Nick Martel
Appearances
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Yeti's Happy New Year. Jack and I, we are still on vacation, but we whipped up something special for you to kick off 2025. Today, we're serving up an episode of The Best Idea Yet. The Best Idea Yet, our weekly deep dive series where we cover the incredible untold stories behind the most viral products of all time.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
The Jacuzzi family, they're not just doing hot tubs and bubbles in hot water. No. They're doing bubbles in wine, too. Yeah, and the reason that the Jacuzzi family had so much money to buy a winery is because the Jacuzzi family created the most iconic product of its kind. What's so shocking about the Jacuzzi family to me isn't the number of family members. There were 13 siblings, by the way.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Okay, so at this point, we have little Kenneth Jacuzzi, a boy with a chronic debilitating condition. His family has found a hydrotherapy treatment that works, but traveling to and from those treatments is wreaking havoc on his body. But there is one silver lining. Ken is a Jacuzzi. He's from a family of brilliant engineers and inventors perfectly poised to create something new.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
But he's also proof that you shouldn't put people in a box. He's determined to find a way. So he starts taking a Jacuzzi Brothers sump pump, the kind you'd use to get water out of the basement, and he begins adapting it for use in a bathtub. We have a picture here. Nick, can you describe what we're looking at? Yeah, I'll describe this, Jack.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
This initial water pump bathtub thing, it's kind of like a speedboat motor crossed with a Vitamix, you know? Yeah. But you put it in a bathtub. So it basically takes a big pool of water in your bathtub. Yes. And turns it into like a bubbly adventure. It makes you feel like a smoothie is what we're saying. Looks a little dangerous. I'm actually kind of scared as we describe it.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
This little contraption, it is churning bathtub water just like that ginormous Hubbard tank. But here's the question, man. Is it working? Absolutely, it's working. Ken is on his hydrotherapy treatments every day in the comfort of his own home now with no brutal commute to and from that Hubbard tank.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
And when they show Ken's doctor their contraption they built, his response is instantaneous. He doesn't just say it works. He implores them, you got to make more of these things. Yeah. Okay, so this is basically the same pump that the Jacuzzi family used for food on farms, but they've now applied it to tubs for people. It's another pivot.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
They didn't just pivot the product, they pivoted the purpose. Totally. And the whole hydrotherapy unit was literally just meant to be a device for Ken. But once the idea is in Candido's mind, it all makes sense. Yeah, it does. Look, not everyone has a farm they need to irrigate, but Everyone gets sore muscles and sore joints, and everyone loves a bubbly frenzy of a hot tub situation.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
So Candido wants to pursue the relaxation market. But Jack, this is like the Jacuzzi family.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
They're not into this latest pivot. Up until now, Jacuzzi has mostly been on a B2B model, working business to business.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
And it carries a whole bunch of new business risks. Yeah, yeah, it does. Because the other Jacuzzi brothers know there are already big players in the consumer appliance market, which is what Candido is thinking about moving into. Right. They would have to face companies like General Electric, Goliaths of the industry, and Jacuzzi, they're just the little David.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
If GE decides they want to make hydrotherapy bathtubs, Jacuzzi would be done for. If they poke the bear, they're going to get eaten. I mean, Jack, it's sort of like when you're a startup and Google takes an interest in your technology.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Good point. It's the number of different businesses they ran together. Because yetis, Jack and I love a pivot story. There are product pivots, there are use case pivots, there are marketing pivots. There are moving sofas up the staircase pivots. Ross with friends, if you know, you know. But besties, there is one pivot in particular that Jack and I have noticed is bigger than
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Why would you ever change a business that is thriving? Plus, it's a family affair. The Jacuzzi's determined their own destiny and the company is providing jobs to many Jacuzzi cousins, among others. I mean, basically, if you got two Zs in your name, you're hired. So why fix a business that's successfully pumping on all cylinders to the tune of $35 million a year in today's money?
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Well, Candido, remember, is the family salesman. And eventually, he just wears them down. They don't pivot the entire business, but they agreed to establish a new division of the company, Jacuzzi Research, Inc., and they start production of their very first whirlpool bath device, the J300. The J300. Now that, Jack, that sounds like a sharper image device.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
And after testing, pumping, gallons and gallons of spilled water, and a whole lot of bubbles, five years later, it's approved. On December 16th, 1952, it finally comes through. A Jacuzzi-branded hydrotherapy pump for your tub. You place one of these pumps into any full bathtub, you plug it into the wall, and your bathtub, boom! It is a water-pumping cyclone of sensation.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Jack, I'm listening to everything you just said.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
And we might have a totally different name for hot tubs today with a totally not as good product. Or we might not even have hot tubs. It's no guarantee somebody would have invented this. And the impact on ludicrous lyrics alone, Nick, be devastating. Don't even get me started, Jack. It reveals something inspiring about this Jacuzzi family. Yeah, it does.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
For every tragedy they faced, they turned it into an opportunity. They learned from it, they pivoted, and they succeeded. Post-war America is a marketer's dream. Every GI family is settling down in the suburbs with a new office job ready to spend. Optimism is in the air, and people want to buy, baby, buy. Honey, I just brought home a new microwave. That's inside a new toaster.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
It is a splurge fest on home goods and comfort. I mean, Jack, if you're not smoking a cigarette on your new back patio furniture, then how else are you going to make your neighbors jealous? So right at the perfect moment, the first Jacuzzi finally hits the market in 1953.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
But by 1955, they decide to expand to a broader category of buyers. They send an army of salesmen to drugstores, to bath shops, and even take this portable bathtub unit door-to-door. I mean, Jack, the door-to-door salesman, truly a lost art. Nick, would you mind reading this quote from an advertisement from that time?
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
And feel free to put your best Shelley Levine spin on it.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
than just all the others. It's bubbly, it's steamy, and it's part of your room upgrade at the Ramada because that pivot is the jacuzzi.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
I'm sold, man. I mean, Jack, grab me a cola and meet me at the jukebox, buddy. We're good to go, man. You see, the Jacuzzi device may have started as a medical product, but that was before the Jacuzzi brothers realized how much spending power the new American middle class was about to have.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Their pitch for their J300 Whirlpool machine is this. It's not just a medical device for the disabled. It's for Ozzie and Harriet, dads and housewives, golfers and gardeners, and even the frolicking youngsters. The Jacuzzi is for everyone.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Yes, Nick, the opportunity is huge, but Candido knows they're on borrowed time. Remember, if this product is successful, it won't be long before General Electric or another behemoth swoops in and overwhelms them with pure name recognition alone. Classic. Someone is going to zuck his idea. Yeah. If Jacuzzi is going to compete, they'll need to make sure their name gets out there first.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
And this job falls to a man with a much more boring name, Ray Schwartz. Ray Schwartz.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
You know me. My name can send goosebumps up and down your spine, make you forget your troubles and put your mind completely at ease.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
camera bubbles. On stage, host Jack Bailey sails through his opening lines. His mustache is trimmed, his salt and pepper hair slicked back to reveal a perfect widow's peak, and his posture totally relaxed, as if the studio audience is sitting in his kitchen. It's 1956, and the lights in the TV studio are searing.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
You know something? There just isn't any better way to put it than, would you like to be queen for the day?
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Jack, I remember my dad telling me about this when I was little. I didn't even believe it was a thing. Queen for a Day is more than just a game show. It's a killer opportunity for brand names to get in front of potential customers. Companies ranging from Colgate to Exlax to the California Egg Council, they all sponsor the show. Why?
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
The name Jacuzzi is trademarked, but it's also used generically to mean any jet-powered hot tub. Yeah, Jack, it's become one of those things where you say the specific brand name to mean any make of that one thing. Like you got your ChapStick, you got your Band-Aid, you got your Tupperware, and... You got your jacuzzi. But this 20th century invention draws on 4,000-year-old traditions.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Because Queen for a Day reaches up to 20 million viewers per episode. Jack, I feel like we got to sprinkle on some modern media context here. Can you put the Queen of the Day viewer numbers in, let's talk streaming numbers. 20 million viewers per episode is 6 million more than those who watched the Game of Thrones finale. Not too shabby. Now, of course, game shows don't just need sponsors.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
They need prizes. Yes. products that become part of the contestants' winnings, they can see their sales skyrocket. Just watch Legends of the Hidden Temple and you'll know what we mean. And the way you're describing the show, Jack, it's kind of like a 1950s version of Oprah's favorite thing. You get a car.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
And guess what? Whatever that car is, it probably sees its sales boost right afterwards. Oh, yeah. Because although he wouldn't understand what you mean by Oprah, Ray Schwartz, he recognizes this too. The Jacuzzi's healing properties are a perfect match for the show's downtrodden and ailing contestants. So if you'll join me back under the studio lights. Jack, I'm with you.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Our contestants have shared their tales of woe. and they're now sitting nervously together on stage. Jack calls out each one's number, and the applause-o-meter comes to life as the audience claps. They seem to love contestant number three. The arrow spikes. That applause-o-meter's about to bust. Contestant number three is queen for a day. Jack starts to call out the prizes that she's won.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
The perfect way to relax, it's with a Jacuzzi Whirlpool bath.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Apparently, all those 20 million Americans watching Queen for a day, they needed a good massage.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Because after its first appearance on the country's big new TV show, Jacuzzi saw sales hockey stick. They could barely keep up with production. They're shipping tubs from Toledo to Tallahassee. But Ray Schwartz isn't finished with his quest for universal name recognition of Jacuzzi.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
As an ex-sports reporter, Ray has connections to Major League Baseball players like Joe DiMaggio, and by extension, the glitzy world of Hollywood. Ooh, and that is when he pulls off one of the most high-profile celebrity endorsement strategies in the history of fame.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
A jacuzzi bathtub. Pose in a jacuzzi bathtub.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Hashtag promoted post. But you know what, Nick? Jacuzzi is jealous of those actors they're partnering with. because Jacuzzi wants their own fame. Interesting. So just a few years later, the company pursues an early product placement. Jacuzzi goes full Hollywood with its own big screen debut. Their tub has a supporting role in The Fortune Cookie, which is a film at the time by Billy Wilder.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
And it should have gotten an Oscar. Jacuzzi got snubbed. The main characters in this movie play scammers trying to get a personal injury settlement from an insurance company. And they use a J-300 Jacuzzi to try to trick the PIs who are trying to bust their scheme.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Just exactly how does it work? Well, first you've got to run some water in the tub. All right. Say, where's the switch on this Jacuzzi thing? Don't switch, just plug it in the wall.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
We've been soaking in hot springs since we stood on two legs from Japan to Mexico to Iceland. But it's jacuzzi that brought hydrotherapy into the modern era. creating a global market that's expected to surpass $6 billion by 2026. In fact, there is an estimated 26 million operational hot tubs around the world. And Jack, could you sprinkle on a little more hot context for us over there, please?
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
I mean, come on, Nick. That is product placement at its finest.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Remember when he said, you just plug it into the wall.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Yeah, yeah, you said that 30 seconds ago. Well, what's the first thing that you learn about when it comes to electrical appliances and bathtubs? Well, Jack, the first thing you learn is that you do not use them together. So many people naturally are nervous about that scary looking wire. Salesmen find themselves having to assure customers that, you know, you won't get electrocuted in the bathtubs.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
So if Jacuzzi really wants to be in every home in America, they're going to have to pivot again. But this next pivot only happens with the help of another Jacuzzi we haven't even mentioned yet.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
So we've talked about Rakele, the engineering genius who invented the jacuzzi pumps for farmers. We've talked about Candido, the salesman who invented their home hydrotherapy product. Now we're going to talk about Roy Jacuzzi. Roy is Candido's grandnephew. He's born just a couple years after Candido's son, Kenneth. I mean, Jack, who's next? Cousin Greg? How many of them are there?
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Enough for a 10th season of the Jersey Shore. Well, Roy, he's a true believer.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
And this one is the story of Jacuzzi, because Hot Tubs is just the start of what these seven Italian-American brothers created. We repeat, this is on Jacuzzi because you have no idea the story behind Jacuzzi.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
But Roy is not crazy about the design of their hero product, the J300. Remember, besties, the J300, great product, but it looks like an all-metal Vitamix slash boat motor that you stick into your backup. Yeah. Even if you're not worried about electrocution, this thing takes up a lot of space in the tub. I mean, Jack, do you put it behind you? Do you put it in front of you?
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Like, do you scrunch forward? Roy calls it a birdbath because the tub is tiny when that thing's in there. And he vows to make something better. He's dreaming about the old country and the great Roman baths. Those marble-filled, hand-tiled masterpieces of meditative indulgence.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
He envisions a deep tub. where you can submerge your entire body up to your neck. His design features hidden wiring and jets, which transforms the Jacuzzi from a medical device to a true luxury item. So, Jack, Roy is on to something here, and he develops the new self-contained model of the Jacuzzi, and he calls it the Roman.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
He patents this design in 1968, and honestly, it's not that different from the Jacuzzis we see today. Yeah, it looks good, Jack. The price tag is about 800 bucks in 1968 or around $7,000 today. This change, it's more than just pivoting your marketing from like home health products to recreation.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Going from the J300 to Roy's Roman model, it's more like going from a $20 Mr. Coffee machine to a $2,000 barista grade espresso maker. This isn't just a marketing pivot. It's a pivot in product and strategy. Honestly, Roy's Roman bath is so different from the J300. This changes the entire company.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
And Jack, Roy then does something really smart to actually get these Romans off the show floor and into the homes around the world. He takes the latest model to home builder and plumbing trade shows, and he gives the home builders a great deal. For every $700 Whirlpool tub they bought, contractors got to keep $350. He's sweetening the incentives in a major way.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
That is one hot tub for every Floridian, plus every Utahan. You can't forget about Utah. But the jacuzzi journey is about so much more than just kicking off your boots and soaking under the park city stars. Yeti's, this story's got everything. Fighter pilots... game shows, Scarface's bathtub, and seven brothers running this business together.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Roy's idea turns home builders into his salespeople. Essentially. Yeah, that's what it does. You're right. And in the very first trade show, he takes home 50 to 60 orders. Not bad. Yetis, Jacuzzis, they are officially on their way to becoming a luxury product and a status symbol. Affordable to the well-to-do, envied by the up-and-comer, and soon an influential Hollywood makeover.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
In the 1970s, the Jacuzzi as we know it really takes shape. After producing the Roman tub, Jacuzzi also develops fun innovations in fiberglass,
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
They're going full exhibit on this. Jack, they're pimping out the product. It's this development that creates the hot tub you probably see in your mind. Jacuzzi has gotten so big that even President Nixon has a jacuzzi installed in the White House bathroom. I mean, the stress of being the most important person in the world. Actually, the stress of the Watergate scandal. Yeah, good point.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Well played. So after he resigns and Gerald Ford becomes president, Ford has an outdoor pool installed and adds a second jacuzzi. Nothing crosses the political divide quite like a jacuzzi, Jack. But jacuzzi knows that sex sells. So it's time to go from PG to PG-13. So the company ups its product placement game to get steamy in a 1970s Warren Beatty film.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Two beautiful twins try to lure him into the whirlpool by forgetting their swimsuits. Or Jack, how about Scarface?
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
The company is building factories everywhere, from St. Louis to Toronto to Sao Paulo, and it's still a family business, employing a whole bunch of jacuzzis. And now, Jack, we should sprinkle on some context to the financials here because Jacuzzi is hitting sales numbers that are just surging at this moment. In 1974, Jacuzzi grossed $67 million in sales.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
By 1999, that number has spiked to $650 million in sales. That's right. In 20 years, this company's grown 10x. And this might have been where we wrapped up our tale about Jacuzzi. It might have been. But there's a parallel story around this family business that we've held back on the towel rack until now. Jack, keep that speedo on.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
So after years of tragedy, the Jacuzzi family is finally prospering. They can relax, hit the tub, crank up the jets. But there's one problem. The family is also fracturing. Candido, the devoted dad who created this entire product category to help his two-year-old sick son, he also gets indicted for tax evasion in 1969 and and is not so gently encouraged by the Jacuzzi board to retire. Brutal.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
He moves abroad until medical issues force him back to the States, where he has to pay a couple hundred Gs in back taxes.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Jacuzzi has over 250 stakeholders. Board meetings are chaotic. I mean, every meeting is also a high stakes family reunion without the cool custom t-shirts and the trips to Disney World, Jack. Oh, and then there's this. Different family members have been suing each other for years over things like selling assets without proper notice. So the company's reserves are depleted.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
They need cash to help fund future growth.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
But beneath the froth and bubbles, it's about a family business turning tragedy into opportunity and creating an iconic product through unexpected twists of fate. Hang on to your speedo. Oh, yeah. Because Jacuzzi didn't just create an entirely new category. Yeah. Jacuzzi is the best idea yet. That's the spot, Jack. Hot, hot, hot. Oh, yeah. From Wonder and T-Boy, I'm Nick Martel.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Right, Jack? The oil crisis rocks the global economy and the IPO market freezes. Yeah. So word starts to get out that the company is looking to sell. Instead of IPOing, they're going to sell the Jacuzzi company. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. And they decide, yes, it's time to sell the company.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
The family's decision to sell the company when faced with internal conflicts and financial pressures, it shows the importance of knowing when to exit or when to seek external investment. For the Jacuzzis, that time was now. Yeah, it was. The company will change hands a few more times across the next 40 years, eventually landing with a European investment group, Invest Industrial.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
The brand's estimated global revenue is $877 million as of 2023. So as prospective Yetis, less than a billion dollars for a brand that we all recognize. Honestly, it's way tinier than I expected at this point, Jack. It's barely grown since 1999. So Jacuzzi's revenues are less than the revenue from Deadpool and Wolverine. But still, the family got what they needed back in 1979.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
They got liquidity, even if not every member feels like they got what they wanted. And despite its travels through private equity, Jacuzzi is still here as a brand. It is still the most recognized Whirlpool brand in the world. And today, you can find a jacuzzi in most mid-priced hotel chains and in a suburban dentist's backyard. But it's still considered by most economists to be a luxury good.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Lifestyle outlets like Travel and Leisure still run articles today, like 20 hotels around the world with stunning private hot tubs. And Jack, we should share the wild stats we discovered about Airbnbs and jacuzzis. Airbnb estimates that a hot tub can increase a rental's booking rate by 13% and increase a rental's price by $39 a night.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Although, Jack, we forgot to mention a jacuzzi's biggest risk of all.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Yeah, you want to check the bubble settings, check the light settings, and check the year, apparently. There's nothing worse than getting sent back to the wrong place to the wrong time in the wrong outfit check. Always pack a second speedo. So, Nick, I've slipped into something a little more formal to wrap up the show with you. I appreciate it.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
We have tracked the history of Jacuzzi from airfields to farms to Hollywood and to the White House and beyond. Yes. After all those pivots. What is your takeaway?
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
And you know what? Wall Street rewarded the stock. When new information presents itself, you must consider changing your mind. Yes. Respond with the best information you have and treat every pivot as a chance to grow. Just make sure when you do pivot, you commit.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Because half a pivot is more like just a flinch. And Jack, can we pause the pod and recap the pivots this family took?
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
But Jack, what's your takeaway on Jacuzzi? My takeaway is about the end of the story. We've talked about family businesses a bunch of times on The Best Idea Yet. We had Birkenstocks, Levi's, Sriracha, all family businesses that lasted for decades under family management. But most of those businesses end up selling at some point. Well, they're not Sriracha. We see you, Hot Sauce Kings.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
So why do family businesses ultimately end? Most often, it's the L word, liquidity. Because working with your family can be stressful. It's also hard. It is. And if things start to fail, the fallout can feel really personal because your name is on the company. A lot of times, heirs just want cash. They don't want the stress and pressure of continuing the family legacy.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
And I'm Jack Kravici-Kramer. And this is The Best Idea Yet. The untold origin stories of the products you're obsessed with and the bold risk-takers who brought them to life.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
It's not necessarily a bad thing, It's just part of the family business life cycle. I think what you're saying, Jack, is that when you're in a jacuzzi, you're family. But Jack, I'm checking the temperature here and it feels like we reached our favorite part of the show, the best facts, yet all the best little tidbits and factoids that we couldn't fit into the rest of the show.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
But we can't leave you without. Whip them up. What do we got, man? Today, Jacuzzi operates multiple brands, including Sundance, Thermo Spas, Bath Wraps, and Hydro Pool. But the best recognized of all is still the original.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
He knew that Hollywood would be the salesman for the Jacuzzi. They're the Andy Cohen of household appliances. Absolutely. Actually, literally, I think Andy Cohen has like three of them in his New York pad. And finally, after all of Jacuzzi's many pivots, they never strayed too far from this one idea. We all deserve to feel relief. Which brings us to one more lasting impact of Jacuzzi's legacy.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Ken, the two-year-old, whose struggles with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis inspired the modern hot tub we know and love today, Ken became a tireless advocate for the disability community.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
And then Ken went on to start a foundation that lobbies for people with disabilities. Expanding accessibility and giving dignity to disabled people was a cause that he championed until his death at the age of 75. 75! He beat his predicted life expectancy by 67 years. Yes, he did. He lived what he called, in his own words, a damn good life. Just one more pivot that the Jacuzzis had up their sleeve.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
And another reason the Jacuzzi is the best idea yet.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
I bet you they have jacuzzis never. I mean, honestly, turn on the jets and pour a little Cabernet. Although they don't serve it slightly chilled. I should point out, Jack, the pinots are piping hot.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Speedos or I'm not going. Coming up on the next episode of The Best Idea Yet, it's the picture-perfect story. Polaroid. Besties, Nick and Jack here with you back in the studio. That's our episode on Jacuzzi. Jacuzzi. To listen to more episodes of The Best Idea Yet, just subscribe or follow the show wherever you get your pods. You're going to be happy you did.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
We put a link in the episode description to make it easy. New episodes of this show, they drop every Tuesday, 45 minutes each, and they're on the products you're obsessed with. And trust us, you're going to love the other shows we've done.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
But Jack and I will be back on Monday, January 6th with an episode of our regular show, The Best Idea Yet. And we're going to look a lot tanner than the last time you saw us.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
The Best Idea Yet is a production of Wondery, hosted by me, Nick Martell. And me, Jack Kravica-Kramer. If you know the best idea yet, leave it here in the comments.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Oh, and by the way, we'd love your rating and review. Yeah, the best way you can help grow the best idea yet is to drop down and give us a five-star rating, a review, and follow the show. Our senior producers are Matt Beagle and Chris Gauthier. Matt Wise is our producer. Our senior managing producer is Nick Ryan, and Taylor Sniffen is our managing producer.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
H. Conley is our associate producer and researcher. This episode was written and produced by Katie Clark Gray. We used many sources in our research, including the following.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
And Saskia Solomon's New York Times article, The Frothy Saga of the Jacuzzi Family. Sound design and mixing by Kelly Kramarik. Fact-checking by Molly Artwick. Music supervision by Scott Velasquez and Jolina Garcia for Freesaw and Sync. Our theme song is Got That Feelin' Again by Black Lack. Executive producers for Nick and Jack Studios are me, Nick Martell. And me, Jack Ravici-Kramer.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Executive producers are Dave Easton, Jenny Lauer-Beckman, Erin O'Flaherty, and Marsha Louis for Wondery. If you like the best one yet, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us a little bit about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Let's start this episode by easing into our hot tub time machine. Let's do it, Jack. I like it. We're standing on an athletic field, ringed by a racetrack, just steps from the San Francisco Bay. The air is thick with July summer heat and the buzz of propellers as a biplane takes flight. It's 1915, and we're at the Panama Pacific World's Fair in San Francisco.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Now, this 10-month expo, it's showcasing the best in technology, from steam locomotives to this newfangled airplane thingamajiggy. It's like CES for the Woodrow Wilson era. Yes, it is. And since it's 10 months long, 18 million people visit. Nick, that's a fifth of the U.S. population. That is huge. The people came to see a direct telephone line that connected San Francisco to New York.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
No, you hang up. No, you hang up. And they also came to see a new form of travel that was still in its infancy. Airplanes.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
He's a young mechanic who goes by the name Raquel Jacuzzi. He's working as an engineer and about to change aviation history. Little does he know, his family name will become synonymous with relaxation. Yeah, Rachele, he's an Italian immigrant.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
To make it easier, we'll put a link to the show in this episode description.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
In the meantime, he's working as an engineer for the future founder of the aerospace company, McDonnell Douglas. This guy is obsessed with flying. Obsessed. So while most people in that airfield are dazzled by the aviation demo, Rokele is noticing something that might only be obvious to an engineer. The stunt plane's propellers aren't very efficient.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
For their size, they're not giving the plane the liftoff that they should. And Rokele thinks, I can do better than that. And you know what? He does. Because Rokele invents the toothpick propeller. It's made of wood, but it's narrower, it's straighter, kind of looks like a toothpick. They're stronger than a toothpick, though. Oh, yeah, yeah, they are.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
And the improved aerodynamics of this Jacuzzi propeller packs a punch while being lighter than most existing propellers. It's a huge advancement in aviation. To manufacture his new propeller, Rekele opens a machine shop in Berkeley, California and calls it Jacuzzi Brothers Incorporated. Because besties, this guy has so many brothers. He could cast an entire episode of the Jersey Shore.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
But in 1907, Papa Iakutsi relocated the entire family to avoid the coming war. That coming war wasn't World War I, but a forerunner called the Italo-Turkish War. Papa Iakutsi had seven sons in danger of being drafted into the war and six daughters to protect as well. So they arrived at Ellis Island in waves, where their name was misspelled from Yakuzy to Jacuzzi.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
I mean, Jack, the same thing happened with my family at Ellis Island. We lost the O on Martello, and I kind of miss it. Can we bring that back? You got robbed. We got robbed. I can feel for these Jacuzzi boys. And Jack, by the time Rick Kelly starts his machine shop, most of his brothers have joined with him in America.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
So they're manufacturing enough toothpick propellers to impress everyone from celebrity pilot Charles Lindbergh to a feisty new division of the U.S. Armed Forces known as the Air Force. When America enters World War I, Rick Kelly's toothpick propellers help win it, allowing American dogfighters to dominate the airspace. And less than 18 months later, the war is over.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Great news for society, bad news for the defense industry. No more war means no more military contracts for the Jacuzzi brothers. So the Jacuzzi brothers, they need to pivot. Pivot! Now, Nick, as far as pivots go, this first one from Jacuzzi, it's pretty logical. Okay. Rakele loves flying. And back then, anyone could fly. There was no regulation, no FAA to drag you back down to Earth. Oh.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Fantastic. It's like riding a bike. So what does Raquel do? He starts to fly. And then these Jacuzzi brothers, they decide to build their own airplane. They throw all their money into building an aircraft called the Jacuzzi J7. It's a monoplane with a fully enclosed cockpit.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Both of these were new innovations at the time because back then, most planes were biplanes with open cockpits, which meant the pilots were held in by just a seatbelt holding on for dear life. You'd be dodging geese. You'd like be picking bugs out of your teeth. And so for Kelly, he's feeling like a roof and a windshield. Yeah, that'd be a good addition to the plan.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Especially since they're thinking ahead to accommodate passengers as well as cargo. It's a big undertaking, and the whole family pitches in. The brothers' wives even sew the canvas covers of the wings. It's like the Olive Garden. When you're here... and you're working on the plane, you're family.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Yeah, we do pop up. That is like our verb of choice.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
And the Jacuzzi J7 makes history as the first fully enclosed monoplane to be built and flown in the United States. It works beautifully for months, and the Jacuzzis start thinking about how to make their money back, like carrying mail for the U.S. Mail Service. Which looks and seems like a very sustainable, consistent business model. Makes a lot of sense. FedEx before FedEx.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
But on the morning of July 14th, 1921, something awful happens. On a test flight from Yosemite, a wing of the J-7 snaps off. The plane crashes over Modesto, California, killing all four men on board, including Jacuzzi brother number six, Geocondo Jacuzzi. Mom and dad Jacuzzi, they are devastated. And so the parents announce a major personal decision that changes the entire business.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
They forbid their remaining children from having anything to do with flying ever, ever again. The Jacuzzi children are literally grounded. But yet there is a silver lining of having to pivot out of necessity because pivoting out of necessity forces you to get creative.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
DVDs becoming obsolete was the best thing to happen to Netflix. Exactly. Because it forced them to evolve. So Jack, what's Raquel A. Jacuzzi thinking as this news hits him and his family? He has exactly the kind of creative mind built for this tough moment. One day, he's staring out into the lush orchards of the San Joaquin Valley, which is in the midst of a renaissance.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
20th century engineering has made it much easier for farmers to access groundwater for irrigation. Suddenly, it smacks him in the face like the aroma of his mom's brajole.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
So Rekele stopped looking up into the sky. Yeah. and he starts looking down to the ground. He takes that airplane instinct and focuses it on farming instead. Riquela gets an idea for how to improve irrigation pumps. He invents a new pump that forces water into the ground, creating a vacuum that draws more groundwater up from the aquifers below. And Jack, this new pump really works.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
It's wildly effective. And as soon as the Jacuzzis put this new pump on the market, it is in high demand. Soon, the lettuce seedlings, blossoming almond trees, and fragrant orange groves feeding America are being watered by the hot, new, powerful pump. Oh, baby.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
The Jacuzzi pump. I'm sorry, Jack. Pause the pod for a moment. Time check here.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
I mean, what's good for California, it must be excellent for the Jacuzzi brothers. It is. And even the youngest brother, little Candido Jacuzzi, is pitching in for this family business. Unlike Rikele and his older brothers, Candido had only gotten a little taste of schooling.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
As one of the last siblings to arrive in the United States, his English isn't great, but he's going to school at night and he's selling jacuzzi water pumps door to door by day. Despite being the worst brother at English, Candido is a natural born salesman. He's like heading out to the farms, demonstrating a new pump.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
And it turns out the language of sales isn't about the words you're actually saying. It's just about making a relationship with people. It's pretty inspirational. Soon, the Jacuzzis are handling everything from deep well injector pumps to swimming pool supplies. America doesn't run on Duncan. By the 1930s, it's running on jacuzzi pumps. Yeah, it is.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
But in 1937, Rekele, working feverishly on new inventions, from solar power generators to crop defrosters, he suddenly dies of a heart attack at the age of 50. Rekele, he's been the family's leader and the primary driver of the company's entire strategy.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
This Jacuzzi family isn't just a company. It's a culture. It's an institution. It's a little society. They get together and decide it's time for one of the remaining brothers to step up and leadership passes to the youngest, the family salesman, Candido Jacuzzi. So Jack, it's 1943.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
And doctors are saying that he won't even make it to age eight. So Candido and his wife, Inez, are determined to save their two-year-old son. They put Ken into a full body cast for a full year. Wow. And inject him with gold salts. Nothing is working.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
It's called hydrotherapy, and it uses a big oval-shaped metal tub that's called a Hubbard tank. The Hubbard tank... basically looks like a giant metal sink. Yes. It has motors that heat and stir the water. And the patient sits on a bench in the tub and lets the hot water massage their pain away. I'll tell you that. It looks like something that belongs to a barn. Yeah, I know what you mean, Jack.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
They're not selling this thing at Sharper Image. So does this creepy looking new metallic structure work? Oh, it works. It's relaxing. It's calming. And most of all, it helps ease little Ken's swollen joints and stiff muscles. His parents are thrilled. It's a big, ugly sink, but it's a miracle.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
His mother, Inez, takes little Kenneth in for treatments twice a week, an hour drive away from their house. He's basically living in this thing just to stay alive. And his fingers are like pruned up 24-7. But the long drive is super painful for little Ken. So Inez begs Candido to take a look at the Hubbard. Here's what she's thinking. Uh, hey, Candido, your whole family works with water, right?
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🛁 Jacuzzi: Legend of the Life-Saving Tub
Like, could you build something like this tub for our boy?
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Yeti's Nick and Jack here from the studio. Since it's President's Day and markets are closed, we decided to serve up a sample of our weekly show, The Best Idea Yet. It's our second show, which just got nominated for an Ambie Award, by the way, for Best Business Podcast. Not too shabby. Not too shabby. And this episode, it's actually our most viral one yet.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And those kids, they love it even more than Don's do. No kidding! There are lines of kids, six or seven deep, leading into this tiny little janitor's closet where the teletype computer lives. The Oregon Trail is so popular among these students that the kids come to school early to get their chance to play.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And if you want the perfect example of this, look no further than the subject of today's show, an iconic game created by three idealistic young teachers in the great state of Minnesota. This story features trappers and bankers, preachers and con artists, and oxen. Oh, the oxen. Also, Jack, many, many deaths from dysentery. That's right, Yetis. We're talking about the Oregon Trail.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
They're there at 7 a.m., and they stay until the teachers kick them out at the end of the night. If you are getting kids to stay at school voluntarily, you got some magic on your hands. The Oregon Trail game is basically the Mudang of Minneapolis. It came out of nowhere and everyone is obsessed with it. That's despite the fact that this game is still very V1.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
What we are seeing is actually the perfect example of an MVP, a minimum viable product in action. An MVP is the earliest version of a product you can possibly release and still have at work. It's not meant to be polished. It's meant to be functional. This way, you can test user love and your early adopters can give the product feedback.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Jack and I have worked in the tech industry, and this industry, it thrives off MVPs. And founders, they've raised millions of dollars off of some really rough looking version ones. When Airbnb launched in 2008, it was a janky looking website called airbedandbreakfast.com. But even the ultra bare bones version was enough to prove the concept and land Airbnb's first $20,000 investment.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Today, Airbnb is worth $80 billion. And for Don's Oregon Trail, this MVP of a game is being validated in the ultimate way. Sadly, there's no $20,000 checks floating around this junior high school. But as Don, Paul, and Bill watch their Oregon Trail game blow up, Bill wonders if they should find a way to monetize this thing. What if this game is their meal ticket?
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Not just an aha moment, but a cha-ching moment. Now, that is a beautiful thought, but that thought passes. Don and his friends, they're planning to become teachers, not game designers. Besides, this is 1971. It was pre-arcade boom, pre-space invaders. So the idea of royalties from a computer game, it sounds absurd. That's why Bill shrugs the idea off.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And in a blink, Oregon Trail Week at school is over. Yetis, this all happened in just one week. His next history lesson for next semester is the roaring 20s, and he's already got his Gatsby costume picked out. Now here's the wildest part. The Minneapolis public school computer doesn't have enough memory to archive last semester's programs. There's no cloud computing at this point.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
That's not a good sign. So Don, Bill, and Paul print out a few paper copies of their game's 800 lines of code, and then they delete the game from the server. So, JR, you're saying they created what feels like a masterpiece on this computer, and all that is left of it is a few sheets of paper? It's like they painted the Sistine Chapel, and all they have left of it is a photograph.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
The Oregon Trail, it's gone cold. And it will stay cold for the next three years. It just lives on as a memory in those children's heads and on three sheets of paper until the Vietnam War, of all things, brings it back to life.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Or as many of us end up calling it, Oregon Trail. Drop the the. It's cleaner. If you went to school in the 80s and 90s, you played this game on your classroom's beat-up Macintosh computer, alongside other classics like Carmen Sandiego and Mario Teaches Typing. Or you may have come across it later, playing a free version online or on your PS5, maybe even your Nintendo Switch.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
one number is about to change everything, a draft number. It's the last gasps of the US's involvement in Vietnam, but the country is still sending young men overseas to fight. And one terrible day in 1972, the draft comes for Don Rawitsch. Our guy Don, he's about to get dragged into a war that he's staunchly opposed to, unless he can figure out a way out that doesn't involve fleeing to Canada.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
To Don's relief, there is one option. He can get an exemption as a conscientious objector, but he has to perform two years of alternative service, like the Peace Corps or something else that benefits the country. Now, sadly at the time, the government doesn't count teaching in public school as alternative service.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
So Don looks around for a gig that will qualify and get him this exemption from going into combat. Then one of Don's old professors introduces him to someone who's about to change his life forever. He's a high school math teacher turned nonprofit director by the name of Dale LaFrenz. Dale is a bit older than Don, but he's just as passionate about classroom learning.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Since the mid-1960s, Dale's been working to get computers into every classroom in America, and he starts with his home state of Minnesota. Now here comes the interesting twist, because at this time, Dale is the assistant director of a new state-run non-profit called the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium, or MECC, M-E-C-C for short. MECC. It's a blonde name for a very exciting idea.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Mech wants to equip all Minnesota students from elementary age to college with computer labs, with support staff, and with educational software. If Dale saw the janitor's closet where their only computer was back at that other school... Yeah, I can't believe he was next to the mops. He'd be furious. Well, working for Mech, it does count as alternative service.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
So Dale hires young Don as Mech's community college liaison, and Don's future has a brand new trail. It's not a sexy role by any means, but that's fine by Don. This is going to keep him out of the war. And honestly, he's 100% on board with Mech's mission. This is a perfect match. Don has seen firsthand what great software can do for students.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
It's actually kind of the perfect role jack for the co-creator of The Oregon Trail. Funny you should bring that up, because for a while, he doesn't even mention this chapter of his past. Yeah, if we had created the Oregon Trail, it'd be the first six bullets of our resume. But in Don's mind, the Oregon Trail was just a fun little moment of his life in the past.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
But the longer that he works at Mech, the more he sees that they're searching for new educational games. So Don decides to ask if they might be interested in his game, that printout of 800 lines of code for the Oregon Trail that's still sitting in his drawer at home. Jack, I am so stressed about this entire game sitting in his drawer.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
If he can add this game to Mech's library, then Mech has the power to distribute it to classrooms, not just in one middle school, but every school across Minnesota. So here's what Don does. He grabs some valuable time on his boss's calendar, and he works up the nerve to walk into their office and tell them about this humble game that he created with two of his best college buddies.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
But Yeti's Oregon Trail goes all the way back to the 1970s. In fact, it's the longest running video game in history, dating back to the PPCE. That's the pre-PC era of 1971. And we repeat, longest running video game in history. We're talking about four years before a guy named Bill Gates co-founds Microsoft. Jack, we're talking five years before another guy named Steve Jobs co-found Apple.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Would Mech be interested in adding this Oregon Trail game to their catalog? Don shuts his eyes, and he waits for an answer. And Mech is all about it. Don feels like he just won the lottery. It's like he's one of those eighth graders who just asked somebody out on a date to the school dance. And they said yes. So Don, he goes home. He grabs that little paper. Oh, wait, where'd the paper go?
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Where'd the, oh, I found it. He found it. He finds the paper. It's still in his sock drawer. And the game that survived on a piece of paper will live again. But hang on, yetis, because the way Don hands organ trail over to Mac will have huge repercussions that last for decades.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
It's Thanksgiving weekend, three full years since Don, Bill, and Paul first wrote the Oregon Trail software while jammed in a janitor's closet. But Don is no longer an earnest student teacher. He's a grown man trying to recreate the signature achievement of his life, letter by letter. Instead of stuffing his face with turkey and cranberry sauce...
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Don is spending his holiday painstakingly retyping 800 lines of Oregon Trail code back into a new teletype machine. To sprinkle on some context, 800 lines? That's actually not that bad. The original Donkey Kong debuted with 20,000 lines of code. And Assassin's Creed? Over 15 million lines. I mean, try typing that into a teletype, Jack. You'd have carpal tunnel, I don't know, forever.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Finally, Don finishes. He's entered every code line into the teletype, which is connected to Mech's giant mainframe computer. But here's the catch, besties. The moment Don entered that code into Mech's server, it became their property. Yeah, record scratch here. This one action, Don has made a crucial mistake. he's handed over all his IP to somebody else.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And he's done it for no additional compensation whatsoever. But to be honest, besties, he's actually more concerned about the game's overall historical factual accuracy. Yeah, because when Don, Bill, and Paul were eating those burritos with that butcher paper on the table, they were sprinting to put out their MVP.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
All of the gameplay was based on their own historical knowledge, like the number of wagon wheels on the wagon, the mortality rate of yellow fish. Fever? They were guessing.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
If Don wants Oregon Trail to make the scale jump from one junior high school to hundreds of high schools, he's going to have to give it a factual tune-up because there are going to be a whole lot more eyeballs on this thing now. The more the product is scaled, the smaller the margin for error. So Don goes full Robert Carrow and dives into some research.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
He combs through archival diaries written by real pioneers who survived the Oregon Trail. He gets firsthand experiences. He reads their journals, their stories, even the footnotes about pairing whiskey with elk meat, which apparently was a fine cuisine on the trail. How often do they really encounter thunderstorms as their parties cross the Great Plains?
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Or where were they most likely to get bitten by a rattler? Or did they always have to ford the river, or could those oxen swim like a four-legged Michael Phelps? Don uses the information from these primary sources to revise the game's back-end probabilities. and to correct a mistake that Don hadn't even realized he'd made in version one.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Originally, he and his roommates had depicted America's indigenous people pretty stereotypically. Native Americans in the game mainly showed up as hostiles who attacked the settlers. But as Don reads the journals, he discovers that most of the pioneers had found indigenous folks to be mostly kind, helping them forage by day and navigate by night.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
So Don writes new encounters with members of the Sioux and the Pawnee and the Shoshone tribes. And these characters show up to do things like teach you about which plants are edible and which ones are going to make you vomit up your cornmeal. After lots of research and rewriting, Oregon Trail Version 2 is so historically accurate that Lewis and Clark would have been impressed.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And Mac, they released this thing to all the Minnesota schools in their free library of educational games. Teachers clock this new history game immediately, wasting no time introducing it to their classrooms. And just like before, students are hooked right away. Don brought the content, Mech brought the distribution, the right and left biceps of a great media product.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
But as anyone who started a company knows, it's exciting when you launch it, but you kind of get curious about the numbers. So he slides into the airtight room where Mech's game logs are kept. He's curious, but he's also nervous because the numbers, they won't lie.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
It is the pioneer of video games, literally. Speaking of Apple, Tim Cook should be leaving daily offerings at a trading post at Fort Laramie because the Oregon Trail had a huge role in making Apple what it is today. Generations of millennial kids might never have begged their parents for that first Macintosh if it weren't for this game.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Now, Mech has a bunch of other educational games in their library at this point, like Lemonade Stand, which teaches kids about business. And on the day that Don peeps the numbers, those other games have been played around 200 or 300 times each. Okay, so Jack, how did the Oregon Trail do in its debut? It's been played around 10,000 times on that one single day. 10,000?
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
thousand plays, literally 50 times more than that lemonade stand thingy. The Oregon Trail is a runaway hit, Mech's most popular game by far. And that's when the Oregon Trail's future is forever changed by a company called Apple. It's been a long day at the MEC offices in St. Paul, Minnesota.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
In fact, it's been a long week because MEC needs to purchase about 500 computers to distribute to Minnesota's computer labs. And Dale LaFrance has been fielding pitches from computer companies all week. He's exhausted, but the day is almost over, and he's looking forward to knocking off work and catching some hockey on TV. It's 1978, and by now, teletypes, they're old news.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
It's the beginning of the PC era. An entire computer that sits on a table, not in an apartment. The personal computer, the PC. Dale LaFrance thinks that they're the future, and he wants them in the hands of Minnesota school kids ASAP. And now a quick reminder, besties. Mac's mission is to equip the state's classrooms with educational software and the hardware to go with it.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And that's why Dale has been fielding vendor bids all week long. One of these computer manufacturers is going to be the right partner to bring the PC to the school system. The one question is who? Dale is leaning towards Radio Shack. Radio Shack is the big dog in the market, and they're well-equipped to meet the large orders that MEC will be making. But then a wild twist happens.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
With just minutes to go before the bidding window closes, an out-of-breath messenger scurries into the MEC office. He sprints to the receptionist desks, and holding a hand-scrawled bid in his hand, he slaps it on the table. The Messenger is from a little upstart company called Apple. It's run by two shaggy 20-somethings that somehow are both named Steve. Wozniak and Jobs, what are the odds?
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
The Steves believe that their new Apple II computer is the answer to Mac's prayers. It's got color capabilities, which the kids will love. It's compact and easy to use. It doesn't have its own monitor, but you can plug this thing into any TV. Now, this Apple computer, this thing is tiny and it is unproven. Dale, he's got no idea if this will even be able to meet their minimum order.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
But in the end, he agrees to give them a shot. If this startup named Apple gives them a great price on the machines. Apple is young and hungry, so they jump at the opportunity. And soon, 500 Apple Tees are on their way to Minnesota classrooms.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
The machines have a little floppy disk drive, so they'll be able to run Mech's vast library of software, including the company's crown jewel, the Oregon Trail. Mech updates the game to reflect Apple II's new graphical dimension. Finally, Oregon Trail gets some simple graphics, not just letters and five exclamation points.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And if that sounds like a big statement, don't worry, we got the receipts. Over its lifetime, Oregon Trail has sold over 65 million copies. That's more copies than the Beatles sold of the White Album. Pretty good for a game that basically started as homework, but it was addictive homework. And the way they pulled that off would come to influence generations of future video game franchises.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And this only makes the game and the machine it's played on even more popular. Yetis, we've said it before, software sells hardware. And the brilliance of Oregon Trail definitely helps sell kids, their teachers, and eventually their parents on Apple.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Kids that might otherwise have never seen or touched these machines are logging hours of gameplay, stocking up on supplies at Fort Kearney, or floating their wagons across the Snake River all on an Apple keyboard. So that's the interesting thing, Jack. The secondary benefit of the game is that it acts as an onboarding tool for kids to get comfortable with tech.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
and embrace the digital age with confidence. The Oregon Trail is basically a gateway goody. And other state school systems start to take notice. They too want to get their hands on these Apple computers and the Oregon Trail software license so that their kids can become familiar with computers.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
It's about the Oregon Trail game, the first video game that you ever played. But Few know how the Oregon Trail actually began. Each week, we explore the most viral products of all time, and here is an entire episode for you to check out. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this sample of the best idea yet. It was my best birthday party, and I planned it myself.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
so mech begins to sell their software library to out-of-state buyers for around 10 to 20 dollars per program all right jack let's hit the whiteboard on this thing 10 to 20 dollars per license is not exactly that much but when we're talking about hundreds of licenses for thousands of classrooms I mean, these numbers are starting to add up, man.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
That is a lot of money for a nonprofit in the education space, Jack. It's more than $10 to $20 per license, that's for sure. Okay, but Iowa's Department of Education, I guess they're like, what the heck? This game's kind of fun. I don't want to die of dysentery. Let's do it.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
MEC sets up a software membership program, like a Netflix subscription, but for computer games, and 5,000 school districts sign up. That's about a third of all the school districts in the United States. Not too shabby. 16 countries outside of the U.S. join into this subscription program, including France and Japan. The program is so successful, it makes MEC financially self-sustaining. What?
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
an achievement for a nonprofit. But that achievement comes with some strings attached. Yeah, we got an interesting twist here. Becoming financially self-sustaining means that MEC stops getting funding from the state government. What we're saying is that MEC goes from a state-financed nonprofit to a for-profit corporation that's got to pull its own weight.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And that is going to have huge consequences for how they do business. This game, it's been played millions of times by students, and yet it has brought in zero dollars of direct revenue. But now, MEC needs to survive like any other corporation. So their new priority for the Oregon Trail? Monetize. And Jack, what do software companies do to monetize? Launch new versions. Oh yeah.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And this next one is going to be a barber. Besties, imagine yourself back in the classroom, not as a teacher, but as a student. You're in the fifth grade, and Miss Caldwell has finally given you some computer time. You boot up your favorite adventure game, Oregon Trail, naturally. But right away, you notice something's different. The colors. So many colors. It's the full Skittles rainbow.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
like Final Fantasy, Assassin's Creed, and Red Dead Redemption. And it would help spawn an entirely new industry, edutainment. And what sets apart Oregon Trail from every other product, business, and entrepreneur we've covered on this show? Oregon Trail was not created to make money. And yet, it ended up making a lot of money. But not for the people who you'd expect to make money.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Oh, and look, you can enter your own name. And you can even enter the names of your friends in your party. Once the game starts, the little ox actually starts an animated walk cycle. That's new. When it's time to hunt, you can use the arrow keys on the keyboard to actually point and shoot. This version of the game is so much more immersive.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
You don't even care when your supplies wash away in a rainstorm. But then your health starts to go, and your food runs out, and finally you read a message on the screen that we all still get nightmares about. You have died of dysentery, and you won't be the last. Now, we got to float in some context here.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
MEC, the nonprofit consortium that grew so successful it became a for-profit corporation, has been flourishing as the longtime owner and publisher of the Oregon Trail. Their partnership with Apple has let them deliver educational software to classrooms across the U.S. and around the world.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
All of this has given them the capital to invest some serious R&D in a blockbuster new version of Oregon Trail for Apple II. And it takes Mac 10 months to develop and launch that brand new upgrade with some major redesigns from the ground up. This new version is awesome. And it launches in 1985 as the official second generation of Oregon Trail.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
We should point out they're not counting the original MVP, but that's okay. Jack and I do. And this 1985 version has all the elements that Oregon Trail is known for today, like customizing player names so you can get personalized updates. This version, it also uses the first complex simulation models for weather, health, and river conditions. You're crossing deep blue rivers.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
You're visiting Matt's General Store. And you're playing the 8-bit hunting game that lets you bag wild rabbit, deer, and bear like it's nobody's business. And there's also a rafting portion. That's added as the final challenge of the game, because every pioneer needs, you know, another way to die.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
After 14 years and countless hours of research and development, Oregon Trail is finally in its full glory, and generations of schoolchildren, including Nick and me, learn the proper spelling of cholera. But yetis, here's where things get fascinating. Because the Oregon Trail hits a sales milestone none of us knew about until we researched this story.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
It became the number one educational software product in all of North America. Oregon Trail, a game that started out as a first-year teacher's after-school project, has become the top-selling game on the continent. All of this is great news for Mac and for our buddy Dale LaFrenz, who by now has become the company's president.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
But Dale's reign as the king of this wild mountain, it's not going to last as long as he thinks. As anyone who's played the Oregon Trail has learned, when you're at your strongest is exactly when you lose a limb. This is the part of the story where the Oregon Trail makes a detour to Wall Street. Now, yetis, Jack and I should point out that Oregon Trail, it is a profit puppy.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
At this point, it represents one third of Mac's $30 million in annual revenue. So Oregon Trail, this game, it's driving $10 million in revenue a year. It is the jewel in their crown. Oh, and that crown is... It is looking pretty shiny. Since taking over as company president, Dale of Friends has mostly run MEC with a steady hand.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And ultimately, it became part of a $6 billion IPOS. So get ready because the Oregon Trail story features a visit from Pioneer Barbie and a buyout from a Shark Tank investor before Shark Tank was a thing. So Jack, let's load the wagon, pitch up the oxen, and increase our pace from steady to strenuous. Here's why the Oregon Trail is the best idea yet. From Wonder and T-Boy, I'm Nick Martel.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
In 1994, he oversees a successful IPO and watches MEC stock price double from $12 to $25 a share. That's right. Oregon Trail is publicly traded. Now, eventually, Mech and all its games, including Oregon Trail, gets gobbled up by a massive entity called the Learning Company. And guess who happens to run the Learning Company? Kevin O'Leary, pre-Shark Tank.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
That's right, Mr. Wonderful acquired the Oregon Trail. But the craziest move is yet to come. That is wild. Because in 1999... Mattel. Yes, that Mattel acquires the learning company for $3.5 billion. That is more than Google spent acquiring YouTube. We're talking about the learning company selling for $3.5 billion. In today's money, that's $6.6 billion.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Mattel, their CEO, they even floated the possibility of Mattel creating a line of educational software around Barbie, perhaps even incorporating Barbie into games like Oregon Trail. I feel like Ken would have struggled to fix a wagon wheel. The deal ends up being a terrible match for all. Estimates suggest that Mattel loses $1 million per day after the acquisition.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And as a result, Mattel's CEO gets ousted. She literally fails to survive the Oregon trip. But yetis, you know we're not going to leave you on a down note. We're going to make it to Oregon City, all right? And when we're there, we're going to hear that little... So, Mac may not have survived to see the 2000s, but the Oregon Trail's legacy is still surprisingly intact.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Despite falling out of circulation after the whole Barbie debacle, the Oregon Trail is back as an iPhone app, as a game for PS5, on Nintendo Switch, and on many, many free players around the internet. The Oregon Trail, it's not just about pioneers. It literally is a pioneer.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
It is a giant in the edutainment space, and so much of that credit goes to the game's original creators, Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger. None of these guys got rich off the Oregon Trail. or really got paid at all. But they were eventually celebrated by MEC as the game's originators.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
They even had a ceremony back in the 90s when the company presented the three guys with some custom embroidered jean jackets. Hey, I created the number one educational software in North America. And all I got was this lousy jean jacket.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
But Don has since said he hasn't lost a single night's sleep over pushing the enter button that day on Mech's computer when he gave up ownership of the Oregon Trail. Don has honestly said that it was just nice to be acknowledged.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
This single project that they spent 10 days on in college ended up selling more than 65 million units worldwide and reaching countless school kids, which is why it's been so successful, why it's been so memeable, and why it has been so iconic. So Nick, now that we've survived the story of the Oregon Trail, what's your takeaway, man? Here's my takeaway, Jack.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
The MVP is your MVP, your minimum viable product. It is your most valuable player because an MVP's job is to demonstrate a product market fit to your investors and to show your product designers how they can improve. And on both counts, the very first down and dirty version of the Oregon Trail, it did exactly that. We had our very own MVP, our own daily podcast.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
It actually started 12 years prior as a WordPress blog. Enough people read that first blog that we knew that we had something. And so we created a version two and a version three and a version four and then a podcast. And now this, our second podcast. And it all started with a $9.99 per month unpolished, logo-less WordPress blog. That was our MVP. And that MVP was our MVP.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
But Jack, what about you? What's your takeaway on the Oregon Trail? Mo' money, mo' problems. Nick, the Oregon Trail was never invented to make money, which is exactly why it ended up making so much money. That's why. By eliminating the question of how will this generate revenue, its creators were liberated from the distraction of monetization.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Instead, they focused on simply creating something that kids would love. And if something is powerfully loved by a user, they'll eventually turn into a paying customer. Yeah, Jack, that's how Google got started. They made the best search engine in the market, and they gave it all away for free before they had any idea how it would make money. Eventually, of course, they figured that part out.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And I'm Jack Kravici-Kramer. And this is the best idea yet. The untold origin stories of the products you're obsessed with and the bold risk takers who brought them to life.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
As Biggie Spall said, and Don Rawitch proved, mo' money, mo' problems. Okay, before we go, it's time for our absolute favorite part of the show, the best facts yet. The best little tidbits from our research that couldn't fit into the story, but we also couldn't wait to tell you. Jack, here we go. In the late 1970s, Don Rawitch published the complete program code for a version of Oregon Trail.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Basically, he open sourced the project. And that led to a whole lot of fun unofficial variants of the Oregon Trail. There's a zombie version called the Oregon Trail. There's an alien version called Overland. And the Banner Saga, which is a Viking version. Now with 50% more marauding.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
It is even a musical film adaptation of The Oregon Trail that is supposedly in the works, Jack, from the songwriters of La La Land. It's been pitched as a dark comedy, which makes sense when half your cast has yellow fever. Although, Jack, I can picture Gosling right now taping a bandage and all for it. He can tape my leg any time.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And finally, if you ever feel the need to experience the real deal for yourself, the National Park Service created the Oregon National Historic Trail. You can stop along the same route as the settlers across six states on foot, or if you're a real one, by covered wagon. Jack, which river was the final river that the settlers would cross on the Oregon Trail?
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Was it the Independence River, the Rushmore River, or the Yellowstone River? Shoot, I was going to say the Missouri River. Well, Jack, you're incorrect. It's actually none of the above. Which one is it? Oh, it's none of the above. That's the correct answer? Jack, we've got to end the pod. And that, yetis, is why the Oregon Trail is truly the best idea yet.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Coming up on the next episode of The Best Idea Yet, something probably all the actual settlers on the real organ trail wish that they had. The next episode of The Best Idea Yet is the delicious story of the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Yetis, to get episodes of The Best Idea Yet every week, remember to subscribe for free wherever you get your podcasts.
The Best One Yet
The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
We left a link in today's episode description to make it easy for you. Or just go and search wherever podcast app you're listening, The Best Idea Yet. New episodes drop every Tuesday. They're 45 minutes each on the products you're obsessed with. And we'll be back tomorrow with our usual daily T-boy show. See you then.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
If you like the best one yet, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us a little bit about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. We want to get to know you.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
It's mid-November in Minneapolis, and already the trees are bare. The wind whips bony branches across the windows of your cozy classroom. Standing at the blackboard, you're sweating under a coon skin cap and a stiff secondhand leather vest. You're playing the role of Meriwether Lewis, one half of the famed exploring team, Lewis and Clark.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And you're trying really hard to teach a room full of eighth graders about the Louisiana Purchase. All right, historical reenactment. I'm into it. One sec, Jack. I just gotta get my David Crockett costume. But the 13-year-old faces staring back at you are not vibing with your performance. One kid yawns. Another sniggers as he elbows his buddy. Look at this guy!
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
That's when you start to realize your immersive history lesson isn't landing quite the way you'd imagined. I mean, Jack, the kids, they know when something's cool and they know when something's cringe. That's the situation that Don Rawitsch finds himself in 1971. Don's just 21, barely older than the kids he's trying to teach. He's not even a full-fledged teacher yet.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
He's in the last year of his teaching degree at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, about an hour south of Minneapolis. But the junior high Don's been assigned to isn't in Northfield. He's working in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Minneapolis. In Mighty Duck's terms, I believe this is geographically District 5.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Don's trying to spice up his dull American history textbook using props and costumes to make history come alive. But so far, the history, it just feels like it's flatlining. Don's next unit is the Oregon Trail, the historic 2,000-mile route settlers took to emigrate west. It extends from Independence, Missouri to Oregon City, Oregon.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And in case you fell asleep in history class or you missed our Levi's 501 Genes episode, here's what you need to know. All right, Jack, let me set the scene for you. Late 1840s, thousands of gold rush prospectors poured into California. But another group of folks was also heading west. And these guys, they were the merchants, the fur traders, the missionaries, and the families.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Anyone who felt their circumstances would improve with a six-month grueling journey westward through purple mountains and fruited plains. For a few hundred miles, the prospectors and the pioneers were basically on the same trajectory. But somewhere around Idaho, the two paths split.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
This was a whole new concept, and the concept is called the reverse surprise party. So you invite all your friends to your party, but you don't tell them where it is. You don't tell them what it is. You just tell them to wear a tuxedo and look fantastic. So we showed up at the front of Nick's apartment, not knowing where we were going.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
The prospectors swung south along the California Trail, and the pioneers on the Oregon Trail, they split and went north. The travelers who went north to Oregon, they hunted their own food, repaired their own wagons, they faced diseases, supply shortages, flooded rivers, and if they failed to brave these obstacles, they die. This is some high-stakes drama.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And Don, our teacher back in Minnesota, he really wants to convey all of that to the students. If only he can make it exciting without coming off as lame. One day, as he drives home to his shared apartment, Don gets an idea. What if he were to ditch the whole dress-up game and try something more interactive? So once Don gets home, he grabs a long roll of white butcher paper.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
He spreads the paper out across the living room floor, and he gets to work. With a fat black marker, Don draws a squiggly line from one end to the other, representing the trail route from Independence, Missouri to Oregon's Willamette Valley.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And now Don starts to think he's on to something, so he sticks that pen cap in his mouth and he adds a series of squares across the map, each one representing historic forts and landmarks that players might land on via dice rolls. But this, this is a game, not just a map, and it needs another dimension.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
So Don starts thinking up period-accurate obstacles, and he jots them down on index cards, like broken wagon wheel, or your oxen died, or you just got bit by a snake, go back three spots, you need to find a doctor. Jack, these are like the chance cards that you get in Monopoly, right? Only instead of a luxury tax bill, you might get mauled by wild animals. Exactly.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And Don, he's getting super creative going back in time in his head for these. As Don is scribbling out these cards, two of his roommates come home. Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger. They're fourth-year teaching candidates, too. Bill and Paul teach math at a different public school. So Bill sees what's going on with this map on the table, and he tosses a frozen burrito in the microwave.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And he takes one look at Don's work in progress, and something just clicks. Bill has been taking some programming classes in an early computer language called BASIC. That's Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. And Bill also happens to be a fan of simulation games. So as he stares at Don's map that's laid out on the table, he offers a thought. Uh, cool game, bro.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Uh, wouldn't it be more fun, though, if you played it on a computer? Don's totally into the idea. Loves it. But he doesn't know code. That's okay, Bill says. I'll build the code for you. Don calls Paul over next, and Paul is on board, too. He volunteers to get in on this project as their debugger.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Jackets giving my uncle's got a barn, my aunt can sew the costumes, let's put on a show kind of vibes. Just one problem. Don's Oregon Trail unit is coming up really soon in the classroom. If they're going to build this game, they'll have to do it in 10 days.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Now, when we say Don, Bill, and Paul are getting ready to build a computer game together, you're probably picturing a cute little desktop computer, right? Wrong. Because this is 1971. They're using a machine called a teletype. This isn't technically a computer.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
It's more like a fancy typewriter with a printer attached, but it communicates via phone line with a huge computer mainframe the size of a Manhattan studio apartment. So the computer itself is off in some building somewhere, and the teletype is how you interact with the computer. It's kind of like a prehistoric internet.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And we all piled into a limousine and Nick told the driver what the destination was. Jack, this was the first ever reverse surprise party. One of many more to come. It might've been the best birthday party ever. Yeah, it created this entire concept of the reverse surprise party purely out of the one goal of optimizing and maximizing enjoyment.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Yeah, if Mark Twain was Googling something, he would use this teletype machine, Jack. But as old-fashioned as all that sounds, in 1971, this is like using an Apple Vision Pro. This machine is expensive, it's cutting-edge, and it's rare. In the school where Don teaches, there's only one teletype machine.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
So the trio used the one at Bill and Paul's school instead, housed in the janitor's closet, barely big enough for the teletype and a chair. But still, they're excited they have access to this huge cutting-edge computer. And what do they do, Jack? Bill handwrites the code, then gives the code to Paul to type into the computer. Don gives input on the history and the gameplay.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And together, they start coming up with the rules of the Oregon Trail. And here they are. This game will begin when you load up an imaginary covered wagon with imaginary supplies for your imaginarily scary journey west. We're talking food, oxen, extra clothes, and of course, you gotta bring ammunition. Because partner, you are gonna be hunting your own food.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Oh, and if you're wondering how they hunt game on a teletype with no graphics, Well, you type the word bang into the machine, and the game tells you whether you'll be feasting on venison tonight or not. With the supply squared away, it's your mission to make it from Independence, Missouri to Oregon City, Oregon. You'll answer a series of prompts spit out by the teletyped printer.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
How fast do you want to travel? How much do you want to spend on oxen? Do you want to eat A, poorly, B, moderately, or C, well? But yeah, this is a teaching game. So it gives tips on what effect each choice will have on your future. So eat too heartily and you're gonna exhaust all your supplies, man. But if you ration too harshly, then your party might starve. And don't forget those chance cards.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
The surprise obstacles that you might encounter, from snowfall to a knife-wielding bandit. It's going to make the game a lot more challenging and scary. Bill inflicts these surprise challenges using a randomizer code script, reflecting the unpredictability of life out on the Oregon Trail. I mean, Jack, you get a splinter on a Tuesday, you could be gone by Thursday.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Although, fun fact, one of the most iconic ways to perish in this game doesn't exist in this version one. Good point, Jack. The phrase, you have died of dysentery, won't make an appearance for several years, when it will then infect the brains of an entire generation of millennials. So yeah, it's super easy to die in this game. A little too easy.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
But if you do manage to stay on your feet, the teletype makes a celebratory ding. And the message appears, you finally arrived at Oregon City after 2,040 long miles. Hooray. When Nick says, hooray, he should have said it with more enthusiasm because in the type of this teletype machine, it said, hooray, five exclamation points. That's the reward you get for winning the game.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
An anticlimactic little ding and complete lack of visual animation. I mean, Jack, if I traveled 2,000 miles in a covered wagon and survived 13 different snake bites, I don't want a ding. I want a Gatsby party. I want the champagne. Pour me champagne. But hold the vote, Jack, because in this Minnesota teacher's side hustle of a game, we're not getting any of that.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
After 10 days of programming in the janitor's closet, Bill Heinemann, Paul Dillenberger, and Don Rawitsch declare their new educational game ready. It's time to turn it over to the mercy of Don's students. Which leads to the big questions. Will their sleepless nights pay off? Or will the Oregon Trail succumb to cholera before it even gets started?
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
You won't hear it often on a business podcast, but sometimes the best motivation to create a product has nothing to do with making money at all. Sometimes, products start with that same goal, to optimize and maximize enjoyment. Exactly.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
And most of all, Jack, is there a test at the end of this podcast episode? It's early December in those hectic weeks between Thanksgiving and winter break. Kids are already dreaming about vacation and teachers are racing to finish their grading. But for Don Rawitch, it's showtime. Never forget this date, December 3rd, 1971.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
Don rolls the school's only teletype machine into his classroom, and he dials up the school district's mainframe computer where Oregon Trail's 800 lines of code reside. Trying not to hold his breath, he introduces the game to his eighth graders, who, as we've established, can be a pretty tough crowd. Don divides the room into groups of five. so everyone can get a turn playing the game.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
The teletype only prints out about 60 words per minute or one second per word. What we're saying is that it takes five Mississippis just to learn that your oxen had died. So since each trail attempt takes half an hour, Don hands out paper maps to the rest of the kids so they can follow along with who's playing. And group one starts navigating their way across the virtual Oregon Trail.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
All right, Jack, ready to roll. What do we got? Right away, it feels like something special is happening. The kids start working together and leaning into their strengths. The kid who's good at math keeps track of spending. The one who likes maps, she decides whether to stop and explore or pick up the pace. And for most of these kids, it's probably their first time ever playing on a computer.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
This is a wild and exciting experience, so getting comfortable with technology is part of the lesson. But Jack, it's not just the tech that grabs them. It's the storytelling, the cutthroat bandits, the old doctor who comes calling when you get sick, and the sky-high stakes, because your whole party could perish at any given moment.
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The Best Idea Yet 🐂 Oregon Trail: Tricking Kids into Liking School Since 1971
It's this investment in the stakes that keeps Dawn students obsessively playing Oregon Trail. Nick, the bell rings, but no one is leaving. Can you imagine that? Class is over. Don is thrilled. He tells Bill and Paul that the game is a hit. The kids are having a blast. And naturally, they want to see it in action for themselves. So Paul and Bill introduce the game to their students.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Yetis, Nick and Jack here. We're still on Jack's paternity leave, although we'll be back very, very soon. Full disclosure, we recorded this before my paternity leave. Yes, we did. But in the meantime, we wanted to whip up something special for you. And that thing is The Best Idea Yet. The Best Idea Yet, our second show. It's weekly and it dives deep into the most viral products of all time.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
But Jack, when Joan and her team start screen testing some early segments for daycare audiences, they're shocked. Because when the Muppets are on screen, Totally dialed in. They're all over it. But when the action switches to the humans, the kids are kind of bored. No human adult can really compete with Kermit.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Now, this may sound like bad news, but this actually shows the beauty of real-world product testing. Feedback is a gift, and this is critical data to get before launching their show widely. Imagine if they'd filmed a dozen episodes without having this critical insight. So here's what they do. Jim Henson designs two special Muppet characters who will interact with the humans.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Think of these guys like Muppet diplomats to the human realm. The first one is a green meanie who lives in that irresistibly loud metal trash can. Oscar the Grouch. Oscar.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
As long as there have been screens, there have been kids trying to watch things on those screens. But get this. In the 1960s, one woman decided to harness children's fascination with screens and use it for something great. She wasn't a teacher and she wasn't a parent. She was a TV producer. And her creation paved the way for the golden age of screen time that you can feel now.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
But that next character that Jim designs becomes the key to this entire format. It's the Muppet who will become the show's tender, sensitive heart. The Muppet who's got a soul of a child and the height of an NBA center. The Muppet, known as Big Bird. Big Bird is made of turkey feathers dyed a brilliant yellow and sewn upside down onto an eight foot tall wearable puppet.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
But Jack, how do they make Big Bird come alive? Because it's actually a feat of engineering. The Muppet Puppeteer steps into Big Bird's giant bird legs, puts one hand into Big Bird's left wing, and operates Big Bird's head by reaching his right hand high up into the air.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
And it doesn't stop there, even if he's cramping, because he then has to use his pinky finger to move the eyelids so that Big Bird can blink, show surprise, worry, sadness. All those emotions are operated by an extended pinky finger. It's this kind of expressive detail that makes Jim Hansen's Muppets so magical for kids.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Now, at first, Big Bird is supposed to be some kind of a bumbling doofus, a clumsy character that smacks into telephone poles and has that big oversized head that keeps bonking things. But this does totally change when Jim Henson recruits one particular puppeteer by the name of Carol Spinney. Muppeteer. Muppeteer.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Carol is ex-Air Force, and he's a gentle soul that loves drawing and still feels like an overgrown kid himself. His mom named him Carol because he was born the day after Christmas. Carol is the reason that Big Bird evolves from clumsy clown to the sweet, naive picture of childhood innocence. Big Bird kind of becomes the proxy for Sesame Street's core audience.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Big Bird is the six-year-old who needs help navigating the world. Big Bird doesn't know why things are the way they are, so the humans around him have to patiently Explain it to them. But they're really patiently explaining to the kids watching the show. Oh, and by the way, Carol also plays Oscar, so he's doing a great double act.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
With Big Bird and Oscar now in the mix, Joan and her team screen some new scenes for test audiences. The difference is night and day. Oh, totally different. During every segment, the kids can't take their eyes off the screen. Muppets and humans together at last. So Jack, add it all up.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
After nearly three years of development, the idea that started in Joan Cooney's Gramercy apartment over a bottle of Chardonnay is almost a reality. The street looks great. The content, top notch. The puppets, fantastic. We finally have a show. All right, lights, camera. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay, yeah, yeah. There's one little thing we have to solve. Oh, you're kidding me.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
The show doesn't have a name. Joan Cooney, oh, she is stressed. She feels like she's about to lose her mind. It is May 6th, 1969. The sets, yeah, they're built. The shooting schedule, it is locked in. The press conference announcing her unprecedented, history-changing show, it's this afternoon. But Joan is worried about what she's going to say when people ask her what to call it.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Because this labor of love that she's been building for the past two years, alongside hundreds of staffers... they still don't have a name for it. Inside the writer's room, one of the writers sheepishly raises her hand. What if we make the name sound like a magic word or a pasky that opens up into another realm? Kids will like that. Like open sesame. Okay, that works-ish. I don't know.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Actually, the showrunner thinks that's the corniest idea he's ever heard. Yeah, we gotta workshop this thing and we don't have time to workshop this thing. Well, outside the room, Joan is done waiting. Oh, yeah. She sticks her head in and says, what's it going to be? Finally, the showrunner says, Joan, we're going to run with Sesame Street.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
One of the most iconic names in TV history is created at the buzzer because they're completely out of time. That's the power of a deadline. You kind of got to decide and commit. Sesame Street kicks off on PBS a few months later. Sponsored by the letters W, S, and E, and the numbers 2 and 3. Nonprofits, they don't have commercial sponsors. They just have alphanumerical ones.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Kermit is in the pilot episode. So is Big Bird, Bert and Ernie, Cookie Monster, and Oscar the Grouch. Starting lineup, I like the way it looks, Jack. Smooth. They even get a cameo from star comedian Carol Burnett for a little celebrity riz, a technique that Sesame Street will go back to again and again. But it's also fun to look at who's not there. Sesame Street launches without Grover.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Sesame Street taught us to read, to count, to process emotions, and to make friends with a guy who lives in a trash can. Bert and Ernie showed us what lifelong friendship is about. They're the original co-hosts. And Grover taught us that being a waiter is harder than it looks. Sesame Street has been on the air since 1969, the same year we landed on the moon, Jack.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
He's a season two edition. Oh, and Jack Count Von Count? You won't see him until season one, two, three, four seasons. Even Mr. Snuffleupagus doesn't show up until 1971. But this is The Pylon, episode number one. And as it airs, Joan Cooney and Lloyd Morissette hold their breaths. It's become so much bigger than they ever imagined.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
If it succeeds, they'll be able to reach thousands, maybe millions of children. But if it fails, educational television might just be called impossible. And kids will go back to singing jingles from beer commercials and Mentos ads. The stakes...
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
are high that's one of the risks that startup founders take when they're piloting a totally new concept like a whole new industry that didn't exist yet if it fails it can cast out not just on the startup that they launched but on the entire sector yeah it's like hey impossible hamburgers no pressure but the entire plant-based industry depends on you ipoing successfully
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Nick and I call this the future fallacy, when investors will disregard a viable concept because the first try didn't work out. And Jack, that's exactly what Joan is worried about right now. She feels the burden that the future of children's educational programming depends on her Sesame Street hitting it out of the pot.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
So Jack, after all this production, two years of work, everything's set, how do they do? Within the first few weeks, WGBH, Boston's public broadcasting network, receives more than 7,600 phone calls and 2,000 letters from parents and educators. who praise the show. Grab the rubber ducky and let's dive in. What are they saying, Jack?
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
People share stories of their little kids suddenly learning to count and singing their ABCs. According to the Educational Testing Service, Sesame Street is improving cognitive skills for underserved kids by as much as 62%. Kids are actually learning from TV. Jack, this is U-N-P-R-E It's unprecedented, baby. Yes, it is. TV critics, they're given glowing reviews of this whole new concept.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
And so do public figures like Jesse Jackson, Orson Welles, even the president of the United States at the time, Richard Nixon. Although that won't stop that president from later trying to cut Sesame Street's federal funding, but that's a story for another pot. The show is also producing at a pace that would make Dora the Explorer blush. Sesame Street is producing 130 episodes every 26-week season.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Sometimes they're doing five episodes a day. And it's not just the quantity. We got to talk about the money, Jack, because at this point in 1970, they're spending about $28,000 per episode. That's over $225,000 in today's money. And it's a lot compared to your average episode of Captain Kangaroo. Yeah, it's like Disney Channel money. But... What's the payoff for that investment?
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Well, they're also reaching an estimated 7 million children five days a week, year round, including reruns. I mean, Jack, that works out to about one penny per child. And that is a massive bargain. Joan Cooney and Lloyd Morissette are giddy with excitement. This is everything they dreamed of and more. But that dream is about to get interrupted because Sesame Street is about to get banned.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
That makes Sesame Street the longest-running children's TV show in U.S. history. The Simpsons? Eh, Sesame Street beat them by 23 years. Sorry, Marge. And since Sesame Street launched, it has helped educate more than 150 million children across 70 different languages in more than 150 countries. Jack, could you sprinkle on some more numerical context for us, please?
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Now, Jack, we said that Sesame Street's learning goals aren't just about letters and numbers, right? They're also about social skills, acceptance, being a good person, and how your friends don't have to look like you or have the same color skin. Well, the state of Mississippi, Jim Henson's birthplace, they ain't happy about that in the year 1970.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
So six months into Sesame Street's run, the Mississippi State Commission for Educational Television bailed Joan Cooney is devastated. She calls it a tragedy, both for the white children and the black children of Mississippi. But then, Joan's assistant gives her an update that lifts her spirit back up. Mississippi residents speak up about this.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Just like the letters of praise that flowed into that Boston TV station, suddenly, letters of protest start flooding the Mississippi Education Board. The commission members get so embarrassed, they actually reverse their decision after just 22 days. And a few months later, the Sesame Street cast visits Mississippi's capital to do some outreach. But Sesame Street's outreach doesn't stop there.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
and all-star voice actor and pronouncer James Earl Jones.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
The show also gets more diverse in later seasons. Ironically, after Mississippi banned them for too much diversity, Hispanic groups protest over the show's lack of Latino representation. So in season three, Sesame Street adds actors Emilio Delgado and Sonia Manzano to play Luis and Maria, the pair that run Sesame Street's fix-it shop.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
And in the coming years, they'll add a cast member who is deaf, Asian cast members, a Native American singer-songwriter, and a little boy with Down syndrome who changes people's assumptions about kids with learning differences. Of all the boundary-pushing shows on TV, it's the one for little kids, Sesame Street, that is breaking the most barriers.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
And being able to talk about hard things and deal with tough emotions, it's baked into Sesame Street's curriculum. But in 1982, something happens that's going to force Team Sesame to deal with hard things, whether they like it or not. It's quiet on set. The giddy, chaotic energy of a typical Sesame Street production, it feels muted.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
The day's filming is almost over, but the cast has one last scene to shoot. Inside Big Bird's suit, Carol Spinney gets ready for his big moment. Not with gleeful anticipation, but with sadness. The human actors take their places. They have an important task in front of them. They have to explain to Big Bird where Mr. Hooper's gone.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Well, add in the 300 million parents who are grateful that their kid had Sesame Street, and that means this show has impacted 450 million people. That's right. The number of the day is 450 million. This show, it broke barriers with a diverse cast and black actors in leading roles, which actually got the show banned in Mississippi in the 70s, which we'll talk about.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
The beloved actor, Will Lee, the guy who played the shopkeeper, Mr. Hooper, he passed away in December of 1982. So Sesame Street has a big decision to make. What to do about Will Lee's passing. They could write his character off the show. Mr. Hooper's in his 70s after all. It's easy to imagine him retiring to the Florida Keys.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
They also could pull a Dumbledore, Jack, and replace the deceased actor. But something about a casting swap feels wrong. The show exists to teach kids, right? Maybe this moment of human sadness, something every human will go through, is actually the exact topic Sesame Street should take head on. The more Joan and her team think about it, the more right it seems. Let's just tell the kids the truth.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
They actually consult with child psychologists to help them craft a script that breaks the news in a gentle but clear way. In the scene, Big Bird, who wants to be an artist, is handing out drawings he's made of all the grown-ups. Every adult on the show is there. Then Big Bird gets to the last drawing, the one of Mr. Hooper. And he starts looking around, but Mr. Hooper isn't anywhere.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Now, eventually, the adults step in, and one by one, they each gently explain what being dead really means. And Big Bird, he just can't accept that.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
The adults reassure him that David will make him milkshakes. They'll all take turns telling him stories. Slowly, Big Bird starts to understand, but he doesn't like it. It won't be the same. And everyone agrees, because it won't be the same. The actors only shoot one take. When Carol Spinney comes out of the bird suit, he asks for a towel because he's been crying.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
And honestly, when we first saw this scene, we started crying. Yeah. Sesame Street decides to air the episode on Thanksgiving 1983. And they do that so that children will be home with their parents to watch it together. But before the big day, the team test screens the segment at a daycare. They show it around pickup time so that the parents can catch it along with their children.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
When the scene is over, parents and kids physically reach out to each other for comfort, not in a scared way, but in a reassuring way. When the producers see that, they know they've done the right thing. Their answer is in the embraces. This moment foreshadows the way the Muppets, and the actors who play them, remember Jim Henson himself.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
In 1990, a sudden illness claims Jim's life too early at the age of 53. At Jim's memorial, Carol Spinney, as Big Bird, sings Kermit's favorite song, It's Not Easy Being Green. You can hear the emotion in his voice as he sings in character. And amazingly, you can even see it on Big Bird's face. Even when he's mourning his friend, Carol gives Big Bird an entire life of his own.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
The show experiences deaths and cast changes, which will always happen on a show that runs for 50-plus years. But this story isn't just about who's missing. It's about who gets added, too. That's right, because it wouldn't be a Sesame Street episode without a character so beloved that he even gets more fan mail than Big Bird, the Muppet who actually helped save the entire show.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Sesame Street also brought in A-list guest stars from James Earl Jones and Stevie Wonder to Carrie Underwood and Julia Roberts. But honestly, the real stars of Sesame Street? Muppets. These fuzzy, lovable, and totally alive-seeming puppets were created by the great Jim Henson and his workshop.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
It's time to bring out our cuddly buddy, Elmo. Now, Jack, put on your podcasting vest because we are about to meet Sesame Street's favorite red three-year-old, Elmo. Elmo first appeared on Sesame Street as a background Muppet in 1979. Basically, Elmo was in a few short scenes with no lines. But in 1984, this small red monster gets a new puppeteer named Richard who gives him a gruff, bossy persona.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
What? Puberty apparently hit Elmo like a ton of fluffy bricks. But Richard, that puppeteer, he hates performing Elmo. So one day, he's backstage in the green room, and in a fit of frustration, Richard tosses his hated red puppet to the new guy, a young puppeteer named Kevin Clash. He's just sitting there. He's studying a script. Maybe he's enjoying some fruit snacks.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
And then this furry red thing, boom, just comes flying into his face. Richard walks off. He's like, see what you can do with this thing, kid, because they're about to start taping. So Kevin's got a winger. And when cameras start rolling, he lets loose with something that hadn't been tried before with this little red Muppet, a soft, innocent voice that we've all come to know.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Phew, that is more like it. Now, ironically, that spontaneous voice choice, it actually becomes really strategic because Elmo is going to speak to the younger kids who are watching. If Sesame Street's target demo is three to five-year-olds, Big Bird is for the older siblings. Elmo's for the babies of the family. Yes, Sesame Street has segmented its customers like any business would.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
In fact, it's Elmo who rescues Sesame Street when their ratings and their finances take a dip. In the 1990s, the show starts losing market share to the kids' show disruptor of our youth. You know what I'm talking about? Barney, the big purple dino with the voice that haunts parents' dreams. He jumped into the kids' entertainment industry out of nowhere.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Sesame Street is struggling thanks to Barney, and its non-profit backers might have to sell to a big for-profit corporation. Outside buyers start to circle the children's television workshop, including the Walt Disney Corporation. But then, in 1996, a seemingly disconnected event will change everything.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
The comedian Rosie O'Donnell's daytime talk show starts booking a few Muppets, including Elmo, as regular guests. In the mid-90s, daytime talk shows are at the height of their powers. It's not just Rosie O'Donnell. Maury wants you to know that you ain't that baby's daddy. Ha ha ha! Oprah is giving away free cars to everyone who showed up to the studio that day. Daytime TV, it is thriving.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
We're talking Big Bird, Mr. Snuffleupagus, Oscar the Grouch, and the ultimate celebrity to toddlers everywhere, including my son Brooks, Elmo.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
And Elmo is getting guest spots on Rosie. That is a big deal. Then, to kick off the 1996 holiday shopping season, the toy manufacturer Tyco sends Rosie a gift. A nice gesture for all the press she's given the little red guy. And some savvy product placement. The toy that Tyco gives Rosie is a stuffed Elmo with motion and sound tech that makes Elmo laugh. When you press his belly.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
It's Tickle Me Elmo. Even if you never held one, you know exactly what we're talking about. You either love Tickle Me Elmo or he terrorizes your nightmares. Maybe we need a trigger warning before that clip. I don't know. Maybe we should throw that in. When Rosie shows this doll to her audience, it kicks off one of the biggest shopping frenzies in toy history.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Before the end of Black Friday 1996, every Tickle Me Elmo on the store shelves have sold out. These Elmo dolls turn out to be a huge success for Sesame Street. In the first year alone, Tickle Me Elmo grosses over $30 million in sales. Licensing its IP is right out of the Disney playbook. Classic Walt D. move.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
It kicks off a licensing business that today makes up 20% of Sesame Street's total revenue. I like those numbers. They're bringing Elmo and all the other cast of Sesame Street from the television to the toy aisle. So it is Elmo, Elmo of all the characters, who pulls Sesame Street out of their mid-90s financial funk.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Today, it's Sesame Street, the most surprisingly powerful story we've ever covered. As I read the script for this story, I cried. Yeah, twice. Also in the recording. And since Jack's about to return from paternity leave, we thought the timing of this was perfect. So Yeti, sit back, relax, and enjoy this sample of the best idea yet with our Sesame Street episode.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
And with hundreds of millions of dollars in fresh licensing and toy cash, they fend off their potential buyers, Disney included. Now, Disney does do a deal with the Muppets, which again, is not the same thing as Sesame Street. But the mouse will never catch Big Bird or the rest of Joan Cooney's creations.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Now, after this Tickle Me Elmo commercial moment, Sesame Street goes all in on Elmo programming. There's Elmo's World, a segment that runs for more than 140 episodes. And he even gets his own Elmo talk show, the Not So Late Show. The Not So Late Show. Elmo's got a bedtime. It's understandable. And this is a little concept that Nick and I called Let Your Winners Ride.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Me neither, Elmo, because you led Sesame Street to a mid-90s bounce back that also made toy history. Tickle Me Elmo is one of the best-selling toys of all time, with a chunk of sales going back to Sesame Workshop as licensing revenue. As a nonprofit, Sesame's mission is not to keep that cash, but to reinvest it. And its mission to teach kids has inspired other shows to do the same. That's right.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
When you have early signs that point to a top-performing product... Lean in, double down, and get that product out there. Let your winners ride. It's Elmo's world, and honestly, we're just living in it, Jack. Elmo goes on to inherit the big torch from Big Bird, taking on the hard subjects from homelessness to grief.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
And then, Jack, remember last year, Elmo typed his famous post-pandemic tweet into Twitter? Elmo is just checking in. How is everybody doing? I do remember that tweet. 221 million views of that tweet. It actually sparked a conversation about mental health post-pandemic. Elmo is an influencer in the most positive sense of the word.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Jack and I love doing the show because we get to go deep on the most viral products of all time. But Jack, this is the first time we've done a TV show, and we were curious if this would work. But by every critical metric, Sesame Street is a smash success no matter what industry lens you view it through.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Since 1969, it's won 221 Emmy Awards, 11 Grammys, and it became the first TV show to win a Kennedy Center Honor. Literally millions of children have learned their ABCs, their 123s, their yellow, blue, and their green because of this show. But besties, we also studied the financials.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
And despite the great programming and the great numbers, the 2010s brought some challenges for the Sesame Street business model. The rise of streaming hurts DVD sales, which were a major source of revenue for Sesame Street. Plus, dozens of new children's shows, many of them inspired by Sesame Street, are now competing for viewers.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
It's the attention economy, from Peppa Pig to Thomas the Tank Engine to Bluey. So after losing $11 million in 2014, the production company now called Sesame Workshop is in danger of shutting down. Then Sesame Workshop makes a controversial move. In 2015, this nonprofit partners with the very for-profit HBO, a premium channel better known for The Sopranos than for Singing Muppets.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
And that deal gives HBO a nine-month exclusivity window for new Sesame Street episodes. After that, they then air for free on PBS, just like before. Now, some critics and public television advocates worry that HBO might pressure Sesame Street to prioritize minutes watched instead of ABC's learned. Or that putting new shows behind a nine-month paywall will contribute to inequality.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
But this move follows a long-standing strategy of Sesame Street, to evolve along with families. Remember, Sesame Street was started because kids were way into television. So Joan, Lloyd, and their whole team brought a pre-K curriculum into broadcast TV. And when families turned to physical media like tapes and DVDs, you know what? Sesame Street pivoted there too.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Now kids are watching a lot of streaming stuff on the web and stuff on mobile devices. So Sesame Street adapted to be on those screens too. They are going to where the kids are and now it's online. The show is even growing an international audience on, get this, WhatsApp. You can be DMing right now at Grover. But Jack, I got another update for you.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
In December, HBO, now called Max, announced they were ending their partnership with Sesame Street. Season 55, that will be the last new season of Sesame Street to debut on Max. So as of this recording, Sesame Street is a bit of a free agent. But Jack, it is more likely that we'll be looking at another streamer stepping in, like Amazon or Netflix.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
We're thinking maybe Disney, who already owns the Muppets, by the way. Either way, we're hoping that Sesame Street finds a nice home to preserve its future. Well put, Jack. Because since that very first dinner party conversation back in 1966, Joan Cooney built Sesame Street into an educational powerhouse wrapped in entertainment.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
A show that helps children learn to read, to count, and to understand the entire world around them. And that mission, it is just as needed today. Now, Jack, today's story is brought to us by the letter T for takeaway. All right, so now that you've heard the Sesame Street story, what's your takeaway? My takeaway is about Trojan horse products.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Without Sesame Street, there'd be no Doc McStuffins, no Dora the Explorer, and no Bluey. This is the story about an unexpected trio of a TV producer, a psychologist, and a puppeteer built the ultimate Trojan horse learning product, bringing early childhood education to the masses in the form of an entertaining kid show.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Some of our best products are actually disguised as something else. Like when we hear Trojan horse, honestly, we often associate it with like sneaking in bad things. You know, like causing the fall of Troy in Greek mythology, classic. Or the fall of your computer because you clicked that phishing email that was actually a virus. Exactly.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
And for sure, yeah, sometimes they're sneaking in something bad. But Trojan horses, they can also smuggle in goodness too, right, man? Like with the Oregon Trail. It's ostensibly a video game from the outside, but on the inside, it's actually an interactive history lesson. Well, it's the same with Sesame Street, a Trojan horse product.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Joan's team smuggled in a curriculum that taught you the ABCs and 123s and a few lessons about tolerance and respect. It was all hidden inside sketches of Muppets and mayhem. Some of the best products actually that we've ever covered are disguised as something else. Beautifully said. Thank you, Jack. But Jack, I mean, what about you, man? What is your takeaway?
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
The only bets worth making are contrarian ones. In other words, being brave can be rewarded in the marketplace. When Sesame Street chose to deal with the death of Mr. Hooper, they won the hearts of parents and kids at a crucial moment for the show. Sesame Street made a contrarian bet that parents would appreciate the show's help discussing a hard subject with their children. And that bet worked.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Oh, it totally worked. I mean, it won't always work. That's why there are bets. But you'll never get ahead by making the same bet as everyone else. True. The only bets worth making are contrarian ones. Now, Jack, before we go, it's time for our favorite part of the show, the best facts yet. The best tidbits of info we couldn't fit into the story, but we also couldn't leave it without.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Why don't you kick us off right there? What do we got? Remember we said Sesame Street took a page or two from the Disney IP playbook? Well, that includes theme parks. In 1980, Sesame Place opened up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. With about 3 million visitors per year, Sesame Place's attendance is on par with your average Six Flags. You know, we actually did our fifth grade class trip there.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Did Elmo tickle you? I tickled Elmo. Never saw it coming. Another one, Jack? Bert's best pal might be Ernie, but did you know Bert actually had a twin brother named Bart? He's a traveling salesman, so you never really saw him. He was always on the road. Cookie Monster originally didn't only eat cookies. Oh, actually, in Sesame Street's pilot episode, I think he ate a letter.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
He ate W. But the show noticed that kids really connected with Cookie when he was focused on one single food. Finally, Sesame Street's original architect, Joan Ganz Cooney, is still alive and fabulous at the time of this recording. Her co-founder, Lloyd Morissette, he sadly passed away peacefully in 2023 at the age of 93.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
And Carol Spinney, who brought Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch to life, passed away in 2019 at the age of 85. And Jack Big Bird actually performed at Carol's memorial, just as he had at Jim Henson's. I'm crying again. I think we need to bring Cookie Monster back. Cookie Monster, you need to lighten the scene over here. And that. is why Sesame Street is the best idea yet.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Plus, we've got some intel on Cookie Monster's origin story that none of your playdates knew about. So, Jack, can you give me a countdown at the start of the episode? One, two, three. That's a count up. This episode is brought to you by the letter F for fantastic. Here's why Sesame Street is the best idea yet. From Wondery and T-Boy, I'm Nick Martel. And I'm Jack Kravici-Kramer.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
On the next episode of The Best Idea Yet, get ready to live moss. Porkay, we're about to take on Doritos Locos Tacos, or DLT, as they're apparently called. If you know, you know, and you're about to know. Woo, yetis. The tears come for you too. Oh, Kermit. Kermit. Besties, remember to subscribe for free to The Best Idea Yet wherever you get your podcasts.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
We left a link in the episode description to make it easy for you. Just search for The Best Idea Yet and tap to follow it. You'll get it every week. New episodes of the show drop every Tuesday. They're 45 minutes each on the most viral products of all time. In the meantime, we'll be back to our usual daily show tomorrow. Can't wait to see you then.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
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The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
And this is the best idea yet. The untold origin stories of the products you're obsessed with and the bold risk takers who brought them to life.
The Best One Yet
🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
It's a gray winter day in Manhattan, 1966. The snow has turned to black slush. The hot dog vendors, they're wearing mittens. But inside Joan Ganz Cooney's chic apartment, a block from Gramercy Park, a cozy dinner party is keeping our guests toasty warm.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
This quiet, tree-lined neighborhood, it's a far cry from the working-class brownstones and tenements that will one day surround 123 Sesame Street. But don't let the doorman or the French cooking fool you. Joan and her husband are outspoken advocates for the poor. Joan is a documentary TV producer for New York Public Television.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
She makes documentaries that make a difference, including one about a preschool in Harlem trying to close the achievement gap between Black students and their white counterparts. 1966 is three years since MLK's I Have a Dream speech. It's two years since the Civil Rights Act, and it's one year since President Lyndon Johnson created Head Start.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
a program designed to help preschool kids from low-income families. So there's a lot going on for civil rights right now. But there's still a huge gap between the haves and the have-nots that often breaks along racial lines. Because of unequal access to pre-K programs and other systemic inequalities, Black first graders are scoring lower on tests than 85% of their white counterparts.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
And this puts them about a grade level behind by the age of six. So Joan and her colleagues, they're constantly talking about this problem. In fact, one of tonight's dinner party guests is an expert on the subject. His name is Lloyd Morrissette. He's a mild-mannered child psychologist and vice president of the Carnegie Corporation.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Carnegie Corporation is a philanthropic foundation dedicated to learning. And Carnegie has been giving out hundreds of thousands in grant money to elementary schools. And it's still one of the largest education nonprofits in the country. Now, Jack, this is promising work, but honestly, each of their grants, it's only reaching a few hundred kids at most. Their efforts aren't scaling.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Meanwhile, there is something that has scaled, and it's reaching millions of American children every day. You know what I'm thinking? Yeah, it's television. In 1966, more U.S. households have TVs than bathtubs. Or daily newspapers. Okay. There's more families with TVs than with telephones. Kids, they're watching on average 55 hours of TV a week. They're learning all the commercial jingles.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
They're driving their parents crazy. Soccer boppers, goldfish, you name it, they got it memorized. When I was eight, I got banned from singing the Goldfish commercial in the house. So at this dinner party, Joan is refilling everyone's Chardonnay while her husband is clearing the beef bourguignon when Lloyd Morissette begins telling a story about his three-year-old daughter named Sarah.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Nick, as you know, I decided to go to Paris this summer. Not just with Alex. We brought both boys too. Bold move. We should point out these boys are under four years old. And we had four seats next to each other in the middle of the huge airplane. And everyone loved you on that airplane, didn't they? Well, you know, we whipped out the nuclear option. iPads. Yeah. The cheapest babysitter there is.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Early one morning, before anyone else was up in the house, Lloyd actually found her in the living room watching the test pattern on the TV. It's like the test signal that comes before the show starts. She would watch literally nothing on TV rather than read or play. And that's concerning. It was concerning. Now, as Lloyd sees it, there are two seemingly distinct problems going on.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
First, kids from low-income families aren't getting access to preschool. And second, all kids are addicted to TV. So Lloyd asked the question to the dinner table. What if there was a way to take the second problem and make it a solution to the first problem? Interesting, Lloyd. Go on. What if we can solve inequality in schooling... through television.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
And then Lloyd turns to his host, Joan, and he asks her a question that's gonna change both of their lives and the lives of millions of future viewers like you. Do you think television can be used to teach young children? The question hangs in the air. All eyes are on Joan. The table is silent. The Chardonnay is getting warm. And she answers, I don't know, but I'd like to talk about it, Lloyd.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
They don't know it yet, but they will keep talking about it for the next 50 years. So Joan and Lloyd, they are fired up and ready to go. But they're in the nonprofit world. So instead of funding rounds and pitching VCs with PowerPoint decks and one-pagers, their next step is two years of deep research and painstaking grant applications.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
And in 1968, Joan and Lloyd create the Children's Television Workshop, a new production company for their new show. Time to get out the metaphorical finger paints and start planning. This new show will be an hour long. It will air weekdays on public television stations nationwide.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Their target audience will be kids aged three to five, spanning all socioeconomic backgrounds, including kids in low-income homes. Because kids' attention spans are pretty short, they model this TV program on popular magazines. Instead of one long plot arc like you typically watch on TV, there will be many short segments from puppetry and animation to short films and songs.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
This kind of show has never been tried before. Most kids' programming is either vapid and silly like Howdy Doody or so boring that you'd rather help your parents fold laundry while eating broccoli. This is the era before Legends of the Hidden Temple. They're trying to give children who don't have access to pre-K education, pre-K education for free on TV.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
They want to make something fun to watch, but with a hidden curriculum of literacy, early math, and social skills like tolerance and understanding. It's kind of like frosted mini-wheats. Healthy whole wheat on one side, but frosted deliciousness for the kid in you on the other side. Exactly. Joan hires two groups of experts to pull this off.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
On the one hand, she's got the academics to create the show's learning goals. That's the whole wheat side. And she's got the seasoned TV pros who can bring the curriculum to life. That's the frosted side. But, Jack, there is one problem. Those two groups I just mentioned, they don't get along. The scholars are all about curriculum. They're thinking, who cares about writing jokes and punchlines?
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
We're trying to teach children how to count. But on the other hand, the creators are thinking, hey, the slapstick jokes, that's how you keep the kids watching with those short attention spans. So Joan needs to find a way to unify these two sides for the show to work. And that's when we get to meet a man who's about to change the entire conversation. His name is James Maury Henson.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
We don't love pulling out the iPad. That's going to do it. But the worry is, is that going to make them hooked on the iPad? It's like on the one hand, the iPad deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for kids. On the other hand, it's completely destroyed their brains. I try to find like educational content that will keep them occupied on the screen. Right, right, right.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
But you know what? You can just call him Jim. Born in Mississippi, raised in Maryland, Jim Henson grew up obsessed with television. But he wasn't a great singer. He couldn't dance, and he had acne scars he was sensitive about. So as a teenager, he taught himself puppeteering as a way to get on TV.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
He then began inventing dozens of characters out of felt and fluff, and he called them a mashup of marionette and puppet. He called them puppeteers. Muppets. In 1955, while in college, Jim starts making puppets. Muppets, Muppets. Sorry. Yeah, you got it. Jim starts making Muppet content for local TV, performing short sketches with characters that include a weird reptilian character with round feet
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
known as Kermit. Now, before you fact-check us, zoologists, Kermit doesn't officially become an amphibian until a few years later. At this point, he's a cold-blooded rat, though. And before long, Jim Henson's Muppets are making national appearances on the Today Show and the Ed Sullivan Show. Kermit is a rising star. But he's got to make money on these puppets, man. And how's he pulling that off?
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Jim takes his talents B2B, creating Muppets for advertising campaigns. He makes a dog named Rolf who sells Purina dog food. Adorable. And a certain monster of cookies to sell snacks for general foods. He's going to wreck some cookie crisps. So Jim Henson's a big deal even before he arrives onto Sesame Street. And there are a couple reasons why these Muppets get so popular.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Before Jim, puppeteers on TV would always be visible on camera. Ventriloquist dummies, they were shown sitting on the performer's lap. You saw the human performer. But on Jim Henson productions, the cameras zoom in to show just the Muppets themselves. So the viewer automatically thinks of the Muppets as real characters. And another reason people love the Muppets, it's mischief.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
I didn't know this, but Jim Henson is often thought of as this cuddly guy who loves kids, but he's actually got a wicked sense of humor. Get this, he makes sketches where one Muppet eats another Muppet. Animuppization. Or one where one of them explodes. These Muppets are rule breakers. Rated R. And nothing makes little kids laugh like a character who's being naughty.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
But the Muppets can also be caring and vulnerable, which kids also love. The contrast of sweetness and rule breaking, it's exactly what Jo needs on her creative team. Maybe, just maybe, Jim can unite the professors and the artists who are working on this groundbreaking project but just haven't been able to get along. So Jim is invited to a seminar that Joan is hosting at the Waldorf Hotel.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
But Joan has no idea what Jim looks like. And she sees this tall, stringy guy in leather with long hair and like a hippie beard. He kind of looks like a war protester. Should we call security? Joan is a little concerned about the situation. Like, who is this dude? That's no radical. That's Jim Henson. So Joan goes from stressed to hopeful.
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Is Baby Shark really going to teach them quantum physics? I don't know. It's worth a shot, honey. Now, Nick, this feels like a modern problem. It does. But it actually goes way back. Before TikTok, before smartphones, all the way back to the earliest days of television, every parent has been dealing with this screen dilemma.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
This bearded, creative genius of a man might just be the key to bringing her show's academic and entertainment goals together. So with Jim on board, the team rallies together. He's the uniting element that Joan needs. Yes, we're ready to go, Jack. Lights, curtain, I'm ready. They actually need one more thing. Oh, what's that? They need a show. Oh, that's key. 1969 is a mad flurry of production.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
No more dinner parties. Joan, she's got a show to make. The first thing is to set the location. And Sesame Street breaks with decades of television tradition. They don't build some suburban paradise with big lawns. Their setting is an urban street. A dark, worn, kind of dirty urban street. Based on locations in Harlem, the Bronx, and the Upper West Side.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Like it's a weathered brownstone with a stoop that sits at center stage. And that's where our main characters are going to hang out. Growing up, these are the kind of brownstones I was walking by. This was reality in New York. And this set, it turns out to be kind of a miracle. Because it's relatable to city kids, of course. But it's not some scary wasteland to suburban or rural kids either.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Neighbors here talk to each other. The sidewalk cracks? That's the street's personality. And the bodega owner remembers the kids' names. See, Jack, this cheers for five-year-olds, which means that when it comes to casting the show, the showrunner, he's actually got a dual mission. Hire talented, compelling actors who also reflect the diversity of the country.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
There's a black couple, Susan and Gordon, who own the brownstone that's at the center of the action. There's a young white guy, Bob, who teaches music. And an older white guy, Mr. Hooper, who runs the soda shop across the way. Now, Jack, that's like half the cast.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
Because remember, while the human beings are being cast, Jim Henson and his workshop are hard at work creating a new species of Muppets to inhabit this Sesame Street world. There's Kermit, of course, who by now has graduated from generic lizard to actual frog. And there's Rolf and the monster of cookies, who is now Cookie Monster.
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🌆 Sesame Street: The Trojan Horse of TV
And they've been liberated from their commercial obligations to now perform in this TV show. The show also gets Bert and Ernie, the Ego and Id pals who rent the Brownstones' basement apartment. Now, originally, the plan was to keep the Muppet segments separate from the human characters.
The Best One Yet
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Every big moment starts with a big dream. But what happens when that big dream turns out to be a big flop? From Wondery and At Will Media, I'm Misha Brown, and this is The Big Flop. Every week, comedians join me to chronicle the biggest flubs, fails, and blunders of all time, like Quibi.
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🐣 Peeps: A Backroom Marshmallow Mystery
Find out what happens when massive hype turns into major fiasco. Enjoy The Big Flop on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Big Flop early and ad-free on Wondery+. Get started with your free trial at wondery.com slash plus.