Two Designers Walk Into A Bar

Episode 14: Best of Season 1 (Episodes 7 through 12)

Released May 19, 2021
© 2021 Two Designers Media, LLC

Two designers walk into a Bar is a proud member of the Evergreen Podcasts Network. For more information about our show, or to discover more podcasts you'll enjoy, visit evergreen podcasts.com. Right. Oh, , did you fall down and my ear fell out. Oh, I thought your Life Alert bracelet was just activated. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay, so your turn. . Okay. Three, two.

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. Yep. Today we close out with part two of our best of last season. It's a time to give one last toast to some of our favorite bits as we move on to season two.

So grab a vintage veno, join us, and some favorite memories as we journey back into the bar.

Well, so, um, we're gonna be talking, uh, about the second part of our season where we had some, uh, kind of funny, eclectic topics. And, um, one that we had a lot of fun with was episode seven, which we called first impressions. And yeah, we kind of, we both have a love of, uh, uh, of display type faces and we referred to them as our ugly dates.

Um, and I think, you know, it was probably a toss up as to who had the best one, but I will say you did tie it together with some good, you, you did tie your tight face together with some good, uh, southern humor. True. Which, you know, if there's ever a moment to inject some southern humor in anything, you know, I'm game to do that

All right, let's take a listen.

So we're gonna kind of get into a little bit of a battle here because, all right. I would argue the type, do, do you want me to tip my hand? Do you want me to, uh, in introduce my, my ugly date for the evening? Yeah. So it sounds like we're, we're gonna, we're trying to decide whose guest is more malign. ? Yes.

Who, who clears the room faster when they show up? Who brought the stink? Guess to the party. Yeah. Yep, yep. All right. Yes, go for it. All right, I'm gonna toss my hat in the ring here. Um, so my, uh, typeface is a , I won't say near and dear to my heart,  typeface, but it's one that is of my childhood. You know what Todd?

I feel to reveal the tight face. I almost. Tell you what the show is that I first encountered it in, because knowing you, knowing your pedigree, I think you will nail this as soon as I give you the title of the show. Oh, no. Okay. All right. Come on, man. Now. All right. Ain't that much of a southerner. Well, are you ready?

Yeah. Okay. Go ahead. Dukes of. Yeah, I know what it is. It's hobo typeface. , yes. Okay. All right. Yeah, you got me. All right. Good. Good, good. All right. Yeah. Yep. If, if the, if the designer wasn't gonna get it, the hillbilly would. So Todd, as uh, the listeners all now know, uh, my introduction to the southern culture, uh, came from the Dukes of Hazard and Heehaw.

I don't wanna downplay Heehaw, but Heehaw was not part of our  our tight face conversation, at least this go round. And bet you thought they were the same type. The same, yeah. I thought it was actually, yeah. I thought that the, the musical review during the Dukes of Hazard was, in fact, Heehaw turns out they were two separate.

Yeah, they should  with, with a little bit of pro wrestling thrown in there. I think  well, so we all sort of love hate hobo and it has certainly been around for a long time and you know, it, it really showed off with the Dukes of hazard, but I was sort of really captivated by finding out how it got its name.

You did a lot of research on that one. Yeah, that was a little bit crazy. It involves happenstance, the Russian language and just maybe a little bit of, uh, plagiarism. So let's give it a listen.

So the first theory is that it came from a story that it was sketched in the early 19 hundreds, sent to the foundry. Nameless, like it just kind of, you know, Hey, would you be interested in me creating this face for you? And it just hung around. No one was an advocate for it within the tight foundry, just sort of lingered.

And it was called that old hobo . You know, it was this, this old kind of half baked design that was always hanging around kind of this albatross, right? So it was the hobo, it was the itinerant fellow, the gentleman of the road who would not go away. that, uh, you know, another idea, the typeface originally was not even called hobo.

It was originally called ad. Believe it or not, which doesn't really roll off the tongue and doesn't sound nearly as fun as you can imagine though. Mm-hmm. , this hobo does. So it was finally patented in 1915. I mentioned there was a second version of the type vase called light hobo. So that's the hobo that, um, doesn't get, it's got his shit together.

Yeah. Well, I, I would say he. Probably shits more often than his more heavyset friend. You know, , if he's the light hobo. So, um, you know, he got a, he got a hold of a bag of Leer chips or you know, something. I'm not sure exactly. That's a separate story my friend. Bring it up. Yeah, I'm sorry. Uh, my new nickname for you Todd is Light Hobo.

Oh, okay. Thanks. So, you know, Elliot, you talked about the irony of the Dukes of Hazard being a show set in the Deep South, shot in Southern California. What about our movie logos episode that included location as part of the story? Like the one I was trying to get you to guess.

Okay. It takes place in Hollywood. Weigh it in Hollywood. Hold on, hold on. I might be zeroing in on this. Okay. I think you and I saw this movie together actually. . We may. I really do. Okay, so was Howard Hughes in this movie? Like a Howard Hughes character, not, not the corpse of Howard Hughes. No. Cuz he was gone by them.

But a character. Yeah. So, so yeah. So, so you're saying it wasn't weekend at Bernie's? No.  it wasn't Weekend at Bernie's. No. And I, I'm not crazy about that logo in particular.  a classic movie in its own right. Nonetheless. That's right, that's right. Well, let's see. So Art Deco set in the thirties, Nazis. In Hollywood.

Oh, in Hollywood. That's right, that's right. Okay. Well thi and, and it's Disney and it's okay. Yeah. I think, was it any, you said it was based on a comic book, right? Because as superhero, so it was like, wasn't a superhero, Disney invented it existed prior to that. Right? Based on a comic book. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.

Okay. I'll just tell you. Okay. The Rocketeer, oh, do you remember the movie? I love the Rocketeer. I love it. I love this movie. Yes. I love this movie. So, uh, I dug into a little bit of the history of, uh, the, the marketing of it. The logo, which I love is just, just reeks of art deco cleanliness, uh, and the poster design.

And then, you know, I, I went back and really dug into the movie itself and, uh, found out some interesting bits about. So, yeah, Todd, we were really surprised at how poorly this movie did at the box office. Yeah. We both loved it. And you know, neither of us are really, um, cinema aficionados, but I do have to say, I loved hearing you use the word homage.

You know what, that's the word that allowed me to pass the s a t . All right, let's hear more about that

But as you said, like the movie had Timothy Dalton in it, had a couple other stars in it, so they actually redid the poster later to see if that would draw a little bit more, uh, attention to put the characters in there. That particular poster just falls apart, but anywho, that's part of it. And as I said in the opening, The marketing was so good and the film flopped so much.

A review in the New York Times  that actually the film didn't fulfill the promise of the marketing material. You know, the other thing I wonder is when you're talking about Terminator two, Versus the Rocketeer. You sort of have this idea of, if you're like a high school kid, say, do you want to see a movie about future-based technology?

That's awesome. And on the cutting edge, to your point, the liquid Terminator. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.  made from like Mercury or chrome or whatever. Or do you wanna see this throwback homage? To 50 years ago during an era that, as far as you were concerned, as like a, a high school kid, which I was at the time, couldn't have been like more uncool, right?

Yeah. That was when your grandparents were alive. Those were the good old days, right? . So, and there's even another little, yeah. So supposedly, um, there's even another wrinkle that might be one of the biggest wrinkles that led to people not many people see in the rocke. The original comic book, the Dave Stevens comic book, as I said, was kind of a, an homage to Betty Page and pen up girls.

Oh yeah. Well, when Disney decided that it was gonna be released under the Disney brand and not touchstone brand, there goes all that stuff. Right. So the thing that made the comic book popular was gone the. Whose name is Joe Johnston Fault, Disney Tooth and Nail to keep all of this stuff, this magic that was in the comic book.

And they said, Nope, nope, nope, nope. Again, love the movie. But you end up with this kind of sweet, uh, almost milk toast picture of a sweet time. Um, but it was not really the taste of the time and that I thought is what made it really cool and it stood. Okay, so I made it pretty clear. I love the Rocketeer, I loved everything about it.

It deserved to do better. Um, but as much as I love the Rocketeer Elliot, you really showed me up. You loved your movie even more, right? Mm-hmm. . Let's give it a listen.

I'm sure everyone knows what Ghostbusters is. I'm not talking about the compromised 1989 Ghostbusters two sequel. I'm not talking about the 2016 reboot. I'm not talking about the 2020 now. 2021 Paul Rud vehicle that will at some point, I am. You're talking about the OG Ghostbusters? Yes, the 1984. I was 11 years old, but managed to get people to take me to the movie theater three different times that summer to see it.

Ghostbusters. Wow. I. Loved Ghostbusters. Loved it. Yeah, loved it. I still love it today actually. , I love it so much. I uh, I bought the DVD twice. Forgetting I already owned it. , . You got so excited the second time . I did. So maybe if you're nice to me, I'll mail one to you. Ooh.  Todd, I loved that the movie logo was firmly implanted in the movie.

And it was also, of course, the company logo for Ghostbusters itself, an icon inside of an icon. Um, you know, and, and this reminds me of another childhood story that I think you really got a kick out of listening to. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, when you were talking about something your family was very passionate about, okay, yeah.

Let's hear about.

I wanna talk about the poster real quick and then I want to get into the, you know, the logo in a little bit about the movie itself, cuz this is one of the cool things where it's very meta in the sense that the logo appears several times in the movie, right? Mm-hmm. , like, like the Ghostbusters, it's the logo for the movie, but it's also the.

Logo for the business. , yeah. Marketing genius. But, but it was, it didn't feel forced, you know what I mean? Yeah. It was, it, it it had a place in the movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally worked. So it was a marketing vehicle, but it was also a prop, little bit of background on the movie. So I think probably the reason why the poster was so simple, it, like I said earlier, it was simply, Black background, red and white logo.

The logo is of course a circle with a slash through it and a cartoon ghost, kind of with both his hands and his head looking in one direction and kind of protruding out of it, right? Mm-hmm. , so he's scared. The slash is going from, if you think of a clock face, two o'clock to eight o'clock. And it's just brilliantly simple, and I remember this was in the days you didn't really buy video cassettes, start to rent them in the mid eighties.

I know this is gonna be hard for some younger listeners to understand, but if you wanted to buy a video cassette at that time, it was still considered really the property of the studio. I remember just to provide some context. My family loved and still loves the movie A Christmas story. Mm-hmm. , and we decided, mm-hmm.

after renting it a bunch of times from a local video store, we wanted to buy it , and the store was stumped. They didn't know exactly how they would do that. How they would sell a copy to us . So they called up the studio or the distributor or whatever, ordered a copy for us. And this is, keep in mind, this isn't like the early mid eighties.

We paid something. My family paid like over a hundred dollars for a VHS tape of a Christmas store. You have like Ralphie come to your house and been delivered something with the fragility land since, since we lived in Cleveland and it was filmed in Cleveland, he should. For that amount of money easily, or, or we should have at least gotten it with a free leg lamp or something.

So, yeah, I know buying a video cassette was, it's not really part of, uh, you know, our design, um, speak here that we're, we are into. Um, but I thought that was such an interesting story and how things have changed now, um, and speaking. I love the way that you told us about the evolution of what ultimately became the Ghostbusters movie, and that influenced how the poster was designed, right?

Yeah. They had no idea, of course, um,  if they could actually use, uh, the title. Um, turns out someone else owned it. Uh, so that was a little bit of a challenge, but they were able to find a work.

I think that they didn't really know what the final art or what these effects would look like. Later they kind of named the Green Ghost Slimer because there's the scene where, you know, he slimed me, that kind of thing in the hotel that was later for a cartoon and all this kind of stuff. The ghost didn't have names or anything like this, so there wasn't any sort of signature character or anything like this, and I think they were still trying to figure it out.

So it was sort of like, well, what can we put out there that will be noticeable and kind of cut through it and give people something to remember? So boom. Big, simple logo. That was just a very, very quick read and it works. So this episode, you know, Todd, if you remember this was sort of our supersize episode.

We couldn't actually fit all the research that we'd done into one episode. Had to hear a lot from us, didn't he? Yeah. This was, this was, you know, this was kind of our Big Mac episode. We had to put an extra piece of bun in. Oh, no, . Okay, good. . Yeah. Yeah. So I didn't know it was that kind of show, but Okay.

That's right. You know, everything is always better with some more buns. , I'm gonna write that down. Yeah, yeah. Needle point it and mail it to me for my birthday. I, I will, it'll, it'll be for next year's birthday, , but I, but, but please go ahead, . But, um, anyway, that middle bun in this case ended up being some good additional lore that was all about h.

Uh, yeah, no doubt. And you know, I think we were on a Hollywood kick at that time because our next episode, which we called adopted icons, um, I really got way into, uh, talking about the origin story for a particular icon used in a film company. Here's a little bit about that,

Elliot, what I was telling you before, This is a lighting brand from nor. Pretty popular light's been making 'em 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. Probably have seen it. It's a two minute short film. It revolves around a parent and child desk lamp, and the larger lamp is named oddly enough, Luxo Sr. And it looks on while this younger Luxo Jr. Kind of comes out and annoys the older one, plays exuberantly with this ball and bounces it around, chases it around until the ball accidentally deflates, deflating luxo, junior's exuberance at the same.

So this film, it was actually a story that was built from a bunch of different modeling tests by John Lasseter, and it was inspired by his Luxo desk lamp. So as he was kind of really getting into computer graphic animation, um, he was doing modeling tests, um, shadow tests and things like that. And for his subject, he used his desk glamp.

It makes a lot of sense though, right? Yeah, because it's, it was there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's there. But also if you think about it, it's a series of geometric shapes, right? Right. And so, He, uh, 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, but he was told, and this is such a great quote, that, um, you can tell a story even in 10 seconds. So a two minute short film, uh, 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. Boy, I'll say, you got into it. I mean, you were going all tmz, man. You had all the Hollywood gossip, didn't you?

Now you ready to spill some tea? Yeah, I was, uh, I got some tea. You, you've been dancing around this, you've been, uh, tempting us and, uh, it's time, man. Okay. Like, let's, let's let her rip. All right. So this graphics group that was spun out from uh, I L M was assembled from Leaders of New York Institute of Technology.

That would be Ed Capel and Alvie 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, uh, a company called Cadabra Scope, which was an early computer animation studio that George Lucas bought in a fire cell from a guy named Nolan Bushnell.

Mm. Now that name may start to conjure up some stuff because Nolan Bushnell was a major entre. Who gave us, among other businesses, Chuck E. Cheese and Atari. Yes. That make us a pong. Yes. There is an amazing, for those of you out there, um, obviously like podcasts, if you're listening to this one, there's, um, how I built this with Guy Roz, I think, which is, you know, and he interviews Nolan Bushnell.

So do you, do you know why, um, uh, sorry, I'm taking us on a quick tangent here. Do you know why he. Invented Chucky cheese. Well, yeah, so, um, so he could place video, um, games inside and uh, that's why he also. Uh, invented the small studio Cscope as well. Yeah, it was because people, , he said, people 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 into video games.

Like that was his rationale, which is Yeah, 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. George Lucas bought that little bit of, of his empire in a fire cell because at the time the Chuck E Cheese business was not doing very well.

So Nolan Bushnell was trying to sell off bits. So he sold off the cadabra scope bit, which became part of Industrial Light and magic, which became part of Pixar. Ah, now, okay. All right. T still spilling. Elliot, I mentioned fire cell. Back when the those members were still part of Industrial Light Magic, George Lucas had to have his own fire sale because he was having what cash flow difficulties stemming from his 1983 divorce.

With a reported settlement of 50 million. Well, and just to take another quick tangent, um, 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. Well, and you wouldn't think that someone of George Lucas's caliber. Be worried about 50 million because he had just made three of the biggest movies of all time, uh, in the Star Wars trilogy. But there was also a sudden revenue drop from Star Wars license, uh, the figures and the toys, which he owned out completely.

That dropped because the last movie had been made. Return of the Jedi, so made three huge movies in six years. Um, 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 fresh 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. To these to like Render man, which is what it was called then. Yes. It wasn't even known as pixart, right? Yes, yes. So, um, interestingly enough, still spilling the T here in this ironic twist, these two contractor kids.

Worked for. Remember our guy Nolan Bush now, the serial entrepreneur, these two contractor kids worked for this entrepreneur back in the mid seventies. They used Atari parts to build their own personal computer and they tried to convince Nolan to sell hardware. This was Atari, right? And he was like, oh hell no, I, Atari is about games and stuff like that.

We're not selling computers cuz he was a very wise businessman, . Um, so he said, he said no to these two contractors. So Steve Wazniak and Steve Jobs went on to start Apple with that. Um, which is crazy because you know that we could have been like sitting here on our Atari phones. Now, if that were the case.

Hi podcast listeners. I'm Carol Costello, a former CNN Anchor and national correspondent. This January I'm launching a podcast about one of the first cases I ever covered as a journalist. It's one that stuck with me all of these years, the one that buried itself under my skin and stayed put. It's a true crime series about an amazing woman named Phyllis Coddle, who defied torture and death and brought a fierce rage to the quest to find her.

Carol Costello Presents Blind Rage as a production of Evergreen podcast and signature title of the Killer Podcast Network. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Discover more great true crime and paranormal programming@killerpodcast.com. I think I've uncovered a new career. Elliot, I, I think I want to do celebrity gossip.

I think, uh, I, I'm really into it like celebrity Hollywood design. Yeah, why not? You know, I mean, what was so interesting about that episode is that it tied so many. People together and, and so many different businesses that, uh, certainly had an impact, uh, on the world. And speaking of impact on the world, I was a little surprised at the adopted icon that, uh, that you talked about and it's cameo appearances in some really historical events.

Have you ever heard of, there was, um, some group in the sixties. I can't can't remember their name. I think they were big for a while. They're from Great Britain. Great Britain, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Uh, they kind of had these matching haircuts. Um, oh, they, they were on Ed Sullivan. Uh, what. Beat Beatles, I think is how you pronounce it.

Beatles. Yes. Beatles. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. So what does the, what does the Blimp have to do with the Beatles? ? Nothing. I just wanted to bring the Beatles up. Yeah, okay. No, no, no, no. Now we know it. Yeah. So the blimp was in the movie help. Really? Okay. Yeah. The Blimp had a cameo and. Also beach blanket Bingo.

With Frankie, now you're talking. Yes. Now you talking. Yes. Great movie there. Okay. But not to be outdone by faux events. Right? Like trumped up media stuff here. Let's go with a couple actual milestone events. So of course we all remember the Loma Preta earthquake in 1989 in San Francisco. Right. That was happening during the World Series.

Yep. And, um, so when that happened, the B. 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. Mm-hmm. , you know, cuz communications knocked out.

This is actually really, really fascinating. So they used 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. Wow. I had no idea, but huh. Now this is the best thing of all, I think out of, out of all this stuff we've talked about with Pop Culture, Uhhuh, college Football Hall of Fame, right?

Obviously, the blimp covers all these sporting events. In January of 2019, the Goodyear Blimp was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Hell yes. Finally. And it's finally, it's only non-human member  of the college foot. So it wasn't the first down marker. It wasn't, it wasn't a football . Yeah. It wasn't, yeah, it wasn't a, you know, it wasn't a helmet.

Yeah. It wasn't anything like that. Yeah. The, 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 b. You and a Pryor Podcast used the phrase range of awesome when you were describing Cooper Black. The blimp to me is range of awesome just in terms of pop culture because chances are if it's going down, there's probably a blimp close by.

I, while we have your attention, if you wanna learn more about us and the podcast, there are a few ways to do it. Visit our website at two designers, walk into a bar. Com, all of that is spelled out. No numbers. Kind of a long url, so do yourself a favor and bookmark. Once you're there, you can find links to more information about the subjects in this episode, our episode archive, and information about both of us.

Wait. We do want people to visit, right? Well, oh, and look for us on social media. You can find those links on our website as well. And while we're at it, if you have a friend who you feel will dig on our rambling, tell him. What we are up to. And while we can't guarantee that they will remain your friend, we can guarantee that they will listen to at least 30 seconds of whatever episode you send them the link to.

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Are we done? We're done. We're done.

So Todd, yeah, we're talking about the Goodyear Blimp. We're talking about a big, like an oversize icon, right? Something. Seen at events. Yeah, yeah. Well, you were able to zero in. I would argue, on an equally noteworthy, equally popular, equally oversize and fun and ubiquitous icon that has been seen at events and dropping a subtle hint here, gas stations all over the place.

Hmm. Let's hear it.

So anyway about these orange balls, really unique for signage. I think you'd agree. It was first designed by a creative director from LA's Young and Rubic can called Ray Peterson and he was doing advertising for Union No in 76 and he was tasked to do, uh, sponsor. Uh, signage for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair Sky Ride, which is, you know, one of those things you get in, it hauls you over the fair and puts you out like a mile somewhere else later.

But anyway, at the time, they were just using the flat lollipop sign, just a round circle, said 76 and Ray Peterson. He thought those were boring and he thought it didn't really evolve much, particularly for something as high profile as a world's. And he also thought we should be able to see it from more than just two sides.

So this was one of those aha moments where he woke up in the middle of the night and had this idea of a giant orange ball and. So it was three dimensional and it rotated and you could see it from all sides. So here's the funny thing though. So it was first launched in, uh, 1962, as I said, at the Seattle World's Fair and the original one, cost.

Hold onto your hat, Elliot, $50,000. In 1962, what would that be today? Do you know? Did you run the numbers? No, I didn't. I don't know today. Um, you know, my guess is what, probably double right. A hundred thousand. Oh at least. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'll look that up cuz it would be good to know. But yeah, $50,000 for one, and as I said before, it was eight foot.

And once it was installed, the senior vice president who was in charge of that project said, we've gotta put one of these on every station we own. So I'm assuming they all didn't cost $50,000. I'm assuming they got a pretty good deal because at their peak in 1969, They reported having more than 18,000 of these orange lighted balls spinning around the corners, uh, of gas stations in about 37 American states.

Okay, so, uh, big orange balls, uh, reminds me, Elliot, did you get your doctor's diagnosis back? I did. Turns out it was all negative. Thank goodness for pen. Thank goodness. Okay, well let's get on with, uh, this particular podcast. Speaking of origin stories, like we were just hearing for 76, Kimmons Wilson's frustration with roadside motels and his idea for standardization gave us a really, really important roadside icon.

Todd, you are so right. Hey, let's jump in real quick and listen to a clip about it.

Kes Wilson, the founder of Holiday Inn, encountered when he was going on a vacation with his family from Memphis where he lived. To Washington, DC in the early fifties. Mm-hmm. , he grew very frustrated at the lack of quality in these roadside motels, dingy hotels, dusty motor courts. These sorts of things might have been satisfactory when people didn't know any better when we're all coming back from the war and setting out on the road.

But he wanted to make sure that as the, in. Matured and grew and meant more development and more accessibility across the country, that there would be more sophisticated amenities that would be able to match that with accommodations that were available. Things that we take for granted today. Air conditioning, restaurants, in room telephones.

Mm-hmm.  and perhaps most of all standard. . Mm-hmm. , and I would say standardization, to answer your question from a minute ago. Mm-hmm.  like what happened with the holiday sign? I would say this very thing that made it. Develop made it, you know, spring fourth into the world was the very thing that ultimately, uh, hastened its demise as well, right?

Hmm mm-hmm. So within a year of this frustrating road trip vacation, Wilson had commissioned blueprints from diagrams that he had drawn himself. The designer, a guy named Eddie Bluestein, wrote Holiday Inn across the bottom of the plans after seeing the Bing Crosby film . So that existed before the hotel did.

Oh. And he sort of wrote it on there as a joke, but the name actually stuck. So the first in which was built on Summer Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee was so successful that Wilson followed up with identical ones on three other roads leading into Memphis. So this was the beginning of the interstate system.

Wow. And Wilson was featured on the cover, just to give you an idea of the rapid growth of holiday. So this is in the early fifties. He had this handful of hotel properties and by the time summer of 1972 rolled around, this guy was on the cover of Time Magazine. Wow. He had franchised over 1400 inns across the United States and around the world.

And just to give you an idea of scale, at that time, he had 300,000 bed. And his nearest competitor in terms of scale, he was three times larger than just the nearest competitor. Wow. I mean, it's crazy. Yeah. And going back to the time illustration, certainly he was on the cover, but what else was on the cover with him?

The sign? Yes, of course. Yes. The great. Man, Elliot Kimmons Wilson sounds like a guy after our own heart. He was pretty passionate, uh, about what we know now as sort of modern branding, and I think, uh, you really sort of capped it off with, uh, how he sort of kept the sign with him, uh, even afterlife.

But this guy loved this sign so much. He felt when holiday was sold off, when he stepped away in the eighties and they started to dismantle. These great signs. Mm-hmm.  and replace them with more standard, cheaper backlit signs. He thought it was a huge, huge mistake because, and rightly so. He thought a lot of the brand equity was getting peeled away.

Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . This guy, when I say he loved this sign, I mean, in a literal sense, he took it. To the grave with him. His love of this sign. What do you mean? He has, he has a sign, like at his grave, he has a sign on his grave . Oh man. How awesome is that? He has etched in his tombstone a picture of the great sign.

The arrow in the great sign is pointing at his name and in the marquee area of the great sign it says, That's better than saying charcoal steak . That's amazing. That might be on the backside of the tombstone. I'm not sure. Okay, Todd, so , we are talking about branding, we're talking about love of branding, we're talking about something.

Uh, Like mortality shouldn't stand in the way of an affection, if you will, for wonderful branding and your love of branding. I'm trying to figure out what sign I would want on my tombstone now, Elliot. So I might, wouldn't it be Waffle House? Oh, well that would be the obvious choice, wouldn't it? Um, all right, well, you know, you could always get Waffle House on the front.

Yeah. And then on the back I'm thinking like, Preparation. H . I like the way you think. I like the way you think. Let's take that one. All right. Now speaking, but, but back to branding. . Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Enough about our, our giving. One another, uh, you know, offhand medical diagnoses, but in all seriousness. Okay.

Preparation H. Preparation H is a consumer product comes in a tube, comes in, a box is found on a shelf. What a better segue than that in terms of talking about. Product parodies. I cannot imagine. So of course we both grew up with wacky packages. We loved wacky packages. I mean, wacky packages to us are just as wonderful as Airplane and Mad Magazine and all of these other things that we hold so close to our hearts.

And uh, you know what was great was, uh, we talk about Art Spiegelman and how he was the brains behind wacky package. Yeah. Yeah. He was sort of the nexus on a lot of things for us, wasn't he? He, he's sort of tied together a lot of our favorite things.

Art Spiegelman is the perfect blend, if you can think of an artist. He is the perfect blend of high and lowbrow culture. Mm-hmm. , I mean, this guy has won a Pulitzer. No kidding. Yes. For Mouse, if you recall his graphic novel mouse, which is about the Holocaust. Right. But then he also did wacky packages.

That's right. . That's right. So a little bit of everything. Um, which is amazing. He sounds like someone we need to know better. . Yeah. We need to, we need to go hang out with him. Yeah. So of course when he was in school, Todd, guess who influenced him? Um, you, you are taking too long to answer this question. It's, go ahead.

Yeah. The same people who influenced us, the usual gang of idiots. Oh, okay. Who later became his coworkers at MAN Magazine. Oh, no kidding. Okay. Yes. Um, yeah, like the Stan Hart, Jack Davis guys. You got it. You got it. Mort Our Mort Drucker. Yep. Who is to blame for us starting this podcast, right? Yep. So Art Spiegelman was incredible, but of course he wasn't a one man band.

There were other people doing things as well. So another one of these key artists was a guy named Jay Lynch. And, uh, you know, you did a little bit of research  that had to do with what they used to figure out the pay scale for these guys, and I got a big kick out of that. Yeah, I, I don't think they were doing it all for the money.

Elliot, let's take a listen to that.

I saw this quote from Jay Lynch who was another sort of constant thread that went through all of this with Art Spiegelman and he was recalling how they used to work and he would usually submit about a dozen roughs at a time for a series, and they did something like 16 series throughout that their period of uh, eight, nine years.

Uh, what a ruff was, was an India ink and magic marker drawing. And it was just, he would look at products of the day, go to the supermarket and kind of just make up funny shit about 'em. They would pay him like, uh, small amount. He said in the sixties he got about eight bucks a rough. By the seventies it had gone up to 20 bucks and then by the eighties it was like 1 25 and so on.

I'm sure by the time he was doing garbage pill kids, he was doing a little bit better than that. But, um, what I think is funny, and this is a quote, he says, one rough pays about the same as a week's worth of groceries, always has and always will , which I think is hilarious. I think that's how William Gaines would pay the guys at Matt as well.

All right, so personally, When you were telling about Garbage Pill kids, which were a little past, uh, my time, so I knew of them, but I didn't know a lot about them. So it was like opening a whole new world. And I really, really loved hearing about the, the battle, the Hatfield and the McCoys, if you will, of Cabbage Patch kids and garbage PLL kids.

And then they took that battle global.

So the Cabbage Patch kids, as I mentioned, exploded from a cannon, went beyond our borders, and were sold internationally. So garbage pale kids, not to be outdone, were also popular internationally. Now I need to give you some of the translated names. For what Garbage Pale Kids were called in some other parts of the world.

Are you ready? Oh, this'll be good. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So in Japan, they were known as Mr. Creepy. That was the brand name. ? Yeah. These are all the brand names, not garbage PA kids. Yeah. Mr. Creepy in Australia, New Zealand, Spain and Israel. They were known as the Garbage gang. The garbage gang. The garbage gang. The garbage gang  in Latin America and Brazil.

They were the trash rings . Oh hey, I love their second album. The trash links. . Yeah. Well, in Italy they were called the snot Lings.  in France and Belgium. They were the filthy. And in Germany, and this is such a German name, they were the totally broken kids.

This is a totally broken kids, the children who are the broken ones, the children who are the broken ones. And I can see them shaking their heads Yes. As they say yes. Yeah. They, they were not buy probably they, they were, they were, uh, all in black and white though in Germany, . Yeah. So Todd, you know, sometimes global can be a good thing, sometimes not.

Sometimes you gotta stick with your knitting and, uh, yeah. I think unfortunately garbage pa kids from time to time got, uh, out over their skis a little too much.

Garbage pail. Kids at this point, they've taken on a life of their own. Right? Right. So naturally what do you do? You gotta monetize, you gotta strike while the iron's hot. Todd, I don't know about you, but that's, that's what good business people do. Well, it sounds like good business advice. It is. It is. So live action movie, you gotta do that.

1987 really. Total flop. Total flop. Oh, okay. No wonder I didn't hear that. . Yeah. Yeah. You were, you were, again, you were busy. You were in college. Yeah. Um, $1 million budget made one and a half million dollars total globally. So total flop. Okay. The same year they were going to release an animated TV show.

like a children's TV show, Uhhuh . But there were so many parental complaints that it was shelved and it was never aired until years and years later. And then of course, you know, the bloom was off the rose and it never went anywhere. Right, right. And then of course, I don't think any discussion of Garbage PA kids or Cabbage Patch kids would be complete without talking about the horror movie Child's play with the Possessed Good Guys brand.

Chucky . Right? So that's Of course. Yeah, of course. So that's far more, I think, along the lines of what Garbage Pill Kids was all about. And in fact, I think that's the better movie than the Garbage PA kids movie . Well, you might be, God, I would love to get my hands on a, on a copy of the Garbage Pill Kids movie and just see how bad it is.

Well, good news, I found the. All right, we will have a link to the trailer on our episode page. And Todd, if you still want a copy of the full Garbage Bail Kids movie. After you watch the trailer, Uhhuh , I will get it for you. . We will find it. So , I will also get you some psychiatric help because if you still want it, there are far bigger problems than your lack of taste because this movie looks like it is absolutely horrible.

All right. So, you know what, Elliot, uh, you challenged me, uh, that if I watched the garbage pill kids trailer and really wanted to see the movie, you would buy it for me. Yes. So I did watch the trailer and, you know, a as you said, I'm certain I'm gonna have nightmares from it. Um, but I found out, I didn't know Anthony Newly was the star of the movie

So, yeah. So I mean, he's like legit star. And then, um, Uh, was it Mackenzie Aston? What played the, the little boy? Um, you know who he is? That's Sean Aston's brother, right? That's Gomez. Adams son, . So there was some amazing talent in that movie somewhere it went wrong. Uh, you know, I think probably the amazing talent was craft service.

I think it was, whatever it was, it, that movie was a real dog. Yeah. Yes. Speaking of dogs, I think, uh, we're talking about icons, of course, pop culture, icons. I would say if we're talking about dogs, we can't not talk about our favorite masculine tableau in every man cave from coast to coast. The dogs playing poker.

Oh, yes. And that episode, which we call when Pitchman Go Pop, uh, where it was about ad icons that went on to be even bigger than their products. And, uh, we, uh, learned the name of the artists that did the dogs playing poker, as well as a whole series of dogs doing other things that that dudes do. And. This guy wins the name game of all time.

This guy that painted these dogs is a guy named Cassius Marcellas Coolidge, who wins. He totally wins the name game right there. That's the best name ever. I know. Cassius and, and he would even sign some of his paintings as just cash. You know, makes him even all the cooler. Um, but he was actually painting dogs that had been humanized and he was commissioned to do a series of 16 paintings, way back 1894 to 1910 for a Brown and Bigelow, as I said, to advertise cigars.

If you think about these paintings, so the, the dogs playing poker, those are probably the most famous ones. Mm-hmm.  and there's actually 11 of those. But they're doing other things too. They're doing other things that, that, you know, dogs just kicking it, enjoying life. Do like playing football or watching baseball or out on a road trip or something like that.

But what was cool? The dogs playing poker were by far the most popular, and it's because these paintings that Coolidge did, they set up these whole scenes, like there was so much shit going on in these paintings, and they told a story. And if you think about it, they were used for calendars, so they were up.

You know, a month at a time. So it gave people time to really sort of get into the, the illustration. All right, so Cassius Marcellas, Coolidge, what a great name. . But you know, I, I'm gonna revisit my earlier comment. I think you, you should get that engraved on your tombstone. Okay, cool. And I can also do that as a, uh, needle point and send that one to you as well.

That'd. You know, it's all about being efficient, isn't it, Elliot? Like, I want to plan all that stuff now while I can, but speaking of being efficient, I loved your story on the, uh, pitchman that we know as Ernest p Worl and how, uh, they made all of these different commercials so quickly.

So the way these guys made this work was card and Cherry would approach local Nashville area businesses. So think about car lots, uh, grocery stores, places like this, and they would say, Hey, do you want to do a quick low budget ad with this earnest character plugging your. Enough people took them up on it to the point that sometimes in a single day, they shot 25 spots for different damn businesses.

Wow. And these were all super low budget. Yeah. So they were all just shot with a handheld camcorder. You know, there was nothing at all sophisticated about this. You know, it's equivalent of just you or I going out with our iPhone today and just shooting one of us hamming it up for, right, right. You know, a local grocery chain or.

A lot of times these were shot through the vantage point of a kitchen window. So Ernest p Worl would always be walking by the open kitchen window with a kitchen table there, and he would come up and he would start talking to Verne. Now we, the audience, were Verne, so Verne was. Us. So Ernest was always talking to us.

He was asking us questions, he was pitching a product. He was telling us what we needed to do, and this was sort of a brilliant master stroke on the part of the structure of these advertising spots, because as a viewer, it immediately put us in the middle of the action. Right, right, right. So these spots took off and they took off to the point that Koch notice.

Ernest p Worl . And so he started advertising Sprite and I think TAB and some of these other products in the Coke portfolio. Yeah. Todd, I mean, I love how versatile both of these pitchmen were. No, but you're right. It was the versatility combined with their Yemen's work ethic. It really made them and kept them icons for all these years and.

You had some pretty cool insight as you wrapped up that episode. Let's hear that.

The question is, are there any earnest oil paintings available? I am not sure that there are. That might be some, but there may be a market for one, and maybe I should get busier. You should actually, you should buy, you should buy some velvet, I think, and then you can start your Ernest painting. That that's true.

That's true. Uh, man, so interesting conversation. Uh, That started with me just trying to seek out thinking that no one in their, in their right mind would ever care about a painting of dogs playing poker. And I could probably find one . No. And um, also about, uh, Jim Varney as Ernest P War, who, uh, started as a, a pitchman everywhere it sounds like.

Yes. And became well loved and well known, and it was a natural, easy. To movies because the character was already known and the character was already loved. Yes. So everyone, thanks for listening for season one. Don't forget to catch part one of our best of season one if you haven't already. And just remember season two is right around the corner.

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