(upbeat music) – Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I’m Link. – And I’m Rhett. This week at the round table of dim lighting, we are exploring the question, what happened to toys? – (laughs) We were just saying, wouldn’t that be funny if you just like, you just go up to somebody, a friend, acquaintance, family member. – Acquaintance. – And you’re just like, you know what, I got this nagging question, what happened to toys? Because listen, something happened, a lot happened y’all, and we’re gonna get into it. – Possibly. – I’m also looking forward to getting into our past lives as children when we played with toys, when toys were still toys, and we played, at least I did. I’m actually curious, ’cause I have a thought, I have some thoughts about you, and I think I have an idea about Rhett as a child that I remember that may not even be true, but toys– – Okay. – Toys have changed. – It probably isn’t true. – Toys have changed. – But I’m interested in what it is. – Do they even exist anymore, by my definition? I don’t know, is it a long-lost thing that we can only experience through nostalgia over the course of this podcast, I can’t wait. – A little reminiscing, a little conjecturing, as always conjecturing, pulling things directly out of our butts and putting them on the internet and hoping that it will change lives. – Yep, one pulled out of our butt at a time, a life has changed. – And I am going to begin holding the microphone like this. – Okay. – That’s my new thing. – All right. – Because I wannna be able to turn– – Loyal listener, I just want you to know that Rhett is now holding and hovering his microphone above the round table. – And I made you a little mini bicep curl. – Did you say this week is a round table of dim light, you didn’t even say that. – You know what? I did say it, and I’ve noticed something, and it’s been happening more and more often, you may need to go to the doctor. – I know what you’re talking about. – Lately, I’ve been saying something, and then in the middle of it. – It’s so cliche. – You say– – Did you just say that. – Did you just say that? And I definitely did say it. – Maybe it is a problem. – I mean it’s happening weekly now. – I feel like I’m crumbling, definitely emotionally after what happened last night. – Oh, okay, yeah. – I’m gonna link the two, because I think that– – I’ve never heard you use your name as a verb. – I’m still kind of, I’m really mad. – You should that more often. – And I’m glad you were there to– – I’m Rhett-y for you to tell me. – (laughs) Oh, that’s so stupid. – Yeah, well, I thought that’s what we’re doing now. – Okay. (both laugh) I’m still not over what happened, and I’m sorry if you don’t wanna hear us talk about magic and our interactions with it again, but that’s not really what this is about. Yes, what happened last night, did happen at a visit to the Magic Castle with our friends. – Which has become just a regular haunt of ours now. (Link laughs) My God, so many people– – But I– – Wanna go to the Magic Castle. – I honestly really, and I know it’s also funny, but I feel like I’m trying, is it better if I tell the story or if you tell the story from your perspective, because… – Ah, it’s probably better if I tell it. – Okay, I agree with that. So tell it from your perspective, I’ll just try not to interject too much, just to clarify what was going on inside of my mind at the time. – And again, not to shatter the illusion that this is recorded on the day that you’re hearing it. For us, we’re recording this right around Halloween, which means that we went to– – But it’s not dated, because no one’s heard it until right now– – Right , I’m not worried about it. – And that’s all that matters, it’s fresh. – I’m just letting you know. – It’s fresh and only for you. – So at the Magic Castle around Halloween, they have a special thing that they do, basically, they call it a murder mystery, and you can wear, you know, you can dress up, you can wear costumes. And another thing that happens is that the performers, the magicians are all in costume as well, and in character, they’re not just normal magicians. – Which is cool. – I will say that we completely– – Or is it? – Abandoned, never even really started the murder mystery thing. They gave us like a list of clues, and you had to go read something, and I was like, ah, I don’t wanna think this much at the Magic Castle, so we abandon that. – Apparently I didn’t either. – But we went to the Close Up Magic Gallery, which is our favorite place. That’s where– – On Earth. – Our friend, almost got into a fist fight with Jason Sudeikis. It holds a special place in our hearts. And the guy gets up there, and he is pretending to be Sherlock Holmes, putting on a British accent, dressed as Holmes himself, and he begins to go through his act, and he’s putting it all in terms of like solving clues, and you know, intuition that Sherlock Holmes would have. – I would say he was good. – I would say he was good, yes. – I would say he was very good. – Yeah I mean he’s a professional magician as far as I could tell. – But even the comedic banter, I thought was a nice aspect of it. – And then of course, for at least half of his act, he requires volunteers from the audience. Now Link is sitting on the first row, in a very small, this place holds like 20 people, so it’s very small. – And if you listen to the other magic podcast, you know that last time I was standing in the back end I still got made a fool out of. – Yeah. – I became the butt of the joke, and I was happy, I was happy to be that. – So he gets to this one trick, and he says “For this I need a volunteer.” And he, you can see there’s five people sitting on the front row, Link is one of those, and he kind of looks at the five people, and he avoids the people directly in front of him, because he had just used those two people, two of our friends, for the previous trick. So he’s got the three people he’s choosing from. And he looks at our friend Jenny, and she, he looks at her, she’s going– – She’s shaking her head, and kinda looking down. – Very emphatically saying, do not pick me. – It’s like when a horse makes that (brays) sound. – But I will say– – She did that motion. – Silently. – But she didn’t make a horse sound. – I will say that he looked at you first. – Yeah. – Now you had also just done something in the previous trick where somebody had to say when they were gonna stop. – They said say stop when you’re compelled to stop, and she never said stop, so I said stop and I thought that was a funny joke to compel her to stop. – Link grabbed the arm of the volunteer. – Who was a friend of ours. – And said, “Stop!” – I thought it was funny. – And then you could kind of see that the guy, when he began to figure out who he was gonna choose for the next trick, he looked at you, and he was like, not the guy that just interjected himself into this previous trick. He goes over to Jenny, she shakes her head, and then he’s kind of at a loss, is he gonna go beyond you, out to where Christy was sitting, and then he just lands back on you very reluctantly. And as he was picking you, I was thinking inside, no, no, no God, don’t pick, don’t pick him, don’t pick him, don’t pick him, if this trick– – I wasn’t wanting to be picked, by the way. – If this trick– – I wasn’t asking for it. – Requires a person to do things that a normal human being would do in response to a magician, you’ve made a mistake. (Link laughs) That’s what I was thinking. You know, again the 95 out of a 100 times that you pick somebody, they’re gonna do the thing that the magician wants, and I know that you’re in the elite 5%, I’ll call it, of people who are not going to behave normally, for a number of reasons. So the trick was– – I don’t know the reasons. – The trick was he put a cup of colored markers in front of Link. – Let’s call ’em Sharpies, not a sponsor. – And then gave Link a pad of paper that had three shapes on it, circle, a square, and a rectangle. And he said “Sir, what I want you to do is I want you “to take one of the markers out of the cup, “any color you want and choose to color “any of the shapes that you want.” – No, no he didn’t say that, he said, “I’m gonna turn around and choose a marker.” And then he said, “Color the triangle–” – Oh, he told you which one to pick. – “With your marker.” He was like pick– – But he didn’t say the color. – Color the triangle any color you want, and then he’s also facing away from us, and he’s coloring. Now, right at the very beginning, you picked up a marker, and then put it back down and got another marker, and at that point– – Is that a crime? – At that point I figured, that probably screwed this guy up. (laughs) Right, because it’s probably based, I don’t know how the trick works, but it has something to do with him knowing what you’ve chosen and if you don’t, if you choose two of them, his whole trick is screwed, right. – All I knew was that everybody was watching me pick a marker, so I’m like, oh, I’m like, I’m like fluttering my hand over the marker and then I’m like– – Being a little extra. – I agree, and then– (both laugh) And then I’m like, oh, am I gonna choose this one, no. And then I let go of it and I chose another one. And then he said color the triangle, and I did it. And then two more times did the same thing. And I’m just thinking, I’m just choosing markers, man. – Now I will say– – I’m trying to be fun, I’m trying to have silly, trying to have fun and be silly. – Have silly if you want. – But I wasn’t trying to do, I had no ill intent. – You were not, you didn’t think– – Honestly. – That the trick hinged on you, just grabbing a marker and holding it up, ’cause you were supposed to hold it up. – How could it? – And I’ll say because he continued on with the trick, I was like, oh, okay, maybe he didn’t screw it up. – Yeah, I did this three times, guys. I picked three different markers, and colored the three different shapes, as he continued to color shapes. – After all three shapes were colored, and the magician had colored his shapes, as he turned around and faced us, I saw a look in his face of utter disappointment. He knew that his trick had failed. – Busted. – And he knew that it was your fault. – The funny thing is I didn’t know. – By the way all the shapes were colored different colors. – Than mine. – And I was still hoping that it was part of the trick. – And then he just put it down on the floor– – He put it down on the floor and he said, “Usually that’s very impressive.” – Yeah, and I was like, but he said a few more things, and he put it on the floor, and then he continues with his act. – Yeah. – So then at the very end, he did like two more things, they were great. I’m laughing, just having a silly time ballin’, and then– – Ballin’. – (sighs) Then I realized, he’s done. He’s like said his last thing, it’s over. He’s like telling everybody goodbye, you can stand up, here’s the exit. And then I say, hold on a second, I know that I colored that exactly how you told me to. So I, I know I didn’t do something wrong, so why don’t you show me the picture that you really drew. And then he said, “That was it.” And at that moment, after everyone else had already long realized this, I realized I blew his trick. It took me that long to realize it. – That’s when you realized it? – That’s when I realized it, because I thought he’s doing the long play, at the very end, he’s gonna be like, and you know what? I do have the one that is exactly like his. I had that much faith in the guy. And I also, because I had no ill intent, I really thought I hadn’t screwed up his trick. And then as we’re leaving I’m like, it’s really dawning on me, and I start turning to everybody in the group, and I’m like, I messed up the guy’s trick. – [Rhett] Yeah. – I messed up his trick, and then as I’m doing that, some person not in our group, storms up to me. – Mm-hmm, I was talking to you at the time. – Another patron, a woman, she was in some sort of a costume, but I couldn’t tell you what it was. Go-go dancer, maybe? – I don’t think so. – She put her finger in my face, and what does she say? – She said, “By the way, sir, not cool.” – “Not cool,” she said it again. – And then we talked– – Then she stormed off. – And that was to our friend. – I was like, as she was walking off, I was like, I, I didn’t mean to. – Right, but just to put things into perspective, this probably makes sense, but there is a, there is an understanding in the magician’s community, I don’t know what the technical term is for it, but people who know how a trick works, know enough about magic to know how a trick works, and when picked to be a volunteer purposely foil the trick. – Sabotage, yeah. – For some own personal gain or just to be a troll, and so lots of people thought that you were a troll. And that woman, who is a magician’s aficionado obviously, that’s what she was dressed as. – Oh okay, yeah. – Kind of looked like a fairy, but– – And in retrospect, I understand why she did it. – Because if you had done it intentionally, it was a complete douche thing to do. – And especially at the end when I’m like, hold on, hold on, show the picture, because I know I drew it how it you told me to. – Rubbing it in. – And I thought I was giving him, I literally, as stupid as it sounds, I thought I was giving him an opportunity. ‘Cause I thought he was about to like blow our minds one last time. – And you thought it required you to ask? You thought part of the act– – I was nuts. – Oh, I have to wait for him ask me to finish the trick – Listen, I’m like a child, when I go into the Magic Castle, I’m like a child. – That’s not untrue. – With childlike wonder, I experience everything. Oh, I’m picking markers, which one am I gonna pick? Maybe this one, nope, this one, I’m having so much fun. – And that’s why I would never choose you if I was doing a trick. – But let me tell you– – But he didn’t know, and he honestly, he tried not to choose you. – I felt so bad after this, that I was like the person who invited us, like the member, I was like, I went up to her, I was like– – Her reputation is on the line. – I was like, I wanna let you know that I didn’t do it intentionally, I am so sorry. And you know, and then a few minutes later, I’m like, you know what, I’d like to talk to the guy, if there’s any way I could talk to him, and apologize– – That’ll make it better. – I ended up, she came and got me a little bit later, and went out there and he was, Sherlock Holmes was standing out there. And I was like– – Sad, disappointed. – Yeah. He was apologetic, he was like, you know what, the first thing he said was, “I should have been more clear.” And I’m like, hold on, no, no. And then he starts telling me, he’s like, when you picked up the marker, and I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I don’t know how to do your trick, I don’t want to know, I just want you to know, I want to look into your eyes, and I want to say I did not do that on purpose. I’m just an idiot and I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. – That would be a good T-shirt I did not do that on purpose, I’m just an idiot. – I’m just an idiot. I earned it, man. I felt horrible, I put my forehead on his shoulder, that’s how bad I felt. – You did that on purpose. – I’ve never done that to a stranger. I was like, that was a little bit later, I was like, I thought I was gonna start crying on the guy’s shoulder. – Well, that would’ve been excessive. – He probably thought I was a total idiot. – Yeah. – I couldn’t go to sleep, I was thinking about it. Here’s what it was like– – Well, you have a reputation. And our whole group has a reputation now. – I’m too impulsive. – ‘Cause we were all dressed as the same thing. – I just, I mean, I’ve experienced a lot of success from just going with it and just being impulsive, but I think maybe for the first time this was a, whoa buddy, look what you’ve done now. You’ve totally, I could have shaken the foundations of my magician’s career, unintentionally. – You did, you did. – Well, I– – But it was a small audience. – I think he could– – You know what? – I think it, maybe it’s good for him. – I think he learned a lesson. First of all, go with the instinct to not pick the person that you think is gonna foil the trick, and go to the second row. Go beyond the first row, go to the second row. – Or when that happens, you gotta have a contingency plan. – Yeah. – You can’t be dead in the water. – As soon as you screwed up the trick, my advice would’ve been as soon as you screwed up the trick, he should’ve backed out and said something like– – Something funny. – I’m getting some bad juju from you, I’m gonna use this other person. And then we would have been able to see the trick go, but you know what? – I, but, I– – Nobody intended, you didn’t have bad intentions. – You haven’t lived life until you know what it feels like to foil a magician’s trick unintentionally. It’s like being at a comedy club, and a stand-up comedian’s up there, and you find yourself trying to like stand up, I’m gonna give you a compliment. And then you end up like heckling him, and decimating him. How is that even possible? – I don’t think– – That’s what I feel like I did. – But I don’t think I need that in my life. – I feel like I was– – You’re telling me that I haven’t lived until I’ve– – Hey comedian, I think you’re great, and I wanna do everything I can to support you. Ironically, I’m murdering you right now. That’s what I felt like I did. – Well, don’t be so hard on yourself, just don’t do it again. – I do feel like I was making it about me because I was choosing the marker. And that was just going on instinct, and I don’t know if I should back off of that ’cause I’ve built a whole career on it. – Well, I think that– – But in that setting– – I think the application of it is in the moment where you’re supposed to be just behaving like a normal person… – I can’t do it. – Bringing the attention onto yourself might be less than desirable for the person who the attention is on. – I wasn’t, I wasn’t even trying to bring the attention to myself. – I’m not even saying– – Once I found that I had the attention, I was just gonna choose a marker. – I’m not saying that you were thinking about it, I’m saying that in order to not do that, you would have to be intentional to be like, okay, I’ve been chosen as a mark in this thing and now I’m gonna behave as a normal human should. – Did you notice what I did for the two other acts after that, whenever they were choosing people? – You looked down. – I bowed my head. – Well, that was– – I bowed my head. – That’s a good start. – In prayer that I would not be chosen again. – Okay– – Then I left early. – But we gotta talk about– – Couldn’t stay. – We gotta talk about toys. We could talk about the Magic Castle over and over and over again– – We probably will. – Ad nauseum, but we’re gonna talk about toys. But before that, we are gonna let you know that you can outfit yourself… – Yes. With the Forest and Farm collection starting with your head. – Look at that, these are the latest in hat technology, you just stick it– – Right on the front of your head– – And you hold it like this. – This is of course a miniature horse, which is one of my loves. – And this is a piece of wood, which is one of my loves. – We also have shirts and socks that go along with this, so go to mythical.store to pick those up. ‘Course you can’t get Rhett’s shirt. – Here’s the deal, the reason I decided to wear this shirt is not only because I love the color palette, but because I want to show you tangibly– – That’s a ugly shirt. – What it means when we say for a limited time, okay. In fact, almost everything we’re doing now is for a limited time. We put it in the store, if you like it, you’ve got a shot at it, because when it sells out, we’re moving on, as is the case with this incredible shirt that I’m wearing right now. I’m not even gonna say what it is because then I’d have to say something else, but it’s really awesome. It’s really cool, I choose to roll the sleeves up– – You can’t trigger your own saying of that– (cell phone rings) Whose freakin’ phone is that? – Oh, that’s my computer. – What… – My wife is wanting to FaceTime with me, and she’s in Malaysia, I feel like I should take this. – Alright, do it. Oh gosh, she’s in bed? Dude, you can’t– – Hey, I’m currently podcasting, but I– – I really wanted to answer this. – And tell her that I’m here, like keep your covers up. – It’s in, it’s early morning in Asia. – Okay, should I give her my mic? Bring it over here so we can mic it. – Ah, well I don’t know if I should have this conversation, I think we should have this conversation later. – I love you, too, stay right there. (laughs) – She’s– – Okay, I’ll call you when I’m done with this. – You know what, let’s just, let’s not do this. You know, you’ve got a life. This is just our podcast. – Okay, that was interesting. – You muted it, that’s good. – I did, okay. – That was a risk, man. – Well– – That’s a relief. This is still the ad, by the way, – Oh. – See, that’s what you get with the video version. – Okay, yeah– – We’re actually gonna splice in footage of that video call. – Okay. – No we’re not, that’s impossible. – Let’s talk about toys. – The other night, I was tucking Lando into bed and he was, Lincoln wasn’t going to bed, ’cause I think it was a weekend and he was staying up watching a movie or something a little later, but Lando still needed to go to bed, but he doesn’t like to go to sleep if Lincoln’s not in the next room, okay. So I was like, you know what, I will stay in your room as long as you want and hang out with you while you go to sleep. We installed this hammock swing that’s like a seat beside his bed, he really wanted one of those, and I just and saw it and was like, I’m gonna sit in this hammock swing– – Comes out of the ceiling? – It’s attached to the ceiling, yeah, it’s a hangy-down. – In a joist? – In a joist, yeah, crossbeam. Lando has an exposed beam in his ceiling, if you must know. This is what you care about, how sturdily the– – Well, I mean– – The story’s not going to a failed swing, it has nothing to do with that. – Okay, well I don’t want your life to go to a failed swing, that’s why I’m just checking in and making sure– – Oh, thank you. – Yeah. – I was like I’m gonna sit in your swing, you’re gonna lay in the bed, and we’re just gonna talk, you know. (jumbles words) (laughs) – You know, talk (repeats jumbled phrase). (laughing) Like we do, when we speak in the made-up language, Mabita Mabita. – I was trying to say, I’m going nuts, man. – Yeah, yeah. – I was gonna say, imagine that. (laughing) Imagine that, we’re just gonna sit here and have a conversation as family members. – Who does that? Who just talks to each other? – Right, I thought it would be refreshing and cool and I didn’t have anywhere to be. So I sit in the swing and he’s laying there and we’re talking and I’m looking around and I said, Lando, I’m realizing something. There is something that I had a lot more of when I was your age than you have, and of course you know what this is, because you already know what this podcast is about, because we’ve already teased it, but he didn’t know, so I’m like, can you guess? And he’s like, looking around, he’s like, “Hammock swings?” I’m like, no son, I actually didn’t have a hammock swing. – Good guess, though. – Your amazing father mounted this for you because you asked for it, but I didn’t have one when I was a kid. And he was like, “Chairs?” He was like looking around and seeing stuff, which is actually, he should have been doing the opposite, looking around for what he didn’t see that I had. – Right. – And I was like, ultimately, after playing this game for 45 minutes. – Mm-hmm. – Not that long. I said, toys. He eventually guessed Legos, ’cause he has a Legos in his room. I was like, not Legos but broader than that, just toys in general. Lando, when I was eight years old, I had a bunch of toys in my room, that was my thing, but you don’t have any, man. You live in a totally different eight-year-old world than the world that I lived in. Your room looks totally different, it’s like you’re a different, it’s like you’re on a different planet, where toys don’t exist, except for Legos and a few odd Nerf bullets. – Planet Mabita Mabita. – Mabita-mabita-mabita. (laughing) – Yeah, and you told me this, and I was like yeah, that’s definitely the case. Now, they have, they do have toys but they don’t have the number of different toys. – Right, I mean– – They may have a lot of a couple of things, ’cause I think that’s the case with my kids. – Now, yeah, ’cause I mean, all my kids have Legos, Lando has that, he also has like the the bigger type of Legos called Bionicles, that’s basically a version of Lego– – That create men. – He has the Bionicle Legos that are Star Wars, you know. – Yeah. – He has some Pop! figures because Lily and Lincoln really got into those, like over the past few years, so he started getting in to that. – Did he ever, did he go through the Duplo stage? – Oh yeah, ‘course much earlier, you’re talking about like, three years old. – Yeah. – But it’s because of screens, and of course I started taking him through the toys that I played with and I’d like for us to do that with each other, but it’s because of screens, man. They’ve got games and shows at their beck and call at all points. And I was like, that’s your problem, Lando. Of course now he’s eyes are rolling, he’s like, oh, you’re attacking my screens, that’s what you guys, you and Mom are always talking about the screens, but I’m like, when we watched shows, the only time kid shows came was like Saturday morning and then after school for like a two-hour window. – It was not on-demand. – And then we were just left watching adult shows, you know like, I would watch reruns of Matlock, or like game shows, stuff that was made for adults that like kids could tolerate, you know? – Right. – On Thursday night, as probably a eight-year-old I guess, I’d watch Dukes of Hazzard, but then of course I’d have to watch Dallas right after it at my grandma’s house. – I had to go to bed after Dukes of Hazzard. – I had to watch a little Dallas. – I specifically remember the NBC dun-dun-dun at the end of the show and I had to go to bed. – But because the screens are so pervasive and any and everything you want, oh it’s like, this show called Fuller House, Lando starts watching that, and then he just binge watches all of it. – Well and they also, it’s the access they have to the number of shows, the number of shows that are, you know, kind of catered towards them. The fact that they can watch it at any time and the fact that there’s more screens has created this situation where they’re all watching things incredibly personalized, so in any given time, everybody in your family is watching something different, right– – On their own screen, with their headphones on and in their own hammock. – And I got, and I’m sure, because it’s so much more, it’s a passive experience, not quite as much with games, but you’re gonna gravitate towards that because the, it’s limitless. – It’s so easy and it’s so enthralling. – Because I think because, as we talk about the toys that we played with, my theory is that we’re going to realize why, given– – Can’t compete. – You just give somebody the option between something they have to apply a lot of imagination to, and then something that all the work’s been done, just the natural human response is to go towards that thing that’s an easier thing, which ultimately could be a bad thing, as well. – I started to explain to Lando, I was like Lando, when I was your age, I was in to these action figures called He-Man, it was actually called Masters of the Universe and then the main guy was called He-Man. And he was a muscle-bound, and I’m talking extremely muscle-bound, like if this was a real person, it would be like a body builder who was six-foot-one, but weighed 800 pounds, like seriously. – Yeah, had very large pecs. – He had very large everything except for clothes, which he wore fur underwear, and then he carried an axe and a sword and he had like fur, he wore Uggs, and he walked around in Eternia and fought a purple guy who had just as much muscle as he did, matter of fact, he had exactly the same amount of muscles– – Same mold. – It was the same mold, but his head was a purple hood with a yellow skull in it. – Skeletor, man. – Skeletor. – And also– – And it started, he was like, what? This is crazy. – And he rode a cat, a tiger, that, well first of all– – A green cat with orange stripes called Battle Cat. – He was a lot like Superman in that he had a normal, non-He-Man persona that was Adam. – Right. – Which is a great name for your non-super persona. – He wore pink, and he liked to bake. – And what was– – Seriously. – What was the, what was the cat’s name? – Cringer. – Cringer, and then Cringer became– – Battle cat. – Battle Cat. – A tiger, a green tiger that had a saddle. – And all he did was put a helmet on, right? And that’s when he became– – Yeah, I don’t know what would make him, I can’t read that, what’s it say? – Prince Adam. – Prince Adam, yeah, he was a prince. – Well, so okay, so you had that, I had the whole set, I had the castle– – Oh you did? – Yeah, I had Skeletor’s castle, and ’cause he had, there was another little guy, like a short ghost, there was like a short ghost guy. – Orko. – Yeah. – Yeah. – I don’t remember whose side he was on, he was like an Oracle, like it was kind of on both people’s side, I don’t know– – He was kind of like the Jar Jar Binks of Eternia. – And it like, he was just, you looked inside his face and it was just eyeballs and it was dark. – Yeah. – Anyway, I had that whole set and spent quite a bit of time playing with it, and you had the castle as well? – Oh yeah, I had a Castle Grayskull, I had it at home, I also had one at Nana and Papa’s house. – Oh, you had a backup. – Well, I just, you know, it’s kind of like when you get old, you have reading glasses everywhere? Everywhere I went, I had to have another Castle Grayskull, which it wasn’t, it wasn’t Skeletor’s castle. And you know, this is something I only learned from watching the Netflix documentary, which I’ll go ahead and plug it, I want to make sure I get it right, The Toys That Made Us. If you’re 40 years old, if you’re 35 years old, now, then you’re gonna love watching that and hearing all the backstory about it, so I highly recommend it and that’s why it’s so fresh in my mind, ’cause I’ve been watching this, some of the times with the kids and they get a kick out of it. Castle Grayskull was, whoever had both sides of the sword that Skeletor had one half of the sword, one side of the sword and He-Man had the other side, and whoever could get both sides and put ’em together could then unlock Castle Grayskull and go inside and have the power of, by the power of Grayskull– – Mm. – You could become amazing. – So who lived in Castle Grayskull? – Well here’s the thing, I actually didn’t watch the cartoons or read the comics that came with the He-Men, as I called ’em. – You didn’t watch the cartoons? – I didn’t even watch, I just played with ’em, I didn’t even know the stories, I didn’t know what I just told you about combining the swords, I just like collecting these super weird characters, like Beast Man or Mekaneck, a guy whose neck went up, or like– – And this all from Masters of the Universe? – Yeah, did you have ’em all, like– – Man-E-Faces, I had Man-E-Faces– – You would twist his head and he would have different faces. – Okay, so, but describe to me, well, and I’ll just quickly say, because I wanna come back to how you played with those but like, as I was kind of thinking back, the list I made was those action figure sets that were based on properties that existed, TV shows, movies. He-Man is the one that was the first in my mind, because it was big, but of course I had GI Joe, not to the degree you did. I had the whole ThunderCats set, which was actually my brother’s that was handed down to me. – Mm-hmm. – So all the ThunderCats and whatever came with them. I had a absolute crap-ton of Smurfs. – What? ‘Cause the thing, when I would go to your house, I think we were older when I started going to your house, I think that’s what it was, because my theory was you didn’t play with many toys, ’cause what I remember, the first time I went to your house was posters of basketball players, Michael Jordan, Spud Webb, dunking in your bedroom, I don’t remember any toys anywhere. – Well, by the time– – But that must’ve been later. – I mean I definitely, I’m fairly confident that I stopped playing with them on a regular basis before you did, I mean I– – Yeah. – None of this made it to middle school, like not a chance. Sixth grade, definitely didn’t make it to sixth grade. For me, this is like, first grade through fourth grade, maybe into fifth grade, also– – Well by the time you turn eight typically, you’re getting out of like, action figure play type thing– – But– – Maybe nine years old– – The other thing that I think is a little different, and this is evidenced by the way that you treated your WWF action figure set, is that when I had somebody over I was like, that’s not time to play with toys. Like I was like, I’ve got somebody over, we’re going to go outside. – Yeah. – We’re gonna go outside, we’re gonna get into something. These toys are for when it’s raining, and I have to be in my room. – Last resort. – The toys were not something I, I was super excited about them initially, I would set them up, but then within seven days, I was missing pieces of it, it was kind of weird and kind of off and I never like tried to like, did you create like stories with them, because I would like play with them a little bit and then I would combine a bunch of ’em and then I would kind of lose interest and move on to something else. – Like broom them into a box that you wouldn’t open. – Yeah. – Well yeah, knowing I mean, knowing the you now as well as I do and applying that backwards, I would say you probably lost interest, whereas I would dig deep. I remember for, GI Joe was the one, and I was telling Lando this too, I was like, it’s army men, but they’re like fully articulated and posable. And that’s when I realized, I told him, I was like, you know, I didn’t so much as play with my GI Joe men as, A collect them, and then I read a lot about like, they also, they had like dossiers and like their, on the back of the packaging it would like describe all of their their detailing, but I would, A I would collect them, and B I would just, I’d set up, I would pose them, you know? That they had, they had a hole in their boot and then they had pegs on all their vehicles. And so you could stand them up and like put them in dynamic poses, and as I was telling Lando this, I realized, you know what, I didn’t play with my toys, I created still life. Like that’s what I did, I would, I remember I got the Mobile Command Center, like the biggest thing that GI Joe had made, it opened up like a three-tier tackle box and it was as huge as this table, at least in my memory. And I would take all of my GI Joe guys and I would position them all over it and pose them and then, once I got it exactly how I wanted it, I’d leave it, and when I came back to it, I would just look at it. (Rhett chuckles) As if I were walking through a museum and someone had created a still life. – Yeah. – That’s what I did. – If I ever went to the trouble of setting it up, and again, I would put, it wasn’t like, Castle Grayskull just had He-Man, it was like, Castle Grayskull could have Smurfs, in my world. – I think it’s hilarious that you were big into Smurfs, like, I don’t even know what you mean, like– – They were little– – Figurines? – Non-articulating– – I know what Smurfs are. – No no, I’m specifically describing them. They were able this tall, they were rubber. – They were three inches tall, four inches tall? – They were rubber and they were non-articulating, they were all stuck in a pose, kind of like the California Raisins. – Oh, I collected all those, from Hardees. – But Smurfs had way more than the California Raisins. – Did you collect all of them? – Ah, I don’t remember, but again, for me, it wasn’t about collecting, it wasn’t like, ah, I’ve gotta get the Papa Smurf ’cause I don’t have the full set. It was about putting them into a situation and again, this is usually on a rainy day, getting it set up, and then just destroying all of it. You know what I’m saying, it was just like, okay, who’s the, Lionor– – Lion-O, yeah. – Lion-O, Lionor. Lion-O’s gonna come through and ThunderCat on the Smurfs, whatever that involves, you know what I’m saying? (laughing) And ThunderCat could take– – ThunderCat’s a verb now. – Take out 12 Smurfs at a time. – Oh gosh. – Yeah, Lion-O has no problem with Smurfs. – Right. – And it was just– – They’re both good though, right? – A hodgepodge– – You didn’t even stick to like good versus evil, you were like good decimates good. – No, in my world Skeletor and He-Man could be buddies, they could team up, they could both ride Cringer at the same time, that was fun, Cringer didn’t complain, Battle Cat I mean. – Okay yeah, get it straight. – So, my room was way too messy to create any sort of like lasting scene or like set it up and of course, my kids are exactly the same way, like there’s not, we’ll get into what they have and what they have had, but it’s not set up in a way, it’s set up in a way to interact with violently and then destroy at some point and it had to be replaced. – Yeah, to me it was just about the scene, the perfect scene that you wouldn’t touch, and if people came over, like my younger cousins, like Kurt, one of his first memories is coming over and getting very upset that I wouldn’t let him touch anything in my room. – (laughs) Yeah, it’s not playing. – And like his mom, my aunt, Aunt Teazy was like, she thought I was, I mean she knew I was strange, but at that point she was like, that boy is strange. And I also think– – True. – Because I’m an only child and I was like, I was in my room and you know, it was my haven, and I had to build these worlds that like, then I would just admire and like perfect, you know, I think that’s the operative word, right. I’ve got to get, I’ve got to perfect the collection and then I could perfect the scene and don’t touch it, and this is my, this is where I’m God, I’m in control, and it felt really good to like, have it all together. And I also didn’t have like you, an older brother that was like well, I do this and if you want to be cool, and aspire to be older, then you might want to do that, so at first maybe that’s a little ThunderCat action when he’s not looking, you’re gonna steal it and decimate your Smurfs. But then later it’s like, hey man, I’m kind of done with toys, I’m more of like a cool sports dude, so why don’t you come outside or we’re gonna play a game where we hide in the woods in the dark, be like uh-uh, count me out. – Yeah, I mean– – Things that Cole would do with you, right? – We were definitely outside. If you could be outside, we were outside. – And it wasn’t that I didn’t go outside, but me going outside was an extension of becoming GI Joe. I don’t know if you remember this, but I had this, I invented this elite group of kids in Harnett County called the Army Investigators, and like I had a Trapper Keeper that had like a dossier in it and like missions and I drew maps of my neighborhood. And I would go out, me and well, I was the only member. But then you would come over and I would take you on these missions and I would have like Jimmy, my stepdad at the time, his gift to me would always be stuff from the army surplus store, which was really cool if you think about it, ’cause he took my love for GI Joe and he said hey, let’s bring this into the real world, not with guns but with like, belts and binoculars. – Vests. – Like the binoculars, vests, like the binoculars that are in our book, that I still have at home in my bedroom now when I spy on my neighbors. He gave me those camouflage binoculars and I would take ’em out into the– – Well and I wasn’t a part of that, and then we did the same thing, so I think this is just, it shows you what the geography does, the fact that we lived like two miles apart was, it might have, before we were riding bikes across town to see each other– – Right, right. – So, ’cause Jeremy Fisher, who lived on my street and then my brother Cole and I were the explorers and we called ourselves the Explorers because we had duck boots that said Explorers on them. – Okay. – And so that, you know how, like behind my house there was, Buies Creek went behind my house and down into the woods and how all those different parts of the creek were named different forts, like Fort You and Fort Dead Man and then Fort Buies Creek. – What are you talking about? – Did you didn’t know about this? – No. – Fort Silverstone? – You made up these names? – Jeremy was, so my brother was like three years older and Jeremy was like two years older, and then me and then like Peter Dinklage next door were kind of all a part of it, and– – And you named different points in the creek different fort names. – Yeah and then we would go out there– – Seeing it was a Jeremy Fisher, the older guy, who kind of like– – Well yeah, ’cause I mean you played with all the kids in your neighborhood. – So, and then later I would spend a bunch of time out there by myself, it was like, I got to go check on Fort Buies Creek today. – See, the only guys in my neighborhood were those two twins who lived on the other side of the cat lady, Miss Bolden. – Yeah. – And the Schue twins or something, I can’t remember their names. – Sounds like a nursery rhyme. – S-c-h-u-e. – The Schue twins, lived in a shoe. – They were older, they were scary, and they rode dirt bikes. – I’m like– – Stay away from those guys. – When the Army went out investigating, had to steer clear of the dirt bikes. What else did you play with, besides Smurfs? – Obviously Transformers, I had Transformers. – I had a lot of Transformers too. – And to me, Transformers were, they’re separate from this first group, which is like posable, because there’s a mission with those, like you change them, they’re active, you change them from one thing to another. – And they weren’t easy. – No and– – Almost like a puzzle. – So I had a bunch of those. – Did you have Optimus Prime? – Optimus Prime was my favorite thing, I played with him a lot. – I had the like, the third generation, maybe the second generation, do you remember the Constructicons, I think is what it’s called, it was like construction equipment like a bulldozer, they were yellow and purple and they were bad guys, and they each transformed– – Were they in the Transformers world? – Oh yeah, they were Decepticons and they would, but they would all transform into one huge thing, so it was like Voltron, that was awesome, so you had to collect each one and then when you got all of them, you could create a huge robot. – Did you do this successfully? – Oh yeah, man. – I would have never been capable of that. – I posed the hell out of that guy. – Before I– – I would set him up and let him lay. – Yeah, I mean, before I got to, one of them would have broken too significantly before I was able to collect all of them and put them together. – Look at the picture, man. – Okay, I remember that guy. – I mean, one, two, three, four, five, there’s at least six guys in there. – And I also had– – That’s cool, man. – GoBots. – (laughs) No you didn’t. – Yeah, I did. – You had the cheap stepchild of Transformers? – Yeah, and they were– – They had a cartoon, too. – Now the interesting thing, so I was looking these up, ’cause I was like, what were those called, and I just put in Transformers ripoffs and I got a list of the 10 worst Transformers ripoffs. See if you remember any of these, because I only remember GoBots. GoBots is number 10, and they were all, don’t you remember, they made the same thing, we’re looking at this picture of– – Oh, wow. A lot of cars made a man. – I just remember that– – I didn’t play in the GoBot world, man, I was loyal. – Like super simple cars that became this other guy. – Now, there was also Robo Force. – Nope, never heard of it. – Convertors. – Never heard of it. – Zybots. – Z-Y-bots? – Yeah, Starriors. – Never heard– – Like Starriors, like warriors, but with a star. – It’s a cool name. – RoadBots. – RoadBots, no. – Robotron. – Nope. – Mysterians. – Nope. – Rocks and Bugs and Things. – You’re reading an ad now. – Skip it. – No, no, no, that’s it, transforming things. – Oh. – And then Rocklords that turn into rocks. – Yeah, that’s sadly derivative, and just sad. He transforms into a rock? Gimme a break, the Transformers were amazing, but the funny thing is, I never watched the television show, or the movie, and the movie is like a cult classic. – The original. – Yeah, and they talk about it in the Netflix series. Well, I don’t know if I wanna, of course I can spoil it, right, spoiler alert if you were gonna watch the amazing Transformers movie, which I personally still have not seen, then mute right now, ’cause I’m about to say Optimus Prime dies. He dies. – You talking about the one made in the 80s that was– – Yeah, yeah yeah. – Like stop-motion? – Yeah, oh yeah, the animated movie– – Oh, animated. – I’m not talking about the Michael Bay– – Yeah, yeah, I know that. Well I wanted to ask you because I have a theory, so my favorite toys were what I call the subversive category of toys. – What? – Garbage Pail Kids. – Oh. – And then, Mad Balls. – I do not know what a Mad Ball is. – Oh, you don’t know what a Mad Ball, Mad Balls were probably my favorite toy that I had, and– – Because Garbage Pail Kids were like baseball cards but they were demented children who all had like, something nasty about them. – Yeah, don’t you remember these, Mad Balls? They were– – Oh, you’re talking about like a, it’s like a– – It’s like a Koosh ball, but it’s a monster’s head, and my favorite one was the eyeball. – It’s a smooshable ball that you can throw that’s like made of like, that smooshy material, but not the stress material that we have today, this was the 80s. – It was perfect for me because it was a ball, so it was this thing that– – Super gross. – It was gross, and it was like a character, but it was also a ball that could be thrown, it could be thrown at Smurfs. – (laughs) If it can kill a Smurf, Rhett’s into it. – You could wipe out, you know, a horde of Smurfs with one Mad Ball. – You’re like a homicidal maniac with the Smurfs, man. – No, no– – What do you got against Smurfs? – I would just get, they’re easy targets, man. They’re just sitting there, looking so happy, they need to have their world ruined from time to time. – You are Gargamel. – You are– – I love Gargamel. – Yes, you are him incarnate. – I always connected- – But Gargamel’s like– – With the darker characters. – Gargamel’s a cat guy though. – Well, he’s got his flaws. He’s not perfect, but did you have, you didn’t have Mad Balls ’cause you don’t know about ’em, but did you have Garbage Pail Kids? – I had Garbage Pail Kids, but I didn’t feel good about it. – Right, so that, my theory was is that those things that were a little bit, that were darker– – Yeah, yeah, yeah. – You moved away from and were like, I don’t know, that’s real trashy. – It was twisted, man, it made me feel– – But what were you afraid of, what was gonna happen? And we didn’t talk about this, the funny thing is is that we were best friends and we spent a lot of time together, but– – It felt– – You didn’t talk about your feelings about Garbage Pail Kids. – Yeah, let’s get into the finer points about what’s your hang-up with Garbage Pail. I mean, I’m just surprised I was your friend if, I never went to your house and saw you decimate Smurfs, ’cause that would have been the end. – I didn’t, again, it wasn’t, that was something I did on my own. – Rhett, I was a sweet, tender child, and again, you’ve seen me at the Magic Castle, I’m just, I’m pure, man. But I still mess things up, you know, it’s– – Like I mean you look at– – They’re back too, by the way, I’m sure Garbage Pail Kids had a resurgence. – Like look at Barfin’ Barbara. She’s literally vomiting into the thing she’s cooking on the stove. (laughs) – It’s pretty awesome. – They’re so great, you know, and you could have that, and it was– – Tell me another one, tell me another one. – We got… Choking Cooper (laughs). – What the crap? – Choking Cooper is being constricted by a large snake. – He’s dying. – Yeah, he’s dying. – He’s being killed by a snake. – Vincent Van Gone, oh this is a kid who has cut his own ear off, just like Vincent van Gogh. – Oh my gosh. Shepherd would love this. – Sharp Shaw, a kid whose– – What the crap? – Ridiculously large teeth have punctured his own face. – The people who come up with this are the type of people, well, they’re like you. – Big Hearted Beverly… is hugging two boys so hard that they are suffocating. (laughing) – That is so wrong, man. – Oh Smiling Stan, that’s just Stan Lee. Stan Lee was a Garbage Pail Kid? – No, that is a re-issue, I believe, or that may just be a photoshop. – Oh yeah, Paris Embarrassed, oh yeah, we got into these. – Yeah, see, you got into some– – Yeah, yeah, yeah– – You got into some modern takes, some meme-ified Garbage Pail Kids. – But like Drippy Debbie– – I did have them, because a lot of people had them at school, and I felt in order to be cool, I had to at least represent. – For me there was just something– – Subversive. – About things that were– – You’re exactly right. – You know, we were in such a, I mean, we were in the worlds of kids, you know, and there are those, you wanna subvert that a little bit just to feel alive. – See, the thing that I, I think the last toys that I ever had were my WWF, now WWE I guess, action, well they’re not action figures, they were not posable, they were like made of, they were thick, and they were made of rubber and they didn’t move, but you could buy the wrestling ring and I had a lot of those. – Yeah, and those were very cool, they were very big. – And here’s the thing, toys back then, I remember I would go to Sky City and I put my bridge layer, my GI Joe bridge layer on layaway and I paid like $4 at a time until I could spend the $30 to bring it home, but I’d also go there and buy, whenever I went, I would look to see what wrestlers they had. It was hard to get toys, like the whole collecting thing, it was very difficult ’cause it was all about local inventory. – And they may not have the one you want. – Oh yeah, so I never had any good wrestlers, I never had Macho Man, I never had Hulk Hogan, I mean I would just go and I’d be so desperate to get a wrestler, I’d buy a crappy wrestler, like Bruno San Martino. What, like, I’m not saying he’s a crappy wrestler, but for a guy, I mean like, I never saw that guy wrestle, he was like a, he’s an old-school wrestler that for some reason, for a nostalgia’s sake they made, I didn’t know who he was but I bought him because I needed to buy a wrestler. – There’s always like Todd Johnson, like a guy who’s just wearing like a singlet. – Well no, they were all legitimate wrestlers, but yeah, I never owned Hulk Hogan or Andre the Giant. – Really, wow. – Because they didn’t exist and there was no Amazon, so nowadays, I mean there’s a resurgence in all these toys for adults, because we want to, the experience I’m having right now is the reason why you can go on eBay and you can buy a Skeletor or a Hulk Hogan. I never got that Hulk Hogan, I’ma get it now, I’ma put it on my desk, man, that kind of thing. You know, there’s a booming business of collectibles for that stuff, there’s that place in Pasadena, you know, where they have like the glass, the glass closets and they’ve got all the collectible stuff in it. But it’s not like… – But our kids are not interested. – Our kids could get anything they wanted, yet they don’t want any of it because it can’t compete with the endless supply of digital screenage, man. – Well okay, so I wanted to talk a little bit about the toys that weren’t screen-based that our kids had, ’cause I think that there’s a lot of crossover here between our kids. – Yeah. – And some of these things are in common with what we had, Nerf. – We had Nerf. – So, but for us, Nerf was, for me Nerf was mostly just a Nerf football, that was what I thought of as Nerf. I didn’t have, that I recall, any Nerf guns, but– – I had, at Nana and Papa’s house, we had a bunch of blasters, they call ’em. – Oh we did have the ones that shot the little suction cups. – Mm-hmm. – And now the Nerf blasters, I mean there was a point at which, I actually– – Arsenals. – I built a– – An arsenal. – I built this giant, I got some of that like stuff that you put in your shop so you can hang up tools. – With the holes in it, yeah. – with holes in it and I got, and I built it and put it on Locke’s wall so that he could have all his Nerf blasters like just ready for the taking. – And he wanted, he and Lincoln wanted to start a channel where they reviewed Nerf guns, because that was a thing for a while. – Yeah. – Yeah. – So that was something that they, and it was super active, I mean you can– – Yeah. – Draw your own conclusions or have your own opinions about whether or not it’s, you know, good for kids to have fake guns– – But the next thing was Legos. – But they had a lot of that and it was super active, they all had Legos– – And we did too, Legos were, Legos is like, that is amazing how, the staying power that they have, I mean I think it’s through the licensing of like, all of the movies and whatnot, but– – Well, and at my house, there’s still to this day just a couple of giant bins– – Yeah. – Of Legos, at your house there’s a bunch of bins of Legos but they’re like meticulously organized. – Actually not anymore. – Really? Like there’s times where I would come over to your house and your kids would like have like, every color organized in a different bin and were like building some specific. – I passed the disease along. But now what we do is, like Lando’s the only one who still plays with ’em, and we’ll lay out a bedspread and we’ll dump out the bin on it and then he’ll start playing, but the last time he did that, it broke my heart because when I dumped out the thing, in the bottom there were like 85% complete sets that I remember putting together with Lincoln, I don’t know, six years ago, and then they were in the bottom of this bin just like eroding, and I just couldn’t take it. But Lando didn’t care and he was just playing with all of ’em and we don’t really, we don’t buy anymore, he’s eight, he’s getting out of it. – Right, well some people don’t, some people stay on it. Beyblades, so— – Yeah, they play with those. – Like it was so– – That was cool. – Like Locke was so into Beyblades– – Explain what it is. – So basically it’s a, I don’t, I believe that it may have been a TV show first? – I don’t think so, but I don’t know. – It ended up becoming a TV show, anyway, it is these spinning tops that you pull this rip cord to start spinning the tops and the two Beyblades go into an arena and battle each other and the first one to stop spinning loses. And like you would get, you’d get a collection of Beyblades, he played it with his cousins, played it with me, you know that was something that we– – Lincoln had those, yeah. – He got into a lot. I just remember him as like a four-year-old, “bey-bay, bey-bay, bey-bay,” he wanted ’em so bad. – That was a cool toy. – Yeah. – ‘Cause it was competition, that you had to pull a rip cord at least, you got a work out. – That’s a very like, 80s-style toy. – Yeah. – That’s completely, you know, the whole deal is analog– – Beyblades, Beyblades, let it rip. – And they were into that, and then they, and I think Lincoln had this same thing, and the funny thing is is like, Shepherd really didn’t care about Beyblades because the difference between a 14 year old and a 10 year old even, or 13 and eight or nine, is that… Our youngest two kids kind of came up with, screens were a bigger part of their playtime than for our older kids who had more of those tangible toys. – Yeah. – See, ’cause we never did, you know, Shepherd has Legos, but he doesn’t play with them as much as Locke did and he doesn’t have any Beyblades, he played with the Nerf blasters, but not as much as Locke did. They also had those Spider-Man wrist things that could shoot stuff– – But again, here’s the thing. Like yeah, they had those gimmicky one-off toys like the modern-day version of the Hulk hands, you put the big Hulk hand over your hand, you smash it together, it says “Hulk smash!” But that’s not a line of action figures, that’s not a robust world of toys that then you could watch the cartoon or a movie about, you know, or create your own. I mean it wasn’t an immersive-type thing. I was trying to search for that, I was like, what action figures exist now? I think that’s what I Googled. And then Google told me– – What’d you learn? – Just Marvel movie stuff. I mean, just movie action figures basically. But it’s not a big deal, like if you walk down a toy aisle, you know, you’ll see Infinity War posable characters, but it’s not, it’s derivative, you know, it’s like, it’s not the main thing. Of course the Star Wars toys are still around, so those are action figures now. But the magic is gone, man. – But the action figures, if it’s just an action figure that doesn’t do anything, if it doesn’t shoot something, if it doesn’t light up, if it’s not part of some AR experience, then it really, beyond collecting, you’re basically just in the world of collecting things. And there’s only so many kids who care about that. It’s a certain personality. – And I mean, the pristine example of collecting things now are these Pop! Figures, which all of my kids, I think Lily and Lincoln are finally getting out of it, but still, and this kind of goes into adulthood that like, if you really like a property, you want to have that thing sitting around, and if you’re my kids, you don’t want to take it out of the box. You know, you have the Hawkman Pop! figure, somebody sent that to you. – Actually I have a bunch of Hawkman– – Whole bunch of ’em? – Figurines, you know, different versions of him that people have sent me just up in our office. – But it’s, they want to have a physical representation of their best screen experience, so toys just fills that slot, it’s like what can I have in the real world that represents my jam, which is the screen world. – But they don’t spend time– – Posing or– – With those characters. – Doing voices for ’em, playing, no they don’t– – As much. – Play with ’em– – I mean there’s probably– – They display it. – Some kids out there who are doing it. – They display them. And that’s it. – Well, and one of the things that kind of ties into this is, it’s not just about screens, ’cause I want to talk about how we counteract that a little bit. – Mm-hmm. – With some of the tangible toys, but it definitely is, the death of retail is a big part of this you know, so obviously this is the year that Toys R Us went under for good. – Mm-hmm. – And at least, do they still have a website or is it, I don’t know, but the retail, all the stores closed, and I would have thought, okay well, they closed because of Amazon, right, they’re being impacted in the same way that lots of retail stores are, and that’s true, they’re being impacted by online shopping, but it wasn’t, it didn’t follow suit that all the purchases that were taking place in retail moved online, because year over year in September, Nerf was down 30%. – Mm-hmm. – And this is largely attributed to the death of Toys R Us. – Okay, so they still have– – A website. – A website, but, because there is something about being in the presence of toys, going to, we used to go to Brendle’s, we talked about that. – Yeah. – Brendle’s was a weird department store that had, for some reason, my dad had decided that Brendle’s is where we get toys for the boys, and– – And lawn care equipment. – You could get anything there, it was kinda like a Sears. And, but there’s something– – Sears’ going under, too. – Going and seeing it, picking it up, picking it up in the package, that is a completely different experience than just looking at something on the internet. – I mean, we experienced the beginning of this, I remember going, that the change, I remember going to Toys R Us, and instead of walking down the toy aisle, I would go straight for the Nintendo and Sega aisle, and what they would have is they had retrofitted aisles that used to have toys on them and it would have, it was flat and it was like laminated cards, you remember this, that you’d flip up and you could look at what would be the front packaging of the video game, and then if you flipped it up you could read what would be the back of the packaging of the video game, but it wasn’t, it was a representation of it where you could read about it in person, and then they had locked cabinets where if you got someone, you’re like, I want Street Fighter II, yes it cost 75 dollars in 1990, whatever it was, wait a minute, late 80s, but I’m gonna get that. And then they pull it out of a glass case and give it to you. I mean it was just like, it was laminated flappers, and they dedicated a whole long row of Toys R Us for that and that was the beginning of the downfall. – I’m sorry, I can read flappers on the internet. – Once the internet happens, yeah. I think the operable question is, but what do we do with our kids at this point, you know? It’s like, I feel like Lily, she’s 15, she’s basically not a child, Locke’s not that type of a child, they’re not a toy child, they’re gone, Lincoln’s gone. – It’s really just Lando and Shepherd, I mean, so with Locke, in fact– – We failed them. – I was talking with Locke the other day, you know, he’s playing basketball, he’s taking, you know, these difficult courses or whatever, he’s got this AP course, and he was like, we were talking about Red Dead Redemption Two coming out, and he was like, I mean first of all, he didn’t play the first one, he didn’t play games that much but he was like, I’m never gonna play that because I don’t play video games. He’s like, I honestly don’t have any time, he’s like, I do homework, I practice basketball, and I do some social stuff, but it’s just like, there’s not a place for video games in my life anymore. Like and I’ve been feeling that way for– – Right. – 20 years, but, and he’s probably a little exceptional because he’s, they play so much basketball– – Right. Like yeah, Lincoln’s big into the games that he plays on Xbox. – But it’s like it’s, I feel like with the older ones, it’s kind of like okay, they’ve kind of got their thing, whether– – Again, once you– – They play video games or not, they’re kind of on this track, they’re gonna do what they want to. – Once you’re eight or nine, you really don’t play with toys anymore. – But I’m feeling this a lot with Shepherd who’s 10, and right now, as was evidenced by the the call from my wife, in the middle of the podcast, she’s out of town, I am taking care of the boys by myself. I don’t even know where they’re at right now. No, someone’s watching them right now, but– – He-Man would know. – I am, you know I’ve got Shepherd and– – The perfect specimen of muscularity and masculinity, he would know if he were a dad. – Locke is– – He’s sterile, though. – He’s taking, you know, Locke’s got all his stuff figured out, but Shepherd is like, just wants to be on screens, man, he just wants to play games. – Yeah. – Roblox is his thing, on the computer or be watching something, and I’m like and he has a limit on each one of those and I’m like, Shepherd okay, time’s up, you have to do something else, and I’m like go outside. Now first of all, it’s not like it was when we grew up, I can’t just say go outside and roam the neighborhood, you basically, you’re confined to our yard– – But what if we said, yeah, ’cause Lando is a similar situation. The different, the thing with Lando though, he’s very craft-oriented, he’s very like inventive and artistic, and you know basically that boils down to being obsessed with slime, like he loves slime ’cause he makes it from scratch, and he like makes all different types and he like looks at the videos on how to make the different types, but he also does other art projects as well, and so he’s not as screen-oriented, maybe as how you’re describing Shepherd, but still, he’s very much, it’s so much easier just to turn to the screen, we have to get him on his projects and like, get him all his materials. But I’m wondering, what if we kill two birds with one stone, go on eBay, start buying all these vintage toys, to like restart my collection, I can’t believe I sold all my GI Joes in a big cardboard box at a yard sale in my Nanny’s front yard for like 20 bucks, I sold my entire, I sold ’em all except for Medic and Gung-Ho, my two favorites, and I still have Medic, I still have both of ’em. – Right, Medic is in the book. – But all the other ones I got rid of, so I’m gonna collect all of ’em and I’m gonna say that it’s so that Lando can experience toys, but that’s really not the truth, but that’s a side benefit, we’re gonna play together with toys, my toys. – I think that’s a bad plan. I don’t think that’s gonna work. – Well I was getting kind of excited about it, thanks for crapping all over it. – Well, I think that you just, I mean first of all, if Lando is– – Can I get He-Man? – Really into the crafty stuff, you just keep giving him more opportunities to do that, if he can occupy himself with that. – But you think, I think he could get into He-Men, Sheera, Teela, Cobra Kai– – I don’t think he will. I think he might observe you doing it, that would be an interesting study of his father. – Okay Lando, get off the screen, you’re gonna watch me play with He-Men again. Play with He-Men. – I could bring some Smurfs over. – Rhett’s coming over with his Smurf victims. – Yeah, I could teach your kids how to kill Smurfs. (laughing) – That’s kinda funny. – Let’s get out the blow torch and burn some. – Let’s have play dates. – Just me and you? – No, with the boys. – Okay, alright. – They’re almost too old for this, but– – I’ll bring Lion-O. – Let’s have a play date. – Who was the blue ThunderCat? I actually liked him more. – He was voiced by the dad on Cosby Show, remember when we found that out a couple years ago? – Oh yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, by Cliff’s dad, or by Claire’s dad. – I think it was Claire’s dad was the voice of the bald, he was more the tech guy, he was like what Donatello was to the Ninja Turtles, oh, and I actually think, after wrestlers, by the way, I think Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was the last toys that I actually collected. – I never got into ’em. – And those are still around, that’s an action figure set and a world that still exists for younger kids, and I think that may be what I’m looking for. – Well I think what I’m looking for is, I was looking at the– – He-Man was nuts though, man, just look, if you don’t know about these characters, they’re all so ridiculous, ’cause they were invented from thin air by a toy company. – Here’s my theory, and I think you talking about the crafty stuff is what– – Okay. – Is giving me this theory because, there’s like, we’ve done a couple of things like robot kits and– – Yeah. – The science-y kit kind of thing. – Those are big now. – And Shepard gets into those. It’s partly my fault and partly my wife’s fault, we’re not patient and so if it’s just like, can you help me with this, can you help me make this slime thing happen, if it requires me to step in, I just don’t have a lot of patience. – Yeah. – And I’m just like, just do what I did and just figure it out, man. – Yeah man, you don’t really have to be a parent. – Take some Smurfs and murder ’em. – Yeah. You’re basically trying to be an 80s parent. – Yeah yeah, right. – Right. – Yeah, my parents didn’t pay attention to me, I don’t want to pay attention to my kids. – Parents nowadays, ironically they are, there is an expectation that parents are supposed to play with the kids. – Guys, you’re too involved. – That didn’t happen in the 80s. – Let the kids be free. Learn some stuff on their own, but I’m looking at what the hot, toy insider hot list for 2018. – What is it? – Well there, first of all I’m gonna skip a lot of these because they’re just dumb. Now okay, Shepherd has a Nintendo Switch, and in this Labo stuff, you can make all this crap. – But then you’re still, you’re building a steering wheel and a gas pedal out of cardboard, but then you’re playing a video game, don’t let, don’t fall for that. – Well okay. – You’re still playing a screen. – But the time, the crafty time that goes into building that, that’s pretty interesting. – Well… – Okay first of all, there’s a freaking game you can play with your Amazon Alexa, called When in Rome, and Alexa keeps score. – That’s cool, I read about that because people from various regions give quizzes from where where they are in their own accents and you play with your family. I think board games and like family-based or party-based games– – Yeah, those are cool. – Those are still happening and that’s, I think that’s a very important aspect of toys that still exist and that I’m personally passionate about. – But I’m getting to the thing, along the way I want to point out a couple things. – Okay. – Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Epic Sewer Lairs playset– – That’s bigger than my Mobile Command Center. – This is giant, it’s taller than this child. – That’s very 80s– – This child’s on his knees, Rhett. – Yeah, well, I think you kinda ruined it. It’s got a slide and Michelangelo is coming down the slide on a skateboard, it’s pretty awesome. – Pizza. – That’s pretty throwback, but the thing that I saw that I was interested in that looked like a combination of a lot of things– – Okay. – Was this last one, when I get to it, this. The Thrill Rides Bionic blast Roller Coaster building set. – Oh wow, okay, well– – Okay so this has a couple of things, right? – It looks like Tinkertoys. – It has, you have the ability to build the roller coaster. – And you put a marble on it? – No, you put a coaster on it. – A coaster? – No marbles involved, man. – Because for many years there was a marble run thing that you could build like that. – But then it’s included. Included as a cardboard VR viewer which I guess you hook up to, you put your phone in there. No no no listen, because this gets them in because it’s still about screens. Because now they can look at from the perspective of the roller coaster, and then you see it, and you ride the thing you just built. I think that the future is, can you bring– – It’s like Rollercoaster Tycoon sims– – That’s why I like the Labo stuff because it’s based on the fact that they’ve got this interest already in video games and screens, but it’s bringing them out into the real world into some sort of tangible, analog experience. – Can I have that whenever Shepherd’s done with it after two days? – Well yeah, we’re gonna do it, and then I’m gonna put a bunch of Smurfs on it, and we’re gonna run those Smurfs over with the car. I’m gonna teach ’em a life lesson. – So you’re gonna eBay Smurfs? – Thinking about it. – You’re joking. You’re not gonna do the Smurf part. Don’t get my hopes up. – But that’s something that, you know, sure once he builds it and plays with it a few times, yeah, we’ll bring it to your house. – And then it won’t have all the pieces. – But at least next time I’m like “Shepherd!” – Can I use it first? I guarantee you we’ll keep all the pieces because then Shepherd can have it. I’ll be like mint condition. – No no, I mean you can buy it and give it to me if you wanna do that. I’m not gonna buy it so that your family can have it first. (laughing) That’s ridiculous. I might get it for your kids as a Christmas present. – Since when have you bought my kids a Christmas present? – Every year. – No you haven’t. – Yes I have. – What did you buy ’em last year? – A bunch of Smurfs. – (laughs) No you didn’t. – No, we get your kids birthday presents. And that’s the kind of thing– – Do we get, hold on, do I give your kids birthday presents? – Our wives handle that, man, but yes. – They have hearts. – Feelings. They care about our kids’ futures. You know, we’re kind of just along for the ride. (sighs) Not true, we care about our kids’ futures, gosh! – All right, so let’s go into conclusion zone. You’re gonna buy Shepherd a VR-based Tinkertoy set. – Well, I’m gonna– – And call it a day. – I’m saying that– – I’m gonna resurrect my He-Man collection– – No, I’m gonna buy more today. I’m gonna get more toys for the kids because I actually want to get them toys so they get off of screens. And if there’s a transitional moment where they have to use toys that also use screens, then so be it. – You’re not, just for Shepherd? – Locke’s? – He’s gone. – Whatever I screwed up with Locke is done. – Right. – You know what I’m saying? His personality is set. The trauma is locked in. You know, he is who he’s gonna be. – Right. But those younger, Lando and Shepherd– – A couple more years of malleability. – It’s muscular toys. – It’s really ages three through five that you have to worry about, and that’s over for us. – We’ve blown it. – I wish I had have read a book about parenting. – Oh gosh, I miss toys, man. I wanna be a child. This is not about my kids, who am I kidding? – What happened to toys? That was the question that we were answering. – They’re done, they’re over. – They became digital, man, they went on a screen. – They are gone. With rare exceptions. – It’s just for weird people who go to coffee shops. – I love family board games, I love tabletop games, and I love party games. Those are an exception. Not what we’ve been talking about. But the quintessential action figure world is gone. And I mourn it. We’ll speak at you again next week. Thanks for hanging out with us, and let us know #EarBiscuits what toy you were obssessed with as a kid. – And what toys your kids are playing with right now. Maybe there’s something that we should be getting for our kids who are still at the toy age and you can tell us what we should get them. – Yeah, let’s do it. We’ll talk at you next week ’cause we love you so much. – Yeah. – [Link] To hear this Ear Biscuit in its entirety and make sure you don’t miss an episode, follow the links in the description to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else podcasts are available. – [Rhett] To watch more Ear Biscuits, click on the playlist on the right. – [Link] To watch more of our daily show Good Mythical Morning, click the playlist on the left. – [Rhett] And don’t forget to click the circular icon to subscribe. Thanks for being your mythical best.