December 6, 2025 • 39 mins
In the 1960s, a very cool machine debuted at the Seattle World's Fair - the Mold-A-Rama. It made real plastic toys on-demand from melted plastic pellets, to the delight of children and adults alike. They didn't last too long, but can still be found at various locations all over the United States and their retro-cool stylings are still a hit. Learn all about these cool machines in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Chuck here on a Saturday. I hope you're
enjoying some breakfast cereal and maybe watching cartoons on the Telly,
but maybe take a pause and listen to this curated
episode from February twenty eighteen. What is mold Rama. I'm
not even gonna tell you what moldarrama is if you
don't know. It's not gross. It's not something that lives
on your walls when it's too humid. It's actually a
(00:23):
pretty cool, fun machine from.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Days gone by. So I hope you enjoyed this episode
all over again.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Right now, welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there,
and this is Stuff you Should Know a rama.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
You know, it's kind of funny that you did that
little Do Do to Do, because I'm gonna go ahead
and plug this right off the top. Okay, we're doing
this show on Moldorama, which spoiler is a machine that
makes that made and still makes these little plastic things, but.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Has maybe one of the worst trade names.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Ever, Moldorama.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
So I'm gonna go ahead and plug this. There's a
YouTube video from this young lady where she shows off
her Moldorama little plastic toys that she's collected. Carpetbagger dot Org.
Oh yeah, Moldorama. Just look up that YouTube. She is
adorable and she's the best. And when she shows her
suitcase full of Moldorama plastic toys, she does a little
(01:46):
song and it's just adorable and great.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
I gotta check that out. I saw her use one
of the Disney Disneyland toy factory Moldoramas. Yeah, I saw that,
so I know who you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
She's great.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
So that was nice of you, Chuck. Well, let's wait
for everybody to come back from watching her YouTube video show.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Okay, let's wait for I think five or six minutes
and done.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Yes, time passes faster here at stuff you should know,
doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
It does. I'm eighty years old.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
So so with you. Like you said, mold Rama, it
is a I've seen it described as a factory in
a case. Okay, I thought that was a pretty apt description.
But for those of you who don't know, it is
basically an odd demand injection blow molded plastic toy dispenser.
(02:38):
That is the that's a technical definition for it. And
while that might not make sense yet, it all will
make sense in about thirty or so minutes.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
All right, how about this picture?
Speaker 1 (02:48):
This?
Speaker 4 (02:48):
All right, let's start over. Should we wait? Should we
edit my part out?
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Oh no, let's leave this all in. All right, good
picture this. You walk into a room.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Let's say it's the tower now Willis Tower? Is it Willis? Oh?
Speaker 4 (03:04):
Yeah, that was Willis Tower, Sears Tower? Who keeps calling
it Willis Tower? Stop that Sears Tower? Or a world's
fair or something. And there is a machine that looks
sort of like a jukebox from fifty feet away. Oh yeah,
that's a good, good way.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
And then you walk up closer to it and you're like,
oh wait, what is this weird mechanical thing? Let me
put in fifty cents, and right before your very eyes,
it will mechanically create a little plastic toy of an
alien or a building or a lion at a zoo,
and it will spit it out. And you'll say, that
(03:42):
was just melted from plastic and molded and shaped and
given to me right in front of my eyes.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
What a fun neat thing.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
Right, and you'll say all this after you recover from
fainting from the fumes of melted plastic, and then get
up and get your toy out, which is good because
they say that you should wait half a minute for
your toy to cool before you grab it from the Molderama, right.
I think that was a pretty good job. You just
did it describing it.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
And I think this is super neat because this reminds
me of a bygone era, like where I went to
Nashville recently and went to Jack White's Third Man Records,
and he has one of those booths where you can
go in and.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Record a record.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Would you record?
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Well, I didn't do it. I chickened out.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
What I wanted to do was go in and sing
a little song for my daughter and give it to
her as a record. And I was thinking, like, what
could I do? What do I know in my brain
by heart? Because they have a little guitar you can
take in there, and it was such a small room
and it was in the room with everything else, and
I just got weirdly shy, like I don't want to
you to hear me.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
You got shy? Jack White made you shy? Huh? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I didn't want to do it in front of people. Like,
if there was literally no one in there, I would
have cut ten records.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Oh I got it. You should have stuck your head
on and been like, can you als leave for a
little while?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Just trust me?
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
But anyway, this reminds me of those days gone by
where you could cut your own record or you know,
they had these really cool machines at fairs and things
that they just I mean, now, I guess you can
still get your picture taken and printed digitally.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Or the Penny smasher that's still around two. I see
that compared to this, A get a lot. Yeah those
are cool, not really, but still it's an app comparison.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I will just say, I'm surprised that my brother doesn't
have a Molderama in his basement.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
So I am too, because there's a guy who collects
these things called Moldville, and I saw videos of his collection.
Did you see this, Yeah, it's like a warehouse full
of mint conditioned Molderama machines. This guy must be richer
than an astronaut. He's got so many of these machines.
(05:51):
And you're right about this. It evoking the memories of
a bygone era. But what's crazy, Chuck, is that these
things are still in use today. You can find them
all over the country. Yeah, and they're still working. And
this is what's amazing to me. There are the original
machines that were made for about a seven year period
during the nineteen sixties. Every Moldorama machine that you might encounter,
(06:15):
including ten at the Toledo Zoo. By the way, we're
built in the sixties and have been operational ever since.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Should we talk about the history, Well, first.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Let me ask you this do you have Did you
ever use a Moldorama when you were a kid? No?
Oh you didn't.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
No, And I'm dying now to go do one as
an adult.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
So they're still around. Yeah, they're still around. Okay, I
actually I got one that there's this thing in Toledo
called well actually it's in mallme which is a suburb
of Toledo, but it's called Children's Wonderland and it's like
this amazing three D Christmas walk through diorama. Basically that
just nothing can put you in the Christmas spirit as
(06:57):
a kid better than Children's Wonderland. And at the end
of this there was a Moldorama machine and it made
a gold, smelly, plasticy angel. It was kind of boring,
boring Christmas angel, but it was mine and I was
so glad to have it. And I have no idea
what happened to it. I'm sure it broke pretty quickly,
but I was like, holy cow, I've had one of
(07:18):
these before. I had no idea what it was called.
That it was moldorama, but I looked it up and
actually found the angel.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Well.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
I think that's the cool thing about these as a
kid is it's not putting your quarter in a gumball
machine and seeing all those things and one of them
falls out right. This is made just for you, right
in front of your face.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
Yep. Pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
All right? So now can we go back in time?
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Yeah? Yeah, I'm I'm done nostalgizing? All right? Wait, what
is it reminiscing?
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Sure, Okay, nostalgizing. I think it's a word, right it is?
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Now all right, we're going back to nineteen thirty seven
in the winter when one J. H. Miller Tyke is
his nickname. I don't know what that comes from.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Was he little?
Speaker 4 (08:01):
I don't know, not that I saw.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Well, because it's spelled differently. T ik. Yeah, I don't
know what it means anyway, of.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Quincy, Illinois, he was he made figurines. He and his
wife made figurines, and they needed a replacement for his
Nativity scene. I guess his little baby Jesus was decapitated
by his dog. He needed a new one, and he
couldn't find a place to sell him just one little piece. Yeah,
(08:29):
you gotta buy the whole Nativity scene. And he was like, well,
what am I going to do with that?
Speaker 4 (08:33):
Yeah, he said, I just needed one. And you could
understand the department stores position, like if they sell you
just one piece, there's a whole set that they can't
sell because who wants that set without the one piece.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Right, unless it's like maybe a.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
Donkey maybe I remember the donkey. That was a good
one though. That was one of my favorites as a kid.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
But anyway, he and his wife said, here's what we're
gonna do. We're gonna take these lemons and make them
into lemonade in the form of making our own little
plaster replacement figure. And apparently they were pretty good at it,
because they ended up doing this for a living and
founding a company doing this. Because the Germans evidently had
the market cornered on nativity pieces, and when World War
(09:13):
two came around, they said nine for you, right, and
we had a shortage.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
Yeah. All we wanted was liberty figures is what they
called them during World War two, not nativity because the
Germans had supplied us with nativity figures, so American main
ones you could call liberty figures.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
That like freedom fries, right.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
I think they actually called sauerkraut liberty cabbage. I'm not kidding.
So the tyke and his wife established this company and
in World War Two that really kind of grew because
they cornered the market and they just kept going from there.
And then about ten years after World War Two they
(09:54):
decided to move from plaster and by the way, he
started selling nativity figures into visual ones to those same
department stores who would only sell them sets before, which
I think is kind of sweet revenge. But they moved
from plaster figures to plastic and got into a type
of injection molding where air is blown into it, which
(10:17):
saves on plastic and creates a lightweight plastic figurine. And really, honestly,
nothing says nineteen fifties Midwest more than plastic nativity figures
you know, probably so yeah, made by a man named Tyke.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Yeah, and I mean they did pretty well for a
little while. I guess.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
I'm not sure exactly when the company was founded, but
if in nineteen thirty seven he came up with this
idea and they went bankrupt in nineteen fifty nine, they
sounds like they added some good years in there.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
Yeah they did. But I and I did not see
why they went bankrupt. I saw they were nothing but successful.
I don't know. I don't know if maybe they sunk
a bunch of money into these machines and it just
didn't quite make it or what. But he was very successful.
And he had a line of plastic toys that kids
would buy by the fistfol at like the local five
and dime or novelty store or something like that. And
(11:08):
he had lines of like dinosaurs, I think, toy soldiers.
But the one that really put his company on the
map as far as kids were concerned, were called Earth Invaders, yeah,
also known as Miller Aliens, and there was a line
of tons of them, but the one that is still
today the most prized of all was the Purple people Eater,
(11:31):
and it actually inspired that that song from the fifties,
which I didn't realize that song was quite that old.
But the song about the one eyed, one eared flying
purple Peepleater that was based on Tyke Miller's creation from
the fifties.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
I think it was the other way around.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
I don't think so. I think the song was based
on the figure.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
It says here the Purple people Eater was inspired by
the hit.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
Song Oh I saw. I read that as the opposite.
Thanks good cat.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
I think that's the case because that song was a
big hit and they were all manner of Purple people
Eater souvenirs and things.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Gotcha.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
It was a big business back then.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
Thank you for that one.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
No problem.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
We would have gotten some email from like three people
on that.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Tyke's great grandson, little Tyke.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
So in fifty nine or sixty they went bankrupt, and
it was right around this time where he said, all right,
I've got this idea for an actual vending machine that
could make these things on demand.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
And he was successful.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
He licensed this thing actually to what would eventually become
a Merra Mark, which everyone knows that that company is still.
Around the time, they were called the Automatic Retailers of America,
and he developed these machines with them, and in nineteen
sixty two at the Seattle World's Fair, they premiered there
doing little space needles and monorails and buddhas and buddhas
(12:55):
for like fifty cents, which is about four bucks today.
So it was not a little cheap thing. It's not
like sticking a dime in a machine today.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
Right, No, they were definitely expensive, but they were a
huge hit at that Seattle World's Fair. That was what
nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
So in nineteen sixty four at the New York World's Fair,
they blew up. They went from a couple of machines
in Seattle, I guess three machines in Seattle to as
many as one hundred and fifty at the New York
World's Fair from nineteen sixty four in nineteen sixty five.
And even more than just having that many more machines,
(13:34):
they also had branded machines. Right, So, like if you
were a company like Sinclair Oil or Disney and you
wanted to just kind of give people an extra little
amazing experience, you could license and brand your own Molderama,
And they had plenty of those at the World's Fair
some pretty cool ones too.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, So, like you said, anywhere from Disneyland to Montreal's
World Expo. And that's the cool thing, is that disney
World or a Disneyland there could be. I think they
were some of the characters that were actually acting like
they were working the machine, right, it's kind of clever.
Or if you know in you're in Montreal, it's going
(14:16):
to be Canadian mounties or maybe an Eiffel Tower, right.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
If you could contact the company, get them to make
you your own like signage I guess, to put on
the machine, and then most importantly, they would sculpt and
then manufacture a mold from that sculpture whatever you wanted,
say your logo or your brand or something like that,
some sort of statuette that had that you could set
(14:44):
it up and people would take home your little branded chotchkey.
It was pretty cool. It was a big hit in
the sixties and to air Marker AAR at the time,
they were like, well, this is great, but apparently they
were just looking at the whole thing as a proof
of concept because they had their sights on not just
like on demand novelties, but on demand everything, like on
(15:06):
demand dishware on demand, jewelry on demand, combs on demand,
ash trays that they felt like this was the future
because at the time, you know, the early sixties, plastics
was the future. It was pretty soon everything was going
to be made in plastic and no one was ever
going to have cancer from it a day in their life, right,
you know. It was a plastically optimistic time.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
And in the end they manufactured about two hundred of
these machines over a seven year period. But by nineteen
seventy one they said, you know what Aar said, we're
getting out.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Of this moldoramabizeh. Should we take a breaking.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Yeah, we're going to go press together our own little
mouldi dinosaur and be right back.
Speaker 5 (15:53):
Shop, all right, chuck.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
So Aar gets out of the biz, and it's kind
of understandable. So why there's a couple of big problems
with Molderama machines. One, they're expensive to manufacture. They were
like apparently thirty six hundred bucks per at the time.
That was back in nineteen sixty two, so just under
thirty thousand dollars today your machine h machine. And then
(16:34):
also once you set these things up, they required almost
constant attention. You had to go refill them with plastic,
You had to top off their fluids, you had to
fix any parts, you had to keep them clean, you
had to get gum off of them, because again these
are interfacing with little kids, so there was a lot
of maintenance in upkeep to them as well. So aer
(16:56):
remarks said we're done. In the seventies, they sold off
their machines to a couple of different groups.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
I mean, this is a mechanical like hydraulic machine that
required like oil and anti freeze.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
There was it was no uh.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
I mean if it sounds like and I mean, I
guess we can go into the process a little bit.
It gets a little wonky for my taste, Okay, but
I guess we should talk a little bit about how
these actually work, right.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
Yeah, we kind of have to and it'll be fun,
I promise you.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Ready, Well, I will say this. First of all, there
are hydraulics.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yeah, and there are these these two molds, and you
can go to on YouTube and look at how these
things work.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
It's pretty neat. They these two molds.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
It's basically one half of the little toy on each side.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
Oh yeah, there like a three dimensional sculptured statuette.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Yeah, So they move toward each other with these hydraulics
and they're pressed together forms a big seal and it
ends up it ends up being hollow on the inside.
That's kind of a big point to make.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
It's a negative of the sculpture.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
So then there's a couple of holes in the bottom
that lead into that sculpture cavity, and into that you
inject hot plastic. Because one thing that a lot of
people don't realize about the mold thematic is just beneath
this the work surface that is the floor of what
(18:27):
you can see below that is a vat of two
hundred and twenty five to two hundred and fifty degree
Farrent height molten plastic just sitting there, bubbling hot.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Yeah, little pellets.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
They feed it in little colored pellets, right, although for
a little while they actually had just kind of neutral
pellets that they use colored powder. Right, But they at
least wised up there and said, why don't we just
color the pellets and just stick with the one color yep.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
And then so the system has a closed steam system
that runs hot steam through crazy that runs through these
plastic pellet vat, this plastic pellet vat and it melts
the pellets and then keeps a molten So then when
that when the the the mold seals up above come
(19:15):
together and form that seal, hot plastic is injected into
the mold and fills it up.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
That's right, hot plastic injection. Great band name.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
And then these things obviously have to be cooled pretty
quick like in order for them to I mean, what
solidify is that the right word? But when they do
come out, like you said, they are warm, and I'm surprised.
I mean, this seems like something that you could not
create today without there being so much liability on your hands.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
Well, again, they still are in use. You can still
go to the Toledo Zoo, to zoos all over the
Midwest and Florida and tourist attractions and rest stops and
you will find these things still in use.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
It's just so funny to me that, like it literally
says on the little door that you open, hold upside
down while it cools, don't let the molten plastic drip
on little Timmy's hand.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
That's exactly right. So we got the injection molding part done,
but there's one step that we missed, and that's the
blow part that makes it injection blow molding. And this
is how these companies manage to actually make money. And
one of the reasons why the molderama chatchkeys are so
fragile is that they're hollow inside. So the mold is
(20:32):
filled with the hot plastic and then compressed air is
blown into it. And the compressed air does two things. One,
it pushes the plastic against the mold so it completely
covers it, and it takes on the shape of the mold, right,
And then it also blows the excess plastic out the
bottom so it's hollow, and then the excess plastic goes
(20:53):
back into the vat when it's reused, reused exactly, so
it might use enough plastic at first to make ten
of these things or five or something. I'm just totally
guessing here, But then it reuses it by blowing it
out the bottom and making it a hollow object rather
than a solid one, right, okay, and then it comes
(21:14):
out hot. They say, wait thirty seconds or half a minute,
I think is how they put it. And the reason
why they say hold it upside down is because there's
still that hole at the bottom that that little hot
plastic can. Like you said, burn Timmy's hands.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
The smell, chuck. You've never smelled anything like it.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Do you remember the smell?
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Yes, I can remember the smell it was. It's it's
at the same time pleasing and totally noxious. Interesting, Like
as a kid, you're like, this smells weird and cool,
But as an adult, I'm sure you'd be like, this
is going to kill my whole family and it's going
to kill my great grandchildren somehow.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Well, back then, no one cared. No, they didn't, you know,
and like we said, tons of upkeep. You know, you've
got steam, you've got hydraulic fluid, you have anti freeze,
sometimes cold water, but I would suspect anti freeze in
most cases. Yeah, And until the nineteen seventies, like I said,
you had powdered coloring. I mean, this whole thing is
(22:13):
I'm surprised they didn't explode at any point.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
Yeah. One of the other things that I really admire
about this is that, again, the machines that are still
in use today, that still work just as well as
ever today, were built exclusively from nineteen sixty two to
nineteen sixty nine when Ara Mark was making them, and
then these things also because they put off these terrible fumes,
they're kept outside, so they've been sitting in the elements
(22:40):
for fifty plus years and they still work. They're pretty
pretty well built machines, for sure.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
I think they've they've got some now that they have
been able to move indoors.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Yeah, from using a different type of plastic. I think.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yeah, it's crazy that these things had to be outside.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Yeah, and they still are. Most of them are a
lot of them have like kind of built in little
canopies over them or something like that. But if you
look at the canopy you can tell they're kind of new.
They've been outside basically for fifty years.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
I'm so going to be on the lookout for these now.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
So there is a website Chuck called Waymarking way m
A r KI NNG dot com. They have a comprehensive
list of every single MOLDERAMA in use today in the
United States, and they they have like actual like longitude
and latitude coordinates. If you want to, I guess geocash
(23:33):
your way to them.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Well, what I want is an app that will text
me when I'm within five hundred feet of one.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
Oh that's a that's a good idea.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
There's a ten dollars app and by ten dollar app,
I mean you would make ten dollars.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
Yeah, although people are crazy for these things still is We'll.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
See they're none in Atlanta, right, not that.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
I saw no, But again, there's a bunch of Toledo.
I found the machine that I almost certainly got my
angel from.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Oh wow.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
They keep it in storage at Tama Shanner, which is
an ice skating rink in I guess a Scottish ice
skating rink. I don't know, in Mome, which is where
they have Children's Wonderland. But I saw a picture of it,
and now it looks like the most recent thing it
makes is polar bears.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
And your DNA is on that machine.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
Still somewhere in the form of a lot of gum.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
All right, Well, let's take another break.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
We'll come back and talk a little bit about some
of these fun figures and the people that are still
trying to keep this traditional alive.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
All right, So.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Here's the thing that I wanted to know, and that
our article didn't get to till three quarter the way through.
I was like, can do they have different things for
each machine. The answer, sadly is no. If it spits
out a dinosaur, it can only spit out a dinosaur
unless you change up that mold.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Yes, but you can change the color and you'll have
a different colored dinosaur.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Well until they started using the single color pellets.
Speaker 4 (25:19):
Right, Well, no, then they just put in a different
color when they refill the thing, and all of a
sudden it went from a purple dinosaur or a green dinosaur.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Right, But could you say purple and hit a purple button? No,
or it's whatever the kid who worked there decided to
put in that morning.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
That's exactly right. The thing is though, and again it's
not even just the toy that comes out. The toy is,
especially as a kid, invariably disappointing, sure, but it's the process.
It's watching this thing happen, and the MOLDERAMA machines will
have like little different lights that light up like now
we're cooling, now we're about to launch the toy to you.
(25:56):
You know, it tells you what's going on, so you're
following the process, which is at least is probably eighty
percent of the appeal of the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Stand back right now, because if I were to explode,
it would be during this next eight seconds.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
Right, all right, your mom who's standing there missing her
one arm from saving you in a car wreck. It's
like you probably should stand back exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
No one knows exactly how many of these molds were made,
but they're, like we said, our enthusiasts who collect these.
And this one dude, Bill Bolman, who owns one and
runs moldville dot com. Bad bad You are all there, right.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
Yeah, it is bad. And I got to say, I
looked it up and it's a dead domain. But he's
got a Facebook thing that he does. Now that's where
he's moved to.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Yeah, that's where he went. My Space and then he
went Facebook. But there will never be another site better
than Facebook. So I'm sure it's all over right, probably
so he his estimate is about three hundred designs us
more than that.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
I don't know. This guy knows what he's talking about.
He counted one hundred and ninety six original ones. And
then he said after the sixties more people started to
make them. They weren't just commissioned by Aerra Mark who
was keeping track of these things. And I would I
would say this guy's probably the person on earth who
could estimate how many there are the closest.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
And not just me guessing randomly. But it's more.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
And what's cool though also is again like if you
were you could be anybody, if you wanted a Moldorama
thing at your event, you could, it could happen. Sure
I found there was a Circleville, Ohio Pumpkin Festival Moldurama figure.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Wonderful.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
So one of the three hundred molds is a pumpkin
from Circleville, Ohio's pumpkin Fest in the seventies. Another one,
so apparently Toledo was crazy about these things, because again
there's ten at the Toledo Zoo. There's the one at
Tamlashan that I got a mine from. There was one
in the eighties at the Toledo mud Headens Stadium, and
(28:07):
there's a mud Hen's figure, which is pretty cool actually.
And I looked and there's like zero for sale anywhere,
but now I'm kind of on the lookout for that thing.
But all you had to do was just make a
bold get your hands on one of these, and bam, Circleville,
Ohio's Pumpkin Fest went from zero to hero.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Right, and you two could have a snowman or a
Gramman's Chinese theater, or a space lab or a Lawrence Welk.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah, or a Titan missile.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
Yeah, and NASA had a lot of these things. Actually,
I'm sure what else was there?
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Well, the Lawrence Welk. None of those were jokes. Those
are real.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
Oh yeah, for sure, there was.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
A Titan three C missile in a Lawrence Welk says.
Other famous people. I'm kind of curious.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
I didn't see anybody besides President and Lawrence Welk. There's
one of the Georgia State Capitol building. Oh really, Yeah,
there were some cool ones. Actually, the Saint Louis arch
is surprisingly cool. You wouldn't think it'd be that cool.
The Oscar Meyer Wiener mobile, this one was kind of random.
(29:17):
It was it's a high Ali player and then at
the base it says, hi, a lie in Miami.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
The water Skier from Cypress I think Cypress Gardens, Florida.
And the Mermaids from Wikiwachie Springs, Florida.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Oh, we talked about them. Oh, here's one. Universal Studios
had one that made a Frankenstein coinbank.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
That's kind of cool.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
It is very cool, Like, a lot of these are
actually super cool, especially the original retro ones. You can
actually see like I can't remember the woman's name, but
there is a woman who was hired by one of
the companies that still operate these things to start making molds,
and she's been making them for the last twenty five
years and compare to some of the ones from the sixties,
(30:01):
like she's just head and shoulders above the people who
are sculpting them. Then, like, these are really really well
made sculptures, not only in like the actual sculpture that
she's making, but the decisions she's making produces just a
better mold. Arama toy. Yeah, because again, you're you're dealing
with melted plastic in a mold that is two halves
(30:23):
pressed together. There's a lot of like details that can
go wrong, and this, this great sculptor is taking all
of them into account making some really boss ones like
the Wienermobile. It's art to behold this, The detail in
it is really really nice.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Should we talk about a couple of these companies that
are still still going strong.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Yeah, for sure, at least going No, they're going strong man, Okay, good.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
There are a couple of them one called Replication Devices,
one called mold A Rama Incorporated Replication Devices, founded by
Elden Irwin, who bought a bunch of these. It has
dozens in the early sixties, eventually passed down through his family,
and right now his grandson and his wife, the Strigowls
(31:14):
in Florida are operating sixty or seventy of these.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Yeah, and let's think about this for a second. So
Elden Irwin bought dozens, now they're up to sixty, maybe seventy,
And those Molderama machines have supported three generations of this
family fully from what I understand, Yes, okay, I saw
an interview with Tim Strigou and he said he was
(31:40):
surprised that the business was still going when his parents
took it over. And now he the grandson and his
wife operate it. And yes, from what I understand it
fully supports it. The San Antonio Zoo estimated that they
make one hundred and thirty thousand figurines a year from
their one Molderama.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Two bucks a pop. That's two high undred and sixty
thousand gross.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
Times sixty or seventy, So yeah, they're doing just fine.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
This other one Molderrama Ink like, we're not asking one
to open their books for us.
Speaker 4 (32:12):
No, for sure, and I certainly don't want to shine
a light on these people's finances. But I'm just saying,
like it's it's astounding to me that these machines built
in the sixties, left out in the elements for fifty years,
are managing to support three generations of the families who
have been operating them. I just think that's super cool.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like it's kind of like
people are own car washes. Sure, isn't it like a
front always to launder money from drug sales?
Speaker 4 (32:38):
I would guess. I think it's low hanging, easy to buy.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
I'm just kidding everyone out there that owns car washes.
I've watched too much Breaking Bad.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Oh that's right, that's right. But I think that is
like a legitimate thing.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Like, yeah, cash businesses are ripe for the picking.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
I forgot they bought that car wash.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Yeah, so Moldorama Inc. Like I said, William A.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Jones Company's changed their name in twenty eleven, but they
got into this in nineteen seventy one when William A.
Jones bought some of these from one of the guys
who worked for the original Moldorama. Then they expanded, bought
more machines and it is still a family business again.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
They got about sixty of them.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
Yep, and they were William A. Jones Company. And then
I guess they got their hands on the Moldorama trademark
in twenty eleven and they changed the name of the
company to Moldorama, Inc. Again because that's originally what it
was called back when Era Mark was running it.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Yeah, they're mainly in the Midwest, Minnesota, Michigan, a bunch
of them in Illinois and one in Texas.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
It looks like right, not bad.
Speaker 4 (33:47):
And then every once in a while you have just
some independent operators like Knoxville Zoo owns their own. They
apparently got there from Dollywood, which man, Moldorama is at Dollywood.
That make your wig spin.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
There's this one cool thing I wanted to shout out.
This toy store in Chicago, Roto Fugi or Rotafuji, I'm
not sure how you pronounce it. They repurposed their own Moldorama.
They bought one and repurposed it that was originally the
La Zoo and they call it the Roto a Mattic.
And they have something called the Helper Dragon you can
(34:23):
get for six bucks. And if you look up the
Helper Dragon and these dudes, it is clear that they
are Simpsons fans.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Did you see this thing?
Speaker 4 (34:32):
Yeah? I did. I saw a video of it, but
it was kind of out of focus.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Yeah, like just google image of the Helper Dragon rodo
omatic and it is to me at least clearly the
cyclops alien from The Simpsons.
Speaker 4 (34:47):
With its oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
With its head stuck on the body of a winged lion.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
That's my take on it.
Speaker 4 (34:55):
Very nice.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
And then there is this one other guy. He is
a Disney World imagineer named James Durand, and he has
built his own moldorama called the Mini Molder. And you
just look at this guy. You know, he's an imagineer.
You look at this machine and you're like, I would
hire that guy to build and do anything, because he's
(35:17):
clearly a brilliant genius.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Yep, really cool looking thing.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
And a bit of a show off. Frankly, you think, So,
I've got two more things, all right. The Moldorama used
to be fifty cents in its original incarnation in nineteen
sixty two, which, again thanks to our friends at West
Egg inflation calculator tells us is about four dollars and
(35:42):
twelve cents in twenty seventeen money. Today you can get
a Moldorama for two bucks, which means that the price
has gone down by half over the last fifty years.
Oh interesting, pretty cool. And then lastly, so after Tyke
Miller got out of the plastics injection molding business, he
had another invention that he called the Golden Goat, and
(36:05):
it was this big machine that apparently he invented to
put out in parking lots at like grocery stores, and
it would take up about two parking spaces, and customers
would come in and put in their used aluminum cans
and then the Golden Goat would weigh it and then
give them some money in return, and then it would
(36:25):
compact those cans, and then later on is that aluminum
would be sold as scrap for recycling. The thing is
that this was years before the green movement was ever
even thought of. That's how ahead of his time this
guy was. And I don't think the Golden Goat ever
made him a lot of money, but it's a pretty
cool invention that this guy had. He was like one
(36:47):
of those great Midwestern tinker inventor guys. Yeah, hats off
to him.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
God blessed all those people.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
Yep. So there you go, Nativity figures plastic. If you
want to know more about Mulderama Man, you can fall
down a rabbit hole just looking at pictures of him
on the internet. So why don't you go do that?
Take some time for yourself, you know, why do you
always have to work? Work?
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Work?
Speaker 4 (37:11):
Since I said that it's time for a listener mail, I'm.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Going to call this just kind of a quick shout out.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
We don't do these a lot because we get a
lot of shout out requests, but this one was adorable
because this little kid. So this is from Ginny, she's
the mom. She says, how about a shout out or
my son Jake. He listens to every episode more than once.
Nic He's got me and many others into the show
and we love it. So young Jake is out there
spreading the word and we appreciate that, Jake, and you
(37:40):
love the show so much you named well, not quite yet,
but Jake says he wants to get a puppy and
call it Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and he says this
most of the time he will be called Chuck, but
when he does something wrong, I'll be like, Charles W.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Chuck Bryant, why did you do that?
Speaker 4 (37:58):
Yep? Well, Jake, we have a really big surprise for
you if you will go to your back door. I
think you're gonna find something pretty special out there. No,
I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
No, We're just kidding, Jake.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
There's not a puppy at your back door unless your
mom Jenny heard this beforehand and is the best.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Mom in the world. Yeah, and your mom.
Speaker 4 (38:17):
Yeah, that was pretty cool of her to write in
and let us know. So way to go, Jake for
listening to us. Thank you, Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Yeah, thank you, Jake, Thank you Jenny. We count literally
count on people like you to spread the words, so
we appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
Good luck with your eventual puppy too named Charles W.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Chuck Bryant when he's bad.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
If you want to tell us about well, your cute kid,
we want to hear about him or her, you can
send us an email. The Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, Chuck here on a Saturday. I hope you're
enjoying some breakfast cereal and maybe watching cartoons on the Telly,
but maybe take a pause and listen to this curated
episode from February twenty eighteen. What is mold Rama. I'm
not even gonna tell you what moldarrama is if you
don't know. It's not gross. It's not something that lives
on your walls when it's too humid. It's actually a
(00:23):
pretty cool, fun machine from.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Days gone by. So I hope you enjoyed this episode
all over again.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Right now, welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there,
and this is Stuff you Should Know a rama.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
You know, it's kind of funny that you did that
little Do Do to Do, because I'm gonna go ahead
and plug this right off the top. Okay, we're doing
this show on Moldorama, which spoiler is a machine that
makes that made and still makes these little plastic things, but.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Has maybe one of the worst trade names.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Ever, Moldorama.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
So I'm gonna go ahead and plug this. There's a
YouTube video from this young lady where she shows off
her Moldorama little plastic toys that she's collected. Carpetbagger dot Org.
Oh yeah, Moldorama. Just look up that YouTube. She is
adorable and she's the best. And when she shows her
suitcase full of Moldorama plastic toys, she does a little
(01:46):
song and it's just adorable and great.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
I gotta check that out. I saw her use one
of the Disney Disneyland toy factory Moldoramas. Yeah, I saw that,
so I know who you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
She's great.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
So that was nice of you, Chuck. Well, let's wait
for everybody to come back from watching her YouTube video show.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Okay, let's wait for I think five or six minutes
and done.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Yes, time passes faster here at stuff you should know,
doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
It does. I'm eighty years old.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
So so with you. Like you said, mold Rama, it
is a I've seen it described as a factory in
a case. Okay, I thought that was a pretty apt description.
But for those of you who don't know, it is
basically an odd demand injection blow molded plastic toy dispenser.
(02:38):
That is the that's a technical definition for it. And
while that might not make sense yet, it all will
make sense in about thirty or so minutes.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
All right, how about this picture?
Speaker 1 (02:48):
This?
Speaker 4 (02:48):
All right, let's start over. Should we wait? Should we
edit my part out?
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Oh no, let's leave this all in. All right, good
picture this. You walk into a room.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Let's say it's the tower now Willis Tower? Is it Willis? Oh?
Speaker 4 (03:04):
Yeah, that was Willis Tower, Sears Tower? Who keeps calling
it Willis Tower? Stop that Sears Tower? Or a world's
fair or something. And there is a machine that looks
sort of like a jukebox from fifty feet away. Oh yeah,
that's a good, good way.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
And then you walk up closer to it and you're like,
oh wait, what is this weird mechanical thing? Let me
put in fifty cents, and right before your very eyes,
it will mechanically create a little plastic toy of an
alien or a building or a lion at a zoo,
and it will spit it out. And you'll say, that
(03:42):
was just melted from plastic and molded and shaped and
given to me right in front of my eyes.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
What a fun neat thing.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
Right, and you'll say all this after you recover from
fainting from the fumes of melted plastic, and then get
up and get your toy out, which is good because
they say that you should wait half a minute for
your toy to cool before you grab it from the Molderama, right.
I think that was a pretty good job. You just
did it describing it.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
And I think this is super neat because this reminds
me of a bygone era, like where I went to
Nashville recently and went to Jack White's Third Man Records,
and he has one of those booths where you can
go in and.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Record a record.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Would you record?
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Well, I didn't do it. I chickened out.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
What I wanted to do was go in and sing
a little song for my daughter and give it to
her as a record. And I was thinking, like, what
could I do? What do I know in my brain
by heart? Because they have a little guitar you can
take in there, and it was such a small room
and it was in the room with everything else, and
I just got weirdly shy, like I don't want to
you to hear me.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
You got shy? Jack White made you shy? Huh? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I didn't want to do it in front of people. Like,
if there was literally no one in there, I would
have cut ten records.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Oh I got it. You should have stuck your head
on and been like, can you als leave for a
little while?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Just trust me?
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
But anyway, this reminds me of those days gone by
where you could cut your own record or you know,
they had these really cool machines at fairs and things
that they just I mean, now, I guess you can
still get your picture taken and printed digitally.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Or the Penny smasher that's still around two. I see
that compared to this, A get a lot. Yeah those
are cool, not really, but still it's an app comparison.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I will just say, I'm surprised that my brother doesn't
have a Molderama in his basement.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
So I am too, because there's a guy who collects
these things called Moldville, and I saw videos of his collection.
Did you see this, Yeah, it's like a warehouse full
of mint conditioned Molderama machines. This guy must be richer
than an astronaut. He's got so many of these machines.
(05:51):
And you're right about this. It evoking the memories of
a bygone era. But what's crazy, Chuck, is that these
things are still in use today. You can find them
all over the country. Yeah, and they're still working. And
this is what's amazing to me. There are the original
machines that were made for about a seven year period
during the nineteen sixties. Every Moldorama machine that you might encounter,
(06:15):
including ten at the Toledo Zoo. By the way, we're
built in the sixties and have been operational ever since.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Should we talk about the history, Well, first.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Let me ask you this do you have Did you
ever use a Moldorama when you were a kid? No?
Oh you didn't.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
No, And I'm dying now to go do one as
an adult.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
So they're still around. Yeah, they're still around. Okay, I
actually I got one that there's this thing in Toledo
called well actually it's in mallme which is a suburb
of Toledo, but it's called Children's Wonderland and it's like
this amazing three D Christmas walk through diorama. Basically that
just nothing can put you in the Christmas spirit as
(06:57):
a kid better than Children's Wonderland. And at the end
of this there was a Moldorama machine and it made
a gold, smelly, plasticy angel. It was kind of boring,
boring Christmas angel, but it was mine and I was
so glad to have it. And I have no idea
what happened to it. I'm sure it broke pretty quickly,
but I was like, holy cow, I've had one of
(07:18):
these before. I had no idea what it was called.
That it was moldorama, but I looked it up and
actually found the angel.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Well.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
I think that's the cool thing about these as a
kid is it's not putting your quarter in a gumball
machine and seeing all those things and one of them
falls out right. This is made just for you, right
in front of your face.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
Yep. Pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
All right? So now can we go back in time?
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Yeah? Yeah, I'm I'm done nostalgizing? All right? Wait, what
is it reminiscing?
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Sure, Okay, nostalgizing. I think it's a word, right it is?
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Now all right, we're going back to nineteen thirty seven
in the winter when one J. H. Miller Tyke is
his nickname. I don't know what that comes from.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Was he little?
Speaker 4 (08:01):
I don't know, not that I saw.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Well, because it's spelled differently. T ik. Yeah, I don't
know what it means anyway, of.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Quincy, Illinois, he was he made figurines. He and his
wife made figurines, and they needed a replacement for his
Nativity scene. I guess his little baby Jesus was decapitated
by his dog. He needed a new one, and he
couldn't find a place to sell him just one little piece. Yeah,
(08:29):
you gotta buy the whole Nativity scene. And he was like, well,
what am I going to do with that?
Speaker 4 (08:33):
Yeah, he said, I just needed one. And you could
understand the department stores position, like if they sell you
just one piece, there's a whole set that they can't
sell because who wants that set without the one piece.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Right, unless it's like maybe a.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
Donkey maybe I remember the donkey. That was a good
one though. That was one of my favorites as a kid.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
But anyway, he and his wife said, here's what we're
gonna do. We're gonna take these lemons and make them
into lemonade in the form of making our own little
plaster replacement figure. And apparently they were pretty good at it,
because they ended up doing this for a living and
founding a company doing this. Because the Germans evidently had
the market cornered on nativity pieces, and when World War
(09:13):
two came around, they said nine for you, right, and
we had a shortage.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
Yeah. All we wanted was liberty figures is what they
called them during World War two, not nativity because the
Germans had supplied us with nativity figures, so American main
ones you could call liberty figures.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
That like freedom fries, right.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
I think they actually called sauerkraut liberty cabbage. I'm not kidding.
So the tyke and his wife established this company and
in World War Two that really kind of grew because
they cornered the market and they just kept going from there.
And then about ten years after World War Two they
(09:54):
decided to move from plaster and by the way, he
started selling nativity figures into visual ones to those same
department stores who would only sell them sets before, which
I think is kind of sweet revenge. But they moved
from plaster figures to plastic and got into a type
of injection molding where air is blown into it, which
(10:17):
saves on plastic and creates a lightweight plastic figurine. And really, honestly,
nothing says nineteen fifties Midwest more than plastic nativity figures
you know, probably so yeah, made by a man named Tyke.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Yeah, and I mean they did pretty well for a
little while. I guess.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
I'm not sure exactly when the company was founded, but
if in nineteen thirty seven he came up with this
idea and they went bankrupt in nineteen fifty nine, they
sounds like they added some good years in there.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
Yeah they did. But I and I did not see
why they went bankrupt. I saw they were nothing but successful.
I don't know. I don't know if maybe they sunk
a bunch of money into these machines and it just
didn't quite make it or what. But he was very successful.
And he had a line of plastic toys that kids
would buy by the fistfol at like the local five
and dime or novelty store or something like that. And
(11:08):
he had lines of like dinosaurs, I think, toy soldiers.
But the one that really put his company on the
map as far as kids were concerned, were called Earth Invaders, yeah,
also known as Miller Aliens, and there was a line
of tons of them, but the one that is still
today the most prized of all was the Purple people Eater,
(11:31):
and it actually inspired that that song from the fifties,
which I didn't realize that song was quite that old.
But the song about the one eyed, one eared flying
purple Peepleater that was based on Tyke Miller's creation from
the fifties.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
I think it was the other way around.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
I don't think so. I think the song was based
on the figure.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
It says here the Purple people Eater was inspired by
the hit.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
Song Oh I saw. I read that as the opposite.
Thanks good cat.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
I think that's the case because that song was a
big hit and they were all manner of Purple people
Eater souvenirs and things.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Gotcha.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
It was a big business back then.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
Thank you for that one.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
No problem.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
We would have gotten some email from like three people
on that.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Tyke's great grandson, little Tyke.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
So in fifty nine or sixty they went bankrupt, and
it was right around this time where he said, all right,
I've got this idea for an actual vending machine that
could make these things on demand.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
And he was successful.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
He licensed this thing actually to what would eventually become
a Merra Mark, which everyone knows that that company is still.
Around the time, they were called the Automatic Retailers of America,
and he developed these machines with them, and in nineteen
sixty two at the Seattle World's Fair, they premiered there
doing little space needles and monorails and buddhas and buddhas
(12:55):
for like fifty cents, which is about four bucks today.
So it was not a little cheap thing. It's not
like sticking a dime in a machine today.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
Right, No, they were definitely expensive, but they were a
huge hit at that Seattle World's Fair. That was what
nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
So in nineteen sixty four at the New York World's Fair,
they blew up. They went from a couple of machines
in Seattle, I guess three machines in Seattle to as
many as one hundred and fifty at the New York
World's Fair from nineteen sixty four in nineteen sixty five.
And even more than just having that many more machines,
(13:34):
they also had branded machines. Right, So, like if you
were a company like Sinclair Oil or Disney and you
wanted to just kind of give people an extra little
amazing experience, you could license and brand your own Molderama,
And they had plenty of those at the World's Fair
some pretty cool ones too.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, So, like you said, anywhere from Disneyland to Montreal's
World Expo. And that's the cool thing, is that disney
World or a Disneyland there could be. I think they
were some of the characters that were actually acting like
they were working the machine, right, it's kind of clever.
Or if you know in you're in Montreal, it's going
(14:16):
to be Canadian mounties or maybe an Eiffel Tower, right.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
If you could contact the company, get them to make
you your own like signage I guess, to put on
the machine, and then most importantly, they would sculpt and
then manufacture a mold from that sculpture whatever you wanted,
say your logo or your brand or something like that,
some sort of statuette that had that you could set
(14:44):
it up and people would take home your little branded chotchkey.
It was pretty cool. It was a big hit in
the sixties and to air Marker AAR at the time,
they were like, well, this is great, but apparently they
were just looking at the whole thing as a proof
of concept because they had their sights on not just
like on demand novelties, but on demand everything, like on
(15:06):
demand dishware on demand, jewelry on demand, combs on demand,
ash trays that they felt like this was the future
because at the time, you know, the early sixties, plastics
was the future. It was pretty soon everything was going
to be made in plastic and no one was ever
going to have cancer from it a day in their life, right,
you know. It was a plastically optimistic time.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
And in the end they manufactured about two hundred of
these machines over a seven year period. But by nineteen
seventy one they said, you know what Aar said, we're
getting out.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Of this moldoramabizeh. Should we take a breaking.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Yeah, we're going to go press together our own little
mouldi dinosaur and be right back.
Speaker 5 (15:53):
Shop, all right, chuck.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
So Aar gets out of the biz, and it's kind
of understandable. So why there's a couple of big problems
with Molderama machines. One, they're expensive to manufacture. They were
like apparently thirty six hundred bucks per at the time.
That was back in nineteen sixty two, so just under
thirty thousand dollars today your machine h machine. And then
(16:34):
also once you set these things up, they required almost
constant attention. You had to go refill them with plastic,
You had to top off their fluids, you had to
fix any parts, you had to keep them clean, you
had to get gum off of them, because again these
are interfacing with little kids, so there was a lot
of maintenance in upkeep to them as well. So aer
(16:56):
remarks said we're done. In the seventies, they sold off
their machines to a couple of different groups.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
I mean, this is a mechanical like hydraulic machine that
required like oil and anti freeze.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
There was it was no uh.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
I mean if it sounds like and I mean, I
guess we can go into the process a little bit.
It gets a little wonky for my taste, Okay, but
I guess we should talk a little bit about how
these actually work, right.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
Yeah, we kind of have to and it'll be fun,
I promise you.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Ready, Well, I will say this. First of all, there
are hydraulics.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yeah, and there are these these two molds, and you
can go to on YouTube and look at how these
things work.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
It's pretty neat. They these two molds.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
It's basically one half of the little toy on each side.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
Oh yeah, there like a three dimensional sculptured statuette.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Yeah, So they move toward each other with these hydraulics
and they're pressed together forms a big seal and it
ends up it ends up being hollow on the inside.
That's kind of a big point to make.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
It's a negative of the sculpture.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
So then there's a couple of holes in the bottom
that lead into that sculpture cavity, and into that you
inject hot plastic. Because one thing that a lot of
people don't realize about the mold thematic is just beneath
this the work surface that is the floor of what
(18:27):
you can see below that is a vat of two
hundred and twenty five to two hundred and fifty degree
Farrent height molten plastic just sitting there, bubbling hot.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Yeah, little pellets.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
They feed it in little colored pellets, right, although for
a little while they actually had just kind of neutral
pellets that they use colored powder. Right, But they at
least wised up there and said, why don't we just
color the pellets and just stick with the one color yep.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
And then so the system has a closed steam system
that runs hot steam through crazy that runs through these
plastic pellet vat, this plastic pellet vat and it melts
the pellets and then keeps a molten So then when
that when the the the mold seals up above come
(19:15):
together and form that seal, hot plastic is injected into
the mold and fills it up.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
That's right, hot plastic injection. Great band name.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
And then these things obviously have to be cooled pretty
quick like in order for them to I mean, what
solidify is that the right word? But when they do
come out, like you said, they are warm, and I'm surprised.
I mean, this seems like something that you could not
create today without there being so much liability on your hands.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
Well, again, they still are in use. You can still
go to the Toledo Zoo, to zoos all over the
Midwest and Florida and tourist attractions and rest stops and
you will find these things still in use.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
It's just so funny to me that, like it literally
says on the little door that you open, hold upside
down while it cools, don't let the molten plastic drip
on little Timmy's hand.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
That's exactly right. So we got the injection molding part done,
but there's one step that we missed, and that's the
blow part that makes it injection blow molding. And this
is how these companies manage to actually make money. And
one of the reasons why the molderama chatchkeys are so
fragile is that they're hollow inside. So the mold is
(20:32):
filled with the hot plastic and then compressed air is
blown into it. And the compressed air does two things. One,
it pushes the plastic against the mold so it completely
covers it, and it takes on the shape of the mold, right,
And then it also blows the excess plastic out the
bottom so it's hollow, and then the excess plastic goes
(20:53):
back into the vat when it's reused, reused exactly, so
it might use enough plastic at first to make ten
of these things or five or something. I'm just totally
guessing here, But then it reuses it by blowing it
out the bottom and making it a hollow object rather
than a solid one, right, okay, and then it comes
(21:14):
out hot. They say, wait thirty seconds or half a minute,
I think is how they put it. And the reason
why they say hold it upside down is because there's
still that hole at the bottom that that little hot
plastic can. Like you said, burn Timmy's hands.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
The smell, chuck. You've never smelled anything like it.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Do you remember the smell?
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Yes, I can remember the smell it was. It's it's
at the same time pleasing and totally noxious. Interesting, Like
as a kid, you're like, this smells weird and cool,
But as an adult, I'm sure you'd be like, this
is going to kill my whole family and it's going
to kill my great grandchildren somehow.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Well, back then, no one cared. No, they didn't, you know,
and like we said, tons of upkeep. You know, you've
got steam, you've got hydraulic fluid, you have anti freeze,
sometimes cold water, but I would suspect anti freeze in
most cases. Yeah, And until the nineteen seventies, like I said,
you had powdered coloring. I mean, this whole thing is
(22:13):
I'm surprised they didn't explode at any point.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
Yeah. One of the other things that I really admire
about this is that, again, the machines that are still
in use today, that still work just as well as
ever today, were built exclusively from nineteen sixty two to
nineteen sixty nine when Ara Mark was making them, and
then these things also because they put off these terrible fumes,
they're kept outside, so they've been sitting in the elements
(22:40):
for fifty plus years and they still work. They're pretty
pretty well built machines, for sure.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
I think they've they've got some now that they have
been able to move indoors.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Yeah, from using a different type of plastic. I think.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yeah, it's crazy that these things had to be outside.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Yeah, and they still are. Most of them are a
lot of them have like kind of built in little
canopies over them or something like that. But if you
look at the canopy you can tell they're kind of new.
They've been outside basically for fifty years.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
I'm so going to be on the lookout for these now.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
So there is a website Chuck called Waymarking way m
A r KI NNG dot com. They have a comprehensive
list of every single MOLDERAMA in use today in the
United States, and they they have like actual like longitude
and latitude coordinates. If you want to, I guess geocash
(23:33):
your way to them.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Well, what I want is an app that will text
me when I'm within five hundred feet of one.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
Oh that's a that's a good idea.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
There's a ten dollars app and by ten dollar app,
I mean you would make ten dollars.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
Yeah, although people are crazy for these things still is We'll.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
See they're none in Atlanta, right, not that.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
I saw no, But again, there's a bunch of Toledo.
I found the machine that I almost certainly got my
angel from.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Oh wow.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
They keep it in storage at Tama Shanner, which is
an ice skating rink in I guess a Scottish ice
skating rink. I don't know, in Mome, which is where
they have Children's Wonderland. But I saw a picture of it,
and now it looks like the most recent thing it
makes is polar bears.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
And your DNA is on that machine.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
Still somewhere in the form of a lot of gum.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
All right, Well, let's take another break.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
We'll come back and talk a little bit about some
of these fun figures and the people that are still
trying to keep this traditional alive.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
All right, So.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Here's the thing that I wanted to know, and that
our article didn't get to till three quarter the way through.
I was like, can do they have different things for
each machine. The answer, sadly is no. If it spits
out a dinosaur, it can only spit out a dinosaur
unless you change up that mold.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Yes, but you can change the color and you'll have
a different colored dinosaur.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Well until they started using the single color pellets.
Speaker 4 (25:19):
Right, Well, no, then they just put in a different
color when they refill the thing, and all of a
sudden it went from a purple dinosaur or a green dinosaur.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Right, But could you say purple and hit a purple button? No,
or it's whatever the kid who worked there decided to
put in that morning.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
That's exactly right. The thing is though, and again it's
not even just the toy that comes out. The toy is,
especially as a kid, invariably disappointing, sure, but it's the process.
It's watching this thing happen, and the MOLDERAMA machines will
have like little different lights that light up like now
we're cooling, now we're about to launch the toy to you.
(25:56):
You know, it tells you what's going on, so you're
following the process, which is at least is probably eighty
percent of the appeal of the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Stand back right now, because if I were to explode,
it would be during this next eight seconds.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
Right, all right, your mom who's standing there missing her
one arm from saving you in a car wreck. It's
like you probably should stand back exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
No one knows exactly how many of these molds were made,
but they're, like we said, our enthusiasts who collect these.
And this one dude, Bill Bolman, who owns one and
runs moldville dot com. Bad bad You are all there, right.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
Yeah, it is bad. And I got to say, I
looked it up and it's a dead domain. But he's
got a Facebook thing that he does. Now that's where
he's moved to.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Yeah, that's where he went. My Space and then he
went Facebook. But there will never be another site better
than Facebook. So I'm sure it's all over right, probably
so he his estimate is about three hundred designs us
more than that.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
I don't know. This guy knows what he's talking about.
He counted one hundred and ninety six original ones. And
then he said after the sixties more people started to
make them. They weren't just commissioned by Aerra Mark who
was keeping track of these things. And I would I
would say this guy's probably the person on earth who
could estimate how many there are the closest.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
And not just me guessing randomly. But it's more.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
And what's cool though also is again like if you
were you could be anybody, if you wanted a Moldorama
thing at your event, you could, it could happen. Sure
I found there was a Circleville, Ohio Pumpkin Festival Moldurama figure.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Wonderful.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
So one of the three hundred molds is a pumpkin
from Circleville, Ohio's pumpkin Fest in the seventies. Another one,
so apparently Toledo was crazy about these things, because again
there's ten at the Toledo Zoo. There's the one at
Tamlashan that I got a mine from. There was one
in the eighties at the Toledo mud Headens Stadium, and
(28:07):
there's a mud Hen's figure, which is pretty cool actually.
And I looked and there's like zero for sale anywhere,
but now I'm kind of on the lookout for that thing.
But all you had to do was just make a
bold get your hands on one of these, and bam, Circleville,
Ohio's Pumpkin Fest went from zero to hero.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Right, and you two could have a snowman or a
Gramman's Chinese theater, or a space lab or a Lawrence Welk.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah, or a Titan missile.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
Yeah, and NASA had a lot of these things. Actually,
I'm sure what else was there?
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Well, the Lawrence Welk. None of those were jokes. Those
are real.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
Oh yeah, for sure, there was.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
A Titan three C missile in a Lawrence Welk says.
Other famous people. I'm kind of curious.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
I didn't see anybody besides President and Lawrence Welk. There's
one of the Georgia State Capitol building. Oh really, Yeah,
there were some cool ones. Actually, the Saint Louis arch
is surprisingly cool. You wouldn't think it'd be that cool.
The Oscar Meyer Wiener mobile, this one was kind of random.
(29:17):
It was it's a high Ali player and then at
the base it says, hi, a lie in Miami.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
The water Skier from Cypress I think Cypress Gardens, Florida.
And the Mermaids from Wikiwachie Springs, Florida.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Oh, we talked about them. Oh, here's one. Universal Studios
had one that made a Frankenstein coinbank.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
That's kind of cool.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
It is very cool, Like, a lot of these are
actually super cool, especially the original retro ones. You can
actually see like I can't remember the woman's name, but
there is a woman who was hired by one of
the companies that still operate these things to start making molds,
and she's been making them for the last twenty five
years and compare to some of the ones from the sixties,
(30:01):
like she's just head and shoulders above the people who
are sculpting them. Then, like, these are really really well
made sculptures, not only in like the actual sculpture that
she's making, but the decisions she's making produces just a
better mold. Arama toy. Yeah, because again, you're you're dealing
with melted plastic in a mold that is two halves
(30:23):
pressed together. There's a lot of like details that can
go wrong, and this, this great sculptor is taking all
of them into account making some really boss ones like
the Wienermobile. It's art to behold this, The detail in
it is really really nice.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Should we talk about a couple of these companies that
are still still going strong.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Yeah, for sure, at least going No, they're going strong man, Okay, good.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
There are a couple of them one called Replication Devices,
one called mold A Rama Incorporated Replication Devices, founded by
Elden Irwin, who bought a bunch of these. It has
dozens in the early sixties, eventually passed down through his family,
and right now his grandson and his wife, the Strigowls
(31:14):
in Florida are operating sixty or seventy of these.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Yeah, and let's think about this for a second. So
Elden Irwin bought dozens, now they're up to sixty, maybe seventy,
And those Molderama machines have supported three generations of this
family fully from what I understand, Yes, okay, I saw
an interview with Tim Strigou and he said he was
(31:40):
surprised that the business was still going when his parents
took it over. And now he the grandson and his
wife operate it. And yes, from what I understand it
fully supports it. The San Antonio Zoo estimated that they
make one hundred and thirty thousand figurines a year from
their one Molderama.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Two bucks a pop. That's two high undred and sixty
thousand gross.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
Times sixty or seventy, So yeah, they're doing just fine.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
This other one Molderrama Ink like, we're not asking one
to open their books for us.
Speaker 4 (32:12):
No, for sure, and I certainly don't want to shine
a light on these people's finances. But I'm just saying,
like it's it's astounding to me that these machines built
in the sixties, left out in the elements for fifty years,
are managing to support three generations of the families who
have been operating them. I just think that's super cool.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like it's kind of like
people are own car washes. Sure, isn't it like a
front always to launder money from drug sales?
Speaker 4 (32:38):
I would guess. I think it's low hanging, easy to buy.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
I'm just kidding everyone out there that owns car washes.
I've watched too much Breaking Bad.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Oh that's right, that's right. But I think that is
like a legitimate thing.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Like, yeah, cash businesses are ripe for the picking.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
I forgot they bought that car wash.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Yeah, so Moldorama Inc. Like I said, William A.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Jones Company's changed their name in twenty eleven, but they
got into this in nineteen seventy one when William A.
Jones bought some of these from one of the guys
who worked for the original Moldorama. Then they expanded, bought
more machines and it is still a family business again.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
They got about sixty of them.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
Yep, and they were William A. Jones Company. And then
I guess they got their hands on the Moldorama trademark
in twenty eleven and they changed the name of the
company to Moldorama, Inc. Again because that's originally what it
was called back when Era Mark was running it.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Yeah, they're mainly in the Midwest, Minnesota, Michigan, a bunch
of them in Illinois and one in Texas.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
It looks like right, not bad.
Speaker 4 (33:47):
And then every once in a while you have just
some independent operators like Knoxville Zoo owns their own. They
apparently got there from Dollywood, which man, Moldorama is at Dollywood.
That make your wig spin.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
There's this one cool thing I wanted to shout out.
This toy store in Chicago, Roto Fugi or Rotafuji, I'm
not sure how you pronounce it. They repurposed their own Moldorama.
They bought one and repurposed it that was originally the
La Zoo and they call it the Roto a Mattic.
And they have something called the Helper Dragon you can
(34:23):
get for six bucks. And if you look up the
Helper Dragon and these dudes, it is clear that they
are Simpsons fans.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Did you see this thing?
Speaker 4 (34:32):
Yeah? I did. I saw a video of it, but
it was kind of out of focus.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Yeah, like just google image of the Helper Dragon rodo
omatic and it is to me at least clearly the
cyclops alien from The Simpsons.
Speaker 4 (34:47):
With its oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
With its head stuck on the body of a winged lion.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
That's my take on it.
Speaker 4 (34:55):
Very nice.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
And then there is this one other guy. He is
a Disney World imagineer named James Durand, and he has
built his own moldorama called the Mini Molder. And you
just look at this guy. You know, he's an imagineer.
You look at this machine and you're like, I would
hire that guy to build and do anything, because he's
(35:17):
clearly a brilliant genius.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Yep, really cool looking thing.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
And a bit of a show off. Frankly, you think, So,
I've got two more things, all right. The Moldorama used
to be fifty cents in its original incarnation in nineteen
sixty two, which, again thanks to our friends at West
Egg inflation calculator tells us is about four dollars and
(35:42):
twelve cents in twenty seventeen money. Today you can get
a Moldorama for two bucks, which means that the price
has gone down by half over the last fifty years.
Oh interesting, pretty cool. And then lastly, so after Tyke
Miller got out of the plastics injection molding business, he
had another invention that he called the Golden Goat, and
(36:05):
it was this big machine that apparently he invented to
put out in parking lots at like grocery stores, and
it would take up about two parking spaces, and customers
would come in and put in their used aluminum cans
and then the Golden Goat would weigh it and then
give them some money in return, and then it would
(36:25):
compact those cans, and then later on is that aluminum
would be sold as scrap for recycling. The thing is
that this was years before the green movement was ever
even thought of. That's how ahead of his time this
guy was. And I don't think the Golden Goat ever
made him a lot of money, but it's a pretty
cool invention that this guy had. He was like one
(36:47):
of those great Midwestern tinker inventor guys. Yeah, hats off
to him.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
God blessed all those people.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
Yep. So there you go, Nativity figures plastic. If you
want to know more about Mulderama Man, you can fall
down a rabbit hole just looking at pictures of him
on the internet. So why don't you go do that?
Take some time for yourself, you know, why do you
always have to work? Work?
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Work?
Speaker 4 (37:11):
Since I said that it's time for a listener mail, I'm.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Going to call this just kind of a quick shout out.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
We don't do these a lot because we get a
lot of shout out requests, but this one was adorable
because this little kid. So this is from Ginny, she's
the mom. She says, how about a shout out or
my son Jake. He listens to every episode more than once.
Nic He's got me and many others into the show
and we love it. So young Jake is out there
spreading the word and we appreciate that, Jake, and you
(37:40):
love the show so much you named well, not quite yet,
but Jake says he wants to get a puppy and
call it Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and he says this
most of the time he will be called Chuck, but
when he does something wrong, I'll be like, Charles W.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Chuck Bryant, why did you do that?
Speaker 4 (37:58):
Yep? Well, Jake, we have a really big surprise for
you if you will go to your back door. I
think you're gonna find something pretty special out there. No,
I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
No, We're just kidding, Jake.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
There's not a puppy at your back door unless your
mom Jenny heard this beforehand and is the best.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Mom in the world. Yeah, and your mom.
Speaker 4 (38:17):
Yeah, that was pretty cool of her to write in
and let us know. So way to go, Jake for
listening to us. Thank you, Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Yeah, thank you, Jake, Thank you Jenny. We count literally
count on people like you to spread the words, so
we appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
Good luck with your eventual puppy too named Charles W.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Chuck Bryant when he's bad.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
If you want to tell us about well, your cute kid,
we want to hear about him or her, you can
send us an email. The Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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