April 15, 2024 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, since the company’s inception in 2005, Liquid Ass has been a popular product amongst pranksters across the world. The two-pack on Amazon currently has an unprecedented 36,000-plus reviews with a 4 1/2-star rating! [BTW: Read the ratings if you want a good laugh.] So who goes about creating such a spray? Well, a teenager, obviously. Here to tell the story are the co-founders of Liquid Assets, Andrew Masters and Allen Wittman (wearing the hat in photo).
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American stories, and our next story, Well,
it's a little gross, it's a little silly, and involves
two young men coming up with a smelly, smelly product
that ultimately has been put to use by the US
military to actually prepare medics and other types of people
involved in operations that would include horrible smells. How did
(00:33):
these two guys come up with their smelly product called liquid? Well,
I'm just going to say assets. Well, here's Andrew Masters
and Alan Whitman with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Allan and I met in an engineering department in Fort Wayne, Indiana,
where we were doing electrical for automotive and trucks. And
we're dealing with managers who are not interested in building
a good product, but dealing with corporate politics and trying
to advance your own careers.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
You're never making any decisions that might cost him a
career choice.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
So, you know, and women and I are we both
have spines and we're more interested in, you know, building
a good product and using logic and not really interested
in a bunch of both. And for that reason we
kind of gravitated toward each other and became pretty good friends.
And Women kept talking about the stuff he had back
(01:31):
in high school and had used a great effect that
stunk really bad, and that he still had a little
bit left and he should bring it in. And I
guess at this point Alan should probably back up to,
you know, fifteen years previous as to the story of
the beginning of what became liquid.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
In his experience.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
All right, well, this is Alan, and I actually came
up with this in high school completely by accident.
Speaker 5 (01:58):
Everybody asked me, well, you know, how did how did
you create it? Well?
Speaker 4 (02:01):
I can't get into the details, but uh, I can
say that my parents had bought me a chemistry set
and I was into sort of mixing things together and
checking stuff out, and just happened to me one day
that I came came across the stuff that was it
just it just was so nasty. I thought, Man, what
if I what if I took this into school and
played around with it a little bit? And uh so
(02:22):
I did that, and uh it was shocking, you know,
with with the reaction of people when you when you
sprayed in a classroom, when everybody's you know, going crazy,
and everybody's staying at the the restroom actually smells better
than the classroom. Those kind of things so I had
a lot of fun with it there, and then all
of my uh graduated, went to college, became an electrical engineer,
(02:46):
and uh had I didn't use it all those years
and uh and it wasn't until I got hired into
my electrical engineering job where Andrew was or actually I
was there first, he came later.
Speaker 5 (02:58):
But when he.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
Showed up the company was most of the people in
there were very disgruntled at the time because we were
told basically that we were.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Going to be laid off.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
Uh probably we figured it would be about five years
that we had left, and uh so everybody was pretty upset.
So I was telling uh Andrew and a few other
friends that I had this stuff I used in high school,
that I even uh cleared out a basketball game one
time in high school, and they're just sort of looking
at me, like, yeah, sure he did whatever you need
(03:29):
to go to the okay on the on the basketball game.
So what I ended up doing was me and a
buddy of mine and we we grabbed a uh.
Speaker 5 (03:39):
I guess it was an Elmer an old Elmer's glue bottle.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
So you know how big those are, right, That's a
pretty nice sized bottle. We filled one of those up
and right before the game started, we went into the
bathroom in that hallway, the men's bathroom, and they had
those old, uh I guess, the radiator style heaters, and
I went in there and I dumped that entire bottle
into that radiator and you could hear it sizzling and steaming,
(04:03):
and I took off. So I went back up in
the stands over there in the gym, and we could
see through the doors into the hallway, and it was
about half an hour later. I looked down and I
see somebody walking by their with their shirts over their
you know, people with shirts over their faces, and they're
waving their hands. And I looked at my buddy, I said,
oh man, I said, it must be hitting good. So
(04:24):
we went back down there halftime, and they had both
double doors open on both ends of the hallways. It
was snowing outside and that plays completely smell like, and
we were just we were just having a great old time.
People trying to figure out what was going on. So
I'm telling them about this story, my co workers, including Andrew,
(04:45):
and I think people had doubts. So I was like,
all right, well, I actually had some stuff that was
at least fifteen years old. That was in a baby
food jar that the lid had actually rusted on. So
I carefully got that off without breaking the jar, and
sure enough the stuff still smell like.
Speaker 5 (05:01):
So I'm like, all right, you know, game on.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
So I grabbed a vizing bottle, reamed the tip of
it out and filled that baby up and I took
it in and we actually had a let me, well,
let me go back.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
We need to back up, because.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Well, I mean he had he had shared the smell
with us, and then what it really was shocking just
smelling the bottle. Next thing, I were walking by h
where his manager sits. It's a cubicle area, and I'm
walking ahead of him. Next thing I know, I hear whitman,
go cover me, and I'm like, I'm confused. I turn
around and he's got that He's got that vizin and
(05:39):
is both hands like he's almost like he's peen. That's
the that's the vision I had as far as remembering
turning around and seeing women putting full pressure on that
vizine bottle aim at right towards Stenson's office. And you know,
this is my first experience of li what's outside the bottle,
you know.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
So and by the way, they had set up a
large fan and an industrial fan. They were blowing that
crap around a ten thousand square foot design center in
that whole place smell like everybody had their shirts over
their faces, and it was it was shocking.
Speaker 5 (06:14):
I remember it worked well, but it worked.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Really well out so he just had a little bit
left in that baby food jar. And I remember, because
we were running out, you added a little alcohol to it.
I mean, really, I don't even know if we did
what two operations it was.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
There was probably a few.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
But the problem was is that once we did it,
we had to have more because it was so addicting
that we couldn't stop doing it. And then the problem
was is that I couldn't remember exactly how to make more.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
We're like, how can you not remember?
Speaker 2 (06:49):
And he goes, well, I know the basics, but there's
some there's some other you know, like subtle the process.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
There's a process to making it. And if you don't
have that exactly right, it ain't gonna happen, that's all.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
So we were so we're all jones and for more
operations and uh, you know, trying to get daily updates
and finally one day Whenland comes in, he goes out,
I think it's ready. I think we got it and
we tested it and sure enough. So that's set off
a oh man, how long did we do?
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Two months?
Speaker 5 (07:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Yeah, of basically.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Strategizing of how to create maximum chaos without drawing too
much attention where we would actually get caught and so good.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
So what would happen is that if I went into
the bathroom and uh, somebody had plugged up a toilet,
I'd call individual to Andrew, which basically he had some
out in his car, and then he go out in
his car and I'd tell him we got a visual
and uh, you know stall number three, building one, and
uh he'd go get the stuff and then he go
(07:53):
ahead and it's the hell out of it. And uh
so so we could it was hard to get in
trouble because you know, there it is right, there's the
you know, the block toilet and there you know, of
course the janitor would come in or whatever. He'd be
just you know, losing his mind, going I don't even
understand how this is possibly being there with the plunger
(08:14):
trying to get this down. Well, this overwhelming smell which
is really not from the actual problem, you know, it's
actually our stuff. And that started being a fun thing. So,
you know, we we'd have times where I'd call in
a visual and he'd he'd Andrew hammer it, and uh,
we'd come back and they'd have crime scene tape, you
know over the door, like this bathroom is closed.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
I was walking through the area and of course it's
you know, i'd it was a day I'd hit it
hard and a guy was walking in front of me
from another department and it was obviously he was very disturbed.
And our buddy Joe was walking out of his cubicle
area and he intersected the guy. You know, they and
the guy stopped and looked at Joe and he goes,
(08:55):
what is this?
Speaker 3 (08:56):
What is that smell?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
And Joe goes, I don't know, but it seems to
happen every Thursday.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
He was dead, alright.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I went over to wif book, went over, hey, hey, hey,
next next operations on Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
And you're listening to Andrew Masters and Alan Whitman. When
we come back, more of these pranksters, these chemistry set experimenters,
these funny guys here on our American stories and we
(09:39):
continue with our American stories and the story of a
product called liquid well I'm calling it liquid assets. You
use your imagination. And it all started again with a
couple of teenage boys, well just looking to make each
other laugh. In the end, we're talking about Andrew Masters
and Alan Whitman. Let's return to them for the rest
(10:00):
of their smelly and kind of funny story.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
That was three or four months full of fun there,
you know, turning.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
A job we really disliked into fun time. These were actually.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Days that we did not have to set our alarm
for it, because we we'd have a specific day that
we would go do it and uh and it and
you almost couldn't sleep at night. You basically just got
up early and just went into work and then started
having fun. And at the end of the day your
ribs would hurt you laughed so hard at the chaos.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, well laughter is addictive, you know, it's you know,
so the fact that I know I'm gonna go into
work and just be laughing all day and I'm definitely
didn't need alarm on those days. I told what you know,
and I always liked doing pranks in college. I had
a fair amount of good ones that I did, and
uh and oddly enough one of them was fart spray,
(10:50):
which didn't work to.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
My satisfaction, so I threw it away.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
But after you know, several months of all this fun,
I was like, this is like the best stuff ever
you So it's like, look at this. You know, it
works good, it stinks really bad. You get a lot
of laughs, and then you'd lay off for a couple
of days and people forget about it and you'd press replay.
So I told the woman, I said, look, I said,
this is the best stuff I have ever used.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
I said, we can sell this. Yeah, and women's like, yeah,
really good, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
And now one of the problems was we were both
looking at getting out of engineering. I was working on
a master's degree in math to get into teaching college
math and Whitman was looking at starting a car wash
his own business.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
So, you know, so there was there was.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
When you know that action, when you know the end
is near, you know, you start coming up with ideas,
you try to you try to figure something out. Because
there was nothing else in the town that we were in,
so we were all going to have to move one
way or another. Something was gonna change. So so When
Andrew came up and decided that we needed to do this,
I said, all right, let's just do it. We'll go
fifty to fifty and we'll just see where it goes.
(11:57):
In parallel with other things that I was doing and
then he was doing. We just decided we'll just sort
of we'll sort of see how that plays out. And
you know, and it did take quite a long time,
a lot longer than we thought.
Speaker 5 (12:09):
I guess, because there's a lot more to it.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
When you get in it seems like, well, I'm just
putting liquid in a bottle, But then you got to
figure out what kind of bottle, what shape a bottle,
what what material is the bottle made out of?
Speaker 5 (12:21):
What kind of.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
Mystery you're going to use? You know, how many middle
leaders is it going to put out?
Speaker 5 (12:25):
You know?
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Where do we get a label? Yeah, we put the
label on. What's the artwork look like?
Speaker 5 (12:30):
And what's the name?
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (12:32):
So well the name is the funny part.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
The name was probably one of the easiest things we did.
You know, it was a big mystery as far as well,
how do you pick a good name? You know, we're
not you know, I've I've learned and doing my own,
you know, and starting our own business here. I've learned
one thing is that if you're a marketer, you you
change smoke and you have a ponytail.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Yeah, so we don't do either. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
So I can remember walking into the conference room, shutting
the door, and woman was halfway sitting down, and he goes, so,
what are we going to call it? And I said,
I don't know, what are you thinking? And as he's
sitting down, he goes, he was like liquid, And I said,
that's it.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
It's kind of ring to it. Let's just go with it.
So we went out.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
We decided that we'd we'd find all the radio stations
in the country that that had crazy morning shows. We
decided to send them samples with a little note.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
And there was about four or five of those stations
where he did really well. Over we would get we
got a surge in sales, but then it would it would,
you know, die off again to practically zero. Until one
day I was reading an article about a guy named
well he goes by. His radio's name is Bubba the
Love Sponge, and it was in the local Fort Wayne paper.
(13:48):
Because this guy was his hometown was two counties over,
so I was, so I was reading the article about
him and I looked up as Meilian address, and I remember,
I remember packing that box. I can still remember the
day because I put six bottles in there and send
it to him and never heard anything from him until
all of a sudden Wopmen's like, hey, our web page
is down because we've got something's going on. We've got
(14:10):
so much traffic to shut our web page down. And
it comes to find out that bubb Love Sponge and
I can't remember his real name, but he was actually
using it on a show as a punishment for someone
who did something stupid.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Usually their cell phone will go off while they're on
the air.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
What they would do is if somebody, if somebody screwed
up on the air, cell phone went off or did
something else stupid they weren't supposed to do, they went
on Liquid It's Alert, and once they were on Liquid Salert,
if they screwed up one more time, then they would
take him in the room and you know, in the
studio there and they would the hell out of them.
And of course this was on Serious Satellite and it
(14:46):
comes on right before Howard Stern. It was on Howard
one on one channel so it went nationwide and these
guys did it's a real favor by basically you know,
using this.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Probably for three or four months, three or four months, three.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
Or four months advertising. And I have to thank oh
Bubba he got us on the map because that.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Put us over the top where we actually were making
enough that well, we don't need a day job anymore.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
It'd be raw, you know, it'd be tight, but we
would make it.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
We spent two years and then we couldn't really get
out of just doing an interview and having twenty orders
and then it go back to zero within a week.
We we just couldn't get the thing stick for whatever reason.
But once Bubba started talking about it on a daily
basis and I started, that started a floor where we
actually had something and it it didn't go away, and
it started growing slowly.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yeah, you know, and then I think the next year
was when Amazon picked us up, and then we did
definitely need the day job. That worked out great, because
that's about you know a few months after that when
we got laid off. I remember telling with him and
I said, I just can't stop smiling. I just I'm like,
I just can't stop smiling. You know, when when Amazon
picked us up and we got another boost to the
point where I was almost making the same as my
engineering salary doing a quarter of the work.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
By the way, yeah, I guess we can start talking
about our customers.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
Now.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
There's some customer stories. Yeah we can.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
Uh, yeah, there's there's quite a few customer stores and
we've we've had people that uh that actually used it
in their bubble juice, like for a for a wedding,
you know, when he blow bubbles.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
You know, they mixed the bubble.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Juice with the liquids and they're they're blowing bubbles as
the bride and groom come down the aisle, you know,
with this juice, which I thought that was sort of clever.
People are putting in, putting it in balloons and blowing
the balloons up so when they pop it smells like.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
This.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
This is one that was in particular sort of strange.
And this was sort of early on, so uh, we
were we were probably only selling it for maybe a
couple of years at that point. This guy calls me
up and he wants to order and okay, that's cool,
but it's obvious that he used it before. And at
that point we hadn't you know, we didn't have tons
of customers, So I said, so, I just asked him,
(16:54):
So it sounds like you've used the product before. He says, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,
because I use it because I goes I need I
need more, but I need it real, real soon here
or whatever, you know. And it's like, well, I said, so,
apparently he had some success with us.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
What did you do?
Speaker 4 (17:08):
And he was sort of hesitant to tell me, And
he's like, all right, I'll tell you, and he starts
the story off. He had bought our product and he
had it laying around and he was in the process
of moving to a new a new city. He had
to get his utility set up. He calls up and
it had been like two or three weeks. His wife
is complaining that they don't have the power on yet. Well,
(17:29):
he's a contractor and he has one of the special keys.
He's got a way to get into the box to
turn the power on. So he turns the power on himself. Well,
he autimally gets a that the next day, the power
company actually shows up to see that it's turned off
or turned on, and he ends up getting it buying
from the power company because he had he had screwed
around with the box and that's illegal and he's not
(17:51):
allowed to do that. So he's like, all right, well,
I'm going to pay this bill, and I'm pissed off
because you know, they should have done this for me anyways, sooner.
So he takes he writes a check and he coats
it with liquids and he sort of lets it dry.
Speaker 5 (18:04):
So he goes over to what sort of looks like
a bank teller set up with that vacuum tube and
they leave. So they take off.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
Well, the following day, the police, the police call him
up and the cop when he goes into the office,
the cops got like an evidence baggie and it's got
his check in it, and they're claiming that this that
this bank or went out the bank with this, the
co op or whatever has now shut the entire system down,
shut the entire building down. They've got tape all the
(18:35):
way around the building or whatever. It looks like a
crime scene and they can't open it up because the
whole freaking building smells like And the teller apparently is
claiming that she's quitting because she claims that she's handled feces.
You can't make this up. So cops like, well, he goes,
(18:55):
here's the deal. He goes, we're going to send this
in for analysis, and it's got feces. You're going to jail,
you're in trouble or whatever. He's like, well, you go
in and test it all you want, because I didn't
do that all. Only what happened was is that they
came back clean. They couldn't do anything about it. And
at the end of the day, he said, what what
could I have done? They would have you know, got
them back. And I said, now I looked at it.
(19:16):
I guess and I said, well, now now you're ordering more,
and he's like, yeah, because I got some other business
take care of. I said, all right, we'll send you
a couple of extra bottles. Have a good day, you know,
and we recommend you know, it's a prank product that
it's not to uh to go out there and destroy people.
But every once in a while, I guess that happens,
you know. We we like to say that we make
(19:37):
the gun, we don't shoot it, so you know, at
your at your own risk, I guess. But most of
the time people are just having fun with it. And god,
there's tons of YouTube videos out there, and we started
making a few YouTube videos until the YouTubers outdid us,
and so now our customers are doing, you know, better
videos than we could even dream of. So uh, if
(19:58):
you ever go out there, you go out there and
look at YouTube and type liquid so you'll see really
good stuff out there.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Andrew Masters story, Alan Whitman's story, Liquid Assets story here
on our American Stories
This is our American stories, and our next story, Well,
it's a little gross, it's a little silly, and involves
two young men coming up with a smelly, smelly product
that ultimately has been put to use by the US
military to actually prepare medics and other types of people
involved in operations that would include horrible smells. How did
(00:33):
these two guys come up with their smelly product called liquid? Well,
I'm just going to say assets. Well, here's Andrew Masters
and Alan Whitman with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Allan and I met in an engineering department in Fort Wayne, Indiana,
where we were doing electrical for automotive and trucks. And
we're dealing with managers who are not interested in building
a good product, but dealing with corporate politics and trying
to advance your own careers.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
You're never making any decisions that might cost him a
career choice.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
So, you know, and women and I are we both
have spines and we're more interested in, you know, building
a good product and using logic and not really interested
in a bunch of both. And for that reason we
kind of gravitated toward each other and became pretty good friends.
And Women kept talking about the stuff he had back
(01:31):
in high school and had used a great effect that
stunk really bad, and that he still had a little
bit left and he should bring it in. And I
guess at this point Alan should probably back up to,
you know, fifteen years previous as to the story of
the beginning of what became liquid.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
In his experience.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
All right, well, this is Alan, and I actually came
up with this in high school completely by accident.
Speaker 5 (01:58):
Everybody asked me, well, you know, how did how did
you create it? Well?
Speaker 4 (02:01):
I can't get into the details, but uh, I can
say that my parents had bought me a chemistry set
and I was into sort of mixing things together and
checking stuff out, and just happened to me one day
that I came came across the stuff that was it
just it just was so nasty. I thought, Man, what
if I what if I took this into school and
played around with it a little bit? And uh so
(02:22):
I did that, and uh it was shocking, you know,
with with the reaction of people when you when you
sprayed in a classroom, when everybody's you know, going crazy,
and everybody's staying at the the restroom actually smells better
than the classroom. Those kind of things so I had
a lot of fun with it there, and then all
of my uh graduated, went to college, became an electrical engineer,
(02:46):
and uh had I didn't use it all those years
and uh and it wasn't until I got hired into
my electrical engineering job where Andrew was or actually I
was there first, he came later.
Speaker 5 (02:58):
But when he.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
Showed up the company was most of the people in
there were very disgruntled at the time because we were
told basically that we were.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Going to be laid off.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
Uh probably we figured it would be about five years
that we had left, and uh so everybody was pretty upset.
So I was telling uh Andrew and a few other
friends that I had this stuff I used in high school,
that I even uh cleared out a basketball game one
time in high school, and they're just sort of looking
at me, like, yeah, sure he did whatever you need
(03:29):
to go to the okay on the on the basketball game.
So what I ended up doing was me and a
buddy of mine and we we grabbed a uh.
Speaker 5 (03:39):
I guess it was an Elmer an old Elmer's glue bottle.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
So you know how big those are, right, That's a
pretty nice sized bottle. We filled one of those up
and right before the game started, we went into the
bathroom in that hallway, the men's bathroom, and they had
those old, uh I guess, the radiator style heaters, and
I went in there and I dumped that entire bottle
into that radiator and you could hear it sizzling and steaming,
(04:03):
and I took off. So I went back up in
the stands over there in the gym, and we could
see through the doors into the hallway, and it was
about half an hour later. I looked down and I
see somebody walking by their with their shirts over their
you know, people with shirts over their faces, and they're
waving their hands. And I looked at my buddy, I said,
oh man, I said, it must be hitting good. So
(04:24):
we went back down there halftime, and they had both
double doors open on both ends of the hallways. It
was snowing outside and that plays completely smell like, and
we were just we were just having a great old time.
People trying to figure out what was going on. So
I'm telling them about this story, my co workers, including Andrew,
(04:45):
and I think people had doubts. So I was like,
all right, well, I actually had some stuff that was
at least fifteen years old. That was in a baby
food jar that the lid had actually rusted on. So
I carefully got that off without breaking the jar, and
sure enough the stuff still smell like.
Speaker 5 (05:01):
So I'm like, all right, you know, game on.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
So I grabbed a vizing bottle, reamed the tip of
it out and filled that baby up and I took
it in and we actually had a let me, well,
let me go back.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
We need to back up, because.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Well, I mean he had he had shared the smell
with us, and then what it really was shocking just
smelling the bottle. Next thing, I were walking by h
where his manager sits. It's a cubicle area, and I'm
walking ahead of him. Next thing I know, I hear whitman,
go cover me, and I'm like, I'm confused. I turn
around and he's got that He's got that vizin and
(05:39):
is both hands like he's almost like he's peen. That's
the that's the vision I had as far as remembering
turning around and seeing women putting full pressure on that
vizine bottle aim at right towards Stenson's office. And you know,
this is my first experience of li what's outside the bottle,
you know.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
So and by the way, they had set up a
large fan and an industrial fan. They were blowing that
crap around a ten thousand square foot design center in
that whole place smell like everybody had their shirts over
their faces, and it was it was shocking.
Speaker 5 (06:14):
I remember it worked well, but it worked.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Really well out so he just had a little bit
left in that baby food jar. And I remember, because
we were running out, you added a little alcohol to it.
I mean, really, I don't even know if we did
what two operations it was.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
There was probably a few.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
But the problem was is that once we did it,
we had to have more because it was so addicting
that we couldn't stop doing it. And then the problem
was is that I couldn't remember exactly how to make more.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
We're like, how can you not remember?
Speaker 2 (06:49):
And he goes, well, I know the basics, but there's
some there's some other you know, like subtle the process.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
There's a process to making it. And if you don't
have that exactly right, it ain't gonna happen, that's all.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
So we were so we're all jones and for more
operations and uh, you know, trying to get daily updates
and finally one day Whenland comes in, he goes out,
I think it's ready. I think we got it and
we tested it and sure enough. So that's set off
a oh man, how long did we do?
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Two months?
Speaker 5 (07:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Yeah, of basically.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Strategizing of how to create maximum chaos without drawing too
much attention where we would actually get caught and so good.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
So what would happen is that if I went into
the bathroom and uh, somebody had plugged up a toilet,
I'd call individual to Andrew, which basically he had some
out in his car, and then he go out in
his car and I'd tell him we got a visual
and uh, you know stall number three, building one, and
uh he'd go get the stuff and then he go
(07:53):
ahead and it's the hell out of it. And uh
so so we could it was hard to get in
trouble because you know, there it is right, there's the
you know, the block toilet and there you know, of
course the janitor would come in or whatever. He'd be
just you know, losing his mind, going I don't even
understand how this is possibly being there with the plunger
(08:14):
trying to get this down. Well, this overwhelming smell which
is really not from the actual problem, you know, it's
actually our stuff. And that started being a fun thing. So,
you know, we we'd have times where I'd call in
a visual and he'd he'd Andrew hammer it, and uh,
we'd come back and they'd have crime scene tape, you
know over the door, like this bathroom is closed.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
I was walking through the area and of course it's
you know, i'd it was a day I'd hit it
hard and a guy was walking in front of me
from another department and it was obviously he was very disturbed.
And our buddy Joe was walking out of his cubicle
area and he intersected the guy. You know, they and
the guy stopped and looked at Joe and he goes,
(08:55):
what is this?
Speaker 3 (08:56):
What is that smell?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
And Joe goes, I don't know, but it seems to
happen every Thursday.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
He was dead, alright.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I went over to wif book, went over, hey, hey, hey,
next next operations on Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
And you're listening to Andrew Masters and Alan Whitman. When
we come back, more of these pranksters, these chemistry set experimenters,
these funny guys here on our American stories and we
(09:39):
continue with our American stories and the story of a
product called liquid well I'm calling it liquid assets. You
use your imagination. And it all started again with a
couple of teenage boys, well just looking to make each
other laugh. In the end, we're talking about Andrew Masters
and Alan Whitman. Let's return to them for the rest
(10:00):
of their smelly and kind of funny story.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
That was three or four months full of fun there,
you know, turning.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
A job we really disliked into fun time. These were actually.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Days that we did not have to set our alarm
for it, because we we'd have a specific day that
we would go do it and uh and it and
you almost couldn't sleep at night. You basically just got
up early and just went into work and then started
having fun. And at the end of the day your
ribs would hurt you laughed so hard at the chaos.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, well laughter is addictive, you know, it's you know,
so the fact that I know I'm gonna go into
work and just be laughing all day and I'm definitely
didn't need alarm on those days. I told what you know,
and I always liked doing pranks in college. I had
a fair amount of good ones that I did, and
uh and oddly enough one of them was fart spray,
(10:50):
which didn't work to.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
My satisfaction, so I threw it away.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
But after you know, several months of all this fun,
I was like, this is like the best stuff ever
you So it's like, look at this. You know, it
works good, it stinks really bad. You get a lot
of laughs, and then you'd lay off for a couple
of days and people forget about it and you'd press replay.
So I told the woman, I said, look, I said,
this is the best stuff I have ever used.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
I said, we can sell this. Yeah, and women's like, yeah,
really good, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
And now one of the problems was we were both
looking at getting out of engineering. I was working on
a master's degree in math to get into teaching college
math and Whitman was looking at starting a car wash
his own business.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
So, you know, so there was there was.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
When you know that action, when you know the end
is near, you know, you start coming up with ideas,
you try to you try to figure something out. Because
there was nothing else in the town that we were in,
so we were all going to have to move one
way or another. Something was gonna change. So so When
Andrew came up and decided that we needed to do this,
I said, all right, let's just do it. We'll go
fifty to fifty and we'll just see where it goes.
(11:57):
In parallel with other things that I was doing and
then he was doing. We just decided we'll just sort
of we'll sort of see how that plays out. And
you know, and it did take quite a long time,
a lot longer than we thought.
Speaker 5 (12:09):
I guess, because there's a lot more to it.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
When you get in it seems like, well, I'm just
putting liquid in a bottle, But then you got to
figure out what kind of bottle, what shape a bottle,
what what material is the bottle made out of?
Speaker 5 (12:21):
What kind of.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
Mystery you're going to use? You know, how many middle
leaders is it going to put out?
Speaker 5 (12:25):
You know?
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Where do we get a label? Yeah, we put the
label on. What's the artwork look like?
Speaker 5 (12:30):
And what's the name?
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (12:32):
So well the name is the funny part.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
The name was probably one of the easiest things we did.
You know, it was a big mystery as far as well,
how do you pick a good name? You know, we're
not you know, I've I've learned and doing my own,
you know, and starting our own business here. I've learned
one thing is that if you're a marketer, you you
change smoke and you have a ponytail.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Yeah, so we don't do either. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
So I can remember walking into the conference room, shutting
the door, and woman was halfway sitting down, and he goes, so,
what are we going to call it? And I said,
I don't know, what are you thinking? And as he's
sitting down, he goes, he was like liquid, And I said,
that's it.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
It's kind of ring to it. Let's just go with it.
So we went out.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
We decided that we'd we'd find all the radio stations
in the country that that had crazy morning shows. We
decided to send them samples with a little note.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
And there was about four or five of those stations
where he did really well. Over we would get we
got a surge in sales, but then it would it would,
you know, die off again to practically zero. Until one
day I was reading an article about a guy named
well he goes by. His radio's name is Bubba the
Love Sponge, and it was in the local Fort Wayne paper.
(13:48):
Because this guy was his hometown was two counties over,
so I was, so I was reading the article about
him and I looked up as Meilian address, and I remember,
I remember packing that box. I can still remember the
day because I put six bottles in there and send
it to him and never heard anything from him until
all of a sudden Wopmen's like, hey, our web page
is down because we've got something's going on. We've got
(14:10):
so much traffic to shut our web page down. And
it comes to find out that bubb Love Sponge and
I can't remember his real name, but he was actually
using it on a show as a punishment for someone
who did something stupid.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Usually their cell phone will go off while they're on
the air.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
What they would do is if somebody, if somebody screwed
up on the air, cell phone went off or did
something else stupid they weren't supposed to do, they went
on Liquid It's Alert, and once they were on Liquid Salert,
if they screwed up one more time, then they would
take him in the room and you know, in the
studio there and they would the hell out of them.
And of course this was on Serious Satellite and it
(14:46):
comes on right before Howard Stern. It was on Howard
one on one channel so it went nationwide and these
guys did it's a real favor by basically you know,
using this.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Probably for three or four months, three or four months, three.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
Or four months advertising. And I have to thank oh
Bubba he got us on the map because that.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Put us over the top where we actually were making
enough that well, we don't need a day job anymore.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
It'd be raw, you know, it'd be tight, but we
would make it.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
We spent two years and then we couldn't really get
out of just doing an interview and having twenty orders
and then it go back to zero within a week.
We we just couldn't get the thing stick for whatever reason.
But once Bubba started talking about it on a daily
basis and I started, that started a floor where we
actually had something and it it didn't go away, and
it started growing slowly.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yeah, you know, and then I think the next year
was when Amazon picked us up, and then we did
definitely need the day job. That worked out great, because
that's about you know a few months after that when
we got laid off. I remember telling with him and
I said, I just can't stop smiling. I just I'm like,
I just can't stop smiling. You know, when when Amazon
picked us up and we got another boost to the
point where I was almost making the same as my
engineering salary doing a quarter of the work.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
By the way, yeah, I guess we can start talking
about our customers.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
Now.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
There's some customer stories. Yeah we can.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
Uh, yeah, there's there's quite a few customer stores and
we've we've had people that uh that actually used it
in their bubble juice, like for a for a wedding,
you know, when he blow bubbles.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
You know, they mixed the bubble.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Juice with the liquids and they're they're blowing bubbles as
the bride and groom come down the aisle, you know,
with this juice, which I thought that was sort of clever.
People are putting in, putting it in balloons and blowing
the balloons up so when they pop it smells like.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
This.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
This is one that was in particular sort of strange.
And this was sort of early on, so uh, we
were we were probably only selling it for maybe a
couple of years at that point. This guy calls me
up and he wants to order and okay, that's cool,
but it's obvious that he used it before. And at
that point we hadn't you know, we didn't have tons
of customers, So I said, so, I just asked him,
(16:54):
So it sounds like you've used the product before. He says, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,
because I use it because I goes I need I
need more, but I need it real, real soon here
or whatever, you know. And it's like, well, I said, so,
apparently he had some success with us.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
What did you do?
Speaker 4 (17:08):
And he was sort of hesitant to tell me, And
he's like, all right, I'll tell you, and he starts
the story off. He had bought our product and he
had it laying around and he was in the process
of moving to a new a new city. He had
to get his utility set up. He calls up and
it had been like two or three weeks. His wife
is complaining that they don't have the power on yet. Well,
(17:29):
he's a contractor and he has one of the special keys.
He's got a way to get into the box to
turn the power on. So he turns the power on himself. Well,
he autimally gets a that the next day, the power
company actually shows up to see that it's turned off
or turned on, and he ends up getting it buying
from the power company because he had he had screwed
around with the box and that's illegal and he's not
(17:51):
allowed to do that. So he's like, all right, well,
I'm going to pay this bill, and I'm pissed off
because you know, they should have done this for me anyways, sooner.
So he takes he writes a check and he coats
it with liquids and he sort of lets it dry.
Speaker 5 (18:04):
So he goes over to what sort of looks like
a bank teller set up with that vacuum tube and
they leave. So they take off.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
Well, the following day, the police, the police call him
up and the cop when he goes into the office,
the cops got like an evidence baggie and it's got
his check in it, and they're claiming that this that
this bank or went out the bank with this, the
co op or whatever has now shut the entire system down,
shut the entire building down. They've got tape all the
(18:35):
way around the building or whatever. It looks like a
crime scene and they can't open it up because the
whole freaking building smells like And the teller apparently is
claiming that she's quitting because she claims that she's handled feces.
You can't make this up. So cops like, well, he goes,
(18:55):
here's the deal. He goes, we're going to send this
in for analysis, and it's got feces. You're going to jail,
you're in trouble or whatever. He's like, well, you go
in and test it all you want, because I didn't
do that all. Only what happened was is that they
came back clean. They couldn't do anything about it. And
at the end of the day, he said, what what
could I have done? They would have you know, got
them back. And I said, now I looked at it.
(19:16):
I guess and I said, well, now now you're ordering more,
and he's like, yeah, because I got some other business
take care of. I said, all right, we'll send you
a couple of extra bottles. Have a good day, you know,
and we recommend you know, it's a prank product that
it's not to uh to go out there and destroy people.
But every once in a while, I guess that happens,
you know. We we like to say that we make
(19:37):
the gun, we don't shoot it, so you know, at
your at your own risk, I guess. But most of
the time people are just having fun with it. And god,
there's tons of YouTube videos out there, and we started
making a few YouTube videos until the YouTubers outdid us,
and so now our customers are doing, you know, better
videos than we could even dream of. So uh, if
(19:58):
you ever go out there, you go out there and
look at YouTube and type liquid so you'll see really
good stuff out there.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Andrew Masters story, Alan Whitman's story, Liquid Assets story here
on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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