Two Designers Walk Into A Bar

Episode 09: Goodyear’s Blimp, Pixar’s Luxo Lamp and How Objects Become Company Icons

Released January 6, 2021
© 2021 Two Designers Media, LLC

Welcome to Two Designers Walk Into A Bar, a place where pop culture creatives, discover design icons, that make us tick. And we share a few cocktails in the process. We’re discussing incidental icons for, we should say objects made by others that have fit so well with company brands. It’s impossible to separate from their adopted corporate.

If you’ve bought new tires or have streamed a movie lately, you may have an idea of what we’ll be talking about. So grab that 20-year old scotch, you may have been saving for a special occasion, or one of the beers you bought last night and kick back with us once again, as we belly up to the bar.

Here we are in the bar and you know, today’s kind of a pretty cool, unusual topic, right?

Incidental icons. Icons that have become part of a company’s lore but they didn’t make the thing to start with. Right. So that’s what we’re here to talk about. We’re going to talk about….

Hello. Hello. Hello. Is this thing on? I thought that’s what we were here to talk about.

Uh, gee whiz, Todd. Well, let me put away my bobble head collection. Let me just slide that out of the way. My famous graphic designers, bobblehead collection, uh, sorry. Massino looks like you’re going to have to go back in the old shoe box.

Okay. But I have – speaking of interesting stories, Elliot – what I have found is an incidental icon that actually believe it or not ties together many things. See if you can guess what I’m talking about. It ties together a Norwegian lamp company, Industrial Light and Magic, an Oscar nomination, Chuck E. Cheese and Atari. Any of those things add up to you besides those all sound like, uh, those all sound like categories in a round of Jeopardy to me.

Potent Potables, right?

Yeah. Random ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I’ve got quite a story to tell you, and we’re going to spill some tea. I’m going to go ahead and tell you we’re going to spill some tea tonight.

Wow. Okay. All right. How about you want to give me a little hint of what you got coming up there?

Well, I wish I had something so multifaceted in terms of ingredients, I suppose, for lack of a better word. ‘Cause it seems like you’re about to weave a tale here.

Oh yeah.

Okay. Okay. Well, I’m looking forward to it.

It’s interesting.

You say Scandinavia and this sort of thing, which leads me to believe highbrow, but then you talk about the sorted underbelly of Hollywood, which makes me think low brow. I would say my company icon is somewhere in between.

Okay. It’s not. Somewhere in between high and low brow, although, here’s my hint, you will often need to look up to find it.

Okay. All right. Interesting. Well, this is going to be a hard guessing game because as we said in the beginning, these are not necessarily icons that, the company made or built.

It’s something they acquired and ran with it. So that’s going to be a little bit…uh…um…all right. Have to look up. So it’s an airplane. A spaceship.

Now, If it’s a spaceship, you better have some amazing vision.

If you’re…yeah. It’s the international space station. It’s uh, uh, it’s the Direct TV satellite.

Actually, you know what? When I said Direct TV, I just tipped my hand slightly. Very, very slightly.

Yes. Yes. All right. I’m totally confused. So a Direct TV, satellite. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know what an icon for Direct TV is, so give me another hint.

Sure. Well, there’s a couple things. First of all of course, one of the main things Direct TV carries is sporting events. Right?

Right. So what often shows up at a sporting…up in the sky…

Up in the sense like a hat to have two beers in them with the straw top.

I know you think pro wrestling is in fact a sport and in a lot of ways, you’re right. I’m not going to fight you on this. I’m not. I’m not going to go to the mat with you on this.

Oh yeah. Collective moan from the listeners now.

That’s right. Not coming at you off the top rope here. Be more lofty in your search.

Oh! The Blue Angels. Yes. Nailed it.

Hmmm. Well, let’s just say so when The Blue Angels fly by you know, sometimes they’ll leave like trails of smoke and that kind of thing.

Right.

When this thing flies by, if it’s leaving a trail of smoke that means there’s a lot of problems.

Okay. Okay. Uh, all right.

Well, I told you, I showed you my hand on where my incidental icon is based. Give me a hint. Where, where would I find yours besides up in the sky?

Okay. Well, I’ll tell you what, I’m going to give you a couple more hints.

Okay. I hope this line of questioning hasn’t made you too tired.

No, no, not yet now.

Well, at some point the rubber’s going to meet the road.

Okay. I get it. Now we’re talking. Would this have anything at all to do with where you grew up?

It just might.

It just like somewhere near Akron,?

I would say yes.

I think, I think you’re dancing right around it.

I am. I’m smelling what you’re burnin’ there, dude. We’re talking about the Goodyear Blimp.

We are. We are. The one. The only. Accept no substitute. The Goodyear Blimp.

I’ve always wanted to ride in that. So, you’re going to tell me you rode in it. Is that what you’re going to tell me?

I wish. Now I have come close when I was a little kid. When I was growing up, when I was eight or nine, I was a very eclectic child. But never wanted to be a pro wrestler though. That’s your dream, Todd and I’m going to let you own that.

I wanted to be a stunt car driver, right. And the quarterback.

Yes. Yes. I mean, I still want to be both of those things.

Oh, well. Who are we to shatter my dreams?

Not at all.

I will not shatter nor shat on your dreams a bit. So you wanted to be a blimp pilot, I guess as well?

Yeah, that was another thing. Because when I was a little kid growing up in Northern Ohio, I would see the blimp all the time. Because it would fly to events in Cleveland, you know, there were Indians games, Browns games. It would fly down to Columbus for an Ohio State game. You know, you’re driving around town or whatever and you look up and it’s like boom, there it is. It’s not like it flies super high. It’s really funny you know, you would sort of see the skyline or whatever, and then there’d be the blimp hanging around.

But yep. I grew up near Akron of course, where Goodyear’s headquarters is still there now and where there’s always been a blimp ever since Goodyear started with the marketing idea of the blimp in the twenties.

Yeah. Sort of like right on the heels of the birth of aviation.

Yep. Among the things I wanted to be, I wanted to be a pilot. And when I was little, I was actually in a mentorship program when I was eight or nine. And, the gal who was a private pilot, she had like a Cessna or a Piper or you know just one of these little planes.

For all the millennials out there, there was a time before the internet when, if you wanted to correspond with someone, you either had to pick up the phone and actually call them, or you had to write a letter. And I’m not sure which this woman did, but believe it or not the blimp pilots got back to her and said, “Yeah. If you want to bring this kid and you want to come down and visit us, come on down and we’ll take you up in the blimp.”

So it turned out, it was too windy the day I was there and we’re going to post some movies about this on our episode page, because they explained what the conditions are for getting a blimp up in the sky and that sort of thing. But it was too windy that day, unfortunately, to ride the blimp. But I got to meet the pilots.

I got to stand next to it. I’m sure my parents have a Polaroid of me, you know, somewhere at home with this. I should ask. I should ask them to dig it up and if I can find it, we can post it. Growing up in the seventies, growing up in the eighties, the blimp over the years has changed its look and we’ll get into that in a little bit.

But the blimp to me was always gray. And then the fins on the back were red, white, and blue. Kind of goes back to our 1976 podcast. This was the time when the country was red, white and blue you know, and the blimp being a symbol of the U.S. and American industry was certainly no exception to that.

And before we get more into this, one of the quirkiest things – and this is still even true today with the current blimp design, one of the things – that I always loved about it is it always had just one wheel for the landing gear. Yeah, that’s right.

That’s so weird.

Yeah, because it’s under the gondola.

So, I mean, that’s the only part that would touch the ground of this big balloon with this little thing with people hanging under it. So all you need is one. And obviously weight is an issue.

But anybody is going to know how to make a blimp tire, it’s going to be Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company I would imagine.

What’s the street price of a blimp tire?

I’ll have to go look that up.

Yeah. Do you think it was actually a Goodyear tire? Do you think they had to get one from, like Bridgestone to go across town to get a Firestone tire?

Exactly. They’re like, “Oh my gosh, we’re fresh out of blimp tires today.”

Yeah. “Call Vinny over at Firestone to get us a white wall blimp tire.”

Elliot, it’s interesting because I gave you a bunch of really disparate things early on when I was talking about my incidental icon. And I’m going to tell you. There’s a connection here too. I didn’t even mention before that there’s a blimp connection in mine.

Yeah. I know I’m tying it all together and man, okay. Spill the beans. I need to know this. So review these things with me again and for the listeners out there so we can kind of keep score.

Okay. So Norwegian lighting company. How about the helpful hints?

Industrial Light and Magic, Chuck E. Cheese, Atari and now a blimp that is so obvious. Oh my God. I can’t believe that.

I think, I think of, well, okay. I can get part of the way there. Okay. Because what I think of, and this is because my son, when he was young, was into this movie. So, so much is Cars.

Okay. Yeah. Well, in Cars, I think right there, that flies over the racetrack. Yeah. The Lightyear brand.

Yes, yes, yes. Are you picking up what I’m putting down? I was actually thinking about the movie Up as a matter of fact also has a blimp, but there’s something those two have in common.

Isn’t it Pixar?

Right. Okay. So I’m going to talk about Pixar, but first I’m going to talk about this guy…this little guy…Luxo. You know what Luxo is right? The little light.

Yeah. So Luxo is a Norwegian lighting company. Everybody knows who Pixar is. And if you’ve seen their opening title sequence, you’ve seen Luxo.

So now this brand of lights, this desk lamp. What he does is he hops around, he jumps on top of the logotype Pixar. I’ll tell you a little bit more about that in a minute, but there’s a great history that goes along with, Luxo Jr. two, which starts way back in 1934 was founded. That’s when the company was founded in Oslo, Norway by a guy whose name looks like Jac Jacobson, but it’s pronounced “Yac Yacobson.”

Are you all right? Did you, eat a chicken wing? Did you just choke or something?

So Jac, he was the founder of Luxo and he actually started in textiles and Luxo the lighting company began as a marketing company for textile machinery.

So they didn’t manufacture the machinery, but they marketed the machine.

Was the light sort of then a marketing device in that it would be like on sewing tables or something as people were using the equipment.

Yup.

Okay. Okay. It was a spinoff of that.

So in 1937, Jacobson invented what he called the Luxo L1 Lamp. And this is the swivel lamp that we’ve all seen. It’s been on desktops and in art studios for decades.

It’s super balanced has the springs on it you know, allows for the lighted head of the lamp to move around and many different positions and it kind of eliminates shadows on your desktop.

Anyway. So back to L.A. It was also the inspiration for a 1986 animated short film from John Lasseter and Pixar. Finally, I get to that destination of what I’m telling you about here.

Luxo Jr. was the name of the movie from Pixar, but you’re going to have to wait because I’m going to tell you about how Pixar launched. And it is a spill-the-tea story all over the place when I start tying together those disparate things I mentioned.

Go ahead. So you need to spend a little time while I’m talking to get your needle threaded and start stitching all this together.

I’ve got a yarn. I have quite the yarn.

Okay. Sounds great. Circling back to Goodyear. Obviously it’s a rubber company, but the blimp, where did this come from? How did Goodyear end up with the blimp and how did it become such an icon for this one company? Why doesn’t Firestone have a blimp?

Why doesn’t any other tire company have a blimp? You know, it’s the Goodyear blimp. And I would argue if you ask anybody like, “Hey, what company has the blimp?” I mentioned Direct TV earlier. And they certainly have – I think they still have it. They have an all-white blimp that goes to sporting events. It’s actually flown right over my house here in Winston-Salem.

They were going to a Wake Forest football game several years ago. And it was at night. They flew in the night to the airport and it was a beautiful evening and I stepped outside and I kind of heard this faint hum. I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. I looked straight up and it looked like the moon was about 200 feet over my house.

It reminded me of – I think it was the movie AI. Do you remember the Spielberg movie, AI and how there were hot air balloons that were like the moon? It reminded me of that. It was this surreal experience. So I went in, my son was asleep. He was young, he was a toddler and I grabbed him out of his bed and I said, come with me I want to show you something. And, you know, we went outside and he’s like…the front yard is empty

And he’s like, “Well, what is it?” And I said, “I want you to just look straight up.” And he looked up and his mind was blown. You know, it was like such a fun, fun moment.

So Direct TV has a blimp, but for Direct TV, it’s a more obvious thing for two reasons. Right?

First Goodyear already had the blimp. It had already established the blimp being used for media coverage. DirecTV is a media company, so it just made much, much, much more sense for them to have a blimp, but they arrived at the blimp about, I don’t know, 80, 90 years after Goodyear. How did Goodyear get it?

Yeah. So the first thing is we’ve all seen a blimp. If I were to ask you to draw a blimp, most people can make a little thumbnail sketch of what a blimp sort of looks like. It’s kind of a like drawing a little bomb, the nose on one end, you know, it’s kind of football shaped. It’s got little fins on another end.

And then it has the little basket, the little gondola I mentioned earlier with the one front wheel hanging off of it.

Yeah. Yeah. The Goodyear tire on the bottom, but who invented it and why are they so popular?

Right. So what happened? You had mentioned 1937 earlier when Luxo was founded. People know what a Zeppelin is if for no other reason, of course, than the Hindenburg disaster in New Jersey.

If you remember that footage, when the Hindenburg was crashing, it had sort of a structural cage to it filled with hydrogen, which is why it was catching on fire. So the envelope is rigid. It has this internal framework that was invented by a guy in Germany named Count Ferdinand Von Zeppelin. I forget what a product is called when it is named after the inventor. Do you remember what that term of art is?

I don’t.

Well, we’ll look it up.

The only word that comes to mind is eponymous. Is that how you say that?

You mean the animal, the animal in the zoo?

Yeah, that one too.

Uh, yeah. Well that animal was discovered by the famous explorer Ferdinand Von Eponymous. So, it makes complete sense.

But you know, a blimp. So a blimp is truly a giant balloon or it’s actually a series of balloons inside a giant balloon because the smaller balloons fill with air to use as ballast to lower or raise the blimp.

Right.

‘Cause air being no lighter, no heavier.

I’ve always wondered if a hot air balloon, with these little sandbags that need to drop – how they figure it out with a blimp. So the only rigid pieces on a blimp are the tail fins a little bit in the front with the nose cone.

And then the gondola which we mentioned earlier, part of the reason that it was such a good promotional tool is you could pack it up. When it was deflated, it was actually pretty small. All things considered. You know, it’s bigger than a hot air balloon, but not by much. That’s why they are used in combat, in war.

It’s funny, you mentioned that.

Yeah. Naturally anything that gives you a vantage point for your enemy or, or any sort of advantage over another group is certainly going to be used for military purposes. And yeah World War I. That’s exactly what happens. So that was really when the blimp started to become a thing versus a novelty. Once you start to get a military contract…things pun intended, take off. See what I did there?

I did. I did. I did. Yeah. And now we have no listeners.

There, the police continue and they all took off as well. So the name “blimp” is pretty quirky. So on December 5th, 1915, during World War I, British commander, H. D. Cunningham of the Royal Navy was in France and he was inspecting a fleet of “non-rigid airships.” That’s what they were called.

And he tapped one of the balloons with his finger and he sort of heard this resonant sound…you know…this “blimp” kind of flicking a giant balloon sound. And the name just stuck.

So it was total onamonapia. And after that, people just started referring to it as a blimp.

Also because blimp rolls off the tongue much better than “non-rigid airship.”

Yeah. Right. Okay. Well that’s all fine and good, but how does Goodyear figure into this? We’ve already talked about Goodyear at the time. I believe it was the largest rubber company in the world. It may still be today…I don’t remember off the top of my head. If not, it certainly is one of the largest rubber companies in the world.

And they began building blimps for the military as the U.S. entered World War I.

So hold on. Blimps are actually made of rubber?

They’re like rubber skins over a bunch of balloons.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it’s pretty thick rubber and then it’s painted. So you think about a blimp kind of being like a flat silver sort of color.

That’s a paint that is sprayed on there and applied to it and everything. I’m sure. Originally, in addition to waterproofing and protection, it was camouflage. You put it up in the sky it’s fairly gray. It’s not going to be as noticeable, right? So these blimps are being made. Goodyear’s cranking out these.

But also around this time, you got to keep in mind the Wright brothers wasn’t that long ago. It was about a decade and a half before World War I. It’s astonishing to think about this. World War I is called the first modern war. And it’s the first war, certainly where aviation played a part.

So all these things are happening. Then of course the war ends. All of these pilots…you know…goes back to what we were talking about with street culture. When you had all these ex-military folks who came back after World War II. They were still tinkerers. They were working on their cars and all these sorts of things.

Well, you had all these fly boys who came back. So what were they doing? They still wanted to fly a plane. You didn’t really have commercial air travel. Think about like Charles Lindbergh and all these sorts of folks. All these things that were happening in the Roaring Twenties…wing walking, barnstorming, all of this stuff that’s happening.

And Goodyear recognized this. They had made these blimps for the military and a guy named Mickey Whitman who worked for Goodyear saw marketing potential – as he should. So the first Goodyear blimp, The Pilgrim was launched in 1925. And I know you’re probably thinking John Wayne named it.

But that is not in fact. the blimps were always named after the winners of the America’s Cup Yacht Race.

So that’s where that came from?

Yeah, it’s crazy. So now currently the blimps are called Wingfoot like Wingfoot One, Wingfoot Two…which is the Mercury symbol, their logos.

And the blimps now are blimps really in name only because beginning in 2014, Goodyear actually stopped making their own blimps and they started working with the Zeppelin Company.

So the blimps are a little bit bigger. Now the gondola rather than being centered underneath is forced forward. And it’s actually now semi-rigid. The blimps you see today are blue and yellow and much more sleek and contemporary looking. They’re actually kind of cheating the whole blimp idea, but because Goodyear is known for the blimp, it’s always going to be a blimp, right?

Yeah. Otherwise they’d have to market it as a Zeppelin, like non-rigid air ship.

Yeah. Semi-rigid rolls off the tongue.

Yeah. Again, we’re having trouble saying it and we love to talk. Imagine people who don’t love to talk and listen to each other…how difficult it will be for them.

That’s right. That’s right.

But I want to touch on one other amazing thing about the blimp and you and I have actually brought this up in conversations in the past, and I talked about covering sporting events and all these sorts of things.

You and I talked a while ago about how when we both were growing up, we had a model of the Goodyear blimp. And one of the things that we both loved about it was that it had light-up messages on the side. Just like the real blimp, right?

Right. My parents bought one for me from the Goodyear store. Obviously it was a promotional item and you could put messages in it and they would scroll and you could change the messages out.

Man! I love that.

I loved it too. The good news is the blimp that you and I remember – the one I described earlier with the red, white, and blue tail fins – I have found and I’ll post it on YouTube videos where actually people have bought the model today. You know, 30 years later they bought the model, put it together and show how it actually works.

But if we’re talking about culture Todd, with this podcast. Of course we talk about design, but what else do we talk about?

We talk about pop culture, right? And so I’m sure that the Goodyear blimp has made its mark flying through parts of pop culture. Hasn’t it? Have you ever heard of, some group in the sixties?

I can’t, I can’t remember their name. I think they were big for awhile. They’re from Great Britain.

Great Britain. Yeah. Uh, they kind of had these matching haircuts. Um, Uh, with a B…Beatles, I think is how you pronounce it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. What does a blimp have to do with the Beatles?

Nothing. I just wanted to bring up The Beatles.

No, no, no, no. Yeah. So the blimp was in the movie Help.

Really?

Yeah. The blimp had a cameo. Also Beach Blanket Bingo with Frankie and Annette. But not to be outdone by events. Like trumped up media stuff here, let’s go with a couple actual milestone events.

So of course we all remember the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 in San Francisco, right. That was happening during the World Series. So when that happened, the blimp actually helped with the earthquake. Well, I mean, it was there, obviously it was covering the World Series. So, you know, it helped with messaging and things like that. And then also a few years later in 1992, when Hurricane Andrew hit, it helped, because communications were knocked out.

This is actually really, really fascinating. So they use the lights on the side of the blimp to message hurricane survivors and tell them that help was on the way and what they should do and all that sort of thing.

Wow. I had no idea.

This is the best thing of all. I think out of all the stuff we’ve talked about with pop culture, College Football Hall of Fame, obviously the blimp covers all these sporting events.

In January of 2019, the Goodyear blimp was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. And it’s the only non-human member, so it wasn’t the First Down. Marker.

It wasn’t even the football.

Yeah, it wasn’t. You know, it wasn’t a helmet. Yeah. It wasn’t anything like that. Yeah the blimp, the Goodyear blimp.

So that is amazing. I mean, the blimp. You love it. I love it. I think a lot of our listeners love it, but the blimp. You mentioned in a prior podcast the phrase, “Range of Awesome” when you were describing Cooper Black, the blimp to me is a range of awesome just in terms of pop culture, because chances are, if it’s going down, there’s probably a blimp close by that’s.

Right. And you know what? That is the range of awesome, incredibly inflated range of awesome. That’s what that is. Sky-high range of awesome right there.

[BREAK]

Todd, I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to feel a bit deflated.

No Elliot. I’m a little surprised because you’re usually the one filled with the hot air.

Funny. Well, I’m off for a brisk walk around the neighborhood, a bowl of peanuts and a quick drink refill.

Okay. See you in a minute.

Hi, while we have your attention. If you want to learn more about us and the podcast, there are a few ways to do it. Visit our website at TwoDesignersWalkIntoABar.com. All of that is spelled out no numbers, kind of a long URL. So do yourself a favor, bookmark it. Once you’re there, you can find links to more information about the subjects in this episode, our episode archive and information about us both.

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[Part 2]

I’m still kind of fascinated by the Goodyear blimp being nominated (or being, excuse me), being inducted into the, Football Hall of Fame.

That’s pretty amazing. To my knowledge Luxo Jr. has not been put in any hall of fame yet. But will. So Elliot, what I was telling you before. This is a lighting brand from Norway, pretty popular lights.

They’ve been making them since 1937 and it was the inspiration for a short 1986 animated movie that John Lasseter did. And this was really the first thing that came out of the new Pixar.

All right. Now, what is the new Pixar? Well, first, let me tell you about this movie. You probably have seen it. It’s a two-minute short that revolves around a parent and child desk lamp. And the larger lamp is named oddly enough – Luxo Sr. It looks on while this younger Luxo Jr. kind of comes out and annoys the older one. Luxo Jr. plays exuberantly with this ball and bounces it around, chases it around until the ball accidentally deflates. This deflates Luxo Jr’s exuberance at the same time. So this was actually a story that was built from a bunch of different modeling tests by John Lasseter inspired by his Luxo desk lamp. So as he was kind of really getting into computer graphic animation, he was doing modeling tests, shadow tests and things like that. For his subject, he used his desk lamp. So it makes a lot of sense, right. Because, it was there.

Yeah. Yeah.

It’s there, but also if you think about it – it’s a series of geometric shapes. Right, right.

And so he kept looking at…was like, okay…it’s kind of a cool looking thing. It’s got a lot of interesting movement to it. And he was inspired to turn it into a story. So not just pictures of lamps and things like that. He was told – and this is such a great quote – that you can tell a story even in 10 seconds.

So a two-minute short needs a story and thus became Luxo Jr. But the question is why did he make a two-minute short film in the first place? This was Pixar’s first animation after being spun out from Industrial Light and Magic’s computer division. They called it The Graphics Group, which I know – crazy inventive name there.

Well they saved all their creativity for the two-minute movie, I guess.

Well that was Industrial Light and Magic’s group and it was spun out from, uh, George. George…Lucas…Lucas, I think was his name – made a movie or two.

He has a nice flowing head of hair. I think that’s the thing most people remember about George Lucas.

He does. Yeah. Anyway, this was 1986. Now you ready to spill some tea?

You’ve been dancing around this. You’ve been tempting us and it’s time, man. Let her rip.

All right. So this graphics group that was spun out from, ILM was assembled from leaders of New York Institute of Technology.

That would be Ed Catmull and Alvy Smith. Also John Lasseter, who was recently fired from the Walt Disney Company for guess what? Promoting computer animation. And assembled with those guys is a small team from a company called Cadabrascope, which was an early computer animation studio that George Lucas bought in a fire sale rom a guy named Nolan Bushnell. Now that name may start to conjure up some stuff because Nolan Bushnell was a major entrepreneur who gave us among other businesses, Chuck E. Cheese and Atari.

Yes. There is an amazing – for those of you out there who like podcasts, if you’re listening to this one – there’s How I Built This with Guy Raz, and he interviews Nolan Bushnell.

So do you know why… sorry, I’m taking us on a quick tangent here. Do you know why he invented Chuck E Cheese?

So, he could place video games inside and that’s why he invented the small studio Cadabrascope as well.

Yeah, it was because people – he said – get burgers too fast, but if you order a pizza, you have to wait 20 minutes for them to make it. And during that 20 minutes, you can pump quarters in the video games. Like that was his rationale, which is brilliant.

Yeah. So he was head of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese and then this video company. So he was trying to wrap it all together. But anyway, George Lucas bought that little bit of his empire in a fire sale because at the time the Chuck E. Cheese business was not doing very well.

So Nolan Bushnell was trying to sell off bits. He sold off the Cadabrascope bit, which became part of Industrial Light and Magic, which became part of Pixar.

Okay. All right. Tea still spilling Elliot. I mentioned fire sale. So back when those members were still part of Industrial Light, George Lucas had to have his own fire sale because he was having what? Cashflow difficulties stemming from his 1983 divorce. With its reported settlement of $50 million.

Well, and just to take another quick tangent, apparently at the same time Spielberg was going through his divorce and they say, that’s why Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom is such a dark film because both of the creators were going through divorces at the same time.

Interesting. I didn’t know that.

And you wouldn’t think that someone of George Lucas’s caliber would be worried about $50 million bucks because he had just made three of the biggest movies of all time in the Star Wars trilogy, but there was also a sudden revenue drop from Star Wars license. The figures and the toys – which he owned out completely dropped because the last movie that had been made was Return of the Jedi.

So he made three huge movies and six years. But no movie was in sight. No tease of a movie was in sight. So this group was spun out and it had its major investor who helped to spin it out. A guy…uh…last name…last name…Jobs. First name, Steve. Heard of him?

He was recently pressured out of a job at Apple and he paid $10 million –$5 million for working capital and then $5 million to George Lucas for the technology rights to these. For RenderMan, which is what it was called.

Then it wasn’t even known as Pixar, right?

Yes. So interestingly enough – still spilling the tea here in this ironic twist – These two contractor kids worked for – remember our guy – Nolan Bushnell, the serial entrepreneur? These two contractor kids worked for this entrepreneur back in the mid-seventies. They used the Atari spare parts to build their own personal computer.

And they tried to convince Nolan to sell hardware. This was Atari, right? And he’s like, “Oh hell no. Atari is about games and stuff like that. We’re not selling computers.” ‘Cause he was a very wise businessman.

He said no to these two scruffy contractors. So Steve Wozniak and Steve jobs went on to start Apple with that.

Which is crazy because you know we could have been sitting here on our Atari phones now, if that were the case.

Well, my first home computer was actually an Atari home computer. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was an Atari 800 XL. So, you know, it did have a cartridge slot. You could play all kinds of different stuff on it.

The main game I played on it – and this is kind of digging into esoteric stuff was a game called Karate. So you can go look that up as a pretty awesome karate game. But the bigger thing that I wanted to mention…one thing I love about Apple – a lot of times they’ll put Easter eggs in their products. Which if you know the backstory, it’s wonderful. And if you don’t, it’s fine. You’re certainly not suffering for it. Years ago for example, if you bought QuickTime Pro the way they showed you how to fill out the registration for QuickTime Pro was a Carl Spackler from Bushwood Country Club registration. You know, like Carl would need QuickTime Pro.

I assume it was to edit all his gopher films.

I’m not sure about that, but the original. iPod had Breakout on it. There was one game on it that was in the software and it was Breakout. And the reason that Breakout was on there was because when Steve jobs was at Atari, that was the game that he helped code. He and Wozniak both. That was the game. They both helped create.

How amazing, how amazing though is that, that, uh, when the iPod rolled out, they still tip the hat to that, to their, their early days at Atari.

Again, I kept telling you about how all of these things are tied together. And the two Steves, the two kids work for Nolan Bush now tried to get him to sell personal computers. Uh, he said, no. Um, but then even more ironic twists, they interact again in 1976, Steve jobs actually goes to no. And says, if you’ll give me $50,000, I will give you one third of apple.

I think at this point in time, hadn’t Nolan Bushnell sold a targeted Warner brothers. No, I think he sold it to Bally. So before I get to back to Pixar for a second, um, if Nolan Buschnell would have taken that deal for $50,000 in 1976, he would be worth today $667 billion. Like what, one third ownership of apple.

That’s crazy. So, okay. Back to 1986 Loxo is debut and a, a short film two-minute film. Uh, this new company that was formed, this graphics company, they were only focused on selling technology. Um, they weren’t selling animation, like they wanted to sell the hardware, um, that they were using and to show off the technology they create.

Uh, short films to show at SIGGRAPH, um, you know, big technology show happens every year. So this, they created this film Luxo Jr to be shown at SIGGRAPH 1986. And it was crazy enthusiastically received like so much. So it like standing ovation and it was even nominated for a best animated, short film from the academy awards of that year being the first CGI film ever nominated for an academy award.

That’s amazing. I think, I think I even read like the standing ovation happened before the movie was over in my mind. This is a two minute movie, a two minute movie about a lamp. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so they, Jerry, they did that’s gold, Jerry. You know, that tells you something Luxo Jr now has become a company icon.

So with the success of that, this little lamp starts appearing in more things associated with Pixar. You have, first of all, he had a role in toy story, the first toy story. Um, and then after toy story, every subsequent movie he shows up in Pixar’s production logo, the logos that appear before the movie starts and what he does, he hops out, he stops, he S next to the letter, I have Pixar.

He jumps on top of it, and he kinda like jumps up and down and squashes it, like he did his rubber ball, and then he kind of looks around and looks directly at us, the audience, and everything goes black except for his lighted head. And that’s pretty much been that way. There’s been some variations, um, to reflect different concepts of movies like in cars and Wally and things like that.

The Loxo symbol has been so ingrained, uh, as part of Pixar, like we see it all the time. And again, it just started as this humble little desk lamp that John Lasseter was using as a model to do tests with. Okay. I, I, I feel I need to step in and interrupt you here. Okay. Because things are going so well for Pixar going so well for our friend.

Loxo you mentioned, you know, just knowing, knowing how you like to weave a tale. Yes. Something tells me we’re about to have our behind the music moment we did right now would be the part where the music changes and it gets a little darker. Okay. What happened when this magic, the hold on, hold on, hold on to John Lasseter and ed Catmull and company, did they like take, you know, like a 500 foot extension cord into a hotel room at SIGGRAPH and did they plug in the light and while it was still lit, did they toss it out the hotel window into the pool?

Was it that kind of not exact? No, no, no, it was, it was probably not nearly as exciting as that. Oh man. I wasn’t, I was thinking of true behind the, behind the music moment. I know, I know true rockstar moments, but nonetheless, a lawsuit did happen, which I want to hear me. I want to hear the GC details. Okay.

So as I said, in 1986, when Loxo made his debut, John lasted or had a handshake. With the Loxo company that allowed them to use that as part of their studio branding and certainly use the name and connection to the character. So-so I was worried he hadn’t even Bob, you know, if you’re sitting in a room, you look at your light and you’re like, I’ll just use that.

The first thing that crossed your mind is an IO to call up this company in Norway and make sure it’s okay for my five minute movie. Okay. So at least he did that. So that was above board and all things where they had this great amicable relationship for 23 years. Well, it’s free, it’s free advertising for them.

Right. I know for 23 years until September, 2009, and guess what happened? The music stopped. That’s what happened. Pixar’s parent company Disney started to sell a limited edition promo packs for the movie up. Remember, we were talking about blimps early package package with all of these premium DVD Blu-rays for, uh, can I, can I, can I have a guess here?

Can I make a guess, you know what it is, knowing Disney and knowing how, you know, Disney has never really met up promotional product. Certainly a character driven promotional product that didn’t like my guess is everybody got a little Luxo lamp, a little toy luck. So am I right? A little toy Luxo lamp that worked.

Oh, really? It truly lit up really lit up. It was battery powered. Now here’s where the problem happened. It was made out of plastic. Uh, the Loxo company does not make things out of plastic. Right. Um, They filed a lawsuit with this, uh, release of this package coming up. And they said, you know, we’ve got a problem with that because it’s cool.

If you wanna use the name as a character, it’s cool. If you want to use it on your logo, but when you start making stuff, it’s physical when it’s actually out in the world and it can be mistaken for something that we made, because it looks exactly like something we would make. Right. And, and it’s not as good a quality, you know, it’s a total, wasn’t meant to be a desk lamp.

Right. And for some reason, they also had a problem with the, um, large dancing audio animatronic Luxo Jr. At Disney Hollywood studios. And the only reason I can figure out that they had a problem with that was, it was really stupid because it, because it looks like a little kid. If you see the video, we’ll post a video.

If you see it, it looks like a little kid dressed completely in white wearing a hoodie. Who’s trying to poop bike. He’s like, instead of dancing, he looks like he’s trying to poop. Oh man. So I’m guessing they had, you know, the Norwegians don’t like that kind of stuff. You know what? I’m an American and I don’t like it either.

Well, see, there you go. You have some Norwegian blood. Um, but I know the question is, well, how did this end? Right. Um, well, uh, lots of chitter chatter on the interwebs where people are saying, you know, Disney’s should have known better. That’s just stupid. They should have known not to do that. Oddly enough, the lawsuit was dismissed by the plaintiff.

Loxo just two months later in November and the special packaging with the collectible. At a limited release of 500 and it had to carry a sticker that said Luxo Jr. Was not made by Loxo of Norway. And, um, the dancing Loxo in Hollywood studios, uh, went away and under a year as well after that. So, you know, they had to make a few concessions, but, um, all things considered, I think things are still back good and Pixar and Loxo land.

Uh, they’re they’re still working together, but hopefully Disney learned their lesson and will not try to make other people’s products now. So the fate of these 500, this limited release are these things seen as like totally valuable and collectible because there are so few or correct. Easy, valuable.

Yeah. Well the price tag was $199 to begin with. Well, it is a Blu-ray. Well, yeah, I know. And, uh, anaplastic, uh, battery powered light every bit of $200, I think so crazy limited. Now here’s something that is even more crazy in the UK. They had a special package that all I could find that was only released there.

And it was a set of five Blu-rays and DVDs plus all the special Luxo Jr. Movies with the lamp for guess what? $999. So there’s that, you know, I, and I could find no more on that one. My guess is they probably had about 500 of those, but that was only in the UK. So there you go. Little bit. Lawsuit juiciness there from our little guy luck.

So suing Pixar and Disney, well suing the parent company Disney, but now things are back happy and picks our land. So Elliot, there’s a couple takeaways that I think tie things together. And I want to know what you think. One is, these are just objects, right? But we’ve added more emotion and we’ve added story to them.

Blimps represent these great times that we have at events, football games, seeing them as kids, their historic. Um, Loxo obviously was a movie. It was just a lamp, but it was a movie that had emotion built into it. And people have fallen in love with it so much so that they’re paying, you know, $199 for a package now.

Yes. Um, I mean, I had a bunch of Goodyear blimp toys when I was little. Um, and then. There’s still a good year. Did you know that Goodyear made tires also? Actually, I can tell you I did. And the reason I did is because growing up in the Midwest, um, I know Todd, this might be sacrilegious to you since we are in the belly of the beast and NASCAR country.

Although ironically, the Midwest, actually the Indianapolis motor Speedway is now NASCAR country, I think as well. But, um, you know, when I was growing up, um, indie 500 and so naturally there were formula one cars sponsored by Goodyear. Actually also, now that I remember there was actually the Cleveland grand Prix, which was a formula one race there isn’t, there is an airport, I believe it’s still around today called Burke lakefront airport in Cleveland.

And every summer they went. How many cars you could set on fire or something like that? Yeah, well actually it was just evil Knievel jumping over cars. Yes, yes. Um, but, uh, no, but it was a formula one race, and that was, you know, obviously Goodyear sponsored racing teams and, uh, the blimp naturally just being, you know, a little less than an hour away, it was coming up in covering that for obvious marketing reasons as well as media reasons.

So for that reason, I was very, very familiar with what Goodyear was, even when I was a little kid. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, cool. Cool. So again, I think it’s cool. We’re not talking about the logos for these companies. Um, we’re talking about things that are used. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you had either like an icon, like a, like a silhouette of either the Goodyear blimp or the Luxo lamp, and you said to somebody, what company, I mean, if I remember correctly, you know, with a Pixar animation at the beginning that the title animation, the head quote, unquote, the lamp part swings around so much, there are silhouettes of the lamp and the letters and casting, these fun shadows and everything.

It’s so iconic. And you’re exactly right. It’s not the logo, it’s the object, but the object becomes the logo. But again, these are both Goodyear. Didn’t, didn’t become the largest, um, rubber company in the world by selling blimps to the military. It was selling tires to the burgeoning automotive and airline industries and everything like that.

Right. You know, just the same way Pixar. Uh, and Disney did not try to confuse the public by making desk lamps.

Exactly. Which is another great lesson because, uh, when we’re talking about these icons that are crossing over businesses, you got to get your legal shit straight. If you’re going to be involving somebody else’s property. Right? Yeah. Well, I remember when I was very, very little, I had a ton of matchbox cars, you know, we talked about the Dukes of hazard and obviously I knew what, what those cars were from the TV show.

But I remember having a bunch of matchbox cars or later my brother had a bunch of like original 1980s transformers. And of course I wish my brother and I had saved all these toys because I wouldn’t be talking to you from, you know, my little podcast closet. I’d be talking to you from my private podcast island.

Cause I would have sold all that stuff. Right. And. Yeah. I remember my dad saying, oh, well that wasn’t, that’s an Oldsmobile or, oh, that’s a Cadillac or that’s, you know, this or that’s that. And I remember being astonished by the fact that he knew what all these cars were. Cause I thought they were all made up.

It’s just like, wow, let’s just make car be different from Carre. And. Of course Mattel, which made hot wheels and, you know, matchbox and all these different companies and transformers, you know what, they’re the Lamborghini and the VW bug and all this kind of stuff. They all had to go to these companies and get permission.

So you talked about cars. I remember going to a lecture with a couple of Pixar animators here at a film festival, and someone said, did a Pixar need to get permission? Because there’s a portion there there’s, you know, if you think about all the cars in the town. Yeah. The Fiat, all that stuff. Um, did they have to get permission?

And they said, yes, a hundred percent, you know, the finale, you know, at the end of the foot, he comes. Right. And, you know yeah. All of those companies had to give now I’m sure by that time with Pixar’s track record, see what I did there, pun intended, uh, Hey, um, it was probably much easier to have that conversation than it would have been when Pixar was a no name company.

Right. You know, I am willing to trust you with my brand assets, because I think you will, we can both be successful together. Right. Which is, that’s a great way to look at this, like, um, two organizations that can help each other out as long as they trust each other with the brand assets. Right. It can build on that equity and you know, not all companies are good year and not all companies are Pixar or Loxo.

Um, so I think that is a, that’s a really good. That’s a good way to look at it and I wish more deals were made like that. Um, but you know, some things don’t always work out like that. Yeah. And I think to some degree you can’t, you know, it’s almost like you and I have had that conversation before where we’ve both laughed when a client says, Hey, can you make me a viral video?

Right. It’s sort of like, it’s sort of like a, Hey, make me an amazing, uh, corporate marketing partnership. Can we have this symbiotic partnership and whatever, can you just find somebody to bolt on or whatever it is I’m selling. And it’s sort of like, you know, sometimes it’s two groups talking to the same audience, other times it’s two completely different audiences.

And for whatever reason, of course it just, it either it’s going to work or it’s, it’s not going to work. And I think, um, at the end of the day, two things happen. I think we touched on the first one where, uh, These companies need to trust one another and be on the same page when it comes to how their respective brand assets are going to be resented.

Right. But then I think they also need to trust their fans and they need to trust the public that if this marketing works, they are going to fall in love with these things. And naturally your fan base, they’re going to emote exactly what you said. They’re going to inject meaning into this far and above what was initially anticipated or even intended.

And you’ve got to let that go like the best brands, whether it’s Pixar or apple, or, you know, a tare or whatever. They’re wonderful because everybody has stories about them. They might not know the corporate pedigree or all the heritage or whatever. Oh, yeah. You know, I, I took this video on my iPhone or I loved playing Pac-Man with my older brother growing up or whatever, you know, there’s all these wonderful stories.

I mean, I wish I had a dollar for every time I had to watch cars on a road trip. Luckily I really liked that movie a lot, but, um, and if I didn’t, I would’ve grown to like it. Um, but, uh, but yeah, you, you know, with repeated exposure, you understand the, you know, the charm, um, and the joy that, that does come out of these things, and you begin to understand why other people love them so much too.

I mean, to the, to the point that Airbnb a few years ago with Goodyear actually allowed you to spend a night in the hanger, in the Goodyear blimp, they converted it into a hotel room for some sort of giveaway. It’s crazy. It’s crazy. Yeah. So, I mean, anything’s possible. Man, great place to leave it. I need to freshen my drink.

How about you? IDT? My ice is all melted cause I’ve been doing too much yapping.

All right. We will pick this back up around our virtual pub table. Another time. Sounds great. See everyone soon.