Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w. Chucky Bryant, and there's Jerry uh the Delicious dish rolland and this is Stuff you should Know, the vintage nostalgia addition that went off to China and then got sold to a different company edition. So do you want to have a rough list of classic toys we've covered? You wanna hear it? Oh? Lay it on me. I'm sure I've missed something, but it did help me think of some more that we should do. It. Slinky, we did slinky. Oh yeah, we did slink. Okay, yeah, Lego Oh yeah, of course. Barbie sure, her boyfriend g I Joe. Yeah, that was a good one. Sorry, wait a minute, Wait a minute, I'm sorry. Did we just specifically do a G I Joe winner in Action figures one? I think both. We definitely did action figures, although probably not. Okay, go ahead, I'll cross check that. Hot wheels, So so this is a made up list, is what you're saying. Hot wheels? Ye, I'm glad you didn't. You didn't call it hot wheels. Easy bake oven m play dough, silly putty. All right, do you count boomerangs? Yes, sure, do you count Monopoly? Yeah, Yo yos. Of course, Hula Hoops. I knew Hula Hoops was after Yo Yos. I just knew it. Teddy Ruxpan, we we covered him in our Christmas show this year. Oh yeah, that's a deep cut right there. And then that's all I have. But um, I could have sworn we did it on Frisbees, but I cannot find it. Yeah. I feel like we did Frisbees too, because I think we talked about like frall for something at some point. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's out there and I just didn't or maybe it's under a flying disc or something. Oh that's possible. Yeah, we made that joke about calling it a novelty flying disc because Frisbee, like used to see everybody who called anything else to Frisbee. Maybe I'll have to look, but that there's probably more out there. But that's a solid you know, twelve or thirteen. That's pretty good, which leads us to edge sketch. Yes, one of the hundred top hundred toys of the century, according to UM, I want to say not the toy Hall of Fame. It's just in the Toy Hall of Fame. Kid who makes lists online? All right, Uh, this is the hundred best toys of the century. This is the hundred best guitar solos of the seventies. Oh man, I'd love to do a show on that. That would be pretty cool. I can't remember who named that that who made that list, but it's a high honor. It's a high accolade, even if we can't remember who came up with it. Like, it just catches the ubiquitous toy. Everybody knows what an that just sketches unless you go to France and then they'll say, oh, you mean like cro magic and you you might say, like, well, why would they have anything to say about the extra sketch in France? Turns out, buddy, the a just sketch is actually French in origin. Did you know that before this? I did not. I didn't either, because it seems like super American, you know, it looks like a TV and just feels like pure Americana. So when I realized I had some French stank on it, uh, my dreams were dashed. You like, it smells like champagne and cheese. Which is kind of pleasant. No, I didn't really care. I thought it was I thought it was great. Sketch, erase and sketch again. The logline that will forever be tied to this really interesting little toy. And um, I can't remember who it is in this article, but they were interviewing different folks. I think it was someone from the company commented, and I totally agree that, like, it's amazing that today, in in the digital world and Bluetooth and WiFi and video gaming as it is, that this little um low fi toy that doesn't even have batteries in it, much less hook up to the internet is still like super popular and still has a little bit of mystique. And I agree with them, And I think the reason why one of them is like you look at it and you're still kind of like, how does this thing work? Right, Well, we're going to ruin that mystique for everybody because we're gonna explain how it works actually in this episode. But hopefully it won't affect that just sketch sales, because we love I just catch you know, all right, should we go to France? We will go to France sometime. It's apparently not clear whether it was nineteen fifty five or nineteen fifty six, But in a little town called Vitry Sir Sin, which means Victory on the Sin River, there was a company called what was the name of the company, chuck uh lynn crusta company name. It is a terrible name. But the reason they called themselves that is because Lynn Crusta is a type of wall covering that was really popular in the nineteenth or early twenty centuries. You know, like, have you ever been into an old, creepy, abandoned house and like the walls are covered in what looks like dimpled tin with like some weird patterns to it or whatever. M m no, but keep going, Okay, So where if you you could rub your hand over it's very much it's like heavily embossed. Sometimes it's painted and it's just imagined. That is like Wayne scouting in the house. That is Lynn Crusta. And so that is one of the two things that this company made in the fifties, Lynn crusta wall coverings and artificial leather that is really neither here nor there, but I could I was with you. I was like, what kind of a name is that for a company. I looked it up. They just basically be like if you and I called our podcast podcast, because that's what we did, was make podcasts, crust pod Crusta, just the name crust Anyway. I think I know what you're talking about because I have, uh we have a pie safe that has that metal tin stuff. But it's I've never seen it on a wall, but I bet it's about the same thing, virtually the same thing. Yeah, okay, so that's link Crusta and that's where this guy worked. His name was Andre Cassagnas. Well, if it's French, wouldn't it be uh Caissan is that pronounced? Yeah, I think you just nailed it. Actually, Andre Cassong. Well that's what we're gonna call him. And we have gone back in time. You didn't know fifty five or fifty six, I say we go to fifty four. Just play it safe, setup shop in France and maybe get some emails done. Alright for a couple of years. Why not we could use a break um because you know, podcaster burnouts a real thing. Really, we're dropping, We're dropping like flies, all right. So he's working in this factory. It's north of Paris, and they are making these uh wall coverings like you're talking about. And he this is a little confusing how this actually happens if you ask me, or at least the way that the first article put it, it's confusing. Oh you're leaving it to me. I noticed by your by your pass after that, well, I mean no, let's let's I'll start it. But I just still don't quite get it. He marked up with pencil on a see through decal, so like he was putting on an electrical plate, um like a light switch. And on that plate, like many things, has like a little see through plastic that you peel off. Um, so he was writing on that he peeled it off. But then that's where it loses me. It's to exactly what took place. So okay, remember this is link Crusta and they make metal wall coverings, which means there's metal dust in the air, metal shavings everywhere, right, all of them are. Um that's what's crazy. This guy made it to that ripole age of eighty six after breathing that for years. But um, so there's there's metal dust everywhere, including on this electrical switch plate that he's installing. And I guess the decal against the plate. And I think what happened was when he marked on the decal and pulled the decale off, he'd seen that he had disturbed the metal shavings that were stuck to the underside of the decal. Do you see what I mean? Like he he had disturbed the shape, so so there was like the whole decal is coated in a metal dust. He marks on it with a pencil and the impression that he makes like gouges out lines on the backside the decal. But I know it's really tough. It was magic. Basically, this man witnessed a feat of magic that still cannot be explained to this day. And that's where he got his idea for the etch just sketch amazing. So a big, big moment he has that that literal lightbulb that goes off of his or I'm not literal of course, light bulb above his head, although you never know, there may have been a light bulb in that factory right above his head. Why not? Uh? And he said, all right, this is uh, this, this can be something. He however, did not have a lot of money to sink into this weird idea, and so he had to partner with somebody with money, man named Paul uh Chase c j z E or maybe Shaw's if he's French. And this guy had some dough because he owned a plastic injection molding company. This is like early on, I wonder if we could count. That's a toy, the the little plastic machines that spent out little plastic guitars in Chicago and it zoos. Yes, Rama, that would definitely count. Yeah, that goes on the list. Yeah, so he didn't. It wasn't mold rama, but it was plastic injection molding that this guy made his money from. Uh. And this where things get a little confusing historically because, uh, the man who his accountant, his name was Arthur Grangenny. You are nailing the French today. Try to run French people, You can't. Chuck is pronouncing your words just beautifully. So his accountant is actually given credit a lot of times because he filed the patent under his name, which I'm curious about how that works legally. Uh. He so he was do you remember the first time we did south By Southwest and on the sign it had like somebody I can't remember whose name it was, but whoever had like filed the application to get us into south By Southwest. It said that like, that's who was performing in the room that day. I think this is the same, basically the same thing. Where as like the US government bureaucracy, the Patent and UM Trademark office basically said, whoever his name is on there, that is, who is the patent holder. And since um Grand Gene, who was the accountant of Chaise, who was the partner of qusayan Um, since he was the one who actually filled out the application and paid for the application for the patent, as far as the government was concerned, he was the person who patented the just catch in the United States, even though grand made no claim on it whatsoever, immediately transferred the title over to Shase. He's for for decades, everybody thought Arthur grand Jean was the guy who invented the A sketch. Interesting, alright, so that was July nine fifty nine was when this patent was granted. And um, I guess we should just look at the little guy itself, the little TV, looking that iconic red frame with the two dials which it didn't have initially. Well we'll get to that. But um, the underside of the screen here has what's known in the patent as a pull virulent material such as aluminum powder. Is that French as well? I don't know, uh? And then to keep that from clumping up there a little tiny plastic beads and then the two knobs control um again from the patent, a movable tracing stylus, although initially it was a joystick, isn't that right? Yeah, yeah, basically like an atari um, but it served the same purpose and it was it was um held together the same way through an intricate system of pulleys and gears that that moved the stylus either upward or downward. And then if you combine the upward and downward together you could make the diagonals and circles and stuff like that. But it's if you it's really tough to describe what's going on and and and that's just sketch. But there's an House Stuff Works article from years back called Inside and that just sketch where the people the House of Verse like took one apart and photographed it and explained it step by step, and it really becomes much simpler and ruins any bit of magic. There is to it when you see inside ants just sketch, but it's still kind of wondrous, you know, like the engineer and you was like, wow, that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's sort of like, Um, I mean, it's not a negative image, I don't think. But what's going on when you're moving those knobs, Uh, there's a stylist that's actually removing like the screen is coated with this powder. So it's actually removing powder, not adding something to the screen. Yes, exactly. And of course if you want to get that away and start a new picture, you just shake that thing up and that recoads the screen once again with that powder. Yeah. So like you know how your TV screen always has tons of dust on it, no matter how often you dust it. Sure, So that's because like that dust is attracted electrostatically through an electrical charge to the glass. That's they take advantage of that same thing with the underside of the um etch a sketch and that aluminum dust which sticks to everything, like it wants to stick to the glass because I think it's missing some electrons or something. And then when you move the stylus through it, you're just removing that that dust. Like you said, it's not a negative. It's the removal of dust. And that's the next that just sketch like at its at its core. And what's interesting, Chuck is like, that is how a nuts just sketch today works. That's how ants just sketch worked in nineteen sixty two, like the two meaning like also but that that that dude, Andre Cassaigne said, this is how this is gonna work. And it's it's basically the same thing. That's pretty awesome. Uh, let's take a break. Yes, we're gonna come back and talk about coming stateside right after this. Alright, So, Chuck, so how did we agree on his last name? I think I'm butchering it still. And I even took years of French in high school. I think he said casserole. All right, Andre Casserole. That seems it seems wrong. Yeah, I'm I'm still gonna go with Cassan. Okay, there you go. Andre Cassan. Um, he knew he was onto something like this guy was an electrician. He was like, this is a great idea, this is a prototype I made, This is this is worth something? So he um and Cruise, I guess funded a trip to the Nuremberg Toy Fair UM in ninety nine. And uh, it was there that Cassan was walking around saying, check this thing out. It is yours for a mere hundred thousand dollars, which at the time was a lot of money. I think it was eight hundred and seventy thou dollars today. And that's what this guy wanted for the for the right to produce this um. And every toymaker at the place said no, including a little toymaker called ohio Art Um. Everybody turned it down, and Cassan went home from the toy fair empty handed. But he he didn't give up. He still persisted. But that was a big strikeout for him right out of the gate. Yes, so Ohio Art eventually settles on a number of grand for the rights to make this thing in the United States. Uh. It is still called La Chrome Magique in France because they had a different licensing deal over there. From the from the get go Um and Ohio Art company is pretty interesting. It started, did you see that thing? Should? Yeah? They started out in nineteen o eight, founded by a man named a dentist named Dr Henry S. WinCE Winsler in Archibald Ohio. He gets out of dentistry because he's like, hey, man, toys is the future. Toys is There's no future in teeth. In a decade, no one in America is gonna have teeth. It's just a losing trade to be in his dentistry. Yeah, so he uh all the way forward. He rented a UM musical, hired fifteen women and they were making metal picture frames at first, to great great success. M hmm yeah. Um. So they they use something called the metal lithography, which is a type of printing, and I think the metal refers to like the medium that you're using to print with, like the like you carve a picture out of metal and you put inc it and then you print on whatever you want. But they were printing on to metal. Like they had like these UM picture frames and pictures that were like a huge seller of a Cupid. It was a pair of like oval plates basically, but they were metal printed printed pictures on them, like a Cupid hanging out and then the same Cupid sleeping, and it's just kind of like whatever, Like these days, it seems kind of it's got a tinge of old timey creepiness. But in the first half of the twentieth century, there were fifty million sets of those things sold in the United States, which is an astounding amount. It's basically every house in America had a pair of this, and that really kind of made Ohio art like a very viable business. But they eventually got into things like sand pails and little trucks and that kind of thing. Anything that was printed with metal before the time that plastic toys came along, they were into so it wasn't a huge leap into the edge just sketch, but the edge sketch was definitely different than anything that they'd ever kind of messed around with for Did you know I've done metal lithography? No? Yeah, it was one of our in industrial arts. It was, you know, and at least at my school, each quarter you did a different medium or whatever, and uh, lithography was something we did one quarter. Do you remember what you printed? I'm trying to remember what I printed. It's funny I can remember that because we also at one quarter was screen printing. Remember the T shirts? I did monkeys T shirts like this, see no evil here, No evil monkeys. No, the Band of Monkeys. They're there their logo with the guitar spelled out as monkeys, Like, wow, did you draw it yourself? No? No, no, of course not um, but we did metal sheet lithography. I don't remember all of the process, but what I do remember was essentially was like burning chemically burning images onto metal plates and then that metal plate was used to print. Okay, So so the metal and metal lithography does it talks about the metal press that you're using to print with like at the end of There may be different processes, but in my class, we would um do this thing and apply this like uh image with like this gel onto a metal sheet and use this combination of chemicals that would burn that into like make it part of the metal. And then all of a sudden you would have a metal sheet within thing on it like a negative image, and then you would use that in the printing process to print a positive image, right, and you could print use that to print onto anything including other metal. Right. Well hey man, that's where my knowledge and again this was ninth grade me, so I've I've forgotten a lot of things over that time period, right, And I'm sure I just butchered that. But that's my one little dance with metal lithography. Well, I'll tell you who would be able to tell us exactly how you could, um, how metal lithography works. It's anybody who works at Ohio Art, because not only was that their bread and butter before the atch just catch it still is today. Actually so so Ohio Art, like I guess, gets in touch with um Andre Cassan and and either he got in touch with them again or they got in touch with him. I think it was the ladder of the two and said, hey, we heard you're selling this for a hundred grand. It's way too rich for our blood. How about either fifteen thousand or twenty five thousand, depending on who you ask in the future. And Cassan is like, what are you talking about there, Like, just take the money. And so they either got it for fifteen thousand or twenty five thousand, which is still substantial. I mean it was like around a hundred k or um two k something like that, depending on which one it was, and Cassan was quite a happy man. There was a story where Um, the guy who was running the show at Ohio Art and his wife went over to meet Andre Cassan and just kind of have like an initial eating and like shake his hand and all that and buy the license from him, and Cassan was like welcome and had like this huge spread of baguettes and champagne and everything at his house, which is pretty cute because there was just like this humble guy who came up with a really great idea for a toy and was finally like selling it for a lot of cash. Interesting, what the baggetts in champagne? Yeah, but you know what are you gonna do? Well? Went in France, right, so he is. Once he's on board with Ohio Art, he gets together with their chief engineer, Jerry Burger and says, and Burger's like, listen here, frenchie, you need to drop the joystick. It's all knobs these days. And he said, what does that knob? And he was like, well, let me show you, and he he introduced the idea of UM, the same system like you were talking about, but knobs instead of a joystick to move that little line horizontal or vertical, or as you pointed out, if you're really talented and you can master both at once, you can actually do UM rooted. Well, if you're really good, you can do very nice current lines. But beyond rudimentary. No neither am I I can make a line go up and a line go to the left or right. Yeah, well we'll get you can't even make it go down. We'll get to the art of it. Um maybe at the end. But because there are some serious artists out there doing some cool stuff, but at any rate, at just sketch. It was rebranded as etch a sketch in the United States, Ohio Arts producing them for the nineteen six holiday season and they sold about six hundred thousand of these um that year, which is a it's a lot, yeah, and they sold it for a lot of money too. They they went for sale at two dollars and nine cents apiece, which is sixty four in today's money. Um. But I mean if you go by and it's just sketched today, it's between and in fifteen bucks. So that was a lot of money, especially to sell six hundred thousand of these things, especially if you were selling like creepy you know, metal waste baskets with an unsettling clown painted on it are printed on it like right before this. This is a huge it was. It was a good move by the people at Ohio Art to buy the license of this thing, in other words, and they say, chook that it coincided really perfectly with television, so much so that that they believe like that is one of the reasons why Jerry Burger was like, you need knobs, this thing needs to look like a TV set, because that's what's all the rage with the kids right now. Yeah, and he um. It was one of the first toys to actually do a TV commercial. And so if it's NIX and you're a child watching, first of all, your mind is blown because you're watching in television to begin with. It's just like you, I can't believe this. I can't believe what's going on right now. Then a TV commercial comes on for a toy uh uh, and this toy has animation in it to where like they would at just sketch a little rocket ship and then that rocket ship that rocket ship would animate and take off. And this was like these kids might have I mean, keep in mind, kids in nineteen sixty were idiots, but they might as well have been dosed with lsd mm hmm. You know, they just kept fainting over and over again throughout the commercial because they could not believe what they were seeing. And it's just it's just an etch, just sketch, you know. Yeah, but it's genius. I love it. It is, but it really I think the point was though that like taking advantage of the novelty of TV and also now having away like if you we just tried to explain and that just sketch over a podcast prior to TV, if that just sketch you come out during like the Little Orphan, any radio era, they would have had to have done the same thing. It wouldn't have landed quite as well. The fact that a kid could see this happening on their TV screen, it was pretty awesome. And then also to say and then you just shake it, turn it upside down and shake it and code the glass screen again and you're you're drawing is gone forever. Like to be able to see that TV made the it just gets what it was like. For sure. It definitely ushered into a position where it could become like a cultural icon of a nostalgia. Yeah, I mean, you know, they perfected it by the time they started rolling off in nineteen sixty. Prior to that, like any product like this, there was a lot of R and d um. One of the people who worked there, talked about the mountain of red frames behind the factory while they were trying to get it right. Um, and it was such a huge smash it out of the gate that uh As legend has it they were manufacturing up until noon on Christmas Eve just to get them to the West Coast in time for Christmas morning. Yeah, that's pretty that's pretty cool. I mean, they really wanted those kids to have those Thats Just catches. They really wanted that money. Should we take another break, Yeah, all right, we'll talk about some some ways at Just Sketches ebbed and flowed and popularity in pop culture over the years. Right for this, Chuck, I don't know if we said it or not, but from what I've seen, more than a hundred and seventy five million ET Just sketches have been sold since nineteen six. And we should point out we're not just like ticking off a list of pop culture references. Like every time this happened, uh ET Just Sketch sales would go up. Yeah, like the Romney one increased sales like thirty percent. I guess everybody was like, Oh, I just guess I forgot about that. I think I'll go buy one right now. Well, they actually branded after that, UM, Republican and Democrat sketches, that didn't they Yeah, so you could buy a red one or a blue one, but both of them came with a sticker which I'm I'm assuming that they printed on their metal lithography presses of a donkey and an elephant, like playing Tugo war on the front of the White House lawn. Yeah, that's just crazy, it is, but it's also that's smart. You know, that's how you that's how you make the money. UM. And then of course in the movie Toy Story from Pixar, uh, that was UM Like one of the character's name was and had the fastest knobs in the West, and that was that was always a very fun uh character. I think to see them drawing things out really fast to communicate. Yeah, and you know, you said something earlier, you were you were talking about how like despite the fact that it doesn't even have batteries, it's had the staying power for you know, fifty something years, almost sixty years it's been around, UM and it's a really simple thing that that the design hasn't changed. And I think even more of a testimony to you know, the the staying power of the etch A Sketch is the fact that they have tried stuff with batteries and like like things that connect to your computer over the years, and nothing has managed to improve on the original etch A sketch. Like there was do you remember that at Just Sketch Animator? So I I couldn't quite place it either, but I went and watched an old ad. It was big in the eighties and it was basically like an et just sketch, but there was nothing mechanical about it. It was digital. You're creating like a bit map digital picture and um. Then you'd press like I guess play or something like that, and it would just kind of run it um like a flipbook over and over again. So your it just skets drawing like came to life. But kids were like, no, I'd rather have the original ETU sketch because that Sketch Animator went away and the I just sketches still available today. Yeah, I mean there have been um other variations. They had the doodle sketch, Um, the plug in play, which this sounds like a bad IDEA plug in play allows you to draw on the TV screen. That's just asking for trouble as a parent. UM and then the mobile app, which I've been playing with today. Oh, how's it going? Well? I mean, what do you think of this picture? Oh? That's it's not bad. It looks kind of edges sketchy, you know. Yeah, So what you can do is it's kind of fun. UM. You can you can upload or take a photo UM on your smartphone, plug it into the app, and then it will instantly etchify it. And what I've learned is that it's UM the more basic, like a picture of your face, works much better than something with a lot of stuff in the background. But it's fun, right, yeah, you know, yeah, I like it. I was reading reviews of the app. I didn't try it myself like you, but it's uh it did say like if it's a basic picture, you'll look way more etch just sketchy. Yeah. So my official review is not bad. So three stars out of six. Sure. I mean for something that downloaded in thirty seconds and was free, I'm gonna give it a half of them up, you know. So UM one of the things that that has kind of kept at just sketch alive for like the younger kids. If I read this article about UM that's just sketch, and it was right before they sold, so a lot of people don't know ohio Art doesn't make that just sketch anymore. They sold it to a brand called spin Master, and I didn't I didn't see that. Yeah it's not it's not ohio Art. Ohio Are it said we're going back to metal lithography, and that's what they did. So they sold that just sketch off to spin Master. Spin Masters like, that's fine with us, baby, thanks for all these licenses. Um, I mean I just sketch a frozen branded that just sketches it. You might as well just be like a printing press for money, right, So it was probably a pretty goodbye for spin Master in Ohio Ar. It was like this thing is it was great. It was a good run while it lasted, but they all so I had to oversee it through some really dark times because, um, well, for one thing, like I just sketched, is it landing with the millennials? I get the impression like it used to um with the baby boomers. That was one thing. Um. And Ohio Art also almost went bankrupt because of it back in like two thousand one. They managed to get some more money back into the business and and stay afloat. But part of that also was they had to send the manufacturing of that just sketched off to China, which they were really unhappy about because they lost like thirty five jobs in tiny little Brian, Ohio. But eventually, like fifteen years later, they said, you know what we're getting out that that's just sketch business and sold it off to spin Master, which is a weird name. But the but then one of the things, it's a little weird, Ohio art's a little weird too. You don't associate Ohio with art, you know, you just don't. I'll say it again to Chrissy Hind. Chrissy Hind gets what I'm saying for sure. Um So the thing that one of the things that that is keeping it just sketch relevant. The reason why, like if you walk up to like a seventeen year old and say what do you think about that? Just catch you say, oh, yeah, I've heard of that. Because every once in a while you'll see on the internets a photo or two of somebody who is really really good at that just sketch and it just kind of makes the rounds on social media. Yeah, I mean everything from like the Mona Lisa to just like portraits of people to landscapes. Uh. What's really fun is you can go on YouTube and look at time laps um renderings at just sketch renderings, which when you're seeing it done super fast like that, you kind of think like, I feel like I could do that, But you really have to be a a master with those knobs. Like UM, what I found is the thing you really need to master to do everything um that you want to do is being able to retrace well because as everyone knows, it's not like a pencil can't pick it up off the paper and start somewhere else. You have to if you want to go somewhere else, you have to retrace as closely to that original line as you can, all the way back to that point that you want to be at, or else it's just gonna look like something you're that I did, which looks like something at Toddler did. Yeah, And I mean like that's a it's a really good point. When you're making a good at just sketch drawing, it is all one single line, so frequently double back over and that's just sketch. Artists will use like that frame. They'll create a line frame around the edges that they can travel back out to and move around the picture like that. Pretty brilliant. Yeah, there's a guy named m. George Vlosits the third who's known for some pretty amazing portraits of Muhammad Ali, Barack Obama, Lebron James. There's a an artist named Jane lab A Witch or Labovich maybe she calls herself Princess at just sketch, sent some amazing like architectural detail with it. And then there's a guy named Ryan Burton who does erotic Simpsons art. There you go with the etch just sketching. All three of them are like really good at the drawings. Yeah, the fan fick of just sketch our artists. And then apparently if you when you're very satisfied with your et just sketch and you don't want anything to happen to it, you drill a hole in the back and get the aluminum powder out, and then you lock the knobs to keep them from being turned in. You have a net just sketch masterpiece that you can hang in a museum. Oh so that makes it permanent. So when the little uh so, when a kid comes in the museum and rips it off the wall and shakes that nothing happens. No, no, And I think by law you're allowed to pick up that kid and shake it. Yes, so as long as it's not a baby, you never shake a baby. Come on, I would never advocate shaking a baby. Everybody just want to go on record to say that there was you know, the comedian Nate Bargatzi. He has a he's great. He's got a very funny bit about shaking babies. Believe it or not, it takes a lot to turn that into something funny. Yeah, he did it. Man, good for him. Nate BURGOTSI huh Nate Burgotti, dude, you would love him. He's great. So Nate Burgotti just became a cultural icon because we did not see him coming up in this episode. That's right. Uh, well, if you want to know more about Nate Burgotti, you should go check him out on the internet like I'm going to. And uh, since I said na Purgatzi, it's time for listener mayo. Man, if someone tells Nate, we're plugging him, plugging away, plugging Nate. All right here, I'm gonna mention this is about Jerry and her eating and this is from Kim Cooper. Did you see this Jerry? She says, no, Hey, guys, I notice that you often mentioned what Jerry is eating a lot during the podcast. I don't know how close to you she how close she is to your microphones. I'll go ahead and say that from your side over there, she's about five ft Like. All I have to do is lean in my seat a little bit and I can touch Jerry's miso soup. That's right. You could dip your bumb in her soup sometimes, I threatened, I don't know how she close she is to your microphones, but I never hear her eating, which is good for your fans with Misa Ponia. But I'm curious why she chooses this time to eat. Do you guys spend all day podcasting and that's the only time she can fit it in? No silly question that popped into my head listening to This Week this week after Josh said, and there's Jerry eating. God knows what um Anyway, Guys, she's got me interested in trying me. So I tell her she's doing a great job because I don't know, because I know she doesn't get too many shout outs and Josh and Chuck, you guys are pretty great too. That is from Kim Cooper. Thanks Kim, that's funny. She went all the way around. Is it basically say? I guess what I'm trying to say is I've always wanted to try me so yeah, pretty much, we'll go try to me, so, Kim. I mean, you can buy it at like any grocery store. Just go get a tub of it, get a big old spoon try your first spoonful. You can go from there. I do you ever eat just miso paste? It's good if you're craving something salty and savory and new. Mommy, let's just say, um, it's good, but you can't. You can't eat very much. But I'm just teasing him, like a spoonful is a lot of me so paste, Okay, what do you just add that to? Is it an ingredient? Yeah, for like soup stuff like that. Yeah, but you can't just seat the paste and live to tell about it. I'm I'm proof. Well, if you want to get in touch with us to talk about Jerry, we're always fine with that. Um, you can go to stuff you should Know dot com find out all of our social links and you can always send us an email attention to everybody. We have a new email address. Wow wow, it is Stuff Podcast. I heart podcast network dot com. How about that? For more on this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works dot com

Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w. Chucky Bryant, and there's Jerry uh the Delicious dish rolland and this is Stuff you should Know, the vintage nostalgia addition that went off to China and then got sold to a different company edition. So do you want to have a rough list of classic toys we've covered? You wanna hear it? Oh? Lay it on me. I'm sure I've missed something, but it did help me think of some more that we should do. It. Slinky, we did slinky. Oh yeah, we did slink. Okay, yeah, Lego Oh yeah, of course. Barbie sure, her boyfriend g I Joe. Yeah, that was a good one. Sorry, wait a minute, Wait a minute, I'm sorry. Did we just specifically do a G I Joe winner in Action figures one? I think both. We definitely did action figures, although probably not. Okay, go ahead, I'll cross check that. Hot wheels, So so this is a made up list, is what you're saying. Hot wheels? Ye, I'm glad you didn't. You didn't call it hot wheels. Easy bake oven m play dough, silly putty. All right, do you count boomerangs? Yes, sure, do you count Monopoly? Yeah, Yo yos. Of course, Hula Hoops. I knew Hula Hoops was after Yo Yos. I just knew it. Teddy Ruxpan, we we covered him in our Christmas show this year. Oh yeah, that's a deep cut right there. And then that's all I have. But um, I could have sworn we did it on Frisbees, but I cannot find it. Yeah. I feel like we did Frisbees too, because I think we talked about like frall for something at some point. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's out there and I just didn't or maybe it's under a flying disc or something. Oh that's possible. Yeah, we made that joke about calling it a novelty flying disc because Frisbee, like used to see everybody who called anything else to Frisbee. Maybe I'll have to look, but that there's probably more out there. But that's a solid you know, twelve or thirteen. That's pretty good, which leads us to edge sketch. Yes, one of the hundred top hundred toys of the century, according to UM, I want to say not the toy Hall of Fame. It's just in the Toy Hall of Fame. Kid who makes lists online? All right, Uh, this is the hundred best toys of the century. This is the hundred best guitar solos of the seventies. Oh man, I'd love to do a show on that. That would be pretty cool. I can't remember who named that that who made that list, but it's a high honor. It's a high accolade, even if we can't remember who came up with it. Like, it just catches the ubiquitous toy. Everybody knows what an that just sketches unless you go to France and then they'll say, oh, you mean like cro magic and you you might say, like, well, why would they have anything to say about the extra sketch in France? Turns out, buddy, the a just sketch is actually French in origin. Did you know that before this? I did not. I didn't either, because it seems like super American, you know, it looks like a TV and just feels like pure Americana. So when I realized I had some French stank on it, uh, my dreams were dashed. You like, it smells like champagne and cheese. Which is kind of pleasant. No, I didn't really care. I thought it was I thought it was great. Sketch, erase and sketch again. The logline that will forever be tied to this really interesting little toy. And um, I can't remember who it is in this article, but they were interviewing different folks. I think it was someone from the company commented, and I totally agree that, like, it's amazing that today, in in the digital world and Bluetooth and WiFi and video gaming as it is, that this little um low fi toy that doesn't even have batteries in it, much less hook up to the internet is still like super popular and still has a little bit of mystique. And I agree with them, And I think the reason why one of them is like you look at it and you're still kind of like, how does this thing work? Right, Well, we're going to ruin that mystique for everybody because we're gonna explain how it works actually in this episode. But hopefully it won't affect that just sketch sales, because we love I just catch you know, all right, should we go to France? We will go to France sometime. It's apparently not clear whether it was nineteen fifty five or nineteen fifty six, But in a little town called Vitry Sir Sin, which means Victory on the Sin River, there was a company called what was the name of the company, chuck uh lynn crusta company name. It is a terrible name. But the reason they called themselves that is because Lynn Crusta is a type of wall covering that was really popular in the nineteenth or early twenty centuries. You know, like, have you ever been into an old, creepy, abandoned house and like the walls are covered in what looks like dimpled tin with like some weird patterns to it or whatever. M m no, but keep going, Okay, So where if you you could rub your hand over it's very much it's like heavily embossed. Sometimes it's painted and it's just imagined. That is like Wayne scouting in the house. That is Lynn Crusta. And so that is one of the two things that this company made in the fifties, Lynn crusta wall coverings and artificial leather that is really neither here nor there, but I could I was with you. I was like, what kind of a name is that for a company. I looked it up. They just basically be like if you and I called our podcast podcast, because that's what we did, was make podcasts, crust pod Crusta, just the name crust Anyway. I think I know what you're talking about because I have, uh we have a pie safe that has that metal tin stuff. But it's I've never seen it on a wall, but I bet it's about the same thing, virtually the same thing. Yeah, okay, so that's link Crusta and that's where this guy worked. His name was Andre Cassagnas. Well, if it's French, wouldn't it be uh Caissan is that pronounced? Yeah, I think you just nailed it. Actually, Andre Cassong. Well that's what we're gonna call him. And we have gone back in time. You didn't know fifty five or fifty six, I say we go to fifty four. Just play it safe, setup shop in France and maybe get some emails done. Alright for a couple of years. Why not we could use a break um because you know, podcaster burnouts a real thing. Really, we're dropping, We're dropping like flies, all right. So he's working in this factory. It's north of Paris, and they are making these uh wall coverings like you're talking about. And he this is a little confusing how this actually happens if you ask me, or at least the way that the first article put it, it's confusing. Oh you're leaving it to me. I noticed by your by your pass after that, well, I mean no, let's let's I'll start it. But I just still don't quite get it. He marked up with pencil on a see through decal, so like he was putting on an electrical plate, um like a light switch. And on that plate, like many things, has like a little see through plastic that you peel off. Um, so he was writing on that he peeled it off. But then that's where it loses me. It's to exactly what took place. So okay, remember this is link Crusta and they make metal wall coverings, which means there's metal dust in the air, metal shavings everywhere, right, all of them are. Um that's what's crazy. This guy made it to that ripole age of eighty six after breathing that for years. But um, so there's there's metal dust everywhere, including on this electrical switch plate that he's installing. And I guess the decal against the plate. And I think what happened was when he marked on the decal and pulled the decale off, he'd seen that he had disturbed the metal shavings that were stuck to the underside of the decal. Do you see what I mean? Like he he had disturbed the shape, so so there was like the whole decal is coated in a metal dust. He marks on it with a pencil and the impression that he makes like gouges out lines on the backside the decal. But I know it's really tough. It was magic. Basically, this man witnessed a feat of magic that still cannot be explained to this day. And that's where he got his idea for the etch just sketch amazing. So a big, big moment he has that that literal lightbulb that goes off of his or I'm not literal of course, light bulb above his head, although you never know, there may have been a light bulb in that factory right above his head. Why not? Uh? And he said, all right, this is uh, this, this can be something. He however, did not have a lot of money to sink into this weird idea, and so he had to partner with somebody with money, man named Paul uh Chase c j z E or maybe Shaw's if he's French. And this guy had some dough because he owned a plastic injection molding company. This is like early on, I wonder if we could count. That's a toy, the the little plastic machines that spent out little plastic guitars in Chicago and it zoos. Yes, Rama, that would definitely count. Yeah, that goes on the list. Yeah, so he didn't. It wasn't mold rama, but it was plastic injection molding that this guy made his money from. Uh. And this where things get a little confusing historically because, uh, the man who his accountant, his name was Arthur Grangenny. You are nailing the French today. Try to run French people, You can't. Chuck is pronouncing your words just beautifully. So his accountant is actually given credit a lot of times because he filed the patent under his name, which I'm curious about how that works legally. Uh. He so he was do you remember the first time we did south By Southwest and on the sign it had like somebody I can't remember whose name it was, but whoever had like filed the application to get us into south By Southwest. It said that like, that's who was performing in the room that day. I think this is the same, basically the same thing. Where as like the US government bureaucracy, the Patent and UM Trademark office basically said, whoever his name is on there, that is, who is the patent holder. And since um Grand Gene, who was the accountant of Chaise, who was the partner of qusayan Um, since he was the one who actually filled out the application and paid for the application for the patent, as far as the government was concerned, he was the person who patented the just catch in the United States, even though grand made no claim on it whatsoever, immediately transferred the title over to Shase. He's for for decades, everybody thought Arthur grand Jean was the guy who invented the A sketch. Interesting, alright, so that was July nine fifty nine was when this patent was granted. And um, I guess we should just look at the little guy itself, the little TV, looking that iconic red frame with the two dials which it didn't have initially. Well we'll get to that. But um, the underside of the screen here has what's known in the patent as a pull virulent material such as aluminum powder. Is that French as well? I don't know, uh? And then to keep that from clumping up there a little tiny plastic beads and then the two knobs control um again from the patent, a movable tracing stylus, although initially it was a joystick, isn't that right? Yeah, yeah, basically like an atari um, but it served the same purpose and it was it was um held together the same way through an intricate system of pulleys and gears that that moved the stylus either upward or downward. And then if you combine the upward and downward together you could make the diagonals and circles and stuff like that. But it's if you it's really tough to describe what's going on and and and that's just sketch. But there's an House Stuff Works article from years back called Inside and that just sketch where the people the House of Verse like took one apart and photographed it and explained it step by step, and it really becomes much simpler and ruins any bit of magic. There is to it when you see inside ants just sketch, but it's still kind of wondrous, you know, like the engineer and you was like, wow, that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's sort of like, Um, I mean, it's not a negative image, I don't think. But what's going on when you're moving those knobs, Uh, there's a stylist that's actually removing like the screen is coated with this powder. So it's actually removing powder, not adding something to the screen. Yes, exactly. And of course if you want to get that away and start a new picture, you just shake that thing up and that recoads the screen once again with that powder. Yeah. So like you know how your TV screen always has tons of dust on it, no matter how often you dust it. Sure, So that's because like that dust is attracted electrostatically through an electrical charge to the glass. That's they take advantage of that same thing with the underside of the um etch a sketch and that aluminum dust which sticks to everything, like it wants to stick to the glass because I think it's missing some electrons or something. And then when you move the stylus through it, you're just removing that that dust. Like you said, it's not a negative. It's the removal of dust. And that's the next that just sketch like at its at its core. And what's interesting, Chuck is like, that is how a nuts just sketch today works. That's how ants just sketch worked in nineteen sixty two, like the two meaning like also but that that that dude, Andre Cassaigne said, this is how this is gonna work. And it's it's basically the same thing. That's pretty awesome. Uh, let's take a break. Yes, we're gonna come back and talk about coming stateside right after this. Alright, So, Chuck, so how did we agree on his last name? I think I'm butchering it still. And I even took years of French in high school. I think he said casserole. All right, Andre Casserole. That seems it seems wrong. Yeah, I'm I'm still gonna go with Cassan. Okay, there you go. Andre Cassan. Um, he knew he was onto something like this guy was an electrician. He was like, this is a great idea, this is a prototype I made, This is this is worth something? So he um and Cruise, I guess funded a trip to the Nuremberg Toy Fair UM in ninety nine. And uh, it was there that Cassan was walking around saying, check this thing out. It is yours for a mere hundred thousand dollars, which at the time was a lot of money. I think it was eight hundred and seventy thou dollars today. And that's what this guy wanted for the for the right to produce this um. And every toymaker at the place said no, including a little toymaker called ohio Art Um. Everybody turned it down, and Cassan went home from the toy fair empty handed. But he he didn't give up. He still persisted. But that was a big strikeout for him right out of the gate. Yes, so Ohio Art eventually settles on a number of grand for the rights to make this thing in the United States. Uh. It is still called La Chrome Magique in France because they had a different licensing deal over there. From the from the get go Um and Ohio Art company is pretty interesting. It started, did you see that thing? Should? Yeah? They started out in nineteen o eight, founded by a man named a dentist named Dr Henry S. WinCE Winsler in Archibald Ohio. He gets out of dentistry because he's like, hey, man, toys is the future. Toys is There's no future in teeth. In a decade, no one in America is gonna have teeth. It's just a losing trade to be in his dentistry. Yeah, so he uh all the way forward. He rented a UM musical, hired fifteen women and they were making metal picture frames at first, to great great success. M hmm yeah. Um. So they they use something called the metal lithography, which is a type of printing, and I think the metal refers to like the medium that you're using to print with, like the like you carve a picture out of metal and you put inc it and then you print on whatever you want. But they were printing on to metal. Like they had like these UM picture frames and pictures that were like a huge seller of a Cupid. It was a pair of like oval plates basically, but they were metal printed printed pictures on them, like a Cupid hanging out and then the same Cupid sleeping, and it's just kind of like whatever, Like these days, it seems kind of it's got a tinge of old timey creepiness. But in the first half of the twentieth century, there were fifty million sets of those things sold in the United States, which is an astounding amount. It's basically every house in America had a pair of this, and that really kind of made Ohio art like a very viable business. But they eventually got into things like sand pails and little trucks and that kind of thing. Anything that was printed with metal before the time that plastic toys came along, they were into so it wasn't a huge leap into the edge just sketch, but the edge sketch was definitely different than anything that they'd ever kind of messed around with for Did you know I've done metal lithography? No? Yeah, it was one of our in industrial arts. It was, you know, and at least at my school, each quarter you did a different medium or whatever, and uh, lithography was something we did one quarter. Do you remember what you printed? I'm trying to remember what I printed. It's funny I can remember that because we also at one quarter was screen printing. Remember the T shirts? I did monkeys T shirts like this, see no evil here, No evil monkeys. No, the Band of Monkeys. They're there their logo with the guitar spelled out as monkeys, Like, wow, did you draw it yourself? No? No, no, of course not um, but we did metal sheet lithography. I don't remember all of the process, but what I do remember was essentially was like burning chemically burning images onto metal plates and then that metal plate was used to print. Okay, So so the metal and metal lithography does it talks about the metal press that you're using to print with like at the end of There may be different processes, but in my class, we would um do this thing and apply this like uh image with like this gel onto a metal sheet and use this combination of chemicals that would burn that into like make it part of the metal. And then all of a sudden you would have a metal sheet within thing on it like a negative image, and then you would use that in the printing process to print a positive image, right, and you could print use that to print onto anything including other metal. Right. Well hey man, that's where my knowledge and again this was ninth grade me, so I've I've forgotten a lot of things over that time period, right, And I'm sure I just butchered that. But that's my one little dance with metal lithography. Well, I'll tell you who would be able to tell us exactly how you could, um, how metal lithography works. It's anybody who works at Ohio Art, because not only was that their bread and butter before the atch just catch it still is today. Actually so so Ohio Art, like I guess, gets in touch with um Andre Cassan and and either he got in touch with them again or they got in touch with him. I think it was the ladder of the two and said, hey, we heard you're selling this for a hundred grand. It's way too rich for our blood. How about either fifteen thousand or twenty five thousand, depending on who you ask in the future. And Cassan is like, what are you talking about there, Like, just take the money. And so they either got it for fifteen thousand or twenty five thousand, which is still substantial. I mean it was like around a hundred k or um two k something like that, depending on which one it was, and Cassan was quite a happy man. There was a story where Um, the guy who was running the show at Ohio Art and his wife went over to meet Andre Cassan and just kind of have like an initial eating and like shake his hand and all that and buy the license from him, and Cassan was like welcome and had like this huge spread of baguettes and champagne and everything at his house, which is pretty cute because there was just like this humble guy who came up with a really great idea for a toy and was finally like selling it for a lot of cash. Interesting, what the baggetts in champagne? Yeah, but you know what are you gonna do? Well? Went in France, right, so he is. Once he's on board with Ohio Art, he gets together with their chief engineer, Jerry Burger and says, and Burger's like, listen here, frenchie, you need to drop the joystick. It's all knobs these days. And he said, what does that knob? And he was like, well, let me show you, and he he introduced the idea of UM, the same system like you were talking about, but knobs instead of a joystick to move that little line horizontal or vertical, or as you pointed out, if you're really talented and you can master both at once, you can actually do UM rooted. Well, if you're really good, you can do very nice current lines. But beyond rudimentary. No neither am I I can make a line go up and a line go to the left or right. Yeah, well we'll get you can't even make it go down. We'll get to the art of it. Um maybe at the end. But because there are some serious artists out there doing some cool stuff, but at any rate, at just sketch. It was rebranded as etch a sketch in the United States, Ohio Arts producing them for the nineteen six holiday season and they sold about six hundred thousand of these um that year, which is a it's a lot, yeah, and they sold it for a lot of money too. They they went for sale at two dollars and nine cents apiece, which is sixty four in today's money. Um. But I mean if you go by and it's just sketched today, it's between and in fifteen bucks. So that was a lot of money, especially to sell six hundred thousand of these things, especially if you were selling like creepy you know, metal waste baskets with an unsettling clown painted on it are printed on it like right before this. This is a huge it was. It was a good move by the people at Ohio Art to buy the license of this thing, in other words, and they say, chook that it coincided really perfectly with television, so much so that that they believe like that is one of the reasons why Jerry Burger was like, you need knobs, this thing needs to look like a TV set, because that's what's all the rage with the kids right now. Yeah, and he um. It was one of the first toys to actually do a TV commercial. And so if it's NIX and you're a child watching, first of all, your mind is blown because you're watching in television to begin with. It's just like you, I can't believe this. I can't believe what's going on right now. Then a TV commercial comes on for a toy uh uh, and this toy has animation in it to where like they would at just sketch a little rocket ship and then that rocket ship that rocket ship would animate and take off. And this was like these kids might have I mean, keep in mind, kids in nineteen sixty were idiots, but they might as well have been dosed with lsd mm hmm. You know, they just kept fainting over and over again throughout the commercial because they could not believe what they were seeing. And it's just it's just an etch, just sketch, you know. Yeah, but it's genius. I love it. It is, but it really I think the point was though that like taking advantage of the novelty of TV and also now having away like if you we just tried to explain and that just sketch over a podcast prior to TV, if that just sketch you come out during like the Little Orphan, any radio era, they would have had to have done the same thing. It wouldn't have landed quite as well. The fact that a kid could see this happening on their TV screen, it was pretty awesome. And then also to say and then you just shake it, turn it upside down and shake it and code the glass screen again and you're you're drawing is gone forever. Like to be able to see that TV made the it just gets what it was like. For sure. It definitely ushered into a position where it could become like a cultural icon of a nostalgia. Yeah, I mean, you know, they perfected it by the time they started rolling off in nineteen sixty. Prior to that, like any product like this, there was a lot of R and d um. One of the people who worked there, talked about the mountain of red frames behind the factory while they were trying to get it right. Um, and it was such a huge smash it out of the gate that uh As legend has it they were manufacturing up until noon on Christmas Eve just to get them to the West Coast in time for Christmas morning. Yeah, that's pretty that's pretty cool. I mean, they really wanted those kids to have those Thats Just catches. They really wanted that money. Should we take another break, Yeah, all right, we'll talk about some some ways at Just Sketches ebbed and flowed and popularity in pop culture over the years. Right for this, Chuck, I don't know if we said it or not, but from what I've seen, more than a hundred and seventy five million ET Just sketches have been sold since nineteen six. And we should point out we're not just like ticking off a list of pop culture references. Like every time this happened, uh ET Just Sketch sales would go up. Yeah, like the Romney one increased sales like thirty percent. I guess everybody was like, Oh, I just guess I forgot about that. I think I'll go buy one right now. Well, they actually branded after that, UM, Republican and Democrat sketches, that didn't they Yeah, so you could buy a red one or a blue one, but both of them came with a sticker which I'm I'm assuming that they printed on their metal lithography presses of a donkey and an elephant, like playing Tugo war on the front of the White House lawn. Yeah, that's just crazy, it is, but it's also that's smart. You know, that's how you that's how you make the money. UM. And then of course in the movie Toy Story from Pixar, uh, that was UM Like one of the character's name was and had the fastest knobs in the West, and that was that was always a very fun uh character. I think to see them drawing things out really fast to communicate. Yeah, and you know, you said something earlier, you were you were talking about how like despite the fact that it doesn't even have batteries, it's had the staying power for you know, fifty something years, almost sixty years it's been around, UM and it's a really simple thing that that the design hasn't changed. And I think even more of a testimony to you know, the the staying power of the etch A Sketch is the fact that they have tried stuff with batteries and like like things that connect to your computer over the years, and nothing has managed to improve on the original etch A sketch. Like there was do you remember that at Just Sketch Animator? So I I couldn't quite place it either, but I went and watched an old ad. It was big in the eighties and it was basically like an et just sketch, but there was nothing mechanical about it. It was digital. You're creating like a bit map digital picture and um. Then you'd press like I guess play or something like that, and it would just kind of run it um like a flipbook over and over again. So your it just skets drawing like came to life. But kids were like, no, I'd rather have the original ETU sketch because that Sketch Animator went away and the I just sketches still available today. Yeah, I mean there have been um other variations. They had the doodle sketch, Um, the plug in play, which this sounds like a bad IDEA plug in play allows you to draw on the TV screen. That's just asking for trouble as a parent. UM and then the mobile app, which I've been playing with today. Oh, how's it going? Well? I mean, what do you think of this picture? Oh? That's it's not bad. It looks kind of edges sketchy, you know. Yeah, So what you can do is it's kind of fun. UM. You can you can upload or take a photo UM on your smartphone, plug it into the app, and then it will instantly etchify it. And what I've learned is that it's UM the more basic, like a picture of your face, works much better than something with a lot of stuff in the background. But it's fun, right, yeah, you know, yeah, I like it. I was reading reviews of the app. I didn't try it myself like you, but it's uh it did say like if it's a basic picture, you'll look way more etch just sketchy. Yeah. So my official review is not bad. So three stars out of six. Sure. I mean for something that downloaded in thirty seconds and was free, I'm gonna give it a half of them up, you know. So UM one of the things that that has kind of kept at just sketch alive for like the younger kids. If I read this article about UM that's just sketch, and it was right before they sold, so a lot of people don't know ohio Art doesn't make that just sketch anymore. They sold it to a brand called spin Master, and I didn't I didn't see that. Yeah it's not it's not ohio Art. Ohio Are it said we're going back to metal lithography, and that's what they did. So they sold that just sketch off to spin Master. Spin Masters like, that's fine with us, baby, thanks for all these licenses. Um, I mean I just sketch a frozen branded that just sketches it. You might as well just be like a printing press for money, right, So it was probably a pretty goodbye for spin Master in Ohio Ar. It was like this thing is it was great. It was a good run while it lasted, but they all so I had to oversee it through some really dark times because, um, well, for one thing, like I just sketched, is it landing with the millennials? I get the impression like it used to um with the baby boomers. That was one thing. Um. And Ohio Art also almost went bankrupt because of it back in like two thousand one. They managed to get some more money back into the business and and stay afloat. But part of that also was they had to send the manufacturing of that just sketched off to China, which they were really unhappy about because they lost like thirty five jobs in tiny little Brian, Ohio. But eventually, like fifteen years later, they said, you know what we're getting out that that's just sketch business and sold it off to spin Master, which is a weird name. But the but then one of the things, it's a little weird, Ohio art's a little weird too. You don't associate Ohio with art, you know, you just don't. I'll say it again to Chrissy Hind. Chrissy Hind gets what I'm saying for sure. Um So the thing that one of the things that that is keeping it just sketch relevant. The reason why, like if you walk up to like a seventeen year old and say what do you think about that? Just catch you say, oh, yeah, I've heard of that. Because every once in a while you'll see on the internets a photo or two of somebody who is really really good at that just sketch and it just kind of makes the rounds on social media. Yeah, I mean everything from like the Mona Lisa to just like portraits of people to landscapes. Uh. What's really fun is you can go on YouTube and look at time laps um renderings at just sketch renderings, which when you're seeing it done super fast like that, you kind of think like, I feel like I could do that, But you really have to be a a master with those knobs. Like UM, what I found is the thing you really need to master to do everything um that you want to do is being able to retrace well because as everyone knows, it's not like a pencil can't pick it up off the paper and start somewhere else. You have to if you want to go somewhere else, you have to retrace as closely to that original line as you can, all the way back to that point that you want to be at, or else it's just gonna look like something you're that I did, which looks like something at Toddler did. Yeah, And I mean like that's a it's a really good point. When you're making a good at just sketch drawing, it is all one single line, so frequently double back over and that's just sketch. Artists will use like that frame. They'll create a line frame around the edges that they can travel back out to and move around the picture like that. Pretty brilliant. Yeah, there's a guy named m. George Vlosits the third who's known for some pretty amazing portraits of Muhammad Ali, Barack Obama, Lebron James. There's a an artist named Jane lab A Witch or Labovich maybe she calls herself Princess at just sketch, sent some amazing like architectural detail with it. And then there's a guy named Ryan Burton who does erotic Simpsons art. There you go with the etch just sketching. All three of them are like really good at the drawings. Yeah, the fan fick of just sketch our artists. And then apparently if you when you're very satisfied with your et just sketch and you don't want anything to happen to it, you drill a hole in the back and get the aluminum powder out, and then you lock the knobs to keep them from being turned in. You have a net just sketch masterpiece that you can hang in a museum. Oh so that makes it permanent. So when the little uh so, when a kid comes in the museum and rips it off the wall and shakes that nothing happens. No, no, And I think by law you're allowed to pick up that kid and shake it. Yes, so as long as it's not a baby, you never shake a baby. Come on, I would never advocate shaking a baby. Everybody just want to go on record to say that there was you know, the comedian Nate Bargatzi. He has a he's great. He's got a very funny bit about shaking babies. Believe it or not, it takes a lot to turn that into something funny. Yeah, he did it. Man, good for him. Nate BURGOTSI huh Nate Burgotti, dude, you would love him. He's great. So Nate Burgotti just became a cultural icon because we did not see him coming up in this episode. That's right. Uh, well, if you want to know more about Nate Burgotti, you should go check him out on the internet like I'm going to. And uh, since I said na Purgatzi, it's time for listener mayo. Man, if someone tells Nate, we're plugging him, plugging away, plugging Nate. All right here, I'm gonna mention this is about Jerry and her eating and this is from Kim Cooper. Did you see this Jerry? She says, no, Hey, guys, I notice that you often mentioned what Jerry is eating a lot during the podcast. I don't know how close to you she how close she is to your microphones. I'll go ahead and say that from your side over there, she's about five ft Like. All I have to do is lean in my seat a little bit and I can touch Jerry's miso soup. That's right. You could dip your bumb in her soup sometimes, I threatened, I don't know how she close she is to your microphones, but I never hear her eating, which is good for your fans with Misa Ponia. But I'm curious why she chooses this time to eat. Do you guys spend all day podcasting and that's the only time she can fit it in? No silly question that popped into my head listening to This Week this week after Josh said, and there's Jerry eating. God knows what um Anyway, Guys, she's got me interested in trying me. So I tell her she's doing a great job because I don't know, because I know she doesn't get too many shout outs and Josh and Chuck, you guys are pretty great too. That is from Kim Cooper. Thanks Kim, that's funny. She went all the way around. Is it basically say? I guess what I'm trying to say is I've always wanted to try me so yeah, pretty much, we'll go try to me, so, Kim. I mean, you can buy it at like any grocery store. Just go get a tub of it, get a big old spoon try your first spoonful. You can go from there. I do you ever eat just miso paste? It's good if you're craving something salty and savory and new. Mommy, let's just say, um, it's good, but you can't. You can't eat very much. But I'm just teasing him, like a spoonful is a lot of me so paste, Okay, what do you just add that to? Is it an ingredient? Yeah, for like soup stuff like that. Yeah, but you can't just seat the paste and live to tell about it. I'm I'm proof. Well, if you want to get in touch with us to talk about Jerry, we're always fine with that. Um, you can go to stuff you should Know dot com find out all of our social links and you can always send us an email attention to everybody. We have a new email address. Wow wow, it is Stuff Podcast. I heart podcast network dot com. How about that? For more on this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works dot com