Episode 33: Big Matterhorn Attack

Cambridge Emer Shawn is a weird way media podcast. Parsley says Mary. Hello and welcome to Cambridge Shawan, a podcast by two weird guys about the weird things that they like. I am one of your hosts, Mark Bigley also known as Mark Begley, and I am here as always with. Ronnie also known as Skelevator over on the YouTube's.

Yeah, we're back with the regular episode. And if it goes long, it goes long. I'm not cutting this intwo, I'm not editing us. We're gonna both talk about some stuff that we're working on right now, talk about things that we got. We've got a couple of closing items.

Ronnie City at a local locale. I've got a childhood treat. We're back to business. Yes, And if you haven't checked out the holiday episode over on Ronnie's Sclevator channel, please do so. Oh yeah, definitely.

And keeping with that, what have you gotten since around that time Christmas rolled by? So we've got Christmas stuff. I don't have a whole lot of stuff. I haven't bought myself anything in months, but I did get a few Christmas items that I'll mention. Yeah, me too, take it away.

I guess the biggest Christmas gift afforded to me by my family was allowing me to partition off into this little room that I'm in now, so I have a little office space kind of like you do now where I can geek out, I can work on my little craft projects and display the things that I have. And I think the biggest gift I gave myself this year this Christmas was the organization of all this stuff into the little displays that I've made and the realization that yeah, I'm good. I'm good for a while. I've got a lot of cool little things. And I was able to get rid of a bunch of stuff that I'm going to take over to a toy shop and see if I can sell.

And it was revelatory. If you're a collector out there, folks, I highly recommend the process of going through what you have. It really kind of was emotional and lovely in a way. It was kind of an amazing feeling. So that was like the big gift I gave to myself, which means I'm going to be buying less things.

If things come across the transom for me, then maybe I'll add them to the collection, But yeah, I'm not buying anything for a while. But I did get some nice gifts from the family and I'll go through them quickly. Here I kind of bought myself the nineteen eighty seven movie Evil Lynn action figure, which is played by Meg Foster. They made an action figure of her that was very, very cool. It was on sale about a month before December, so in November, and I ordered it and my wife gave it to me for Christmas.

And Jules are the biggest fan of our show. Here. He gave me a nineteen sixty one Sun Rubber Company Pink Elephant, which is absolutely amazing. My daughters got me a bunch of socks and Werner Herzog book All the Future of Truth, which just came out, which is really cool. I'm a huge runner Hersog fan.

My wife got me Volumes one through three of the Carl Barks collected Donald Duck comics, which was a total surprise and I'm super stoked. And she also got me volume one and two of the Peanuts comic strips, Oh wow, the earliest strips, and I've been leafing through those along with the artwork of Mary Blair, who is a Disney artist who I think is absolutely phenomenal. She's the one responsible for the aesthetic of some of the background art and many of the most iconic cartoons. But also it's a small world. It's sort of like her great achievement, the one that was like really cool, something that I've been wanting to get for a while.

I can't afford to get a vintage at AT. She gave me this little micro galaxy at AT, which is the toy color variant, so it's just very basic. That was awesome. It was a lovely holiday for me. Everything came with a certain positive emotional weight, if that makes sense.

Sure, it was lovely. And you can check out Ronnie talking about his new office space and the Pink Elephant on his YouTube channel because I watched both those videos. Thanks. I was curious about the room. Whose room did you take over?

Well, our youngest was in here for many, many, many years, and then when our oldest went out and started college, our youngest moved into the bigger room, and then our oldest was in here for a while, but it just ended up being a storage space because she lives in a dorm that allows her to have a cat. And my wife and other daughter are allergic to cats, and so she's not spending the night here anymore. So it just made sense why not go through her stuff and put both beds in the big room, and since she's no longer spending the night here, have that as sort of a thought where she can crash if she's if she does end up sitting and I we're basically like partial empty nesters at this point. Our youngest is at the dorm also, so she's only here on the weekends.

Long story short, it made sense to get me out of the dining room so we can finally have a dining room again because my little corner was a bit of an eye sore. Now we can have dinner at a table and sure maybe feel like we can invite people over all. Right, he's kind of cool. That our refreshment stand. You'll find these Beezza pies right Lee, baked to your order.

Yeah, like I mentioned, I haven't gotten anything for myself, mainly because of the Burger build. Yeah, picking up a lot of my time and energy and thoughts and then and dollars prepping. Not that so much, but the officer big Mac build did. I'll get into all that. The costs and stuff when I talk about that later.

But I don't even know the last thing. I got nothing since we did our holiday episode, and even prior to that for Christmas the adults have Finally, I mean, this goes back and forth almost every year, Like we really don't need to be buying each other gifts as fifty plus year old people. I think it's kind of ridiculous. And we exchange gift cards basically for the most part, and it's like, well, I could just use this my own money myself to buy stuff I want. Let's stop doing this.

So we just get little stocking stuffers quote unquote for each other and leave it at that. But within our immediate family, my wife and I and my daughter, we get each other stuff. And so I got from my wife clothes. Of course I'm wearing a flowl right now, just wore another one, all of which you can see in the Officer Big Mac Build videos, by the way. And then she got me two really cool Fresno related shirts from a place called Vintage Fresno.

And I will link their Instagram or all linked their shop actually both in this episode description. I actually was sitting on the couch one night scrolling through Instagram and I see this Sunnyside Drive in T shirt. And I'm like, what so good? And I'm like, look at this and they kind of looked at me like yeah, we know. And so then I'm like, well, now you just gave it away, so I know one thing I'm getting for Christmas.

So she got me the Sunnyside Drive in T shirt, which is just awesome. And then this one I'm warning today, the Sands Motel that was my hotel drive. Yeah, I'm not going to undress for you here to show it, but us I kind of vaguely remember the sign. I obviously never stayed there. I wouldn't have any reason too since I lived here in Fresno, but kind of an iconic signage from our past.

Then I got as stocking stuffers. My sister is a big Peanuts fan. Yeah, cool, Like last year, I got her one of those Charlie Brown's. The is it fun? I can't remember the They're from Super seven, but they're kind of bigger figures.

Oh yeah, those are cool. Yeah, they're doing Sesame Street and that price is nice on those, by the way, they were only twenty five bucks. So I got her Charlie Brown last year. And then this year I went small because we're doing stocking stuffers, and I just kept seeing in my again, in my Instagram feed, nothing that Peanuts just like it. Walmart has all these Peanuts things, Hallmark always has Peanuts stuff.

But all this stuff from these different places with these Peanuts items. Yeah, I feel like they're hitting a stride right now. Yeah, it's crazy. And so one day when I was on Amazon looking for other stuff, a Peanuts item popped up. These little and I had seen them before, probably on Instagram, the little blind box figures.

They come in a plastic snoopy doghouse and they're like fake crystal. Oh I haven't seen those. They're kind of like that's. To have the edge that a crystal figure would have, the beveled edge beveled Yeah, like facets, I guess. And so I bought three of those.

They were like seven fifty a pop. So I'm like, oh, that's great. So I bought three. I bought one for my sister, I bought one for Cleo, and I just bought an extra one for me in case somebody got something they didn't like as much, right, So we all opened them on Christmas. My sister opened up pig Pin.

We couldn't figure out if it was Pigpin or Franklin or somebody. Was hard to tell. I opened up Snoopy, which is like her guy, So yeah, I swapped her for a pig Pin because I love Pigpin. I love Pigpen too. Sort of makes you want to treat me with more respect, doesn't.

Cleo opened up Lucy, which was kind of perfect for her because she loves Lucy. So she got to keep that one, and that was it. That's all I've gotten. Well, that's good stuff, man, are all like important little things. I was going to ask you about the Peanuts books.

Are those the fanographic collections that she got you? Yeah, the hardbacks? Yeah, yeah, but from fantagraphics. I'll have to double check. They're kind of wider than they are talk wider elongated landscape as opposed to portrait.

Because of course that's how comics are presented. Yeah, which, you know, you and I have talked about this. That's as great about those old Garfield books and the shape of the comic strips. They are gorgeous and hard bound. They come, you know, each little set of two there's a lot out there, each little set of two comes in a little cardboard display box.

Is similarly the Donald Duck. Carl Bark's comics are like their portrait rather than landscape because their comic. Book shape right. They are beautiful hardcover books as well. The Peanuts books are really gorgeous.

Yeah, when they were rolling those out, and I still get stuff from Fantagraphics, but I would see every new edition and I'm like, man, those are gorgeous. They're freaking expensive, ya, they are gorgeous. We're going to take a quick little break and come back with our main topics. I am drinking my succulent coffee ppulent. I just took sip and made it.

Reminded me that I meant to tell you about this coffee back when Curlea brought it home. We basically do cureig except for the odd occasion when I use the chem X. We don't have a regular coffee pot anymore. But she bought Pete's Holiday blend and so I had one back. I don't know if this was some time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

And I took a sip and I'm like, holy crap, that tastes exactly like McDonald's coffee. Oh really, And. I meant, I keep forgetting to tell you because I'm only having like one every weekend, and when I have one, I'm like, oh, I need to tell Ronnie about this, and I forget. It's good to know I have made one this morning, and I'm like, oh, perfect timing because now I'll actually remember to tell him. And I think you can still order it on Amazon.

Oh I got to have McDonald's coffee this past week. All right, We'll be right back with Ronnie's topic. There's over this mountain and it's Easter time and it's hay degrees out. I love Disneyland. That's just the blo the parade, Sweetheart, the matter Lord, the matter Hard Away we go.

Okay, Ronnie, hit us with what you're talking about today. I was a little inspired by the topic that you chose, and it's something that I probably need to talk about anyways on our show because it's taken up a lot of my time and energy for the last six months. Right now, I'm getting close to finishing a commission build for a gentleman that lives in Texas, Texas. Only stairs and Queer's come from Texas by the Cowboy, and you don't much look like a stair to me, so that kind of narrows it down. He has a garage, a separate garage from his house.

I'm gonna say garage. It looks more like a shed, but it's big on his property where he has taken up an entire room to recreate a miniature Disneyland. He's building this Disneyland in Z scale, and if you know anything about trains, Z scale is basically the smallest scale for trained builders. Earlier in the stage of building this Matterhorn, I bought a little baggie of Z scale people just to see what they look like, because I'm going to put some in here, and they're like, it's hard to even describe how small it is, like a quarter of an inch, almost just a little bit bigger than a quarter of It's a very small build. I'm used to.

If you've watched my YouTube channel, you'll see that mainly the size that I usually work with is for five to seven inch action figures. So this is a big challenge for me because my hands are kind of a little shaky, just naturally. That way working miniature has always been hyper miniature has always been terrifying to me. But I was like I'm going to try this, and. I'll use the skills of accrued over the years and see if I can do it.

And I'm almost done. You know. I follow the same guidelines that I follow with my other builds, which is basically a simplified set building technique where the core of something is styrofoam, and I primarily use insulation foam because it's solid. It's that pink foam you can buy. It's only eleven and a half inches tall by eight and a half inches wide, and so if you've ever been to Disneyland, you know that the matter Horn is wider than it is tall because of the forced perspective.

That they utilize for that. So when you're standing at the base, it looks like it's very very tall, but it's actually wider at the bottom than it is tall, which is of course different from the real matter Horn, which is extremely tall in Switzerland. And then he also asked that I make it. He's generation X like you and I are. He asked to make it the matter Horn that we all grew up with, which had a skyway going through it.

Finding the correct measurements set z scale for the placement of the skyway, and making sure that the skyway is placed correctly in the lower center of this mountain was a challenge as well. Something that I've always said here too, with these commissions and these builds I've done for myself making sure that I'm not there's nothing wrong with three D printing, but I make sure that every thing is hand sculpted so you can see the hand in the making of it. That allows for imperfections and for artistic license, and that's always more exciting to me than making something absolutely perfect. That's just the way I am and always have been with the stuff that I make. But that means I'm carving little, tiny, easy scale Bob sleds, which is I just finished up.

My batch of Bob sleds yesterday. There's eleven Bob sleds, and I can fit the little people in. I mean, we're talking the size of my just a little bit bigger than my thumbnail. Little tiny wooden Bob sleds, The Abominable Snowman, the Herald that I made, I sculpted out of epoxy sculpt in mark. Now that you're like deep in the crafting zone, I.

Don't know if i'd say deep, but oh. Yeah, you're deep bro. There's no going back, no going back now. I highly recommend that you get yourself. The kind that I bought is twenty bucks for the two part epoxy sculpt.

There's a better you know, doing air quotes, folks, there's a better version of epoxy sculpt that you can buy for about forty bucks for the small containers. But this more affordable version is great my first time using it. Since I got it and started building the little tiny abominable Snowman, I've also made a little tiny Grimace which I haven't painted yet, I've just primed. And I've also made the fur collar for my first custom action figure that I made, Werner Herzog action figure, so I gave him is he has this leather jacket that he wears. It has a fur collar, and so it's fun to do that.

But Mark, I highly recommend that you mess around with it. It's so much fune. You can basic. It's basically your sculpting plastic items, just like you would with the air dry clay, except they're hard, hard plastic. The biggest challenge that I've faced at this z scale has been something I didn't anticipate.

I thought, well, I can probably find zscale tubular steel roller coaster rails online. Gosh, I'm sure someone's made them. No, No one. Has made Z scale tubular steel roller coaster rails. Is there a documentary about it?

Though not yet. But there are very expensive like roller coasters that you can buy that are HO scale, which is a little bit bigger than Z scale I've found. You snap them together and there's this cool functional little roller coaster you can have on your desk. That does not work for what I'm doing. I went out, I bought a bunch of wire.

I was building little pegs using the epoxy sculpt to put the pegs because the rail is pegged into the base of the matterhorn at the ride. You can see it if you watch the next video that I put out here on the channel, you'll see that there are these little pegs that the rail is. It adheres to the matterhorn itself with these pegs. So I thought, maybe that'll work, and that's not happening for a variety of reasons. It's been about two months of a struggle to find a way to build these things.

Finally, I with some advice from Eric. He said, hey, go to this website called Evergreen they make these little plastic pieces that look like tubular steel rails that you could find different sizes. These long they're like twelve inches long and they're solid cylinders of plastic, but they're very, very very small. I think the size that I ended up getting is zero point five millimeter or something like that. It's very thin.

I ended up just getting some from Amazon for some reasons. Someone sells them on Amazon, and they're a lot more affordable than going through Evergreen. During the last week and a half, I've been figuring out a way to use that for the tubular steel rails. I finally, as folks, if you're listening to this, it's early February. That means that my Part ten is already launched on my channel, Part ten of my Matterhorn build, So there's nine parts you can watch already, and then Part ten will be up and you'll see the tedium of figuring out how to do this, as you'll hear from Mark.

One of the greatest rewards. Of crafting and building something for yourself figuring out how to do it as you're doing it is making cool discoveries along the way. When we you and I were building the Hamburger builds our first Hamburgers that we made, which you can also see on my channel. One of the things that. We discovered was that air dry clay is good, but it's not enough for creating smooth surfaces.

And so Mark was like, Hey, I'm going to bring dap over and we'll use some spackle and see if we can do that and then send it down spackle sand, spackle sand, And that really was a successful move because we were able to sort of recreate almost like a fiberglass illusion of a smooth surface, which really turned out great. Gotta troul it, and you gotta trowl it. Gotta trowel, and so We're It's been a real challenge, but I'm super excited and happy that I did it. And then I'm. Getting close to finishing up.

I've got little resin waterfalls, so it's like semi translucent blue waterfalls. I'm going to be gluing on here soon it comes apart. There's like a piece where the loading area is a separate little piece that snaps into place. I'm doing air quotes for snaps. It like fits snugly to the front.

I was watching that part and I'm like, oh, is he going to fix that one little piece on the very edge there, because that looks like that would just break right off, and I think, yeah, I did, you kind of fortified it. And I'm like, thank God, because that dude's going to break that or it's in transit or whatever very thin. I'm going to make a little video that's like for him just to show him how to put all the pieces together. And since I'm shipping it to Texas, I'll probably show him where the little because they're Back in the day, there were these Swiss climbers that were hired by Disney to climb up the mountain on a daily basis. I imagine having that bag in your job.

Yeah, very very cool. So they're gonna be little climbers on it, little trees, and I want him to make sure he knows where those things go. And because I'm not going to have these delicate items on the build right as a ship. It, let me ask you this. Yeah, the plastic you got for the railing, is it polystyring?

Yeah? Yeah it is. Yeah, Because as you were describing it, I was thinking of Toy Polloy because he uses stirring rods of various sizes for all kinds of things. Anytime he needs something tubular, that's what he uses. I thought about him, because if I were to go in and customize my vintage Millennium Falcon to look more realistic, I would use this tube right to recreate.

And it's bendable, right if you warm it up. It's been really been really cool. Yeah, and probably at that diameter it's probably fairly bendable to a certain degree already it is. It's not hard plastic. Yeah, it's not rigid.

It won't snap on me. The pegs I made with epoxy sculpt and I'm worried about those because those could snap. So I just have to be very careful when I install this. So I have to put little holes in the base of each of these roller coaster rails too. Not that this would be easier or fun, but would the end what end of is that called of a needle like a sewing needle work, because it's got an islet?

Would that work if you like cut fifteen hundred needles in half for the islet? I thought about that, except the islet is just a little too small for this. There's probably something you could get that's like for yarn or something that would be the right size. I messed around with that idea. The only issue with that I talked about artistic license and not being too much of a perfectionist with these.

But what happens with the islet Because I looked at these little tiny pieces that are similar to needles, except they can open up. People use them to put them through the hole then lock things into place. Gosh, I can't write yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about. It's in part nine of my video. Oh that's right, yeah, yeah, yeah, you did try something like that, and.

So I thought about the eyes of needles too. The perfectionist part of me that struggled with that concept is that then there would be interruptions to the coaster on the rail, There would be something that goes over the top, which doesn't make sense logically because the bob slas just goes smoothly across, and they would bump into those I thought seriously about that. In fact, I bought a bunch of little tiny nails because I was going to clip the tops up of the little tiny nails and glue those on. Boy. I even tried soldering for the metal rails, and that didn't work.

Soldering wire. Yeah, soldering wire. Yeah, that's probably too flexible too. Malleable yeah, malleable yeah yeah yeah that really bins. They were popping off every time I tried to move the wire.

Oh my god. It was just like so I like, my palms are sweating right now just thinking about it. Somebody's probably out there screaming about a really simple solution. Yeah, totally. You know, there are experts.

I have to say, though I scoured the internet for tutorials on this, I haven't been able to find people making tubular steel roller coasters at Z scale, So there probably is, I just didn't find it. One of the things the challenges that I've noticed as a YouTuber is that there are limits to our searches because of the way the algorithm works and AI and AI. Yeah, you can type something in and the functionality of YouTube is trying to help you find this stuff, but it might be keeping other things from you. Yeah, Which is kind of a frustrating aspect of being a YouTube creator is that it's hard to know how to break through into that ALB algorithm realm of being able to reach a larger audience. And I think there's probably somebody out there with an amazing channel, building z scale stuff that's complicated and unique.

But they have fifty followers, fifty subscribers, and YouTube just doesn't know how to bring that to my attention. So it has been a journey. I'm happy actually to be getting close to finishing it. Yeah, it's been a while, Yeah, it has too long, too long. Plus it's been a busy last half of twenty twenty five.

It's just been so busy with other stuff too. So yeah, so yeah, how about you. Well, we're going to take another break and then I will talk about my build yay. Thereafter I'm going to show you how McDonald's builds a big Mac sandwich. It starts here with a lightly toasted bun and then a pure beef hamburger sizzling hot, a slice of cheddar Bland cheese and some crisp fresh letuce.

Then our own secret sauce the club slives toasted, another hamburger and a little more sauce just for good flavor, crisp dill pickles, and the sesame seed crown. This is the sandwich McDonald's new Big Mac Sandwich for the bigger than average appetite. Well, I think I think it was our first Burger Patch Burger build. I was already liked what's next, and I kind of knew my officer, Big mac Rimko head was calling, Yeah, it would be similar to the Burger build, but a little more difficult because we've got facial features, we've got an extra layer, we've got an extra bun and patty in there, we've got a hat, we've got all kinds of stuffs. Don't assess me, seed, but all of which I will talk about.

I was like, Yeah, this will be the next thing. We should do another build and then with our extended breaks between build times, I'm like, Ronnie, I think I'm going to have to do this on my own because I do not have the patience to wait a month or a month and a half between. I'm glad you just went for it. In my head without being a dick about it, I was like, really, Mark, you're going to have to give me like two months before we start a new project. So I'm glad you went for it.

I mean, I even knew in my head before that that I probably have to do this on my own. But I started thinking about it in November after our second build day, which was in October. I'm like, okay, I need to start thinking of how I'm going to do this differently, because I'm going to have to do it differently based on my capabilities. Because on the Burger build, you basically carved out the patty sections I finessed or whatever. Now I should say you traced it, and you did do a little bit of the carving two with the hot wire thing, because I'm not used to using that, and I knew I wasn't going to do that for this, So that was one thing.

I'm like, I'm not gonna get a solid piece of foam, a four by ten or six by whatever piece of phone to carve multiple layers out of, because I don't think I can do that and get straight lines. We were out one day and stopped by Michaels. I looked at the foam there, and I think I had also looked on Amazon, but I'm like, I'm going to do one inch rounds of whatever diameter I decided to do on this, and I knew I wasn't going to do ten because that would just make. This guy way too big. Ten inches why, I'm like, well, eight inches should work, okay.

So I started sourcing eight inch diameter by one inch high rounds. They were like six bucks a piece at Michael's and I'm like, fuck that I need like seven of these, Michael. This is honestly for any crafters out there. Go to Walmart. Michael's has a lot of cool stuff to look at.

But like, here's an example, the plant, the foliage back here that I put my burger in. Those leaves and those little wire branches were like four bucks at Walmart and they were fourteen dollars. Oh wow, Michaels. Wow. Yeah.

Well, so I found them on Amazon and good. The thing about this stuff with Amazon is, you know, it's all third party sellar things. I just want eight inch by one inch round, So that's what I put in there, and I'm getting all different kinds of sizes. I'm getting the solid ones like we use for the burger, and I'm like, come on, just give me what I put in the search thing. So I found a pack of i think eight for around twenty dollars or something.

I'm like, well, that's much better than five bucks apiece because it would be double that. I was looking for other stuff too. What else am I going to need? So I was searching around for paints and blah blah blah, and I was creating a little list for myself, so I put stuff in the list instead of in my cart. So I had an officer big Mac build list on Amazon that I would throw stuff in as I stumbled upon it.

And as I looked at the one that I had put in the list, another one came up down below of eight eight by one inch rounds for like five bucks less, so I swapped that out, so that was like fifteen bucks instead of twenty. Yeah, that's great. What else did I buy? Oh? The other thing that I didn't want to work with was the air dry clay because that you put on my burger as well.

I mean you rolled everything out and laid it on and then I messed with it. But I still don't like it very much. For the structural element use rolling these big thin layers out and then laying it on and then trying to get it to bed here and to mold it. And I thought, well, I could just use the DAP, but spreading that on isn't the easiest thing in an even layer, and you know, on the sides of the buns that might be okay, but I've got the head to cover and the bottom to what could I get that's in a sheet that will go on and harden and blah blah blah. So I remember, I believe you've used plaster cloth in.

The palace all the time. Yeah. Yeah, So I'm like, I'll use that. And you were like, man, this might be an issue here, might be an issue there. And I'm like, ah, fuck it, this will be easier.

I'll just I can just cut it, wet it, slap it on, smooth it out. So I watched a bunch of videos and I'm like, oh, this looks fairly easy. Fits my capabilities more. I think I'll do this for the quote unquote outer shell, the structure of the buns and the patties, et cetera. I might even be able to make the features out of it, because people do that, they like smoosh it up, and because it's just plasters stuck on thread basically on this real thin cloth, this fiber.

So I watched a bunch of videos, I'm like, Okay, I'm going to use this. So I bought the rounds, I bought plaster cloth, I bought mod podge. That was another suggestion of yours. I love Modpodge. I bought that mainly to coat the pieces of styrofoam that I wasn't putting plaster cloth on because I am doing this in sections.

I'm like, I'm not gonna put plaster cloth over everything. It's going to be covered up, and I'll use the mod PODJ to protect the foam from the spray paint, because I know that spray paint can destroy foam. All right, I had read it, or you may have told me. I bought a couple things of paint a couple of days before Thanksgiving, and it arrived, you know, the day after Thanksgiving, and runner I didn't quite start in on it then because I had to figure out how I was going to do all this, and so I had to utilize, you know, the things that I've watched, like Dallas Pogueurse Toy POLLOI, the Tonka restoration stuff. Oh yeah, I haven't watched any in a while, but that would be helpful.

And of course I learned a lot by watching you, watching you when we did the Burger build, and also just your channel and stuff. So I had all that different tech meeks, some things to use and match whatever I could to my own capabilities or in capabilities, and so the things that I thought would be trouble were the hat, the seeds, and the eye. So I'll kind of talk about each of those. But first of all, the other reason I bought separate rounds instead of one big chunk is that I didn't really like having to spray paint the burger like top and bottom. That was kind of you know, I'd have to wait in between.

It worked out well on those They look fine and I didn't mess anything up too badly by painting too quickly. I did a little bit at the end, but I thought this'll be great because once I'm done with a layer of patty, I can just go paint it. Yeah, paint that patty, set it off to the side. I can do that with the middle bun, the bottom bun, et cetera, et cetera. So that was my plan originally, was to do everything separately, paint everything separately, put it together at the end, and apply clear coat.

I have since changed that. Also. I stopped using the plaster cloth pretty quickly. Yeah. The thing with plaster cloth is once you get it wet, it sort of shrinks if you cut it.

Folks cut it larger than you need. Why it cut like a perfect even a little slightly larger eight inch round to put on the bottom of one of the layers. I don't even remember which one. And as I put it on, I'm like, this is not reaching the edge, so overcut. And then also when I smoothed it out, the fibers poked through.

The fibers are one of the most annoying parts of using that cloth. Yeah, if you overcut, there's a way to tuck that stuff in. And yeah, I kind of did that. I kind of folded over on some of the edges. I mean, I can still see it on the bun parts because that's really the only place I used the plaster cloth was on the buns.

My Anna Conda don't want none unless you got buns on. It worked okay, but I knew I was going to have to dap it anyway smooth it out, which I did, and I thought, you know what, this foam that I got for this was that smooth foam. It would have taken the dap just fine. And actually did I tested a piece. It wasn't like the eyeballs that we used were.

It just soaked it up and stayed kind of flaky. That was very porous. Yeah, this is not porus. Plus I had mod podged it, and I'm like, you know what, I could have just fucking used DAP and not used the plaster cloth. There you go.

And so then I realized, oh, well, I am going to have to use air dry clay for the features. So I bought a little one pound cake of air dry clay to make the eyes, et cetera. Et cetera. Started with the plaster cloth dapt things kind of like we did with the burger build. Then had to dive into making the condiments or ingredients or accoutrement, the pickle, the cheese, and the sauce drips, and the lettuce lettuce, because if you look at any version of Officer Big Mac, the rimco head, the set maker, statues, the costume, or any other kind of drawings, he's always got stuff dripping out of his Between the patty and buns.

I made all that stuff with air dry clay and just stuck them on. That was all fairly easy. Did the pickle like I did the pickle for the burger, patch, cut some foam half circles out, attached them with toothpicks and lock tight, put air dry clay on them, et cetera, et cetera. Just made blobs of sauce dripping out blobs of lettuce, kind of sculpted them a little differently, used our tinfoil technique to make the sauce texture. All that stuff was fairly easy, and I kept putting off the hat and the seeds because I wasn't sure how to tackle those.

I didn't know what I was going to make the hat out of. I didn't know what to use for scale. They're all different scales on the different Officer Big Max, and I thought, well, I want something roughly in between the set maker statue and the Remco figure because the Remco figurehead as dimensions are funky. Yeah, they're very very funky. He squished, and the statue is very kind of like even stacks layers and then the head.

So I'm doing in between that. You know, The Officer Big Max patties are kind of oozing out over the buns, which I thought was cool, but I knew I wasn't going to be able to achieve that. So I did the patties with air dry clay and just made pulled out little strips and then kind of squished them got them on there. I had beveled the edges of the foam so that it was a little bit narrower looking to the eye. So it wasn't just perfectly stat it wouldn't be perfectly stacked.

There'd be a little separation there. And so I put the air dry clay on the main portion and then kind of smoothed it onto that beveled edge and left it bumpy, and so it looks like meat. Yeah, I didn't stand it. I didn't put anything on it. They just kind of came out bumpy and they stick out a little ways from the.

That's perfect buns. And I'm like, oh, that work super good. So that was easy. That again, that all fit my capabilities. So for the hat, I originally was going to use a toilet paper roll because I figured it was about the right size.

I'd probably have to cut it down a little bit. I didn't want it to be too terribly tall, and I thought, well, what am I going to I got a sculpt around this, you know, I've got to fortify it. I've got to do this. So I'm looking at all the plastic cups we have in our house and I found one, and I'm like, I think this will work. And then I found a little whiffle ball, not a baseball wiffleball, but a golf wiffle ball, and I thought, well, that'll that's about the right size for the brownness at the top.

How am I going to attach it? So I cut this plastic cup down a little bit because it was too tall. I had the whiffle ball, half of the whiffle ball in there, and I didn't know how to attach it. I'm like, I don't know what I'm going to do. So I tried to put mod podge around the inside of it.

Well, I didn't do anything to the plastic. It just it didn't stick. Glue, I mean, mottpodg is mostly glue. You could smell smells like Elmer's glue. Right, Basically, Yeah, it wasn't strong enough to hold it.

So I put tinfoil over the whiffle ball to get rid of the holes, and then I just actually just attached it with air dry clay. I put an air dry clay around the edge of it. It stuck just fine. Then I air dry clayed the top. You know, I've been working on that trying to smooth it out and stuff for a while, and I just have not been happy with it because I could not get the seam where those two things met right.

Kept sanding it and priming it and sanding it, and I did the bottom part where it kind of flares out, and then the band. The other day I did the band, and I wasn't happy with the band because I made it too thick, so I shot footage for that. Like immediately after I completely changed the band, I pulled it back off. I flattened it out more, put it back on too high, cut the top around the thing. I don't know how I managed to get it even, but I did, and so I was looking at it, I'm like, I am not happy with the top of that.

So I pulled out my hacksaw. I had to cut through the whiffle ball in both diameters so that I could peel it all off, pop the whiffle ball out, et cetera, et cetera. I had removed the bottom of the cup as well, so I got another cup because I needed to have the bottom back, so I locktighted that into it, and then I just did a very subtle little curve of air dry clay and threw it on the top. So actually now it looks more like as I was doing it, and I'm like, you know, this looks more like cling and clang hr puffin stuff. Yeah, well, there you go.

That gave me a thought because my other problem with the hat is putting the M on there. And I thought about this early on. I'm like, I don't know how I'm gonna do this. Could I find it? Possibly a sticker that's the right side.

Does somebody make a stickers out there that's like a round an inch tall that I could adhere to it? Possibly, I don't know. I don't know where I would find that. And then I thought I could just freehand it, which is way beyond my capabilities. And I thought, well, I could just leave it off.

I could blah blah blah blah blah. So that's when toy ploy kind of came into my head. Actually, toy ploy and the car restorer guys is putting something on it and then painting it and pulling that off so that it leaves the impression of the M in there. So I just found an image of the McDonald's logo printed it out at the size that I wanted, and I thought, well, I'll just put two sided tape on this, tape it on the hat at some point and then do the blue paint over it, pull it off, and then see what happens. Oh yeah, that's my goal.

But if it doesn't work, I'm going to simply paint it blue and put a silver star on it instead of the m and just find a sticker that's the right size. I think you'll be able to do it. That's like reverse stenciling with the double skin tape, and I think that'll look good. If it works, if I can get it to one thing at here, because I've got to cut it out with sticky tape. On it, brand new exact O knife and so I.

Got to cut it out. It's got to attach. I know it'll probably peel whatever bottom paint I stick it to. My plan is to paint the hat and yellow and then put that on there. And the trick that I've learned from toy ploy is with that sticky double sided tape is to kind of remove some of the tacks.

So I'll put it on a piece of fabric to get some fabric on it, then stick it on. And then I was thinking, well, this is just regular paper. It's probably going to disintegrate as I paint it, and I need it to stay on there so that I can find it again and peel it off. So I just sprayed it with some of that semi gloss clear coat the paper itself, so it has a little protection. That's smart.

So we'll see if that works. If it doesn't, I may just opt for the star, which will remind me of and clang. But also he has a star, you know, on his uniform. I'm not doing the body. I thought, well, you know, and also keep out of you know, copyright infringement stuff and you know, using your logo.

Do all the Patty special sauce, matus, cheese, pickles, onions. I want assess me seat. But so the other thing that I wasn't sure how I was going to accomplish was the eyes. And I think we talked maybe on that first thing about googly eyes. Yeah, you know, the costume comes with googly eyes.

I was like, I could do that. I just don't have any idea what size I'm going to need. I was working on it. I kind of was like, now I'm not going. To do that.

I'm going to create the eyes. I'll figure out some way to do it with AIRGRAI clay. As I was working on it and creating the head, and I made the nose and some of the other stuff, and I thought, okay, I think that jigger is going to work for cutting out the eyes. That pone et side of the jigger and I traced it on his face and I'm like, oh, that's perfect. I made an even flat little piece of air dry clay.

I got the jigger out, I used the pony side and too small. Oh, and I'm like, oh crap. I was looking at that. I got the dimensions for the outer edge of that and realize it's about one and a half inches. And I'm like, I wonder if I can find one and a half inch sized googly eyes.

Yep, sure can. One point five to seven inch googly eyes is a standard for some reason. So I ordered a pack of googly eyes from Amazon. They showed up. You know, they're sticky backed, yea, And of course this is not a flat surface, and I thought, well, they're sort of bendables, so let's see if this works.

Stuck it on the where I had traced, and it immediately kind of just started popping up, and I thought, oh, maybe I could put DAP around that. And then I looked and I'm like, well, this is just going to continue to pop. These are going to fall off. And so then I'm like, well, I could put DAP under it like I did with the eyes for the burger patch thing and stick them on. I've got to peel the backing off and get rid of that stickiness though, and put the DAP on there.

And I'm like, no, this is not going to work. So I've got like fourteen googly eyes if you need them. So I went back and I'm like, okay, well I'll turn the jigger over to the jigger side and cut it out and it was perfect. So I just did that, stuck them on. They maintained their roundness for the most part.

There were some little irregularities there just by putting it on and smoothing it out and stuff. And then I made the little tiny cutout pupils for him using the top of a pin cap. Smart O. Perfect. So that's all the eyes.

And then my other issue was the seeds. What the heck am I going to do for the sesame seeds? But I think my original thought was well, I'll probably just have to like do little hundreds of little bits of air dry clay, just like roll out little pieces of air dry clay smush them down. I was like, man, I really don't want to do that. I really don't want to do that.

That's going to be so tedious. And I thought, well, I could just get sesame seeds, but sesame seeds are so tiny. This thing is so much bigger than a regular big mac. I'm like, yeah, that would just look silly, but I just kept thinking about it. I'm like, oh, I could just paint them on at the end, get like a tan paint or even the yellow that I have, and paint them.

On and got to have them three dimensional. Or ignore them. Yeah, that's how I felt too. I'm like I need them to pop out. Cleo and I were at Seerra Nuthouse looking for Christmas stuff and I'm like, oh, sunflower seeds are basically the same shape kind of do they have any plane unshelled sunflower seeds here, which they don't, And so then I started looking on Amazon.

I'm like, I'll buy some sunflower seed just raw, you know, I don't want salt on them or and then they don't need to be roasted. So I found a bag of raw shelled sesame seeds for four bucks fer seeds I mean sunflower seeds, sorry, and bought those. They showed up. I'm like, yeah, this will work. I didn't realize that that was a pound bag.

So I've got like nine eighths of a pound of sunflower seeds. Don't mind. I love sunflower seeds. So I've been roasting them up and eating them, and I thought, well, how am I going to put these on? Hm?

So I did a little test. I had a leftover rounded piece of foam from the chicken nugget we're doing for Cleo. I thought, I wonder if I could paint it and then drop them on there and they would stick. So I primed this piece of foam and I kind of like tried to just drop them randomly around and it sort of worked. And then I went back and I painted over it.

It wasn't enough. They just started falling off. If you touched the thing, they fell off and stuff, and I thought, oh shit, I'm gonna have to put these on by hand. What should I use? Should I use app Should I use mod podge?

And I'm like oh shit, I've been using this lock tight to put stuff together. All. Yeah. I just got a little toothpick, pulled a little piece of that off, put it on the seed, and then put it on the top of the head. And then I'm realized, oh no, it's easier to put the glue on the head and then put the seed where the glue is.

So I ended up doing that. It didn't take very long actually, but it is about one hundred seeds because I counted when I was halfway through. I counted, and I'm like, oh, that's like forty eight seeds that I've already put on. That's awesome. Turned out great.

It's not even full coverage because you don't put any on the eyes or the nose or the upper mit where the brows or where the hat's going to be. So primed it immediately after doing that because everything else was on to also help and hear it. And then I could see where all the little lock tight yeah drips were that I missed or kind of moved it. And there's some lock tight around the brows because I had to make sure those were stuck on good. And I'm like, oh, well, that's just going to have to stay there.

I'm not sanding. This stuff knocked one of the seeds off, and I'm like, man, I hope the rest of this paint got like four layers of paint to go on it, so hopefully that stuff keeps them on. You know, I don't know if they're going to rot out of there and fall off or what, but I'll deal with that when it happens. Oh. The only other thing that I had to figure out was because my original thought was I'm going to paint all these pieces separately and put it all together at the end, and then I started thinking about it.

I'm like, I don't know if that's a good idea. I also do like how we use the yellow as an undercoat for everything. Yes, I'm a Burger Patch build, and I'm like, well, if I'm going to do that, then I should stick these together before I paint. If I'm going to paint everything the same way, I might as well just do that and hand paint the patties like I did on the Burger Patch thing. I know I can do that.

I've got a hand paint all the condiments. Anyway, Sticking them together was tricky because I had to get them even I didn't want it to look like a back and forth, and so I stuck the bottom two layers together. I was like, okay, that worked. Just used lock tight and I'm just using I'm not using the stuff that you have. I've discovered, Oh I've got a little thing of lock tight.

They're like they're super glue, crazy glue, yep version. And so I stuck the bottom two layers together, worked on some of that stuff, stuck the top two layers together, worked on the sauce and things like that, and put it all on there. And then I thought, well, now I got to stick those two layers together so that all four layers are together. As far as I can tell by my eye, everything lines up pretty perfectly. Put two skewers in through the top of that, and it's flesh with the very top here as an extra protection.

So it's glued. It's skewered. I have put on the bottom layer of yellow and the bun colors on that bottom layer. Already. All of that's on my Instagram and the Cambridge on Shaw on Instagram, which I realized, oh yeah, why am I not just doing that for this instead of directing people to my page, you can go to either one and watch it.

This will come out first week of February. I should be done by then. I'm hoping the rate you've been going, I'm pretty sure you'll be done by then. The paint stuff is, I'm gonna have to wait. That's the only thing is I'll paint something and I'm gonna have to wait a day, yeah, to paint something else.

You know, I can paint the patties, but then I'm gonna have to wait then so that i can tape those off and paint the pickles, and paint the sauce, and paint. The lettuce race lettuce. I'm gonna have to do all the taping. I've got to do the head still, I've got to attach the hat. I've got to fix the hat.

It'll be probably a couple more weeks maybe from today's date, whatever today is. But it's looking amazing. The goofiness, the little bits of fiber that are sticking out once you add that brown layer, like all the imperfections are going away. The bottom of this is pitted, and so you won't even be able to tell. Well, you can if I get the light on it see all the I'm like, I'm not making this smooth as butter, like the Burger Patch burger, I don't care.

Nobody sees the bottom. The bumps and lines and all that stuff just make me think of the rimco Head. Yeah, absolutely, I mean, and even the fiberglass playland versions of these they were imperfect too. I mean, as we were talking about when we were making the Burger Patch burgers, I remember as a kid looking at these things up closed and thinking, oh, this part here was hand painted, or this part here was scratched and then fixed and hand painted, and some of the masking off of the different colors. They were hardly ever perfect.

That's part of the charm of these kinds of characters. And I've been just keeping that in the back of my head the whole time. Like you know, the rimco Head is not perfect. It's very funky. The no I mean, I don't even know the nose to matches sort of the set maker statue nose, but it is weird looking, but it sort of works kind of square, and it's got a bulbous nose, and.

It's a strange sculpt of a nose. I mean, yeah, on the costume it's always crooked because it moved you know, and the brows moved, and the brows are kind of disattached, so I'm not worried. I didn't try to smooth them onto the head. I just wanted them to stick. I don't want them to fall off.

The Remco head is very funky. The cheeks are like misaligned, Like, yeah, it's further away, and that's true. These are the things that you don't notice unless you're paying closer attention. You just look at the Remco figure and it's like, oh, this is an oddball sculpt But then when you get real close up, you're like, whoa, what the heck's going on there? Why is that misaligned?

That's weird? Yeah, yeah, I mean it works though. You know the rest of the things. The cheeks are usually in the same kind of spot, but mine are probably a little off. And again I'm like, huh, well that's how it is on the figurehead.

Yeah, it looks great. It shaped more like the set Maker statue, but the goofiness is definitely more like the rim cohead. That's a good combo. Yeah, it's been interesting. I haven't screwed anything up too badly, so we'll see what happens.

I'm hoping that I get the head on. I'm gonna have to paint everything other than the clear coat and then put that together. And I hope it doesn't look like it's just like a totally separate thing. I kind of want it to combine. But we'll see it lays on their flat, so it should be okay.

It'd be great. It's already looking amazing. And as Mark said, folks go over to the instagram, the Cambridge and On Instagram or the wake Up Heavy Instagram and. Watch the processes. It is so much fun Mark and I love watching process making videos.

Yeah, it's such a blast to see Mark getting in deep with this and I'm anxious to see what's next. My original thought was to do the Mister Grape Little munch Bunch, Cutie fruity guy. But I may actually do a small burger, just a cheeseburger, okay, no eyes, no nothing, just a burger that's like half the size of our burger patch burgers. I might. I don't know.

I got to help Khalil with her chicken nugget buddy too, so. I see the nugget down there, it looks. Like it's oh yeah, it looks like a nugget, buddy. It's a very thick nugget, buddy. That was the other thing too.

I ended up buying some Bondo glazing putty, which Dallas Poge uses all the time on these restorations, for that specifically because I needed some. DAP is great, but it's little too thick for easy spreading on stuff like this, so it's more like cake frosting, yeah. And the Bondo glazing putty is more like toothpaste yeah, so it's a little bit more liquidy. I did use the plaster cloth on that. Actually, I'm like, I got to use this for something, so will use that to go over the foam of yours and I hopefully can hide the fibers better, which I did, And then I kind of had the thought, I'm going to prime this.

I'm going to spray paint it on the plaster cloth before we do anything else to also kind of get that stuff stuck down, which did help. Still have had fibers come out. Then I adapt it and then I standed it, and then I'm like, I need something else. I need something that goes on smoother. I bought some glazing puddy at a local AutoZone eight bucks Yeah, so the cost, I think I'm up to about one hundred and twenty bucks on this officer big back.

Yeah, I understand it's a lot of money. Lot. It adds up fast, especially when you're learning the materials. But then the next time you do it, you'll be like, that works, that works, that works, Okay, good. I'm working with more like forty.

Dollars for this. Yeah. The plaster cloth, I mean, none of it was all that much. That was probably twelve bucks for that rule. Yeah, I got so if you need some plaster cloth, Ronnie, pretty much a full role will give to you.

I got some in the garage too, for I'm going to be after this madaw Horn's over, I'm going to resume fixing up the castle grace Gull that I started years ago. So I have some plaster cloth ready to use. But if I run out, I'll reach. Out to yeah, because I don't think I'll use it for anything else. And I bought, of course the fifteen foot length role because I thought I might need it.

Also, I probably used maybe three feet of it, probably. Not even that much. I don't think, I mean, I'm there may be something else I can end up using it for but definitely not going to use it for mister Grape, or if I do a smaller burger, I won't be using it for that. I'm just going to use DAP, maybe bondo glazing putty, and the other things that are easier to apply. Pretty soon you'll be making little action figures.

It'll be great. No, I don't think so. No, Mister Grape is probably the closest to an action figure. All right, we'll be bad with Ronnie's local locale and my childhood treat right out these succulent messages. Popular.

Oh my gosh, look at this mud this place was amazing. Look over here, and look at this right here. This is amazing. Good. They are absolutely amazing.

Oh my gosh. Look oh this is amazing. This is absolutely beautiful. Oh look, listen to this, listen to this, look at this. Okay, Ronnie, I'm curious what your local locale is today.

I think it's important to finally talk about one of my central sand looking valley obsessions has been since I was a kid. It's not the typical kind of thing that a kid is obsessed with, but once I met this, I know Mark's gonna be like, oh my gosh. Yeah, when I was a kid. I grew up just a little bit above the foothills off of one eighty in a town called Dunlap, which is basically a small community up in the mountains. I guess the best way to describe it.

There's a lot of white flight up there. When I was a kid, there were quite a few Native American families that lived up there. Since then, so forty years later, there aren't as many. It's mostly folks living up there because they want to get out of the city for whatever reason. But it's a strange place.

A lot of mobile homes, a lot of interesting structures built by people by hand up there. When I would be picked up by my dad every other weekend and he would bring me down to Fresno, where he and my stepmother lived. When he would drive up to get me, and when we would drive back down, we would take the one eighty and the one eighty passes through a town called Minkler. This it's amazing. Mink was a special place for me as a kid.

There's a little store. We would stop at the store and my dad would buy me a sprite and we'd share some beef jerky. Minkler in the early no in the late nineties was actually for sale for about two hundred and ninety five thousand dollars because at the time the population was about forty people. I'm estimating, I can't remember the exact number. But these these little clumps of homes, irregular architecture, so like some of the homes were small, little one or two bedroom houses, probably built in the thirties, and then some mobile homes just dropped in.

And then the center of the town is the one Minklaer family store. Recently, have been thinking about Minkler because the one eighty is different now. The one eighty was built to bypass Minkler, so it's a fancier highway that passes past Minkler, so no one really stops by there anymore. I was looking it up online recently and noticed that the Wikipedia page. I haven't driven out there in ages because the one ag just passes through.

My aunt still lives up near Dunlap in a town called Miramanti. We go up there maybe once a year. I never goet to see Minkler anymore. I looked it up on Wikipedia recently and noticed that the population is closer to eight hundred and sixty seven people, which is a bit paradoxical to me. There's a neighboring town to Minkler called Centerville, which I also am deeply fascinated by.

It's a larger town. I'm wondering if maybe they've grown closer together and maybe some of the population are actually Centerville residents. As a younger person, like in my twenties, I would drive over there just to visit the store. I had this lingering obsession with the possibility of living there. Point in my.

Life, Winkler has always seemed like it's on the cusp of disintegrating. Living there has always been sort of like, well, yeah, but type of scenario. When it was for sale for two hundred and ninety seven dollars or whatever the price was on Craigslist of all things, back in two thousand and one, ish, I thought, man, if I had money, this would be worthy of an investment. For some reason, probably wouldn't have been. About two thousand and five, when I had moved back from New York City after living there for a.

Few years, I looked. It up and it was no longer for sale, So I think they never sold it because it's still owned by the family that runs the store. Basically it was established as a community and finally became a township not too long ago. And in fact, twenty ten, there was a shootout there. A couple of sheriffs died.

Law enforcement people died in the shootout. It made the news, made national news. My brother in law was involved, he was a sheriff. And then I found out that in twenty ten, around the same year, it was formally established as a town named after the person who probably built the store there, Charles Minkler. For those of you listening that you're interested in oddball little communities kind of like I am.

Minkler is a place that is this unique, special, strange. It deserves a television show. It deserves a documentary, a. Documentary, a YouTube documentary. Hey, maybe I'll go out there and visit it.

Put it on my YouTube channel. You can do a powel on it. Oh, I would love to. I'd love to. California now, Hule Houser, Full Houser, California's gold.

This is amazing. He kind of died early, like I think he was in his sixties when he died. I think if he was still doing this, he would probably have made it out there. He may have. Who knows California well.

I used to. Watch California's Gold on a weekly basis when it was on PBS. I don't recall that one of his episodes that really stuck out in my head was the Tillarry Basin, the Tillarry Lake which fills up occasionally. It's one of these odd areas that used to be meadowland, you know, with all the dams, it hardly ever gets filled with water and sit there. Occasions when we get a lot of rain, the Tillary Basin will fill up with water and cover up the roads and stuff.

Kule Houser would have loved it. I wanted to talk about Minkler because it's something that pops up in my brain every once in a while as a place to revisit. I took the family through once just to visit the store. They were like, hmm, okay, this is like this is the beginning of a horror movie. Maybe, yeah, why are you bringing us here?

Why are we here? Why are we here? For folks interested in straining California locales, the Fresno area or the central San Woquing Valley as a bunch of little towns, I mean, we live in one of the small little communities here, Fowler and Minkler's not too far from here. It's right outside of Realley, which is about a thirty minute drive from where we live, about a forty minute drive from Fresno. A lot of interesting, interesting stuff.

Cool, never been gotta go. Probably won't you make for the documentary. I'll wait for the. Documentary flavor when it comes to the crunch. I had this childhood treat on my mind, like I mentioned before we started recording, back when we didn't record that one time that was going to be one of my items for the day.

That was because I had recently purchased a box of it. Oh yeah, So I am talking about about the greatest cracker known to man, and that is chicken in a biscuit, which I absolutely loved as a kid. This is one of those things like hostess treats or mother's cookies that were pretty constant in our house when I was growing up, And then I didn't have for years once I got into college or whatever and had more grown up tastes. I don't know. And then when I lived on my own, I was such a penny pincher.

I didn't buy necessarily treats for myself as I got older and I'm shopping for myself and in a store and thinking, why am I not buying these? I love this. I love Hostess fruit pies. I love Mother's cookies. I love Mothers cookies.

I have money, I can afford this as a little succulent treat. Popular chicken and a biscuit is the same. When I'm at Target and I'm thinking I need a salty snack for the week, I'm going to buy me a box of chicken and a bit biscuit. And I absolutely love them. I love the flavor of them.

It's a very unique taste as far as crackers go. So I bought some couple months back when Clue and I went to Target and enjoyed them. I always assumed they were called chicken in a biscuit because they were probably flavored with like poultry seasonings, right, and you get that savoriness out of a you know, Parsity sage yep, Rosemary and time, et cetera. Clip Yes, Parsley sage mary. No, I looked it up.

They actually are flavored with dried chicken. Interesting to this day, there is still because this is something I think. Yeah, they would have probably did that back in the seventies. But no one's going to use dried chicken to flavor their crackers these days. No, it's one of the ingredients.

Is there a protein percentage? I don't have the box anymore, but I'm sure there's probably a minimal. Yeah, that's interesting. I didn't know that either. I thought they because I loved them as a kid too, And I always thought some scientists came up with a way to imitate the flavor of chicken pot pie and they're like, oh, let's turn this into.

A cracker, right right, No, it has chicken in it, it's got's cooled, it's flavored with dried chicken. Vegetarians and vegans steer clear of chicken in a biscuits. Clear. And there were all kinds of other things in a biscuit back then. There was like bacon in a biscuit, et cetera, et cetera, which I vaguely remembered.

But then, as I was trying to find a frickin commercial to use in the show, could not find an American commercial for chicken in a biscuit. They were all really either. Yeah, not on YouTube couldn't find one. They were all either UK or Australian based commercials. Whatever clip I'm using is from that.

I'm just going to put in a request for the Australian Chicken and a biscuit commercial, just going to say that, right. I used the one that I found that it was decent enough to use, so I it might be the Australian version. I think in the commercial one of the people sounds like they're American and one sounds like they're British, So I don't know. Cool chicken and a biscuit bring in the world together. There were no American commercials.

There were just reviews and other weird things that people made their own homemade commercials. Oh fast, Okay, that's cool. It's just one of those things that I have always loved. It's still out there and you can still buy it, and they're delicious and made with chicken. Well, next time I'm in the grocery store, I'm gonna be checking out that box and getting it in a closer look.

Get them at Target, though, because stuff like that is always cheaper Target than it is. Oh yeah, stras for sure. Probably four bucks at Target and six bucks at a grocery store. Sixteen dollars at Savemark. Probably, so that is my childhood treat.

I love it. Yeah, get out there and get yourselves some chicken and a biscuit. Crackers. They are good. I can voucher that one hundred percent.

I love them as a kid. It's just a unique taste. Yeah, alrighty well, I guess that's it for this go around. Thanks everybody for listening. Hop over to the YouTube channel of Ronnie's to watch that holiday special if you haven't already.

Yeah, check out the instagram pages for all the stuff that's going on with he and I and take us out Runnie. All right, folks, remember until we meet again, have fun, stay weird, and keep collecting. Josh, I'm going to have to tell them about my weirdness. I'm sorry, Josh. Populus This is amazing.

Cambridge or Seawan is a weirding Way media podcast