December 12, 2025 • 42 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):
Ho ho, everybody. Santa Chuck here continuing on with our
twelve Days of Christmas Toys playlist. I'm gonna stop doing
that silly voice because I'm not Santa Claus. I'm just chucking.
I am here to introduce it smells good, it tastes good.
I just hope it sounds good, the salty goodness of Plato.
(00:23):
How Plato Works.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
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 were recording today. My
voice already sounds weird to me. What do you mean? Hmm?
It doesn't sound a little weird, you know how like
when we get toward the end of the second one, or.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
It gets a little like a worn out or something.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Yeah, like it's been extruded through a Plato fun Pat.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
What's all that is set up? Or do you really
feel that way.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
That was off the cuff? Baby?
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Okay, No, it doesn't sound weird to me. Your voice
never sounds weird unless you're sick.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Jerry Judge McCall, Yeah, Jerry brooklet tie. She sided with me.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Well, Jerry wears 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. I'm like, you're
two feet from me on what headphones?
Speaker 3 (01:24):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
That How about this for a new SYSK T shirt?
No more cans? Okay, just have a little X through
some headphones.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
I think when you make a stuff, you should know
decree from now we should have like a fairy wand
sound effect.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
We's like, here's this for a new T shirt. I
decree it be made into existence.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
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, pretty exciting.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Yeah, we and we do have some now that people
can go by if you want.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I like those first designs we had.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
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?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Oh, unless there's a reason. I think perpetuity is the
way to go. But someone might like the dancing you
know what we call that, the skeleton would cut Yeah,
fa parade of dancing skeletons.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
The macabre parade, that's what I would call it. Yeah,
that's a good one, all six of them. We're excellent.
The baby with the fly on its forehead.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
It's still my al time favorite.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yeah, it's good stuff. If you don't know what we're
talking about, good of stuff, youshould know dot com our
venerable website, and in the top navigation there's a store
button and it will take you our store and you
can see with your own very eyes what the heck
we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Yeah, yeah, that was off the cuff.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Yeah it was.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I wasn't like, oh, we gotta plug the T shirts.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
No, no, no, you very rarely say things as fretfully
as that. Okay, Chuck, Yes, you want to talk about Plato.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah, we promised to do this recently and here we are.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Yeah, in my defensive was 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? No,
it was already on the.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
List dance monkey.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Right. Did you play with Plato a lot when you
were a kid?
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Oh? I played with it. I ate it.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I don't recall eating it. I do specifically recall eating
the paste that was an off brand that had a
purple pirate on it. Oh, he was a pirate wearing
a purple hat, and I think maybe it had an
orange parrot.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah. Was the paste? Did it have a on the
inside of the lid. Did it have a applicator?
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Yeah, attached to it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I totally ate that paste.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
That was the best tasting paste on the planet.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
As a matter of fact, I think that paste might
have been manufactured in part to eat like it's rule
serve to like kids, some bad kids.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah. Actually, I want to revise my statement. I taste,
I licked and tasted playto. I don't remember like swallowing it,
but I remember, like, you know, tasting it and then
maybe even put it in my mouth and spitting it
back out. But I don't think I didn't swallow I gotcha.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Yeah, 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 bro
through a year long celebration for Plato Sure, which it owns,
(04:30):
which it bought off of Kenner. Yeah, which Kenner bought
from a dude named Joe mcvickers.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Actually they bought it from Tonka. Tonka bought it from Kenner.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Oh yeah, how'd I forget Tonka? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
And for this fiftieth birthday party, they had a scent
a Plato perfume released that smelled just like Plato.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Can you buy that? A wonder?
Speaker 3 (04:52):
I looked, and I think you can get it, but
I don't think as easy as you could back in
two thousand and six.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Yeah, I wouldn't want to wear it. I was just curious.
I think, yeah, nostalgia, Like I would like to smell it,
But don't spray that stuff on me.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
I don't think you're supposed to wear it?
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Oh was it just like it? Yeah, one of those things.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
It's a mood stabilizer. Okay, you know what I mean? Yeah,
spray in front of your face, and you just go,
oh yeah, okay, should put this lead pipe down and
rethink things.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Right, Remember when I was a kid and less violent.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Right, somebody give me some paste to eat.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
They should do that.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Well back when you were a kid, did you know
much about the origin of plato?
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Oh no, not at all.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
I didn't either until today or yesterday when I started
researching this plato everyone And in this article by Tracy Wilson,
who hosts Stuff You Missed in History Class, she says
that it's lower, but I've seen it all over the place,
and from what I understand, it's the truth.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
I think it's the truth.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
There was a dude named Joe mcvickers who had a
company and his company produced, from what I understand, McVicker's invention,
which was wallpaper clean.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yeah. His father and uncle started it and they were
called Koutol Products and it was a soap company, but
their big cellar was this wall cleaner. Because when we
heated our homes with coal, your house would get coal
soot on the walls. Yeah, which is really weird to
think of.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Now, Yeah, but it's true. And your wallpaper can still
get dirty grease from cooking things, food fights, whatever, yeah,
your wallpaper can get dirty. Let's just face facts. Everybody
and McVicker's company had this putty. It was kind of
a pliable, gooey putty that you slapped up against the
(06:39):
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. Yeah, and it was doing okay,
I guess great. I don't think they were like hurting necessarily.
But Joe was married to a woman or was his
sister in law was a tea Yeah, it was Cincinnati.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Yeah. They sold a lot of the stuff for a while,
but then natural gas came around and so they fell
upon hard times. But Joe took over from Cleo. Cleo's
was his father and his sister in law, Qesu Fall
of New Jersey read about kids that were making Christmas
ornaments out of that stuff and she said the wapaper cleaner. Yeah,
(07:26):
and much like kids do today with playto And she said, hey,
you know we're hurting, why don't we try and turn
this stuff into a toy. And they did so, and
in nineteen fifty he made a non toxic version, added
some almond scent, and you had your first little off
white playdo Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Kind of exactly what you would think of when you
think of a gummy colored like dough. Yeah, off white
khaki almost yeah. And mc vicar was a pretty smart
dude as far as business goes. He donated a bunch
of cans to the Cincinnati City School System. Very smart
(08:06):
and so got these little kids hooked on Plato. It
was a huge hit, but it might have just been
a regional hit. And if he hadn't approached a dude
named Captain Kangaroo. Yeah, he went to what is Captain
Kangaroo's name?
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Bob Bob Keishan.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
I think Bob keishen nice memory, Chuck.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
I pulled that out from I don't know how many
years ago, the last time I heard that name.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
He well, did you watch Captain Kangaroo? Oh? Yeah, me too,
huge fan loved Captain Kangaroo. I liked Captain Kangaroo more
than mister Rogers.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
I liked him both. But yeah, I think I might
have been yeah, Captain Kangaro a little bit more. It
was a haircut, and I was Electric Company over Tesame
Street Iman.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Yeah. I liked both, but I liked Electric Electric Company more. Yeah,
but I like Pinwheel most.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
I didn't watch that. It was for real old kids. Okay.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Anyway, Captain Kangaroo had a show and Joe McVicker somehow
got in contact with Captain Kangaroo and said, hey, I
have a little deal for you. Yeah, We've got this
awesome stuff. The kids in Cincinnati are crazy for it.
We're calling it Plato right now. It's an off white,
or it used to be, but now we have four colors, red, blue, yellow,
(09:15):
and white. Those are the four original colors of Plato
by the way. Yeah, and he gave someone to Captain
Kangaroo said I will give you two percent of gross
sales if you mentioned this on your show two times
a week. Yeah, he played with it.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Bob Keishan was a money grubber, that's what we all know.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
He I think he believed in this product.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yeah, and he's a smart guy, he is, And he.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
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. Yeah,
he would play with Plato on TV and it just
took off like a rocket from there.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
That was his additional compensation that he got free.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Plato.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
No, he had a percentage. So oh, yeah, you're right,
you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
You're right, But it suggests that he believed in it.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
That's right. He did believe in it.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
And do not shatter my image of Captain Kangarhood.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
I'm not saying he just wanted to make more money.
Of course not.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Isn't that the show that Mister Green Teens was on.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yeah, big fan of that guy too. They formed the
Rainbow Crafts Company, you know. They wanted to take it
out from under the Kutole 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,
(10:29):
and those I think you're probably if you have a
can of that, you probably it's probably in a museum
or something that wasn't around long. No, And then they
went to Plato. Pete the kid with the smock in
the beret. Yeah, because all little kids wore berets and
smocks back then.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Or you wore your dad's dress shirt like backwards.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Oh yeah, that made a good smock too, Yeah, the
one he didn't want anymore. Yeah, or that you thought
he didn't want any more, but he really got mad
at you because he got paint on it.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
That's my good short sleeved dress shirt.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
And finally it took all the way until two thousand
and two, did the Herbal Elvis wear short sleeve dress shirts?
Oh man, really with slacks and ties? Yeah, my dad
usually as a principal, wore a coat. But when you
take off the jacket and you've got the short sleeve, huh,
that's something else.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
With a blue felt tippin, a red felt tippin, and
a green felt tippin in his pocket front pocket.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
That was your dad.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Yeah, he's a mechanical engineer.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Oh, so each one had a different use.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Interesting.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
I think he also just thought they were pretty. Yeah,
like they kind of they made his They made his
shirt pocket pop.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
That's where you get it with your shirt pocket thing, right,
all right. It took it until two thousand and two
for that bereat to become a baseball cap.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
And then now he's just gone, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Was looking like somebody anymortalosy.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
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 and the top of the litter
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. Yeah. I like Plato Pete, the
kid with the beret.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Yeah, me too.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
He was great.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
That's what we grew up with. It's nostalgia.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Yeah, but he was around for a really long time
and only just do away with him like he's nothing.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
That's another shirt, Bring back Plato Pete. Yeah, we'll get sued.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Yes, although I didn't get the impression that they were
too terribly litigious.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Well, plus we could tell him, you know, we sold
nine t shirts. Here's your seventy three dollars. So Plato,
we all played with it. It was fun for modeling,
but it was not like you. If you were like me,
your your hopes were dashed a bit when you modeled
something and left it out overnight because you thought it
(12:51):
would make it into a permanent exhibit. Yeah, but it
would really just kind of break apart. It's not like
you can't cure it like you do modeling.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Clay no I was on Plato's site and they readily
admit that as a matter of fact, they say, if
you want a permanent thing, go get your some modeling clay.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
You get some Sculpy. I don't want a buzz market,
but Sculpy's a lot of fun. Okay, we're talking about
Plato though, Yeah, that Skulpy's fun.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
So but they say modeling clay. They don't say sculpy,
but they say, if you want to make a permanent thing,
go get some modeling clay. It's not what Plato's for.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
No, it's for being in the moment making fun things
and then put smashing those and then putting it back
in the can right, doing it all over again every day.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
And driving your mom crazy because she can't stand colors
to be mixed together. She sits there and like picks
them apart or whatever.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Or it's in the orange shag carpet.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Which again Hasbro has some helpful suggestions for how to
clean this stuff up. Sure number one and 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
(14:05):
of job, just go ahead and let this thing dry,
turn brittle, use a stiff brush and just kind of
brush it out of the carpeting, vacuum it up boom.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Yeah, or do the reasonable thing and get hardwood floors.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
All right, we'll discuss that very soon after this message.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Fish.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
All right.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
So Plato is fun enough on its own. Like when
I was a kid, I had zero accoutrem all to
go along with my Plato.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
I don't recall having anything but just the Plato too.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
All I had was the Plato in my imagination. And
in nineteen sixty that 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.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
That's like, that was it.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
That was it, And 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?
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (15:12):
There are hundreds of different things that you can buy
out with your Plato, of course.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Yes, for sure, and different types of Plato too to
make different looking things as well. Yeah, but the original
fun Factory thing is basically just a hand pushed lever
that shoved the Plato inside through a hole.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
It was a sausage grinder.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
And then basically yeah, and then in front of the hole,
you had just kind of like different shapes that you
could make this thing into. Yeah, what'd you say, spaghetti
rope and the rope. Speaking of the rope, all of
these are basically what it is. An extruder.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, this is a Plato extruder.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Is what these guys came up with. And I guarantee
they had colored felt tip pens in the fronts of
their pockets too when they design those things. But this,
if you took all Plato. By the way, here's a
Plato fun fact. If you took all the Plato ever
created and ran it through the fun factory and extruded
it into one long rope, it would wrap around the
(16:11):
Earth three thousand times?
Speaker 1 (16:14):
How many big max is that?
Speaker 3 (16:15):
No, I'm sorry, it would wrap around the Earth three
hundred times. Let's not go.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Crazy, Oh, only three hundred.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Yeah, and you could go to the moon and back
ten times with that rope. You could make a pretty
good little bridge that would be kind of crumbly by
the next day. Yeah, but it'd be colorful.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
That's a lot of playto man.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Yeah, they've sold nine hundred and fifty million pounds of
this stuff, more than two billion cans since nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Yeah, and they apparently make about one hundred million cans
every year.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Yah.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
What I find heartening is those are current statistics.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
They're not rated for inflation.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
No, but this article that Tracy wrote was apparently written
in two thousand and six. Yes, she said that they
make ninety five million cans, So they've upped their production
by five million cans a year, which means Plato's not
going anywhere.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
I'm pretty psyched about that.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Yeah, and all the stuff they have now, Like they've
got all sorts of licensing deals like they have like
the Plato Disney Princess set and right, you can make
dresses for your Disney princess out of Plato.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
And they have a long standing tradition too of making
fake food. Like I was watching some I wouldn't really
call it documentary. It's almost just a compilation of Plato
ads over the years.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
And there's one from the eighties where you could make
pizza hut pizzas out of Plato.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
I think I remember that.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Nowadays they have 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. Some are
squishyar and thinner and more pliable, so you can use
those to make the frosting, yeah, and use regular Plato
to make the actual cupcake.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
That's because the cupcake grays, I bet.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Probably it's filtered down to kids. And with the gluten
free graze on your website as contained gluten yeah, as wheat. Yeah,
but they like 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.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
But if your kid has a peanut allergy or a
milk allergy.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Yeah, you're fine. That's right. Water, salt, and flour is
the general. I mean, it's a it's a very proprietary
recipe obviously.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Right, it's a US patent number six seven one three
six two four.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
But if you look that up, you're not gonna find
the ingredients.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
No, like you said, it's proprietary. They they do give
kind of like a general ingredient list somewhere, I guess
in the patent itself. Yeah, but yeah, they're not going
to tell you like how to make it.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
But we'll list those really quickly, and then we're gonna
talk about chemistry.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Yeah, we're gonna get to the chemical molecular base of
play dough itself.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
But in broad terms, it is water. You got a
starch based binder. You have a retro gradation inhibitor because
you have to inhibit that retrogradation. Sure, salt, know there's
salt in there. In fact, at one point it was
too salty and they had to get a new chemist
to remove some of the salt.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Is that right?
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Yeah? But you remember how salty it tasted.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
No, I didn't. I never tasted it.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Oh you didn't. No, I thought you said you tasted it.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
No, I said I never did I ate the paste?
Oh okay, I never tasted But the smell was the
paste salty? No, no, no, it had a weird sweet
taste to it. It wasn't overly sweet, but of all
of the tastes.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Just sweet enough to get a kid to eat it.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Right.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Salt, you got your lubricant and all this will make
sense in a bit a surfactant, preservative, hardener, a humectant,
a fragrance of course in color. I know he used
almond for the first fragrance, but wonder if it's still
an offshoot of that smell like almond.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
From what I saw, they've admitted to vanilla. Oh really,
that's all I've seen, Okay, And they're saying like that
doesn't tell us anything.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
That's all they admitted to. Yeah, under question, think.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Yeah, but the colors, we should also say, Chuckers. They
originally had red, yellow, and blue primary colors, and they
added white, and this is all in the fifties, and
those are the only colors until the eighties.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
And then 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.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
I never got the white because it just it looked
dirty so quickly. Yeah, I never really understood the purpose
of the white.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
I liked it. I thought it was a nice juxtaposition
with the primary colors.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah, you were in artiste.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
No, I was just a kind of sore.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
All right. So now the rest of the show, we're
gonna talk about chemistry.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
You're not happy about this, are you?
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Well?
Speaker 3 (20:57):
What'd you think about this article?
Speaker 1 (20:59):
I thought it was It was good, you know, because
that's what how stuff works does, is they tell the
story behind things, Like we can't just talk about surfing.
We have to talk about the physics of a wave, right,
I get that, But yeah, chemistry was not my bag baby.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
This one, this one kissing and roller coasters. You were
kind of like you had a little bit of protest
going on, like, come on, this is fun stuff.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Yeah, when you're talking about kissing, you want to talk
about you know.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
Remember the title of it was a rigid, sterile look
at Kissing.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
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, it's
called how Plato Works, all right, but you heard it here.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
That was my It was the working title. Yeah. All right,
Well I will kick the chemistry off and maybe I
will spark your interest. Are you ready?
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Do you have your beret and your smock on.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
This isn't even the fun chemistry you get to burn things.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
No, this is the chemistry of compounds. You're just adding
them together. Yeah, yeah, there's a little involved, as we'll see,
so possibly you could start that flame. Okay, So the
whole basis of Plato, it turns out, is an interaction
between starch and water and starches. Are there polysacchrides, which
(22:16):
are sugar molecules, and there's basically two varieties or two
types that combine. There's amelos and there's amelopectin, and amylos
is like a string. Amelopectin 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
(22:38):
central area a hollow called the highlum hi l u
M the hylum, and it's all held together thanks to
hydrogen bonds. And then you have all that these polysacchride
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 of the
(23:00):
two bases of Plato.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Yeah, and this one, this article does have some pretty
handy illustrations. If hearing this doesn't make as much sense,
you can follow along on your own computer look at
the illustrations. If you add cold water to starch, the
granules are gonna absorb some. But when things really get
interesting is when you add warm water or when you
(23:26):
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
gelatin just like when you make jello. It's got to
be warm water.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Right. Like if you've ever had like corn starch or
flour whatever and you add cold water to it, they
just kind.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Of separate, right, It's really untoor it.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
It doesn't do much. It's almost like this starch protects
itself against the cold It's like, yeah, you stay over
there cold water. But when you use warm water or
mechanical action of mixing it together, it forms, like you said,
it gelatinizes. That's right, and how you're starting to get
the basis of play dough. But the problem is when
you just add warm water and the starch in this
(24:08):
case it's wheat starch that they use, right, because they
have to gluten more against gluten. 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 trouble.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yeah, because it really depends on the breakdown of amelos
to amelopectin is the key. If you have a lot
of ammelos, it's going to take more swelling to gelatinize, right.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
But you get a nice robust gel when you have
a lot of amlose. But the problem is that excess
ammelos 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 couple of It's like you've got
that gel and then some extra amylose and it's dry
and brittle and it's not good.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
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 pliable, right, And a lot of a
lot of work went into this, I'm sure.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Yeah, because at anytime, like they started with a starch
in the water, put it together fantastic, but then that
created this problem, yep. And then when they went to
solve this problem, it created this problem. So then they
had to solve this problem. And then after adding like
seven things, they finally have this like precariously balanced compound.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
That's perfect.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
That's perfect, but it's pretty neat. It's really complicated, and
it's self complicating, which I find very interesting it is.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
And what they ended up settling with as far as
percentages goes for that wheat startch was twenty five percent
amelos and seventy five percent amelopectin. They found that to
be the secret sauce, right, as our buddy Chad likes
to say.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
And the reason they have the amelopectin is because the
amelopectin is a waxy starch and it keeps the amelos
from binding to itself. So you have you've prevented that
retrogradation problem right where the amelos separates from the water
and just binds to itself. The problem is now that
you have this extra amelo pectin. The amelo pectin, it
(26:15):
keeps the whole thing together, but it does it too much,
and now you have a sticky tachy compound.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah, you don't want it sticky.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
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 I'll stick to itself. It's not going
to make a cheeseburger like that. No, No, so they
added something else, a lubricant.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
That's right in this case. I don't know if it's
that's part of the secret or not, but it's probably
some sort of a vegetable oil or mineral oil.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Well they think possibly it's it's a mineral oil which
is derived from petroleum, which petroleum which is why it's
non toxic, but you still shouldn't eat it.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Yeah, I did see that there was petroleum. I bet
you they're going to come out with a gluten free playto.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
I'm surprised they haven't already.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
But that would almost be like it minting. Your child
is eating this or can eat it?
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Well, some of that new stuff like the Sweet Shop stuff. Yeah,
I'm actually I would be very surprised if they hadn't
done some R and D of different flavored play dough, right,
you know, because they have the different colors and this
is supposed to look like this frosting. This is supposed
to look like this frosting. So I wonder if they
were like, well, we can't make this taste like vanilla
(27:25):
or or you know, cotton cany 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.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
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, yeah, some kid is probably going to
eat that entire thing at some point.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
And like we said, they've pretty much always been like,
you can make fake food with this.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Yeah, Pizza Hut gave us money to do this, but
don't eat it.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Right, it's a weird mixed message.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
It is a totally mixed message.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
But you were saying they use the petroleum oil for
as a lubricant.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
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 and moist, but it's not going to
stick to your fingers, which is the key.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Right. So you have added the mineral oil or some
sort of lubricant to prevent the extra amlopectin from making
it sticky. And the whole reason you added amelopectin was
because too much amelose can cause retrogradation. So you've got
all these solutions and you've got the lubricant solution. The
(28:27):
problem is you can't just put like, you can't just
drop it into lubricant and expect it to stick. The
lubricant won't bind within this compound. Yeah, so you have
to add yet another thing, the surfactant.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yeah. Surfactants you'll see in a lot of household cleansing
products if you use that chemical junk to clean your house.
But a surface active agent is another name for it,
and it basically they're artificially manufactured. They're molecules, but it's
gonna suspend some water. It's the whole keyt of being asurfractant.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
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 means it repels water
and it's actually attracted to fats lipids.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Right, Yeah, are afraid of it. Even.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
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, one end will
attract the fat molecules and another end will attract the
water molecules. And what the end result of all of
this is that you can basically suspend fats in water
(29:39):
or water in fats, 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's
being held together by surfactants. That's right, that's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Yeah, it actually binds to the molecules of the lubricanty
chemical reaction is taking place.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
And keeps them all mixed together. It won't allow him
to separate. So we've got the lubricin in there. Yeah,
the whole thing's being held in place by their surfactant.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
All looped up, ready to go.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
We've got a little extra water, chuck, what are we
gonna do?
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Well? I don't think we mentioned earlier. The reason it
dries out to begin with if you leave it out
overnight is just because of evaporation.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Right, And Hasbro recommends that if this happens, you take
your Plato modeling clay. Yeah, and you wrap it in
like a damp paper towel, put it back in the camp,
but the cover on it leave it overnight should be
good as new.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Yeah, And I've seen you can also add a little
water to it as well. Yeah, but I've never tried that,
so that, my friend is it's a very fine tuned mixture,
like you said, they had to. I'm sure it took
a lot of work over the years to get it
just exactly right. And we're going to learn how you
can make your own right after this break.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
So chuck. Yeah, we should have said. There's a couple
other things that they add, Like you get excess to water,
so they added a little salt. Yeah, sure, and apparently
for the excess salt they brought in a new chemist.
So it's just fine, perfectly fine tune stuff.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
And you get a color it of course, and give
it its sent.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
Yeah, and then possibly make it taste in the future.
Who knows. I'm betting on that.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Yeah. And you know, the salts also adds a little
anti microbal element to it.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
Right, which is nice, so it has it acts as
a preservative as well. And to make Plato, you just
put all this stuff in these in the right measurements
and apply heat to it and mix it together and
package it and that's Plato.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah, and it's got to have that shelf life like
this is. It's really 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 where like, oh, this stuff's two weeks old on
the shelf, it's like a brick back to the drawing board.
Ye put on your beret and your smock.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Remember in our How Twinkies Works episode they dealt with
that initially.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Of the shelf life. Yeah, right, so they just made
it infinity. Man, that was such a good episode. No,
it's good, one of my all time favorites. Agreed. We
still get emails from people that are like, I found
the banana Twinkies.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
Yeah, they have them in like limited release from once
in a while. Yeah, I have yet to try one.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
I remember trying one years ago, but it wasn't my bag.
I don't like banana flavor things, but I like bananas.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Huh. You're a very complex Manchuck.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Well, they don't. They don't quite get it right. I
don't think ever, I've never tasted a banana flavor thing
that got it right, gotcha. I'm hard to please, So.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Man, you just totally threw me off. What were we
talking about?
Speaker 1 (32:38):
We were I think we were at to a point
where we're going to make our own right.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Right, So it's very tough to make what until you
come upon the recipe. But apparently a lot of people,
even though it's a proprietary recipe, a lot of people
have come up with their own recipes for play though.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
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, get
a learning moment if.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
You want to save some money, or you you don't
want to feed the corporate beast that too, or yeah,
you just want to do something with your 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. Oh really, there's some for glittery plato. There's
(33:21):
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 to it,
something to hold the whole thing together. In this recipe,
it's a cream of tartar yes which stiffens eggs and
gives plato homemade plato its firmness. But there's a lot
(33:42):
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.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
And you can explain, you know, what each ingredient is doing,
and then at the very end, gonna have plato and
your kid's gonna say this Plato stinks. It's not nearly
as good as the real thing.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Unless it's the peanut butter variety. And I'll bet you're like, ooh,
this is tasty plato.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Do they have that?
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Yeah, there's a recipe for it in this article.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
So peanut butter is one of the ingredients.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
Yes, interesting, Yeah, or you know what, you could make
it with your kid. Wow. You listen to us stumble
through the explanation. Yeah, and to everybody who's doing that
right now, Hello, Hello everyone, and.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Your kid's gonna say, who are these jerks? And why
does my plato not work?
Speaker 3 (34:35):
Can we just go to the store and buy some
plato please?
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Yep?
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Yeah, Well we're portable. We go around on MP three players,
so we can go to the store with you two.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Exactly what else you got and then you can listen
to our episode on temper tantrums on the way to
the store.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
That was a good one too. It was what else
do you got? I've got nothing else, I got plenty more.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Oh well, please.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Mister Bill remember him from sarat Life. Of course he
was made a Plato. Yeah, they made the first mister
Bill short for twenty bucks.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
That's pretty good stuff. What else you got? Fun facts?
Playoff fun facts.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
There's a there's not just one, but two at least
Plato three D printers on the market right now. Really, yeah,
it's pretty awesome. So you put a hunk of it
in there, different hunks in there, and oh no, no, no,
and it I was about to say, a hunk in there,
and then it whittles it down. But that's the opposite
of three D. No, no, it extrudes it. It builds up.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
There's one on think Geek for like fifty bucks that
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.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
That's kind of fun.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
It is at the same time, it's kind of like,
you know, I mean you're 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.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Well, I think that that's the new imagination, my friend, I.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Guess, so to follow forms and schematics the.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
T maybe so it would be cool as if you
could design your own schematic and then.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Which I'm treated you can. Yeah. And then Plato has
one called the do Vinci. I saw that, 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 years back.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Oh, band is in? I thought you meant like bands
recorded music.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
No, no, like d taboo plato ads that are very
adult centric.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Really yeah that can you say?
Speaker 3 (36:40):
What?
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Well?
Speaker 3 (36:42):
How about this?
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (36:43):
I made a slideshow of them on our site. You
can go check them out. They're pretty crazy. They're not
like naked or not adult in that way, but like
kind of violent and a little dark that this ad
agency made basically without the approval of has Bro clearly,
and Hasbro came in and like denounced it and everything.
(37:04):
But they're pretty great. So if you go to stuff
you should dot com and search a band Plato ads,
it will come up.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
And Hasbro had a news release it says we don't
endorse this use of Plato brand multiple Clay Right, they
just kept working the name in there.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
Yeah, it's pretty crazy. I learned all about something called
scam ads, where advertising agencies basically create ad campaigns based
around brand names without the brand names permission, simply to
submit them for awards consideration to expand their prestige.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Interesting. Well, and if you want to be a TV
commercial director, you have probably made some spec or fake
ads yourself, right, just to have on your reel, Like
you know, I'm going to make a Dorito. Well, Dorito
says said coast every.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
Year, right, So this is that same thing. But sometimes
they really run a foul of like the spirit of
the brand. Sure, and there's yeah scam ads.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Yeah, they're like you're a pan commercials which are always
way better than risque and like funny. Yeah, get with it, America.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
So if you want to learn more about Plato, including
a few Plato recipes, you can type Plato into the
search bar house stuffworks dot Com and say said search bar,
it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
I'm going to call this another MPAA called the Golden
f Bomb. Hey, guys, I discovered your show and he
says Helloa Jerry and spilled her name right too. Oh
that was nice, which doesn't happen aten, No, the spelling
that is. I discovered your podcast while looking for something
interesting to listen to while I worked on my organic
farm in Kawhi nights, I heard the MPAA show and
(38:42):
I just had to write. In growing up, my friends
and I were always looking for a way to sneak
into movie theaters via 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,
et cetera. He had all sorts of ways of stealing.
Our goal was to get into an ra the movie Underage,
with NC seventeen being the ultimate prize PG. Thirteen always
(39:05):
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.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Yeah, it must have been a time when movies weren't
as good as they are today. In the theaters.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
No, movies have never been this bad.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
I know, man, it is really out of kate. It's terrible.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
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
look out for to this day. Still there are some
real classics, including Ron Burgundy's and Anchorman, most recently in Skyfall,
when Judy Dinch uses that naughty word.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
She did, I don't remember that, Judy.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
The first one in the Bond series, heclaimed, Judy, Judy, Judy, Oh,
I just saw Filamina by the way, finally, what did
you think.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Think that it was fantastic? Was that just an amazing
change of pace for her? She always plays like the
sharp pulled together like yeah yeah, like boss Lady, and
this one she was just kind of just working class. God,
that was a good movie.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
It was really good.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
I love that movie.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Highly recommended. And then I noticed the rating rule is
not ironclad, however, because recent examples of Lincoln and Philamina, Hey,
how about that had two of those naughty words a piece.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Lincoln had it in their hunts that Spielberg gets away
with anything.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Well, he's the one that had the whole thing changed.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Oh yeah, he was the one that created it.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
PG. Thirteen. Yeah, and then he ran a foul of it. Anyway,
My absolute favorite PG thirteen Golden Goal naughty word not
mentioned anywhere else that I've researched, was the one that
got me out of my seat cheering like the President's
speech and Independence Day is from Oblivion. Tom Cruise's character
waits to the very end of the movie to deliver
(40:56):
the perfectly timed line to his enemy that movie.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
Stunk, didn't Yeah, I heard the other one was pretty
good though, Edge of Tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Yeah, that was really good. Oblivion stunk. And he closes
by saying, mahalo nue loa, thank you very much for
all you do to infotain us. And that is Evans
on Kawhii. Yeah, sorry, Evans, Oblivion was no good. He said,
he liked it a lot, but you know, to each
their own, I'm not gonna poopooit his taste.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
Good for you, Chuck, thanks for.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Your game and your thievery.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
If you want to talk to me and Chuck about movies,
we are always down for that. We love to talk
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 there like, oh,
this is a good episode.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
There were podcasts liked exactly like that. You know that?
Speaker 3 (41:49):
What was I just saying? Oh yeah. If you want
to get in touch with us for whatever reason, movies
or otherwise, you can tweet to us at sysk podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash No,
you can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
HowStuffWorks dot com, and you can join us at our
home on the web, stuff you Should Know dot com.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com.
Ho ho, everybody. Santa Chuck here continuing on with our
twelve Days of Christmas Toys playlist. I'm gonna stop doing
that silly voice because I'm not Santa Claus. I'm just chucking.
I am here to introduce it smells good, it tastes good.
I just hope it sounds good, the salty goodness of Plato.
(00:23):
How Plato Works.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
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 were recording today. My
voice already sounds weird to me. What do you mean? Hmm?
It doesn't sound a little weird, you know how like
when we get toward the end of the second one, or.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
It gets a little like a worn out or something.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Yeah, like it's been extruded through a Plato fun Pat.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
What's all that is set up? Or do you really
feel that way.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
That was off the cuff? Baby?
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Okay, No, it doesn't sound weird to me. Your voice
never sounds weird unless you're sick.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Jerry Judge McCall, Yeah, Jerry brooklet tie. She sided with me.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Well, Jerry wears 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. I'm like, you're
two feet from me on what headphones?
Speaker 3 (01:24):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
That How about this for a new SYSK T shirt?
No more cans? Okay, just have a little X through
some headphones.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
I think when you make a stuff, you should know
decree from now we should have like a fairy wand
sound effect.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
We's like, here's this for a new T shirt. I
decree it be made into existence.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
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, pretty exciting.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Yeah, we and we do have some now that people
can go by if you want.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I like those first designs we had.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
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?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Oh, unless there's a reason. I think perpetuity is the
way to go. But someone might like the dancing you
know what we call that, the skeleton would cut Yeah,
fa parade of dancing skeletons.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
The macabre parade, that's what I would call it. Yeah,
that's a good one, all six of them. We're excellent.
The baby with the fly on its forehead.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
It's still my al time favorite.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yeah, it's good stuff. If you don't know what we're
talking about, good of stuff, youshould know dot com our
venerable website, and in the top navigation there's a store
button and it will take you our store and you
can see with your own very eyes what the heck
we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Yeah, yeah, that was off the cuff.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Yeah it was.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I wasn't like, oh, we gotta plug the T shirts.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
No, no, no, you very rarely say things as fretfully
as that. Okay, Chuck, Yes, you want to talk about Plato.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah, we promised to do this recently and here we are.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Yeah, in my defensive was 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? No,
it was already on the.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
List dance monkey.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Right. Did you play with Plato a lot when you
were a kid?
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Oh? I played with it. I ate it.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I don't recall eating it. I do specifically recall eating
the paste that was an off brand that had a
purple pirate on it. Oh, he was a pirate wearing
a purple hat, and I think maybe it had an
orange parrot.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah. Was the paste? Did it have a on the
inside of the lid. Did it have a applicator?
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Yeah, attached to it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I totally ate that paste.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
That was the best tasting paste on the planet.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
As a matter of fact, I think that paste might
have been manufactured in part to eat like it's rule
serve to like kids, some bad kids.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah. Actually, I want to revise my statement. I taste,
I licked and tasted playto. I don't remember like swallowing it,
but I remember, like, you know, tasting it and then
maybe even put it in my mouth and spitting it
back out. But I don't think I didn't swallow I gotcha.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Yeah, 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 bro
through a year long celebration for Plato Sure, which it owns,
(04:30):
which it bought off of Kenner. Yeah, which Kenner bought
from a dude named Joe mcvickers.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Actually they bought it from Tonka. Tonka bought it from Kenner.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Oh yeah, how'd I forget Tonka? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
And for this fiftieth birthday party, they had a scent
a Plato perfume released that smelled just like Plato.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Can you buy that? A wonder?
Speaker 3 (04:52):
I looked, and I think you can get it, but
I don't think as easy as you could back in
two thousand and six.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Yeah, I wouldn't want to wear it. I was just curious.
I think, yeah, nostalgia, Like I would like to smell it,
But don't spray that stuff on me.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
I don't think you're supposed to wear it?
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Oh was it just like it? Yeah, one of those things.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
It's a mood stabilizer. Okay, you know what I mean? Yeah,
spray in front of your face, and you just go,
oh yeah, okay, should put this lead pipe down and
rethink things.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Right, Remember when I was a kid and less violent.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Right, somebody give me some paste to eat.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
They should do that.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Well back when you were a kid, did you know
much about the origin of plato?
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Oh no, not at all.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
I didn't either until today or yesterday when I started
researching this plato everyone And in this article by Tracy Wilson,
who hosts Stuff You Missed in History Class, she says
that it's lower, but I've seen it all over the place,
and from what I understand, it's the truth.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
I think it's the truth.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
There was a dude named Joe mcvickers who had a
company and his company produced, from what I understand, McVicker's invention,
which was wallpaper clean.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yeah. His father and uncle started it and they were
called Koutol Products and it was a soap company, but
their big cellar was this wall cleaner. Because when we
heated our homes with coal, your house would get coal
soot on the walls. Yeah, which is really weird to
think of.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Now, Yeah, but it's true. And your wallpaper can still
get dirty grease from cooking things, food fights, whatever, yeah,
your wallpaper can get dirty. Let's just face facts. Everybody
and McVicker's company had this putty. It was kind of
a pliable, gooey putty that you slapped up against the
(06:39):
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. Yeah, and it was doing okay,
I guess great. I don't think they were like hurting necessarily.
But Joe was married to a woman or was his
sister in law was a tea Yeah, it was Cincinnati.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Yeah. They sold a lot of the stuff for a while,
but then natural gas came around and so they fell
upon hard times. But Joe took over from Cleo. Cleo's
was his father and his sister in law, Qesu Fall
of New Jersey read about kids that were making Christmas
ornaments out of that stuff and she said the wapaper cleaner. Yeah,
(07:26):
and much like kids do today with playto And she said, hey,
you know we're hurting, why don't we try and turn
this stuff into a toy. And they did so, and
in nineteen fifty he made a non toxic version, added
some almond scent, and you had your first little off
white playdo Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Kind of exactly what you would think of when you
think of a gummy colored like dough. Yeah, off white
khaki almost yeah. And mc vicar was a pretty smart
dude as far as business goes. He donated a bunch
of cans to the Cincinnati City School System. Very smart
(08:06):
and so got these little kids hooked on Plato. It
was a huge hit, but it might have just been
a regional hit. And if he hadn't approached a dude
named Captain Kangaroo. Yeah, he went to what is Captain
Kangaroo's name?
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Bob Bob Keishan.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
I think Bob keishen nice memory, Chuck.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
I pulled that out from I don't know how many
years ago, the last time I heard that name.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
He well, did you watch Captain Kangaroo? Oh? Yeah, me too,
huge fan loved Captain Kangaroo. I liked Captain Kangaroo more
than mister Rogers.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
I liked him both. But yeah, I think I might
have been yeah, Captain Kangaro a little bit more. It
was a haircut, and I was Electric Company over Tesame
Street Iman.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Yeah. I liked both, but I liked Electric Electric Company more. Yeah,
but I like Pinwheel most.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
I didn't watch that. It was for real old kids. Okay.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Anyway, Captain Kangaroo had a show and Joe McVicker somehow
got in contact with Captain Kangaroo and said, hey, I
have a little deal for you. Yeah, We've got this
awesome stuff. The kids in Cincinnati are crazy for it.
We're calling it Plato right now. It's an off white,
or it used to be, but now we have four colors, red, blue, yellow,
(09:15):
and white. Those are the four original colors of Plato
by the way. Yeah, and he gave someone to Captain
Kangaroo said I will give you two percent of gross
sales if you mentioned this on your show two times
a week. Yeah, he played with it.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Bob Keishan was a money grubber, that's what we all know.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
He I think he believed in this product.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yeah, and he's a smart guy, he is, And he.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
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. Yeah,
he would play with Plato on TV and it just
took off like a rocket from there.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
That was his additional compensation that he got free.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Plato.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
No, he had a percentage. So oh, yeah, you're right,
you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
You're right, But it suggests that he believed in it.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
That's right. He did believe in it.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
And do not shatter my image of Captain Kangarhood.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
I'm not saying he just wanted to make more money.
Of course not.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Isn't that the show that Mister Green Teens was on.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yeah, big fan of that guy too. They formed the
Rainbow Crafts Company, you know. They wanted to take it
out from under the Kutole 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,
(10:29):
and those I think you're probably if you have a
can of that, you probably it's probably in a museum
or something that wasn't around long. No, And then they
went to Plato. Pete the kid with the smock in
the beret. Yeah, because all little kids wore berets and
smocks back then.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Or you wore your dad's dress shirt like backwards.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Oh yeah, that made a good smock too, Yeah, the
one he didn't want anymore. Yeah, or that you thought
he didn't want any more, but he really got mad
at you because he got paint on it.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
That's my good short sleeved dress shirt.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
And finally it took all the way until two thousand
and two, did the Herbal Elvis wear short sleeve dress shirts?
Oh man, really with slacks and ties? Yeah, my dad
usually as a principal, wore a coat. But when you
take off the jacket and you've got the short sleeve, huh,
that's something else.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
With a blue felt tippin, a red felt tippin, and
a green felt tippin in his pocket front pocket.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
That was your dad.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Yeah, he's a mechanical engineer.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Oh, so each one had a different use.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Interesting.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
I think he also just thought they were pretty. Yeah,
like they kind of they made his They made his
shirt pocket pop.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
That's where you get it with your shirt pocket thing, right,
all right. It took it until two thousand and two
for that bereat to become a baseball cap.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
And then now he's just gone, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Was looking like somebody anymortalosy.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
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 and the top of the litter
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. Yeah. I like Plato Pete, the
kid with the beret.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Yeah, me too.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
He was great.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
That's what we grew up with. It's nostalgia.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Yeah, but he was around for a really long time
and only just do away with him like he's nothing.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
That's another shirt, Bring back Plato Pete. Yeah, we'll get sued.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Yes, although I didn't get the impression that they were
too terribly litigious.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Well, plus we could tell him, you know, we sold
nine t shirts. Here's your seventy three dollars. So Plato,
we all played with it. It was fun for modeling,
but it was not like you. If you were like me,
your your hopes were dashed a bit when you modeled
something and left it out overnight because you thought it
(12:51):
would make it into a permanent exhibit. Yeah, but it
would really just kind of break apart. It's not like
you can't cure it like you do modeling.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Clay no I was on Plato's site and they readily
admit that as a matter of fact, they say, if
you want a permanent thing, go get your some modeling clay.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
You get some Sculpy. I don't want a buzz market,
but Sculpy's a lot of fun. Okay, we're talking about
Plato though, Yeah, that Skulpy's fun.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
So but they say modeling clay. They don't say sculpy,
but they say, if you want to make a permanent thing,
go get some modeling clay. It's not what Plato's for.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
No, it's for being in the moment making fun things
and then put smashing those and then putting it back
in the can right, doing it all over again every day.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
And driving your mom crazy because she can't stand colors
to be mixed together. She sits there and like picks
them apart or whatever.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Or it's in the orange shag carpet.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Which again Hasbro has some helpful suggestions for how to
clean this stuff up. Sure number one and 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
(14:05):
of job, just go ahead and let this thing dry,
turn brittle, use a stiff brush and just kind of
brush it out of the carpeting, vacuum it up boom.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Yeah, or do the reasonable thing and get hardwood floors.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
All right, we'll discuss that very soon after this message.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Fish.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
All right.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
So Plato is fun enough on its own. Like when
I was a kid, I had zero accoutrem all to
go along with my Plato.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
I don't recall having anything but just the Plato too.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
All I had was the Plato in my imagination. And
in nineteen sixty that 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.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
That's like, that was it.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
That was it, And 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?
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (15:12):
There are hundreds of different things that you can buy
out with your Plato, of course.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Yes, for sure, and different types of Plato too to
make different looking things as well. Yeah, but the original
fun Factory thing is basically just a hand pushed lever
that shoved the Plato inside through a hole.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
It was a sausage grinder.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
And then basically yeah, and then in front of the hole,
you had just kind of like different shapes that you
could make this thing into. Yeah, what'd you say, spaghetti
rope and the rope. Speaking of the rope, all of
these are basically what it is. An extruder.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, this is a Plato extruder.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Is what these guys came up with. And I guarantee
they had colored felt tip pens in the fronts of
their pockets too when they design those things. But this,
if you took all Plato. By the way, here's a
Plato fun fact. If you took all the Plato ever
created and ran it through the fun factory and extruded
it into one long rope, it would wrap around the
(16:11):
Earth three thousand times?
Speaker 1 (16:14):
How many big max is that?
Speaker 3 (16:15):
No, I'm sorry, it would wrap around the Earth three
hundred times. Let's not go.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Crazy, Oh, only three hundred.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Yeah, and you could go to the moon and back
ten times with that rope. You could make a pretty
good little bridge that would be kind of crumbly by
the next day. Yeah, but it'd be colorful.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
That's a lot of playto man.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Yeah, they've sold nine hundred and fifty million pounds of
this stuff, more than two billion cans since nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Yeah, and they apparently make about one hundred million cans
every year.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Yah.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
What I find heartening is those are current statistics.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
They're not rated for inflation.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
No, but this article that Tracy wrote was apparently written
in two thousand and six. Yes, she said that they
make ninety five million cans, So they've upped their production
by five million cans a year, which means Plato's not
going anywhere.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
I'm pretty psyched about that.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Yeah, and all the stuff they have now, Like they've
got all sorts of licensing deals like they have like
the Plato Disney Princess set and right, you can make
dresses for your Disney princess out of Plato.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
And they have a long standing tradition too of making
fake food. Like I was watching some I wouldn't really
call it documentary. It's almost just a compilation of Plato
ads over the years.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
And there's one from the eighties where you could make
pizza hut pizzas out of Plato.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
I think I remember that.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Nowadays they have 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. Some are
squishyar and thinner and more pliable, so you can use
those to make the frosting, yeah, and use regular Plato
to make the actual cupcake.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
That's because the cupcake grays, I bet.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Probably it's filtered down to kids. And with the gluten
free graze on your website as contained gluten yeah, as wheat. Yeah,
but they like 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.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
But if your kid has a peanut allergy or a
milk allergy.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Yeah, you're fine. That's right. Water, salt, and flour is
the general. I mean, it's a it's a very proprietary
recipe obviously.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Right, it's a US patent number six seven one three
six two four.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
But if you look that up, you're not gonna find
the ingredients.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
No, like you said, it's proprietary. They they do give
kind of like a general ingredient list somewhere, I guess
in the patent itself. Yeah, but yeah, they're not going
to tell you like how to make it.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
But we'll list those really quickly, and then we're gonna
talk about chemistry.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Yeah, we're gonna get to the chemical molecular base of
play dough itself.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
But in broad terms, it is water. You got a
starch based binder. You have a retro gradation inhibitor because
you have to inhibit that retrogradation. Sure, salt, know there's
salt in there. In fact, at one point it was
too salty and they had to get a new chemist
to remove some of the salt.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Is that right?
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Yeah? But you remember how salty it tasted.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
No, I didn't. I never tasted it.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Oh you didn't. No, I thought you said you tasted it.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
No, I said I never did I ate the paste?
Oh okay, I never tasted But the smell was the
paste salty? No, no, no, it had a weird sweet
taste to it. It wasn't overly sweet, but of all
of the tastes.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Just sweet enough to get a kid to eat it.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Right.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Salt, you got your lubricant and all this will make
sense in a bit a surfactant, preservative, hardener, a humectant,
a fragrance of course in color. I know he used
almond for the first fragrance, but wonder if it's still
an offshoot of that smell like almond.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
From what I saw, they've admitted to vanilla. Oh really,
that's all I've seen, Okay, And they're saying like that
doesn't tell us anything.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
That's all they admitted to. Yeah, under question, think.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Yeah, but the colors, we should also say, Chuckers. They
originally had red, yellow, and blue primary colors, and they
added white, and this is all in the fifties, and
those are the only colors until the eighties.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
And then 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.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
I never got the white because it just it looked
dirty so quickly. Yeah, I never really understood the purpose
of the white.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
I liked it. I thought it was a nice juxtaposition
with the primary colors.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah, you were in artiste.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
No, I was just a kind of sore.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
All right. So now the rest of the show, we're
gonna talk about chemistry.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
You're not happy about this, are you?
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Well?
Speaker 3 (20:57):
What'd you think about this article?
Speaker 1 (20:59):
I thought it was It was good, you know, because
that's what how stuff works does, is they tell the
story behind things, Like we can't just talk about surfing.
We have to talk about the physics of a wave, right,
I get that, But yeah, chemistry was not my bag baby.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
This one, this one kissing and roller coasters. You were
kind of like you had a little bit of protest
going on, like, come on, this is fun stuff.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Yeah, when you're talking about kissing, you want to talk
about you know.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
Remember the title of it was a rigid, sterile look
at Kissing.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
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, it's
called how Plato Works, all right, but you heard it here.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
That was my It was the working title. Yeah. All right,
Well I will kick the chemistry off and maybe I
will spark your interest. Are you ready?
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Do you have your beret and your smock on.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
This isn't even the fun chemistry you get to burn things.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
No, this is the chemistry of compounds. You're just adding
them together. Yeah, yeah, there's a little involved, as we'll see,
so possibly you could start that flame. Okay, So the
whole basis of Plato, it turns out, is an interaction
between starch and water and starches. Are there polysacchrides, which
(22:16):
are sugar molecules, and there's basically two varieties or two
types that combine. There's amelos and there's amelopectin, and amylos
is like a string. Amelopectin 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
(22:38):
central area a hollow called the highlum hi l u
M the hylum, and it's all held together thanks to
hydrogen bonds. And then you have all that these polysacchride
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 of the
(23:00):
two bases of Plato.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Yeah, and this one, this article does have some pretty
handy illustrations. If hearing this doesn't make as much sense,
you can follow along on your own computer look at
the illustrations. If you add cold water to starch, the
granules are gonna absorb some. But when things really get
interesting is when you add warm water or when you
(23:26):
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
gelatin just like when you make jello. It's got to
be warm water.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Right. Like if you've ever had like corn starch or
flour whatever and you add cold water to it, they
just kind.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Of separate, right, It's really untoor it.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
It doesn't do much. It's almost like this starch protects
itself against the cold It's like, yeah, you stay over
there cold water. But when you use warm water or
mechanical action of mixing it together, it forms, like you said,
it gelatinizes. That's right, and how you're starting to get
the basis of play dough. But the problem is when
you just add warm water and the starch in this
(24:08):
case it's wheat starch that they use, right, because they
have to gluten more against gluten. 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 trouble.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yeah, because it really depends on the breakdown of amelos
to amelopectin is the key. If you have a lot
of ammelos, it's going to take more swelling to gelatinize, right.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
But you get a nice robust gel when you have
a lot of amlose. But the problem is that excess
ammelos 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 couple of It's like you've got
that gel and then some extra amylose and it's dry
and brittle and it's not good.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
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 pliable, right, And a lot of a
lot of work went into this, I'm sure.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Yeah, because at anytime, like they started with a starch
in the water, put it together fantastic, but then that
created this problem, yep. And then when they went to
solve this problem, it created this problem. So then they
had to solve this problem. And then after adding like
seven things, they finally have this like precariously balanced compound.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
That's perfect.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
That's perfect, but it's pretty neat. It's really complicated, and
it's self complicating, which I find very interesting it is.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
And what they ended up settling with as far as
percentages goes for that wheat startch was twenty five percent
amelos and seventy five percent amelopectin. They found that to
be the secret sauce, right, as our buddy Chad likes
to say.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
And the reason they have the amelopectin is because the
amelopectin is a waxy starch and it keeps the amelos
from binding to itself. So you have you've prevented that
retrogradation problem right where the amelos separates from the water
and just binds to itself. The problem is now that
you have this extra amelo pectin. The amelo pectin, it
(26:15):
keeps the whole thing together, but it does it too much,
and now you have a sticky tachy compound.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah, you don't want it sticky.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
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 I'll stick to itself. It's not going
to make a cheeseburger like that. No, No, so they
added something else, a lubricant.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
That's right in this case. I don't know if it's
that's part of the secret or not, but it's probably
some sort of a vegetable oil or mineral oil.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Well they think possibly it's it's a mineral oil which
is derived from petroleum, which petroleum which is why it's
non toxic, but you still shouldn't eat it.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Yeah, I did see that there was petroleum. I bet
you they're going to come out with a gluten free playto.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
I'm surprised they haven't already.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
But that would almost be like it minting. Your child
is eating this or can eat it?
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Well, some of that new stuff like the Sweet Shop stuff. Yeah,
I'm actually I would be very surprised if they hadn't
done some R and D of different flavored play dough, right,
you know, because they have the different colors and this
is supposed to look like this frosting. This is supposed
to look like this frosting. So I wonder if they
were like, well, we can't make this taste like vanilla
(27:25):
or or you know, cotton cany 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.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
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, yeah, some kid is probably going to
eat that entire thing at some point.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
And like we said, they've pretty much always been like,
you can make fake food with this.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Yeah, Pizza Hut gave us money to do this, but
don't eat it.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Right, it's a weird mixed message.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
It is a totally mixed message.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
But you were saying they use the petroleum oil for
as a lubricant.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
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 and moist, but it's not going to
stick to your fingers, which is the key.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Right. So you have added the mineral oil or some
sort of lubricant to prevent the extra amlopectin from making
it sticky. And the whole reason you added amelopectin was
because too much amelose can cause retrogradation. So you've got
all these solutions and you've got the lubricant solution. The
(28:27):
problem is you can't just put like, you can't just
drop it into lubricant and expect it to stick. The
lubricant won't bind within this compound. Yeah, so you have
to add yet another thing, the surfactant.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yeah. Surfactants you'll see in a lot of household cleansing
products if you use that chemical junk to clean your house.
But a surface active agent is another name for it,
and it basically they're artificially manufactured. They're molecules, but it's
gonna suspend some water. It's the whole keyt of being asurfractant.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
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 means it repels water
and it's actually attracted to fats lipids.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Right, Yeah, are afraid of it. Even.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
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, one end will
attract the fat molecules and another end will attract the
water molecules. And what the end result of all of
this is that you can basically suspend fats in water
(29:39):
or water in fats, 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's
being held together by surfactants. That's right, that's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Yeah, it actually binds to the molecules of the lubricanty
chemical reaction is taking place.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
And keeps them all mixed together. It won't allow him
to separate. So we've got the lubricin in there. Yeah,
the whole thing's being held in place by their surfactant.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
All looped up, ready to go.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
We've got a little extra water, chuck, what are we
gonna do?
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Well? I don't think we mentioned earlier. The reason it
dries out to begin with if you leave it out
overnight is just because of evaporation.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Right, And Hasbro recommends that if this happens, you take
your Plato modeling clay. Yeah, and you wrap it in
like a damp paper towel, put it back in the camp,
but the cover on it leave it overnight should be
good as new.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Yeah, And I've seen you can also add a little
water to it as well. Yeah, but I've never tried that,
so that, my friend is it's a very fine tuned mixture,
like you said, they had to. I'm sure it took
a lot of work over the years to get it
just exactly right. And we're going to learn how you
can make your own right after this break.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
So chuck. Yeah, we should have said. There's a couple
other things that they add, Like you get excess to water,
so they added a little salt. Yeah, sure, and apparently
for the excess salt they brought in a new chemist.
So it's just fine, perfectly fine tune stuff.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
And you get a color it of course, and give
it its sent.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
Yeah, and then possibly make it taste in the future.
Who knows. I'm betting on that.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Yeah. And you know, the salts also adds a little
anti microbal element to it.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
Right, which is nice, so it has it acts as
a preservative as well. And to make Plato, you just
put all this stuff in these in the right measurements
and apply heat to it and mix it together and
package it and that's Plato.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah, and it's got to have that shelf life like
this is. It's really 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 where like, oh, this stuff's two weeks old on
the shelf, it's like a brick back to the drawing board.
Ye put on your beret and your smock.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Remember in our How Twinkies Works episode they dealt with
that initially.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Of the shelf life. Yeah, right, so they just made
it infinity. Man, that was such a good episode. No,
it's good, one of my all time favorites. Agreed. We
still get emails from people that are like, I found
the banana Twinkies.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
Yeah, they have them in like limited release from once
in a while. Yeah, I have yet to try one.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
I remember trying one years ago, but it wasn't my bag.
I don't like banana flavor things, but I like bananas.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Huh. You're a very complex Manchuck.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Well, they don't. They don't quite get it right. I
don't think ever, I've never tasted a banana flavor thing
that got it right, gotcha. I'm hard to please, So.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Man, you just totally threw me off. What were we
talking about?
Speaker 1 (32:38):
We were I think we were at to a point
where we're going to make our own right.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Right, So it's very tough to make what until you
come upon the recipe. But apparently a lot of people,
even though it's a proprietary recipe, a lot of people
have come up with their own recipes for play though.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
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, get
a learning moment if.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
You want to save some money, or you you don't
want to feed the corporate beast that too, or yeah,
you just want to do something with your 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. Oh really, there's some for glittery plato. There's
(33:21):
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 to it,
something to hold the whole thing together. In this recipe,
it's a cream of tartar yes which stiffens eggs and
gives plato homemade plato its firmness. But there's a lot
(33:42):
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.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
And you can explain, you know, what each ingredient is doing,
and then at the very end, gonna have plato and
your kid's gonna say this Plato stinks. It's not nearly
as good as the real thing.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Unless it's the peanut butter variety. And I'll bet you're like, ooh,
this is tasty plato.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Do they have that?
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Yeah, there's a recipe for it in this article.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
So peanut butter is one of the ingredients.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
Yes, interesting, Yeah, or you know what, you could make
it with your kid. Wow. You listen to us stumble
through the explanation. Yeah, and to everybody who's doing that
right now, Hello, Hello everyone, and.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Your kid's gonna say, who are these jerks? And why
does my plato not work?
Speaker 3 (34:35):
Can we just go to the store and buy some
plato please?
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Yep?
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Yeah, Well we're portable. We go around on MP three players,
so we can go to the store with you two.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Exactly what else you got and then you can listen
to our episode on temper tantrums on the way to
the store.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
That was a good one too. It was what else
do you got? I've got nothing else, I got plenty more.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Oh well, please.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Mister Bill remember him from sarat Life. Of course he
was made a Plato. Yeah, they made the first mister
Bill short for twenty bucks.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
That's pretty good stuff. What else you got? Fun facts?
Playoff fun facts.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
There's a there's not just one, but two at least
Plato three D printers on the market right now. Really, yeah,
it's pretty awesome. So you put a hunk of it
in there, different hunks in there, and oh no, no, no,
and it I was about to say, a hunk in there,
and then it whittles it down. But that's the opposite
of three D. No, no, it extrudes it. It builds up.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
There's one on think Geek for like fifty bucks that
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.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
That's kind of fun.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
It is at the same time, it's kind of like,
you know, I mean you're 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.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Well, I think that that's the new imagination, my friend, I.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Guess, so to follow forms and schematics the.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
T maybe so it would be cool as if you
could design your own schematic and then.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Which I'm treated you can. Yeah. And then Plato has
one called the do Vinci. I saw that, 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 years back.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Oh, band is in? I thought you meant like bands
recorded music.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
No, no, like d taboo plato ads that are very
adult centric.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Really yeah that can you say?
Speaker 3 (36:40):
What?
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Well?
Speaker 3 (36:42):
How about this?
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (36:43):
I made a slideshow of them on our site. You
can go check them out. They're pretty crazy. They're not
like naked or not adult in that way, but like
kind of violent and a little dark that this ad
agency made basically without the approval of has Bro clearly,
and Hasbro came in and like denounced it and everything.
(37:04):
But they're pretty great. So if you go to stuff
you should dot com and search a band Plato ads,
it will come up.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
And Hasbro had a news release it says we don't
endorse this use of Plato brand multiple Clay Right, they
just kept working the name in there.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
Yeah, it's pretty crazy. I learned all about something called
scam ads, where advertising agencies basically create ad campaigns based
around brand names without the brand names permission, simply to
submit them for awards consideration to expand their prestige.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Interesting. Well, and if you want to be a TV
commercial director, you have probably made some spec or fake
ads yourself, right, just to have on your reel, Like
you know, I'm going to make a Dorito. Well, Dorito
says said coast every.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
Year, right, So this is that same thing. But sometimes
they really run a foul of like the spirit of
the brand. Sure, and there's yeah scam ads.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Yeah, they're like you're a pan commercials which are always
way better than risque and like funny. Yeah, get with it, America.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
So if you want to learn more about Plato, including
a few Plato recipes, you can type Plato into the
search bar house stuffworks dot Com and say said search bar,
it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
I'm going to call this another MPAA called the Golden
f Bomb. Hey, guys, I discovered your show and he
says Helloa Jerry and spilled her name right too. Oh
that was nice, which doesn't happen aten, No, the spelling
that is. I discovered your podcast while looking for something
interesting to listen to while I worked on my organic
farm in Kawhi nights, I heard the MPAA show and
(38:42):
I just had to write. In growing up, my friends
and I were always looking for a way to sneak
into movie theaters via 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,
et cetera. He had all sorts of ways of stealing.
Our goal was to get into an ra the movie Underage,
with NC seventeen being the ultimate prize PG. Thirteen always
(39:05):
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.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Yeah, it must have been a time when movies weren't
as good as they are today. In the theaters.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
No, movies have never been this bad.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
I know, man, it is really out of kate. It's terrible.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
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
look out for to this day. Still there are some
real classics, including Ron Burgundy's and Anchorman, most recently in Skyfall,
when Judy Dinch uses that naughty word.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
She did, I don't remember that, Judy.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
The first one in the Bond series, heclaimed, Judy, Judy, Judy, Oh,
I just saw Filamina by the way, finally, what did
you think.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Think that it was fantastic? Was that just an amazing
change of pace for her? She always plays like the
sharp pulled together like yeah yeah, like boss Lady, and
this one she was just kind of just working class. God,
that was a good movie.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
It was really good.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
I love that movie.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Highly recommended. And then I noticed the rating rule is
not ironclad, however, because recent examples of Lincoln and Philamina, Hey,
how about that had two of those naughty words a piece.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Lincoln had it in their hunts that Spielberg gets away
with anything.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Well, he's the one that had the whole thing changed.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Oh yeah, he was the one that created it.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
PG. Thirteen. Yeah, and then he ran a foul of it. Anyway,
My absolute favorite PG thirteen Golden Goal naughty word not
mentioned anywhere else that I've researched, was the one that
got me out of my seat cheering like the President's
speech and Independence Day is from Oblivion. Tom Cruise's character
waits to the very end of the movie to deliver
(40:56):
the perfectly timed line to his enemy that movie.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
Stunk, didn't Yeah, I heard the other one was pretty
good though, Edge of Tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Yeah, that was really good. Oblivion stunk. And he closes
by saying, mahalo nue loa, thank you very much for
all you do to infotain us. And that is Evans
on Kawhii. Yeah, sorry, Evans, Oblivion was no good. He said,
he liked it a lot, but you know, to each
their own, I'm not gonna poopooit his taste.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
Good for you, Chuck, thanks for.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Your game and your thievery.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
If you want to talk to me and Chuck about movies,
we are always down for that. We love to talk
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 there like, oh,
this is a good episode.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
There were podcasts liked exactly like that. You know that?
Speaker 3 (41:49):
What was I just saying? Oh yeah. If you want
to get in touch with us for whatever reason, movies
or otherwise, you can tweet to us at sysk podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash No,
you can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
HowStuffWorks dot com, and you can join us at our
home on the web, stuff you Should Know dot com.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com.
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