Episode 06: Big Boy vs. Bibendum

Cambridge and Mshawan is a weirding Way media podcast. The Cantle makes Me first. Yeah yeah night, Oh yeah, oh yeah, Days got away. Great good friend's cool. Brands entre Bix.

Hello, everyone, Welcome to episode six of the Cambridge and Wishawon Podcast. Do we need to include a definite article when we say Cambridge and Shawn podcast or the Cambridge and Wishan Podcast. No, no definite articles here. It's like talking Heads or you rhythmics. There is no the in the.

Name the talking Heads that gets me. Nope, the Devo Yeah no, it's just talking heads. People don't get me started. I know you're a fan of the Doors. I am too, So like, would their name have been better if it had been doors rather than the Doors?

No? I think those things like the Beatles and the Doors and the Rolling Stones need that article. I mean doors would have been fine, but nobody would have said it that way. No, that's true. Melvin's works without the even though some people say the Melvins, Yeah, it works that way too.

E Rhythmics is kind of a tough one because it doesn't sound right just as a standalone word. But it is just eurhythmics. Folks, again, don't get me started. Don't say the eurhythmics, not around Mark. No, we should do a music episode one of these days.

Oh yeah, I have music stuff on my list, my long list. You people are never getting away from us. I've got a no list of obsessions. Not only are you not getting away from us anytime soon, but the list keeps growing and growing and growing. There's no escape.

It's just the way Mark and I are. It's just the way our minds work. Yep. Every week I think of something new to add. To the list.

Well, you're lucky it's only every week, I know. Well, yeah, I think it's probably more than every week. I note things. For instance, based on what we're discussing today, I added the stay Puffed marshmallow Man to my list of obsessions that I had as a kid when that movie. When Ghostbusters came out, he was more interesting to me than and I think after today's episode we'll understand why he was more interesting to me than any of the other ghost creatures from the Ghostbusters movie.

Absolutely makes sense. So today we are talking about add mascots or add icons that Mark and I have been obsessed with over the years, or at least interested in aesthetically, at least for me. It's like, I don't think I was necessarily obsessed with one of the icons that I'll be talking about today, but I certainly loved the aesthetic and would always think about it and still to this day think about them. Any updates from the last episode that you want to share before we jump in. Just the sound issue, which really should be solved now I figured it out.

I was going to go through a whole spiel and explain what happened with that recording and editing, but to cut a very long story short, I figured it out at the end of the editing of episode five because the problem persisted even though I thought I had solved it, and then I realized, Oh, it was this last thing I did in audacity that creates that peaking. I think is the term of particularly on my tracks. I just due to the tonal quality of my voice, I guess, but it is apparent in yours and everybody else's that I've recorded with since about twenty twenty when I started using Audacity. So anyway, if you use Audacity, if you're a podcaster and you listen to the show and you use Audacity, do not use click removal on your tracks.

It does something to the audio. And this is just using the standard settings. I'm sure if I fiddled with it or understood it a little bit more, it might not happen. But I did a little test, took out a chunk of the original recording from last time, ran it through all the stuff I normally run it through, sounded fine, and then when I hit click removal, that happened. So I'm never using that again.

So that was sort of not necessarily long story short, but long story midway short because I almost told the whole story anyway, it shouldn't happen anymore. What you may hear on this episode, though, are outside noises because Ronnie and I both have our windows open in the rooms that we're recording in. And it's because it's pretty nice right now, and it is getting hot in Fresno already. It is. I'm a little cool down next week.

But if you listen to Wake Up Heavy and you've listened to my summer episodes, you know I'm always pitching and complaining. About the heat. It gets rough. Yeah, the dog is not here right now because she's getting groomed, so there won't be any dog barking at least, but you might hear car sounds or neighbor sounds from either one of us. You know, shit happens.

It adds to the atmosphere. Right, We didn't do our introductions this time. I don't know is that necessary every time? I know I do it on Wake Up. Heavy, but yeah, let's do it.

Let's do it. I'm Mark Bigley, host of Wake Up Heavy and co host of Camber Jem with. Sean, and I'm Ronnie or Ronald or Sclevator, and I have a YouTube channel. Pick a name, brew. I know it's hard to do.

It's funny because of Ronald. You don't have to say Ronnie every time, just because that's what I call you. You can go by Ronald. I like it though, because it's hard to differentiate for me because there are people in my life that call me Ronnie, and I absolutely love that because it becomes kind of a term of endearment as opposed to I don't think anyone uses Ronald as a term of endearment for me, So I might just introduce myself as Ronnie from now on. If I got to choose, you have to choose.

I got a YouTube channel and it's Sclevator and Instagram and for those of you who are patreons of Mark and of mine, you get to listen to these episodes early all that stuff. Oh, I wanted to say, We got a really you pointed this out. You have access to these things, and it's really awesome and wonderful. We got a really great review from Larry Gengrich. He gave us a five star rating and he says it's authentic.

I love that. He said, with the wrong hosts, this subject matter could easily devolve into another Hey remember that kind of thing? Do you remember that? What a nice thing to get a great review on what we're doing. I did a few social media searches just to see if I could find out who this person was.

That might be a name from something Parks and rec Okay. Jerry god gross, Oh carry guys, Oh good, Oh I think he might be having a heart attack. What are you serious? Some stuff is happening right now called ever one. Okay, just breathe, O.

Hey, you're gonna be fine. Yeah, it was a nice review, and you do have access to that. It's all you got to do is look on Apple Podcasts and look at our reviews. Oh, that's so cool. I didn't know that.

It's awesome. Welcome to podcasting, Ronald, Oh, it's so great. The reason I know about it is because there's a thing called chartable that shows your position. We finally charted actually on the show, which I'm surprised about because we still haven't hit two hundred plays across five episodes. We'll get there.

We have two reviews and they're both very nice, and I think they both express our goal in this. It's not to be chuckleheads that talk about New Star Wars, toys and you know, all that shit, which is the same goal I have for Wickup Heavy. I think where you're going with this is that it's not based on here's what we hear is coming out. Let's talk about what's cool and what's not and then share our opinions about that. Or tearing stuff apart bit by bit, like yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the cinema sins thing, but for toys, yeah yeah, yeah, everything wrong with this, Luke Skywalker, I could give a fuck if it's not really accurate whatever.

So anyway, they're absolutely right. And actually, even on the other show that I co host, Toy Frenzy, it is sort of like we're fighting a battle against a lot of talking heads that share their aggressive opinions about things, and I like being part of pop culture discussions that are more about information than opinion or bias, because it's a waste of time. Some people love that, but I'm not a fan of it. I'm more interested in what we do, which is and what I try to associate myself with, which is a celebration of what this stuff represents for others, but also through our own lenses. That's part of what makes this so much fun for me.

Well and for me, and same with Wake Up Heavy. It is about the personal connection to something precisely, and I know people don't like this. I really appreciate when I'm listening to a movie podcast of any sort and the person goes on for a bit about their personal history and first experience with the movie, even stuff like Red Letter Media, which is pretty big YouTube channel. That's the stuff that I find interesting when they're talking about a particular movie, not so much the breakdown of the movie itself, hearing when they first watched it or what the circumstances around the world. So that's my goal for the most part with Wake Up heavier rarely.

Chris and I do movies maybe that are newer, but I like to talk about stuff that I've been into for decades. So that's the exact same thing with this. At some point we'll get into newer stuff with this, because we'll run out of old things. But it's about the personal connection to these things. For some people that might not be interesting, but for me that is what I find fascinating.

I think both the reviews of the show sort of hit on is it made me think of these things, not necessarily what we're talking about, but something in their life that maybe they had the same kind of feelings about. It's an authentic approach and I'm proud to be part of it. Let's jump into our ad icons, our ad mascots. Do you want to go first? Who do you have on your list?

First step for me is one of those through lines. Gosh, probably back all the way to when I was could be like five years old, that this one goes back to, and that is the Bob's Big Boy. We had Bob's Big Boys in restaurants in town in Fresno. But that bank the I guess he's about seven. Or eight inches tall.

Bank of their advertising icon, holding his overalls with the pompadoor hair and the checkered overalls, standing with one foot forward askew. I guess his stance is a little fancy. He's kind of sassy. He's got some sass. Love that, but this is something that's just always been around.

Not that we went to Bob's Big Boy a lot. They were sprinkled throughout town. There was one. I don't know if there was one in Sunnyside, but if there was, I don't ever remember going to it. The one that we went to was on Sean Clovis, the south west corner of Sean Clovis, which is sort of a ways from where I live.

But all you would have to do is get over to Clovis Avenue and drive all the way down there go in there. But my mom likes to tell the story of and I think I was an infant going to a Bible study there with their Bible study gals and me. I guess she wasn't paying too close attention me getting on top of the booths. So I took off on the ledge of the booths to god knows where. And that's awesome, you know, I don't know when or how or where I got the first one.

Of these banks. I've always had one. Well, I shouldn't say that. I believe one of the ones that I have is my childhood bank, and I think it survived because it was like my Ernie plushdall. They were stored away in my Lego box, which was it wasn't a Lego box.

It was like a pair of boots. It was a big square box that held a pair of boots, and all my legos were in there. And I think I had stored away a couple other things. So I'm pretty sure I have my childhood bank. I gave it to my nephew at some point, kind of forgot about it, and then when that came back up around.

It's been one of those things, like I always mentioned. Once eBay came around, always searched for Bob's big boy banks, right, And that's when I discovered there were variations. Didn't know that before. This was the only one that I ever knew about. So anyway, you know, I would search, never pull the trigger until at some point it's just like I have to do this.

I didn't get that one. I got some of the variations of where he's holding a burger like the actual statue, so these looked more like the statue that would be outside the stores. I don't think we well, some of the frisdent ones might have had statues. I don't think the one on Clovis and Shaw did, though, and realizing okay, these seemed to be older, like I think, more from the sixties, and that bank that I'm talking about is definitely from the seventies. I started finding cheap ones buying the variations.

You can still buy them. Funko made them for a time, but there's a company called Just for Fun I think that's producing them for them now. So you can go to either Bobs dot net, which is the Burbank store, which is one of the original stores that's still going, and then there's I think big Boy dot com, which is one of the Midwest franchises. You can buy Bob's Big Boy Bank for like less than twenty bucks. I have a couple of new ones, I have a couple old ones.

I have one of the Funko ones, and the Funko one I have is like the bank that I had as a kid that's holding his coveralls. And then the mystery mini figure that came with that blind box set. I have that, so I think I have. Seven big boys. Just saw a couple on our trip out to the Clovis antique stores last weekend.

Mm hmm, and I thought, Oh, I've got that guy, and realized when I got home, Oh, no, I don't. So next time i'm there, I'm going to have to check him out. I've been listening to Mall Walking, which is a podcast where Matthew Gorley from the Conan O'Brien needs a friend podcast. He and his friend go walking through the malls. We got to come up with a rig and do a walk through antique mall one of these days, look at some stuff, and record it as a podcast.

I think that'd be fun. I don't know if I could be one of those obnoxious people that like social media influencer. Here, let me take twenty pictures of my food. Well, I don't know if I could do that. I don't know if my personality could handle that.

To be honest with you. What's great about those Clovis antique malls or antique shops is if we go there on a weekday afternoon or even early on a weekend morning. No one's going to be in there, so we just talked each other. Yeah, that's true. I sidetracked myself.

I gave mine to my nephew, and then I started buying some and posting pictures and my sister was like, hey, we still have that one. I thought it ended up as a dog toy, to be honest, I think it's still in Will's toy chest. And she found it, so I got I'm ninety eight percent sure it's my childhood one. I may have bought it on eBay, but I don't think so. Then my aunt, who lives in Stockton, my dad's sister in law, She's like, oh, uncle Cody has one of those in a bag, do you want it?

And I was like, yes, I do want it. Yes. Indeed, he used to be a food inspector in Stockton and somebody at one of the Bobs gave him and I think he has other Bob. Stuff, so maybe I'll get it someday. They sent it, and so I have one bag that's.

Amazing, the Bob's Big Boy mascot, the Big Boy standing out in front of the restaurant, the fiberglass statue which you can buy, which you can find just like you can. If you do the searches, you can find them. The McDonald land play ground stuff and restaurant displays too, but they're pricey. If you've got four thousand laying around, you can buy one. Yeah and put it in your living room or in front of your house.

Hey, you know, I've got to be amazing for it. Yeah, yeah, you do that' stuff's amazing. So you know, Dustin Crop's boy doing those fixing up videos of the fiberglass statues. It just makes me really miss I think that's the way to describe it. It makes me miss an era when we had those big fiberglass icons that you could walk up to, and as a kid, it's just was spectacular.

Seeing Bob's Big Boy standing in front of the restaurant really made an impression on me too. We have Mortar Heads who's doing really great rubber masks, So I keep waiting for him to do. I feel like he and I are kind of on the same wave linked in a lot of ways. He'll probably I can predict him doing a Bob's Big Boy rubber mask down the line. That would be pretty cool, that would be pretty amazing.

Yeah, So if you're listening Mark and right from Mortarheads. You should consider that. And there are also I don't know, I might be down south and southern California there is a Bob's Big Boy cemetery where a bunch of the old ones are probably go down there and pick one up and for cheaper and have Dustin Crop's Boy fix it for you for that's ten thousand dollars. That'd be awesome. The Bob's Big Boy Graveyard is located into Gunney, Michigan.

Actually, so I just actually got something from Funco. I was scrolling through keep getting ads from them on Facebook. I was like, let me, let me go look and see what's going on in the advertising icon section. Right now, they have these weird things called popsis and it's like you're supposed to give it to people as a gift. Yeah, it's a little.

Figure and it's coming out of a present, an open present, and I think you can record a message on it. That's cool. Yeah, weird, I don't know. They're supposed to be about five inches tall and they had a Bob's Big Boy so for fairly cheap, and I was like, that's kind of weird, but I'm going to get him because he looks really cute. Heck, yeah, record a message for yourself.

We'll get into this maybe a little bit more later. But the Funko stuff again sort of last resort. But the mini figures, I don't know if I mentioned this on our show or if it was your show. The minifigures are better because they're not beholden to that dead eyed jaws like a doll's eyes. Yeah.

Sure, I'll put. Quin's quote in there so people understand what I'm talking about. You know, the thing about a Shaggy's getting. Lifeless eyes, black eyes like a dolly. The black holed eyes that the pop figures have, which I'll never understand.

It's not aesthetically pleasing. The mystery minis are much more detailed than actually look like the icons themselves in most regards. Yeah. Yeah, and so I had that little guy. He came with the blind boxes that I got from Target when they had them for for a very brief period.

They never did a second series of that. One of the best features of Bob's Big Boy is his eyes. Yeah, those elliptical yep looking to the side, that cartoonish look. And there's one I think the Funko put out that looks like the original icon. Like most of these do.

They go through these stages where if you survived to the twenty first century, then it's gotten pointier. And we'll get into that with. Cereal mascots, yes, for sure. But when everything was like smooth and cute and round the sixties and seventies. But before that, this kid was kind of weird, looking really large.

His overalls are hanging down even further down his body. No shirt. They thankfully put a shirt on him at some point. That's theous got. This crazy curly hair.

So they did a version of that one, and I haven't tracked one down, and that one goes for more. I think it was very limited. That's fantastic. He's interesting looking, like like. Watching the evolution and we're going to talk about that a little bit today.

I think for every one of these, watching the evolution of these icons is fascinating. Yeah. In fact, the first one I'm going to share piggybacks right off of that idea. David Lynch has great stories about his obsession with the bobs Play restaurant. If folks out there are listening to this and you're looking for something interesting to search on YouTube, look up David Lynch talking about Bob's Big Boy.

It's fantastic. Alan I had a talk that we would try to work and make the can Film Festival with Eraser Hind and Al said, I'll do it. I'll go, you know, twenty four hours, but if you will not take your Bob's break in the afternoon, which almost killed me. But I said, okay, ow, I'll do that, but it's killing me. Yeah.

And there's a great picture that always circulates of him shaking hands with John Waters in front of the Bob said, probably the one in Burbank, I would assume because Bob. Stops kids and kids not just asking your work, you know. So what is your first ad icon for today? I'm piggybacking off of your first choice because my encounter with this particular icon first was by seeing him as a giant fiberglass statue. And it's the Michelin man.

Michelin we put America on radios. There used to be one on Blackstone and as a kid in the eighties, we would drive by him and I was just fascinated by that guy. He was just standing out in a parking lot of some auto park store. I think a big fiberglass, white, chubby tire guy. What made him so interesting to me was the design of his eyes.

There are multiple versions of the Michelin Man, but the eyes in the late seventies early eighties versions of him were particularly appealing to me. I've always liked him, but I've never really done any research on him. So in preparation for today's episode, I did a little research. He first showed up. In you know what his name is?

Yes, okay, well there's a few different names. No, No, that's okay, But are you talking about Bibbindum. Yeah, it's almost. Like a demon name, Bibbdum. He first showed up in an art nouveau poster as a weird character that was intended to promote a brewery, and the Latin on the poster said nunc est bibbindum, which means I just found it.

Yeah, now is the time to drink. That version of the Michelin Man is absolutely terrifying. Yeah, he looks like he could be in a David Lynch movie. Absolutely terrifying. But what they did was they the Michelin Dudes adopted him to be part of their advertising campaign because he looked like tires and at the time.

I mean, we're going way back with Michelin Man. I think of all these that I'm talking about that I've chosen for today, this is the oldest one of any of ours. Actually, eighteen ninety eight I'm seeing for that age thirteen. That's right, eighteen ninety eight. They adopted him.

I believe that they were, that the people who created the Michelin tires were part of I could be getting this wrong, but we're associated with the advertising agency that did that brewery ad, and so they adopted him for their tire ads, and tires used to be white or like a beige color. It made a lot of sense back then. Today it makes no sense that you have a white tire mascot because tires haven't been white in a very, very, very long time. He's still around, the Michelin Man, and is still around, still showing up in advertisements. You know, as I mentioned at the beginning of this show, he's probably the reason why subconsciously I was so drawn to the Staypuffed marshmallow Man, which is a fictional at icon and probably inspired by the Michlein Man.

Oh yeah, as I'm just scrolling through pictures on the internet, right now there are pictures of the Staypuffed marshmallow Man alongside him. Yeah, there him and another one that we'll be getting to later on. I think are inspirations for Staypuffed. Oh yeah, for sure, he's still I love that guy. There's something very comforting about the Michelin Man.

He's soft and squishy. Look him. He's soft and squishy. He's approachable. He wasn't approachable when he was a nukeest bibbendum.

He is and he always and has been for a very long time. And one of the differentiating factors from some of these choices, or at least one of my choices from today's episode. And he's still around and still going strong. As I'm talking to you right now at this very moment, I just realized that you probably have versions of all the icons that you've chosen in possession as a collectible. I don't have collectibles of any of these, and I've always that's interesting to me because I've seen them, I've seen them in antique stores that I've never picked anything up from any of these.

This afternoon, I'm going down to the Wonderland Comics Street sale and I'm putting it out there into the universe that I run into a Michelin man collectible of some sort. I want to say, I've seen figures, dolls, or whatever you want to call them. I'm sending you a picture. This is the one that I see all the time. It's one of the old timey pictures of guys in the costumes.

Oh yeah, it's interesting that they were those old timey glasses, you know that just you would sit on the bridge of your nose that would have a little chain on it. I all love those classes. Not a monocle, but because there's two pieces of class. Yeah, I think about it. That is terrifying.

It makes sense though that and I never made the connection, only really knowing of Michelin as a tire company growing up, that he looked like a stack of tires. And it's because by that time tires were black, except for the occasional white wall tire you might see on an old car, right right. So I never really made that connection that, oh yeah, he looks like stacks of tires. If you're curious and you want to see an image of this, after this episode launches, I will definitely be posting an image of these creepy Michelin men the Bibbendoms on our Instagram page, which we just launched, So if you want to follow Cambridge and Lashawn podcast on Instagram you can you can follow us there also. I want to add something to the Bob's Big Boy conversation.

You and I were texting earlier in the week or at the end of last week, I believe about are there any local icons that we could talk about? And I didn't really come up with any until today. So I mentioned to my wife that we were going to be talking about Bob's Big Boy because I knew you were going to be talking about it, and she said, well, what about Wilkins in Selma? So in Selma there is a burger place called Wilkins and they have an adult man version of Bob's Big Boy on top of their burger place. He's basically the same exact design, except he looks like a chubbier older dude with receding hairline, and he's holding a burger on one hand, and he's holding a frosty beer or probably intended to be a root beer, but it also looks like it could pass for a beer in the other hand.

And I'm going to make sure I get a good picture of that and post that on our Instagram page too. Yeah. I couldn't come up with anything either at all. There's the sparky electronics guy. Yeah, yeah, I couldn't get away from burgers.

So there was a place, a local place called lester Berger's. There was one near our house, and we went a couple times and I but nobody in our family liked them. But when I look at that Lost Fresno message board, a lot of people have fond memories of it, I'm like, Okay, we thought they were shit, but whatever. And they had a goofy little mascot that was obviously made by probably a family member or something, and I was like, man, it seems like there should be I'm sure there probably were before our time. Yeah, some decent local mascots, either anthropomorphic animals or people, but it just doesn't really seem to happen that much anymore.

I just thought of another one. There's the Pig. There's the Mexican restaurant in the. Tower District continto. Coco Contento, the pig, who is basically porky pig.

Yeah, he's chopping his own handoff. Yeah, he's holding a knife and he's got his other arm is sort of behind the knife. You can kind of see that that's probably what he's doing. But yeah, that's a good one. And then Wilkins and I don't think the Santa Claus on top of Valley Novelty.

Count Robert Tito's has a pretty iconic person on their sign, but it's he's a little terrifying if you look closely at his design. Me and Eds, Me and Eds. Yeah, I don't know, that's just two guys, two guys. I mean, like something that someone actually created out of whole cloth. We got to come up with a mascot named Cambridge with Sean who looks like a combination of the two of us.

Oh God, that'd be horrified, would be. At least we have similar glasses, so we can begin with that. We can begin with that. Oh, what's next on your list? This goes back again to childhood, very young.

I think these were produced in the early seventies and were ubiquitous, just like Bob's Big Boy. And it is poppin' fresh. Oh yeah, Pillsbury dough boy. Ye Hi, I'm popping fresh the Pillsbury dough boy man, here's popping fresh news. I kind of assumed that he went back further than he does.

But he was created in nineteen sixty five to promote the refrigerated stuff that Pillsbury puts out, which they still put out and oh yeah, still gets used by millions of people. We buy their biscuits every once in a while. Their biscuits, crescent rolls, yep, pizza, crust, pie do all the stuff that comes in the little ten that you have to terrifyingly pop open. Oh yeah, So he was made to promote that. Everybody calls him Pillsbury dough Boy, but his name is Poppin Fresh.

Actually, I just read and take this with a grain of salt, because it's from Wikipedia that his name is Jonathan Pillsbury. Oh my gosh, really, Johnny, wait to hear what I found out about mister Peanut. Anyways, I think they first produced the vinyl figure in seventy one or seventy two, so shortly after I was born. Everybody had him. I think I had one as a kid.

I'm pretty sure I had one. Might have been a hand me down from a next door neighbor, but I definitely know that friends had them, or like at your church or school he had, like a play area. There'd always be one in there, always there, like Bob's. It's that esthetic of him which has gone virtually unchanged since then. He's maybe was.

A little bit softer and rounder and cuter early on. But I have a figure from seventy one that's the date stamp on it, and a newer one from the nineties and it's the same. I don't think they've messed with him very much over the years. And once I started looking for him on eBay back in the early two thousand's discovered. Actually I think I knew this as a kid, but never saw any of them.

He's got a whole family. There's Poppy Fresh, there's Grandpopper and Grandmomer. There's grand Momer yeah that's weirder. And Grandmomer so, you know, trying to go with the pop thing with everybody. I'm assuming that's his parents, but it could be hers.

And then they have Popper a little boy, and Bun Bun a baby girl. Oh that's adorable, Flapjack was a dog, and Biscuit the cat, and then Uncle Rolly. As happens with all of these things, and you get that obsession you discovered or oh, wait, there's all these other things. Yeah. I started searching for them as well and trying to find cheap versions that I could buy.

I was trying to find out my history on eBay, and I think I got my Poppin' Fresh. It was either my Pop and Fresh or the next little guy I'm going to talk about, for like a dollar ninety nine. I don't know how much shipping was because it doesn't show. That that's a good deal. And then eventually I got Poppy Fresh and this is the same size to like five or six inch size.

Yeah. And then there was a line of Finger Puppets of the whole family. You could get Grandpopper and Grandmamarez the larger size figures too, and maybe as the Finger Puppets. But they also released a set of Finger Puppets, and I've got pop and Fresh, Poppy Fresh. I want to see what Flapjack looks like, and the boy and the girl.

I don't have the animals, and I think there's even a baby baby in a later set, and I don't they don't show the name on here. That's probably really adorable. They're all very round and they all have the little blue eyes. The one thing though, that I discovered in my searches. That is just amazing to me.

Is they release this can. Oh, but it comes with a little blow mold, not fresh that you can put in and there's a rubber band in here, so you push him down and this one's I need to get a new rubber band because half of it's broken. But you can push him down in there, close the can lid, you'll whack it on the table and he flies out. That's amazing, just like the you know, yeah, we've all experienced it or seen it, and there's always jokes about that tear or fine moment of when is the can gonna pop open? Oh yeah, there's that urban legend of somebody of it blowing up in the back of their car and hitting them in the back of the head and they pass out or something like that, and because they felt it, they thought it was their brain coming out.

I've heard different versions of that story over the years, the urban legend. That's ridiculous. I know people were ridiculous. I found one on eBay the other day and I don't think the rubber band was included. But it's got a little spring loaded piece of metal in there that you can pull out and redo the it's cool rubber band with to make it work, and I have a video.

I shot a video of me doing it, so hopefully that's on my phone or I can find it or our stuff. Let's see it. It's a great little gimmick. This guy is kind of fragile though he's I cleaned all my stuff off during this last week so I could take count of everything I had, and if you put them up to the sun, you can see where there are very thin spots. I was trying to be very delicate when I cleaned him, But blow mold is not my favorite thing, especially when it's not done very well.

It would make more sense that they would do it with a soft vinyl so that when he pops out he could bounce around a little bit. Yeah, because this stuff, I think can get brittle over the years. Maybe it's the weight of it. The blow mold was the only way of it be light. I think that's probably true.

I think I did have a Pillsbury dough Boy as a kid in some form. I have vague memory of something like that. Same with Bob. They make plushes of these. They make other things like you can buy little ones that are keychains.

I looked though to see if they had a store or anything on Pillsbury's site that would sell them new, but I couldn't find anything. It was just those typical things when you look up General Mills or whatever, it just shows you where you can buy their product. Yeah, yeah, which I was kind of disappointed in. But yeah, the ones that I have that are twenty years twenty five years apart. The sculpt and everything is almost exactly the same.

The Pillsbury insigny on his hat and the newer version is like it was stamped on there. The old one is like somebody etched it with a little metal tool or something, so it's all ganky and wonky looking. I love that. And that is the one Funko pop that I don't have. I missed him.

I think he was a Story exclusive and they've released other ones that are like holiday related, which I am not interested in. No, not at all. He is one of the Funko pops. It's really fricking adorable and I'd like to have at some point. I bet they have him at that store that I found by McDonald's ones Alex's Collectibles or something like that, and it's on Sean and Moroa not too far from you.

Nothing says loving like myself, Fred Stakes Hello. Speaking of Funko pops, That leads me to my next one, because they did a big Funko pop of this guy and I wanted it, but I just wasn't willing to spend the forty or so dollars on it. My next icon or mascot is the kool Aid Man. Oohing, She makes me hot and thirsty. This is a job for KOOLI Hey cool?

Oh yeah, lad here, bring in your button. There's done the rum get a big wine happy here mine. Aid. The Funko Pop version of him actually kind of works with the black eyes because if you're familiar with the kool Aid Man, he has just sort of black outline eyes and nose and smile. I found some interesting information on him.

He first premiered on TV in nineteen fifty four. The person who came up with the kool Aid Man, Marvin Potts, was inspired by his son drawing on the frosted glass as we have all done as kids on windows. And especially car windows. Yeah, yep, exactly like a little smiley face. And that's exactly what this kool Aid Man has He's been different colors before, different colors of kool Aid, but the one that we're most familiar with is the cherry or the red.

I finally figured out why Chris Farley on Saturday Night Live was so appealing to me. As soon as I saw him first crash through his first wall, it immediately activated in it like a subconscious connection to the kool Aid Man crashing through walls, and how completely insane it is that in order to save these children from the thirst, this giant thing has to crash through a wall and bring kool Aid to them. Can't just show up right, It has to crash through windows, crash through fences, crash through houses. I mean those commercials, especially the ones in the eighties where he's always just crashing through everything, were hilarious in retrospect, although I took it completely seriously, like, of course, this thing's going to come save us from our thirst, but to crash through a building is completely insane.

It's very irresponsible. Mister kool Aid man, whatever your name. Is, Marvin, Yeah, teaching these kids right the wrong thing to do. Another interesting thing that I found out about him, there was a short series of Marvel comics MM hmmm, where he was fighting off these villains called the Thirsties. And now I really really want to see those comics because that sounds amazing to me.

But the kool Aid Man kind of fits into that category of round, comforting cute icons, the Michelin Man and Pillsbury dough Boy and Bob's Big Boy. I was fascinated by the animated eyes and mouth of the kool Aid Man, but how the body was a real costume, probably plastic. Same thing with the Pillsbury dough Boy. I loved looking at those early commercials and seeing that it was stop motion animation, yeah yeah, and being able to see the tactile quality of these creatures. I love how some of these icons you could really see how they were made in the commercials.

But yeah, kool Aid Man, oh yeah, the great massive glass carafe of sugar water crashing through your wall. Emphasis on the sugar, Yeah, exactly, shitload of sugar to make that stuff. We never really had kool Aid growing up, No, that was. Like the big So kool Aid was huge for every one of my babysitters, and there were about five of them. One of them had My babysitter situation is that I'd be dropped off at somebody's house until my mom could come get me, and they always had cool it always.

It is intuing to keep us hyper doing stuff on our own. I think I only had it at other people's houses. I don't think we ever bought. Yeah, we didn't have it in our house, but I did have it quite a bit at babysitter's house. We just drink juice.

I guess, yeah, it's probably better for you, I would think so, mm hmm. Yeah. I have the little mystery Mini Funkos cool figure blind box. There you go. Wasn't one of my top choices, but I like him.

I looked up your stuff. I didn't really do any research on the ones you sent, but I looked up your stuff, and it's interesting that it started out as just a picture with the face on it, and then slowly got the legs and all that stuff. The legs didn't show up until nineteen seventy one. Wow, let me look at my date. Yeah, that's correct, nineteen seventy one the legs, and then that's when he started breaking through walls too.

I think that it would have been cool to have the giant Funko pop of him Funko Pops are kind of like you and I have said before, placeholders. I think the format of the Funko Pop really works for that particular character, just like the format of the Funko Pop works really well for the Hamburger officer, Big Mac and Mayor mccheese as well. That having a giant one of him would have been pretty cool. Yeah. I remember seeing it at Target and being kind of not one of my top guys, but he's pretty cool looking.

Yeah. Yeah, did they make anything any promotional stuff for him back in the day. I've ever done a search for Kool aid Man on eBay or anything like that to see if they put out a plush or even a vinyl figure. I did a brief search. I wasn't able to uncover anything that was plastic or vinyl.

I'm sure there's something out there somewhere. Mainly, he would show up on two dimensional products like advertising. Oh, I remember seeing the ads and comic books. He was one of those ones that was always on the back like a full page, a. Full page ad crashing through a wall, A little coupon you could cut out or whatever to probably order it.

But yeah, those ads are burned into my brain too. What's next on your list? I'm gonna throw out an honorable mention because this guy goes along with popping fresh in my mind. I think if you had one, you generally had the other. And I don't know that I had one as a kid.

And that's the Little Sprout figure. Oh yeah, Giant. I think that's the one that I got for one ninety nine on eBay. However, many years ago. The aesthetic of him and the shape and the and this is something that's very important about all of these figures.

The smell of these vinyl figures is very nostalgia inducing, and it's actually a part of why I started collecting vinyl. In the early two thousands, I saw an article I don't know if it was it was either Details or Detour magazine, and I wish I had bought that magazine. It had an article about the new vinyl toys that were coming out of Japan that were reminiscent of these advertising icons. That was the inspiration was things like this Big Boy, Bank, Tillsbury, dough Boy, Little Sprout. If I get a figure like none of these that I have in my collection have that vinyl smell anymore.

But I would get something new and get hit with that smell and immediately go back to playing with these things as a kid, and even like pool toys when we get cleopool toys. I mean, it's weird to say, but I would sit there and breathe in that smell. It's amazing. It's chemical off gassing. Yeah, like a crazy thing that we can attach so many positive memories to this toxic fume that essentially is appealing.

And it's petroleum based, which makes sense because I like the smell of gasoline. I like the smell, you know. So if I. Get a toy and I haven't purchased any Japanese file in quite a while, but if I get one and it's got a strong final smell, man, I mean nothing more satisfying to my brain than that. And what I always think of is these little guys.

There's a couple variations again of the little sprout. There's the one that I have that's got a rounder head, and then a later one I believe has kind of a more conical head. And then I discovered at one point not too long ago, actually a little finger puppet. I'm like, I've never seen that before. Nice, totally adorable.

So I got one of those, and then later on a while later, found out that it's from a set, a play set of a farm that and I'll send you a link later. There's one on eBay right now that's complete and going for a pretty cheap price other than that shipping, because it's got the box, it's got everything in it. So it came with two little sprout finger puppets and a little farmer guy, and then all these cans of vegetables and little blow mold corns and carrots and things that you could put in the cans. It's a really cool set that I had no idea existed, and I forgot to see who made it. The Green Giant farm in Factory set was made by a child Guidance Toys.

I'm really tempted to snatch that. I don't have any place for it or anything, right, I don't even know if it's a finger pupet. I think it's just so it can fit in the vehicles that it comes with, because I'm like, who's finger Even as a little kid, nobody's finger would fit up this hole. That doesn't sound right, Well, you gotta put the thing bong sound in for that line. He's one of those ones that goes along with Big Boy and popping Fresh as ubiquitous to childhood.

Well, since we're doing honorable mentions, I'll bring up mister Peanut because I've always loved the design of that character. Mister Peanut is asking people to say, please pass the Planters because Planters pleases three times fast. He's got a sophistication that is really fascinating to me. Oh, look at you got him right there. I was eating that before we started because I haven't eaten anything today.

He's still around and uh kinda. They killed him off a couple of years ago. They did. Yeah, I did not know that was that. So he's been voiced by Robert Downey Junior, by Bill Hayter and Keith Ferguson.

So was he killed off recently, like canceled or killed off? Oh that's right, that's. The character was killed off and then reincarnated as a little baby. Oh my gosh, that's so. I don't know if that was planned.

I think people flipped out when they killed him off. It's like changing new coke or whatever. Don't fuck with stuff like that, you know, don't kill off mister Peanut. That is really strange. I did not know that.

I'm glad you brought that up because I feel like I knew that on the periphery of some sort. You'll have to look it up. I don't know. I just remember it happening and going, what in the hell are they doing? And then like a month later, the little baby peanut shows up like you guys are idiots.

They're trying to get on the whole. Uh. Baby versions of everything are cuter than the real versions of them. So his real name, and I'll be quick with this, Bartholomew Richard Fitzgerald, smythe m is it smith? Smyther Smith?

If it's a y? Is there any at the end? No, so I guess it could be either one, but my brain would tell me smythe. Yeah, me too, So Bartholome. This is of course Wikipedia, so we don't know if it's true or not.

But Bartholomew Richard Fitzgerald smythe. I think I saw a sprout Funko Pop a while back, and I've seen a peanut Funkle pop too. Yeah, they have a mister Peanut. I think the Jolly Green Giant was one of my favorites too. As a kid.

I always love those commercials. I didn't really gravitate towards him, it was always a little sprout. Yeah. There was a larger green giant figure vinyl figure as well. I think he was probably maybe eight or nine inches or something.

That's cool. He's slender and he's a man and not cute, so it's wearing a man wearing minimal clothes. Apparently it was originally like bear skin, but then they changed it to the leaf design. He's been around for a long time. Yeah, Yeah, that's another one that goes back pretty far, mister peanut.

I do searches all the time for stuff on him, and I just never find anything that appeals to me. They have those banks, and I sent you a picture of one that I found and it was all janked up, so I didn't get him. And then there's little things you can get in pencil toppers and blah blah blah. But there's never really been anything that makes me think I have to have this. I think there's whistles too, and it's just kind of weird stuff.

He is a cool figure. I liked the older variations of him more than the modern ones. I'm with you on that like, don't take away that detail. I love the old design of him because of the check texture of his shell and the monocle. And well on the top hat.

I mean, yeah, I said last time or time before, I was obsessed with top hass as a kid. So yeah, I've got two more on my list. Well I've got my big one. But I wanted to honorable mention again for the Hostess ions. That was all.

And I didn't really express this at the beginning, but. A lot of this stuff, I mean, there were obviously mascots dating back you know michelin Man too, the nineteenth century. So much of this stuff, particularly for me at least, is food related, and so much of it is junk food or what most people would consider junk food or not really healthy options. In the next one that will kind of end on or the big thing goes along that line. But Hostess, of course, with all of their snack treats, is a big one.

And every single item of theirs that they produced had a mascot, and of course they would do commercials, animated commercials for these things. And Snooze booz Twinkies things. This goes along with McDonald land and all that stuff and it fits in the kid's brains. I mean it is a oh, what's that word? The word mark is looking for his insidious And I know people rail against this and have for years, Like a kid sees this commercial, sees this figure and thinks that they want that cereal.

And people rail against this for the right reason, right, it's hard to not appreciate the artistry of these characters. You're probably the same way you see a twinkie cowboy character and doesn't make you want to go out and buy a twinkie and eat it at this sometimes kind of does. It kinda does. For example, I had an apartment once that was right next to a Hostess shop over by Fresno State. I lived there briefly with my brother, and there was a host the shop right down the street from us, like an outlet store, and I would just go and wander the aisles and just look at the images.

It was just because of the nostalgic connection. I know why people would my parents would be pissed off, But they're beautiful characters. It makes sense. I'm trying to think of the word that comes to mind with it not invasive, but it perpetuates these thoughts and it's exploitative. Yeah, that's not really it's those ideas, but there's a particular word.

I'll probably figure it out when I'm editing the show. But once again, insidious. They can take a stranglehold on you, and I don't remember seeing like merchandise for these guys. There is a little years later discovered the little Twinkie the Kid container that you could put Twinkies in. That's cool.

Yeah, this is one of the lines that Funko has exploited. I think they've put it out nearly every character. I don't know if they've done Dancy the Chocodle. I don't think they've done Susie Q. She was sort of block because she was just a girl with a look like a cheerleader I think, with a que on a big old sweater.

I haven't seen Chauncey. These names run from inspired to really lame. But Twinky the Kid, I don't know why. He's a cowboy. That's okay.

King Ding Dong, that's fantastic. I think they changed it later to just King Don. Better than King Dong. Yeah, Captain Cupcake again, uninspired, fruit Pie the Magician, uninspired, Chauncey chocodile. I kind of like that.

One, yeah Happy ho. Ho, which was modeled after Robin Hood for some reason. Interesting Chief big Wheels, And this is one that I never saw as a kid, because it's just he's a larger ding dong. Apparently, so the ding dong, the larger, the ding dong gets a chief. It becomes Chief big Wheels.

I don't remember seeing those, but it's possible. I'm sure that particular character doesn't exist anymore. No, I don't think they make larger ding dongs anymore. And if you have one. Good for you, good for you Chief.

I don't remember seeing like the Twinkie, the kid thing that you could get destroy your twinky in or anything like that. But of course these days Funko and then now Funko is coming out with the items themselves with little feet and hands and like a bite taken out of them so you can buy a twinkie, oh yeah ho or a cupcake. They were represented pretty highly in that Mystery Mini's collection because I got a magician who is my favorite, the fruit pie because I love those fruit pies. Oh, I love those fruit pies too. And then I think I have Captain Cupcake and I've got Twinkie the Kid.

I've got a larger version of Twinkie the Kid as well. They did quite a few of them for that set, and they and again for the larger size ones. My favorite is Twinkie the Kid. I don't know why. He's pretty cool looking.

Well, I was gonna say those ads were ubiquitous, and comic books too, especially the fruit pie ads in the Marble comics. Yeah, yeah, where they will have the heroes doing something Hulk and fruit pies. I mean that is great, amazing, amazing stuff. Of course, they went out of business and then somebody bottom up and nothing's been the same. They're smaller, the pies are not anywhere near as good as they used to be.

Cloingly sweet Twinkies are pretty much the same. But of course I don't think they use any of the iconography anymore for the rebranded stuff, probably not, at least not on the Zingers. They might for Twinkie, so that that was another honorable mentioned. I don't have anything, well, I've got funk O stuff, but yeah, didn't really have anything as a kid other than eating them. You're gonna big delight.

In every pie of Hostess cupcakes and Twinkies cakes. Well, I got to mention these guys to stray from food before I bring up I guess I have two more honorable mentions. We're doing quick honorable mentions now. This is our first full on theme episode and there's a lot of stuff to go on, so it's going to be long. I mean, we only put these out once a month, so that's right.

Break it up into chunks if you need. Two folks enjoy going Along, Going Along Manny, Moe and Jack the Pet Boys. Jack, the Three Best Friends are car Ever had. Loved these guys as a kid, mainly because they for me, they were like the Three Stooges. There are a few animated commercials where the characters of Manimo and Jack might say things to one another.

They didn't really appear anywhere else except for at the store, and there was the big sign, the big Pep Boys sign right off of Blackstone. I love that each character had a particular personality trait that was visible. One was a smoker, one had little round glasses and a Hitler mustache or a Charlie Chaplin mustache, and the other one was normal looking, so they looked like icons. They looked like old timey comedians, and that really really appealed to me. And it wasn't until later on that I realized that Ron Mayle from the band's Sparks really reminds me of Manny.

I think it's Manny, the one with the little glasses and the Charlie Chaplin mustache. And then in nineteen ninety they took away the cigar that I think it was Mo that was smoking it or Jack. They took away the smoking aspect, of course, which is really a shame, because no one's going in and eliminating gars from imagery of Groucho Marx. It's just you don't do that. Maybe maybe someone is, Maybe someone is.

I just loved looking at them. And again there's the fiberglass representation of these characters, the three dimensional fiberglass statues that probably still exist out there too in junk yards. Now they're virtually not part of the pet Boys promotional. They're not on the sign. Still, there was a sign in downtown that has them.

I took a picture of it. I don't know how years ago that was. Carly and I were down there for some reason. I'm not sure why we ate at a Burger place and no longer exists, and I remember taking a picture of that sign down town. I like the commercials because, if I'm not mistaken, the animated figures of them had giant heads and tiny little bodies, right, yes, exactly.

I always found very strange. Uh huh. That's an interesting story that goes They were founded in nineteen ten twenty one in Brooklyn. There were two mos, and one of the Mos left. These are nicknames.

Essentially, the images of Many Moo and Jack are true to the people that founded the store cool, which I think is really cool. So they're not made up. So are you telling me that it could have been many Momo instead of Many Mo and. Jack, Many Momo and Jack, Many Moo, Mo and Jack. If I have the information correct.

Mo, Many Mojack, Mo Many Mojack. There's something about those guys, man, and I know that eventually I will succumb to it and buy round glasses. I tried some on when I was looking for my new ones, and I don't think they work on my face. Round glasses either work or they don't work. So I got these gigantic old man glasses.

And I didn't realize we're so big. You know what you and I look really good in the gigantic old man glasses. It works for us, it works for our demeanor demeanors. So yeah, that's all I had to say about Mammi Moo and Jack. As a side note, everyone should listen to the band Sparks.

They're pretty amazing. So what do you have next on your agenda? Well, we're getting I think into the last group. Here, my item, your item, and then our combo item at the very end all have to do with cereal ad icons. These were the ones that were really targeted by parents.

Oh yeah, and I understand that again. In almost every serial directed towards kids had a cute mascot. And these are just some of the ones that I remember from childhood and are still going today and were aesthetically pleasing and I grabbing and made you want. To eat that cereal. So we've got Captain Crunch, Lucky the Leprechaun, Tony the Tiger, Tricks, the Tricks Rabbit, Snap Crackle and Pop the flintstones for the Oh yeah, Pebbles cereals too.

Can Sam Digham who. Was the Sugar Smacks icon, Sonny the Cuckoo Bird for Cocoa Puffs. I still love toocn Sam, And this is the case where I think the sixties and seventies versions are the go to for me. As far as esthetics. Yep, some of them, like Tricks, hasn't changed all that much.

But he was definitely rounder and cuter bat and I think he's one of the older ones. I think he has been around since like the thirties or forties or something. But a lot of these cereals really hit the market in the sixties and seventies and targeted kids. We didn't need a lot of junk food when we were growing up, but we had sugary cereals. I remember having Captain Crunch and cocoa pebbles and or fruity pebble a lot in the house.

Oh yeah. And my parents also went to the health food store regularly, and I went there with them and got all kinds of healthy stuff as well. So you know, don't eat cap'n Crunch all day long. Treat yourself, but don't indulge. You'll destroy your mouth.

For one thing, that's for sure. Oh my gosh, crunchberries in high school for my sister and I were like a definite treat. I love apple jacks in high school. But when I was in elementary school, it was all about fruit loops and fruity pebbles. I can't do fruit flavored cereals anymore.

It has to be chocolate or plain I guess, like just cap'n crunch, not with the crunchberries, right that puffed rice and or corn cereals that they make. I can do, but I'm not big on. The fruit stuff. I'll eat it like as a last resort, but I definitely remember doing fruit loops and tricks and fruity pebbles. I'd much rather have chocolate than fruit any of the week, and any regard.

I'd much rather eat a piece of chocolate than a strawberry. So assume me my big one. Oh my, this might usurp even Big Boy in Pillsbury dough Boy in my mind, because they're so odd and this is something that no longer exists as a cereal. When I was a kid, they were big, and they were heavy on promotion, promotional materials and commercials, and that is Freaky's Cereal came out in nineteen seventy two and only lasted until seventy six, and they I think have one of the greatest promotional outputs of any cereal in history. I like Freaky Cereal because it tastes good and I know I'm the bus.

I believe that it started from the get go with Cereal premiums, cereal prizes, whatever you want to call them. I believe that started right when the cereal was introduced. So Freaky's are seven characters, and let me run through these names because they're pretty awesome. So we've got Boss Moss who is the leader of the group, Snorkel, Dwarf, ham Hose I'm not really sure. About that one, King Gong, and ham Hose, Yeah, Grumble.

Cow, Mumble, gargle, and Goody goody. So it's the seven creatures that they created for this cereal were featured in their commercials and. They created these. Oh, I would say they're maybe just over an inch most of them. Some of them are even shorter, just based on the figure design hard plastic premiums that you could get in the cereal love them.

And I had a bunch of. These as a kid. I can't really specify exactly which ones I had. I don't know that I had a full set of seven as a kid. I'm sure during that time period of seventy two to seventy six.

We went through quite a bit of. This so that I could get those right, and I played with them. They produced little cars that had not really a balloon, but it almost looks like a how what do you call the thing when you have like a beaker and you bring up the liquid with the little a dropper. Yeah, so that rubber party you would stick on the end of the car and then hit it with your hand and it would skid across the floor. They came out with boats that you would attach a balloon to, so blow up the balloon, stick it on the end and have it go across your bath to magnets patches.

I guess. There was a little mini series of comic books, which is new to me discovery. I found this out when I was doing my research. I'm looking at eBay and other things. What else, I'm all kinds of stuff, little discs with each figure on them.

It was those little figures for me that really solidified them in my brain. I would think about them for decades. Probably lost them back in the Great Purge. When you discover girls and other quote unquote adult things when you're about thirteen years old. eBay of course comes around. You've got this marketplace that can go across the country or across the.

World, would always look for them. I don't think I bought any. I don't know why I hold off so long on stuff. I think I'm just waiting for the best price for things. Yeah, I know that I bought three, not off eBay but from Etsy, from Doctor Tongue's Toys.

And I've actually been to this guy's place in Portland when Curly and and I went before Cleo was born. I bought a couple off of eBay, and so I had six of them, but I had a double of Boss Moss, the green Bossy figure, fantastic. The only one I didn't have was ham Hose, and I don't know if he was like short packed back in the day, you know, one of the ones that just didn't get produced that often. But he ain't cheap when you find him alone. And if you want to buy a set of seven of these little guys these days, you're looking at at least one hundred and twenty dollars, which is just outrageous to me.

Individually, I think I looked for stuff that was under ten dollars. Recently got the ham hose off of Etsy for way more than I usually spend on this stuff. I'm not going to say how much. The litle embarrassing, not like fifty dollars or anything, but there was one on eBay recently, but it disappeared. I think it had gone for a less missed out on it because I was him and Hahn, and then you reach that point where it's like I got to get one or I'm never going to and I think the probably a couple of his little tentacles might break off, so I have a feeling that that's also an issue.

It's hard to find an intact one. They're weird little figures that some ad company came up with for this cereal that Ralston produced, and it was the first cereal that they ever produced, Ralston Purina most people know of from dog food, right they did Chuck Wagon, I believe, so they've got that checkerboard logo. Yeah. So short lived cereal, but major impact on me and some of the greatest cereal premiums in the history of the world. I'm actually really excited that I have a full set now, and I started looking at the magnets and stuff, and everything's just too much.

They want twenty or more dollars a piece for them. I didn't have magnets, go ahead. There were short lived, so anybody interested in owning that stuff is from a particular period of time twenty two to seventy six. I had no idea, because of course I was born in seventy six. They show up in the erbs.

Tom Hanks is eating from a box of them, and that's much later than seventy six. That's true, that's like eighty six or something. I think they probably just did it because they look like little monsters. Yep. I want to say I may have had a boat or a car when I was a kid.

I know I had magnets, and I definitely had figures. I just don't remember which one I did buy. According to my eBay purchase history, I bought a box of sealed cars, so I have a whole set of those. I have all seven of those as well. And that was ten bucks or something for the box.

Nice. Nice, I think, clean. And I played with them a few times, but they're boxed away now. But they're pretty cool. And the toys and the magnets, I think the magnets might look more like how they looked in the art that was produced for them, like on the boxes, the figures themselves, some of them are a little wonky, but you get the basic idea and for producing a one by two inch toy at the most, it's like I can understand the liberties that they took.

But there's variations too. I think there's a Goody Goody that has a Carmen Miranda fruit hat on her head, I guess is really rare. And there were rubber versions produced at some point, which honestly don't interest me. So it's the hard plastic ones. The hard plastic is really that's the tactile thing that we're going to talk about in a little bit.

The descriptions on the backs for things like the magnets were called Freakis Magneticus. They used all kinds of great promo jargon and things, and you know, they all had personalities and the commercials are really fun. All you musicians out there, you need to start a band called Freakis Magneticus, Yeah. And be like just total drone, yes, freak out music, that's right, neo psychedelia. Freaky's for me is my top thing, and I now have a complete set of I'm whole and I can die a happy man.

That's awesome, but hopefully not for another thirty years or so at least. No, you got a long ways to go. Mark. My cereal icon we're going to talk about before we get into the big one is from Quaker Oats Cisp. A natty problem.

Fortunately there's always time for a boneup. Quispe Cuisp is a really fascinating character because this guy hasn't changed since nineteen sixty five when he first emerged on the scene. They've maintained the same design. You can still buy Cuisp cereal with him on the box looking exactly the same. It's a weird relationship because I was never drawn to the cereal itself.

I think I tried it once, it didn't really like it. It was all about fruit loops and applejacks and cocoa crispies. But the Cisp character himself beats all them out in my opinion, and I know it's because of this. He was created by the same dude, Jay Ward, who designed Rocky and Bullwinkle, and so he has the same aesthetic as those characters. And I absolutely loved Rocky and Bullwinkle as a kid.

Yep, same I didn't even understand the humor until later on. But I loved the design and the music, the timing and the weirdness of that show, but primarily the design of the characters. And so Quisp is my jam. A pink skinned alien with a helicopter attachment on his head is just awesome to me. I'm sure that there is merchandise out there, though I've never purchased any and gone shopping for it.

He's amazing. I love the design. I love the combination of color, pink and blue, and you just can't beat it. Is it blue or green? He looks green to me.

The outfit is green, The background is blue. Yeah, the box is blue. Yeah. Yeah. The contrast is just so brilliant.

I want to. Say I've seen an old Vinyl CISP figure, but I couldn't find any trace of that in my searches. Of course, Funko has put out a ton of stuff. Yeah, Cisp and Quake, I think came in that. They've got those two packs.

I think they're just called Vinyl figures and Quick and those are pretty cool. They tend to go more towards like a style guide for the actual item. You know, they're not Funko eyes. They're not pop Eyes, but they do have pops. They have the soda Quisp figure as well, and he's kind of cool looking.

Yeah. I know they did a bobblehead back when that's all they did. I don't ever remember seeing this cereal as a kid. So that's that's the thing. It wasn't ever on the shelf consistently.

I would see it every once in a while. I got real excited the first time I ever saw it on the shelf. I convinced my mom to get it. And I wasn't impressed by the cereal, and so I never bought it again. But even to this day, you have to order it from like Amazon.

I have not seen it on the shelf since the early two thousands, though I do know that you can still buy it new. I think this is interesting too. Do you know the story of Crisp and Quake? No? But you know, the one thing I find odd is that his helicopter antenna thing is the same color as his flesh.

So are those fleshy out growths. Yeah, that's part of his alien that's disgusting, biomechanical alien helicopters, skin of the flaps Cronenberg. Yeah. Yeah, it's super super gross and weird. It only works because of the design, right, the illustrative design.

So Quake was voted out in nineteen seventy one by fans because they chose Quisp over Quake, and I think that's super fascinating. Yeah, Quake, quick, big Bennet. That was why not leave it to the kids out there take sides with either Quake. Or a quisp. Oh, quake or a quip two no cereals from Quaker, sort of a breakfast fude vote for.

Your character to be eliminated. It was like a death match. I mean, he's kind of boring. He's what a construction dude or something. Yeah, he's like a logger, I think something like that.

Or he's got like a miner's hat on or something. He's got a hard hat on. What makes it worse is that apparently the cereal was the same, right, it was just the same cereal, just two different icons, you know, looking at the cereal, and I didn't mention this about Freaky's. I could never remember what the cereal was, but looking at old images, it's that puffed like corn yep, which I think if I'm not mistaken is much like Captain Crunch, you know, the base Captain Crunch thing, the orange ish, puffy, super sweetened cereal en. Yes, Freaky's was just little ovals, just exactly like cheerios, but they weren't oats or healthy like cheerios can be.

Yeah, it was just that sweetened puffed corn by the look of it. That's what CISP was as well, just a different shape. The flavor has been compared to frosted flakes, but not as good. So when we lived on Cambridge and with Sean was the last time I ever bought a box of CISP. I remember on a whim being at the grocery store and buying a box and eating it and saving the box.

But I don't think I actually finished eating the food. I think I just ate some of the cereal and then got rid of the rest. Looking up whether or not you could still buy Cuisp, I found that you could buy it through Amazon. And also there's a great T shirt out there. I'm really tempted to get eventually down the line got to represent I love that character.

He's fun. You can watch the commercials on YouTube. They're great. The guy who voices Cuisp is DAWs Butler who did Yogi Bear and Elroy Jetson and Snagglepuss and a lot of those characters. He fits right in with what we're about to talk about.

I think I think I may have seen a couple boxes in targets sometime decades ago and just going yeah, I don't remember this from childhood as a kid at all. It's an interesting present but not present thing. It's probably territory things too, like this may have been more popular in other parts of the country, and just like some of the hosts of stuff had different names like ring Dings instead of hohos or ding dongs or whatever. Part of that is front companies coming out with a very similar item in different parts of the country and then getting stepped up ye bought up by hostess or bought up by whoever changing them. This next one we're about to talk about feels as if it hasn't changed since it started.

Maybe a couple of characters have come and gone a little bit, but these guys have remained unaltered, well until recently. I guess I. Don't know if I would say that, because they've had a lot of design changes over the years, and well, like you say, character introductions and then character demises as well as when they're available. That's true. So what are we talking about here.

We're talking about the serial monsters. Don't be scared. I'm the super Sweep Monster with the superwe You see your Count Chocula, here's the super Sweetness City. But I've got Chalcolitz sweet used or Monstrous chalk Blitz flavor. Well, i got Betty flavored sweet eatul Monster Strong Bedy flavor.

Two of them are my Two of my favorite mascots of junk food ever created Booberry and Frank and Berry. Those two are phenomenal designs in my opinion. The Cereal monsters are amazing. And you and I were both lucky winners of the Cause Cereal Monster contest. Well before we get into that, like, I'm a Count Choculate guy because that was the cereal that we got when I was a kid.

Again, not big. On fruit cereals. I like the design of all of the characters actually, and even the ones that were introduced later like Fruit Brute and or what's the other. The mummy what was he called? Yummy Mummy?

Yummy Mummy, the short lived ones, but of those original three, count Chocula was the one that we would get. And I don't actually remember getting any prizes out of the Serial Monster boxes back in the day. And I know they had them. They had rings, and they. Had little stand figures like we'll talk about in a minute.

Freaky's and Coco Pebbles are the only things that I remember specifically getting prizes from. Yeah, so that's interesting because I know they made them. I don't recall getting prizes either. My memory is just that the image was my prize, like the box, like just staring at the box. I would just stare at the box.

But I'm sure there were little prizes. Oh there were, yeah, because I see them on eBay all the time. Yeah. But this is another one that man like came right on the heels of my birth again, nineteen seventy one, mm hmm. I don't know what it was about the early seventies, that change in decades that brought on all of this great stuff.

I think it was because I was born, Like, we got to give Mark some stuff to have when he's a kid. You know, let's get into the numerology here. Just kidding, but this is weird. This is weird. So fans voted these are my notes.

Fans voted quake out of the quake and quisp thing in nineteen seventy one. H In nineteen seventy one, the kool aid Man was given arms and legs, legs and began breaking through walls to say children from being parched. That's when they created the first Pillsbury dough Boy. And they created the first Pillsbury Doughboy. The figure, not the image itself.

And that's when the Serial Monsters came about. Yep, I'm telling you, nineteen seventy one was a good year. Mark it was. They said, Marks two, he's going to start wanting toys and mascots, so let's. Get stuff for Mark.

That's everybody. Thank you, General, pills Thank you Pillsbury, Thank you Purina, Purina, Ralston. I don't think it was Ralston Purina yet. They used the log I was just looking at the box design. They used the same checkered logo as you see on Purina dog Chow.

Hilarious. This is, along with Freaky's, one of the greatest design ideas. Yes for monster kids, for any kids. Really, having a Dracula of Frankenstein and a ghost be your iconography makes a lot of sense. Yeah, back in.

The day, they were just they were available year round. This wasn't an annual Halloween time thing like it is now. They were very appealing, and those early boxes are, of course the best. I liked that. A few years ago they released them in that form.

Again. Yeah, I like Count Chocula. For me, he just never called out to me as much as the other characters, and it was less about the flavor of the cereal than it was maybe the design of the characters. These are particularly exciting because they work as toys too, can Sam Tony the Tiger, Snap Crackle and Pop Lucky from the Lucky Charms, the Twix Rabbit. These mascots that have lasted so long aren't really that exciting if you were to see them in toy form.

I'm gonna beg to differ with you on that, all right, let's talk about it. I feel like, okay, so. Those have all had vinyl figures. Everyone that you mentioned has been a vinyl figure released in the seventies or all around the same time. And I have pictures of those that I've used, like on Facebook as my cover photo from years ago.

I have a tricks because I found him cheap on eBay. These three Monster Serier guys they have them as well. There's a boxed Count Chocula on eBay right now. But I think it's they're asked too much or more than I'm willing to pay. Right they all had them, Snap, Crackle and Pop have had them.

I think they've had them even previous to the seventies. I don't know about Lucky the Leprechaun, though he might be the one that didn't. They're all pretty appealing as figures. They're beautiful designs and I could see them as vinyl figures being appealing. I guess where I'm going with this is that as action figures.

Yeah, that's kind of a different. These monsters were in that realm, and that's a. More modern take on it though, because nobody made action figures of advertising icons back in the they wouldn't even know that. It was always static vinyl figures. Something you put on the shelf.

And look at the Count Chocula one, for whatever reason, is going like this. He's got his arms raised up. I guess like a vampire. But he's pretty cool. There might have been a reissue of him, actually, so I want to say I run a cross and it's hard to tell the difference between a vintage one and a newer one.

Anyway, my Jada Toys Frankenberry is a phenomenal action figure. It works, It really works so well. Yeah, I have spied the Count Chocula one multiple times because it's available on Amazon for in the twenty something dollar. It's like twenty eight bucks. Yeah, it is pretty cool.

And it comes in that box yep, that replicates the Cereal box, the old cereal box. Yes, indeed, it hits all kinds of neurons. Something to think about. They're coming out with a Booberry as well at some point. Buueberry, my blueberry flavored cereal Buueberry is part of this complete breakfast.

Yeah. That's kind of a weird thing though, since he doesn't actually. Have legs or arts, I know, I think he's going to be like suspended on a little clear piece of plastic or something like that. But the Frankenberry one is, I have to say, is one of my favorite toys I've purchased in the last four years. People should check out.

Your Yeah, actually send me the link to your video for that and I'll put it in the description for the show. Ooh, that's a good idea, so people can check it out. I will do that. I don't know how long ago, but at some point, and I think this was another pretty relatively cheap find. But during my searches for Monster serial figures, Count Shocula for me in particular, I found a set of pencil toppers, Robert pencil toppers that must have been premiums for the Cereal that include those original three.

So there's a Count Chocula, Frankenberry, and I think they're just the heads. Booberry might be sort of full figure ish since he's just anamorphous right. And then it comes with a bat some other weird that's cool alien bat type head figure. And I can't remember what the sixth one is, but there's a set of six. Theres some on eBay right now if you look up Monster Cereal.

So I got that a while back. That was one of the few things I could find for them, other than the little plastic one to two inch tall two D two and a half D. I always like to call those flat things standing figures of those original three, which I think kind of leads us into our final thing here, which you mentioned and that's the cause. Kaws Ye, who is a graffiti artist, graffiti straighter, yeah, pop artist I think might be a better term. He and the few others that have garnered some fame started off doing street art and stuff like that and became pop artists, perfecting their style, which could probably be called street style into a more popular pop art thing.

He takes commercial items and adds his spin on them. He's done The Simpsons, He's done Sesame Street and a couple other ips where and I get going to kind of get into the not controversy, But the reason why a lot of people don't like him is all he really does to those images is add xt out eyes and skull and crossbones, which are the kinds of criticisms that got laid on pop artists back in the sixties, like why are you taking a Campbell's soup can that's on every store shelf across America and screen printing it and selling. It for thousands of dollars? How is that creative? How is that whatever?

So when those cereals came out, I saw somebody that I follow on Twitter posted, oh, you know, I found my count chocolate target. But what the hell is going on? With count this. He looked so weird and I didn't know anything about it at the time, and I looked and immediately knew. I'm like, oh, that's cause he did the designs for the boxes this year.

That's interesting. When I first saw them on the shelf, I thought, so they're doing something different with the illustration. It's a little more like sketched looking. And then I saw the crossbones and I was like, Okay, I see what's going on. It took me a while to figure it out.

I'm familiar with him from the toy scene because he and I actually had one of his Cause Companion figures for a hot minute. I bought it and kind of instantly regretted it because they ain't cheap, and traded it for a large Timbiscuit figure. He's put out a bunch of different figures over the years. One of them is a Bibbendum. Yeah, he does a michelin Man toy.

The other one is Mickey Mouse rip off. He's hidden the same stuff where he's probably our age making way more money than either of us will ever see in it a lifetimes. That's for sure. I mean Sesame Street, you know, it's all the same stuff. I'm not a huge Cause fan.

I get the criticism that's leveled at his designs. It's one of those things that everybody says, I could do that. That's hilarious, right, and you could do it, but did you do it? That's the big I. Could draw a figure with skull and crossbones and xID eyes, but it would look like shit.

I think we could emulate his style, but I could not. So No, I hate when people say that, But that's not the point anyway of art or whatever you want to call it, Right then, I think for me at least, And you can give your story of how you found this out. It was on Facebook another toy guide that I follow, I think he does toy photography. He's like, oh hey, I just found out that I want a set of these already, and I. Was like, what the fuck are the Oh yeah, exactly want to set?

How do you? And looked it up or whatever, or maybe contacted you. I don't remember the whole deal. I know that you and I both got absorbed in it around the same time. But that was my.

First exposure to the serial premiums that they put out. Of the four figures designed by Cause. Yeah, how did you come across it? It was sort of fortuitous that I've happened upon it. Somebody posted something on Instagram at the same time.

I think it may have even been the same day that you sent me. Dude, have you seen this type of message? It hit us both at the same time, probably because that one person posted that they had gotten it, and right at the same time, I was listening to a podcast called podcast The Ride. One of the guys on Podcasts The Ride a guest host. I believe they'd talked about it briefly and he said that he had won.

Go ahead, but I want to make a point about that one them thing in a minute here. Yeah, yeah, into the whole idea of this promotion that they did. Yes, I wonder about that too. Yeah, we will talk about that. I think you submitted your application first, then I submitted mine, and then I got my notification first that I had won, and then you got your notification that you would want, right.

Is that how it went. So the promo itself was you would go to General Mills or they had a dedicated psite causemonstercreals dot com enter a code. It started in early September or maybe late August yep, when those cereals start to hit the stores. So you didn't have to buy anything. They had a code on that page that you could use.

I just took a snapshot of it, right. I eventually bought a box of Count Chocula, and then my sister always buys me one almost every year or two, so i'd have two boxes. I use that code, use the code online. I don't think I entered every single day. You could enter every day the time it started to December second of twenty twenty two.

I don't think. I remembered to do it every day. A couple of times I did it twice accidentally, and it said you already joined. But the first time you do it, you get a notification that you've been intered. It says congratulations are something along that line.

And I think some of those people that say that they won it was that initial sign up notification that they got, because when I first saw it, I was like, oh shit, I already won, and I'm like, oh wait, no, no, this is just telling me that I've been intered and you can keep doing it. But there were people that got them, of course ahead of time. Somebody like Dinosaur Dracula. I don't know if you follow him, but he talks about all the same shit we do. He's been doing this stuff for years, and the food, the promotion, the toys, all that stuff.

So he got these people, these influencer people that both this stuff as basically their jobs, got these packages of not only the little figures, but the serial that came in special boxes that were embossed and had different covers than what was in the stores, probably shirts and other things, so that they could hype it up and get people interested. You would see people with the figures, and it was usually those kinds of guys who are, for lack of a better term, social media influencers. We entered around the same time you got your notification earlier, which distressed me. I got my notification that I won the day that the promotion ended, December second, and so I was relieved. Then it's that wait time and it says, you know, anywhere from now until March probably, and I'm thinking for me, as I've said before, the Bagley rule is if something can go wrong with the mail, or not even go wrong, but like you'll be lost on the list, You're not going to get these until March.

Or something, and you got yours before me. Yeah, but you kept sending me things of people showing theirs showing up and I'm like, stop sending those to me because it just makes me more stressed out. And I check my fucking mailbox enough as it is. Well, it's so funny, said the beg Lee thing or the Begley curse, Right, I have the same thing. So when you got yours first, I was like, oh, of course I won mine first.

So mine must have gone lost in the mail, like, right, I know, because they didn't send shipping notifications. Right right, No shipping notifications, which I understand because I don't know. I have no idea how many of these they made, right right. That's the other point that sort of came up in all this is why didn't they just put them in boxes? I had that thought.

I think you and I discussed this. I'm I'm not glad they didn't, but I understand why they didn't. And they didn't because you would have a bunch of and I'm start seem to be the only one that cusses on this show, and you know whatever, I'll fucking cuss a bunch of a bunch of fucking assholes will go into Target and rip open these bags, yes, to find the figures to sell on eBay. Absolutely they would. Yeah, it's the same people that go to Target, like right when the store opens and have some porche led that's working there, go find this fucking Star Wars toy in the back of the store that's not even out on the shelves yet, m so that they can buy it and flip it on eBay.

And I hate you, guys. I really don't like people that do this shit. Buying it to flip it is so awful. If you decide to have it in your collection and you decide to sell it later on, that totally makes sense to me. But buying it just so you can make a profit off of this thing so you're the first is really really annoying to me.

So I get it, and it's why I've slowed down my hunting for things so much. I just can't do it. I can't compete with these people that are so it's slimy to me. Yeah, so you know, if we're alienating people, I'm sorry. But if you do that kind of stuff, I don't know, take a look at your heart.

The figure out why you need to do that. I think you're right. I think I'll say one last thing about that. It takes away the joy of it. I have certainly raced to a target to get something because I found out it was going to be there.

But if I were to buy them out and buy all five that were in the box of this item just so I could sell them, that would be frustrating. Buying a few of them so you could sell them to your friends at price, or have one to save it for later in case it's worth money. That makes sense. But the first reason why we go toy hunting is not to make money off of others. It's for the joy of it.

That ruins the hunt. Its ripped the joy of it for me. That's too bad. With the new Migos all that stuff, it just I can't do it anymore. So anyway, I was happy to have a random chance of getting I don't know, like I said, who knows how many thousands, tens of thousands they made of these?

I bet I wonder if everyone won, because that's. I have a feeling most people, because a lot of people are like, oh shit, these showed up and I never got a notification. It's like, well, I probably went into your spam or junk folder anyway. But that was the other thing that was kind of frustrating me as this was going along and not having received them yet, as seeing people like I didn't even know what one and here they are and it's still December. I think I got mine, And I'd have to look back through my pictures to see when I posted that, but it might have been February.

It wasn't March, so it wasn't the tail end. And then yours came what a week or two later. Yeah, So they're a little. I hesitate to even say too. And they're two mentional.

They're like if you've ever played candy Land, they're like the little figures that you used to get with candy Land. So they have a base so that they can stand up because they're basically flat. And they are of. The original three characters count Shocula, Frankenberry, and Booberry, plus Fruit Brute, who was a later addition and. Didn't last very long.

They didn't do the Mummy, so I guess they wanted to keep it to four. Yeah, and they've got the cause designs, so they have either X stout eyes or x stout eyes and crossbones. I think Count Schocula and Frankenberry have the crossbones and the other two don't. They just have x stout eyes. Booberry and fruit Brute.

That's all they have is the xtout eyes. Otherwise, they are exactly the design of the characters. They're the characters. They're just causified. And I remember when we were discussing these, going, oh, you know, this is reminding me of Freakys.

I had forgotten that there were figures like this for those original three little standy guys like this. I'd forgotten that too. I think you were the one that reminded me of that. Yeah. I found a set of them shortly sometime during the weight of having gotten the announcement that we won and getting the figures, and I was like, oh, yeah, they did this, and they're the almost exactly the same thing.

These are substantial, they're at least two inches tall. They're very well made. They all stand flat. I mean the stands might curve a little at the ends, but that's just you know, how these plastic things go. You know, they're base colors pink, brown, orange, and blue, yep, And they're awesome.

Yeah, They're amazing, the. Great little idea. I'm glad they didn't put them in boxes, especially if they were limited. You know, you might find one in a box, you might not. You would have had people depleting the stores of them, or like I said earlier, bean assholes and opening the boxes in the stores to find the figure.

The bottom of the boxes, the boxes exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you want to hear something tragic. These are on a we're on my shelf behind me on this one here that you can see this metal one. They were displayed right next to down there, next to Darth Vader. We have one of those robot vacuum cleaners.

Had it for years, for years, so it's getting old. It doesn't like to adhere to its schedule. So one day it came alive and was vacuumting. It bumped the shelf. It took Frank and Berry all around the house and I found it and he's okay, but he does have a few little scuffs, and oh so I cleaned him off.

He's all right, but man, that was like that broke my heart. It broke my heart. It's one of those things. I've lost toys to the dog chewing them. Up.

Yep, it's a good lesson. You can't get too attached to things. That's so true. It hurts. But it's like, I'm pretty cognizant these days of not leaving anything important out.

The dog doesn't really do it anymore. She hasn't done it. In a good while. Yeah, but every once in a while, I think, oh shit, I left that ham hoose out on the coffee table. It's like I left my munch bunch guys that I just got out on the coffee table.

These are small. She could easily destroy those. Yeah, it happens in your heart broken and then you're like, it's a thing my house didn't go up in flames. Yes, exactly. I'm just happy it didn't that nothing was broken off.

These are made. I don't know how much money they put into this stuff, but it's kind of amazing that it was a free giveaway to probably I gotta say, tens of thousands of people. I don't know. I have no idea how yah stuff like this promo stuff even back in the day. I don't know how many of these freaky's got pumped out of China during their run.

No idea what the numbers are on stuff like that. Someone's going to do a documentary on it down the line. It's gonna be really exciting to see the story behind the story. You know, they're great. I think they're really cool.

I hope they do something like that. In the future. They really honor the vintage aspect of these characters and what they represent while bringing a newer angle to it. I feel owning these four little pieces of plastic is like owning a part of pop art culture. Being part of that is really really cool.

So I guess years ago he did the same thing for Reese's Cereal. It was one of his figures, and I got kind of confused for a minute. Therou. I'm like, to date, was there a figure of his in these boxes? I think people just made some like three D printed their own because I was like, shit, how did I miss that?

That would have been awesome. Yeah, So he has worked with General Mills in the past. Maybe he will in the future, I hope. So. I like it, good stuff.

I didn't think of a place for this time, but we've kind of gone long, so I don't think I'm going to do a place this time. I kind of talked about Wilkins, so folks driving through the Central Valley. Selma is right off of the ninety nine. Just pull off on and look up Wilkins. Pull off and see that middle aged Bob's big boy looks on top of And they did that on purpose, but that's funny.

I'm sure they tried to emulate the look of mister Wilkins, but also emulate Bob's big boy. So that's local. That's something we did a little bit of that. I do have a weird dream, Marie. That's my combination dreams slash memory thing that relates to cereal premiums.

And I have it in my head that I got from one of the pebbles Cereals, so either Coco or Fruity Pebble, because they did have a lot of premiums and or prizes. I have in my head that I got a little rock, like a blow mold rock, h just a brown lump. It probably was part of maybe a set like collect All five. Yeah, you know, a rock and I don't know, maybe Dino or Dino or whatever the hell is the pet's name was. I just always have it in my head that I had a little rock, flintstone rock.

It's impossible to search for. You can't type in flintstone rock, what are you gonna get? Yeah, it brings up just all kinds of nonsense and cereal cocoa, pebbles premiums, free pebbles, premiums. Yeah, usually just brings up little figures of them or Dino. I'm like, is this a real thing?

Did I totally. Create this whole cloth in my brain? Why? And why? Why?

And why a rock? Why would plastic rock? But I loved it. Maybe we'll find the answer by the time we record next. I doubt it.

I've been looking for years since eBay. I signed on to eBay almost exactly twenty four years ago in May of nineteen ninety nine. Uh huh. I've looked for it since then, off and on forever. Now you've thrown it out into the podcast Cosmos, so maybe it'll activate something.

The only other thing I can think of that I'm conflating it with is I used to cut golf balls open. On the inside. There was kind of a it's a ball, but a lot of times it was really lumpy from all the rubber bands that were wrapped around it. And I'm thinking, did I create in my head that that was a Flintstone Rock. I also have this specific memory where it was like a blow molded little piece.

It wasn't a solid thing. I don't know. It's one of those things that I will probably never figure out or find. Now you've got me hooked, I'm going to start doing some research too. That's exciting.

You'll never find it. If you find it, I'll give you. I don't have anything that I could give you one of your twenty five Bob's Big Boys. No, probably I could probably do without one of those guys. This was a great episode.

This is a lot We went through a lot of material, and. I'm so happy we did because that checks a lot of stuff off of my list. This could have been a lot of other different episodes or parts of episodes. Probably. I mean, yeah, we probably could have done a whole episode on the serial Monsters.

But maybe we'll do something like that in the future. Where can people find you? Mark? Do we even need to do that anymore? Yeah?

I guess might as well. Someone might be listening to this. This might be their first time listening to us, right. I think that's general white people do that. You can find me a Wakeupheavy dot com or on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and letterboxed at wake Up Heavy all one word and what's the one I always forget?

Oh, Patreon if you want to listen to the shows early. And ad free. There will probably be a lot of ads in this episode because it's going to cluck in over two hours. I'm sure Patreon dot com slash wake. Up Heavy and I think that's it.

And there's a new Cambridge and with Sean Instagram page and I'll let Ronnie tell you more about that. Where can people find you? Well, you can find me on YouTube. I have a channel called Scala Vader. If you're on YouTube, you type in at Sclevator.

I'm also on Instagram Scala Underscore Vader. Also on Facebook. Like Mark said, we've got an Instagram page now. We just launched it this week for Cambridge And with Shan. We will be posting images of stuff we're talking about.

We'll be posting little clips and interesting tidbits that coincide addendums if you will for our episodes. We're currently working on a logo. We're struggling to find the right way to show Cambridge and with Shawn to the world. Yeah, you can also find me on Patreon too. Got Thepatreon dot com backslash Exclevator.

If you're interested in getting some Sclevator art or stickers of my toy talk show Toy Frenzy, a good way to get that is through Patreon too, and as well as the early episodes of Cambridge with Shawn's. All right, Mark, thanks for listening. Thanks everyone for listening, all three of you for chiming in and listening to this podcast. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next month. One last thing, go check out weirdingwaymedia dot com.

There's all kinds of eight podcasts there, including Mark's wake Up Heavy podcast. Alrighty, it's a good place to end it, right. This is the story of the Freakys and their perilous search for a home. The leader of the Freakys was the fearless Boss Moss. Never the Freakis had a problem, they ran to Boss Moos, we're afray, I understand exactly.

How you rail. He never solved the problem, but he was always understanding. At last, they came upon a wonderful tree which grew their favorite cereal, Freakys. Oh Happy Day. Every morning the cereal was ripen in the sun, becoming toasty and sugary and golden would item bron are Yes, Keviner are something and they knew they had found a home.

Oh well, the potential they're laying here. Freakys is part of a good breakfast and you get a free drinking magnet in specially marked boxes