Chapter 1: What is the history of Play-Doh as a wall cleaner?
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I'm Stephen Curry, and this is Gentleman's Cut. I think what makes Gentleman's Cut different is me being a part of developing the profile of this beautiful finished product. With every sip, you get a little something different.
Visit Gentleman'sCutBourbon.com for your nearest Total Wines or BevMo. This message is intended for audiences 21 and older. Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, Boone County, Kentucky. For more on Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, please visit Gentleman'sCutBourbon.com. Please enjoy responsibly. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan?
Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link.
But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Ho, ho, ho, everybody. Santa Chuck here, continuing on with our 12 Days of Christmas Toys playlist. I'm going to stop doing that silly voice because I'm not Santa Claus. I'm just Chuck, and I am here to introduce... It smells good. It tastes good. I just hope it sounds good. That salty goodness of Play-Doh, how Play-Doh works.
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Chapter 2: How did Play-Doh transition from a cleaning product to a children's toy?
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is the first of two Stuff You Should Know's that we're recording today. My voice already sounds weird to me. What do you mean? It doesn't sound a little weird, you know, like when we get toward the end of the second one or it gets a little... Like worn out or something?
Yeah, like it's been extruded through a Play-Doh fun factory.
Okay.
Was all that a setup, or do you really feel that way? That was off the cuff, baby. Okay. No, it doesn't sound weird to me. Your voice never sounds weird unless you're sick. Jerry, judgment call? Yeah, Jerry broke your tie. She sided with me. Well, Jerry wears headphones, but you and I fight the broadcasting business by being the only people that don't wear headphones. Or cans. I never get it.
I'm like, you're two feet from me. Why do I need headphones? I know, and I don't want to hear myself anyway. I don't want to hear myself better. No. It's terrible. It sounds like torture. How about this for a new SYSK t-shirt? No more cans. Okay. Just have a little X through some headphones. I think when you make a stuff, you should know decree from now on.
We should have like a fairy wand sound effect.
Yeah.
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Chapter 3: What are the key ingredients in Play-Doh?
Where you're just like, here's this for a new t-shirt. I decree it be made into existence.
Yes.
Yeah, we're going to, by the way, since I mentioned it, we're going to have some new shirts coming soon. Yeah. Some fan designs even. Yep. Pretty exciting. And we do have some now that people can go buy if you want. Yeah, I like those first designs we had. Well, let's just have this out on the air. It's not an argument, but let's have this discussion.
Are we going to retire the original six from the contest, or should we just let them keep going in perpetuity? Oh, unless there's a reason, I think perpetuity is the way to go. Because someone might like the dancing, I don't even know what we call that. The skeleton woodcut? Yeah, parade of dancing skeletons. The macabre parade, that's what I would call it. Yeah. All six of them were excellent.
The baby with the fly on its forehead. Still my all-time favorite. Yeah, it's good stuff. If you don't know what we're talking about, go to stuffyoushouldknow.com, our venerable website, and in the top navigation, there's a store button, and it will take you to our store, and you can see with your own very eyes what the heck we're talking about. That was off the cuff. Yeah, it was.
I wasn't like, ooh, we got to plug the t-shirts. No, no, no. You very rarely say things as fretfully as that. Okay.
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Chapter 4: How does the chemistry of Play-Doh work?
Chuck. Yes. You want to talk about Play-Doh? Yeah. We promised to do this recently, and here we are. Yeah. In my defense, it was already on the list. Oh, wow. So it's not like I'm at the beck and call of anybody. It's like, do Play-Doh, do this, do that. No. It was already on the list. Dance monkey. Right. Did you play with Play-Doh a lot when you were a kid? Oh, I played with it. I ate it.
I don't recall eating it. I do specifically recall eating the paste that was an off-brand that had a purple pirate on it. Oh. He was a pirate wearing a purple hat, and I think maybe he had an orange parrot. Yeah, was the paste, did it have a, on the inside of the lid, did it have a applicator attached to it? Yes, yeah. I totally ate that paste. That was the best tasting paste on the planet. Yeah.
As a matter of fact, I think that paste might have been manufactured in part to eat. Like it's gruel served to kids, some bad kids. Yeah, actually, I want to revise my statement. I licked and tasted Play-Doh. I don't remember, like, swallowing it. But I remember, like, you know, tasting it and then maybe even putting it in my mouth and spitting it back out. But I don't think I didn't swallow.
I got you. Yeah. I never, I don't think I ever ate Play-Doh in any form or fashion, but... The scent of it, it's unmistakable. Unmistakable. It's so unmistakable, in fact, that apparently back in 2006, Hasbro threw a year-long celebration for Play-Doh, which it owns, which it bought off of Kenner, which Kenner bought from a dude named Joe McVickers. Actually, they bought it from Tonka.
Chapter 5: What innovations have been made in Play-Doh products over the years?
Tonka bought it from Kenner. Oh, yeah, how did I forget Tonka? And for this 50th birthday party, they had a scent, a Play-Doh perfume released that smelled just like Play-Doh. Can you buy that, I wonder? I looked, and I think you can get it, but I don't think as easy as you could back in 2006. Yeah, I wouldn't want to wear it. I was just curious. I think, yeah. Nostalgia.
I would like to smell it, but don't spray that stuff on me. I don't think you're supposed to wear it. Oh, is it just like one of those things? It's a mood stabilizer. Okay. You know what I mean? Yeah. Spray it in front of your face and you just go, oh, yeah, okay.
Yeah, like rose water.
Maybe I should put this lead pipe down and rethink things. Right. Remember when I was a kid and less violent? Right. Somebody give me some paste to eat. They should do that. Well, back when you were a kid, did you know much about the origin of Play-Doh? Oh, no, not at all. I didn't either until today or yesterday when I started researching this.
Plato, everyone, and in this article by Tracy Wilson who hosts Stuff You Missed in History class, she says that it's lore, but I've seen it all over the place. And from what I understand, it's the truth. I think it's the truth. There's a dude named Joe McVickers who had a company and his company produced, from what I understand, McVicker's invention, which was wallpaper cleaner.
Yeah, his father and uncle started it, and they were called Coutole Products, and it was a soap company, but their big seller was this wall cleaner because when we heated our homes with coal, your house would get coal soot on the walls, which is really weird to think of now. Yeah, but it's true. And your wallpaper can still get dirty. Grease from cooking things, food fights, whatever.
Your wallpaper can get dirty. Let's just face facts, everybody. And McVicker's company had this putty. It was kind of a pliable, gooey putty that you slapped up against the wallpaper and rolled up and down.
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Chapter 6: How can you make your own Play-Doh at home?
And it just took that soot or that grease or that spaghetti sauce clean off. And it was wallpaper cleaner. And it was doing okay, I guess. I don't think they were hurting necessarily. But Joe was married to a woman? Or his sister-in-law was a teacher? In Cincinnati. Yeah, they sold a lot of this stuff for a while, but then natural gas came around, and so they fell upon hard times. Right.
But Joe took over from Cleo. Cleo was his father. And his sister-in-law, Kay Zufall of New Jersey, read about kids that were making... Christmas ornaments out of that stuff. And she said... Out of the wallpaper cleaner.
Yeah.
And much like kids do today with Play-Doh. And she said, hey, you know, we're hurting. Why don't we try and turn this stuff into a toy? And... They did so, and in 1950, he made a non-toxic version, added some almond scent, and you had your first little off-white Play-Doh. Yeah, kind of exactly what you would think of when you think of a gummy-colored dough. Yeah. Off-white. Khaki, almost. Yeah.
And McVicker was a pretty smart dude as far as business goes. He donated a bunch of cans to the Cincinnati City School system. And so got these little kids hooked on Play-Doh. It was a huge hit, but it might have just been a regional hit if he hadn't have approached a dude named Captain Kangaroo. He went to, what is Captain Kangaroo's name, Bob? Bob Keeshan, I think.
Bob Keeshan, nice memory, Chuck. I pulled that out from, I don't know how many years ago was the last time I heard that name. He, well, did you watch Captain Kangaroo? Oh, yeah. Me too. Huge fan. Loved Captain Kangaroo. I liked Captain Kangaroo more than Mr. Rogers. I liked them both.
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Chapter 7: What are some fun facts about Play-Doh?
But, yeah, I think I might have been, yeah, Captain Kangaroo a little bit more. It was a haircut. And I was Electric Company over Sesame Street, I mean. Yeah, I liked both, but I liked Electric Company more. Yeah. But I liked Pinwheel most. I didn't watch that. It was for real little kids. Oh, okay.
Anyway, Captain Kangaroo had a show, and Joe McVicker somehow got in contact with Captain Kangaroo and said, hey... I have a little deal for you. We've got this awesome stuff. The kids in Cincinnati are crazy for it. We're calling it Play-Doh. Right now it's in off-white, or it used to be, but now we have four colors, red, blue, yellow, and white.
Those are the four original colors of Play-Doh, by the way. And he gave some to Captain Kangaroo and said, I will give you 2% of gross sales if you mention this on your show two times a week. He played with it. Bob Keishon was a money grubber. That's what we all know. I think he believed in this product. Yeah, and he's a smart guy.
He is, and he believed in it so much that he upped the number of mentions without any additional compensation from two times a week to as many as three times a week. He would play with Play-Doh on TV, and it just took off like a rocket from there. Well, that was his additional compensation. That he got free Play-Doh? No, he had a percentage, so.
Oh, yeah, you're right.
You know what I'm saying? You're right. But it suggests that he believed in it. That's right. He did believe in it. Man, do not shatter my image of Captain Kangaroo. I'm not saying he just wanted to make more money. Of course not. Isn't that the show that Mr. Green Jeans was on? Yeah. Big fan of that guy, too. They formed the Rainbow Crafts Company.
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Chapter 8: How has Play-Doh influenced childhood creativity?
They wanted to take it out from under the Kutol Products banner. And got famous wildlife artist John Ruthven to design that first package with... Originally it was very briefly, it was an elf. And those I think are probably, if you have a can of that, it's probably in a museum or something. That wasn't around long. And then they went to Plato Pete, the kid with the smock and the beret.
Because all little kids wore berets and smocks back then. Or you wore your dad's dress shirt backwards. That made a good smock too. Yeah, the one he didn't want anymore. Or that you thought he didn't want anymore, but he really got mad at you because you got paint on it. That's my good short-sleeved dress shirt. And finally, it took all the way until 2002.
Did the Herbal Elvis wear short sleeve dress shirts? Really? With slacks and ties. Yeah, my dad usually as a principal wore a coat. But when you take off the jacket and you've got the short sleeve on, that's something else. With a blue felt tip pen, a red felt tip pen, and a green felt tip pen in his pocket, front pocket. That was your dad? Yeah, he was a mechanical engineer.
Oh, so each one had a different use. Yeah. Interesting. Plus, I think he also just thought they were pretty. Yeah. They made his shirt pocket pop. That's where you get it, your shirt pocket thing. Right. All right. It took until 2002 for that beret to become a baseball cap. And then now he's just gone. Yeah, I was looking. He's not around anymore at all, is he? Not at all.
Now it's a can with arms, and the lid's kind of pulled back, and in between the rim of the can and the top of the lid are a couple of eyes. It looks a bit like a garbage can, but it's obviously a Play-Doh can, but just kind of, I don't like it. I like Play-Doh Pete, the kid with the beret. Yeah, me too. He was great. That's what we grew up with, is nostalgia.
Yeah.
Yeah, but he was around for a really long time and now they just do away with him. Like he's nothing. That's another shirt. Bring back Plato Pete. Yeah. We'll get sued. Yes. Although I didn't get the impression that they were too terribly litigious. Well, plus we could tell them, we sold nine t-shirts, here's your $73. Here's your 2%. So Play-Doh, we all played with it.
It was fun for modeling, but it was not like, if you were like me, your hopes were dashed a bit when you modeled something and left it out overnight because you thought it would make it into a permanent exhibit. Yeah. But it would really just kind of break apart. It's not like you can't cure it like you do modeling clay. No, I was on Plato's site and they readily admit that.
Yeah.
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