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The Legacy Of Simpsons Collectables (with The Simpsons Theory & @bartofdarkness) · Four Finger Discount (Simpsons Podcast)

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  This podcast is brought to you by Patreon dot com slash four Finger Discount,
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  home to all of our exclusive shows including Tales of Futurama, Talking Seinfeld,
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  Speaking of the Hill, The Movie Guys, and so much more. Plus
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  you also get a whole range of cromulent goodies that are short term and beg
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  in your life. So go ahead and support the show today by joining the
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  four Finger Discount family on Patreon. Hello, everybody, welcome to another episode
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  of four figure Discount Extra here on the fourth Finger Discount Network. I am
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  your host, Brendan Dando, and today I am joined by not one,
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  but two guests. Yes, these two lovely people have just announced the release
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  of their perfectly cromulent new book, It's Collecting Simpsons, the merchandise and legacy
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  of our favorite nuclear family. They are, of course, Lydia from The
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  Simpsons Theory and my man Warren Evans aka Butt of Darkness. So basically,
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  what was initially intended to just be a conversation promoting the book, it quickly
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  became just three Simpsons nerves from different corners of the globe or simply gushing over
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  at love of the show. Now need to warning, we recorded this at
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  midnight my time, So if I do sound a little bit rustier than usual,
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  you can play it on the time zone difference. But I really wanted
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  this conversation to happen, and I'm glad it did because it was a lot
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  of fun. I must say. A highlight for me was Warren describing the
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  time that he allowed one of his friends to go into his collectibles room and
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  that frame proceeded to spill a can of Simpsons energy drink all over his collectibles
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  and hilarity ensues for us anyway. But in all seriousness, though, be
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  sure to pre order their book. As I said, it's called Collecting Simpsons,
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  the Merchandise and Legacy of our favorite nuclear family. So availability right now
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  depends on where you currently live, so just give it a quick Google search
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  and I'm sure you'll find it. Also, be sure to subscribe to The
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  Simpsons Theory on YouTube and follow at Butt of Darkness on Instagram if you want
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  more lidiar and warrant in your lives. Also, if you enjoy this episode
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  and everything we do here, add four fink a discount. You can support
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  the channel to get access to our exclusive podcast, Tales of Futurama. Talking
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  communities, as well as early and ad free access to our Simpsons pods,
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  our south Park podcast, and our Friends podcast as well. But for now,
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  thank you for tuning into the show. But it's time to sit back
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  and and join my conversation with Lydia and Warren. It is pretty cool,
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  isn't it. I just thought it was just like we're covering all bases of
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  the all corners of the world. It's like a whole triangle of Simpson nerd.
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  I know, you guys have been so accommodating though, Like Warren's the
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  Cracker door and you're there the other end of the Cracker dawn and yeah,
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  it's midnight here, kids are crying out there. I was like, well,
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  you every man from himself for you guys, just handle your sales tonight.
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  My wife's gone to sleep, So I think I feel like, clearly
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  you're gonna have to handle this this this episode here of four fisc extra because
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  it's midday for you, Warren. We've dragged him out of bed. I'm
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  being kept from bed. We're both half a seat. Yeah. See,
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  but this is don't let Dan go for you, because if there's one thing
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  I learned from the last episode, this is just what he lives for.
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  This like, my man is always on a microphone. I'm not you know,
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  I'm sure he takes it to bed with him, so I'm not falling
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  for the My wife is so jealous, but hey, what are you going
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  to do? She knew this when she married me. I was listening to
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  your last Carolinamine interview and it was so good. You asked such good questions.
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  Oh thank you. I actually was kind of proud of that one because
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  I listened to one of my first interviews. I did, like I've been
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  doing this in the early twenty years now, fifteen when I started on the
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  local radio show and my first interview, I'm constantly just interrupting the interviewee,
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  trying to sort of any awkward pauses. I'm just trying to fill it with
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  something. And with the Carol and Amine when it went up just today,
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  actually I'm listening to it and I was like, there was like seven or
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  eight straight minutes where it was just her talking, and I was like,
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  you have grown up. Brendan asked the question and just let them talk and
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  as part of what she sort of you can tell she's thinking of the next
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  thing to say, And some people would try and fill that gap with oh,
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  I know what you're trying to say. It's like no, no,
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  let her think, you know, And it's just I was just sitting there
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  listening to an editing going well done. It's really hard. It's really hard
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  to remind yourself that not ever, you know, Like when I first started
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  my podcast, I had a really hard time remembering that I could edit them.
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  So I would sit there and just like really obsess over like the timing
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  or like, you know, are they comfortable, do they know what to
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  say? Like you just like think about all these things. And then once
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  you realize that the natural flow will feel exactly that it'll feel natural, interviewing
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  gets a lot easier. So I noticed that at a point too where I
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  was like, no, just like you're talking to someone, don't forget how
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  to talk to someone just because it's being recorded. Yeah, exactly, have
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  a conversation, don't interview. Yeah. Yeah, that's really like what it
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  boils down to, because I think I used to always be like, no,
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  I'm the host, I have to be the host. I have to
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  like really you know, make sure I hit all my questions. And that's
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  just not that's just not how it works. Really, yeah, I gotta
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  listen to that. I love Carolyn. She's amazing. She was just telling
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  me all these insights and I was like, do you remember you really you're
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  being recorded now right? Yeah. She's been so candid. Yeah, you
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  get all the industry secrets exactly. But Lydia, I feel like I'm not
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  letting you speak. How are you? Oh, I'm very good, thank
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  you, yeah, very good. Like I've been quite nervous. I hardly
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  ever do podcasts, so like I had to really like, yeah, yeah,
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  I've got the feeling in my head that is like a job interview.
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  So I tend to but if I yeah, just cut me off if I
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  go on a bit, but no, no, no, Lydia does great.
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  Don't listen to her. She does just fine and great. Are they
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  books or board games behind you, by the way, or a combination.
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  I've got board games down here, yeah, book books up here, and
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  I've actually got your book right here. Well, you do so much.
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  I've got some Randy somewhere. I forget that I've got a book out there
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  half the time, and it's like, so what was I set it on
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  the shelf and I'm like, that's right. You released a book. You
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  should be proud of that. Ye look at us, Look at us,
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  guys. We've all made books. Aren't we contributing to We're contributing to the
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  zeitgeist. See I feel like you guys though, So you guys have clicked
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  and the Simpsons coming out. You guys MA made this happen where I was
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  just lucky where Penguin like, can you do this for us? And I
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  was like, I guess. So, so like let's go back to you
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  know, because your book. Actually, before we start that, you've just
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  announced that I finally it was like the worst kept secret in the world in
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  the Simpsons online community, but you got you finally announced your book. How
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  pre sale is going good? I think, yeah, yeah, I think
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  we're getting quite a few comments being like, oh, we've put our order
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  in and yeah, I think. I don't know what Warren thinks, but
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  I think, I mean, it seems to be very well, Like I'm
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  waiting to hear that actual number. So you don't you don't get like regular
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  updates or anything. I mean, Lydia can speak to this maybe on her
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  first book, they got more updates I think because it's maybe they wait for
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  the official release date, but I haven't seen a number. Yeah. So
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  just but to my own like you know, analytics or whatever, from my
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  own links and just like my own like posting about it, the response seems
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  to be fantastic. So I'm very I'm very humbled and and you know,
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  excited by the response. I guess I'm not humbled because it would I'd be
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  humbled if it was bad. But I'm excited about the Yeah, I'm excited
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  about the response so far. And people that have already gotten copies, like
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  early copies, what do you really love it? It's true. I think
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  it's just the US in Canada, and I don't understand how that's possible.
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  So to anyone listening, if you got your book already, can you tell
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  us how can you grab your copy Lydia so we can hold up to the
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  camera, just so I can see it and just describe how pretty it is.
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  I've actually got one, right, here's got one as well. We
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  can both do it. Oh, I need to hold up something, look
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  at I'm gonna hold up this because the kids were listening to this on the
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  record today. You know, I don't know if people know this about me.
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  In fact, they probably don't. I've probably mentioned it on my show
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  once or twice. But I also work in a record store, and I
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  can tell you, Brendan that records like kind of valuable. No ship,
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  Yeah, this and the A it's a good hundred dollars if it's in nice
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  condition. I got this for at A. We call them op shops here,
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  I guess you guys call them like, well, the opportunity shops like
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  it's you know, the shop where secondhand stuff thrift stores. Here. Two
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  Australian dollars, which is about one dollar American. That's how much why I
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  paid for it? Wow, amazing, amazed. The kids were, Oh,
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  who's on your cup lidier, I've got Star Wars, I've got the
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  Orlando Magic team. Did you go there? I can't. I can't remember
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  his name. I should know. I've been to several Magic games living in
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  Florida. But oh, are you a basketball man? Well, there we
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  go. Here's the book. I love basketball. Yeah, all right,
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  so we hold it it lego. No, what is that? Now?
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  That's the mc McFarland. Is it? What is it? Know these are
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  these are Hamilton, Hamilton Okay, yeah, well wait, yeah, what's
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  it's big? It reminds me of sort of like I'm trying to describe to
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  the listeners, when you get like a visual history of like a movie or
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  something, thick hard cover looks like it's worth the money you're spending. Yeah,
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  I got to say that. Now that I'm holding it in my hands,
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  I do believe, you know, because when we were making the book,
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  I will say we were very concerned about the price. We're like,
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  well, we don't want this thing to get so off the rails that it's
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  a price point that people might not want to pay. So the longer you
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  work on something and the bigger it gets, you become concerned. You're like,
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  well, you know, are we going to price ourselves out of this
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  thing? So we were very like, you know, that's something we thought
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  about all along the way, and I wanted, you know, we were
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  like, it just can't be more than fifty bucks. And if it's going
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  to be more than forty bucks, it has to really feel and look worth
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  that price point. And I'm happy to say that now that I have them,
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  I think it does call me crazy, but I won't drop money on
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  a book like that unless it's a hard cover. It's something about time.
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  For sure. Covers get bent and they chabby on the shelf, but hardcovers
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  you're like, Yep, it's worth it definitely, especially for the photos because
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  I think you need something which is going to preserve the images, and I
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  think the hard bag just does a really nice job of showing it off.
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  And we've spent so long on it. We wanted it to be a really
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  good product. So even the boundings yellow so little wow, which is two
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  years. So how did it all come about? So did who approached who
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  to get this happening? So I did Warren's podcast Simpsons Is Great then and
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  Warren was saying, oh oh, I was actually promoting our last book,
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  The Simpson's Secret, and Warren was really into doing something similar but with his
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  collection. And then me and James actually went to Subway and James was like,
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  how about we work with Warren to produce a book about Simpson's merchandise.
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  So then we went to Warren and he was really stoked about it, and
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  then we pitched it to our Mango Publishing, who did our last books where
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  they based Florida Florida again. Yeah, oddly enough, so Ora could literally
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  hop over there and say hello, yeah, and then it's just yeah,
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  line gone. It was crazy because it was crazy because when you know,
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  this is something I wanted to do for a long time, and it was
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  so serendipitous, uh that Lydia came to me with this idea because I I
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  had, you know, I had this group of Simpsons collectors that I've had
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  like a group chat with on Instagram for years at this point, and uh,
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  for a while, like, I really became obsessed with this idea of
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  like, you know, sort of doing something similar to what Robert's get to
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  what Robert Gets did, And I always, I always want to give Robert
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  Gets his flowers because when I interviewed him, he told me no one had
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  ever interviewed him. I was the first person who had ever interviewed him,
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  and no one really, you know, beyond the collector community, no one
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  really knew who he was or cared about his story. And I find Robert
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  to be such an interesting guy. I love that he wanted to make a
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  book like that in the late nineties when the Simpsons was still such a new
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  thing and he already saw the potential for this, you know, a book
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  about the merchandise. He just saw that this was like a good idea,
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  and those books are still like the Bible to so many collectors. I said
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  this to him. I was like, you don't understand, like, these
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  books are the reason so many people, including myself know about a lot of
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  this stuff, because there's not really a database anymore for this stuff outside of
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  your books other than just Google if you know what it's called, and you
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  can look for it. So talking to Robert, I really got wrapped up
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  in this idea of like, no, someone needs to do this, this
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  updated book. And Robert even joked with me that I or me or someone
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  should do one. So I told this group I was like, no,
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  I'm going to do a book someday. I'm not sure how or what I
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  want it to be, but I'm determined to take sort of what I do
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  with the Instagram and eventually do a book. And so this idea was like
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  so hot in my mind. But I was like, well, I'm working
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  on a lot of stuff, so you know, I got to get this
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  plan together and it was you know, within a year of that interview,
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  Lydia was like, hey, you know me and James were talking about this,
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  like would you want to do a book with us? And my immediate
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  response was like are you kidding? Of course, like you know what,
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  what's the plan? So it was just you know, not not to get
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  all you know, emotional, but it was like meant to be and I
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  you know, I'm glad I got to do it with James and Lydia.
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  They were like the perfect partners to make this book. So I'm really proud
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  of everything that came out of it. So if you need to do a
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  book about Australian fans, let's all work together and somehow make that happen.
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  Australia seems like the coolest place on earth to me. Seriously, it's like
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  one of my most I want to visit. Australia is so bad. I'll
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  ask you for some tips. Well, you look at to a couple of
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  beds, he can stay here, say or more ye sleep We're in the
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  same bed with like you know, kids and shit, right yeah, top
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  and tail, sleep with your microphone yeah yeah. So yeah. So basically,
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  Lydia, you went to Sideway, you had your lunch, you thought,
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  yeah, let's contact Warren. Made it happen. Then what do you
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  do? So what was the first step to make in this book a reality?
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  You obviously approached and they said, yes, go out and make this
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  book. What was the first first thing you guys did? You sat down
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  and mapped out what you're going to do, because you said to me,
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  Warren that you age did sections or something, So who did what? Yeah?
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  So the first thing we did was we hopped on a call and we
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  wanted to vaguely cover everything we wanted to do in this book because obviously Simpsons
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  merchandise, it spans across everything and decades, so we wanted to focus on
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  particular niches to like fashion, toys, comics, kind of segment it like
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  that. But after doing the initial plan, we then started to flesh out
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  a bit more as and when Warren and Caroline took photos, we could then
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  write around the photos we had. But yeah, lots of back and forwards
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  across time zones and Zoom, Like this book should be sponsored by Zoom because
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  it did a lot of the legwork for us. But this technology I have
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  never heard of riverside. But yeah, so but yes, continue sorry oh
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  yeah yeah, yeah so so yeah, so we had the vague plan and
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  then we each started writing our own sections because we wanted to have our own
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  tone of voice. But we didn't want to talk for all three of us
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  because we'd start talking about memories that, you know, Warren didn't necessarily have
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  or James necessarily had. So we decided the best way to go about it
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  was to each pick our topics. So Warren had toys to kick everything off
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  with, which was really good because it had the timeline across how that merchandise
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  changed, and then I took fashion, James took comics, and then we
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  distributed the other chapters amongst ourselves, which made it easier when we wanted to
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  swap each other's work because it kind of segmented it a bit, so we
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  weren't looking at one big chunk of writing. And yeah, hopefully it works
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  really well, and it's quite nice. At the beginning of every chapter,
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  it's got our names, so you can kind of tell whose memories are which,
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  And yeah, it made it a lot easier, I think. I
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  think if we try to do it any other way across continents, it just
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  wouldn't have worked. So this was the best. Yeah, So did you
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  include absolutely everything that you could or was it just a case of with h
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  category picked the most notable. Well, it's crazy because you know, and
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  I love what Lydia said about because that was sort of our thinking of,
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  like, well, if we're gonna speak from a personal place, people need
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  to know who this is coming from. And like, while I feel like
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  our writing compliments each other very well and it feels cohesive, it just makes
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  sense to know who is telling you about each things. So I really,
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  I really like the way she put that. But you know, at first,
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  I was like, all right, I'm going to try to make note
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  of all the stuff that people kind of know about, the big ones,
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  you know, you have the Playmates, Dandy Mattel, like the stuff that
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  people really know. But I'm also along the line gonna gonna use my collector
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  brain and say, well, there's also some other things that collectors always talk
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  about, so like more known things among just like collectors, so street kids
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  or you know, McFarlane or Hamilton or whatever. So I was like,
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  I have to find a balance, because if I try to talk about every
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  toy, you know, we're screwed. Like we're never gonna get there.
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  It's impossible. And and at that point, if you miss anything it's a
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  big deal because it looks like you're trying to do everything, and so you
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  just open yourself up to more scrutiny. So we sort of accepted early on,
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  like let's tell the story of the stuff that we can and let's just
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  show people, No, this was a crazy thing. Like no matter what
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  people feel about the Simpsons or when they got off the train, they have
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  to realize like, no, this is like, no, very few people
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  on earth, very few companies did what the Simpsons did, like they they
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  did it all like everything you know, for your house, for your bathroom,
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  for your kitchen. It's like a crazy thing. Yes, I would
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  love to know, like if someone has actually done the math to see who
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  has more, it has to be one of the most merchandise things, if
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  not top three, of all time. So we just wanted to show people
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  that, like no, like there's this whole culture around the fashion, around
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  the bootlegs, there's all these fast foot you know, fast food promotions,
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  there's all these comics, there's all these books. So we just wanted to,
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  you know, open that up because collectors know, but there's also stuff
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  that collectors don't know about, and there's a lot of stuff that just the
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  general public don't know about. So if anything, this is like an introduction
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  to that world. Yeah, And the way I approached my fashion chapter,
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  I thought, well, there's no way it's interesting enough to talk about every
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  single Simpsons T shirt. So I chose like the band bought Simpsons T shirt
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  and how it sets the tone of Bart mania in the early nineties, and
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  then I was able to then link that to the exposure of bootleg Bart merchandise
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  and then lead that into like how streetwear was partly inspired by the Simpsons,
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  because that was also a subgenre of fashion that was really come into fritition in
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  the early nineties. So like, the way I approached this fashion chapter was
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  I kind of picked four key products and then linked them in a way,
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  and then if there was a story which I found really interesting about one item,
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  then I'd probably just have that by itself. But otherwise I tried to
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  make it quite Yeah. Yeah, linear, I think if you guys tried
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  to include everything as well, you did and you wouldn't be able to.
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  Like you said, but you get like the genius of work saying, well,
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  you do realize that you missed this, you know, collectible from nineteen
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  ninety seven, like you just you don't you want to avoid that at all
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  costs. It's just here's more like a loving tribute to merchandise as opposed to
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  every and don't don't get it twisted. Like I've already been hard on myself
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  about this book at times, because you know, you work on something for
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  so long, you start to obsess over it and you want every little thing
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  to be perfect, which is impossible with anything that you do. It goes
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  back to what we said about podcasts, Like in the beginning, you're like,
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  no, this has to be perfect every episode. I have to do
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  it a certain way, I have to edit it a certain way. It
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  just has to be perfect. And so, you know, I could look
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  back at the book today and go, well, you know, maybe I
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  could have done this, or maybe I could have taken this and turn it
• 20:23
  into its own chat. You know, you start thinking of all you sort
• 20:26
  of what they say here in America Monday Morning quarterback, where you like you
• 20:30
  explain all the things your team did wrong on Sunday to everyone else, like
• 20:33
  you're on the team. So there's things that I you know, you can
• 20:38
  always find like oh what if we did this, or what if we did
• 20:41
  that. But when you're working with a property this large, you just have
• 20:45
  to cover what ground you can in a way that makes sense. And I
• 20:48
  love you know, like Lydia said, the chapter about fashion is not so
• 20:52
  much about the history of the of the fashion in terms of like here's a
• 20:55
  shirt, here's a shirt, here's a shirt. It's like telling you stories
• 20:57
  that maybe you don't know about, like what a controversy that early merchandise was
• 21:03
  for the show. And so I think the book weaves that in in a
• 21:06
  nice way where it's like, no, there is a timeline, there is
• 21:08
  like history about the different factions of merch but there's also you know, it's
• 21:14
  not just a collector guide, it's it's stories and history as well. So
• 21:18
  there is like you know, I think you walk away and you learn something,
• 21:22
  or it looks nice on your coffee table when you just look at the
• 21:25
  beautiful photos that are friend Caroline Walker Evans took. So that's the other thing.
• 21:30
  It's kind of serves two purposes. If you want to just look at
• 21:32
  cool photos, there's a lot of that. There's pages that have no words,
• 21:36
  so you kind of have a little bit of everything in this book.
• 21:37
  And I think that's why, regardless of anything, you know, we're super
• 21:41
  proud of how it turned out. So it's kind of like the visual history
• 21:45
  of since it mechandise, and that's what you're saying essentially, when it's just
• 21:48
  it tells the story of it. Yeah, and especially like it, you
• 21:52
  know, in a broad way, because you have to show people like there
• 21:57
  were times where there were there were and as much merch you know, there
• 22:00
  were times where you know, there was a lull in this or a lull
• 22:04
  in that, and there was a lot more of this and less of that.
• 22:07
  And I think that that's why you have to talk about not just the
• 22:10
  toys, but you have to talk about the comics, you have to talk
• 22:12
  about the books, you have to talk about all these little the video games.
• 22:15
  You have to talk about these little facets that some people. You know,
• 22:19
  I've talked to a million people even since the book has been done,
• 22:23
  and they'd been like, wow, you know, I didn't realize there were
• 22:26
  this many video games, and so especially especially and I will say like some
• 22:33
  chapters cover more ground than others, Like we we do talk about basically every
• 22:37
  video game, because at that point, it's like why skip over one if
• 22:41
  you're going to talk about most of them anyway. So there, you know,
• 22:45
  there's moments where we get super deep into it, but then there's moments
• 22:48
  where it is kind of skipping around and just showing you the scope. And
• 22:51
  I think that that mix kind of works. There will still be someone out
• 22:53
  there, I'm confident that will complain that I didn't talk more about X,
• 22:57
  Y or Z. But that's you know, you do what you can.
• 23:03
  If this book were any bigger, it wouldn't fit on a shelf. So
• 23:07
  that's a good way to put it. Give us a tea, Give us
• 23:10
  a teas Lydia. So you mentioned the band bart shirt there, give us
• 23:12
  a little bit of a little story there, like why was the band and
• 23:15
  what was the shirt? So in nineteen ninety I believe it was a scol
• 23:19
  in a hio called Likes Lots Elementary and basically this principles called Principal Crumb Now
• 23:27
  something Principal Crumb Now and he was sitting behind his desk and he had loads
• 23:33
  of complaints from parents about this new show, The Simpsons, and I think
• 23:37
  within like the PTOs and stuff, it was a big discussion into it.
• 23:40
  If this is a good influence on our kids, and it got to the
• 23:44
  point where the principal finally put his foot down and he saw that there was
• 23:47
  this growing number of kids in the school that would wear these Bart Simpson t
• 23:49
  shirts. And there was one in particular that said underachiever and proud of it.
• 23:55
  And it's got him holding a slingshot directly at the person looking at it.
• 24:00
  And for him, he felt like it was a big political statement,
• 24:04
  which is partly why I think the kids were drawn to it, because there
• 24:07
  was no other character before that had that presence. But yeah, they just
• 24:11
  saw it as like needless rebellions, and they banned it, and then it
• 24:15
  got banned across different states across America. And there's a really funny article by
• 24:19
  ABC News where they interviewed different children about what they thought about it. And
• 24:25
  you had like a Bart Simpson kid who had like the backwards cab. He
• 24:29
  probably had like a sling shot in his pocket and he was like, we're
• 24:32
  not going to act like Bart Simpson. And then you had like a goodie
• 24:33
  goody, really lovely boy who was just like you shouldn't you should be proud
• 24:38
  of being an underachiever. It was a really interest. And then also you
• 24:44
  had the Simpsons reactions of it. I think Nancy Cartwright spoke to Warren about
• 24:48
  partly why Bart was so frightener he was so threatening to parents, yeah and
• 24:57
  yeah, so yeah so. But luckily, I think as it died down,
• 25:02
  I think because that was the spark of the popularity of The Simpsons,
• 25:06
  and then as people were starting to get more and more not numb, but
• 25:08
  desensitized to it as a cartoon, it kind of like, like, I
• 25:15
  don't know, it just kind of set up, isn't the funny? How
• 25:17
  like teens had Kirk Cobain and kids had Bart Simpson. Yes, I mean
• 25:21
  listens. As the one American on this call, I can say I remember
• 25:25
  that very well. And uh, you know, my brother was a little
• 25:29
  older than me and my mom, you know, we grew up with a
• 25:33
  single mom and I've told this story of my podcast before, so she didn't
• 25:37
  really have a lot of time to monitor what we were watching. I might
• 25:38
  have even said this to Brendan, but like she bought us Bart shirts because
• 25:42
  she was like, oh, this is what the kids like. And uh,
• 25:45
  you know, my mom also is very cool, and she she never
• 25:49
  really bought into like the alarmist stuff like you know when people were saying like,
• 25:53
  oh, video games make your kids violent, or music makes your kids
• 25:57
  violent, or TV show everywhere everything major kids violent or angryer vegetables, Mackey
• 26:02
  kids bond right. My mom never really bought into that, and I give
• 26:07
  her a lot of credit in that regard. So, but I remember like
• 26:11
  teachers getting very mad about these shirts and being like, you need to turn
• 26:15
  that inside out or you know. I don't think my school banned them,
• 26:18
  but it was like a huge you know, kids got in trouble for wearing
• 26:21
  certain shirts because again, and I can sort of understand as an adult,
• 26:26
  why maybe you don't want your kid wearing a shirt that says I'm Bart Simpson,
• 26:30
  Who the hell are you to school? As cool as I think it
• 26:34
  is, I can understand why some parents are like, hey, maybe we
• 26:37
  need to see what this shows about you know. So that but that's it's
• 26:42
  all lost to time now because then we got South Park and Family Guy,
• 26:45
  and now The Simpsons feels like a kittie cat in a zoom, So it's
• 26:49
  nothing. It's funny. I went through my old family album the other day
• 26:52
  and as a fano of it would be what nine year old me, so
• 26:56
  I'm like, I'm not a little kid, but I'm still a kid,
• 26:59
  and I'm wearing this Cottman ship that just says kick ass. And I'm like,
• 27:02
  what we thinking? Like, you wouldn't be watched the Simpsons tall six
• 27:06
  wear a kick ass ship with cotton on it? What? Was it?
• 27:11
  A really formal family portrait as well? Yeah, but it's funny how you
• 27:19
  sort of touching on the bandbox. So that's just basically what they're obviously touching
• 27:22
  on in Team Homer with a damn with homework. Yeah. Yeah, people
• 27:26
  people were different back then. Man, They like really got worked up about
• 27:30
  this sort of thing. And I think it's like an interesting part of our
• 27:33
  of you know, culture, uh in general, that there's always gonna be
• 27:37
  these things that make people mad. I mean, they blamed beave us some
• 27:41
  butthead for like a kid lighting his mom's trailer on fire, they blamed the
• 27:45
  show for that. And you know, obviously some kids are gonna be You
• 27:49
  can you can impress upon a child, like an idea if they grow up
• 27:52
  in a in a certain circumstance, things are gonna affect them. But also
• 27:56
  kids are pretty smart, man, Like I have two friends that are teachers
• 28:00
  and kids are smarter than ever, and I think that this idea that like
• 28:04
  they they believe everything they see to be something they should do, or like
• 28:11
  you know, the kids are just immediately tricked into believing everything they see.
• 28:15
  I just think I'm glad to see that that's sort of you know, changing
• 28:18
  as the narrative like people are like, no, actually, kids are pretty
• 28:21
  bright and they like they understand this stuff earlier than you think they do.
• 28:23
  So I think that that's a cool thing about the shifting you know, existence
• 28:27
  we have. Also, I think around that time you also had like even
• 28:30
  the president of the United States was saying something like being more like the Walton's
• 28:34
  less like the Simpsons. So I guess the adults which the news would see
• 28:37
  that and be like, oh my god, they're a danger to our society.
• 28:41
  And hopefully now people are a lot less I don't know, impressionable to
• 28:45
  like the politic the political view of a president. So yeah, I mean
• 28:49
  he also only won one term, so no one likes being that graining at
• 28:57
  that time, just like you know, you little and then you're on the
• 29:00
  news for you you're causing a revolution with children, you know. The presidents
• 29:06
  told me about you. That's just it's amazing wild and so early too,
• 29:08
  yes, so early into the show, you know, it's just nuts and
• 29:12
  it kind of quickly didn't just drop off, but like the fad came and
• 29:17
  went so fast. You know, I don't understand what causes that other than
• 29:22
  you know, I think the more parents saw the show, they realized that
• 29:26
  that things like that shirt were like, you know, obviously they were present
• 29:32
  in Bart's personality, but they were not the point of the show. It's
• 29:36
  not like every episode was Bart like destroying something or you know, terrorizing his
• 29:42
  teacher. I think people started to realize the heart the show actually had,
• 29:47
  and so that initial outrage sort of just died down. And I think that's
• 29:52
  like that happens with a lot of shows, is people just assume things based
• 29:55
  on like one metric. Yeah, a question we get asked all the time.
• 29:59
  I'm gonna let you answer. I'm sick of of saying it in my
• 30:00
  inbox, so you just tell the listeners, now, Warren, why was
• 30:03
  it a blue shirt? And don't orange shit? Okay, Well, I'm
• 30:07
  actually glad that you that you asked that, because we do. I talk
• 30:11
  about that a little bit in the book because I think that main point of
• 30:15
  confusion comes from just just this assumption that people had for a long time that
• 30:22
  like that was a bootleg carryover, and in reality, like the earliest versions
• 30:26
  of Bart, like the way Matt drew them in the beginning, like he
• 30:30
  wore a blue shirt, like his initial design, he had a blue shirt
• 30:33
  on. And I think what it really boils down to is that in those
• 30:37
  early days, and Bill Morrison told me this as well, licensees were just
• 30:42
  they wanted more options. They wanted to be able to like, you know,
• 30:47
  well, you know, a red shirt or an orange shirt doesn't really
• 30:49
  work with our packaging. Can we can we change that? Can we do
• 30:52
  something else? And back then the show was so new, they just didn't
• 30:56
  see why not. And also because the show didn't fully exist yet, like
• 31:02
  people got to remember they were outside of the shorts, like you know,
• 31:07
  there weren't a lot of reference for these toys, and they started developing,
• 31:11
  especially like companies like Dandee they started, you know, developing these toys in
• 31:15
  eighty nine, if not sooner. So the show wasn't even on TV yet,
• 31:19
  and so this whole thing about the shirt just didn't seem like a big
• 31:22
  deal. And if they're looking at reference and they're looking at things that do
• 31:26
  exist, they're like, oh, this blue shirt looks nice. That would
• 31:29
  probably look nicer on the packaging against this green background or against this white background.
• 31:34
  So it really was just a product of being so early, and I
• 31:40
  think beyond that, they used it in the comics and certain things for a
• 31:42
  while because they just could, and it just was like, oh, it
• 31:45
  kind of separates this universe a little bit. So, yeah, you used
• 31:51
  to read online that that it was like a way to trick bootleggers, like,
• 31:53
  oh, they'll know the real ones have a blue shirt, and that's
• 31:56
  all made up. I don't know who came up with that theory, but
• 31:59
  there's like no truth to that at all. It was truly just they had
• 32:01
  a more laid back attitude. Then, have you done a video on that
• 32:05
  theory yet? Video? No, not yet, but being more gonna do
• 32:08
  a video where they're gonna be on boxing it and talking about it. So
• 32:12
  I think we should probably pick out the most not the most interesting, but
• 32:15
  like things like that the Simpsons fans really want to know and probably have mixed
• 32:20
  messaging about, so I think we should definitely do I think that's a good
• 32:23
  idea that. I mean, it's funny that Brennan talks about getting that question
• 32:25
  a lot, because that used to be like the most common question I would
• 32:30
  get asked. Like it's such a point of of you know, confusion for
• 32:36
  people when it comes to the merchandise. But if I'm being honest, I
• 32:39
  think it's more funny that people are always so confused about the blue shirt.
• 32:44
  But no one talks about how Bart's shirt was originally orange and over time it
• 32:51
  became red, and no one talks about that, And personally, I prefer
• 32:54
  the orange and wish it was still orange like on the show. Now it's
• 32:58
  just it's tomato red. But in those early seasons it was straight up orange.
• 33:02
  I swear it's a little orange or in your I mean maybe maybe it's
• 33:07
  a blue dress white dress thing. I'm going to I'm going to google Bart
• 33:09
  Simpson's season thirty five and see what comes up. Right now, Yeah,
• 33:13
  because if you look at him next to Lisa, now they're wearing the same
• 33:16
  color. But if you go back and look at like, you know,
• 33:21
  Barth the Genius or something, it's it's orange. I mean I'm looking at
• 33:23
  it. It's a very different. It's not not a light orange, but
• 33:27
  it's a it's a little off Lisa's dress, but it's it's yeah, it's
• 33:32
  almost like a salmon. Yes it is. Yeah, it's not. It's
• 33:36
  not the light orange from the first season like you're saying now it is now
• 33:39
  it is like bright red. It's like, you know, really really really
• 33:44
  red. Speaking to thirty five, you guys been watching it keeping up the
• 33:45
  date. Absolutely, I've watched the first three. I haven't watched TSAR yet.
• 33:52
  It doesn't drop till time. Are we sure that we want to talk
• 33:54
  about this so we don't alienate listeners or because I go, okay, I'll
• 34:01
  take if you don't want to listen to us talking about that, go and
• 34:04
  never return. There you go, Well, I will say this, and
• 34:07
  I'll take a quick aside from just the general discussion in the book and all
• 34:12
  that to talk about one thing. Anyone listening to this, and I'm gonna
• 34:16
  address this on my show as well. This is this has been driving me
• 34:20
  nuts. Anyone that believes this whole fake story going around about how Homer's not
• 34:25
  going to strangle Bart anymore, Let me just put it. Let me just
• 34:29
  put that, Let me put your mind at ease. It's clickbait. It's
• 34:32
  not real. Uh, Homer hasn't really strangled Bart in a few seasons anyway,
• 34:38
  But there was no decision to like stop doing it. It's just how
• 34:44
  many times do you need to see that joke? But literally, in the
• 34:47
  next episode following the one where people claimed he announced he wasn't gonna do it
• 34:53
  anymore, he did it. So to anyone that believed that article, it's
• 34:58
  not real. And I made a post about this the other day that I
• 35:01
  actually archived because the comment section got so out of hand. Mostly positive,
• 35:07
  I will say, but there were just some some people got it to their
• 35:10
  second or third burner account and we're just really good under my skin. So
• 35:14
  I took it. I took it down after I made my point. But
• 35:17
  this is like such a big topic in the community now I feel the need
• 35:21
  to say it here on four Finger Discount. It's not real, no,
• 35:24
  of course. But the new season is good. There's like, you know,
• 35:28
  there's been episodes of like more than other ones, but it's been solid.
• 35:30
  There's been a lot of clickbait as well. If the Simpsons have killed
• 35:34
  off a famous character and it's like it's trans of Horria idiot, but they
• 35:40
  don't know the show. It's it's just some intern. He's probably never watched
• 35:45
  the Simpsons. That's the thing. I was thinking about this the other day.
• 35:46
  I'm like, are we going to be the last generation that really watched
• 35:50
  the Simpsons? Because like my son, he's not going to be raised on
• 35:53
  the Simpsons unless I actually force it down his throat. So like, will
• 35:57
  the Simpsons even be a thing in twenty years? You know? Yeah?
• 36:00
  Well, James's nephew, Xavier, he loves the Simpsons and because you show
• 36:06
  him though, because you show him exactly. Yeah, he never waited for
• 36:08
  it at like a certain time every week. Yeah, but he still enjoys
• 36:14
  it. And we like buying him the comics now, so hopefully we can
• 36:17
  pass the torch. Are you getting your kids to? Why? Kids?
• 36:21
  Now? So we're dancing to I was holding this up to seeing the Blues
• 36:23
  alopit listens, That's all I was holding it before for you guys, because
• 36:25
  the kids were dancing around to it. And then Elliott today goes, can
• 36:29
  I start doing your Simpsons show with you? And I was like, oh,
• 36:30
  my heart, you should. Oh we're going to Yeah, we're going
• 36:37
  to start doing just like a daddy son show. I mean, it's not
• 36:39
  going to be a really in depth podcast, which is going to be father
• 36:43
  and son talking about The Simpsons, him me reliving him watching the show for
• 36:46
  the first time. You know, amazing. I love that idea. Brennan
• 36:51
  cannot stay off the Mac, like I said before, he's obsessed with the
• 36:54
  Mac. I will say, Man, I kind of feel the opposite.
• 36:59
  I do think that young kids love the show and the I see. To
• 37:04
  me, the evidence is in the fact that it's still you know, rates
• 37:07
  as well as it does. Because that can't all just be people like us,
• 37:13
  Like I know that there's like younger generations that love Bob's Burgers and they
• 37:16
  love these other animated shows that are more recent that still watch the show,
• 37:22
  and they probably I've noticed in years past there are kids of a certain age
• 37:27
  that prefer newer seasons. They think they look better, the jokes are more
• 37:30
  for them. And this is like an argument that I've made so many times
• 37:36
  to like old bitter idiots that have nothing better to do than complain in comment
• 37:39
  sections about new Simpsons. It's not all for us, like the episodes that
• 37:45
  we loved as kids are because we were kids, they speak to our generation
• 37:52
  watching it. Yeah, that's it totally, And those jokes are for our
• 37:55
  generation. As the show grows, those jokes can't always be for us,
• 38:00
  Like it might annoy us that they make an episode about like you know,
• 38:05
  twitch streaming or TikTok or something, but that's what kids are into. Like
• 38:09
  do you want them to only make jokes about like Richard Nixon? Like to
• 38:14
  me that just like that idea is so broken that you think the show has
• 38:17
  to only be for you at all times and that's why you hate it.
• 38:22
  So that's you know, that's another thing that, like making a book like
• 38:25
  this, you have to navigate is like will this attract everyone or will it
• 38:30
  just attract people like me? So like we really try to think about that
• 38:35
  in terms of the book too. So that's that's the ever you know,
• 38:37
  the ever going battle of being a Simpsons fan in twenty twenty three. But
• 38:42
  if you haven't watched the show recently, though, it's definitely worth watching the
• 38:45
  new season because you can genuinely tell that they're putting in It's a whole sort
• 38:47
  of mentality shift of the show. I feel like it's gone back to It's
• 38:51
  not back to its roots, but kind of back to its roots where it
• 38:53
  feels like, you know, home is not the ignorant husband anymore. They
• 38:58
  feel like a loving family again. Yeah, yeah, I think a lot
• 39:00
  of that has to do with like Carolinamine may have having a bit more input.
• 39:05
  I guess she's stepping away from being a co show or whatever. It
• 39:07
  seems to be a really nice balance between the really funny episodes as well as
• 39:12
  like the really family yea heart wrenching ones and yeah, Midchild is my dream,
• 39:17
  like would go down as like one of my favorite March stories. It
• 39:21
  was so good. I actually feel like going back and revisiting because I hadn't
• 39:24
  watch The Simpsons as often as I used to since I've been doing the show
• 39:27
  as well. Same Wren, But I feel like now being not just a
• 39:30
  parent but also just a husband and revisiting those first nine seasons, I feel
• 39:35
  like I'll just experience them through a whole new set of eyes, because you
• 39:38
  know, I'll relate more to the Homer and Marge stories now than the Bart
• 39:42
  and Lisa ones. Same totally. It's such an interesting thing about the show
• 39:45
  is that I think you grow with the characters, and you know, That's
• 39:51
  something that I've said before too. I think you appreciate different things about the
• 39:54
  show that order you get. Like when I was a kid, I obviously
• 39:57
  didn't care as much about Lisa. In fact, she probably annoyed me a
• 40:00
  little bit when I was little, Like I was like, oh, you
• 40:04
  Bart's you know, I'm like Bart and Homer's funny. You know, he's
• 40:07
  dumb and my just mom when we all love Mountain. Yeah, right,
• 40:10
  the older I get, I'm like, no, Lisa is the best character.
• 40:14
  She's the most well rounded and grounded character, and you know, no
• 40:20
  bias here. I love Yardley. I also think she's one of the best
• 40:22
  actors on the show, and it just her delivery is always so special.
• 40:28
  But I think you appreciate that kind of stuff more, and you appreciate the
• 40:31
  side characters more. You appreciate these little elements of the story more the older
• 40:36
  you get, because when you're a kid, you're just like, oh,
• 40:37
  Bart made something explode. That's so funny. And I think that's what's so
• 40:42
  special about it and why people should revisit seasons they thought that they hated.
• 40:45
  Because also if you thought you hated season fifteen or season sixteen or whatever it
• 40:51
  is. You know, who knows where you were at in your life when
• 40:54
  that season was on, you might go back to it now and be like,
• 40:57
  damn, this is actually pretty good. And I've heard people have that
• 41:00
  exact experience. So I think that that is like one of the reasons people
• 41:05
  have to like change this narrative that the Internet has convinced them of is because
• 41:10
  it wouldn't still be here if no one cared. Uh, and this whole
• 41:14
  like it's already dead blah blah blah, like stop, Like if it were
• 41:17
  already dead, then they wouldn't still get people wouldn't still watch it, and
• 41:22
  we wouldn't be in season thirty five. And that's why I laugh so much
• 41:25
  when people go, well, at this point, it's just about money,
• 41:28
  and I go, well, if no one's likely been, how is it
• 41:30
  making money? Yeah? How how is it making money if nobody watches it?
• 41:35
  Like, your own argument collapses when you say that it makes no sense.
• 41:37
  The whole point of a show is to make money, though, So
• 41:40
  what is your point? Sure? Yeah? Yeah, like what you think
• 41:44
  that they like they made these in their garage. It's a real show.
• 41:47
  Of course, of course, money is an element, you know, yes,
• 41:51
  yeah, but I feel like you want to talk about to the book
• 41:53
  or do you want to keepalking about season thirty five? Ye, let's talk
• 41:55
  about the book. I You know, anyone that's listened to me before knows
• 42:00
  that when I get on this topic, I can go, well, it's
• 42:04
  just because it's just because they brought up the choking thing, right, And
• 42:07
  it's like, we're currently reviewing season eighteen. We've got an chronologe glorder,
• 42:10
  right, so we're on season eighteen at the moment, and he's barely doing
• 42:14
  it then anyway, and when he does do it, Guy and I are
• 42:16
  both like, this GAG's so old and stupid. Why are we still doing
• 42:20
  this in season eighteen? Yeah, people are annoyed that they apparently he supposedly
• 42:23
  stopped doing it in season thirty five. It's like it was it's a stupid
• 42:28
  joke anyway, Why do you care as a joke? And the fact that
• 42:30
  the people complaining don't watch the show anyway, so why exactly why do you
• 42:35
  care? Exactly? Yes, all those people that click that article about strangling,
• 42:38
  but they're the same people that probably click about, you know, the
• 42:42
  simptons to predicting the future. It's just like a quick yes, just to
• 42:46
  jump on the bandwagon again. I don't know, right, No, you're
• 42:51
  exactly rightly, that's what it is. These people are just already mad,
• 42:53
  and they're like, see, I told you it sucked. It's becoming this,
• 42:57
  and it's becoming that these people are not The show hasn't been for them
• 43:01
  ever. Really, yeah, it's me. But so with your fashion section
• 43:07
  of the book, Lydia, do you own many Simpsons shirts or dresses or
• 43:10
  anything. Do you own much Simpsons clothing yourself? Well, I really want
• 43:15
  Warren's vintage T shirts because I've only really got one, and my oldest two
• 43:20
  thousand and one, so it's not very old. But I look at all
• 43:23
  the collections from like H and M and Adidas or Addidas, and yeah,
• 43:30
  I've got a few. I've got a few, but I can't say that
• 43:31
  my collection is as amazing as Warren's. I've got like a few random jumpers,
• 43:36
  but typically when I go into the stores, they tend to just put
• 43:39
  like the PNG's that we see on Google images on a T shirt or embroidered
• 43:44
  onto a jumper, right, and they don't have that special color combination that
• 43:49
  the older ones do or the designs. So if I saw a really good
• 43:52
  one, like I've got a cute like pink Krusty one cycling on a bike
• 43:57
  embroidered there, then I would. Otherwise I've got some I'm going to keep
• 44:02
  an eye out for you, Lydia. Don't worry. I'll eventually find some
• 44:06
  stuff that I can pass on to you. I'll work on that. I
• 44:10
  mean, one thing I will say that's interesting about the merchandise is that if
• 44:15
  you really dig deep, you'll realize that the team will admit that they were
• 44:20
  taking notes from bootleg culture. Because the bootlegs happened so early, they sort
• 44:25
  of realized, like, no, people like this sort of edgy rough thing.
• 44:30
  And I think that's another reason that that early merch is so special,
• 44:34
  because they they understood like who wanted it and what who was attracted to that
• 44:38
  sort of energy. So I think it's one of the coolest things in history
• 44:42
  is that merch. And I wish that mine didn't just sit in a drawer.
• 44:45
  You wear it, wear proud. Some of them. I just can't
• 44:50
  bring myself to like I have some like I have a Bartman, like the
• 44:53
  original Bartman shirt in nineteen eighty nine with the tags still on it, like
• 44:59
  I just can't. I can't wear that, Like I have to just keep
• 45:02
  that to put in a time capsule or something. What would you do if
• 45:05
  your lovely wife just accidentally the tag off that one day and I'll chuck it
• 45:07
  through the wash? Uh? You know, I don't like to think about
• 45:14
  the sort of breakdown that I would have in that in that moment. Yeah,
• 45:20
  yeah, I've had I've I had a friend once come over and check
• 45:23
  out the room, and uh, you know, a long story shorty,
• 45:27
  he accidentally knocked over an energy drink that was sealed, and it exploded mostly
• 45:32
  onto my cabinet of Simpson shirts. Most of the really rare ones were safe.
• 45:40
  A couple of them had to be washed. It's kind of funny,
• 45:45
  but it's not. It's kind of funny trying to envision the situation in your
• 45:51
  face and him panicking and just like a Benny Hill show, just so I
• 45:55
  kept telling him like, no, it's fine, don't worry about it,
• 45:58
  It's totally okay. And in the moment when he was gone, I was
• 46:00
  like freaking out. It was bad. And to this day I still find
• 46:07
  residue on like random toys from that energy drink. Dude, it's fine,
• 46:13
  it's fun. Why are you throwing up? Why are you throwing up?
• 46:17
  It could have just been nuclear energy drink that just fizzles everything, it disintegrates.
• 46:22
  So then now I got rid of every energy drink after that. I
• 46:28
  took them all. I put them all on the ground. Ye. I
• 46:30
  was like, this can never happen. So I'm not, no, how
• 46:34
  did that happen? Take me through that situation. So you've invited a friend
• 46:37
  of Hi'm assuming gonna be a very special person to be allowed in the room
• 46:39
  in the first places. As long as you're not an idiot, I'll let
• 46:44
  you in. But uh, yeah, so he gets in and uh he's
• 46:47
  just looking around, and he's looking very intently, and you know, he
• 46:52
  like leans. I will say. At the time, I had like more
• 46:54
  stuff on the ground than usual because I was like sort of reorganizing some stuff.
• 46:59
  So he did have an op stackle or two, I will say.
• 47:01
  But he was, you know, looking around very intently and just kind of
• 47:05
  checking everything out, and he just like his elbow just grazed this duve energy
• 47:09
  drink that was on like this sort of like duff section of a shelf that
• 47:13
  I have and it hit the ground and just you know, volcano just exploded
• 47:19
  out of the top. Your instant thought at that moment, what do you
• 47:22
  what's going through your mind at that As soon as you say that happening,
• 47:24
  I honestly probably I was probably frozen for a good, like, you know,
• 47:30
  sixty seconds, just like unable to move or talk. But I just
• 47:34
  immediately grabbed towels and was trying to like, I don't think. It's honestly
• 47:37
  one of the most anxious moments of my life, because I didn't really know
• 47:40
  what to do. Like I was like, now I'm gonna to take all
• 47:44
  this out in this corner and clean it. And then I realized it was
• 47:47
  on some of the shirts. It was like, I'm not gonna say it
• 47:51
  was like one of the worst days of my life. But it's like not
• 47:53
  far off the top ten, you know, It's like it's in the top
• 47:55
  fifteen. Probably. I've kept it from when I was a kid. Right,
• 48:00
  I've got like an original megazo parentage Megazot that I had since I was
• 48:02
  a kid, So I've got that ninety three, right, So we're talking
• 48:06
  what thirty years. You know, I showed my son Alliott last year he
• 48:09
  was like four at the time, and he holds it and then I kid
• 48:15
  you not little shit had it for like twenty seconds and he snapped the leg
• 48:19
  off. And I'm like, thirty years I had this. You took less
• 48:24
  than thirty seconds to break it. It's just it's gone in an instant.
• 48:30
  And my wife's like, what do you expect this four? And I'm like,
• 48:32
  I know. I got it when I was four, and I managed
• 48:36
  to keep it for thirty years. I managed to not destroy it in thirty
• 48:42
  years and it took him thirty But it's like unbelievable. I can relate to
• 48:45
  I can relate to your feeling. It's like I don't want to yell.
• 48:49
  I'm not angry. I'm just really sad. But I don't want to make
• 48:52
  it again. I want him in the face. I have to. I
• 48:54
  mean I could, but just didn't, you know. But I was like,
• 49:00
  it's not because he starts, He's like good break at My first reaction
• 49:02
  was what are you doing? He's like God. I'm like, oh God,
• 49:06
  calm down, Brendan. It's okay. Well see that's the thing though,
• 49:12
  that's like, and I think I will say this about the book that
• 49:15
  is like another reason I wanted to make a book like this because there's a
• 49:20
  lot of things that people had as a kid that they don't have anymore,
• 49:23
  and they probably forgot that they even had it. Like they're like, oh
• 49:25
  my god, I forgot all about this Burger King doll. H this was
• 49:30
  my favorite doll. I used to take it to my grandma's house, you
• 49:31
  know, whatever it may be. And so I said along the way making
• 49:35
  this book that like, I wanted to unlock those memories for people, Like
• 49:38
  not everyone had playmates, not everyone had the Motel toys, and everyone had
• 49:43
  X, Y or Z, but a lot of people would go, oh
• 49:45
  my god, I had one of these like camping, you know, Simpsons
• 49:50
  figures from Burger King, and it's gonna have memories attached to it. It's
• 49:52
  gonna unlock this sort of fuzzy feeling for them, and I want to I
• 49:58
  want to remind people. It's in the same way that my Instagram has been
• 50:00
  able to do that. And that's like one of the reasons I kept doing
• 50:04
  it from the start is it's it's like, uh, you know, it's
• 50:07
  an encyclopedia of memories for some people, and I think that that you know,
• 50:12
  not everyone needs another book on the shelf, but you want something that's
• 50:15
  going to unlock that feeling. I think we all want that. So that's
• 50:17
  that's that's one of my main points that I want to make with this thing
• 50:22
  is just to remind people what they no longer have or you know, their
• 50:25
  kid broken thirty seconds. I think I asked you that when we were chatting.
• 50:28
  It was like, do you think you have more followers of people who
• 50:30
  just are remembering the stuff with Naraqido actual Simpsons collectors? Yeah, yeah,
• 50:35
  I'd be curious to know, like in Lydia's case, if it seems like
• 50:38
  it's people who you know grew up with the show, or if it's people
• 50:42
  who are learning about the show through her. I wonder what's your comment section,
• 50:45
  Like Lydia, Well, we looked at the age demographic because I kind
• 50:47
  of track that every month, and it's funny that, like one of our
• 50:51
  biggest demographics is the thirteen year olds to the seventeen year olds, and we
• 50:54
  have yeah, yeah, so it's very young and we have quite a lot
• 50:59
  of people. Going to sound really big headed, but they say, I've
• 51:01
  started watching the symptoms through your videos. Amazing. Yeah, which is the
• 51:06
  biggest compliment, and we make sure to tell Matt Selman that we're like yeah,
• 51:10
  but no, no, no, so as you should yeah yeah,
• 51:15
  so yeah. I think like the comment section definitely ranges, like it depends
• 51:20
  on the video topic. Like some people just want the really fun shouty I
• 51:24
  don't know, fun content we do, but then we do more the analytical
• 51:28
  stuff where you get the more maybe thoughtful comments from fans that are more hardcore.
• 51:32
  It just really varies. Like I like that our channel kind of caters
• 51:36
  for the casual fans, the new fans, and then hopefully the fans who
• 51:39
  think that they're getting something out of the channel. And I mean I think
• 51:44
  that's I think that's good information for our you know what we're saying about our
• 51:46
  kids, you know, are we the last generation? No? I mean
• 51:50
  like clearly if that people, if people that young are are such supporters of
• 51:53
  your channel, I think that says a lot. Yeah, And I think
• 51:55
  especially we're like releasing shorts, which are one of our biggest highest performer pieces
• 52:00
  of media at the moment, with TikTok and YouTube shorts. I think just
• 52:07
  people reacting to that kind of content now where it's just very short, fiery,
• 52:09
  and it gives you a little taste of what the show is and then
• 52:13
  hopefully that encourages people to watch the full episode. Do you feel like your
• 52:15
  channel grows from doing shorts or the sort of dislike the same? We literally
• 52:21
  within I think within the last six months, I think we've got about one
• 52:23
  hundred thousand subscribers on the Sipson theory through doing shorts. Is it showing on
• 52:29
  views on the videos? It's showing through well a little bit. It kind
• 52:31
  of trickles through. We did have one thing where as soon as we uploaded
• 52:35
  a short, it actually completely tanked the long form videos. And I think
• 52:40
  YouTube is really encouraging people to keep uploading shorts, so if you then upload
• 52:44
  a long form they're thinking, oh, please don't do that again, like,
• 52:49
  let's get shorts in front of That's why I ask, because I've had
• 52:51
  a lot of content creators say to me ever since I started doing shorts,
• 52:53
  it's gained them a lot of followers, but the views have actually dropped on
• 52:58
  their long form videos because YouTube doesn't want you to watch those anymore. They
• 53:01
  want you to watch shorts, and people just want to watch shorts, so
• 53:04
  they'll flick through your shorts, but they won't sit down for your long form
• 53:07
  videos and that's not Yeah, it's interesting, definitely, Yeah, because it's
• 53:10
  difficult because with our other channel, Lydia Love's Timelines, at one point that
• 53:15
  was performing better than the Simpsons channel, so we started doing more long form
• 53:19
  videos on that one, and we didn't want to risk that happening, so
• 53:22
  we just ended to keep the shorts to the Simpsons to kind of experiment a
• 53:24
  bit and see which one was working better. But yeah, I agree,
• 53:30
  like the subscribe account has gone higher, the views seem to have gone higher,
• 53:35
  but that doesn't really reflect in Google Ads sense and stuff like that.
• 53:38
  But really that's not Yeah, how can that be because people are more people
• 53:42
  paying premium now and you're not getting them AD revenue as a result, I
• 53:45
  guess. So all, when you're scrolling through shorts, you never I think
• 53:49
  especially YouTube shorts, you may get one ads every so often, but it's
• 53:52
  not as consistent as like a long form video. We can get like five
• 53:54
  ads in a consistent video. So yeah, good to that sense. See,
• 54:05
  that's why you just have to be like me and just like refuse to
• 54:08
  expand into the other apps. I'm just gonna live in my little box of
• 54:14
  Instagram and uh no, I really need to like jump on that. I
• 54:19
  just, uh you know, maybe I'm maybe I'm scared. Yeah, it's
• 54:24
  like you know, your Grandpa and all the other apps are just the clouds
• 54:28
  and you're just checking them. Well, you tend to stay where you where
• 54:34
  you start, you know, Like I started this whole thing on Instagram,
• 54:37
  so it's like hard for me to like leave. I always acted like I
• 54:40
  would never do a TikTok, but I want to like expand into that a
• 54:44
  little bit. I've seen that be a great growth point for people, and
• 54:46
  again, like I you know, to that same point. I want,
• 54:51
  you know, if if something like Lydia's channel has been such an introduction for
• 54:53
  people, I want the book to do that too. Like I hope someone
• 54:58
  is like, oh, you know, I used to watch this when I
• 54:59
  was kid, and then before you know it, they're watching newer seasons.
• 55:01
  They maybe get a little shelf with collectibles, Like I love things that inspire
• 55:07
  like a new hobby. So like I want, you know, I want
• 55:10
  this to do that as well. I want the book to do that.
• 55:13
  That's why when we started our podcast, it was before Simpsons were available on
• 55:15
  streaming well in Australia and the UK anyway, because Disney Plus wasn't a thing,
• 55:20
  and it was just it wasn't it isn't a fun to go back and
• 55:22
  revisit the Simpsons. And that's what we sort of did. We wanted people
• 55:24
  to just talk about the Simpsons again. That's where we sort of took off.
• 55:28
  It was just like, hey, I love the Simpsons too. We
• 55:30
  all love the Simpsons. Yeah, it's great show of all time, definitely
• 55:35
  easy. Yeah, what would you say was the most exciting part of the
• 55:38
  book for both of you? Like, what's the part? When you think
• 55:42
  of it now, it's like, this was the most fun. I smile
• 55:44
  whenever I think about doing it because I know, I mean I've done a
• 55:45
  book as well. I know it's along sometimes boring, sometimes you know,
• 55:51
  intimidating process and nerve wracking, But like, what's the part that you just
• 55:54
  had so much fun doing? Think? Oh? Think? For me personally,
• 56:00
  I think it was the creative control of actually designing the page layouts.
• 56:07
  We were really lucky to have some amazing photographs from Caroline Walker Evans and that
• 56:13
  was my first big excitement moment was seeing those photos because they were beautiful and
• 56:17
  it was like so impressive. So it was really nice to work with those
• 56:21
  to produce the layouts. And I think, yeah, I think for me
• 56:24
  just seeing the layouts and actually seeing that printed in a book, because I've
• 56:28
  never worked in an industry where I had that kind of creative, creative freedom,
• 56:32
  and yeah, for me, that was amazing. Yeah, yeah,
• 56:37
  that's I agree with that. I mean, I will say, you know,
• 56:40
  shout out to Elena, the designer at Mengo, who gave us a
• 56:44
  lot of freedom, and she took our notes really well and at times,
• 56:47
  you know, if we had a particular vision for a chapter, she just
• 56:51
  let us run with it and she would use you know, we would make
• 56:54
  changes, and she would use those changes almost exactly because she knew we had
• 56:59
  a particular vision. So I do really appreciate that she gave us that sort
• 57:02
  of input. You know, I think for me, because you know,
• 57:07
  writing a book is one thing, and it's it's you know, it's you
• 57:09
  read that you read it over and over until you hate it, and it's
• 57:12
  like this whole process of trying to you know, find a balance between what
• 57:15
  you're trying to say, and is it fun to read? And whatever.
• 57:20
  The part that I like will always remember. So finally has got to be
• 57:22
  the photos. And I really wish James Lydia could have been there for that,
• 57:27
  you know, if they weren't a whole country away, uh, they
• 57:30
  would have been. But you know, working on those directly with Caroline and
• 57:34
  having her come to my house and help me style these photos and again me
• 57:38
  having the input on that, like Caroline was like, no, you do
• 57:42
  what you want and then if it doesn't work, you know, we'll we'll
• 57:45
  we'll change this and change that. And she recently told me, she's like,
• 57:47
  no, you have a real eye for styling photos like this, you
• 57:52
  know obviously with your Instagram and all that, but I didn't expect you to
• 57:54
  take such control in that regard. And it was you know, I was
• 57:58
  really proud of how it turned out. So that was like getting that compliment
• 58:00
  from not only a friend but a professional was really really nice. But just
• 58:06
  the process of working on that with her is the part that I'm probably gonna
• 58:10
  remember. The fun and obviously the zoom calls with James O Lydia. We
• 58:14
  had a great time making the book, but that's you know, you're sitting
• 58:16
  at a desk, Yeah, getting to pull everything out of out of the
• 58:21
  room and and sort of plan this, you know, this visual thing with
• 58:24
  these photos. It's something I remember for a long time. It's something I
• 58:28
  hope I do again, because I do. I did really have fun with
• 58:31
  that. I do think the book in a lot of ways is what it
• 58:36
  is because the photos are so striking, and the writing was definitely such like
• 58:42
  a fun process of it. I think it's because we wrote it for such
• 58:45
  a long time. And I don't know about Waurreen, but I just kept
• 58:47
  over analyzing the way I was writing things, thinking is that enough research?
• 58:52
  So I think the writing was a double edged sword because it was so fun
• 58:55
  to do and research. But at the same time, it was probably the
• 58:59
  bit that we screwed nice the most over. But I'm glad we said the
• 59:02
  time to look at the visuals and the writing because oh yeah, because I
• 59:07
  mean we you know, we would write this thing and then you know,
• 59:09
  send it to each other and make notes for each other. So like,
• 59:12
  while we each took the reins on particular chapters, we all had heavy input,
• 59:16
  you know, James and Lydia had heavy input on all my chapters and
• 59:20
  vice versa, because we you know, we wanted this thing to all feel
• 59:23
  cohesive, and you know, I think like anything, like Lydia said,
• 59:28
  when you when you write something and you're constantly coming back to it and taking
• 59:31
  away or adding to it's uh and I mean you understand this. To Brendan,
• 59:36
  it's exhausting and you start to be like, wow, like I suck
• 59:39
  at this, Like you start to like really just be like, you know,
• 59:45
  why did I make this dumb? Why did I make this dumb little
• 59:47
  joke? You know? And and going all the way back to the beginning
• 59:51
  of this episode where we talked about, you know, over editing the podcast,
• 59:53
  that was sort of my brain is like up up to the finish line,
• 59:58
  there were things that I was like, hey, can we take out
• 1:00:00
  and change this, like down to the wire because I was really trying to,
• 1:00:02
  like, you know, get get to this final place with the book.
• 1:00:07
  So I have so many fond memories of it they far out weigh any
• 1:00:12
  negative. But I am glad that it's done. With The photos that were
• 1:00:15
  done on your dining table, was that right? A lot of them were
• 1:00:22
  done in my in my actual like dining room, Like we sort of Caroline
• 1:00:27
  brought her equipment down to Florida. Caroline lives in Seattle, by the way,
• 1:00:31
  so she traveled across the country, uh, to come take these photos.
• 1:00:36
  Like that's probably the longest flight you can make in America. In fact,
• 1:00:40
  I'm closer to Lydia than Carolina is to me. Like that, that's
• 1:00:45
  insane to think about. I could fly to London right now in less time
• 1:00:47
  than I could fly to Seattle six hours or something to England from where you
• 1:00:52
  are. From here to London it's about seven seven y yeah, and to
• 1:00:55
  Seattle it's like almost nine is it really? Which is? Which is?
• 1:01:00
  Yeah? It's far man America. It's a big ass country man. Like
• 1:01:05
  people wonder why people in America can't get on the same pages because there's a
• 1:01:07
  lot of people here. It's huge. So, you know, Caroline travel
• 1:01:12
  across the country literally to help me with these photos. She stawed me for
• 1:01:15
  a week, and we like, she brought her stuff. We like turned
• 1:01:17
  my dining room into this like makeshift studio, which again is why I think
• 1:01:22
  the photos are so impressive, because she can work with that sort of like
• 1:01:28
  all she needs is her lights, her camera, the ability to like you
• 1:01:32
  know, get rid of reflections and stuff, which was the coolest thing.
• 1:01:36
  And something I do want to highlight is that when you work with a real
• 1:01:39
  photographer and Caroline is like unbelievable at what she does, she just immediately knows
• 1:01:45
  how to problem solve. If we took a photo and I'm like, oh,
• 1:01:50
  wow, that looks great, Caroline would go, yeah, but there's
• 1:01:52
  this weird glare here. She would hand me like an umbrella and say,
• 1:01:57
  can you stand right here and hold this up towards the light. The glare's
• 1:02:01
  gone. Like watching someone in this space know how to fix these problems was
• 1:02:07
  honestly like amazing for me to see. And I think that that's why that'll
• 1:02:10
  be the part that I look back on and smile about for years, because
• 1:02:15
  it was like a masterclass for me, Like I learned a lot as someone
• 1:02:17
  who just takes photos with his phone for an Instagram. I feel like it
• 1:02:22
  made me a better photographer. It made me like think about a little bit
• 1:02:24
  more about certain things that I do. So that experience of working with someone
• 1:02:30
  like Caroline who is not only so talented but so humble about it was like
• 1:02:36
  really really special. And I think the book, even if the book were
• 1:02:38
  just photos. I think people would want it because they are that beautiful.
• 1:02:43
  So you get these beautiful photos and you get you know, me Lydia and
• 1:02:45
  James like digging in as much as possible about this stuff. Yeah, fine,
• 1:02:51
  a combo. I'm glad to know that you've done the history because I
• 1:02:52
  didn't realize that. I just thought this was going to be and you can
• 1:02:55
  get this figure and this figure and this game came out. I didn't realize
• 1:02:59
  it was going to be an actual history on h category as well. So
• 1:03:00
  that's actually really exciting. Yeah, because I think I was prepping for this
• 1:03:05
  podcast and I was literally trying to think of how to sum up this book,
• 1:03:07
  and I literally wrote about three paragraphs about how to describe it because it's
• 1:03:12
  literally it's like when we pushed it to the publishers, they were like,
• 1:03:15
  okay, so it's going to be like the antique and collectible section, and
• 1:03:19
  we're like, yeah, but also talks about video games, and it talks
• 1:03:22
  about TV and I don't know history in general, So yeah, it was
• 1:03:25
  a difficult one to kind of like pitch to the publishers. But yeah,
• 1:03:30
  like I think we did cover a lot of basis in it, Yeah,
• 1:03:32
  and you do. You know, there are chapters that are like, you
• 1:03:36
  know, and then there, and then there was this, and then there
• 1:03:37
  was that. Like there is some of that, but I think along the
• 1:03:40
  way we try to like give you like a glimpse into like where the show
• 1:03:45
  was at that time or like you know, in this time. You know,
• 1:03:47
  like I said earlier, there's like it's like, oh, in the
• 1:03:50
  mid nineties, there was less stuff being made and more like calendars and like
• 1:03:53
  you know, different types of merchandise. But then shortly after that there came
• 1:03:57
  this and companies like this, So we try to like sort of explain how
• 1:04:01
  this stuff was coming out in the era of it. Do you cover the
• 1:04:03
  Simpsons House the contest? Oh? Yeah, yes, that's a whole chat.
• 1:04:08
  Lelia did a whole fantastic chapter about that. Yeah. Yeah, because
• 1:04:13
  we thought to include that one because at first I was thinking, is this
• 1:04:15
  going to be a bit random to having the book because it's not actually like
• 1:04:17
  something you can keep, but it kind of encapsulated how the Simpsons merchandise was
• 1:04:24
  dipping, and then they brought out the House as this big promotional vehicle in
• 1:04:28
  order to boost not only merchandise sales, but also viewership in the show again,
• 1:04:32
  so yeah, like I'd love to have owned that house. But talking
• 1:04:35
  about the story of it and how to build it, it's a fascinating story
• 1:04:39
  in itself, and we've done a whole video about it, but I thought
• 1:04:42
  it's worth its own chapter to really get into the nitty and gritty about how
• 1:04:45
  it relates to the actual merchandise, for sure, because and that's another reason
• 1:04:49
  we called the book, you know, Collecting the Simpsons the Merchandise and Legacy,
• 1:04:56
  because you know, there's the house is significant in a lot of ways,
• 1:04:59
  in the same way Universal Studios is. And while you know that's not
• 1:05:01
  something you can physically collect, I do think it ties into that world.
• 1:05:05
  All these little things kept the show relevant in a way that directly led to,
• 1:05:12
  you know, merchandise. So I think that all of that is important.
• 1:05:15
  I think it all comes I think it all makes sense being in a
• 1:05:17
  book about collecting, and that's why we really felt the need to include that.
• 1:05:20
  Have you eithered you ever visited the house? I have? I mean
• 1:05:26
  I didn't go in. I didn't go in because people live there, but
• 1:05:30
  I took some photos. I definitely I'm not encouraging anyone to do this.
• 1:05:33
  I've joked with Lydia about this, and I think I even said it in
• 1:05:35
  a video on their channel. I don't encourage this, but I did go
• 1:05:41
  into their yard to take a photo because one of the only things that exists
• 1:05:45
  from that original construction is the square that Matt Groening drew Homer in. Yeah,
• 1:05:51
  so he drew Homer, he signed it and he wrote the year,
• 1:05:55
  and that's one of the only things that still exists from like the original thing.
• 1:06:00
  Well, if you go there and there's no cars in the driveway,
• 1:06:02
  maybe you run up in there and take a quick photo, but like leave
• 1:06:04
  the people alone. But I saw the house in person, and I did
• 1:06:08
  get a photo of that and then ran back to my car. Did you
• 1:06:11
  say they bought it in because of the Simpsons were dipping and it was like
• 1:06:14
  A yeah, I think so Calvin and broad which was the they built like
• 1:06:19
  this big housing estate in Levaga, and they a wants to promote it,
• 1:06:24
  but they need be needed like a brand to associate with it in order to
• 1:06:27
  promote it. And I think the reason why the Simpsons kind of accepted it
• 1:06:31
  as I researched anyway, it's they wanted something which was going to be that
• 1:06:35
  promotional vehicle to put them on TV screens, Like they had adverts on primetime
• 1:06:41
  television advertising this competition, and then they had like the work of Pepsi,
• 1:06:45
  So it was a big collaborative thing. But yeah, I think as shows
• 1:06:50
  like South Park, there was like shows that were coming up around that time
• 1:06:56
  which were competing for viewership around then. So I think for this house,
• 1:07:00
  it's kind of acted as their vehicle to promote it. And yeah, it
• 1:07:05
  also makes sense because you know, that was around the time that like there
• 1:07:10
  was a bit of a lull in the merchandise in America anyway, And it
• 1:07:14
  does seem you know, I'm not saying it's directly related, but it does
• 1:07:17
  tick up big time after that. You get Playmates, you get all this
• 1:07:20
  stuff after that. So who can say what impact that had, but it
• 1:07:26
  does seem to have had a pretty big impact. And it's just crazy to
• 1:07:28
  think that the person that one went nah, thanks, and it's like,
• 1:07:31
  I know, you can build it. They said, you can either move
• 1:07:38
  it to my house all the way in like rural yeah, or you can
• 1:07:44
  build the exact replica on my farm and I'll charge people to look at it,
• 1:07:47
  But I think she had a good reason because I think her brother.
• 1:07:50
  I think it was for cancers, for like charity, so at least I
• 1:07:56
  had a good sentiment behind it. But yeah, I know, you know
• 1:08:00
  what's crazy in this looking back, not again, not to Monday Morning Quarterback,
• 1:08:03
  this whole thing. But wouldn't it have made more sense to just the
• 1:08:06
  for the promotion to be if you win, we will build you the house
• 1:08:11
  because it would cost the same amount of money and it wouldn't be they wouldn't
• 1:08:15
  have to move to Nevada. Yeah, it's like you have to move here.
• 1:08:16
  It's about that one too. Like looking back, it's like, just
• 1:08:23
  make a model, Like think of what a crazy promotion that would be to
• 1:08:27
  be like, hey, we're doing this promotion. If you win, we
• 1:08:30
  will literally build you the fucking Simpson's House, like wherever you want, like
• 1:08:33
  we will build it for you. Like it would have been crazy, now,
• 1:08:36
  I get it. The photos and the videos made the promotion even cooler.
• 1:08:42
  But make a model, like I think if they would have offered to
• 1:08:44
  build it anywhere, someone would still have that house and it would be a
• 1:08:46
  museum and it would be so cool. I'm telling you, for twenty fifth
• 1:08:49
  anniversary. If they did that again, everyone would be like, fuck,
• 1:08:53
  yes, sign me up, I want this right now. Yes, I
• 1:08:56
  would move to Nevada for every because every fucking kid who was like a kid
• 1:09:00
  at that point is not old enough to have their own house. So we'll
• 1:09:03
  all fucking we'll all want to be in this competition. I know they should,
• 1:09:08
  they should do it again, Matt. I mean, I'm not imagine
• 1:09:12
  living and I will say living in that house. After a couple of years,
• 1:09:15
  the novelty would probably wear off. You'd be like, yeah, I
• 1:09:18
  kind of just living in this constant like dream state of a cartoon, which
• 1:09:24
  would after a while, you would probably But I think ultimately the smartest thing
• 1:09:28
  on earth would have been for someone to just take it, but not live
• 1:09:30
  there, and just make it a museum. That's the hire team. It's
• 1:09:33
  hot friends that just hang out there, look after the place, and just
• 1:09:36
  charge people to come and have look at it. Yeah, I know,
• 1:09:40
  what a missed opportunity. They They also though, you got to say,
• 1:09:43
  like you got to assume that, just like a lot of shows, then
• 1:09:46
  they'd probably be like, well, you know, this thing will probably be
• 1:09:49
  off the air in a couple of years anyway, like there's no chance we
• 1:09:51
  make it to season ten. Yeah, you know, it's probably one of
• 1:09:55
  those things where it just didn't seem like something that would matter in twenty years
• 1:09:59
  maybe. Yeah, but you know how wrong they were. And Bill always
• 1:10:02
  says that, you know, he's like the mentality when now his show run
• 1:10:04
  is and was it seven and eight? They were like, we'll just do
• 1:10:08
  whatever we want because we're not gonna be on the air anymore anyway, So
• 1:10:10
  he cares, let's just go out full swing, you know, on its
• 1:10:14
  way out anyway. Yeah, that's what they thought. Thirty years later,
• 1:10:15
  still going around. But I mentioned Matt before, So how many of the
• 1:10:20
  actual Simpsons cast crew or whoever did you get involved with this book. We've
• 1:10:25
  got Bill Morrison, who basically designed a lot of the Simpsons merchandise as well
• 1:10:30
  as being the co founder of Bongo Comics and Simpsons Comics. Yeah, a
• 1:10:34
  name who many people may not know, but a pivotal part to this story.
• 1:10:39
  Pivotal pivotal. I mean Bill is like, in my mind, he's
• 1:10:44
  like one of the most I think he started to get his flowers a little
• 1:10:47
  more now, but there was a time where I feel like he was like
• 1:10:49
  one of the most unsung heroes of the show because not only was he like
• 1:10:54
  so important to the comics, but so much of the merchandise that we all
• 1:10:58
  collect and love was design by Bill, Like you know, like the matel
• 1:11:02
  packaging, the video game arn't work like that was all Bill. Yeah,
• 1:11:06
  So like he you know, part of the reason we remember the show visually
• 1:11:11
  the way we do is because of things Bill drew. So I think Bill
• 1:11:15
  is in such a huge part. So him doing the forward for me was
• 1:11:19
  like huge because I've always admired Bill so much and having him be involved at
• 1:11:25
  all or you know, endorse it in any way, especially right the forward
• 1:11:30
  is like such a big deal. But yeah, but in addition to that,
• 1:11:33
  I mean a lot of people endorsed it, you know, y Hardly
• 1:11:35
  Smith endorsed the book. She wrote a blurb, Matt Selman wrote a blurb.
• 1:11:40
  Wes Archer wrote a blurb. You know, these are people that we
• 1:11:43
  sent some chapters and we're like, hey, you know, if you enjoy
• 1:11:45
  the book, we'd love to get you know, like something from you.
• 1:11:46
  And they all supported the book. So that's like a huge deal to me.
• 1:11:50
  Yeah, and I really liked Bill Morrison's forward because it kind of told
• 1:11:55
  the story about how we got involved in the Simpsons from the beginning. I
• 1:11:58
  think he was working, oh yes at the time, and his mum actually
• 1:12:01
  told him, do not work with this new TV show. It's not gonna
• 1:12:04
  have the longevity as Disney. And then the Simptons is literally owned by Disney
• 1:12:09
  now. But it just it was a really human forward to give, like
• 1:12:14
  a really nice introduction into the kind of heart where this merchandise came from.
• 1:12:17
  And he set the standard for what's to come. So it felt right that
• 1:12:21
  he was the one who started the book. Yeah, very cool. Did
• 1:12:25
  any of these people have any collectibles of their own? And they told you
• 1:12:28
  about does does Matt collect things? I mean, he clicks comic books,
• 1:12:30
  but does there any Simpsons shit, like cool Simpson stuff? I honestly,
• 1:12:33
  I honestly don't think. I mean, I think he probably has some.
• 1:12:36
  I feel like he keeps most of it at the office. I think I
• 1:12:39
  asked him that when I interviewed him, Like I know that, like Bill
• 1:12:44
  Morrison probably has an insane collection, and he also collects like Batman. He
• 1:12:46
  has he has one of the biggest Batman collections in the in the world probably,
• 1:12:50
  which is really cool. Bill Bill like he gets it. He's one
• 1:12:54
  of He's one of us, you know. So I know Bill has a
• 1:12:58
  ton of stuff. He also kept a lot of things from and he worked
• 1:13:00
  in the merchandising department, like I know, some of the prototypes that we
• 1:13:03
  know about, like or knew about years ago we were Bills like he you
• 1:13:09
  know, he kept like the Dan Diatto or the you know, the Grandpa
• 1:13:13
  Dandy and some of these things. As far as like a lot of Simpsons
• 1:13:16
  people like I remember once I asked Jake Cogan that and his response was like,
• 1:13:20
  no, I didn't keep the merchandise. That'd be like, you know,
• 1:13:24
  working at McDonald's and eating hamburgers every night for dinner. I just can't,
• 1:13:27
  you know, I can't. I never really cared about it. So
• 1:13:29
  I'm sure it varies between people. I know Wes kept a lot of things.
• 1:13:32
  I know Yardley kept some things. But yeah, it does seem like
• 1:13:36
  when you're surrounded by it all the time, maybe you don't want to bring
• 1:13:39
  it home. Seems like Matt Graining himself is like not only a fan of
• 1:13:43
  the merchandise, but a fan of the bootleg merchandise as well. He's apparently
• 1:13:45
  he's a giant collection of Yeah. Bill Morrison claims again to mention Bill that
• 1:13:51
  Matt has the biggest collection in the world because he kept one of everything.
• 1:13:56
  He claims that Matt kept one of everything that's ever been made. Now,
• 1:13:59
  who now or not that that's true? Yo, one day we will know.
• 1:14:04
  And Matt if you're if you're listening, and you know, I know
• 1:14:06
  that that account. Actually he regularly emails me. He regularly writes into the
• 1:14:11
  show. Really Matt, Matt Graining or Mass I'm joking. Well, excuse
• 1:14:17
  me, excuse me. There is a Matt Groening, a Mat Graining sort
• 1:14:24
  of like burner account that let's just say I've confirmed is him. I've confirmed
• 1:14:30
  through official channels is really him, and he does. He does follow me.
• 1:14:34
  So maybe one day, uh, he will reach out and be like,
• 1:14:39
  hey, I've got all this stuff. I don't want to give it
• 1:14:41
  to you. That's my that's my let's sell it give He doesn't need my
• 1:14:46
  money. He doesn't need my money. Come on, it's funny you write
• 1:14:50
  that about the bootlegs, because when Matt was here and Melbourn, we're going
• 1:14:53
  out for dinner, We're walking around Melbourne trying to find all this various places
• 1:14:57
  selling bootleg Simpsons ship that's like Simpson's artwork on the walls, but there's like
• 1:15:00
  places that is blatantly called just like you know, Simpsons pizza, and it's
• 1:15:02
  just like home painted on the wall eating a pizza. And it's like Matt
• 1:15:05
  doesn't give a shit. He loves He takes photos of everything. He's got
• 1:15:08
  a whole collection on his phone of all these bootlegg Simpsons places. Yeah,
• 1:15:12
  because I think when I'm striking, he was wearing bootleg merchandise on his Yeah,
• 1:15:15
  yeah, yeah, I'm sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, because
• 1:15:19
  in ther I was gonna say. In the book Matt Groening, We've got
• 1:15:23
  a quote from him where he talks about a off model bar Simpson doll where
• 1:15:27
  he's supposed to be sitting on two Easter eggs, but their flesh colored so
• 1:15:30
  it looks like he's sitting on two giant balls. So and I've seen that
• 1:15:35
  thing and it does look very very weird. Yeah, I mean, I
• 1:15:39
  you know, I understand that, like a lot of the people that work
• 1:15:42
  for the show, like Matt Groaning, even Matt Selman, like Brennan saying
• 1:15:45
  they they love that stuff. It's only Disney or Fox that would ever care,
• 1:15:49
  Like they think it's cool, Like they love the fans, you know,
• 1:15:53
  they want this like cool and interesting stuff to be made. So I
• 1:15:56
  you know, I think that's like another reason to love the show. They
• 1:15:59
  have no reason to dislike, you know, fans making stuff like that.
• 1:16:03
  Well. I think for a long time too, it felt like the merchant
• 1:16:05
  was being made. You touched on an earlier lily. With the the shirts
• 1:16:10
  and stuff, it felt very generic, just like Google images wapped onto shirts.
• 1:16:14
  I think in maybe the last I want to say, five years or
• 1:16:16
  so, there's more sort of just hardcore fan targeted merch coming out, like,
• 1:16:21
  for example, was a kid robot did the stupid sexy Flanders statue,
• 1:16:26
  like figuring just things like that right where. It seems since Disney took over,
• 1:16:30
  it's like their marketing department went, Fox, what are you doing?
• 1:16:33
  You know, yeah, let them do target shit because I worked for also
• 1:16:38
  worked for a place that sold pop culture things, and they bought a license
• 1:16:41
  because of me. I was like, look, I've got three hundred thousand
• 1:16:44
  people on my Facebook page. I can market the shit of this stuff.
• 1:16:45
  Let's buy a license. So they bought the license, and then Fox were
• 1:16:48
  just like, you can't do this, you can't do that, blah blah
• 1:16:50
  blah. Eventually we got these I'm not sure whether you saw them, but
• 1:16:54
  they're like replica Stonecutter steins. Yeah yeah, yeah they were because of me.
• 1:16:58
  I had to push and scratch, like you can't do it, it's
• 1:17:00
  gotta be this kind. I was like, but everyone's gonna want this,
• 1:17:04
  it's like and made them, and boom, we saw like ten thousand of
• 1:17:08
  them, like straight away. I believe it, you know what I mean.
• 1:17:11
  But like Fox just had their heads so far up their own ass.
• 1:17:14
  They just had no idea what they was sitting on, just didn't care.
• 1:17:16
  DCNY took over and they're just like, h yeah, go for it.
• 1:17:19
  Yeah yeah. I do believe there's been a huge uptick in good stuff since,
• 1:17:24
  you know, and I know a lot of people want to find reasons
• 1:17:26
  to complain about Disney owning the show, but one thing they cannot complain about,
• 1:17:30
  or they can. I guess you can complain about anything, but it
• 1:17:31
  makes no sense. The merchandise has only gotten better since they took over.
• 1:17:36
  I do not like Funko pops. I've been very vocal about that. I
• 1:17:40
  do. I cannot stand Funko pops. But even in Funko pop territory,
• 1:17:45
  they make some really good ones. No offense to Brendan them. I get
• 1:17:50
  them for nothing, So I don't care. There you go. I mean,
• 1:17:54
  but but the things they're making are interesting at least like they're making.
• 1:17:57
  They did at least a snail. I mean, that's great, you know.
• 1:18:00
  And so you know, even kid Robot before they they actually retired their
• 1:18:03
  license, they had it for a long time. I guess they probably just
• 1:18:05
  felt like they had squeezed all they could out of it. They Oh,
• 1:18:12
  is that what happened? Okay, well, there you go inside her info.
• 1:18:18
  But Kid Robot, towards the end made what I consider, and I
• 1:18:21
  say this in the book, two of the best things the show ever had,
• 1:18:24
  which is super Sexy Flanders and Itchy and Scratch like from my bloddy Valentine.
• 1:18:29
  Those are amazing. They come in a huge television Those are like next
• 1:18:33
  level toys. I love those and all the stuff Super seven is doing.
• 1:18:36
  Again, I'm not sponsored by them, but I should be as much as
• 1:18:41
  I talk about them. Actually, now I do have an affiliate link.
• 1:18:43
  So if you want to buy super seven stuff, go to my link and
• 1:18:45
  use it because I make money. But that is true what I'm saying.
• 1:18:49
  They are making incredible stuff that probably could not have been made ten years ago
• 1:18:55
  because Fox would have had some sort of problem with it. Yeah, and
• 1:18:59
  it's just like, I know it's pricey, but once you're holding it,
• 1:19:01
  you're like, ah shit, I can kind of see why. But still
• 1:19:04
  trying to convince your wife that, hey, can we spend one hundred dollars
• 1:19:08
  on this little toy? She's like, Brendan, I love you, but
• 1:19:15
  yeah, you just have to lie about what it costs. Maybe if you
• 1:19:16
  get more patrons on your podcast, maybe that's a good subscribe to patroon anyway,
• 1:19:26
  But so what else should we cover with the book before we go?
• 1:19:28
  Because I just say, it's one thirty in the morning and I'm just like,
• 1:19:30
  I feel like I'm delirious, but I want to get as much out
• 1:19:33
  of this as possible. So let's let's talking about this book. But what
• 1:19:35
  have we coverage yet, particularly category and discussed yet? I mean not,
• 1:19:41
  you know, there's lots of things, so I mean the book, you
• 1:19:43
  know, not only do we talk about the merchant, the toys, and
• 1:19:45
  beyond that, like stuff for your house. But you know, we talk
• 1:19:48
  about the books, we talk about the fast food toys, we talk about
• 1:19:50
  the video games, we talk about toys that weren't made. There's a whole
• 1:19:55
  chapter about like toys that don't exist. They're just they only exist in sample
• 1:20:00
  or prototype form. So it's pretty broad, you know. I think anyone
• 1:20:03
  that wants to learn more about that or already has a collection and just wants,
• 1:20:08
  like, you know, a way to sit around on the couch and
• 1:20:12
  enjoy that and look at cool photos of it, I think this book will
• 1:20:14
  work for that. I mean, I you know, there's not much to
• 1:20:16
  say other than if you like the Simpsons and you have any affection at all
• 1:20:20
  for the toys, just buy it. Yeah, and also we like money.
• 1:20:27
  Warren did have to open like a twenty year old Crostio's box to really
• 1:20:30
  show the cereal in one of the photos, so that sacrificed a lot for
• 1:20:35
  it, ye like we had or did you just invite your friends just opened
• 1:20:41
  it up? Just like? So what I will say, Like, the
• 1:20:45
  food chapter is awesome, and there's so many cool photos in there as well.
• 1:20:47
  There's there's also a photo about like media, so like VHS, DVD,
• 1:20:51
  all that stuff. But in the food chapter, when we open that
• 1:20:55
  cereal for the photo, I was like, you know, if it doesn't
• 1:20:58
  smell that bad, I might just try it. It smelled absolutely terrible.
• 1:21:01
  Oh really, did you try it? I did not try it. It
• 1:21:04
  expired in two thousand and seven, I believe. And it's just fruit loops.
• 1:21:11
  Sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but I think they had to deal with
• 1:21:13
  fruit loops. It's literally just froot loops. But it let's just say,
• 1:21:16
  fruit loops does not age well. And I cannot even describe the smell.
• 1:21:20
  That's going to say, describe the smell? Yeah, what what would you
• 1:21:24
  three k words? How would you like if you I think if you locked
• 1:21:29
  away synthetic fruit in a time capsule, so like the smell of fruit in
• 1:21:38
  a time capsule and then someone dug it up in twenty years, that smells
• 1:21:44
  exactly like that. Like it just smells like stale fake fruit. There it
• 1:21:48
  is. It just smells so weird. I've never smelled anything like it,
• 1:21:56
  and I've smelled old food several times. You know, obviously collecting stuff,
• 1:22:00
  you come across food I've sort of cashed out of collecting food anything sealed because
• 1:22:06
  I've had chocolate that just got gross or just like all it's hard and there's
• 1:22:10
  people that love that stuff. From a collector standpoint, it's hard for me
• 1:22:14
  to do. So. I've smelled weird stuff. Old chocolate smells weird,
• 1:22:17
  old chips smell weird. But those that those crustio's, Man, that's one
• 1:22:21
  of the weirdest smells I've ever smelled. I do not I do not recommend
• 1:22:26
  it. If you have a sealed box at home and you're curious, do
• 1:22:28
  not open it. Just leave it alone, leave it sealed forever. See
• 1:22:30
  I could have told you that because they had them here in Australia and I
• 1:22:33
  just ate them, like I knew that were fruit libs. I was like,
• 1:22:39
  this is just fruit lips with a different character in the bucks. What
• 1:22:42
  I remember them coming out and I think I think I convinced myself that they
• 1:22:45
  were different. I was like, oh, these are really good, Like
• 1:22:46
  I didn't like, they didn't taste swee. You want it to be different,
• 1:22:49
  so you just tell yourself that, Yeah, Well, is there any
• 1:22:53
  stuff that came out in Australia that isn't available anywhere else mertions wise, lots
• 1:22:58
  of stuff. Actually, I will say one of the things that I regret
• 1:23:01
  about the book, and this is like, you know, it's just it
• 1:23:04
  was too much. And maybe maybe I'll do another book, who knows.
• 1:23:09
  But there's so much international stuff that I couldn't talk about because that would require
• 1:23:13
  almost its own book, and you know, chapters. The book was getting
• 1:23:18
  so big we knew we couldn't really add any more chapters. But I would
• 1:23:21
  have loved to do a whole chapter or again even a whole book about international
• 1:23:27
  merchandise because countries like Australia had so much stuff that was unique to Australia,
• 1:23:34
  and the packaging was so different, Like a lot of times stuff from Australia
• 1:23:39
  would have like them playing sports on the packaging, which was not common in
• 1:23:44
  America at all. That Yeah, I mean, I have like you know,
• 1:23:48
  I believe it's no, it's a glue stick. It's either lip balm
• 1:23:51
  or a glue stick. I truly can't remember at this point. Those are
• 1:23:54
  very different things. But they look alike, what are you doing with your
• 1:23:57
  glu? Yeah, but it's something like that, and Bart is playing soccer
• 1:24:02
  or football on it, and that was very common apparently for Australian merchandise in
• 1:24:10
  the nineties to have like that sort of packaging, I guess because it showed
• 1:24:13
  the kids being active. That's what we do, yeah, which whenever you're
• 1:24:15
  marketing with a fast food it was always, yeah, showing kids being active.
• 1:24:18
  Yeah yeah. And so it's like a totally different world, which is
• 1:24:24
  like one of the most interesting things. And the same can be said for
• 1:24:26
  Japan, France, you know, Italy, all these places. The packaging
• 1:24:30
  is so different and a lot of times things were only made there. Like
• 1:24:34
  it's you know, yeah, they would have playmates in you know, England,
• 1:24:39
  but it's not the same as what we had in America, Like they
• 1:24:42
  would sell the toys individually, whereas in America you could only get some of
• 1:24:45
  them in a play set, et cetera, et cetera. But in places
• 1:24:47
  like Japan and France and Italy and Australia and the list goes on and on,
• 1:24:51
  it was like a completely different market of toys that only exist there.
• 1:24:56
  And I think that that is like the most interesting thing about collecting anything,
• 1:25:00
  but especially Simpsons, is that they had the fans to support that on such
• 1:25:04
  a worldwide, world wide level. But Australia is actually like an area of
• 1:25:10
  merchandise that doesn't get talked about enough because there is so much And I've bought
• 1:25:14
  a lot of stuff from Australia that you just never see. So yeah,
• 1:25:18
  I might have to do like a I might have to do like a Australian
• 1:25:23
  eccentric series of posts soon because I do have a lot of stuff from Australia.
• 1:25:27
  Do you have the ntall glasses? I have a ton of them.
• 1:25:30
  I think I have them all now. I think I do, because it's
• 1:25:33
  just one thing. I don't know whether you do it in the States or
• 1:25:35
  in England, but it's like you know, once you finish your jam or
• 1:25:38
  you spread, yeah, that is you get to keep the glass. Look
• 1:25:42
  what a fucking clever concept that is, right, It's it's so cool And
• 1:25:46
  I know that that was Like there was a time where those were like so
• 1:25:51
  hard to find in America. And I think because every way he man everywhere,
• 1:25:57
  I believe it, and they're probably so cheap. But for a long
• 1:26:00
  time in America, the only way to really get those things where you had
• 1:26:02
  to know someone there that would ship them to you, or you had to
• 1:26:05
  buy them through like you know eBay with like a VPN or something. Yeah,
• 1:26:11
  and they were just more expensive because you had to like you know,
• 1:26:15
  ship them. They're super far and all this stuff. Now that more collectors
• 1:26:19
  have existed for thirty years and people have had them in America for a long
• 1:26:24
  time, you see more people in America selling them because they're like they need
• 1:26:27
  to make space or so, they're not as uncommon as they once were.
• 1:26:30
  It's the same with like stuff from Japan. It was really hard to find
• 1:26:33
  for a long time. Now that collecting has been a thing long enough,
• 1:26:36
  it's a little more common in America because enough people have had it over the
• 1:26:40
  years. But then the teleglasses, there was a time where those were like
• 1:26:44
  kind of expensive because everyone wanted them. So yeah, it took me a
• 1:26:48
  while, but I think I have them all. I'm close at least.
• 1:26:50
  They just they covered stuff is here. It's like every Australian keys. It's
• 1:26:54
  got like six at the back of they covered. It's amazing and they're great.
• 1:26:58
  There's like the short ones, the tall there's like a lot of different
• 1:27:00
  and they really the unique designs on them too. It's not like you said,
• 1:27:03
  like off Google it's just they were drawn for the glasses. Yeah,
• 1:27:06
  no, they're so good. And like the drawings, the ones that are
• 1:27:10
  just like the characters where it's just like a photo, like the Mister Burns
• 1:27:14
  when I just showed the camera it's just a photo and then the name over
• 1:27:16
  it. Uh. Those are so nice, Like they look way too nice
• 1:27:20
  yep to have just been something that Natella came in. Yeah, like they
• 1:27:25
  look like if you you you know, they're beautiful. Like I just think
• 1:27:29
  they're great. They made like Natella like a household brand here. Lookun't tell.
• 1:27:33
  It was just sort of starting everyone's like, yeah, I'm not too
• 1:27:35
  sure. Put him in Simpsons glasses. Bring everyone one of the Simpsons glasses.
• 1:27:39
  And as a result everyone started to eating na Tella. Yeah. And
• 1:27:42
  I mean not only that, but the like I've noticed that like stickers and
• 1:27:46
  like notebooks and that sort of thing were really big in Australia. There's like
• 1:27:49
  a lot of that, tons of stickers, tons of like glowing the dark
• 1:27:54
  stuff was really big there. Like that market is very very interesting. It's
• 1:27:58
  like such a cool space because it's really unlike anywhere whereas like France and you
• 1:28:02
  know, places like that were really big into ceramics, but in in Australia
• 1:28:08
  it's like the opposite. It's like no, it's like practical shit tack at
• 1:28:11
  school and stuff. Yeah, yeah, And I think that's really cool.
• 1:28:14
  I think that's like a it's like what separates all these different markets in a
• 1:28:17
  way that makes it fun to collect? What about you, Lydia, did
• 1:28:19
  you have any Simpsons collectibles when you were a kid. My mum was very
• 1:28:25
  against the Simpsons, Like she would just walk into the living room, see
• 1:28:28
  it with the Simpsons and then swear and then she should walk out again.
• 1:28:30
  So I like, for some reason, I was banned from getting a lot
• 1:28:34
  of things, like there were these weird like alien jelly things and eggs that
• 1:28:39
  you could buy and I was never allowed any of those. I was never
• 1:28:41
  out of particular sweets, So no, I didn't have. And then when
• 1:28:45
  it came to like writing the book, I was like, wouldn't it be
• 1:28:46
  so nice if we could each have a photo ourselves as kids wearing Simpsons merchandise?
• 1:28:50
  And I was like, I don't have anything. So no, I'm
• 1:28:55
  reliving. I'm having like a midlife crisis where I'm starting it now. No,
• 1:29:00
  it looks fantastic. It looks great, thank you. My wife walks
• 1:29:03
  in here and she just goes it. You can't see it here, but
• 1:29:09
  I've just I've just got I'm sorry, that's all some Simpson stuff up there.
• 1:29:12
  And yeah, i've got the goo we those Simpsons on the fun cover
• 1:29:15
  of your book. You've got like the toppers for the for the cups.
• 1:29:18
  Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. So I'm not sure whether they were
• 1:29:21
  available in the States, but they were part of a KFC promotion here.
• 1:29:25
  Were they available in the States as well? Were the KFC in the States
• 1:29:28
  as well? You know, It's so interesting because I in my memory,
• 1:29:33
  I like, I I swear I remember those commercials in America, and I
• 1:29:36
  think that they were sold in America. But you honestly could be right.
• 1:29:41
  Those could have most those could have only been in Australia. I don't think
• 1:29:44
  so, but it's possible. I know that ninety eight. I still remember
• 1:29:48
  that you say that. I now that you say that. I do believe
• 1:29:51
  I might have bought them from someone in Australia, but I remember. Maybe
• 1:29:56
  I've just seen it so many times that it's like a false memory. But
• 1:29:58
  I swear I remember those commercials in America. I know they did do some
• 1:30:00
  stuff in America, so did Subway, but other than that, it was
• 1:30:04
  like mostly burging. So yeah, maybe that is a maybe that is a
• 1:30:09
  false memory, but they it's cool that they had them there. Also,
• 1:30:12
  this is how much of a loser I was, right and how awesome my
• 1:30:15
  parents were because I still remember those because there's four cups in that collection,
• 1:30:18
  as you be well aware. Yeah, and there's one. It's the purple
• 1:30:21
  one where has like the whole cast on it, you know, the one
• 1:30:24
  I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and the kfs that we
• 1:30:28
  always would go to your house. They didn't have that one. So mom
• 1:30:30
  and dad drove little Brendon around to like four or five different kfss, which
• 1:30:34
  cups if you got, and they're like, I don't know. I'm like,
• 1:30:36
  can you please look, I need the purple one. They're like,
• 1:30:39
  fine, whatever, this one, and I'm like, yes, it's the
• 1:30:44
  one, Mom, I need that one. My god, I love that.
• 1:30:47
  I gotta be honest too, this is like so funny, Like we
• 1:30:50
  talk about like, you know, things that things about the book that like
• 1:30:55
  you are along the way you just like, can't I honestly think that here
• 1:30:58
  on this podcast, a four figure discount exclusive. I think I think Brennan
• 1:31:02
  just caught something that I had missed, and I think possibly those are not
• 1:31:06
  from America anyway. They're from Australia, and I forgot that when I was
• 1:31:11
  making the book maybe in America. Maybe maybe I'm wrong, Maybe maybe that
• 1:31:17
  false memory is a true memory. But like now that you say that,
• 1:31:20
  I'm like, you know what, I think he's right. Second edition.
• 1:31:26
  I mean, it's fine, you know, it's it's gonna happen. Oh
• 1:31:29
  yeah, yeah, I love those. And either way, I mean,
• 1:31:31
  at least I didn't say they were from like, you know, jolly By
• 1:31:34
  or something. At least I said they were from their correct place. And
• 1:31:38
  I did forget that those were in Australia and they might not have been in
• 1:31:41
  America. Did you have amazing tasos in the UK? We called I think
• 1:31:45
  you call them pugs. We call them tasos. Mmm, oh no,
• 1:31:51
  little magic motion like discs like pugs. We call them pugs and stones.
• 1:31:57
  Don't they also have like a clip on them? Sometimes not the one,
• 1:32:00
  not the ones we had that So basically we had said, do you not
• 1:32:02
  have them in your set? New collection? I do. I do have
• 1:32:05
  some, but I also thought there were some that had a clip, but
• 1:32:08
  those might not be taso, those might be a different Are all just the
• 1:32:11
  motion ones? Yeah that's yeah, Yeah, I do have some of those.
• 1:32:14
  Yeh. They look like POGs lydia, but they're not always circles,
• 1:32:17
  right are Some of them like have a different shape, So all the all
• 1:32:20
  the tass a circle. So there was a reason I thought there was some
• 1:32:25
  that had like they were almost like not a star, but like they almost
• 1:32:28
  were like a sun. Again, I think dragon ball z ones that did
• 1:32:31
  that. And there's also ones that I'm know the ones you're talking about,
• 1:32:33
  they were they were lonitunes. But yeah, there was ones that you can
• 1:32:36
  connect connect to each other, had little like holes on the edges of the
• 1:32:39
  can sort of slop them into each other. But they were a huge thing
• 1:32:42
  in the nineties, like everyone loved getting their ta You get them in packets
• 1:32:45
  of what you call crisps. We call them chips. Don't ask me why
• 1:32:48
  we call them chips. We called them. We call them chips. Also,
• 1:32:50
  okay, yes, so I live with my wife's English, so I
• 1:32:56
  noticed that crisps, But yeah, that would be in there, and then
• 1:32:59
  of course all the do goods. We're like, you're promoting best food and
• 1:33:02
  junk food to kids. This is not right. And they took it away
• 1:33:05
  and I was like, but the whole fun was collecting the tasos. No
• 1:33:10
  one went there for the food. They went there for the toys. I
• 1:33:13
  bought the chips. I didn't eat the chips. I just wanted the taso
• 1:33:15
  that was in the packet. My mom was like, those because I've got
• 1:33:20
  them stuck to my wall, got a whole wall of tasos, Like that's
• 1:33:23
  my wallpaper in this part of the room over here. And my Mom's like,
• 1:33:27
  every time I walk in your room and I see those tasas, I
• 1:33:29
  think of all the money you made me waste on chips. You'd open up
• 1:33:32
  the packet and go, I've already got this one. Another packet, please,
• 1:33:34
  And I'm like, what I mean, that's the thing that's so special,
• 1:33:41
  and I want to know, like what weird thing Lydia remembers. But
• 1:33:45
  what I remember is that it wasn't just that, but they would do promotions
• 1:33:47
  with like tombstone pizza. They would do like, which is a big thing
• 1:33:50
  in America, is like a frozen pizza. They still exist. But one
• 1:33:54
  of my earliest memories of Simpson's merchandise period, and I had this on my
• 1:33:58
  wall when I was like little kid was a thing you had to mail in
• 1:34:02
  to Tombstone to get a poster. And and years ago I found that poster
• 1:34:08
  again and I had it framed in my room for a long time. Sadly,
• 1:34:11
  I ran out of room. I needed the wall space, and the
• 1:34:14
  poster's huge. It's like, you know, thirty six by twenty four or
• 1:34:16
  something. It's a huge poster. But I do still have it, and
• 1:34:19
  that's like one of my earliest memories. So that's what I that's what I
• 1:34:21
  mean, Like Taso's Tombstone burger King, these things are like some people's first
• 1:34:29
  memory of the merch Yeah, I had nothing, I think. I think
• 1:34:32
  for me it's just skip past because I think I loved the show and I
• 1:34:35
  watched the show, but I never actually had that thing of walking down toyas
• 1:34:41
  and like looking at the Simpsons merchandise. I think for me it was very
• 1:34:44
  much like you know, I like my barbies, I like my like sure
• 1:34:48
  baby burns. I think like I appreciated it as a show, but I
• 1:34:51
  baby, I've not thought about dice for a long time. You fed them
• 1:34:57
  and then they pood. Yeah, like for me, I think like the
• 1:35:01
  toy. I think. I don't know. Maybe I have to talk to
• 1:35:04
  my mum. But I can't actually remember any of us having any Simpsons merchandise.
• 1:35:11
  I have to ask James. But yeah, one of my favorite things
• 1:35:14
  that I own Simpsons merch wise. And I know this is only avaiable in
• 1:35:16
  Australia because it was an Australian thing. So when we first got pay TV
• 1:35:21
  in Australia, it was called Galaxy, and then it became Foxtail, and
• 1:35:25
  when they rebranded as Foxtowel, Bart Simpson was the mascot of Foxtail and he
• 1:35:30
  had the cash phrase, I want my foxtail, right, Lauren's looking around.
• 1:35:33
  He must have something. I got my fact, it's the magnet.
• 1:35:41
  Yes, I love my foxtail. Yes, so I've got that on the
• 1:35:45
  fridge still here that I got. When we first got Foxtail, it was
• 1:35:47
  like you didn't you weren't cool unless you had the Bart Simpson magnet. And
• 1:35:55
  yeah, so how much do you have to pay for that? Bad boy?
• 1:35:57
  I don't remember. I think I got this Fox Tale is only in
• 1:36:01
  Australia, right, Well Foxtel is what England court Sky? Okay, yeah,
• 1:36:05
  I don't remember where I got this, to be honest, it's so
• 1:36:09
  weird too, because like I don't think that owned by the same person,
• 1:36:11
  but when you go to England, the remotes are exactly the same except one
• 1:36:15
  says Foxtown the other says Sky. But they're two completely different companies. It's
• 1:36:17
  so bizarre, so weird. Yeah, I this is like so such a
• 1:36:24
  funny thing about collecting is like eventually you just forget where stuff came from.
• 1:36:29
  Like for the longest time, I could tell you exactly when and where I
• 1:36:32
  bought everything that I have, And now I'm to the point where it's like
• 1:36:36
  turning into a vague memory of some of the origins. But there you go.
• 1:36:42
  Yeah, And the other thing we have is I've got him in the
• 1:36:44
  fridge in my garage. Is that it's Homer and Bart and you can dress
• 1:36:47
  them. They're magnets. Have you seen these ones, Warren't, Yes,
• 1:36:50
  yes, I have some. Yeah, so I those are those are also
• 1:36:55
  Australian correct, Well, this is the thing, so I originally maybe they
• 1:36:59
  are also in the Uk. I think so I originally had some. They
• 1:37:01
  made some like cheaper ones in America, I remember for sure, But they
• 1:37:04
  might have also originally had like some of the nicer ones in America, because
• 1:37:08
  the ones that I recall seeing when I was younger were like much smaller and
• 1:37:13
  like all they were they were. They might have even just been stickers,
• 1:37:15
  not magnets. But I know exactly the ones you're talking about, ye,
• 1:37:17
  because there would be a different set, like sometimes it would just be Barton
• 1:37:21
  Homer, and then there would be one with Marge and Lisa. I think,
• 1:37:25
  yeah, so like you had to get like a few sets to have
• 1:37:27
  the whole family, and they came with hilarious outfits like that they would just
• 1:37:30
  be like them in their underwear and you could put them in all kinds of
• 1:37:32
  weird stuff. I do, I do have them somewhere in here, That's
• 1:37:35
  what I so. I thought you could never get margin, Lisa, because
• 1:37:36
  they wouldn't want to show you those guys and all those girls in their underwear.
• 1:37:40
  I'm I am like fairly positive. Again, this could be a false
• 1:37:45
  memory, but I'm pretty sure there's a margin Lisa. One also, and
• 1:37:46
  I think I have Okay, Yeah, okay maybe yeah. But what happened
• 1:37:49
  was I went on eBay UK and obviously my family within the UK, so
• 1:37:54
  I found someone in the UK with them and go to ship to their house.
• 1:37:57
  I said, hey, let's go for a let's get visit you fan.
• 1:38:00
  That'd be fun. Really, I've just got to get my Simsters magnets.
• 1:38:04
  But yes, had in the UK too. Anyway, that's so cool.
• 1:38:08
  It has been fun. This has been amazing. Yeah, it's been
• 1:38:11
  super fun. Very excited to finally read this book. So I try to
• 1:38:15
  go online and pre order. I was just like, I'm just going to
• 1:38:16
  pre order one. I can't find anywhere to pre order in Australia. Everywhere
• 1:38:19
  says unavailable. Ship, do you have Booktopia in austriat Utopia says not available?
• 1:38:25
  Amazon not available. That is a question for our publishers. Next week,
• 1:38:29
  Yeah, we will find out. We will find out what's up with
• 1:38:31
  that and well, and I'm sure we can get one on its way to
• 1:38:33
  you. Because I only go on Boo Topia or Amazon and both of them
• 1:38:36
  say not currently not available. I was like, oh, this was available
• 1:38:41
  for so long and then they announced it now it's not available. What's going
• 1:38:44
  on here? I thought maybe you sold your original orders or something. I
• 1:38:48
  truly don't know. We will find out. But either way, Brennan,
• 1:38:50
  I'll make sure you get one. I've got Dund's address. I've sent it
• 1:38:57
  to the publishers. You should very soon. Great. Great. I will
• 1:39:00
  buy one anyway because I like to support my friends. That's very that's very
• 1:39:03
  kind of you. Yeah. I mean, I hope everyone loves this book.
• 1:39:05
  I mean, it is truly, truly a labor of love. You
• 1:39:10
  know, we worked, we worked our asses off on it. I'm proud
• 1:39:13
  of it, and I just hope that you know, it's something that people
• 1:39:16
  look at more than once if they actually read it, take it all in.
• 1:39:19
  You know. Well, really this could be available for Christmas just the
• 1:39:21
  States, unfortunately, yes, I think for the UK and probably Australia.
• 1:39:28
  I think it's January fifteenth, but yeah, yeah, I think so,
• 1:39:32
  which is annoying. But we had to push it back because we wanted a
• 1:39:35
  few final edits on it just to make it perfect, and unfortunately it meant
• 1:39:39
  that the release date was pushed back. Yeah. But I will say to
• 1:39:42
  anyone that like has already ordered it in America or anywhere, really, some
• 1:39:45
  people are getting them early. I've gotten several messages even in the last couple
• 1:39:50
  of days of people that are like, oh my god, I ordered it
• 1:39:53
  from you know, X, Y or Z and it's already here. So
• 1:39:56
  there's a chance that even you know, who knows, maybe even the UK
• 1:39:59
  would get a little sooner if if they've already ordered it, so you know,
• 1:40:02
  go go get it and maybe you'll have it even before. You might
• 1:40:06
  get it two weeks early. Definitely. Yeah. I've pre ordered mine for
• 1:40:09
  the UK just to see what it's like getting it as a customer, so
• 1:40:13
  hopefully it might get mine early too, because I need to give it to
• 1:40:15
  my mom. He should do so, you know what you should. It
• 1:40:16
  is just the marketing, it's just the marketing brain coming out of me.
• 1:40:19
  But you guys should make like a custom I owe you note that people can
• 1:40:23
  print off and give to their friends for Christmas. That's good. I'll do
• 1:40:29
  that. Yeah, I'll do that. That's what happened for the for the
• 1:40:32
  Star Wars presence. When they first came out, they didn't have they didn't
• 1:40:35
  realise it's going to be a huge hit. So they're like, all these
• 1:40:38
  kids want Star Wars toys for Christmas, but they weren't gonna be ready.
• 1:40:41
  So all these kids under the Christmas tree that you got, and I owe
• 1:40:44
  you one Star Wars toy you're going to be getting this next year. So
• 1:40:46
  that's what they got, and they were happy with that because I knew they're
• 1:40:48
  going to be geting their Star Wars toys. So maybe you should be doing
• 1:40:50
  the same. Now, that's that's a great idea. I'm gonna. I'm
• 1:40:54
  not going to give you any credit, Brinnan, but I'm gonna I'm gonna
• 1:40:56
  do that. It's such a good idea. Alright, guys, it's been
• 1:41:00
  a blast. Thank you once again for joining me on the go. Get
• 1:41:03
  some sleep, my friend. I will talk to you soon. Lydia.
• 1:41:05
  Always a pleasure. I'll see you both very soon. See soon.