August 3, 2023 • 39 mins
Laura Ingalls Wilder probably couldn’t have imagined the multi-million dollar media empire that would emerge from her books. From the television show to prairie chic dresses to dolls to tin cups bearing her name, Laura is a brand, a business and, dare we say it, an influencer. Her stories have spawned industries large and small, both directly and indirectly for nearly a century. How exactly did the simple prairie life get sold to millions around the world?
Go deeper:
Stay at the Prairie House Manor in De Smet, SD
The Queen’s Treasures
Melissa Gilbert’s Modern Prairie
Stephanie McNeal on the Nap Dress
Sara Petersen’s Momfluenced
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello, Wilder listeners, Thank you so much for listening to
our podcast. We've been working really hard on this and
we're so grateful for all the feedback you've been sending us.
We want to address some of that feedback in a
few weeks in the final episode. So please consider this
both an invitation and a reminder that if you have
thoughts on Wilder to please let us know. All of
(00:23):
our contact information can be found in the notes to
each episode. In the meantime, we're going to bring you
some episodes that are a little different, some very special episodes,
if you will.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
This week, Joe is.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Going to be walking you through some of the industry
that Laura has inspired. As anyone who listened to her
podcast Under the Influence knows, Joe is the expert in
influencers and Laura is arguably one of the original influencers.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Now I'm giving you over to Joe.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Hi, Glynn, good morning.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I'm passing the pigs bladder baton.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
We should get one of them. Oh, you know what,
I'll bet someone makes one and sells it for like
seventy dollars.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
I'm sure if we went on Etsy right now we
would find a number of pigs bladders that were branded
with Little House.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
By the end of the episode we will find out
where to buy a pigs bladder baton, and with that,
the business of Laura just just thank you.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
We have cups, we have t shirts of course, the
books always goal and I mean I've had almost eleven
hundred dollars sales today.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Really, when you're on the road going from Laura Ingles
Museum to Laura Ingles Museum, you're inevitably going to go
to a lot of Laura gift shops.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Those little porcelain jack dobs for ten dollars I got, Oh,
there's Laura Ingles Wilder homies.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I mean, have to get a coffee cup.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
That's the kid. Yeah, coffee cups we love. I like
these too.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
The shops have everything. They're so not just books, but mugs, dolls, bonnets, candy,
pretty much anything you might need to cosplay the prairie life.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
That's the biggest cellar in the store.
Speaker 6 (02:21):
Usually tin cups. Everybody like says oh yes, because you
know that was the very first episode Laura and Mary
got their own tin cups.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
When Glynnis, Emily and I were on the road last summer,
we spend a lot of money on gifts. Tin cups included.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Little tin cups, Young, They're cute.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Those are one of the most popular.
Speaker 6 (02:39):
And then our slates with.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
And it's not just us, hords of people do this
every summer.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Over the whole year.
Speaker 6 (02:47):
We can get up between ten thousand to probably twelve
thousand a year. We've had twenty thousand in one year.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
They come from all over the world.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Out Look at all of these people today.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
This is all today.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Oh my gosh, today.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Are should we name the states through here today?
Speaker 7 (03:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (03:04):
Here, Minnesota, Kansas, Nevada, New York, Illinois, Georgia, Ohio, California,
North Dakota, Germany, Oregon, Oregon, Norway, now Texas, Virginia.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Maybe we've got all the states right now. Except when
Laura Ingles Wilder set out to write her life story
into the Little House series, she wanted to be a writer,
an author, a successful one. Today, almost a century later,
between the books, TV show and the intense tourism culture
(03:41):
around her, Laura is undoubtedly a brand anyone who writes
books today, much like Glennis and I do know that
writers have to become a sort of brand in order
to survive, to build an audience and to sell enough
books to keep their careers going. And the most successful
writers spawn entire industries around their stories, industries of movies,
(04:04):
television and media companies, magazines, and sometimes even stuff goods
and services. That wasn't the case when Laura sat down
to write. She just wanted to get those books out there.
I actually don't believe that she could have even imagined
the many products and platforms that she inspired, both directly
(04:24):
and indirectly. If you are struggling with what where this summer,
this esthetic is for you.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
So I like to call this look clean, romantic, prairie cottage.
Speaker 9 (04:35):
I mean, I think you can just look at the
popularity of cottage core as an aesthetic on TikTok first
day of school cottage core.
Speaker 6 (04:43):
Okay, y'all are going to think I'm crazy, but gone
with a bonnet.
Speaker 9 (04:47):
This dedication to living a very simple, homespun life. People
are getting millions and millions of followers by almost cosplaying
as frontiers women.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
To be perfectly honest, when this line hit Target stores,
I was actually.
Speaker 10 (05:04):
A huge hand of it because one I love Little
HULLSLM Prairie.
Speaker 5 (05:07):
I grew up with it, and to act.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
It can easily be argued that brands like the American
Girl Dolls, the Pioneer Woman, Hillhouse Home, and all of
the Nap Dresses all had Laura to thank for laying
the groundwork of prairie life nostalgia.
Speaker 11 (05:23):
I think a few brands that come to mine are
Christy Down, lots of Calico cotton dresses, the Nap Dress
by Hillhouse Home doan.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Entire home goods companies have been inspired by prairie nostalgia,
including one created by TV Laura herself, Melissa Gilbert.
Speaker 12 (05:44):
It really started out as a retail line sort of,
but there's more to it than that. It's a place
for women over a certain age, women like me.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
From nap dresses to bonnets, to butter churns, paper dolls,
tin cups, and many, many, many spinoff books. There is
an entire industry of Laura that she never could have
conceived of, though I kind of bet Rose could have
imagined it. And as always, it thrives when times get hard,
(06:17):
when people get fed up with their lives and have
an urge to look back to a simpler era.
Speaker 13 (06:22):
We've had in the past twenty years two pretty big crises.
One was the financial crisis of two thousand and eight,
and then, of course there was the pandemic that we
all lived through, and in each of those cases the
interest in Little House spite.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
It is not a leap at all to say that
Laura Ingles Wilder may have been one of the very
first influencers. What I want to know is how did
all of this get so popular? How did the fantasy
of prairie life get sold to millions? I'm Joe Piazza
and this Isness of Wilder. Hello, I'm Glennis, Lennis and
(07:38):
Emily Great tomorrow night.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
I know are you from Distory very a long time?
Speaker 4 (07:45):
We just bought the place of February.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Really, Oh, I'm excited to hear your experience of your
first pageant season.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
That's Glennys and Emily arriving at the Prairie House manor
Bed and Breakfast in De Smet, South Dakota. I sadly
wasn't with them for this part of the trip, and
I have a lot of fomo about that. But when
they arrived they found this very unexpected story. You found
Laura's influence, her sphere of influence, in a place that
you didn't expect. You found that she had inspired this couple.
(08:15):
It was Robin Eric Right during COVID. They'd done a
road trip. They'd come to Smet.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
They had grown up loving Laura Ingalls and decided to
uproot their life from Denver and take over.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
A big city, A big city, big city, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Where they'd been for years and had uprooted and come
to Desmet and taken over this bed and breakfast in
the heart of d Smet. We had to book into
their months in advance to get that spot to run this,
and it was And when we talked to them, they
just went on about how much they'd loved the television
show Laura and the fond memories of being read the
(08:53):
books in school, and it just, I mean, we know this,
but also it never ceases to sort of amazed and
surprised at like the reach she has, but also like
the level of devotion.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Right, if that's a big life change, there's.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
A huge life change, and also a very kind of
TV movie inspiring one. I'm just uprooting my life in
the big city to open a little B and B
centered around Laura Ingles Wilder. So they fled big city life.
They bought the Prairie manner and now they're running an
inn together. They have a business that is directly based
(09:31):
on Laura.
Speaker 10 (09:32):
It seems surreal sometimes, like when we come back from
the grocery store and I see the house, I'm like, wow,
that's ours.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Rob and Eric are just you know, the tip of
the iceberg in terms of families who've tapped into their
love of Laura in one way or the other and
turned it into a huge business. Like we met Anne
Lash who runs the homestead site, and her family bought
that in the late nineties, and she talks about growing
up being read the book.
Speaker 10 (09:56):
My parents and my brothers came on vacation in nineteen
ninety six and it was for sale and it had
been farmed for many years, and a family that was
farming it at that time they were older and wanting to,
you know, move on and sell it and stuff. And
so that's really how we came across it. So we
(10:16):
purchased the homestead in nineteen ninety seven and then have
over the past twenty five years kind of built it
up into what it is and welcomed thousands and thousands.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Of visitors over the years. It's amazing to me that
there is not just one, but two and probably many
more of these kinds of stories. That Laura's draw is
so strong that just one vacation can uproot an entire life.
And it's worth reminding us that these towns are very,
very small. Laura isn't just a business in these places,
(10:49):
she is the main industry. Let me put this in
perspective for you. The town I'm just met has about
the same population now as the time when Laura lived there.
Bur Oak, where the Ingles worked in the hotel, isn't
even a town anymore. It's an incorporated community, but it
still gets visitors and foot traffic because of Laura. And
remember from our very first episode how we told you
(11:11):
that Walnut Grove seemed like a ghost town until we
got to the gift shop. It's businesses like that and
the summer pageants that genuinely helped the town's yearly bottom line.
Speaker 14 (11:20):
It is an economic boost.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
As pageant director Bill Richards explained to us.
Speaker 14 (11:25):
We use a lot of local people for supplies, for lumber,
for concrete, for construction work, electrical plumbing, all that kind
of stuff. The businesses that get the biggest boost would
be probably the convenience store, Nellie's Cafe and the bar
and things like that. The other ones are more I
(11:46):
would call secondary effect, where because you have people that
we hire out here, that has a multiplier effect as well.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Those houses, museums, and stores are all independently run, and
then they also sell and profit off the things they're
license from the books. The books themselves and the many
many sequels and offshoots of them that came long after
Laura passed away. And what I keep thinking again and
again is whether or not Laura would have actually wanted this.
(12:16):
How did Little House go from just a book series
to a brand that can actually be licensed? Of course
I had to talk to Glynnis because she is the
expert on all things Laura. All Right, So we're looking
at the big business of Laura, all of the stuff
that's being sold, all of the TV shows, the extra books.
(12:42):
Do you think that this is what Laura would have
wanted for her legacy?
Speaker 1 (12:46):
It's so hard to say, because could Laura have envisioned
any of this As a question, I wonder, could she
even envisioned the books having this impact and having this legacy.
We know that she wanted to leave a significant part
of the Little House rights to the local Mansfield library.
And then that feels though like ary in keeping with Laura,
like sort of a small vision for her afterlife, so
(13:10):
to speak of, like these could be a nice thing
for the local library and the town that I've lived
in for decades that she didn't even really leave after
the books. She think she left once after the books
sort of became successful. So that feels like a small
sweet vision of her giving back. And that's definitely not
a description as we know of what has actually happened
(13:31):
right to the legacy.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
And that didn't happen because Rose ignored those wishes and
granted the literary estate to Roger Lee McBride.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, I mean this has to be one of the
great random inheritances in literary history. I mean, Roger Lee
McBride's fate intertwining with Little House is wild. And even
as a kid, I would be like Roger Lee McBride,
person that keeps getting mentioned on the back cover of
the book, Laura never met him, which is incredible.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Don't you think it's incredible?
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, it's wild. And at the same time, we know
from all.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
The episodes we did that Laura and Rose's life emotional
financial everything life was so enmeshed, so maybe Rose thought
that she had not just permission, but the right to
do what she wanted with it.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
I mean, who knows. And it was Roger who ended
up selling the rights to the Friendly Family, yep.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
I mean we know that Laura and Rose had turned
down offers from radio to serialize the books. This is
sort of before TV was such a huge thing, and
we know they had consistently turned it down. So as
soon as Rose dies almost immediately, Roger does a one
tot eighty, takes it to Hollywood to meet with Disney,
(14:55):
and then fate intervenes and he ends up selling it
to a Friendly which how we have Michael Landon well,
which is how we.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Really have the Business of Laura, because the Friendly Family
took on the copyrights and they've created a massive industry
around Laura and Little House that I don't think she
ever could have imagined.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
I mean, I don't know that I could have imagined
it as a child. So much of this is Internet
fueled too. I think I would just like try and
make these clothes for myself as a kid, or like
staple brown yarn braids to everything I owned, And now
you can go to at Sea or to Amazon and
buy all of the stuff and it all exists. And
(15:40):
that I think is like the collision of fandom, legacy
licensing the Internet.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
It's just it's so accessible now.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
When we get back from the break, we are going
to talk to the family that ended up with the
rights to all things Little House. How'd they get it,
and what's their intention with Laura's legacy and finally what
kind of stuff is being created from it.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
My father and Friendly acquired the rights to the Little
House books from a man named Roger Lee McBride.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
That's Trip Friendly. You heard from him in our TV
episode telling the story of how his father created the
Little House television series. These days, Roger Lee McBride's daughter
still owns the copyrights on the Little House books, but
the Friendly family owns the licensing for products and media.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
Friendly Family Productions owns film, television, merchandising, theme park and
other rights to the classic books by Laura Engels Wilder,
as well as to the Little House on the Prairie trademark.
When the television program was first broadcast on NBC in
the nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties, my father created
(16:57):
a licensing program which included lunch boxes, dinner plates, beverage ware, posters, puzzles,
board games, calendars, costumes, McCall patterns, and many other items.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
The Friendlies take their role very seriously. They know that
Laura holds sentimental value for a lot of people. None
of us know how Laura would feel about these products today,
but the things that are licensed definitely feel in line
with the wholesome, cozy nature of Laura's children's books.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
We've worked with a selective group of licensees that we
believe reflect the values of the Little House on the
Prairie brand in which we hoped would resonate with families
and fans today. So simple, joy, optimism, charm, and craftsmanship,
I would say, our integral parts. We would probably reject
(17:49):
any inquiries that are not consistent with the brand values
or are quote unquote are rated, such as alcohol, gambling.
They're sort of vice products.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
How much impact can a product actually have when it
comes to the legacy of Little House, There's so much
stuff that I wanted to find an example of a
company truly manufacturing in the spirit of Laura and Goes Wilder.
Speaker 7 (18:15):
The Queen's Treasures, in particular, has been a long time
licensee and they continue to expand their line of dolls
and doll accessories.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
That's Rebecca Friendly Trip's daughter and one of the driving
forces behind continuing Laura's legacy.
Speaker 7 (18:30):
They have some beautiful eighteen inch dolls. We started with Laura,
then Mary and most recently Nelly. They of course each
have a variety of outfits and accessories, and there are
some amazing doll size scenes.
Speaker 15 (18:48):
So we have a obviously a Laura doll, and Laura
actually comes in a night gown with a cap like
they used to wear, and her box turns into a bit,
so even the box can be used.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
That's Joanne Particulia, the president of the Queen's Treasures toy company.
Queen's Treasures makes pretty much every accessory that you could
possibly imagine for a little house doll set.
Speaker 15 (19:12):
Mary comes dressed in a pretty blue dress, and she
has a lunch pail which has the typical things that
she would have brought to lunch. GE's a hard boiled egg,
a little molasses cookie, abiscuit, that kind of thing, and
she comes of course with a little chalkboard. We have
a black cook stove, we have clothing, we're actually working
(19:33):
on a Olsen's Mercantile, which is really going to be
cool that kids can open up and they could play shop.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Joanne started her toy business in her garage in two
thousand and three by making doll trunks and accessories. Eventually
she started focusing on Laura because she thought that story
would be inspiring to young kids.
Speaker 15 (19:54):
We wanted to do women who change the world, and
Laura Ingleswilder is literally the first novelist I became obsessed with.
I have reread those books. I can't tell you how
many times. It just transports you to a place where
for me, looking back, children don't go now. You know,
(20:18):
every child you see has something electronic that they're obsessed
with and staring at, and they don't have any sense
of what history is. But Laura, She's just resonates with me.
She resonates with our customer base. I think people are
looking for a simpler time for children.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
Joanne's goal isn't just a tap in a demand for
Laura and Little House, but to use those stories to
influence people, small people, children.
Speaker 15 (20:50):
We put these imagine this cards in with each product
that says, imagine life over one hundred years ago, when
there was no electricity and to cook on a stove
you had to bring in wood and wait for the
stove to heat up. And you know, we just go
through scenarios that maybe children wouldn't even think about today.
(21:12):
We have a lot of homeschoolers that love our products,
so we really do try to keep it in an
educational vein. Laura was all about language, if you think
about it, and for me, she was I believe sixty
four when her book got I'm hoping I got a
few years for that, not that many. I'm hoping at
(21:35):
sixty four, something really crazy goes on with this company too.
But until then, I'm going to still keep developing and
designing toys and trying to bring inspiration to children and
try to get them to read and play and pretend
they need their own voices now. So that's my mission,
(22:00):
not just the.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Kids who are learning from these dolls. Joanne told me
herself that she's felt way more connected to Laura and
the lessons of the Ingles and prairie life while she's
been building this brand.
Speaker 15 (22:11):
I feel a little bit like a pioneer, if you will,
you know, persistence and being able to face a problem
and move on. They had so much adversity that happened
in their life, and they still smiled at the end
of the day and appreciated what they had.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
It's the simplicity that we keep coming back to, the
urge to go back to basics, have real concrete experiences,
get offline. We hear it over and over and over
again in our increasingly connected digital age now. So far
in this episode, we've been looking at businesses that start
(22:56):
with Laura, but a lot of them go way beyond
her in the wholesome, cozy feeling of the books into
our modern world in ways that you might not even notice.
After the break, we're getting into the products and trends
that are catching fire all over the internet. Who owe
their success to promising all of us a taste of
the prairie lifestyle. Oh, let's go into the done store.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Is the dog store?
Speaker 7 (23:25):
I've never even heard of it.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
It's like, you know, those like flowery prairie dresses that
I wear all the time?
Speaker 11 (23:31):
Yes, I do.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Hyeah.
Speaker 7 (23:33):
This is where it all happens.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
This is where that's me and my co author, Christine
Pride on our book tour in la We had some
time to kill and naturally, I felt myself drifting towards
a store that sold prairie dresses. Yet another overpriced prairie dress. Yep,
I see what you're talking.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
I mean they're cute.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
No, I know, they're like a real shoe. You can
totally see Laura wearing these.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Right, she's lavender.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
I have that actually. Yeah.
Speaker 7 (24:07):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
Beyond the official Little House products, there is so much
in our world that seems to be influenced by Laura.
Her DNA exists in brands all over our social media
feeds and in the real world. I fall for it
all the time, and maybe you do too. I bring
this up to Glennis a lot, a lot, a lot.
(24:30):
So now I want to talk about things inspired by
the prairie esthetic. And so I'm thinking the Pioneer Woman.
Do you remember her read Drummonds. Yeah, her net worth is,
according to the Internet, something like fifty million dollars. She
has built a TV show, a magazine, a massively successful
(24:53):
digital empire based off her prairie life, which I would argue,
with a direct continuation influenced by Laura Ingles Wilder.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
I mean absolutely, it's hard to see how it's not.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
And then you have things like the American Girl Dolls,
Kirsten the Prairie, she was my American girl doll, my
first American girl doll, and her life on the prairie,
again not directly based on Laura's life, but definitely influenced
by the prairie nostalgia that is in these books. And
(25:32):
more recently, you've got the nap dress phenomenon, nap dresses
and cottage core. And you know what nap dresses are.
They're just nightgowns. They're just nightgowns. And like these mommy
prairie dresses that spiked in popularity on social media in
the past few years, which I have nine of nine
of them.
Speaker 6 (25:52):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Yeah, I looked in my closet and I have been
suckered into buying nine nine of these.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
What's them? You tell me what's the appeal there?
Speaker 3 (26:05):
I don't know, because I've been influenced by cottage core
on social media and it makes me feel like a
beautiful lady running through the prairie. It's but and I'm
not the only one. I talked to social media and
branding expert Stephanie McNeil about the fact that during the pandemic,
Hillhouse nap dresses. Hillhouse is the big nap dress company.
(26:26):
We're selling over a million in inventory in something like
twelve minutes.
Speaker 9 (26:32):
Hillhouse is really interesting because the nap dress is a
very kind of cottage core look.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
They're definitely capitalizing on it.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
That's the author and reporter Stephanie McNeil. She covers influencing
branding and marketing on social media. I called her up
because I wanted to run the theory by her that
cottage core is fueled by longing for a simpler, cozy time,
just like life on the prairie.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
I could definitely see that.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
I think it's also.
Speaker 9 (27:01):
This idea of unbridled femininity that I think you see
a lot in cottage core as well, where this embrace
of a time where women could be very freely and
dressed up.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Stephanie has a few theories on why these trends persist.
It's never just one thing.
Speaker 9 (27:18):
I think that kind of is behind a lot of
these trends that are based around identity and personal style
and lifestyle is I think people are really just looking
for connection, and I think sometimes it's easier to be
I'm going to go in on a cottage core and
connect with people online who are really into cottage core
that it is to I don't know, go to a
(27:39):
gym class and find a friend.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Again, we circle back to the idea that these prairie
inspired trends are just a longing for a perceived simpler time,
a false nostalgia, and a desire for connection in an
over connected world. But you all know from listening to
this podcast that Laura's life wasn't actually that simple. Her
family lived in poverty, she experienced so much trauma as
(28:04):
a child. Her ode to a simple, happy, cozy life
is mostly fiction, but that fiction continues on social media today.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Often.
Speaker 16 (28:15):
You know, you look at these accounts and it's moralizing
and prioritizing a type of simplicity that is actually quite
expensive and quite inaccessible to most of us.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
That's Sarah Peterson, another expert in social media marketing and
branding and the author of the book Momfluenced.
Speaker 16 (28:34):
I think the construction of this imagery is really interesting
because often it requires quite a bit of money and
quite a bit of aesthetic investment, but it's always done
in this like oh it just happened to be like this,
And I'm not putting a lot of effort in effort
seems to be at odds with the performance of this
type of pioneer femininity.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Sarah's right, these products are expensive, and it takes a
lot of disposable income to be able to afford one
hundred dollars plus prairie dresses and all the sour dough starters,
pots and mugs that influencers and cottage core companies are
selling to us these days. And I think it's worth
taking a second to think about exactly what we're buying into.
(29:16):
What is this sphere of influence, what are we trying
to achieve with all of this stuff.
Speaker 16 (29:22):
I think the prairie chic aesthetic is so big on Instagram,
particularly for momfluencers, because it taps in to our cultural
understanding of mothers as being connected to the divine feminine,
as being connected to the earth, being connected to domestic spaces.
(29:47):
I really think this prairie you nostalgic aesthetic directly taps
into our cultural construction of the ideal American mother in a.
Speaker 11 (29:58):
Way that makes for, you know, big business.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
I can't stop thinking about this, about what makes the
ideal American mother, the ideal American woman. How dresses and
mugs and the collection of all of these trappings of
prairie life play into our desire to buy our way
into being more complete and happy women. There's a lot
of brands these days that are working to create a
(30:25):
place for women to figure out how to be in
the world, and one of those is actually called Modern Prairie,
and it was created by TV Laura Melissa Gilbert herself.
Who better to encapsulate all the sides of Laura's influence
than the woman that played her as a little girl.
Modern Prairie does sell a lot of stuff that we've
(30:48):
been talking about, but it also promotes healthy ideas for
how to live in the world as a mature woman,
something that the world doesn't always recognize as valuable. It's
genuinely a unique take on the prairie lifestyle brand, but
I've got to say its beginnings are very similar to
the other brands we've talked about. Like we've seen time
(31:09):
and time again, Melissa felt drawn to the ideals of
Little House during the pandemic.
Speaker 12 (31:14):
I think we all really rediscovered Cozy during Lockdown too.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Just before twenty twenty, Melissa and her husband Tim bought
a cabin in the Catskills and renovated it into their
permanent home. In her memoir about that time back to
the Prairie, she recounts the joy she felt in letting
go of the life that she'd built in La She
let her hair go gray, she took joy in cooking
and gardening, and essentially rediscovered herself in this genuinely simpler life.
(31:41):
When she founded Modern Prairie, she wanted to capture this
simplicity for others.
Speaker 12 (31:45):
I think Modern Prairie's a space to remind people of
that cozy, basic, woamy warm, those nostalgic feelings Boo brought
up to the current times.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
The initial idea for the brand started with just one product.
Speaker 12 (32:06):
I have had this sort of little patchling of an
idea for a couple decades that there's something more to
do with just the entire sort of prairie ethos It
all for me starts with them, of all objects, a butterbell.
It's a ceramic holder for butter. You put the butter
(32:26):
in it, and you put it in the crock and
you put it upside down in water, and it keeps
your butter fresh and soft without having to refrigerate it.
And I always thought, let's create something around a butterbell
and go from there and take us back to these sweet,
simple things, which really are the best things after all,
just full on lower angles Wilder celebration.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
Modern Prairie now sells that butterbell for forty nine to
fifty plus. So many other things go on their website.
There's backyard roofstore, quoted place mats, a Prairie iron stone
handled one gallon croc potmets, a set of farmhouse aprons,
pinafoor aprons, tablecloths, and my personal favorite, the deep dish
baking pan. But what feels special about Modern Prairie is
(33:13):
that they provide more than just products. They're actually creating
that sense of community that so many women online are
looking for.
Speaker 12 (33:19):
It's a place for obviously women over a certain age,
the mature women like me. And it's not just about
buying things. It's now grown into a community and we
have all these workshops and everything from you know, how
to paint with watercolor, to how to deal with grief
(33:40):
during the holidays, to how to get unstuck, which is
a big thing with women over a certain age. You know,
their kids are gone. We're reassessing what we want to
do with this last third of our lives, all of
these things that we're dealing with at this part in
our lives, there's no space for a community for people
to talk about these things. So we create this space
(34:01):
with these workshops. And what's kind of the heart of
Prairie for me is the community aspect. I love being
older because I don't feel like I have to do something.
I can sit at home and learn something.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
What I think is so interesting is that almost everyone
we spoke to in this cottage core prairie life world
seems to be striving for a simpler life. The people
that are making it, the people that are buying it,
everyone is trying to get to something simpler through commodification.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yeah, it's a strive for simplicity and also self sufficiency
in a world where neither.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Of these things really exist. And I think, are we
all so miserable and overconnected and overworked that will pay
for simplicity? This feels like a big joke capitalism is
playing on us, by the way, because I think the
answer is yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Though I also think this, like this desire to get
back to the simpler life, which is so well represented
by Little House on the Prairie, is not a recent phenomenon.
Like I'm just thinking of those old commercials we found
from this eighties being like come home, come home to
the simpler life.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Like there's always this fantasy.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Around getting back to this simple life, which, as we know,
never existed, right, Like, they did not have a simple.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Easy life. They had a terrible hard life.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
All of the people who actually lived in this time
period would kill to live in our time period with
antibiotics and electricity.
Speaker 7 (35:40):
But like, the.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Fantasy of that is so pervasive.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
So pervasive. It's so pervasive that people will pay, you know,
fifty dollars plus for a butterbell or three hundred dollars
for a prairie dress that is essentially a nightgown. And
there's entire there are entire stores in Brooklyn to sell
things that look like they could have been on.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
The prairie exactly.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
And also I kept thinking about how everyone wants to
use Laura as a gateway to something else, as a
gateway to simplicity, as a gateway to community, and it
reminded me that it's always bigger than Laura the human being.
It's bigger than these prairie stories. It taps into our
(36:28):
very humanity, what we desire, what we're hungry for, and
as this episode showed, what people are willing to pay
for those things.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Yeah, pay for a sense of community and safety and
coziness and simplicity. And maybe you two can make a
doll out of straw and have just like a direct
connection to sustainability.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
I'm going to open my own atsy shop after this episode.
Don't worry. I'll check in with the friendlies and make
sure that it's kosher. And I'm going to make some
pig Potter toys. Yes, yeah, we're gonna make so much money.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
I mean, in this episode, we've come up with our
own business ideas.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
So listen, it's never ending.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
It's never ending. It's never ending. If this episode has
taught us anything it's that Laura is everywhere. She's ever present,
no matter what form she happens to be in. Laura
is going to stick around for a very very long time.
In fact, I can't wait to see what ai Laura
(37:32):
does now. That is a business idea. Wilder is written
and hosted by Me and Glennis McNicol. Our story editors
are Me and Emily Meronoff. Our senior producer is Emily Maronoff.
Our producers are Mary Do, Sena Ozaki and Jessica crimechicch
(37:54):
Our Associate producers Lauren Philip. Sound design and mixing by
Amanda Rose Smith, and our theme and additional music was
composed by Alise McCoy. We are executive produced by Glennis mcnickel,
Nikki Etour, Ali Perry and Me. If you're enjoying Wilder,
please consider rating and reviewing us on Apple Podcasts. It
(38:15):
actually helps us out quite a lot, and remember you too,
are an influencer. Special thanks for this episode goes to
the Friendly Family, Melissa Gilbert, Stephanie McNeil, and Sarah Peterson.
Check out our show notes if you want to know
more about the people we interviewed, the places we visited,
and the books that we mentioned. You can also find
our contact info there. If you want to write to
(38:37):
us with your own thoughts and questions, we're going to
be including listener responses in our final episode, so if
you have thoughts on the Little House series or on
this series, please send a voice memo to Wilder podcast
at gmail dot com. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok
Influence Influence Influence We will be posting all of the
(38:57):
behind the scenes footage from our travels, and you really
don't want to miss it. Thanks for listening. Talk to
you next week. Hold on, I'm looking pigs butter lampshade.
Pigs flatter lampshade. M if you go on Etsy and
(39:21):
put in prairie and Laura Ingleswilder if you like it's
It's an extravaganza, my friends. It's an extrava ganza. Pigs
flatter lamp shade, Pigs butter, lampshade,
Hello, Wilder listeners, Thank you so much for listening to
our podcast. We've been working really hard on this and
we're so grateful for all the feedback you've been sending us.
We want to address some of that feedback in a
few weeks in the final episode. So please consider this
both an invitation and a reminder that if you have
thoughts on Wilder to please let us know. All of
(00:23):
our contact information can be found in the notes to
each episode. In the meantime, we're going to bring you
some episodes that are a little different, some very special episodes,
if you will.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
This week, Joe is.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Going to be walking you through some of the industry
that Laura has inspired. As anyone who listened to her
podcast Under the Influence knows, Joe is the expert in
influencers and Laura is arguably one of the original influencers.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Now I'm giving you over to Joe.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Hi, Glynn, good morning.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I'm passing the pigs bladder baton.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
We should get one of them. Oh, you know what,
I'll bet someone makes one and sells it for like
seventy dollars.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
I'm sure if we went on Etsy right now we
would find a number of pigs bladders that were branded
with Little House.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
By the end of the episode we will find out
where to buy a pigs bladder baton, and with that,
the business of Laura just just thank you.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
We have cups, we have t shirts of course, the
books always goal and I mean I've had almost eleven
hundred dollars sales today.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Really, when you're on the road going from Laura Ingles
Museum to Laura Ingles Museum, you're inevitably going to go
to a lot of Laura gift shops.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Those little porcelain jack dobs for ten dollars I got, Oh,
there's Laura Ingles Wilder homies.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I mean, have to get a coffee cup.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
That's the kid. Yeah, coffee cups we love. I like
these too.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
The shops have everything. They're so not just books, but mugs, dolls, bonnets, candy,
pretty much anything you might need to cosplay the prairie life.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
That's the biggest cellar in the store.
Speaker 6 (02:21):
Usually tin cups. Everybody like says oh yes, because you
know that was the very first episode Laura and Mary
got their own tin cups.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
When Glynnis, Emily and I were on the road last summer,
we spend a lot of money on gifts. Tin cups included.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Little tin cups, Young, They're cute.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Those are one of the most popular.
Speaker 6 (02:39):
And then our slates with.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
And it's not just us, hords of people do this
every summer.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Over the whole year.
Speaker 6 (02:47):
We can get up between ten thousand to probably twelve
thousand a year. We've had twenty thousand in one year.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
They come from all over the world.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Out Look at all of these people today.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
This is all today.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Oh my gosh, today.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Are should we name the states through here today?
Speaker 7 (03:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (03:04):
Here, Minnesota, Kansas, Nevada, New York, Illinois, Georgia, Ohio, California,
North Dakota, Germany, Oregon, Oregon, Norway, now Texas, Virginia.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Maybe we've got all the states right now. Except when
Laura Ingles Wilder set out to write her life story
into the Little House series, she wanted to be a writer,
an author, a successful one. Today, almost a century later,
between the books, TV show and the intense tourism culture
(03:41):
around her, Laura is undoubtedly a brand anyone who writes
books today, much like Glennis and I do know that
writers have to become a sort of brand in order
to survive, to build an audience and to sell enough
books to keep their careers going. And the most successful
writers spawn entire industries around their stories, industries of movies,
(04:04):
television and media companies, magazines, and sometimes even stuff goods
and services. That wasn't the case when Laura sat down
to write. She just wanted to get those books out there.
I actually don't believe that she could have even imagined
the many products and platforms that she inspired, both directly
(04:24):
and indirectly. If you are struggling with what where this summer,
this esthetic is for you.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
So I like to call this look clean, romantic, prairie cottage.
Speaker 9 (04:35):
I mean, I think you can just look at the
popularity of cottage core as an aesthetic on TikTok first
day of school cottage core.
Speaker 6 (04:43):
Okay, y'all are going to think I'm crazy, but gone
with a bonnet.
Speaker 9 (04:47):
This dedication to living a very simple, homespun life. People
are getting millions and millions of followers by almost cosplaying
as frontiers women.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
To be perfectly honest, when this line hit Target stores,
I was actually.
Speaker 10 (05:04):
A huge hand of it because one I love Little
HULLSLM Prairie.
Speaker 5 (05:07):
I grew up with it, and to act.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
It can easily be argued that brands like the American
Girl Dolls, the Pioneer Woman, Hillhouse Home, and all of
the Nap Dresses all had Laura to thank for laying
the groundwork of prairie life nostalgia.
Speaker 11 (05:23):
I think a few brands that come to mine are
Christy Down, lots of Calico cotton dresses, the Nap Dress
by Hillhouse Home doan.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Entire home goods companies have been inspired by prairie nostalgia,
including one created by TV Laura herself, Melissa Gilbert.
Speaker 12 (05:44):
It really started out as a retail line sort of,
but there's more to it than that. It's a place
for women over a certain age, women like me.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
From nap dresses to bonnets, to butter churns, paper dolls,
tin cups, and many, many, many spinoff books. There is
an entire industry of Laura that she never could have
conceived of, though I kind of bet Rose could have
imagined it. And as always, it thrives when times get hard,
(06:17):
when people get fed up with their lives and have
an urge to look back to a simpler era.
Speaker 13 (06:22):
We've had in the past twenty years two pretty big crises.
One was the financial crisis of two thousand and eight,
and then, of course there was the pandemic that we
all lived through, and in each of those cases the
interest in Little House spite.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
It is not a leap at all to say that
Laura Ingles Wilder may have been one of the very
first influencers. What I want to know is how did
all of this get so popular? How did the fantasy
of prairie life get sold to millions? I'm Joe Piazza
and this Isness of Wilder. Hello, I'm Glennis, Lennis and
(07:38):
Emily Great tomorrow night.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
I know are you from Distory very a long time?
Speaker 4 (07:45):
We just bought the place of February.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Really, Oh, I'm excited to hear your experience of your
first pageant season.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
That's Glennys and Emily arriving at the Prairie House manor
Bed and Breakfast in De Smet, South Dakota. I sadly
wasn't with them for this part of the trip, and
I have a lot of fomo about that. But when
they arrived they found this very unexpected story. You found
Laura's influence, her sphere of influence, in a place that
you didn't expect. You found that she had inspired this couple.
(08:15):
It was Robin Eric Right during COVID. They'd done a
road trip. They'd come to Smet.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
They had grown up loving Laura Ingalls and decided to
uproot their life from Denver and take over.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
A big city, A big city, big city, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Where they'd been for years and had uprooted and come
to Desmet and taken over this bed and breakfast in
the heart of d Smet. We had to book into
their months in advance to get that spot to run this,
and it was And when we talked to them, they
just went on about how much they'd loved the television
show Laura and the fond memories of being read the
(08:53):
books in school, and it just, I mean, we know this,
but also it never ceases to sort of amazed and
surprised at like the reach she has, but also like
the level of devotion.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Right, if that's a big life change, there's.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
A huge life change, and also a very kind of
TV movie inspiring one. I'm just uprooting my life in
the big city to open a little B and B
centered around Laura Ingles Wilder. So they fled big city life.
They bought the Prairie manner and now they're running an
inn together. They have a business that is directly based
(09:31):
on Laura.
Speaker 10 (09:32):
It seems surreal sometimes, like when we come back from
the grocery store and I see the house, I'm like, wow,
that's ours.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Rob and Eric are just you know, the tip of
the iceberg in terms of families who've tapped into their
love of Laura in one way or the other and
turned it into a huge business. Like we met Anne
Lash who runs the homestead site, and her family bought
that in the late nineties, and she talks about growing
up being read the book.
Speaker 10 (09:56):
My parents and my brothers came on vacation in nineteen
ninety six and it was for sale and it had
been farmed for many years, and a family that was
farming it at that time they were older and wanting to,
you know, move on and sell it and stuff. And
so that's really how we came across it. So we
(10:16):
purchased the homestead in nineteen ninety seven and then have
over the past twenty five years kind of built it
up into what it is and welcomed thousands and thousands.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Of visitors over the years. It's amazing to me that
there is not just one, but two and probably many
more of these kinds of stories. That Laura's draw is
so strong that just one vacation can uproot an entire life.
And it's worth reminding us that these towns are very,
very small. Laura isn't just a business in these places,
(10:49):
she is the main industry. Let me put this in
perspective for you. The town I'm just met has about
the same population now as the time when Laura lived there.
Bur Oak, where the Ingles worked in the hotel, isn't
even a town anymore. It's an incorporated community, but it
still gets visitors and foot traffic because of Laura. And
remember from our very first episode how we told you
(11:11):
that Walnut Grove seemed like a ghost town until we
got to the gift shop. It's businesses like that and
the summer pageants that genuinely helped the town's yearly bottom line.
Speaker 14 (11:20):
It is an economic boost.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
As pageant director Bill Richards explained to us.
Speaker 14 (11:25):
We use a lot of local people for supplies, for lumber,
for concrete, for construction work, electrical plumbing, all that kind
of stuff. The businesses that get the biggest boost would
be probably the convenience store, Nellie's Cafe and the bar
and things like that. The other ones are more I
(11:46):
would call secondary effect, where because you have people that
we hire out here, that has a multiplier effect as well.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Those houses, museums, and stores are all independently run, and
then they also sell and profit off the things they're
license from the books. The books themselves and the many
many sequels and offshoots of them that came long after
Laura passed away. And what I keep thinking again and
again is whether or not Laura would have actually wanted this.
(12:16):
How did Little House go from just a book series
to a brand that can actually be licensed? Of course
I had to talk to Glynnis because she is the
expert on all things Laura. All Right, So we're looking
at the big business of Laura, all of the stuff
that's being sold, all of the TV shows, the extra books.
(12:42):
Do you think that this is what Laura would have
wanted for her legacy?
Speaker 1 (12:46):
It's so hard to say, because could Laura have envisioned
any of this As a question, I wonder, could she
even envisioned the books having this impact and having this legacy.
We know that she wanted to leave a significant part
of the Little House rights to the local Mansfield library.
And then that feels though like ary in keeping with Laura,
like sort of a small vision for her afterlife, so
(13:10):
to speak of, like these could be a nice thing
for the local library and the town that I've lived
in for decades that she didn't even really leave after
the books. She think she left once after the books
sort of became successful. So that feels like a small
sweet vision of her giving back. And that's definitely not
a description as we know of what has actually happened
(13:31):
right to the legacy.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
And that didn't happen because Rose ignored those wishes and
granted the literary estate to Roger Lee McBride.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, I mean this has to be one of the
great random inheritances in literary history. I mean, Roger Lee
McBride's fate intertwining with Little House is wild. And even
as a kid, I would be like Roger Lee McBride,
person that keeps getting mentioned on the back cover of
the book, Laura never met him, which is incredible.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Don't you think it's incredible?
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, it's wild. And at the same time, we know
from all.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
The episodes we did that Laura and Rose's life emotional
financial everything life was so enmeshed, so maybe Rose thought
that she had not just permission, but the right to
do what she wanted with it.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
I mean, who knows. And it was Roger who ended
up selling the rights to the Friendly Family, yep.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
I mean we know that Laura and Rose had turned
down offers from radio to serialize the books. This is
sort of before TV was such a huge thing, and
we know they had consistently turned it down. So as
soon as Rose dies almost immediately, Roger does a one
tot eighty, takes it to Hollywood to meet with Disney,
(14:55):
and then fate intervenes and he ends up selling it
to a Friendly which how we have Michael Landon well,
which is how we.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Really have the Business of Laura, because the Friendly Family
took on the copyrights and they've created a massive industry
around Laura and Little House that I don't think she
ever could have imagined.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
I mean, I don't know that I could have imagined
it as a child. So much of this is Internet
fueled too. I think I would just like try and
make these clothes for myself as a kid, or like
staple brown yarn braids to everything I owned, And now
you can go to at Sea or to Amazon and
buy all of the stuff and it all exists. And
(15:40):
that I think is like the collision of fandom, legacy
licensing the Internet.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
It's just it's so accessible now.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
When we get back from the break, we are going
to talk to the family that ended up with the
rights to all things Little House. How'd they get it,
and what's their intention with Laura's legacy and finally what
kind of stuff is being created from it.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
My father and Friendly acquired the rights to the Little
House books from a man named Roger Lee McBride.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
That's Trip Friendly. You heard from him in our TV
episode telling the story of how his father created the
Little House television series. These days, Roger Lee McBride's daughter
still owns the copyrights on the Little House books, but
the Friendly family owns the licensing for products and media.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
Friendly Family Productions owns film, television, merchandising, theme park and
other rights to the classic books by Laura Engels Wilder,
as well as to the Little House on the Prairie trademark.
When the television program was first broadcast on NBC in
the nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties, my father created
(16:57):
a licensing program which included lunch boxes, dinner plates, beverage ware, posters, puzzles,
board games, calendars, costumes, McCall patterns, and many other items.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
The Friendlies take their role very seriously. They know that
Laura holds sentimental value for a lot of people. None
of us know how Laura would feel about these products today,
but the things that are licensed definitely feel in line
with the wholesome, cozy nature of Laura's children's books.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
We've worked with a selective group of licensees that we
believe reflect the values of the Little House on the
Prairie brand in which we hoped would resonate with families
and fans today. So simple, joy, optimism, charm, and craftsmanship,
I would say, our integral parts. We would probably reject
(17:49):
any inquiries that are not consistent with the brand values
or are quote unquote are rated, such as alcohol, gambling.
They're sort of vice products.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
How much impact can a product actually have when it
comes to the legacy of Little House, There's so much
stuff that I wanted to find an example of a
company truly manufacturing in the spirit of Laura and Goes Wilder.
Speaker 7 (18:15):
The Queen's Treasures, in particular, has been a long time
licensee and they continue to expand their line of dolls
and doll accessories.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
That's Rebecca Friendly Trip's daughter and one of the driving
forces behind continuing Laura's legacy.
Speaker 7 (18:30):
They have some beautiful eighteen inch dolls. We started with Laura,
then Mary and most recently Nelly. They of course each
have a variety of outfits and accessories, and there are
some amazing doll size scenes.
Speaker 15 (18:48):
So we have a obviously a Laura doll, and Laura
actually comes in a night gown with a cap like
they used to wear, and her box turns into a bit,
so even the box can be used.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
That's Joanne Particulia, the president of the Queen's Treasures toy company.
Queen's Treasures makes pretty much every accessory that you could
possibly imagine for a little house doll set.
Speaker 15 (19:12):
Mary comes dressed in a pretty blue dress, and she
has a lunch pail which has the typical things that
she would have brought to lunch. GE's a hard boiled egg,
a little molasses cookie, abiscuit, that kind of thing, and
she comes of course with a little chalkboard. We have
a black cook stove, we have clothing, we're actually working
(19:33):
on a Olsen's Mercantile, which is really going to be
cool that kids can open up and they could play shop.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Joanne started her toy business in her garage in two
thousand and three by making doll trunks and accessories. Eventually
she started focusing on Laura because she thought that story
would be inspiring to young kids.
Speaker 15 (19:54):
We wanted to do women who change the world, and
Laura Ingleswilder is literally the first novelist I became obsessed with.
I have reread those books. I can't tell you how
many times. It just transports you to a place where
for me, looking back, children don't go now. You know,
(20:18):
every child you see has something electronic that they're obsessed
with and staring at, and they don't have any sense
of what history is. But Laura, She's just resonates with me.
She resonates with our customer base. I think people are
looking for a simpler time for children.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
Joanne's goal isn't just a tap in a demand for
Laura and Little House, but to use those stories to
influence people, small people, children.
Speaker 15 (20:50):
We put these imagine this cards in with each product
that says, imagine life over one hundred years ago, when
there was no electricity and to cook on a stove
you had to bring in wood and wait for the
stove to heat up. And you know, we just go
through scenarios that maybe children wouldn't even think about today.
(21:12):
We have a lot of homeschoolers that love our products,
so we really do try to keep it in an
educational vein. Laura was all about language, if you think
about it, and for me, she was I believe sixty
four when her book got I'm hoping I got a
few years for that, not that many. I'm hoping at
(21:35):
sixty four, something really crazy goes on with this company too.
But until then, I'm going to still keep developing and
designing toys and trying to bring inspiration to children and
try to get them to read and play and pretend
they need their own voices now. So that's my mission,
(22:00):
not just the.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Kids who are learning from these dolls. Joanne told me
herself that she's felt way more connected to Laura and
the lessons of the Ingles and prairie life while she's
been building this brand.
Speaker 15 (22:11):
I feel a little bit like a pioneer, if you will,
you know, persistence and being able to face a problem
and move on. They had so much adversity that happened
in their life, and they still smiled at the end
of the day and appreciated what they had.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
It's the simplicity that we keep coming back to, the
urge to go back to basics, have real concrete experiences,
get offline. We hear it over and over and over
again in our increasingly connected digital age now. So far
in this episode, we've been looking at businesses that start
(22:56):
with Laura, but a lot of them go way beyond
her in the wholesome, cozy feeling of the books into
our modern world in ways that you might not even notice.
After the break, we're getting into the products and trends
that are catching fire all over the internet. Who owe
their success to promising all of us a taste of
the prairie lifestyle. Oh, let's go into the done store.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Is the dog store?
Speaker 7 (23:25):
I've never even heard of it.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
It's like, you know, those like flowery prairie dresses that
I wear all the time?
Speaker 11 (23:31):
Yes, I do.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Hyeah.
Speaker 7 (23:33):
This is where it all happens.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
This is where that's me and my co author, Christine
Pride on our book tour in la We had some
time to kill and naturally, I felt myself drifting towards
a store that sold prairie dresses. Yet another overpriced prairie dress. Yep,
I see what you're talking.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
I mean they're cute.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
No, I know, they're like a real shoe. You can
totally see Laura wearing these.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Right, she's lavender.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
I have that actually. Yeah.
Speaker 7 (24:07):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
Beyond the official Little House products, there is so much
in our world that seems to be influenced by Laura.
Her DNA exists in brands all over our social media
feeds and in the real world. I fall for it
all the time, and maybe you do too. I bring
this up to Glennis a lot, a lot, a lot.
(24:30):
So now I want to talk about things inspired by
the prairie esthetic. And so I'm thinking the Pioneer Woman.
Do you remember her read Drummonds. Yeah, her net worth is,
according to the Internet, something like fifty million dollars. She
has built a TV show, a magazine, a massively successful
(24:53):
digital empire based off her prairie life, which I would argue,
with a direct continuation influenced by Laura Ingles Wilder.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
I mean absolutely, it's hard to see how it's not.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
And then you have things like the American Girl Dolls,
Kirsten the Prairie, she was my American girl doll, my
first American girl doll, and her life on the prairie,
again not directly based on Laura's life, but definitely influenced
by the prairie nostalgia that is in these books. And
(25:32):
more recently, you've got the nap dress phenomenon, nap dresses
and cottage core. And you know what nap dresses are.
They're just nightgowns. They're just nightgowns. And like these mommy
prairie dresses that spiked in popularity on social media in
the past few years, which I have nine of nine
of them.
Speaker 6 (25:52):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Yeah, I looked in my closet and I have been
suckered into buying nine nine of these.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
What's them? You tell me what's the appeal there?
Speaker 3 (26:05):
I don't know, because I've been influenced by cottage core
on social media and it makes me feel like a
beautiful lady running through the prairie. It's but and I'm
not the only one. I talked to social media and
branding expert Stephanie McNeil about the fact that during the pandemic,
Hillhouse nap dresses. Hillhouse is the big nap dress company.
(26:26):
We're selling over a million in inventory in something like
twelve minutes.
Speaker 9 (26:32):
Hillhouse is really interesting because the nap dress is a
very kind of cottage core look.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
They're definitely capitalizing on it.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
That's the author and reporter Stephanie McNeil. She covers influencing
branding and marketing on social media. I called her up
because I wanted to run the theory by her that
cottage core is fueled by longing for a simpler, cozy time,
just like life on the prairie.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
I could definitely see that.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
I think it's also.
Speaker 9 (27:01):
This idea of unbridled femininity that I think you see
a lot in cottage core as well, where this embrace
of a time where women could be very freely and
dressed up.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Stephanie has a few theories on why these trends persist.
It's never just one thing.
Speaker 9 (27:18):
I think that kind of is behind a lot of
these trends that are based around identity and personal style
and lifestyle is I think people are really just looking
for connection, and I think sometimes it's easier to be
I'm going to go in on a cottage core and
connect with people online who are really into cottage core
that it is to I don't know, go to a
(27:39):
gym class and find a friend.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Again, we circle back to the idea that these prairie
inspired trends are just a longing for a perceived simpler time,
a false nostalgia, and a desire for connection in an
over connected world. But you all know from listening to
this podcast that Laura's life wasn't actually that simple. Her
family lived in poverty, she experienced so much trauma as
(28:04):
a child. Her ode to a simple, happy, cozy life
is mostly fiction, but that fiction continues on social media today.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Often.
Speaker 16 (28:15):
You know, you look at these accounts and it's moralizing
and prioritizing a type of simplicity that is actually quite
expensive and quite inaccessible to most of us.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
That's Sarah Peterson, another expert in social media marketing and
branding and the author of the book Momfluenced.
Speaker 16 (28:34):
I think the construction of this imagery is really interesting
because often it requires quite a bit of money and
quite a bit of aesthetic investment, but it's always done
in this like oh it just happened to be like this,
And I'm not putting a lot of effort in effort
seems to be at odds with the performance of this
type of pioneer femininity.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Sarah's right, these products are expensive, and it takes a
lot of disposable income to be able to afford one
hundred dollars plus prairie dresses and all the sour dough starters,
pots and mugs that influencers and cottage core companies are
selling to us these days. And I think it's worth
taking a second to think about exactly what we're buying into.
(29:16):
What is this sphere of influence, what are we trying
to achieve with all of this stuff.
Speaker 16 (29:22):
I think the prairie chic aesthetic is so big on Instagram,
particularly for momfluencers, because it taps in to our cultural
understanding of mothers as being connected to the divine feminine,
as being connected to the earth, being connected to domestic spaces.
(29:47):
I really think this prairie you nostalgic aesthetic directly taps
into our cultural construction of the ideal American mother in a.
Speaker 11 (29:58):
Way that makes for, you know, big business.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
I can't stop thinking about this, about what makes the
ideal American mother, the ideal American woman. How dresses and
mugs and the collection of all of these trappings of
prairie life play into our desire to buy our way
into being more complete and happy women. There's a lot
of brands these days that are working to create a
(30:25):
place for women to figure out how to be in
the world, and one of those is actually called Modern Prairie,
and it was created by TV Laura Melissa Gilbert herself.
Who better to encapsulate all the sides of Laura's influence
than the woman that played her as a little girl.
Modern Prairie does sell a lot of stuff that we've
(30:48):
been talking about, but it also promotes healthy ideas for
how to live in the world as a mature woman,
something that the world doesn't always recognize as valuable. It's
genuinely a unique take on the prairie lifestyle brand, but
I've got to say its beginnings are very similar to
the other brands we've talked about. Like we've seen time
(31:09):
and time again, Melissa felt drawn to the ideals of
Little House during the pandemic.
Speaker 12 (31:14):
I think we all really rediscovered Cozy during Lockdown too.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Just before twenty twenty, Melissa and her husband Tim bought
a cabin in the Catskills and renovated it into their
permanent home. In her memoir about that time back to
the Prairie, she recounts the joy she felt in letting
go of the life that she'd built in La She
let her hair go gray, she took joy in cooking
and gardening, and essentially rediscovered herself in this genuinely simpler life.
(31:41):
When she founded Modern Prairie, she wanted to capture this
simplicity for others.
Speaker 12 (31:45):
I think Modern Prairie's a space to remind people of
that cozy, basic, woamy warm, those nostalgic feelings Boo brought
up to the current times.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
The initial idea for the brand started with just one product.
Speaker 12 (32:06):
I have had this sort of little patchling of an
idea for a couple decades that there's something more to
do with just the entire sort of prairie ethos It
all for me starts with them, of all objects, a butterbell.
It's a ceramic holder for butter. You put the butter
(32:26):
in it, and you put it in the crock and
you put it upside down in water, and it keeps
your butter fresh and soft without having to refrigerate it.
And I always thought, let's create something around a butterbell
and go from there and take us back to these sweet,
simple things, which really are the best things after all,
just full on lower angles Wilder celebration.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
Modern Prairie now sells that butterbell for forty nine to
fifty plus. So many other things go on their website.
There's backyard roofstore, quoted place mats, a Prairie iron stone
handled one gallon croc potmets, a set of farmhouse aprons,
pinafoor aprons, tablecloths, and my personal favorite, the deep dish
baking pan. But what feels special about Modern Prairie is
(33:13):
that they provide more than just products. They're actually creating
that sense of community that so many women online are
looking for.
Speaker 12 (33:19):
It's a place for obviously women over a certain age,
the mature women like me. And it's not just about
buying things. It's now grown into a community and we
have all these workshops and everything from you know, how
to paint with watercolor, to how to deal with grief
(33:40):
during the holidays, to how to get unstuck, which is
a big thing with women over a certain age. You know,
their kids are gone. We're reassessing what we want to
do with this last third of our lives, all of
these things that we're dealing with at this part in
our lives, there's no space for a community for people
to talk about these things. So we create this space
(34:01):
with these workshops. And what's kind of the heart of
Prairie for me is the community aspect. I love being
older because I don't feel like I have to do something.
I can sit at home and learn something.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
What I think is so interesting is that almost everyone
we spoke to in this cottage core prairie life world
seems to be striving for a simpler life. The people
that are making it, the people that are buying it,
everyone is trying to get to something simpler through commodification.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yeah, it's a strive for simplicity and also self sufficiency
in a world where neither.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Of these things really exist. And I think, are we
all so miserable and overconnected and overworked that will pay
for simplicity? This feels like a big joke capitalism is
playing on us, by the way, because I think the
answer is yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Though I also think this, like this desire to get
back to the simpler life, which is so well represented
by Little House on the Prairie, is not a recent phenomenon.
Like I'm just thinking of those old commercials we found
from this eighties being like come home, come home to
the simpler life.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Like there's always this fantasy.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Around getting back to this simple life, which, as we know,
never existed, right, Like, they did not have a simple.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Easy life. They had a terrible hard life.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
All of the people who actually lived in this time
period would kill to live in our time period with
antibiotics and electricity.
Speaker 7 (35:40):
But like, the.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Fantasy of that is so pervasive.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
So pervasive. It's so pervasive that people will pay, you know,
fifty dollars plus for a butterbell or three hundred dollars
for a prairie dress that is essentially a nightgown. And
there's entire there are entire stores in Brooklyn to sell
things that look like they could have been on.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
The prairie exactly.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
And also I kept thinking about how everyone wants to
use Laura as a gateway to something else, as a
gateway to simplicity, as a gateway to community, and it
reminded me that it's always bigger than Laura the human being.
It's bigger than these prairie stories. It taps into our
(36:28):
very humanity, what we desire, what we're hungry for, and
as this episode showed, what people are willing to pay
for those things.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Yeah, pay for a sense of community and safety and
coziness and simplicity. And maybe you two can make a
doll out of straw and have just like a direct
connection to sustainability.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
I'm going to open my own atsy shop after this episode.
Don't worry. I'll check in with the friendlies and make
sure that it's kosher. And I'm going to make some
pig Potter toys. Yes, yeah, we're gonna make so much money.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
I mean, in this episode, we've come up with our
own business ideas.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
So listen, it's never ending.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
It's never ending. It's never ending. If this episode has
taught us anything it's that Laura is everywhere. She's ever present,
no matter what form she happens to be in. Laura
is going to stick around for a very very long time.
In fact, I can't wait to see what ai Laura
(37:32):
does now. That is a business idea. Wilder is written
and hosted by Me and Glennis McNicol. Our story editors
are Me and Emily Meronoff. Our senior producer is Emily Maronoff.
Our producers are Mary Do, Sena Ozaki and Jessica crimechicch
(37:54):
Our Associate producers Lauren Philip. Sound design and mixing by
Amanda Rose Smith, and our theme and additional music was
composed by Alise McCoy. We are executive produced by Glennis mcnickel,
Nikki Etour, Ali Perry and Me. If you're enjoying Wilder,
please consider rating and reviewing us on Apple Podcasts. It
(38:15):
actually helps us out quite a lot, and remember you too,
are an influencer. Special thanks for this episode goes to
the Friendly Family, Melissa Gilbert, Stephanie McNeil, and Sarah Peterson.
Check out our show notes if you want to know
more about the people we interviewed, the places we visited,
and the books that we mentioned. You can also find
our contact info there. If you want to write to
(38:37):
us with your own thoughts and questions, we're going to
be including listener responses in our final episode, so if
you have thoughts on the Little House series or on
this series, please send a voice memo to Wilder podcast
at gmail dot com. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok
Influence Influence Influence We will be posting all of the
(38:57):
behind the scenes footage from our travels, and you really
don't want to miss it. Thanks for listening. Talk to
you next week. Hold on, I'm looking pigs butter lampshade.
Pigs flatter lampshade. M if you go on Etsy and
(39:21):
put in prairie and Laura Ingleswilder if you like it's
It's an extravaganza, my friends. It's an extrava ganza. Pigs
flatter lamp shade, Pigs butter, lampshade,
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