an Eiffel Tower, right,
(14:22):
if you could um contact the company, get them to
make you your own um like uh signage I guess,
to put on the machine, and then most importantly, they
would sculpt and then manufacture a mold from that sculpture
whatever you wanted, say your logo or your brand or
something like that, some sort of statuette that had that
(14:44):
you could set it up and and people would take
home your little branded chot sky. It was. It was
pretty cool. It was a big hit in the sixties
and to air marker a r A at the time,
they were like, well, this is great, but Apparently they
were just looking at the whole thing as a proof
of concept because they had their sights on not just
like on demand novelties, but on demand everything like on
(15:06):
demand dishware on demand, jewelry on demand, combs on demand,
ash trays. That they felt like this was the future
because at the time, you know, the early sixties, plastics
was the future. It was every pretty soon everything was
going to be made in plastic and no one was
ever going to have cancer from it a day in
their life. You know, there's a plastically optimistic time, that's right.
(15:29):
And in the end, they manufactured about two hundred of
these machines over seven year period. But by nine they said,
you know what, A r A said, We're we're getting
out of this moldor rama biz. Take a break. Uh yeah,
We're gonna go pressed together our own little mouldy dinosaur
and be right back alright, chuck. So are A gets
(16:14):
out of the biz, and it's kind of understandable. So
why there was There's a couple of big problems with
Molderama machines. One, they're expensive to manufacture. They were like
apparently thirty six d bucks per at the time. That
was back in two, so just under thirty thou dollars today.
And then also once you set these things up, they
(16:37):
required almost constant attention. UM. You had to go refill
them with plastic, you had to top off their fluids,
you had to fix any parts, you had to keep
them clean, you had to get gum off of them,
because again these are interfacing with little kids. UM. So
there was a lot of maintenance and upkeep to them
as well. So Air Air remarks said we're done. In
(16:58):
the seventies, they sold off their machine to UM a
couple of different groups. Yeah, I mean, this is a
mechanical like hydraulic machine that required like oil and anti freeze.
It was it was no uh, I mean if it
sounds like and I mean, I guess we can go
into the process a little bit. It gets a little
(17:19):
wonky for my taste. But um, I guess we should
talk a little bit about how these actually work. Right, Yeah,
we kind of have to and it'll be fine, I
promise you. Ready, Well, I will say this. First of all,
there are hydraulics and there are these these two molds,
and you can go on YouTube and look at how
these things work. It's pretty neat um. They these two molds,
(17:40):
it's basically one half of the little toy on each
side three like a three dimensional sculptured statue at Yeah.
So they move toward each other with these hydraulics and
they're pressed together, forms a big seal um and it
ends up it ends up being hollow on the inside.
That kind of a big point to make. It's like
(18:02):
it's a negative of the sculpture. Yeah. So then there's
a couple of holes in the bottom that lead into
that sculpture cavity, and into that you inject hot plastic.
Because one thing that a lot of people don't realize
about the mold thematic is just beneath this the work
(18:25):
surface that is the floor of what you can see
below that is a vat of two hundred and twenty
to two hundred and fifty degree fahrenh height molten plastic
just sitting there, bubbling hot. Yeah. Little pellets. They feed
it in little colored pellets. Although for a little while
they actually had uh, just kind of neutral pellets that
(18:46):
they use colored powder. But they at least wised up
there and said, why don't we just color the pellets
and just stick with the one color yep. And then
so the system has a closed um steam system that
runs hot theme through coils that runs through these plastic
pellet that this plastic pellet vat and it melts the
(19:08):
pellets and then keeps them molten. So then when that
when the the the mold seals up above come together
and form that seal, hot plastic is injected into the
mold and fills it up right, hot plastic injection. Great
band name. Uh. And then these things obviously have to
(19:29):
be cooled pretty quick like in order for them to
I mean, what solidify Is that the right word? Um?
But when they do come out, like you said, they
are warm, and um, I'm surprised. I mean, this seems
like something that you could not create today without there
being so much liability on your hands. Well, again, they
still are in use. They you can still go to
(19:51):
the Toledo Zoo, to zoos all over the Midwest in
Florida and tourist attractions and rest stops and you will
find these things still in use. It's just so funny
to me that, like it literally says on the little
door that you open, hold upside down while it cools,
don't let the the molten plastic drip on little little
Jimmy's hand. It's exactly right. So so we got the
(20:12):
injection molding part done. But there's one step that we missed,
and that's the blow part that makes an injection blow molding.
And this is how these companies manage to actually make money.
And one of the reasons why the mold of rama
chatskeys are so fragile is that they're hollow inside. So
the the the the mold is filled with hot plastic
(20:34):
and then compressed air is blown into it. And the
compressed air does two things. One, it pushes the plastic
against the mold so it completely covers it, and it
takes on this the shape of the mold, right, and
then it also blows the excess plastic out the bottom,
so it's hollow, and then the excess plastic goes back
(20:54):
into the vat reused exactly so it might use enough
plastic at first to make ten of these things or
five or something. I'm just totally guessing here, But then
it reuses it by blowing it out the bottom and
making it a hollow object rather than a solid one, right, okay,
And then it comes out hot They say, wait, thirty
(21:16):
seconds or half a minute, I think is how they
put it and the reason why they say hold it
upside downs because there's still that hole at the bottom
that that little hot plastic can like you said, burned
Timmy's hands. That's right. The smell, chuck. You've never smelled
anything like it. Do you remember the smell? Yes, I
can't remember the smell it was. It's it's at the
same time pleasing and totally noxious. Interesting, Like as a kid,
(21:40):
you're like, it smells weird and cool, but as an adult,
I'm sure you'd be like, this is gonna kill my
whole family and it's gonna kill my great grandchildren somehow. Well,
back then, no one cared. No, they didn't, you know. Uh.
And like we said, tons of upkeep. You know, you've
got steam, you've got hydraulic fluid, you have anti freeze,
(22:00):
sometimes cold water, but I would suspect anti freeze in
most cases. Uh. And until the nineteen seventies, like I said,
you had um powdered coloring. I mean, this whole thing
is Uh. I'm surprising they didn't explode at any point. Yeah.
One of the other things that I really admire about
this is that again, the machines that are still in
(22:23):
use today that still work just as well as ever today.
We're built exclusively from nineteen sixty two to nineteen sixty
nine when air Mark was making them, and then these
things also because they put off these terrible fumes, they
keep they're they're kept outside. So they've been sitting in
the elements for fifty plus years and they still work,
(22:44):
and they're they're pretty pretty well built machines, for sure.
I think they've they've got some now that they have
been able to move indoors. Yeah, if I'm using a
different type of plastic, I think, yeah, that's crazy that
these things had to be outside. Yeah, and they still are.
Most of them are a lot of them have like
kind of built in and little canopies over them or
something like that. But if you look at the canopies
(23:04):
you can tell they're kind of new. They've been outside
basically for fifty years. I am so going to be
on the lookout for these now. So there is a
website Chuck called uh Way Marking w A Y M
A r k I n G dot com. They have
a comprehensive list of every single moldar rama in use
(23:25):
today in the United States, and they have like actual
like longitude and latitude coordinates if you wanted to, I
guess geo cash your way to them. Well, what I
want is an app that will text me when I'm
within of one. Oh, that's a that's a good idea.
There's a ten dollar app. Dollar app. I mean you
(23:46):
would make ten dollars. Yeah, although people are crazy for
these things, still is We'll see they're none in Atlanta, right,
not that I saw no, But again there's a bunch
of Toledo. I found the machine that I almost certainly
got my angel from. They keep it in storage at
Tama Shanner, which is an ice skating rink in um
(24:07):
I guess a Scottish ice skating rink. I don't know,
in in mam Meat, which is where they have Children's Wonderland.
But I saw a picture of it and now it
looks like the most recent thing it makes is polar bears.
And your DNA is on that machine, still somewhere in
the form of a wad of gum. All right, Well,
let's take another break. We'll come back and talk a
little bit about some of these fun figures and the
(24:29):
people that are still trying to keep this tradition alive.
(24:54):
All right, So here's the thing that I wanted to know,
and that our article didn't get to till three quarters
the way through. I was like, can do they have
different things for each machine? The answer, sadly is no.
If it spits out a dinosaur, it can only spit
out a dinosaur unless you change up that mold. Yes,
but you can change the color and you'll have a
(25:15):
different color dinosaur. Well until they started using the single
color pellets, right, Well, no, then they just put in
a different color when they refill the thing, and all
of a sudden it went from a purple dinosaur to
a green dinosaur. Right, But could you say purple and
hit a purple button or it's whatever the kid who
worked there decided to put in that morning. That's exactly right.
The thing is, though, is is and again it's not
(25:37):
even just the toy that comes out. The toy is,
especially as a kid, invariably disappointing, sure, but it's the
process is watching this thing happen, and the mold mold
Arama machines will have like little little different lights that
light up like now we're cooling, Now we're about to
launch the toy to you. You know, it's it tells
(25:58):
you what's going on, so you're following the process, which
is at least is probably of the the appeal of
the whole thing. Stand back right now, because if I
were to explode, it would be during this next eight seconds. Right. Um,
all right, so your mom is standing there, missing her
one arm from saving you in a car wreck. It's
(26:18):
like he probably should stand back exactly. Um. No one
knows exactly how many of these molds were made, but they're,
like we said, our enthusiasts who collect these, and uh,
this one dude, Bill Bollman, who owns one and runs
moldville dot com. Bad bad. You are all there, right, Yeah,
(26:39):
it is bad. I gotta say. I looked it up
and it's a dead domain. But he's got a Facebook
thing that he does. Now that's where he's moved to. Yeah,
that's where he went my Space and then he went Facebook.
But there will never be another site better than Facebook.
So I'm sure it's all over right, probably so he Um,
his estimate is about three hundred designs. I bet it's
(27:01):
more than that. I don't know. This guy knows what
he's talking about. He he counted a hundred and nineties
six original ones, and then he said after the sixties
more people started to make them. They weren't just commissioned
by Aero Mark who was keeping track of these things.
And and I would I would say this guy is
probably the person on earth who could estimate how many
(27:23):
there are the closest and not just me guessing randomly.
And what's cool though also is again like if you
were you could be anybody, if you wanted a mold
Arama thing at your event, you could it could happen.
Like I found there was a Circleville, Ohio Pumpkin Festival
(27:45):
mold Arama. So one of the three hundred molds is
a pumpkin from Circleville, Ohio's pumpkin Fest in the seventies.
Another one, So apparently Toledo was crazy about these things,
because again there's ten at the Toledo Zoo. There's the
one tam O Shannon that I got a mind from.
There was one in the eighties at the Toledo Mudhans Stadium,
(28:08):
and there's a Mudhan's figure which is pretty cool actually,
And I looked and there's like zero for sale anywhere.
But now I'm kind of on the lookout for that thing.
But all you had to do was just make a
bold get your hands on one of these, and bam, Circleville,
Ohio's pumpkin Fest went from zero to hero right, and
(28:28):
you two could have a snowman, or a Grammin's Chinese theater,
or a space lab or a Lawrence Welk. Yeah, yeah,
NASA had a a lot of these things. Actually, I'm
sure what else was there? Um, well, the Lawrence Welk.
None of those were jokes. Those are real. Oh yeah,
for sure. There was a Titan three C missile and
(28:50):
a Lawrence Welk, says other famous people. I'm kind of curious.
I didn't see anybody besides presidents and Lawrence Welk. There's
one of the Georgia State Capital building. Oh really? Yeah?
Um there were some cool ones actually, the St. Louis
Arches surprisingly cool. You wouldn't think it'd be that cool.
(29:11):
The Oscar Meyer Wiener mobile mm hmm uh. This one
was kind of random. It was it's a high alli player.
And then at the basis, says Hi Ali in Miami. Okay, um,
the water skier from Cypress. I think Cypress Gardens Florida
and the Mermaids from Wiki Wachee Springs, Florida. We talked
(29:34):
about them. Um oh, here's one. Universal Studios had one
that made a Frankenstein coin banks. That's kind of cool.
It is very cool. Like a lot of these are
actually super cool, especially the original retro ones you can
actually see like, um, I can't remember the woman's name,
but there was a woman who was hired by one
of the companies that still operate these things, uh to
(29:56):
start making molds, and she's been making them for the
last twenty five years and compared to some of the
ones from the sixties, like she's just head and shoulders
above the people who are sculpting them. Then, like these
are really really well made sculptures, not only in like
the actual sculpture that she's making, but the decisions she's
making produces just a better mole orama toy because again,
(30:21):
you're you're dealing with melted plastic in a mold that
is two halves pressed together. There's a lot of like
details that can go wrong, and this, uh, this great
sculptor is is um taking all of them into account,
making some really boss ones like the wan Or mobile.
It's it's art to behold this. The detail in it
is really really nice. Should we talk about a couple
(30:41):
of these companies that are still still going strong? Yeah,
for sure, or at least going now. They're going strong?
Man good. Um. There are a couple of them, one
called Replication Devices, one called mold a Rama Incorporated um
Replication Devices, founded by Elden Irwin, who bought a bunch
(31:03):
of these, it says dozens in the early sixties, eventually
passed down through his family, and right now his grandson
and his wife, the Strigg owls Um in Florida, are
operating sixty or seventy of these. Yeah, and let's think
about this for a second. So Elden Irwin, but dozens.
(31:24):
Now they're up to sixty maybe seventy. And those mold
Arama machines have supported three generations of this family. Fully
from what I understand, Yes, I saw an interview with
Tim strigg Owen. He said he was surprised that the
business was still going when his parents took it over,
(31:45):
and now he the grandson and his wife operated and yes,
from what I understand it fully supports it. The San
Antonio Zoo estimated that they make a hundred and thirty
thousand figurines a year from their one mold a rama
two bucks of up. That's two hundred and sixty thousand
grows times sixty or seventy. So yeah, they're doing just fine.
(32:08):
This other one molder rama inc Like, we're not asking
anyone to open their books for us, No, for sure,
and I certainly don't want to shine a light on
these people's finances, but but I'm just saying, like, it's
it's astounding to me that these machines built in the sixties,
left out in the elements for fifty years, are managing
to support three generations of the families who have been
operating them. I just think that's super cool. Yeah, I
(32:29):
mean it sounds like, uh, it's kind of like people
are on car washes. Isn't it like a front always
too to launder money from drug sales? I would guess.
I think it's low hanging, easy to buy. I'm just
kidding everyone out there that owns car washes. I've watched
too much Breaking Bad. Oh, that's right, that's right. But
(32:52):
I think that is like a legitimate thing, like like, yeah,
cash businesses are are right for the picking. I forgot
they bought that car wash. So um mouldar Rama Inc.
Like I said, William A. Jones Company. Uh changed her
name in two thousand eleven. But they got into this
in nine when William A. Jones bought some of these
(33:12):
from one of the guys who worked for the original
moldar Rama. Then they expanded, um bought more machines and
it is still a family business. Again. They got about
sixty of them, yep, and they they were the William A.
Jones Company. And then I guess they got their hands
on the molda Rama trademark in two thousand eleven and
(33:33):
they changed the name of the company to moldar Rama Inc.
Again because that's originally what it was called back when
Aramark was running it. Yeah, and they're mainly in the Midwest, Minnesota, Michigan,
bunch of them in Illinois and one in Texas that
looks like right, not bad. And then every once in a
a while you have just some independent operators like Knoxville
Zoo owns their own. They apparently got there from Dollywood,
(33:55):
which man, mold a Rama's at Dollywood that make your
wigs spin. Uh, there's this one cool thing I wanted
to shout out this toy store in Chicago Roto Fugi
or Rhoda Fuji, that's sure you pronounce it um. They
repurposed their own moldor rama. They bought one and repurposed
(34:16):
it that was originally the l A Zoo and they
call it the Rhodo a Matic. And they have something
called a helper Dragon you can get for six bucks.
And if you look up the Helper Dragon in these dudes,
it is clear that they are Simpsons fans. Did you
see this thing? Yeah? I did. I saw a video
of it, but it was kind of out of focus. Yeah,
(34:37):
Like just Google image the Helper Dragon, Rhodo Amatic and
it is to me at least clearly the Cyclops alien
from The Simpsons with it with its head stuck on
the body of a winged lion. That's my take on it.
Very nice. And then there is this one other guy.
(35:01):
He is a Disney World imagineer named James Durand, and
he has built his own moldar rama called the Mini Molder. Uh.
And you just look at this guy, you know, he's
an imagineer. You look at this machine and you're like,
I would hire that guy to build and do anything
because he's clearly a brilliant genius, really cool looking thing
(35:22):
and a bit of a show off. Frankly, you think, so,
I've got two more things. The mold of Rama used
to be fifty cents in its original incarnation in nWo, which,
again thanks to our friends at West Egg inflation calculator
tells us is about four dollars and twelve cents in
(35:43):
two thousand and seventeen money. Today you can get a
moldar rama for two bucks, which means that the price
has gone down by half over the last fifty years.
Pretty cool. And then lastly, so after Tyke Miller got
out of the plastics injection molding business, he had another
invention that he called the Golden Goat, and it was
(36:06):
this big machine that apparently he invented to put out
in parking lots at like grocery stores, and it would
take up about two parking spaces, and customers would come
in and put in their used aluminum cans, and then
the Golden Goat would weigh it and then give him
some money in return, and then it would compact those
(36:26):
cans and then later on that is that aluminum would
be sold as scrap for recycling. The thing is, this
was years before the green movement was ever even thought
of this. That's how ahead of his time this guy was.
And I don't think the Golden Goat ever made him
a lot of money, but it's a pretty cool invention
that this guy had. He had he was like one
(36:48):
of those great Midwestern tinker inventor guys. Hats off to him.
So there you go, Nativity figures plastic. If you want
to know more about Molder Rama man, you can fall
down a rabbit hole just looking at pictures of him
on the internet. So why don't you go do that?
Take some time for yourself, you know, why do you
(37:10):
always have to work? Work? Work? Since I said that,
it's time for a listener mail. We call this just
kind of a quick shout out. We don't do these
a lot um because we get a lot of shout
out request but this one was adorable because this a
little kid. So this is from Jenny, she's the mom.
She says, how about a shout out for my son Jake.
He listens to every episode more than once. He's got
(37:33):
me and many others into the show and we love it.
So young Jake is out there spreading the word and
we appreciate that, Jake. Uh, and you love the show
so much? Um you named well, not quite yet, but
Jake says he wants to get a puppy and call
it Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And he says this. Most
of the time he will be called Chuck, but when
(37:53):
he does something wrong, I'll be like, Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
why did you do that? Well, Jake, we have a
really big surprise for you if you will go to
your back door. I think you're gonna find something pretty
special out there. I'm just kidding. No, we're just kidding, Jake.
There's not a puppy at your back door unless your mom.
Jenny heard this beforehand and is the best moment in
(38:16):
the world. Yeah. Yeah, that was pretty cool of her
to write in and let us know. So way to go,
Jake for listening to us. Thank you, Thank you very much. Yeah,
thank you, Jake, Thank you, Jenny. We count literally count
on people like you to spread the word, so we
appreciate it. Good luck with your eventual puppy too named
Charles W. Chuck Bryant. When he's bad. If you want
(38:36):
to tell us about well, you're a cute kid, we
want to hear about him or her. You can tweet
to us at joshum Clark or at s Y s
K podcast. You can post it on Facebook dot com,
slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant, or slash stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email the Stuff podcast at
how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us
at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
(38:58):
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
visit how stuff Works dot com. M
Hey, everybody, if you live in Boston, d C. St. Louis, Cleveland,
and Denver, we are coming to see you. That's right,
Stuff you should know live, brand new topic. So if
you're traveling from a nearby state where you've seen us before,
this will be new and exciting and awesome. Yep. On
March fourth and fifth, we're going to be in Boston
and d C. On May twenty two and twenty three,
(00:21):
we're gonna be in St. Louis and Cleveland, and then
on June we're going to be in Englewood, meaning Denver, Colorado.
So come see us and you can get tickets and
information at s y s K live dot com. Welcome
to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
(00:45):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there, and
this is stuff you should know. A rama. You know,
it's kind of funny that you did that little do
to do, because I'm gonna go ahead and plug this
(01:05):
right off the top. We're doing this show in Molder Rama,
which spoiler is a machine that makes that made and
still makes these little plastic things but has maybe one
of the worst trade names ever, moldor rama. Yeah, so
I'm gonna go ahead and plug this. There's a YouTube
(01:25):
video from this young lady um where she shows off
her molder rama um little plastic toys that she's collected
carpet bagger dot org molder Rama. Just look up that YouTube.
She is adorable and she's the best. And when she
um shows her suitcase full of moldar Rama plastic toys,
(01:46):
she does a little song and it's just adorable and great.
I gotta check that out. I saw her use one
of the Disney Disneyland toy factory molder ramas. I saw that,
so I know who you're talking about. She's great. So um,
that was nice of you, Chuck. Well, let's wait for
everybody to come back from watching her YouTube video show.
(02:07):
Let's wait for I think five or six minutes and done. Yes,
time passes faster here. Stuff you should know, doesn't it?
It does. I'm eighty years old, so so with you.
Like you said, mold Rama, it is a I've seen
it described as a factory in a case. I thought
that was a pretty apt description. But for those of
(02:28):
you who don't know, it is UM basically an on
demand UM injection blow molded plastic toy dispenser. That is
that that's a technical definition for And while that might
not make sense yet, it all will make sense in
about thirty or so minutes. All right, how about this
(02:48):
picture this? All right? Let's start over? Should we wait?
Should we edit my part out? Don't know, Let's leave
this all in? Alright, picture this. You walk into a room.
Let's say it's the Sears Tower. Now Willis Tower? Is
it Willis? Oh? Yeah, that was Willis Tower, Sears Tower?
Who keeps calling it Willis Tower? Stop that Sears Tower?
(03:11):
Or a or a a world's fair or something. Um.
And there is a machine that looks sort of like
a jukebox from fifty ft away. Oh yeah, that's a good,
good way. And then you walk up closer to it
and you're like, oh wait, what is this weird mechanical thing?
Let me put in fifty cents, and right before your
very eyes, it will mechanically create a little plastic toy
(03:35):
of an alien or a building, or a lion at
a zoo, and it will spit it out, and you
will say that was just melted from plastic and molded
and shaped and given to me right in front of
my eyes. What a fun neat thing. And you'll say
all this after you recover from fainting from the fumes
of melted plastic, and then get up and get your
(03:57):
toy out, which is good because they say that you
should wait a half a minute for your toy to
cool before you grab it from the mold. Rama, right.
I think that was a pretty good job. You just
did it describing it. And I think this is super
neat because this reminds me of a bygone era, like
where I went to Nashville recently and went to Jack
(04:18):
White's Third Man Records, and he has one of those
booths where you can go in and record a record.
Would you record? Well, I didn't do it. I chickened out.
What I wanted to do was go in and sing
a little song for my daughter and give it to
her as a record. And I was thinking, like, what
could I do? What do I know in my brain
by heart? Because I have a little guitar you can
(04:39):
take in there, and it was such a small room
and it was in the room with everything else, and
I just got weirdly shy, like I don't want you
to hear me, you got shy. Jack White made you shy? Huh. Yeah.
I didn't want to do it in front of people.
Like if there was literally no one in there, I
would have cut ten records. Oh I got you. You
should have stuck your head on been like, can you
(05:00):
all just leave for a little while? Just trust me.
But anyway, this reminds me of those days gone by
where you could cut your own record, or you know,
they had these really cool machines at fairs and things
that they just I mean, now, I guess you can
still get your picture taken and printed digitally. Or the
Penny smasher that's still around two. I see that compared
(05:22):
to this a lot. Yeah, those are cool, not really,
but still there's it's an app comparison. I will just say,
I'm surprised that my brother doesn't have a molder Rama
in his basement. So I am too, because there's a
guy who collects these things called Moldville, and I saw
videos of his collection. Did you see this. It's like
a warehouse full of mint condition mold a Rama machines.
(05:45):
This guy must be richer than an astronaut. He's got
so many of these machines. Um, and you're right about this.
It evoking the memories of a bygone era. But what's crazy, Chuck,
is that these things are still in use today. You
confined them all over the country and they're still working
and there. This is what's amazing to me. They are
(06:06):
the original machines that were made for about a seven
year period during the nineteen sixties. Every mold Aama machine
that you might encounter, including ten at the Toledo Zoo
by the way, Um, we're built in the sixties and
have been operational ever since. Do we talk about the history, Well,
(06:26):
first let me ask you this, do you have did
you did you ever use a Moldorama when you were
a kid? No? Oh, you didn't know. And I'm dying
now to go do one as an adult. So they're
still around, they're still around. Okay, I actually I got
one that there's this thing in Toledo called well actually
it's in Mamma, which is a suburb of Toledo, but
(06:47):
it's called the Children's Wonderland and it's like this amazing
three D Christmas walk through diorama. Basically that just nothing
can put you in the Christmas spirit as a kid
better than Children's Wonderland. And at the end of this
there was a mold Arama machine and it made a gold,
smelly plastic e angel. It was kind of boring, boring
(07:10):
Christmas angel, but it was mine and I was so
glad to have it. And I have no idea what
happened to it. I'm sure it broke pretty quickly, but
I was like, holy cow, I've had one of these before.
I had no idea what it was called, that it
was molder Rama, but I looked it up and actually
found the angel. Well, I think that's the cool thing
about these as a kid is it's not putting your
(07:31):
your quarter in a gumball machine and seeing all those
things and one of them falls out. This is made
just for you, right in front of your face. Pretty cool.
All right, So now can we go back in time? Yeah, yeah,
I'm done. I'm done nostalgizing. Alright, Wait, what is it reminiscing? Okay,
nostalgizing I think it's a word, right it is? Now
(07:51):
all right, we're going back to seven in the winter
when one J. H. Miller Tyke is his nickname. I
don't of what that comes from. Was he little? I
don't know, not that I saw because it's spelled differently.
T I k E. Yeah, I don't know what it
means anyway, of Quincy, Illinois, Um, he was he made figurines.
(08:13):
He and his wife made figurines, and they needed a
replacement for his Nativity scene. I guess his little baby
Jesus was decapitated by his dog. He needed a new
one and he couldn't find a place to sell him
just one little piece. Yeah, you gotta buy the whole
Nativity scene. And he was like, what am I gonna
(08:33):
do with that? Yeah, he said, I just needed one.
And you couldn't understand the department stores position, Like if
they sell you just one piece, there's a whole set
that they can't sell because he wants that set without
the one piece, right, unless it's like maybe a donkey
maybe I remember the donkey. That was a good one though.
That was one of my favorites as a kid. But anyway,
he and his wife said, here's what we're gonna do.
(08:55):
We're gonna take these lemons and make them into lemonade
in the form of making our own little plaster replacement figure.
And apparently they were pretty good at it, because they
ended up doing this for a living and founding a
company doing this because the Germans evidently had the market
cornered on nativity pieces, and when World War two came around,
they said nine for you, right, and we had a shortage. Yeah.
(09:20):
We all we wanted was liberty figures is what they
called them during World War two, not in nativity because
the Germans had supplied us with nativity figures, so American
may once you could call liberty figures that like freedom
price right. I think they actually called sauer Kraut liberty cabbage.
I'm not kidding. So so the the tyke and his
(09:42):
wife established this company and UM in World War two.
That really kind of grew because they cornered the market
and they just kept going from there. And then about
ten years after World War two they decided to move
from plaster and by the way, he started selling UM
nativity figures individual ones to those same department stores who
(10:03):
would only sell them sets before, which I think is
kind of sweet revenge. UM. But they moved from plaster
figures to plastic and got into UM a type of
injection molding where uh air is blown into it, which
saves on plastic and creates a lightweight plastic figurine and really, honestly,
(10:24):
nothing says nineteen fifties Midwest more than plastic nativity figures,
you know, probably made by a man named Tyke. Uh Yeah,
And I mean they did pretty well for a little while.
I guess. I'm not sure exactly when the company was founded,
but if the seven he came up with this idea
and they went bankrupt in nineteen fifty nine, they sounds
(10:46):
like they added some good years in there. Yeah they did.
But I and I did not see why they went bankrupt.
I saw they were nothing but successful. I don't know.
I don't know if maybe they sunk a bunch of
money into these machines and it just didn't quite make
it or what. But he was very six festival. He
had a line of um plastic toys that kids would
buy by the fistful at like the local five and
(11:06):
dime or novelty store or something like that. And he
had lines of like dinosaurs, um, I think toy soldiers.
But the one that really put his company on the
map as far as kids were concerned, we're called Earth invaders,
also known as Miller Aliens, and there was a line
of of um tons of them but the one that
(11:28):
is still today the most prized of all was the
Purple People Eater and it actually inspired that that song
from the fifties, which I didn't realize that song was
quite that old. But the song about the one eyed,
one eared flying Purple People Leader, that was based on
Tyke Miller's creation from the fifties. I think it was
the other way around. I don't think so. I think
(11:50):
the song was based on the figure this says hear.
The Purple People Eater was inspired by the hit song
Oh I saw. I read that as the opposite thinks
a good catch. I think that's the case because that
song was a big hit and they were all manner
of Purple People Eater souvenirs and things. It was. It
was a big business back then. Thank you for that one.
(12:13):
No problem. We would have gotten some email from like
three people on that. Tyke's great grandson, little Tyke um
So in Fife or sixty they went bankrupt and it
was right around this time where he said, all right,
I've got this idea for an actual vending machine that
couldn't make these things on demand. And he was successful.
He licensed this thing actually to what would eventually become
(12:36):
a Merra Mark, which everyone knows that's that company is
still around. At the time, they were called the Automatic
Retailers of America. And he developed these machines with them,
and in in nineteen sixty two at the Seattle World's
Fair they premiered. They're doing little space needles and monorails
and Buddhists and Buddhists for like fifty cents, which is
about four bucks today. So it was not a little
(13:00):
cheap thing. It's not like sticking a diamond a machine
today right now. They were definitely expensive, um, but they
were a huge hit at that Seattle World's Fair. That
was what nineteen sixty two. So in nineteen sixty four
at the New York World's Fair they blew up. They
went from a couple of machines in Seattle, I guess
(13:21):
three machines in Seattle too, as many as a hundred
and fifty at the New York World's Fair from nineteen
sixty four in nineteen sixty five. And even more than
than just having that many more machines, they also had
Brandon machines. Right. So like if you were a company
like Sinclair Oil or Disney and you wanted to just
(13:42):
kind of give people an extra little amazing experience. You
could license in brand your own um mold a rama
and they had plenty of those at the World's Fair,
some some pretty cool ones too. Yeah. So, like you said,
anywhere from Disneyland to Montreal's World Expo. And that's the
(14:02):
cool thing, is that disney World or Disneyland that could
be I think they were some of the characters that
were actually acting like they were working the machine. It's
kind of clever. Or if you know, and you're in Montreal,
it's going to be Canadian mounties or maybe an Eiffel Tower, right,
(14:22):
if you could um contact the company, get them to
make you your own um like uh signage I guess,
to put on the machine, and then most importantly, they
would sculpt and then manufacture a mold from that sculpture
whatever you wanted, say your logo or your brand or
something like that, some sort of statuette that had that
(14:44):
you could set it up and and people would take
home your little branded chot sky. It was. It was
pretty cool. It was a big hit in the sixties
and to air marker a r A at the time,
they were like, well, this is great, but Apparently they
were just looking at the whole thing as a proof
of concept because they had their sights on not just
like on demand novelties, but on demand everything like on
(15:06):
demand dishware on demand, jewelry on demand, combs on demand,
ash trays. That they felt like this was the future
because at the time, you know, the early sixties, plastics
was the future. It was every pretty soon everything was
going to be made in plastic and no one was
ever going to have cancer from it a day in
their life. You know, there's a plastically optimistic time, that's right.
(15:29):
And in the end, they manufactured about two hundred of
these machines over seven year period. But by nine they said,
you know what, A r A said, We're we're getting
out of this moldor rama biz. Take a break. Uh yeah,
We're gonna go pressed together our own little mouldy dinosaur
and be right back alright, chuck. So are A gets
(16:14):
out of the biz, and it's kind of understandable. So
why there was There's a couple of big problems with
Molderama machines. One, they're expensive to manufacture. They were like
apparently thirty six d bucks per at the time. That
was back in two, so just under thirty thou dollars today.
And then also once you set these things up, they
(16:37):
required almost constant attention. UM. You had to go refill
them with plastic, you had to top off their fluids,
you had to fix any parts, you had to keep
them clean, you had to get gum off of them,
because again these are interfacing with little kids. UM. So
there was a lot of maintenance and upkeep to them
as well. So Air Air remarks said we're done. In
(16:58):
the seventies, they sold off their machine to UM a
couple of different groups. Yeah, I mean, this is a
mechanical like hydraulic machine that required like oil and anti freeze.
It was it was no uh, I mean if it
sounds like and I mean, I guess we can go
into the process a little bit. It gets a little
(17:19):
wonky for my taste. But um, I guess we should
talk a little bit about how these actually work. Right, Yeah,
we kind of have to and it'll be fine, I
promise you. Ready, Well, I will say this. First of all,
there are hydraulics and there are these these two molds,
and you can go on YouTube and look at how
these things work. It's pretty neat um. They these two molds,
(17:40):
it's basically one half of the little toy on each
side three like a three dimensional sculptured statue at Yeah.
So they move toward each other with these hydraulics and
they're pressed together, forms a big seal um and it
ends up it ends up being hollow on the inside.
That kind of a big point to make. It's like
(18:02):
it's a negative of the sculpture. Yeah. So then there's
a couple of holes in the bottom that lead into
that sculpture cavity, and into that you inject hot plastic.
Because one thing that a lot of people don't realize
about the mold thematic is just beneath this the work
(18:25):
surface that is the floor of what you can see
below that is a vat of two hundred and twenty
to two hundred and fifty degree fahrenh height molten plastic
just sitting there, bubbling hot. Yeah. Little pellets. They feed
it in little colored pellets. Although for a little while
they actually had uh, just kind of neutral pellets that
(18:46):
they use colored powder. But they at least wised up
there and said, why don't we just color the pellets
and just stick with the one color yep. And then
so the system has a closed um steam system that
runs hot theme through coils that runs through these plastic
pellet that this plastic pellet vat and it melts the
(19:08):
pellets and then keeps them molten. So then when that
when the the the mold seals up above come together
and form that seal, hot plastic is injected into the
mold and fills it up right, hot plastic injection. Great
band name. Uh. And then these things obviously have to
(19:29):
be cooled pretty quick like in order for them to
I mean, what solidify Is that the right word? Um?
But when they do come out, like you said, they
are warm, and um, I'm surprised. I mean, this seems
like something that you could not create today without there
being so much liability on your hands. Well, again, they
still are in use. They you can still go to
(19:51):
the Toledo Zoo, to zoos all over the Midwest in
Florida and tourist attractions and rest stops and you will
find these things still in use. It's just so funny
to me that, like it literally says on the little
door that you open, hold upside down while it cools,
don't let the the molten plastic drip on little little
Jimmy's hand. It's exactly right. So so we got the
(20:12):
injection molding part done. But there's one step that we missed,
and that's the blow part that makes an injection blow molding.
And this is how these companies manage to actually make money.
And one of the reasons why the mold of rama
chatskeys are so fragile is that they're hollow inside. So
the the the the mold is filled with hot plastic
(20:34):
and then compressed air is blown into it. And the
compressed air does two things. One, it pushes the plastic
against the mold so it completely covers it, and it
takes on this the shape of the mold, right, and
then it also blows the excess plastic out the bottom,
so it's hollow, and then the excess plastic goes back
(20:54):
into the vat reused exactly so it might use enough
plastic at first to make ten of these things or
five or something. I'm just totally guessing here, But then
it reuses it by blowing it out the bottom and
making it a hollow object rather than a solid one, right, okay,
And then it comes out hot They say, wait, thirty
(21:16):
seconds or half a minute, I think is how they
put it and the reason why they say hold it
upside downs because there's still that hole at the bottom
that that little hot plastic can like you said, burned
Timmy's hands. That's right. The smell, chuck. You've never smelled
anything like it. Do you remember the smell? Yes, I
can't remember the smell it was. It's it's at the
same time pleasing and totally noxious. Interesting, Like as a kid,
(21:40):
you're like, it smells weird and cool, but as an adult,
I'm sure you'd be like, this is gonna kill my
whole family and it's gonna kill my great grandchildren somehow. Well,
back then, no one cared. No, they didn't, you know. Uh.
And like we said, tons of upkeep. You know, you've
got steam, you've got hydraulic fluid, you have anti freeze,
(22:00):
sometimes cold water, but I would suspect anti freeze in
most cases. Uh. And until the nineteen seventies, like I said,
you had um powdered coloring. I mean, this whole thing
is Uh. I'm surprising they didn't explode at any point. Yeah.
One of the other things that I really admire about
this is that again, the machines that are still in
(22:23):
use today that still work just as well as ever today.
We're built exclusively from nineteen sixty two to nineteen sixty
nine when air Mark was making them, and then these
things also because they put off these terrible fumes, they
keep they're they're kept outside. So they've been sitting in
the elements for fifty plus years and they still work,
(22:44):
and they're they're pretty pretty well built machines, for sure.
I think they've they've got some now that they have
been able to move indoors. Yeah, if I'm using a
different type of plastic, I think, yeah, that's crazy that
these things had to be outside. Yeah, and they still are.
Most of them are a lot of them have like
kind of built in and little canopies over them or
something like that. But if you look at the canopies
(23:04):
you can tell they're kind of new. They've been outside
basically for fifty years. I am so going to be
on the lookout for these now. So there is a
website Chuck called uh Way Marking w A Y M
A r k I n G dot com. They have
a comprehensive list of every single moldar rama in use
(23:25):
today in the United States, and they have like actual
like longitude and latitude coordinates if you wanted to, I
guess geo cash your way to them. Well, what I
want is an app that will text me when I'm
within of one. Oh, that's a that's a good idea.
There's a ten dollar app. Dollar app. I mean you
(23:46):
would make ten dollars. Yeah, although people are crazy for
these things, still is We'll see they're none in Atlanta, right,
not that I saw no, But again there's a bunch
of Toledo. I found the machine that I almost certainly
got my angel from. They keep it in storage at
Tama Shanner, which is an ice skating rink in um
(24:07):
I guess a Scottish ice skating rink. I don't know,
in in mam Meat, which is where they have Children's Wonderland.
But I saw a picture of it and now it
looks like the most recent thing it makes is polar bears.
And your DNA is on that machine, still somewhere in
the form of a wad of gum. All right, Well,
let's take another break. We'll come back and talk a
little bit about some of these fun figures and the
(24:29):
people that are still trying to keep this tradition alive.
(24:54):
All right, So here's the thing that I wanted to know,
and that our article didn't get to till three quarters
the way through. I was like, can do they have
different things for each machine? The answer, sadly is no.
If it spits out a dinosaur, it can only spit
out a dinosaur unless you change up that mold. Yes,
but you can change the color and you'll have a
(25:15):
different color dinosaur. Well until they started using the single
color pellets, right, Well, no, then they just put in
a different color when they refill the thing, and all
of a sudden it went from a purple dinosaur to
a green dinosaur. Right, But could you say purple and
hit a purple button or it's whatever the kid who
worked there decided to put in that morning. That's exactly right.
The thing is, though, is is and again it's not
(25:37):
even just the toy that comes out. The toy is,
especially as a kid, invariably disappointing, sure, but it's the
process is watching this thing happen, and the mold mold
Arama machines will have like little little different lights that
light up like now we're cooling, Now we're about to
launch the toy to you. You know, it's it tells
(25:58):
you what's going on, so you're following the process, which
is at least is probably of the the appeal of
the whole thing. Stand back right now, because if I
were to explode, it would be during this next eight seconds. Right. Um,
all right, so your mom is standing there, missing her
one arm from saving you in a car wreck. It's
(26:18):
like he probably should stand back exactly. Um. No one
knows exactly how many of these molds were made, but they're,
like we said, our enthusiasts who collect these, and uh,
this one dude, Bill Bollman, who owns one and runs
moldville dot com. Bad bad. You are all there, right, Yeah,
(26:39):
it is bad. I gotta say. I looked it up
and it's a dead domain. But he's got a Facebook
thing that he does. Now that's where he's moved to. Yeah,
that's where he went my Space and then he went Facebook.
But there will never be another site better than Facebook.
So I'm sure it's all over right, probably so he Um,
his estimate is about three hundred designs. I bet it's
(27:01):
more than that. I don't know. This guy knows what
he's talking about. He he counted a hundred and nineties
six original ones, and then he said after the sixties
more people started to make them. They weren't just commissioned
by Aero Mark who was keeping track of these things.
And and I would I would say this guy is
probably the person on earth who could estimate how many
(27:23):
there are the closest and not just me guessing randomly.
And what's cool though also is again like if you
were you could be anybody, if you wanted a mold
Arama thing at your event, you could it could happen.
Like I found there was a Circleville, Ohio Pumpkin Festival
(27:45):
mold Arama. So one of the three hundred molds is
a pumpkin from Circleville, Ohio's pumpkin Fest in the seventies.
Another one, So apparently Toledo was crazy about these things,
because again there's ten at the Toledo Zoo. There's the
one tam O Shannon that I got a mind from.
There was one in the eighties at the Toledo Mudhans Stadium,
(28:08):
and there's a Mudhan's figure which is pretty cool actually,
And I looked and there's like zero for sale anywhere.
But now I'm kind of on the lookout for that thing.
But all you had to do was just make a
bold get your hands on one of these, and bam, Circleville,
Ohio's pumpkin Fest went from zero to hero right, and
(28:28):
you two could have a snowman, or a Grammin's Chinese theater,
or a space lab or a Lawrence Welk. Yeah, yeah,
NASA had a a lot of these things. Actually, I'm
sure what else was there? Um, well, the Lawrence Welk.
None of those were jokes. Those are real. Oh yeah,
for sure. There was a Titan three C missile and
(28:50):
a Lawrence Welk, says other famous people. I'm kind of curious.
I didn't see anybody besides presidents and Lawrence Welk. There's
one of the Georgia State Capital building. Oh really? Yeah?
Um there were some cool ones actually, the St. Louis
Arches surprisingly cool. You wouldn't think it'd be that cool.
(29:11):
The Oscar Meyer Wiener mobile mm hmm uh. This one
was kind of random. It was it's a high alli player.
And then at the basis, says Hi Ali in Miami. Okay, um,
the water skier from Cypress. I think Cypress Gardens Florida
and the Mermaids from Wiki Wachee Springs, Florida. We talked
(29:34):
about them. Um oh, here's one. Universal Studios had one
that made a Frankenstein coin banks. That's kind of cool.
It is very cool. Like a lot of these are
actually super cool, especially the original retro ones you can
actually see like, um, I can't remember the woman's name,
but there was a woman who was hired by one
of the companies that still operate these things, uh to
(29:56):
start making molds, and she's been making them for the
last twenty five years and compared to some of the
ones from the sixties, like she's just head and shoulders
above the people who are sculpting them. Then, like these
are really really well made sculptures, not only in like
the actual sculpture that she's making, but the decisions she's
making produces just a better mole orama toy because again,
(30:21):
you're you're dealing with melted plastic in a mold that
is two halves pressed together. There's a lot of like
details that can go wrong, and this, uh, this great
sculptor is is um taking all of them into account,
making some really boss ones like the wan Or mobile.
It's it's art to behold this. The detail in it
is really really nice. Should we talk about a couple
(30:41):
of these companies that are still still going strong? Yeah,
for sure, or at least going now. They're going strong?
Man good. Um. There are a couple of them, one
called Replication Devices, one called mold a Rama Incorporated um
Replication Devices, founded by Elden Irwin, who bought a bunch
(31:03):
of these, it says dozens in the early sixties, eventually
passed down through his family, and right now his grandson
and his wife, the Strigg owls Um in Florida, are
operating sixty or seventy of these. Yeah, and let's think
about this for a second. So Elden Irwin, but dozens.
(31:24):
Now they're up to sixty maybe seventy. And those mold
Arama machines have supported three generations of this family. Fully
from what I understand, Yes, I saw an interview with
Tim strigg Owen. He said he was surprised that the
business was still going when his parents took it over,
(31:45):
and now he the grandson and his wife operated and yes,
from what I understand it fully supports it. The San
Antonio Zoo estimated that they make a hundred and thirty
thousand figurines a year from their one mold a rama
two bucks of up. That's two hundred and sixty thousand
grows times sixty or seventy. So yeah, they're doing just fine.
(32:08):
This other one molder rama inc Like, we're not asking
anyone to open their books for us, No, for sure,
and I certainly don't want to shine a light on
these people's finances, but but I'm just saying, like, it's
it's astounding to me that these machines built in the sixties,
left out in the elements for fifty years, are managing
to support three generations of the families who have been
operating them. I just think that's super cool. Yeah, I
(32:29):
mean it sounds like, uh, it's kind of like people
are on car washes. Isn't it like a front always
too to launder money from drug sales? I would guess.
I think it's low hanging, easy to buy. I'm just
kidding everyone out there that owns car washes. I've watched
too much Breaking Bad. Oh, that's right, that's right. But
(32:52):
I think that is like a legitimate thing, like like, yeah,
cash businesses are are right for the picking. I forgot
they bought that car wash. So um mouldar Rama Inc.
Like I said, William A. Jones Company. Uh changed her
name in two thousand eleven. But they got into this
in nine when William A. Jones bought some of these
(33:12):
from one of the guys who worked for the original
moldar Rama. Then they expanded, um bought more machines and
it is still a family business. Again. They got about
sixty of them, yep, and they they were the William A.
Jones Company. And then I guess they got their hands
on the molda Rama trademark in two thousand eleven and
(33:33):
they changed the name of the company to moldar Rama Inc.
Again because that's originally what it was called back when
Aramark was running it. Yeah, and they're mainly in the Midwest, Minnesota, Michigan,
bunch of them in Illinois and one in Texas that
looks like right, not bad. And then every once in a
a while you have just some independent operators like Knoxville
Zoo owns their own. They apparently got there from Dollywood,
(33:55):
which man, mold a Rama's at Dollywood that make your
wigs spin. Uh, there's this one cool thing I wanted
to shout out this toy store in Chicago Roto Fugi
or Rhoda Fuji, that's sure you pronounce it um. They
repurposed their own moldor rama. They bought one and repurposed
(34:16):
it that was originally the l A Zoo and they
call it the Rhodo a Matic. And they have something
called a helper Dragon you can get for six bucks.
And if you look up the Helper Dragon in these dudes,
it is clear that they are Simpsons fans. Did you
see this thing? Yeah? I did. I saw a video
of it, but it was kind of out of focus. Yeah,
(34:37):
Like just Google image the Helper Dragon, Rhodo Amatic and
it is to me at least clearly the Cyclops alien
from The Simpsons with it with its head stuck on
the body of a winged lion. That's my take on it.
Very nice. And then there is this one other guy.
(35:01):
He is a Disney World imagineer named James Durand, and
he has built his own moldar rama called the Mini Molder. Uh.
And you just look at this guy, you know, he's
an imagineer. You look at this machine and you're like,
I would hire that guy to build and do anything
because he's clearly a brilliant genius, really cool looking thing
(35:22):
and a bit of a show off. Frankly, you think, so,
I've got two more things. The mold of Rama used
to be fifty cents in its original incarnation in nWo, which,
again thanks to our friends at West Egg inflation calculator
tells us is about four dollars and twelve cents in
(35:43):
two thousand and seventeen money. Today you can get a
moldar rama for two bucks, which means that the price
has gone down by half over the last fifty years.
Pretty cool. And then lastly, so after Tyke Miller got
out of the plastics injection molding business, he had another
invention that he called the Golden Goat, and it was
(36:06):
this big machine that apparently he invented to put out
in parking lots at like grocery stores, and it would
take up about two parking spaces, and customers would come
in and put in their used aluminum cans, and then
the Golden Goat would weigh it and then give him
some money in return, and then it would compact those
(36:26):
cans and then later on that is that aluminum would
be sold as scrap for recycling. The thing is, this
was years before the green movement was ever even thought
of this. That's how ahead of his time this guy was.
And I don't think the Golden Goat ever made him
a lot of money, but it's a pretty cool invention
that this guy had. He had he was like one
(36:48):
of those great Midwestern tinker inventor guys. Hats off to him.
So there you go, Nativity figures plastic. If you want
to know more about Molder Rama man, you can fall
down a rabbit hole just looking at pictures of him
on the internet. So why don't you go do that?
Take some time for yourself, you know, why do you
(37:10):
always have to work? Work? Work? Since I said that,
it's time for a listener mail. We call this just
kind of a quick shout out. We don't do these
a lot um because we get a lot of shout
out request but this one was adorable because this a
little kid. So this is from Jenny, she's the mom.
She says, how about a shout out for my son Jake.
He listens to every episode more than once. He's got
(37:33):
me and many others into the show and we love it.
So young Jake is out there spreading the word and
we appreciate that, Jake. Uh, and you love the show
so much? Um you named well, not quite yet, but
Jake says he wants to get a puppy and call
it Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And he says this. Most
of the time he will be called Chuck, but when
(37:53):
he does something wrong, I'll be like, Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
why did you do that? Well, Jake, we have a
really big surprise for you if you will go to
your back door. I think you're gonna find something pretty
special out there. I'm just kidding. No, we're just kidding, Jake.
There's not a puppy at your back door unless your mom.
Jenny heard this beforehand and is the best moment in
(38:16):
the world. Yeah. Yeah, that was pretty cool of her
to write in and let us know. So way to go,
Jake for listening to us. Thank you, Thank you very much. Yeah,
thank you, Jake, Thank you, Jenny. We count literally count
on people like you to spread the word, so we
appreciate it. Good luck with your eventual puppy too named
Charles W. Chuck Bryant. When he's bad. If you want
(38:36):
to tell us about well, you're a cute kid, we
want to hear about him or her. You can tweet
to us at joshum Clark or at s Y s
K podcast. You can post it on Facebook dot com,
slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant, or slash stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email the Stuff podcast at
how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us
at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
(38:58):
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
visit how stuff Works dot com. M
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