Stuff You Should Know - How Easy Bake Ovens Work

Episode Date: November 1, 2018

Easy Bake Ovens are as iconic as a toy can get, as American as apple pie or baseball. Learn all about these light bulb cooking, working ovens that endanger children to this day.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Ramsey over there, The Euse,

which means it's time for Stuff You Should Know, nostalgia edition, Colin T.S. Hodgman. Yeah, we've done a few toys, Play-Doh, Slinkies, right? What else? What, does a boomerang count as a toy? That's a way of life, mate. We've done tons, we did Silly Putty.

Silly Putty, sure. We did, you know, a bunch. The Balls? Yeah, the Balls episode, how Balls work. They round and they bounce. We said Balls like a million times in that episode. Yeah, this one's kind of cool though. The Easy Bake Oven, which I never had one.

Did you ever have one in your home? I don't think so, no. I don't think my sister had one either. Well, I was a pretty tubby kid, so it's possible that my mom was like, make sure your brother doesn't know you have one of those. Do not feed your brother anything from there. But it's interesting that this is one

where sort of a very simple idea and you never can tell what's gonna hit toy-wise. Nothing super complex about this other than you could literally bake food and sort of pretend to be an adult in the kitchen. That was the basis of it, being an adult. That was kind of Kenner's thing. And Kenner, the people who made Star Wars toys

were the ones behind this. And they were very much into toys that let kids pretend they were grownups. That was their bag. Yeah, I have a new neighbor actually. Shout out to Rick, Kathy, hey guys. Well, they really got under your skin, huh? What?

Rick and Kathy got a shout out on the podcast and they're new neighbors, geez. Yeah, because he worked for, I was talking to him and I was like, he seems like a good guy. I was like, what do you do? Rick, he's retired now, what did you do? And he's like, I was a toy and action figure designer for Kenner and I was like, whoa.

What years? He came on after, the first thing he worked on was the Tim Burton Batman movies. Nice. And he stayed on for a long time, like his whole career. Like after they were sold and everything. Wow. Pretty neat.

That is very cool. Yeah, good for him. Yeah, he still does wonderful sculpture, so. Oh, I'll bet. So after Rick Watkins art online and then check it out. I'm going to check it out. But I mean, Kenner is such a big deal to people our age and of many ages, but I didn't realize that they,

I didn't realize their origin as a company. Remember that we talked, we did a whole action figures episode, remember? Oh yeah. And we talked a lot about Kenner. Was that a two part episode or was it just like an hour and a half long? I feel like it was just long.

It was very long. But Kenner almost didn't do the Star Wars ones, if I remember, but for us at least, that put Kenner on the map. What I didn't realize is that Kenner was already on the map as far as toys go. And one of the ways that they got there was from the Easy Bake Oven,

which debuted in November of 1963, right around the time that John Kennedy was shot. Yeah, but Kenner had been around since the 1940s. Albert Phillip and Joseph Steiner formed the company after as legend goes, one of them saw a bubble maker bubble wand or whatever you call them. Yeah.

And it was like, hey, if I could do a gun that shoots bubbles, we might be on to something. And that was their very first product is the bubblematic gun. Yeah. And then whatever, less than 20 years later, the Easy Bake Oven,

even though as we learned today and yesterday, there had been toy ovens since like the Victorian days. Yes, like really, really dangerous ones. I know, like real little ovens. Yeah, like wood burning pellet, solid fuel stoves made of cast iron that were sized down for little kids to use. Yeah, basically like here's the oven

that can kill your parents. We'll just make a smaller one that can kill you. Right, yeah. Yeah, so the children's play oven, functioning play oven history, very kind of closely tracks the real oven history, right? Yeah. Like when there were cast iron wood burning ovens,

there were kids versions of them. As real ovens moved into electric ovens, there were kids versions of them. Apparently Lionel, the model train makers, they made some in the 30s. Also, we wanna give a shout out to Lisa Hicks and the people at Collectors Weekly for a great article. We also used for this episode too.

But in the 30s, there were electric ovens. By the 40s or 50s, I think, there were fiberglass insulated ovens, electric ovens. It was just like a small oven for kids. But they were ovens, they were extremely dangerous. And Kenner had this really great idea. And the reason that this idea came about at Kenner to begin with.

So apparently Kenner was really big on having like ideas could come from anywhere. Anybody in the company, float an idea. And people would listen. They had like regular meetings where, there were bull sessions. Maybe they ordered some like chow mein or something like that. Everyone rolled up their sleeves and relaxed

and spat out ideas. And one of the salesmen from Kenner came back in from the field and said, you know what, I saw something. I saw some pretzel vendors keeping their pretzels warm on the street using a light bulb. What if we used a light bulb to heat up an oven for the little kitties? And somebody, I think, Charles Howes, Ralph Howes.

Well, Norman Shapiro was that gentleman. And then Ronald Howes. Ronald Howes. Was the big time inventor for Kenner who had a couple of like really big products under his belt. And he was like, that's an ace's idea. That's exactly how he talked.

Yeah, probably so. Everyone hated him for it. But he was really good at inventing toys so they had to put up with it. Yeah, but Kenner's deal, like you were saying, was find things that mimic adult things. And that's like kind of, I bet like kids are gonna dig that stuff.

And they did from like, and kids still do, little toy lawnmowers and toy bulldozers. And I mean, Ruby's got a little cleaning set with like a duster and a dustpan and a mop and like. Is she OCD? No, but I mean, all the time she will say, come on daddy, let's clean and she'll hand me a mop.

That's a little OCD. Well, no, that's good then. I like where she's headed. Did you have one of those plastic safety razors so you could shave next to your dad? No. I did. But I was, I think a lot of boys are pretty obsessed

with shaving before they have whiskers. Yeah. And I think I heard that they would actually stimulate hair growth on your face. I was about to say, I remember being worried about that. Yeah, because I didn't have, I had a pretty, I mean, looking at me now, you would never know, but I didn't have a lot of facial hair going on

until well into college. Was it like lacking or did it come in patchy? Just a little bit, sort of like my brother is now, he just stayed in that phase where. Your brother's got a perfect chiseled face. Well, I know, that's cause he doesn't have a beard. Oh, okay. But Scott can grow a pretty decent goatee now,

but I don't think he could grow the full beard. But his was, we were both spotty, like a little bit above the lip, little bit on the chin. The one part just kind of traced a line up to your eye from around, from under your nose. Yeah, but I mean, it was sort of a family thing. We're not hairy dudes. We don't have very hairy legs or stuff like that.

It is odd that you have such a full beard. Like I don't have hairy arms or anything like that. You're a beast. I don't know if beast is the right word, but yes, I'm a little hairy. You're a hairy guy. My chest hair definitely plucks out from under my shirt. Have you ever done any like a laser or anything like that?

No. No? Good for you. No, I'm just, I'm hairy. No, I mean, you're normal. It's not like you're Robin Williams. No. He was hairy.

Yes, he was. God rest his soul. Yes, indeed. So back to the ovens. So the idea has been put out there now by Norman Shapiro. Yes. Yeah, okay. So, and it was taken up by Ronald House.

And this was, this was huge in groundbreaking because again, there were unsafe ovens for kids that had been around since the 19th century. What these guys had just happened upon was the way to make another unsafe oven seem safe to parents. That was it. That was the genius of this idea.

That is what made Easy Bake Ovens take off. What they had figured out was that if they used a light bulb as the heating element, and believe me, a light bulb can heat up an oven. Sure. 350. Yeah. Up to 350, which is a common baking dump.

Yes, from a light bulb. And actually at first, we'll see a pair of light bulbs. But the fact is they're light bulbs and parents are familiar with light bulbs. They don't seem weird or scary. Yeah, it's not a wood pellet. And the fact that it's not like a heating element like in an actual oven, it's just a light bulb.

That is what they used to convince parents that this was a safe product that they could buy for their kids. It was a genius idea. It really was. And like you teased a second ago, the very first model in 1963. And if you look at that very first one,

it doesn't really even look like an oven. Well, certainly the new one doesn't either. No. I did go online. I was like, maybe I should get one of those, but they're ugly now. I'm sorry to the person who designed them. Yes, I'm glad you said it.

They're ugly little ovens. Yeah, they should kind of go back to looking more classic, I think. That'd be my advice. But they used two 100 watt incandescent bulbs at first. One over the top and another under the bottom. Obviously they were trying to get an even heat because you're baking things.

Right. And they very wisely designed this thing so that the actual oven part was basically inaccessible to the kit on either side. So just imagine a box. Okay, oh man, here's the way. I love it. It's my favorite thing

when you try to describe something official. Let me see if I close my eyes, it works. Imagine a box and then coming out from either side of the box are a couple of little arms. But the arms are half arms and they're rectangular and hollow. Okay.

And they're actually openings. One opening, you slide in the uncooked thing that you want to bake into the heating area, the oven. Let it bake and you push it through the other side, the cooling chamber, and then it comes out the other arm. Everyone, Josh just had his eyes closed that entire time. And it worked. I really painted a great picture.

In your mind's eye, yes. Yeah, so that's what's going on. You had the two bulbs and in fact, let's go ahead and take a break there. Oh, okay. Nice little cliffhanger. When we come back, I'll re-describe the Easy Bake Oven again.

Sounds good. The Easy Bake Oven On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude. Bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips?

Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling

of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place

because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. [♪ upbeat music playing [♪ upbeat music playing

All right, we were at one bulb. Charles Cummings. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, so in 1967, the Easy Bake Up in a Cellin, like, uh, hotcakes, literally. General Mills buys Kenner, uh, and they did a couple of genius things. They, they partnered because they were General Mills. They had no problem because they owned Betty Crocker as well, I assume, um, launching Betty Crocker branded mixes. Right. And then later on, they got into licensing deals with McDonald's and Pizza Hut because here's the thing, you can bake anything in an Easy Bake Oven because it's just a little oven.

Yeah, I saw that. You can make pizza and you can make, you don't have to buy these mixes. You can just bake cookies that you made from scratch. Yeah, and there's like a lot of recipes online, Easy Bake Oven recipes. Yeah, they actually don't taste like garbage. Right. So, um, yeah, they did have a huge line of mixes though and they sold more than a hundred million of them over the, over the years. Man, that's how they get you.

But I mean, they, they were recipes for, or mixes for candy bars, pecan brittle, popcorn, bubble gum. You can bake your own bubble gum. Interesting. It is interesting. I would have tried that for sure. I want to see bubble gum come out in like a brownie pan. Yeah. I'd be like, I want some of that bubble gum.

That looks amazing. We had a cotton candy machine now that I remember. What? It would just spin sugar and you would. Oh, I know what they do. Yeah. I wanted one. Yep.

That thing was probably dangerous. It was probably like a nuclear centrifuge. Well, what, what was interesting about those, or fascinating to me, was it like the, the cotton candy, um, this, oh, it's not called. It's like a, not the web. Spun sugar or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, I want to say web, but that's not it either. It's not really visible in the machine.

Yeah. But when you stick in the little cone, it just builds up on it. Like, it's like it's just coming out of another dimension into this one. Like coming out of a spider's butt. It's awesome to see a pink and pink and blue spider's butt. Man, I had to go out yesterday to, uh, I still have my pickup truck because I just kept it because it was paid for. And I still move and haul stuff occasionally. Yeah.

I had to move something. You have to justify it to me. I had to move something yesterday. And, uh, I went out and there was the most beautiful, huge spider web from a tree down attached to the rear tailgate of my truck. Me like, chuck smash. With this big spider right in the middle. And I was like, oh man, I just felt so bad. I didn't know what to do.

So you just put in reverse and pretended nothing. You didn't see anything? No, I actually plucked it off little by little because I wanted to ensure his safety. Oh, that's nice of you. And the web just goes crumbling down into a long, you know, skinny string and he, he climbs right up. To the tree and I was just like, I'm really sorry. He's like, oh, I'm sure you are. I see you.

I know. He tried to spit venom into my eyeball. He's like, what do you, what do you need your truck for? And you're like, gotta go get peanut butter. He's like, oh good. Thank you for ruining 30 hours of my work. A giant vat of peanut butter that would only fit in my truck. All right.

So let's, let's flash forward here to, uh, the modern times in 2007. Okay. The, uh, energy independence and security act. When the government said by 2012, uh, light bulbs have to increase their efficiency by 25%. So bye-bye 100 watt incandescent bulb. Yeah. So let me just say something. Let me set that up too.

Over the years, the Easy Bake Oven had just remained a steady seller for Kenner and then Hasbro. And the design had been basically the same. It went from two bulbs to one bulb, but it was this closed box where the heating element was where there was a slot on the side. Remember, I went through the whole thing, pushed it in and it came out the cooling chamber on the other side. Um, but really the design was the same. The outward look changed.

Like it went from the weird, its own thing to the late seventies and early eighties. It started to resemble a microwave. Sure. And then in, in, uh, response to this change in light bulb requirements, Easy Bake did a redesign in 2006 and for the first time ever, the Easy Bake Oven actually looked like an oven, like a stove. It had little like fake burners on the top. It looked like a stove and it was actually a front loader to where there was a, like a slot in the front of the Easy Bake Oven and that's where you put the thing in.

And that's what you actually pulled it out from too. And it went right into the heating element and they replaced the light bulb because again, so long, 100 watt light bulb because of the energy act, um, with an actual heating element, a ceramic heating element, like an oven. Yeah, it was an oven. So they made an oven, but then when they made the oven, they redesigned this thing so that you could put your fingers right into the oven while it was baking at its hottest temperature. And of course kids immediately started doing that.

How did they, how did that one slip past? No idea. I mean, that just doesn't make any sense at all. So in the end, I think what, close to 250 kids ended up with like second and third degree burns. Yeah. One partial amputation of a finger. Yeah, because kids would get their fingers stuck in it, right? And it's just, and then some kids got their fingers stuck in it while it was heated, hot.

Yeah. And yes, they were getting huge burns. So, um, Hasbro was like, well, we'll do a recall and they recalled like 985,000. I think ultimately a million of these things they recalled. First, they tried to say, here's a little fix. Yeah. Here's a retrofitted piece. It's really easy to snap it on and it'll solve everything.

And apparently it did solve everything. They're like, why didn't you make it that way to begin with? Right. But most parents were not like, they didn't have their ears out that there was a recall of their easy bake oven. And so their kids, the kids kept getting burned. And then finally Hasbro was like, just bring them back. So there's a recall of a million easy bake ovens from that 2006 redesign. There's a huge toy for them, like to, if that would have ruined the easy bake oven,

that would have been a big, big deal. So what they did was they temporarily went back to an old design featuring a light bulb too, while they redesigned it to the new version. So, uh, then they came out in 2011 with that, that really ugly designed, what's called the easy bake ultimate oven. Oh, I'm looking at it now that things, yeah, it does. It looks terrible. It's horrible.

It's super, it looks like it's on the go or something like that. I don't like it. It looks like a weird toaster oven. Yeah, but it's sort of, it looks like it's trying to look futuristic and modern, which never ends up looking like that. No, it doesn't. But they also made it pink and purple. Yep.

Super girly. The ads were super girl targeted yet. There's flowers on it. And again, they were like, nope, this is for girls. Boys, don't play with this. So in 2000, I think 2013, there was a girl named McKenna Pope. Yes. Who is just a hero of heroes.

She's amazing. I saw an interview with her on CNN. She's pretty great. She's just so like self-possessed and intelligent and like well spoken, but also like a kid and aware she's a kid. She's just amazing. One of those clearly reincarnated. Yeah.

And she started a petition to get Hasbro to make a gender neutral version of its Easy Bake Oven because her little brother liked to bake, but realized that the Easy Bake Oven was for girls. She wanted him to be able to bake. So she said Hasbro, why don't you make one that's gender neutral and got something like 50,000 signatures for her petition. And Hasbro came out with a new version of the Easy Bake Ultimate Oven, which was just a black version of it, black and I think silver.

I'm surprised it wasn't like our brush stainless model. Sure, right. Like to emulate, you know, kitchens. Right. Yeah, she's probably almost 20 years old now. Yeah. Wonder what she's doing. McKenna Pope, are you out there?

She's some sort of like consumer protection lawyer I'll bet. Probably so. I hope so. Me too. 2006, they go into the National Toy Hall of Fame. The same year that disastrous redesign. Yeah, they got in just under the wire. They did, yeah.

Can't take it back. I'm trying to look here from their very own website, some of the landmark years. And it is kind of funny that it emulated the styles at the time, unless they were just doing pink. Like in 69, they premiered the avocado green. Yeah. The very next year was harvest gold.

Yeah. It's very good. Metallic pee. We say that a lot in our house. Oh, they had a potato chip maker. Do we mention that? No. 1973, the Easy Bake Potato Chip Maker.

That's awesome. And then in 78, they finally started putting a fake digital clock on it that always read 1230. Okay. Not 420. You see that a lot as a joke. Sure. And like the- Pothead joke.

Yeah, but like you'll see an alarm clock add and like Sky Mall or something and it'll say 420. Right, because the publishers aren't paying attention. They get it. They don't know. Or they don't care. Sure. I remember years ago when we used to have a lot of illustrations on how stuff works and

had two in-house illustrators that I won't name. And remember one of them drew like a park scene for me and the tree clearly had a marijuana leaf like embedded in it. Right. And I was like, hey man, you can't do that. And he was like, oh, it was completely an accident. Right. I was like, man, I wasn't born yesterday.

Yeah. I've seen a pot leaf before. I mean, I thought it was funny, but like, you know, couldn't do that. You got anything else? I don't think so. Easy bake ovens. Mac and cheese you can bake. Oh, in 2003, they introduced the real meal oven.

And you could, that's when you could do like french fries and pizza and mac and cheese and stuff. I think that was the predecessor to the ceramic heating element that they eventually redid the easy bake in in 2006. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. If you want a nice blast from the past, just type in like easy bake oven commercials.

There's one from 1980 that was just perfect. Yeah. Was it rad? No, it was pre-rad. Oh, okay. It was like Carpenter's era. Gotcha. Which was not rad, but still lovely.

Yes. Love the Carpenter's. Me too. Well, if you want to know more about easy bake ovens or the Carpenter's or the Snoopy Snoco machine, just go onto the internet. It's a vast repository of stuff like that. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. Hey, guys. I'm a freelance writer who works remotely.

So I've been writing and traveling the world for the past year and a half. It's been wild. Since I've been traveling alone, it can get lonely. But from Mexico City to Bali to Tokyo, you guys have been with me, keeping me company, making me laugh, teaching me all kinds of cool facts. As a content writer, I also feel a connection to y'all. We both have to research seemingly mundane topics sometimes and discover the cool, interesting things about them, present them in a palatable way.

People sometimes laugh when I'm telling that I'm writing something like the history of the Egg McMuffin or the best month to buy a mattress. But I just point to your podcast as a sterling example of how gyms and surprises lie within even the most unassuming topics. Thank you. Yeah, I agree. Have you guys ever considered doing a show on digital nomadding? Never.

I know it's becoming increasingly popular as more companies embrace remote working. I'm in a cafe in Medellin, Medellin, Columbia right now, and there are five digital nomads tapping away on their laptops as we speak. They would beat me up if they knew I just referred to them as digital nomads. The future is location-independent, I say. Thanks again for being so awesome. It's a short-term dream of mine to digital nomad over to a country where you're doing a live show by you guys at Drink.

Awesome. If you do read this on the air, please give a shout out to Mark Alexander who insisted that I keep listening to you guys even after I was initially slightly turned off by all of your sides in off-tracking. Happens to a lot of people. And that's funny because we had a lot of those today. You know that reminds me of a totally unrelated story. She says now I very much learned to appreciate those.

He would burst into tears and I would too. So thank you Mark Alexander for turning on your friend, Maria Cristina La Londe. Thanks a lot. Beautiful name. Yeah. I'm sorry, La Londe. La Londe. Maria Cristina La Londe.

Beautiful. And I hope that your buddy did just burst out into tears. That'd be amazing. It's pretty neat. Thanks for that email. If you want to get in touch with us, you can find us on the web at stuffyoushouldknow.com. Check out our social links there. And if you like, send an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.