December 2, 2021 • 36 mins
Once the Little Orphan Annie comic strip was adapted to a radio program, it wasn't just a hit show -- it was a marketing coup for the good folks at Ovaltine. The company underwrote the program, riddled it with advertising, and worked like mad to convince every child in the US that they must drink as much Ovaltine as possible. Tune in and learn more in the second part of this two-part series.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. I don't know if you
guys have noticed on the zoom calls, but what I'm
actually doing for some reason, I've got this happen. Now,
let me lean back so you can see what I'm doing.
What I'm when I'm introing the show, I'm going like this,
like I'm I'm dabbing for some reason. I don't know why,
(00:47):
but I hope that. I hope you guys are okay
with it. That's our super producer, Mr Max Williams. I'm
ben uh that, Noel Brown. Thank you for approving of
my dad more ovaltine. Please, you're actually drinking I'm flagging, bro,
I need pet man. It's actually not ovaltine. It's adult ovaltine.
(01:11):
It's iced coffee. Oh okay, I'm drinking. I'm drinking iced
coffee as well. You know it would be good. The
ovaltine and iced coffee make it like a mocha. Yeah,
malted ice coffee. You know what. I think You're onto something,
my friend. And that is a perfect segue to our
continuing conversation. This is part two of the Sinister Influence
(01:32):
of Little Orphan Annie, and we've already learned some weird stuff.
I don't know if you know this radio show was
before our time. I don't know if the modern world
is aware of just like how corporate that show was.
The radio show. We're gonna learn a little bit about that, right, yeah,
especially considering it's like highly controversial political roots as a
(01:57):
comic strip. Uh. And then also some of that bled
into the radio show too, very very odd dichotomy. And
by the way, it was something we didn't mention in
the episode, and I think we buried the lead here.
I had forgotten until I was looking up some images
from the comic strip that like all of the characters
have these weird, soulless, vacant button eyes, Like, what's that about? Well,
(02:19):
it's it could be just a stylistic choice. But also
I'm wondering if maybe it was something that was just
cleaner when it was a comic strip. But those eyes
are off putting, right, Maybe it would be too busy
or too much ink, too much detail. But that doesn't
make sense because you have other comics like dag Would
that don't have a problem with having normal eyes. Yes, definitely,
(02:43):
still its a choice. It's a super odd one because
when I look at them, I just see just nothingness
staring back at me. Especially the one cover of one
of the collections of all of the Little or Nanni comics,
or one of many, because there were probably hundreds hundreds
of them, it's got Annie and her dog Sandy, both
with these kind of rarely rictus kind of creepy grins
and just staring at you through these vacant white eyes.
(03:06):
Creepy stuff. Uh, and we're gonna get into some more
creepy stuff in terms of like advertising and targeting kids,
and also the super sinister bizarro world that Little Orphan
Annie occupy that potentially could have caused some some wrinkles
in the the daily lives of the youth of the
nineteen thirties. Yeah, yeah, and uh, light spoilers here, perhaps
(03:30):
most importantly will be exploring how similar conversations continue in
the modern day. So without further ado, we we proudly
present or hopefully endearingly present part two of the sinister
influence of Little Orphan Any. One of the big themes
about Annie as a character is that she is self reliant.
(03:54):
The creator himself said that she lives in a vaguely
sinister world without comfort. She's controversial, but she's tougher than hell,
and she has a heart like you said in a
Heart of Gold, a fast left, and she takes care
of herself because she has to. The radio series did
cut some of the or sanded down some of the
(04:14):
comic strips more sharp tones, like it dropped the super
anti Roosevelt politics. At times, the strip reads as just
a way for this guy to let everyone know, through
the power of cartoons that he hates FDR, but they
kept the idea of danger. The episodes ending cliffhangers, and
the cliff hangers are a big reason kids tuned in
(04:37):
for the next episodes. They're also the reason parents didn't
like this. They didn't like their kid thinking um like
there was one episode where Annie is kidnapped at the
end of the show and parents were ticked off at this.
They were calling in. They were like, you guys are
being real pills. My kid is going to spend the
(05:00):
next the next who knows how long, freaking out trying
to figure out what happens to Annie if she survives.
Because in these kids imaginations in their minds. For many
of them, Annie is a real person. I was saying
that I was thinking the same thing, man, Like, with
this being so new, it's almost like it would be
hard for them to differentiate between or even understand the
(05:24):
nature of fiction. Like it's to them it's so real
that they would, you know, honestly respond with real emotion
and a real attachment, And they would wonder about their
friend Annie and if she was gonna be okay, you know,
all this time leading up to the next episode, which
surely would distract them, and they're thinking from school, you know,
and it happens. Yeah, you're you're right that, Like, I
(05:45):
love these said that, because that gets us to a
valid point. Parents have legit concerns now like this, their
friend has gone missing. They're gonna suck at their math
homework for a while, and it's your fault, traumatised. Yeah,
and it happens today with um, you know, to go
back to a Game of Thrones example, I can't believe
this is appropriate again, but the inability of audiences to
(06:10):
distinguish fact from fiction remains with us. For an example,
one need look no further than the unfortunate and very
talented actor who played King Joffrey in Game of Thrones.
People hated the actor and like, who was a child
by the way at the time, and would say terrible
(06:31):
things about him and to him. And now he quit acting.
What's his what's his name? Oh, it's something Gleason. He
has a very old man kind of name. I think
it's like, yeah, oh yeah, I was. I wasn't too far.
It's it's literally Jackie Gleason. Well not Jackie but Jackie.
Very old man name goes along with the period that
we're talking about. But you're right. I mean he quit
acting and I think went into like philanthropy or something
(06:54):
because he was just sick of getting dragged on the
internet because people had a hard time separating the art
from the artist. Yeah. Yeah, and Max, he said, you
have another example, Yeah, I do. Um. Obviously, you guys
know who Malcolm McDowell is, right, obviously very famous from
a clockwork Orange, but he was in Star Trek Generations
as the villain and he is just hated by Star
(07:18):
Trek community because he is spoiling right here at the
guy who killed Captain Kirk cannot discern the fact that
he is not that guy. And he didn't kill William Shatner.
But they're like, you know you killed Kirk. You are
a terrible person, Malcolm McDowell. No, William shatter is fine.
He went to space with Jeff Bezos, if I'm not mistaken.
He did a cover of Rocket Man. He made a
film in Esperanto, I think as well. Esperanto infamous. Yeah,
(07:44):
it's it's infamously bad, but also you know, an infamously
big swing, Esperanto being what kind of like a like
a an invented language, right then, yes, yeah, it is
a manufactured language with the idea of becoming a global,
one world language. We could do an episode on one
world languages, if that's interesting to anybody. So far, the
(08:04):
majority other than Math have failed at one point or another.
Language continues to kind of I don't want to say balkanized,
but specie in a way. That's why so many different
versions of English exists. I have a very good friend
of mine, Um you may have met briefly and only.
He's an author, a wonderful author named Tim Westover. And
(08:25):
I'm sure he's fine with me saying saying his name
on the air. Uh. Tim is in addition to his
many many accolades. He is a polyglott and he's the
kind of guy who studied Esperanto for fun. So I
asked him about the Shatner movie. He's like vice president
of Esperanto Publishing in America or something, and I asked
him about the Esperanto movie and Shatter was in and
(08:47):
he immediately told me it's like a cult classic in
the Esperanto community because the pronunciation is that bad. I
don't know how he got on this tangent, but it's uh,
but hopefully it's a worthwhile one. Okay, thrones to Esperanto, yes,
and and it's a little or fan any so, so
(09:08):
like uh, because everybody was very close to this show,
in part because parents were concerned and their children may
not understand that Annie is a fictional character. The writers
eventually had a list of what they called the mustn'ts,
which were things that could not happen in the plot
of any episode. So and he can't be kidnapped, right,
(09:29):
and he can't. You can find the list online, but
it's it's pretty interesting. And why did they do this?
We know the comic strip author was out there to
propagate his own political viewpoints, but when this moved to radio,
it's a new era, baby. We got money coming in
the door totally. And we also know that Gray the
(09:50):
the the author of the comic strip, Harold Gray. Um,
there are plenty of instances where the syndicated you know,
printings of the comic strip were pulled due to complaints.
So oh, you know, but he was maybe a little
less concerned with that. I don't know that he was like,
I don't know how the syndication pay worked, but uh
did He didn't seem too concerned. But now we've got
(10:10):
a centralized production that's going out over the wire, and
that sponsored by a marketing megal if in Ovaltine. Back
to Christmas story, you'll remember that that plays a huge
part of the whole Ovaltine thing. And there were literal,
(10:33):
you know kind of tie ins you know with um
little little things, you little prizes you could win similar
to the old Man's major reward that I believe you
went from some some other kind of like you know,
the sweepstakes for adults. But um, Ralphie was just absolutely
obsessed with getting this little or fan andy Dakota ring.
So you get the Dakota Ring and then you listen
(10:55):
along and then in an advertisement that's disguised as like
the Stirring Moments, he earns the dials always in the
bathroom on his Dakota ring, only to realize that the
message that it spells out is drink more ovaltine. Uh
dun due done. Indeed, he felt betrayed. He was so upset.
He was absolutely understandably because you know, he had to
(11:17):
power through tons of advertisements just to even get the
thing that ultimately became an advertisement and of itself. Yeah,
and he not's just the not just the advertisements he
had to power through. He had to physically power through ovaltine.
That's because he had you had to send in the
box stops, right, So imagine the physical tool that's not
ding on ovaltine. It's not like bad for you. It's
(11:39):
a multi drink mix well, and it has like vitamins
and minerals and stuff, and it's still widely available. It's
quite delicious. You know, I'm a fan of al um.
He was funny though that not to not to get
another tangent, just a really quick one. There is a
lot in common between the early days of radio and
like the single advertiser that requires what's called direct risk
(12:00):
bonts advertisements like where you have to send in your
box top or your code or whatever to where we
are in podcasting, or at least the very beginnings of podcasting,
because podcasting in the early days there were like a
handful of advertisers, all of whom required you to enter
some kind of code to get a prize, to get
a discount, to get something. So it really is kind
(12:20):
of like media going full circle in an interesting way. Yeah, yeah, no,
let's stay on this tangent for a while, because it's
it's pretty interesting. It happened when Hulu came out too.
There would be a very there'd be relatively little diversity
in the world of advertisers, right like, uh, in the
world of podcasting. You know, there was a time where
(12:41):
if you heard a commercial on a podcast, it was
a high chance it was going to be one of
like four companies, you know, the Blue Aprons, the Casper Mattresses,
Casper Mattresses, of course, Great Courses, yeah and yeah, all
the hits, all the good ones, and this is this
is something that could be a weird experience for people
(13:03):
who were listening. It was certainly, it was certainly surreal
for us at times on the other side of the microphone.
But overall this stuff ended up being good for our shows,
and we didn't We weren't in a Ovaltine position to
have just one entity doing the underwriting because they had
tremendous they had a creative control. Yeah. Ovaltee not only
(13:26):
did the underwriting, and underwriting just literally means that you
are a primary sponsor underwrite. It's a weird term. It
just means that you, you know, have a stake in
the show and you're responsible to the show partially underwritten
by etcetera. They were doing the writing properly. The advertising
agency that was responsible for marketing ovaltein they actually wrote
(13:46):
the Little Orphan Annie Radio Hour. Yeah, and then they
were adding stuff in all to sell Ovaltine. They were
making plot decisions. They said, okay, how do we this
very Edward Bernese approach. They were thinking, okay, you know,
how do we, uh, how do we make this attracted
the boys? We want boys drinking Ovaltine too. We got
so much oval team, we gotta move all ovaltea. Uh.
(14:09):
And then someone else is like, well, I don't know, boss,
let's go, let's get her sidekick let's say a sidekick.
We'll call him Joe. That's a name, and Joe corn Tassel,
He's he's a sidekick. Boys like hearing about themselves, so uh,
they'll buy Ovaltine too, and this Uh. Radio historians think
that the big success of this for the Ovaltine company
(14:33):
and for the story of Little or Financy was that
this was one of the first shows of its kind
in this medium that had a child as a lead character.
So it's almost like taking a Christmas Carol and now
now it's from tiny Thim's, you know, and that's something
kids can relate to. It's a brilliant idea and it
(14:55):
spoke directly to kids who are also trying to navigate
the weird stuff about the world of adults, which adults
often keep hidden from children or attempt to. I mean,
if you think about it, when your kid growing up,
the world of adulthood is somewhat cryptic, is it not.
Not only is it cryptic, I mean it's pretty depressing.
I mean this is in fact the Depression era in
(15:17):
the United States. Parents were struggling to pay the bills,
you know. I mean it was it was a really
tough time and there was a lot of strife and anxiety,
and this gave the kids something to latch onto or
sort of a protagonist that they could understand. But he
was ultimately written by adults, so that filtered in all
of these Like again we were talking about in the
comic strip, it was much less politicized are political in
(15:40):
the radio show, but there were adult issues that were
kind of like woven into the narrative. The producers understood,
the little or fancy preus understood. They had to kind of,
you know, really tread lightly on this stuff though, because
they wanted to make sure that the kids were signing
on because they were thrilled and enticed, but also that
(16:02):
it wasn't offending their parents, and the parents didn't think
that they were being given too much information or it
was too adults, because after all, it was the parents
that were buying the Oval Team for the kids, it
wasn't the kids that were buying it for themselves. So
it was very much a delicate balancing act they had
to do once they realized what the stakes were, especially
considering that the show itself, each episode was only about
(16:25):
fifteen minutes long, and so you can tell what they're
prioritizing here. Just for an example, let's go back to
that clip from the episode we played earlier, and let's
play something for you at the very beginning here. It
is now I have time to hear more about the
big new adventure that's starting for Orphanani and Simmons Corners.
(16:46):
But first, if there are any few boys and girls
who don't like to drink milk and your mother's scored
you because you don't drink enough, don't forget what a
wonderful help Oval team can be to you. Here's what
you do, instead of drinking your milk plain, ask your
mother to let you have ovaltine after this, because ovaltine
turns plain milk into the keenest kind of a treat,
(17:07):
so chocolately looking and good. It tastes even better than
it looks. What's more, your mother will be glad to
let you have all you want to drink because when
you add ovaltine, it greatly increases the food energy value
of your milk. So we're several minutes into the program
at this point, and what we just heard was a
(17:29):
an announcer who is not part of the story extolling
the virtues of ovaltine, promising that it would give them
pep just so and uh. And the thing is that
if you look at a breakdown of how much time
is spent telling a story versus telling people to buy ovaltine,
as much as one third, like as much of five
(17:51):
minutes of every fifteen minutes was all about ovaltine. And
then some stuff went down with this orphan named Annie
and her side kicked Joe and maybe a word of episodes,
So what is that? TRANDL And that's like, yeah, it's
like five minutes, so it's really only ten minute episode.
That kind of tracks to roughly where we ended up
(18:12):
in the proper golden age of like prime time television,
you know, thirty minute episode of a show would really
only end up being about twenty minutes, so maybe a
little less than a third, but I think it was okay, yeah, yeah,
but still right. They're definitely cutting into the time. And
you could hear that on AM radio too. For example,
(18:34):
AM radio will often save its commercials for like a
block that that feels very long. So this is clearly
an advertising thing. It doesn't matter who the president is
right now, unless the president says something really cool or
really mean about oval team. If they did, then I'm
sure that the writers would have Little Annie rediscover her
(18:57):
political um colleciousness. Because even though, like we said, they
definitely scaled back the political stuff from that clip we
heard again they're talking about buying stock. You know, they're
talking about like all of this kind of adults, you know,
financial stuff that kids would never in a million years
probably be privy to. So very very interesting that some
of that still carried over. And let's not forget that
(19:19):
we are still in and around the depression era, and
so most families don't have unlimited, you know, expendable income
to buy like suits and treats. So they had to
market this as something that was like, you know, good
for your health. You know, it would give the kids
the PAP, you know, and like you say things like
and do little over financy a favor and and tell
your mom and dad to buy more ovaltine, and so
(19:41):
they you know, you could argue that it was, in
some small ways like a supplement. I mean, that is
how it's marketed. Now. If you look at the front
of ovaltine, it really leans into how many vitamins and
minerals in it and all that good stuff. But we
also know that milk itself already has a lot of
vitamins and minerals and and you know, calcium and all
of that um, and you know, to add something to
(20:03):
milk that was costly probably would have been a tough
sell to some parents if it wasn't for their kids
just haranguing them about this, you know, and making it
absolutely just not an option to not buy the stuff.
There is, in fact, a really great anecdote in the
book The Psychology of Radio by Hadley Cantrill and Gordon Allport,
(20:26):
where they talk about a seven year old kid named
Andrew who loved and then in the context of the book,
they say whose favorite radio show unnamed with a little
heroine who almost certainly was anny, and was sponsored by
a chocolate flavoring to be added to milk, which is
again unquestionably opaltine. This is from a Smithsonian magazine article
about American children facing great dangers in the nineteen thirties.
(20:49):
I believe the one they're referring to, hear is marketing,
and apparently the kid got so obsessed with this chocolate
flavoring not to be named, that he insisted that mother
buy and after she refused to buy it. He wouldn't
drink milk anymore at all after she decided that it
wasn't worth the price. Um. And then there's the quote
from the book in vain. Does she suggest that Andrew
(21:12):
derived his pep from ordinary cuco or at least from
one of the less expensive preparations. Uh. Andrew wins his
point by refusing to drink milk at all without the
costly addition. So again, parents do have an ax to
grind here. This is some serious arm twisting that's going
on on the part of their kids who are potentially
(21:32):
being so stubborn that they could put their own health
at risk. If you are to believe it is to
be believed that milk, you know, was such an important
facet of kids growing up, which we now know isn't
quite true either. Well yeah, yeah, and shout out to
the concerted, ongoing conspiracies of the dairy industry. Um, maybe
not so much the dairy industry. Big cheese, there was
(21:54):
a real thing. Check out cheese spiracy on stuff they
don't want you to know, available wherever you find your
favorite podcast. Always be closing, gentlemen. So you you nailed it. Yeah,
there's another thing they do. This is incredibly clever and
again this is the dark shadow of berness. It's it
would be described as a giveaway, so giveaway. An Air
(22:17):
quotes the announcer Pierre Andre, that's the guy you heard
do the ovaltine add just a few minutes ago. Would
always tell these kids about giveaways. All you had to
do was send in one dime and it would had
to be wrapped in the metal foil from under the
lid of an ovaltine. Can you know, like the sealed
(22:37):
for freshness kind of thing. You wrapped the dime up
in that, and if you sent it in you could
get things like mugs or buttons or booklets or badges
and masks and blah blah blah all this other or
Dakota Rings Right, Merchants, swag Right and a lot of
other radio shows. To be fair, we're doing this. They
were offering quote unquote free items. The deal is that
(23:00):
they weren't really free because you're proving that you've bought
this product. When you're sending this stuff in. It's just
like sending in a rapper or a box top. An
oval team by far. According to Bruce Smith in History
of Little or fananity. Gave away more items connected to
this radio show than anyone else, any other radio show.
(23:21):
Children would have to get box tops labels, this happens
in um, this happens in a Christmas story, and they
would have to mail them in for like you said,
these Dakota rings, these toys, these tis it does and
and you know, the Christmas story twist being that the
message that he dcoded ended up being itself an advertisement,
(23:41):
wasn't really the way it would usually go, thankfully, to
give them a little bit of credit, the idea was
that this it was actually a pin. It was a
Dakota pin, and it was their most popular giveaway item.
But in the show it was almost like this way
of having like an interactive element in the show. It
would be little things where if you had to have
the dacoder pin to you know, decodeed so you felt
(24:03):
like you were in the know, you know, but it
would be little clues about what would happen on next
week's episode, right, things like send help or Sandy is safe,
you know, things like that, and it would be you know,
it would give you this sense of like inclusion and
like feeling like you were part of the adventure or
like you know, on her team. Yeah, you were in
on it. You had knowledge that other folks, maybe even
(24:26):
your parents, did not possess. And this dacoder, Yeah, you're right,
it is technically a badge. This was used pretty often.
Another very clever thing they did was to conduct acts
of planned obsolescence. This is planned obsolescence is when something
is purposely made to not last forever, such that a
(24:48):
company can sell you the same thing product or service again.
So these decoder devices, these badges weren't good forever. You
couldn't just get one. You had to get a new
when like every year or so, because if you would
try to decode stuff with last year's badge, it wouldn't work.
The labels had changed. So this is brilliant because everything
(25:18):
is centered on getting kids to sort of hold their
parents emotionally hostage for more ovalteen and uh, it's a
true story. What happens to Ralphie is based on a
true story and his desire for this to be a
member of Annie's Mystery Radio Club or the Secret Circle.
(25:40):
There's something that really happened to kids, maybe to some
folks who were listening or were alive at the same time.
So let's talk about this, like the kids needed to
get their parents to move ovaltee. Kids were also the
kids are just little human beings, right, They needed to
keep up with the joneses of the playground. You didn't
(26:02):
want to be that last kid who got the Dakota
ring or got the Dakota badge and was late. You
know what I mean. You wanted to be in the
zeit guys. You wanted your finger on that malted milk pulse.
So parents had to battle their kids over the grocery
list and there would be more and more giveaways, but
you had to buy more and more ovaltine to get
them because they weren't really giveaways. And so parents thought, well,
(26:27):
what if we start boycotting ovaltine, or what if we
just boycott any company that is evolved with a show
that we don't like, maybe we can influence its content.
And that's why those advertising exacts had that list of
mustn'ts for the plots, right, They didn't want to do
things that parents objected to content wise, and broadcasters would
(26:47):
listen to this and they would they would fall in
line the little orphan any ovaltine overlords, that's a tongue twister,
orphan anie, ovaltine overlords. They would they would ultimately comp
chulate to the parents because they needed to keep that sweet,
sweet guilty kid money coming in, you know, you know,
and in the same way that it was kind of
(27:10):
up to the parents to maybe shield their kids from
some of this you know, influence from these radio shows
and make sure that they, you know, stuck to their
their school work and that they you know, give like
like like you think today, like you can have X
number of hours of TV a week and that's it,
and blah bla, blah blah. There was a certain amount
of like weak willed parenting that was going on, as
(27:30):
evidenced by the anecdote about the kid who essentially brow
beat his mother into you know, getting him ovaltine or
else he refused to I'll starve before I don't drink
my chocolate flavored milk, And clearly the advertisers capitalized on that.
There's an article in Newsweek on December of nineteen thirty
four saying if a weak willed mother should buy all
these prize box tops, her grocery budget would swell to
(27:53):
at least two dollars a week, or about thirty five
dollars and fifty cents today and this boycott that you mentioned,
and I think you know, they took note. Right at
the very least, they decided, Okay, maybe if we're gonna
we're in this for the long haul, maybe we should
tone down the rhetoric a little bit and give these
parents a break, because they're really starting to hate us.
(28:13):
At the end of the day, we need them to
be on our side. So by the end of the thirties,
all those cliffhangers that caused kids to be like just
you know, out of their minds with a worry until
the next episode came, well, those were toned down quite
a bit. And this actually might have kind of begun
the end of the beginning of this era of of
you know, ubiquitous uh child directed advertising. Yeah. But that's
(28:38):
the thing though, because by toning down those cliffhangers and
those dark, mysterious, sinister events, they were also removing some
of the appeal that I had to children to this
young audience. The style of advertising, though, as you're pointed out,
still remained and it hasn't gone away since. So what
(29:00):
we see here is a precedent set just like young
Ralphie in a Christmas story, we learned the true cost
of a free giveaway, and we've got a I don't know,
there's so much to impact here, because it's like the
story of Little Orphan Any is much more than what
(29:21):
you find in the musical, especially when you get backstage
and you see that she is a political metaphor and
in a way she's a defire of gender stereotypes. She's
also a corporate mascot through the puppet strings of the
folks over oval team. You're always thinking about was trying
to have a modern what if and we can probably
(29:41):
find it better when. But my first thought is what
if Wendy from Wendy's had like the most popular weekly
show on HBO and a third of it, a third
of the plot. Every every episode, no matter what, involved
having to go to Wendy's and be knowledge bull of
the newest stuff on the menu. Also, Wendy's released a
(30:04):
mixtape and I'm gonna be honest with you, if you
like hip hop, it slaps. I did not want it
to be good. It is good. Wendy has been doing
a pretty good job on their like social media game
for quite some time. All a lot of those fast
food brands have They even have like feuds from time
to time. You gotta wonder if they are manufactured. But
they Oh my god, I got I got Ovalteine as
(30:27):
soon as we in the episode. I'm gonna listen to
the Wendy's mixtape again rest in Greece also known as
We beef in It dis track for I think McDonald's
I can what to check it out? No, it's true,
and I mean, you know, a lot of the cues
as we know, um from marketing. Uh, the lessons learned,
you know from this era. Uh, you can't be you
(30:49):
can't overplay your hands when it comes to marketing, and
I think Ovalteine realized that. But it's also still around.
So yeah, they clearly did an okay job and pivoting
and bobbing and weaving with the times, you know, and
the comic strip itself went on until That's wild to me.
But this what a what a strange what a strange ride.
(31:11):
We also know that there is a new I believe
there's a new Ani musical adaptation that's either out now
or yeah have you have you guys seen it? Is
it out yet? I thought commercial for it? Either last
night or night before. I think it's coming up. I
don't think it's okay, okay, Well, with that in mind,
you know, everybody, you think the point of this two
(31:33):
part series, as we draw to a close here is simply,
this ridiculous history is brought to you by Ovaltine. Collect
your Ovaltine box tops and send us stuff. I might
have missed the larger point. I wish I wish we
had prepared a little more. We could have given you
some sort of cryptic message to the code. How do
they do it? Wasn't it just like B three like
bingo results, kind of like X seven, you know, like
(31:58):
that would make sense because it would have to be
something that you couldn't solve unless you had a codex
with you, you know, because if they tried pick Latin,
people would have broke it. If they tried some like
um alphabet based cryptographical approach, somebody could have broken it.
It would have to be something where you had just
the It depended on the cipher that the audience possessed. Right,
(32:22):
I'm trying to awaid getting two into the idea of cryptography,
because that that itself is a whole another message, spaghetti
whole another bag of badgers. But and there's so many,
they made so many of them, ben that you can
you can buy yourself one on eBay today for just
around thirty five to fifty bucks. They are they are
(32:43):
looking a little sheriff's badge almost. And the most pricey
one that I see right up front is one that
includes the actual mailer that it came in with, the
actual envelope and the addresses on it in the stamps.
That one fifty bucks. But in general, uh, and appears
you can get you can get you one of these.
And it is exactly as we describe. Ban's just a circle.
(33:04):
That's the codex with like a ring of letters and
then an interior ring with numbers, crazy crazy stuff, you know.
And and just for if we could get a quick
inflation calculator, let's do this. It's a reverse inflation calculator.
Clips up. Wonderful, wonderful work, gentlemen. Uh, fifty dollars in
(33:32):
nineteen thirty six. By the way, it would be the
equivalent of nine d and nine four dollars two cents today, right. Well,
I think Uh, Daddy Warbucks would be proud. Daddy Warbucks
would be proud. Yes, And we are as always super
grateful and proud for the opportunity to explore these ridiculous
(33:54):
stories with you today, folks. Also, this one was a
two parter to us because it it's on so many
themes that are applicable in the modern day. Dare I
say it maybe to some parents who are feeling some
you know, a little bit of stress from their kids
who need to have the thing. And it can't be
a thing like the thing. It has to be that
(34:16):
thing specifically that you know, it can't be It can't
be a cuddle meat grover tickle meal. No, no, that's
not gonna fly. Let us know what you're coveted childhood
item was and do you like opal zane? Do you
do you cream of wheat? That was another big one.
Remember we wouldn't even get into it but around this time,
or I guess a little later. That's when we got
(34:36):
into things like the craft you know, television, you know
hour or whatever, craft like the cool Gate Hour, cool
Gate Hour exactly, you know. But all of those that
they were always a single sponsor. A lot of them
were done live, and they you know, constantly bounced back
to whoever the spokesperson was and a separate little shooting
scenario in the studio with like boxes of the thing
(34:57):
behind them. So let us know if you're from that
air what you remember fondly, because honestly, nowadays we just
wouldn't put up with that. It's us a little much.
Even though with the streaming and the podcasting, like we're
talking about earlier, we are in a weird new space
where advertising has kind of gotten clunky and weird again,
you know what I mean? Yeah, the same as it
(35:18):
ever was, and it is sort of a renaissance in
that way. You're right, because a new technology has entered
the playing field. And what will the future bring Well,
hopefully we'll be with you to explore it together. Thanks
as always to our super producer, Mr Max Williams, Thanks
to Casey Pegram, Thanks to our own little orphan Annie
Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister Or is he
(35:40):
more of a Daddy warbox? You think he is quite
bald um as his daddy warbox, But if you were
a little orphan anti figure, I mean he's got his
dog Timbolt, which would be his trusty companion for solving mysteries. Yeah,
and and I'll say it, he has a lovely singing voice.
He does, it's very true. I don't know. I feel
like he's more of a sidekick though fair enough. Joe
(36:01):
corn Tassel, Yeah, he's a drawing corant task completely. He
would he would uh, he would wrinkle at at that
second second fiddle status. But we'll see, we'll we'll get
with his agents. We'll see what he we'll see what
he prefers. Um. Also, it's always huge. Thanks to Alex
Williams who composed our theme, Christopher Hastiods Neaves, Jeff Coates
here in spirit and to you Ben. I'm not sure
(36:23):
which of us is which, but between the two thos
who make a hell of a team for solving you know,
ridiculous history mysteries and you know, beating down the man.
Let's do a hearty boys. Oh, we'll do a hardly boys,
so we don't get super love it. We'll see you
next time. Books. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
(36:46):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. I don't know if you
guys have noticed on the zoom calls, but what I'm
actually doing for some reason, I've got this happen. Now,
let me lean back so you can see what I'm doing.
What I'm when I'm introing the show, I'm going like this,
like I'm I'm dabbing for some reason. I don't know why,
(00:47):
but I hope that. I hope you guys are okay
with it. That's our super producer, Mr Max Williams. I'm
ben uh that, Noel Brown. Thank you for approving of
my dad more ovaltine. Please, you're actually drinking I'm flagging, bro,
I need pet man. It's actually not ovaltine. It's adult ovaltine.
(01:11):
It's iced coffee. Oh okay, I'm drinking. I'm drinking iced
coffee as well. You know it would be good. The
ovaltine and iced coffee make it like a mocha. Yeah,
malted ice coffee. You know what. I think You're onto something,
my friend. And that is a perfect segue to our
continuing conversation. This is part two of the Sinister Influence
(01:32):
of Little Orphan Annie, and we've already learned some weird stuff.
I don't know if you know this radio show was
before our time. I don't know if the modern world
is aware of just like how corporate that show was.
The radio show. We're gonna learn a little bit about that, right, yeah,
especially considering it's like highly controversial political roots as a
(01:57):
comic strip. Uh. And then also some of that bled
into the radio show too, very very odd dichotomy. And
by the way, it was something we didn't mention in
the episode, and I think we buried the lead here.
I had forgotten until I was looking up some images
from the comic strip that like all of the characters
have these weird, soulless, vacant button eyes, Like, what's that about? Well,
(02:19):
it's it could be just a stylistic choice. But also
I'm wondering if maybe it was something that was just
cleaner when it was a comic strip. But those eyes
are off putting, right, Maybe it would be too busy
or too much ink, too much detail. But that doesn't
make sense because you have other comics like dag Would
that don't have a problem with having normal eyes. Yes, definitely,
(02:43):
still its a choice. It's a super odd one because
when I look at them, I just see just nothingness
staring back at me. Especially the one cover of one
of the collections of all of the Little or Nanni comics,
or one of many, because there were probably hundreds hundreds
of them, it's got Annie and her dog Sandy, both
with these kind of rarely rictus kind of creepy grins
and just staring at you through these vacant white eyes.
(03:06):
Creepy stuff. Uh, and we're gonna get into some more
creepy stuff in terms of like advertising and targeting kids,
and also the super sinister bizarro world that Little Orphan
Annie occupy that potentially could have caused some some wrinkles
in the the daily lives of the youth of the
nineteen thirties. Yeah, yeah, and uh, light spoilers here, perhaps
(03:30):
most importantly will be exploring how similar conversations continue in
the modern day. So without further ado, we we proudly
present or hopefully endearingly present part two of the sinister
influence of Little Orphan Any. One of the big themes
about Annie as a character is that she is self reliant.
(03:54):
The creator himself said that she lives in a vaguely
sinister world without comfort. She's controversial, but she's tougher than hell,
and she has a heart like you said in a
Heart of Gold, a fast left, and she takes care
of herself because she has to. The radio series did
cut some of the or sanded down some of the
(04:14):
comic strips more sharp tones, like it dropped the super
anti Roosevelt politics. At times, the strip reads as just
a way for this guy to let everyone know, through
the power of cartoons that he hates FDR, but they
kept the idea of danger. The episodes ending cliffhangers, and
the cliff hangers are a big reason kids tuned in
(04:37):
for the next episodes. They're also the reason parents didn't
like this. They didn't like their kid thinking um like
there was one episode where Annie is kidnapped at the
end of the show and parents were ticked off at this.
They were calling in. They were like, you guys are
being real pills. My kid is going to spend the
(05:00):
next the next who knows how long, freaking out trying
to figure out what happens to Annie if she survives.
Because in these kids imaginations in their minds. For many
of them, Annie is a real person. I was saying
that I was thinking the same thing, man, Like, with
this being so new, it's almost like it would be
hard for them to differentiate between or even understand the
(05:24):
nature of fiction. Like it's to them it's so real
that they would, you know, honestly respond with real emotion
and a real attachment, And they would wonder about their
friend Annie and if she was gonna be okay, you know,
all this time leading up to the next episode, which
surely would distract them, and they're thinking from school, you know,
and it happens. Yeah, you're you're right that, Like, I
(05:45):
love these said that, because that gets us to a
valid point. Parents have legit concerns now like this, their
friend has gone missing. They're gonna suck at their math
homework for a while, and it's your fault, traumatised. Yeah,
and it happens today with um, you know, to go
back to a Game of Thrones example, I can't believe
this is appropriate again, but the inability of audiences to
(06:10):
distinguish fact from fiction remains with us. For an example,
one need look no further than the unfortunate and very
talented actor who played King Joffrey in Game of Thrones.
People hated the actor and like, who was a child
by the way at the time, and would say terrible
(06:31):
things about him and to him. And now he quit acting.
What's his what's his name? Oh, it's something Gleason. He
has a very old man kind of name. I think
it's like, yeah, oh yeah, I was. I wasn't too far.
It's it's literally Jackie Gleason. Well not Jackie but Jackie.
Very old man name goes along with the period that
we're talking about. But you're right. I mean he quit
acting and I think went into like philanthropy or something
(06:54):
because he was just sick of getting dragged on the
internet because people had a hard time separating the art
from the artist. Yeah. Yeah, and Max, he said, you
have another example, Yeah, I do. Um. Obviously, you guys
know who Malcolm McDowell is, right, obviously very famous from
a clockwork Orange, but he was in Star Trek Generations
as the villain and he is just hated by Star
(07:18):
Trek community because he is spoiling right here at the
guy who killed Captain Kirk cannot discern the fact that
he is not that guy. And he didn't kill William Shatner.
But they're like, you know you killed Kirk. You are
a terrible person, Malcolm McDowell. No, William shatter is fine.
He went to space with Jeff Bezos, if I'm not mistaken.
He did a cover of Rocket Man. He made a
film in Esperanto, I think as well. Esperanto infamous. Yeah,
(07:44):
it's it's infamously bad, but also you know, an infamously
big swing, Esperanto being what kind of like a like
a an invented language, right then, yes, yeah, it is
a manufactured language with the idea of becoming a global,
one world language. We could do an episode on one
world languages, if that's interesting to anybody. So far, the
(08:04):
majority other than Math have failed at one point or another.
Language continues to kind of I don't want to say balkanized,
but specie in a way. That's why so many different
versions of English exists. I have a very good friend
of mine, Um you may have met briefly and only.
He's an author, a wonderful author named Tim Westover. And
(08:25):
I'm sure he's fine with me saying saying his name
on the air. Uh. Tim is in addition to his
many many accolades. He is a polyglott and he's the
kind of guy who studied Esperanto for fun. So I
asked him about the Shatner movie. He's like vice president
of Esperanto Publishing in America or something, and I asked
him about the Esperanto movie and Shatter was in and
(08:47):
he immediately told me it's like a cult classic in
the Esperanto community because the pronunciation is that bad. I
don't know how he got on this tangent, but it's uh,
but hopefully it's a worthwhile one. Okay, thrones to Esperanto, yes,
and and it's a little or fan any so, so
(09:08):
like uh, because everybody was very close to this show,
in part because parents were concerned and their children may
not understand that Annie is a fictional character. The writers
eventually had a list of what they called the mustn'ts,
which were things that could not happen in the plot
of any episode. So and he can't be kidnapped, right,
(09:29):
and he can't. You can find the list online, but
it's it's pretty interesting. And why did they do this?
We know the comic strip author was out there to
propagate his own political viewpoints, but when this moved to radio,
it's a new era, baby. We got money coming in
the door totally. And we also know that Gray the
(09:50):
the the author of the comic strip, Harold Gray. Um,
there are plenty of instances where the syndicated you know,
printings of the comic strip were pulled due to complaints.
So oh, you know, but he was maybe a little
less concerned with that. I don't know that he was like,
I don't know how the syndication pay worked, but uh
did He didn't seem too concerned. But now we've got
(10:10):
a centralized production that's going out over the wire, and
that sponsored by a marketing megal if in Ovaltine. Back
to Christmas story, you'll remember that that plays a huge
part of the whole Ovaltine thing. And there were literal,
(10:33):
you know kind of tie ins you know with um
little little things, you little prizes you could win similar
to the old Man's major reward that I believe you
went from some some other kind of like you know,
the sweepstakes for adults. But um, Ralphie was just absolutely
obsessed with getting this little or fan andy Dakota ring.
So you get the Dakota Ring and then you listen
(10:55):
along and then in an advertisement that's disguised as like
the Stirring Moments, he earns the dials always in the
bathroom on his Dakota ring, only to realize that the
message that it spells out is drink more ovaltine. Uh
dun due done. Indeed, he felt betrayed. He was so upset.
He was absolutely understandably because you know, he had to
(11:17):
power through tons of advertisements just to even get the
thing that ultimately became an advertisement and of itself. Yeah,
and he not's just the not just the advertisements he
had to power through. He had to physically power through ovaltine.
That's because he had you had to send in the
box stops, right, So imagine the physical tool that's not
ding on ovaltine. It's not like bad for you. It's
(11:39):
a multi drink mix well, and it has like vitamins
and minerals and stuff, and it's still widely available. It's
quite delicious. You know, I'm a fan of al um.
He was funny though that not to not to get
another tangent, just a really quick one. There is a
lot in common between the early days of radio and
like the single advertiser that requires what's called direct risk
(12:00):
bonts advertisements like where you have to send in your
box top or your code or whatever to where we
are in podcasting, or at least the very beginnings of podcasting,
because podcasting in the early days there were like a
handful of advertisers, all of whom required you to enter
some kind of code to get a prize, to get
a discount, to get something. So it really is kind
(12:20):
of like media going full circle in an interesting way. Yeah, yeah, no,
let's stay on this tangent for a while, because it's
it's pretty interesting. It happened when Hulu came out too.
There would be a very there'd be relatively little diversity
in the world of advertisers, right like, uh, in the
world of podcasting. You know, there was a time where
(12:41):
if you heard a commercial on a podcast, it was
a high chance it was going to be one of
like four companies, you know, the Blue Aprons, the Casper Mattresses,
Casper Mattresses, of course, Great Courses, yeah and yeah, all
the hits, all the good ones, and this is this
is something that could be a weird experience for people
(13:03):
who were listening. It was certainly, it was certainly surreal
for us at times on the other side of the microphone.
But overall this stuff ended up being good for our shows,
and we didn't We weren't in a Ovaltine position to
have just one entity doing the underwriting because they had
tremendous they had a creative control. Yeah. Ovaltee not only
(13:26):
did the underwriting, and underwriting just literally means that you
are a primary sponsor underwrite. It's a weird term. It
just means that you, you know, have a stake in
the show and you're responsible to the show partially underwritten
by etcetera. They were doing the writing properly. The advertising
agency that was responsible for marketing ovaltein they actually wrote
(13:46):
the Little Orphan Annie Radio Hour. Yeah, and then they
were adding stuff in all to sell Ovaltine. They were
making plot decisions. They said, okay, how do we this
very Edward Bernese approach. They were thinking, okay, you know,
how do we, uh, how do we make this attracted
the boys? We want boys drinking Ovaltine too. We got
so much oval team, we gotta move all ovaltea. Uh.
(14:09):
And then someone else is like, well, I don't know, boss,
let's go, let's get her sidekick let's say a sidekick.
We'll call him Joe. That's a name, and Joe corn Tassel,
He's he's a sidekick. Boys like hearing about themselves, so uh,
they'll buy Ovaltine too, and this Uh. Radio historians think
that the big success of this for the Ovaltine company
(14:33):
and for the story of Little or Financy was that
this was one of the first shows of its kind
in this medium that had a child as a lead character.
So it's almost like taking a Christmas Carol and now
now it's from tiny Thim's, you know, and that's something
kids can relate to. It's a brilliant idea and it
(14:55):
spoke directly to kids who are also trying to navigate
the weird stuff about the world of adults, which adults
often keep hidden from children or attempt to. I mean,
if you think about it, when your kid growing up,
the world of adulthood is somewhat cryptic, is it not.
Not only is it cryptic, I mean it's pretty depressing.
I mean this is in fact the Depression era in
(15:17):
the United States. Parents were struggling to pay the bills,
you know. I mean it was it was a really
tough time and there was a lot of strife and anxiety,
and this gave the kids something to latch onto or
sort of a protagonist that they could understand. But he
was ultimately written by adults, so that filtered in all
of these Like again we were talking about in the
comic strip, it was much less politicized are political in
(15:40):
the radio show, but there were adult issues that were
kind of like woven into the narrative. The producers understood,
the little or fancy preus understood. They had to kind of,
you know, really tread lightly on this stuff though, because
they wanted to make sure that the kids were signing
on because they were thrilled and enticed, but also that
(16:02):
it wasn't offending their parents, and the parents didn't think
that they were being given too much information or it
was too adults, because after all, it was the parents
that were buying the Oval Team for the kids, it
wasn't the kids that were buying it for themselves. So
it was very much a delicate balancing act they had
to do once they realized what the stakes were, especially
considering that the show itself, each episode was only about
(16:25):
fifteen minutes long, and so you can tell what they're
prioritizing here. Just for an example, let's go back to
that clip from the episode we played earlier, and let's
play something for you at the very beginning here. It
is now I have time to hear more about the
big new adventure that's starting for Orphanani and Simmons Corners.
(16:46):
But first, if there are any few boys and girls
who don't like to drink milk and your mother's scored
you because you don't drink enough, don't forget what a
wonderful help Oval team can be to you. Here's what
you do, instead of drinking your milk plain, ask your
mother to let you have ovaltine after this, because ovaltine
turns plain milk into the keenest kind of a treat,
(17:07):
so chocolately looking and good. It tastes even better than
it looks. What's more, your mother will be glad to
let you have all you want to drink because when
you add ovaltine, it greatly increases the food energy value
of your milk. So we're several minutes into the program
at this point, and what we just heard was a
(17:29):
an announcer who is not part of the story extolling
the virtues of ovaltine, promising that it would give them
pep just so and uh. And the thing is that
if you look at a breakdown of how much time
is spent telling a story versus telling people to buy ovaltine,
as much as one third, like as much of five
(17:51):
minutes of every fifteen minutes was all about ovaltine. And
then some stuff went down with this orphan named Annie
and her side kicked Joe and maybe a word of episodes,
So what is that? TRANDL And that's like, yeah, it's
like five minutes, so it's really only ten minute episode.
That kind of tracks to roughly where we ended up
(18:12):
in the proper golden age of like prime time television,
you know, thirty minute episode of a show would really
only end up being about twenty minutes, so maybe a
little less than a third, but I think it was okay, yeah, yeah,
but still right. They're definitely cutting into the time. And
you could hear that on AM radio too. For example,
(18:34):
AM radio will often save its commercials for like a
block that that feels very long. So this is clearly
an advertising thing. It doesn't matter who the president is
right now, unless the president says something really cool or
really mean about oval team. If they did, then I'm
sure that the writers would have Little Annie rediscover her
(18:57):
political um colleciousness. Because even though, like we said, they
definitely scaled back the political stuff from that clip we
heard again they're talking about buying stock. You know, they're
talking about like all of this kind of adults, you know,
financial stuff that kids would never in a million years
probably be privy to. So very very interesting that some
of that still carried over. And let's not forget that
(19:19):
we are still in and around the depression era, and
so most families don't have unlimited, you know, expendable income
to buy like suits and treats. So they had to
market this as something that was like, you know, good
for your health. You know, it would give the kids
the PAP, you know, and like you say things like
and do little over financy a favor and and tell
your mom and dad to buy more ovaltine, and so
(19:41):
they you know, you could argue that it was, in
some small ways like a supplement. I mean, that is
how it's marketed. Now. If you look at the front
of ovaltine, it really leans into how many vitamins and
minerals in it and all that good stuff. But we
also know that milk itself already has a lot of
vitamins and minerals and and you know, calcium and all
of that um, and you know, to add something to
(20:03):
milk that was costly probably would have been a tough
sell to some parents if it wasn't for their kids
just haranguing them about this, you know, and making it
absolutely just not an option to not buy the stuff.
There is, in fact, a really great anecdote in the
book The Psychology of Radio by Hadley Cantrill and Gordon Allport,
(20:26):
where they talk about a seven year old kid named
Andrew who loved and then in the context of the book,
they say whose favorite radio show unnamed with a little
heroine who almost certainly was anny, and was sponsored by
a chocolate flavoring to be added to milk, which is
again unquestionably opaltine. This is from a Smithsonian magazine article
about American children facing great dangers in the nineteen thirties.
(20:49):
I believe the one they're referring to, hear is marketing,
and apparently the kid got so obsessed with this chocolate
flavoring not to be named, that he insisted that mother
buy and after she refused to buy it. He wouldn't
drink milk anymore at all after she decided that it
wasn't worth the price. Um. And then there's the quote
from the book in vain. Does she suggest that Andrew
(21:12):
derived his pep from ordinary cuco or at least from
one of the less expensive preparations. Uh. Andrew wins his
point by refusing to drink milk at all without the
costly addition. So again, parents do have an ax to
grind here. This is some serious arm twisting that's going
on on the part of their kids who are potentially
(21:32):
being so stubborn that they could put their own health
at risk. If you are to believe it is to
be believed that milk, you know, was such an important
facet of kids growing up, which we now know isn't
quite true either. Well yeah, yeah, and shout out to
the concerted, ongoing conspiracies of the dairy industry. Um, maybe
not so much the dairy industry. Big cheese, there was
(21:54):
a real thing. Check out cheese spiracy on stuff they
don't want you to know, available wherever you find your
favorite podcast. Always be closing, gentlemen. So you you nailed it. Yeah,
there's another thing they do. This is incredibly clever and
again this is the dark shadow of berness. It's it
would be described as a giveaway, so giveaway. An Air
(22:17):
quotes the announcer Pierre Andre, that's the guy you heard
do the ovaltine add just a few minutes ago. Would
always tell these kids about giveaways. All you had to
do was send in one dime and it would had
to be wrapped in the metal foil from under the
lid of an ovaltine. Can you know, like the sealed
(22:37):
for freshness kind of thing. You wrapped the dime up
in that, and if you sent it in you could
get things like mugs or buttons or booklets or badges
and masks and blah blah blah all this other or
Dakota Rings Right, Merchants, swag Right and a lot of
other radio shows. To be fair, we're doing this. They
were offering quote unquote free items. The deal is that
(23:00):
they weren't really free because you're proving that you've bought
this product. When you're sending this stuff in. It's just
like sending in a rapper or a box top. An
oval team by far. According to Bruce Smith in History
of Little or fananity. Gave away more items connected to
this radio show than anyone else, any other radio show.
(23:21):
Children would have to get box tops labels, this happens
in um, this happens in a Christmas story, and they
would have to mail them in for like you said,
these Dakota rings, these toys, these tis it does and
and you know, the Christmas story twist being that the
message that he dcoded ended up being itself an advertisement,
(23:41):
wasn't really the way it would usually go, thankfully, to
give them a little bit of credit, the idea was
that this it was actually a pin. It was a
Dakota pin, and it was their most popular giveaway item.
But in the show it was almost like this way
of having like an interactive element in the show. It
would be little things where if you had to have
the dacoder pin to you know, decodeed so you felt
(24:03):
like you were in the know, you know, but it
would be little clues about what would happen on next
week's episode, right, things like send help or Sandy is safe,
you know, things like that, and it would be you know,
it would give you this sense of like inclusion and
like feeling like you were part of the adventure or
like you know, on her team. Yeah, you were in
on it. You had knowledge that other folks, maybe even
(24:26):
your parents, did not possess. And this dacoder, Yeah, you're right,
it is technically a badge. This was used pretty often.
Another very clever thing they did was to conduct acts
of planned obsolescence. This is planned obsolescence is when something
is purposely made to not last forever, such that a
(24:48):
company can sell you the same thing product or service again.
So these decoder devices, these badges weren't good forever. You
couldn't just get one. You had to get a new
when like every year or so, because if you would
try to decode stuff with last year's badge, it wouldn't work.
The labels had changed. So this is brilliant because everything
(25:18):
is centered on getting kids to sort of hold their
parents emotionally hostage for more ovalteen and uh, it's a
true story. What happens to Ralphie is based on a
true story and his desire for this to be a
member of Annie's Mystery Radio Club or the Secret Circle.
(25:40):
There's something that really happened to kids, maybe to some
folks who were listening or were alive at the same time.
So let's talk about this, like the kids needed to
get their parents to move ovaltee. Kids were also the
kids are just little human beings, right, They needed to
keep up with the joneses of the playground. You didn't
(26:02):
want to be that last kid who got the Dakota
ring or got the Dakota badge and was late. You
know what I mean. You wanted to be in the
zeit guys. You wanted your finger on that malted milk pulse.
So parents had to battle their kids over the grocery
list and there would be more and more giveaways, but
you had to buy more and more ovaltine to get
them because they weren't really giveaways. And so parents thought, well,
(26:27):
what if we start boycotting ovaltine, or what if we
just boycott any company that is evolved with a show
that we don't like, maybe we can influence its content.
And that's why those advertising exacts had that list of
mustn'ts for the plots, right, They didn't want to do
things that parents objected to content wise, and broadcasters would
(26:47):
listen to this and they would they would fall in
line the little orphan any ovaltine overlords, that's a tongue twister,
orphan anie, ovaltine overlords. They would they would ultimately comp
chulate to the parents because they needed to keep that sweet,
sweet guilty kid money coming in, you know, you know,
and in the same way that it was kind of
(27:10):
up to the parents to maybe shield their kids from
some of this you know, influence from these radio shows
and make sure that they, you know, stuck to their
their school work and that they you know, give like
like like you think today, like you can have X
number of hours of TV a week and that's it,
and blah bla, blah blah. There was a certain amount
of like weak willed parenting that was going on, as
(27:30):
evidenced by the anecdote about the kid who essentially brow
beat his mother into you know, getting him ovaltine or
else he refused to I'll starve before I don't drink
my chocolate flavored milk, And clearly the advertisers capitalized on that.
There's an article in Newsweek on December of nineteen thirty
four saying if a weak willed mother should buy all
these prize box tops, her grocery budget would swell to
(27:53):
at least two dollars a week, or about thirty five
dollars and fifty cents today and this boycott that you mentioned,
and I think you know, they took note. Right at
the very least, they decided, Okay, maybe if we're gonna
we're in this for the long haul, maybe we should
tone down the rhetoric a little bit and give these
parents a break, because they're really starting to hate us.
(28:13):
At the end of the day, we need them to
be on our side. So by the end of the thirties,
all those cliffhangers that caused kids to be like just
you know, out of their minds with a worry until
the next episode came, well, those were toned down quite
a bit. And this actually might have kind of begun
the end of the beginning of this era of of
you know, ubiquitous uh child directed advertising. Yeah. But that's
(28:38):
the thing though, because by toning down those cliffhangers and
those dark, mysterious, sinister events, they were also removing some
of the appeal that I had to children to this
young audience. The style of advertising, though, as you're pointed out,
still remained and it hasn't gone away since. So what
(29:00):
we see here is a precedent set just like young
Ralphie in a Christmas story, we learned the true cost
of a free giveaway, and we've got a I don't know,
there's so much to impact here, because it's like the
story of Little Orphan Any is much more than what
(29:21):
you find in the musical, especially when you get backstage
and you see that she is a political metaphor and
in a way she's a defire of gender stereotypes. She's
also a corporate mascot through the puppet strings of the
folks over oval team. You're always thinking about was trying
to have a modern what if and we can probably
(29:41):
find it better when. But my first thought is what
if Wendy from Wendy's had like the most popular weekly
show on HBO and a third of it, a third
of the plot. Every every episode, no matter what, involved
having to go to Wendy's and be knowledge bull of
the newest stuff on the menu. Also, Wendy's released a
(30:04):
mixtape and I'm gonna be honest with you, if you
like hip hop, it slaps. I did not want it
to be good. It is good. Wendy has been doing
a pretty good job on their like social media game
for quite some time. All a lot of those fast
food brands have They even have like feuds from time
to time. You gotta wonder if they are manufactured. But
they Oh my god, I got I got Ovalteine as
(30:27):
soon as we in the episode. I'm gonna listen to
the Wendy's mixtape again rest in Greece also known as
We beef in It dis track for I think McDonald's
I can what to check it out? No, it's true,
and I mean, you know, a lot of the cues
as we know, um from marketing. Uh, the lessons learned,
you know from this era. Uh, you can't be you
(30:49):
can't overplay your hands when it comes to marketing, and
I think Ovalteine realized that. But it's also still around.
So yeah, they clearly did an okay job and pivoting
and bobbing and weaving with the times, you know, and
the comic strip itself went on until That's wild to me.
But this what a what a strange what a strange ride.
(31:11):
We also know that there is a new I believe
there's a new Ani musical adaptation that's either out now
or yeah have you have you guys seen it? Is
it out yet? I thought commercial for it? Either last
night or night before. I think it's coming up. I
don't think it's okay, okay, Well, with that in mind,
you know, everybody, you think the point of this two
(31:33):
part series, as we draw to a close here is simply,
this ridiculous history is brought to you by Ovaltine. Collect
your Ovaltine box tops and send us stuff. I might
have missed the larger point. I wish I wish we
had prepared a little more. We could have given you
some sort of cryptic message to the code. How do
they do it? Wasn't it just like B three like
bingo results, kind of like X seven, you know, like
(31:58):
that would make sense because it would have to be
something that you couldn't solve unless you had a codex
with you, you know, because if they tried pick Latin,
people would have broke it. If they tried some like
um alphabet based cryptographical approach, somebody could have broken it.
It would have to be something where you had just
the It depended on the cipher that the audience possessed. Right,
(32:22):
I'm trying to awaid getting two into the idea of cryptography,
because that that itself is a whole another message, spaghetti
whole another bag of badgers. But and there's so many,
they made so many of them, ben that you can
you can buy yourself one on eBay today for just
around thirty five to fifty bucks. They are they are
(32:43):
looking a little sheriff's badge almost. And the most pricey
one that I see right up front is one that
includes the actual mailer that it came in with, the
actual envelope and the addresses on it in the stamps.
That one fifty bucks. But in general, uh, and appears
you can get you can get you one of these.
And it is exactly as we describe. Ban's just a circle.
(33:04):
That's the codex with like a ring of letters and
then an interior ring with numbers, crazy crazy stuff, you know.
And and just for if we could get a quick
inflation calculator, let's do this. It's a reverse inflation calculator.
Clips up. Wonderful, wonderful work, gentlemen. Uh, fifty dollars in
(33:32):
nineteen thirty six. By the way, it would be the
equivalent of nine d and nine four dollars two cents today, right. Well,
I think Uh, Daddy Warbucks would be proud. Daddy Warbucks
would be proud. Yes, And we are as always super
grateful and proud for the opportunity to explore these ridiculous
(33:54):
stories with you today, folks. Also, this one was a
two parter to us because it it's on so many
themes that are applicable in the modern day. Dare I
say it maybe to some parents who are feeling some
you know, a little bit of stress from their kids
who need to have the thing. And it can't be
a thing like the thing. It has to be that
(34:16):
thing specifically that you know, it can't be It can't
be a cuddle meat grover tickle meal. No, no, that's
not gonna fly. Let us know what you're coveted childhood
item was and do you like opal zane? Do you
do you cream of wheat? That was another big one.
Remember we wouldn't even get into it but around this time,
or I guess a little later. That's when we got
(34:36):
into things like the craft you know, television, you know
hour or whatever, craft like the cool Gate Hour, cool
Gate Hour exactly, you know. But all of those that
they were always a single sponsor. A lot of them
were done live, and they you know, constantly bounced back
to whoever the spokesperson was and a separate little shooting
scenario in the studio with like boxes of the thing
(34:57):
behind them. So let us know if you're from that
air what you remember fondly, because honestly, nowadays we just
wouldn't put up with that. It's us a little much.
Even though with the streaming and the podcasting, like we're
talking about earlier, we are in a weird new space
where advertising has kind of gotten clunky and weird again,
you know what I mean? Yeah, the same as it
(35:18):
ever was, and it is sort of a renaissance in
that way. You're right, because a new technology has entered
the playing field. And what will the future bring Well,
hopefully we'll be with you to explore it together. Thanks
as always to our super producer, Mr Max Williams, Thanks
to Casey Pegram, Thanks to our own little orphan Annie
Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister Or is he
(35:40):
more of a Daddy warbox? You think he is quite
bald um as his daddy warbox, But if you were
a little orphan anti figure, I mean he's got his
dog Timbolt, which would be his trusty companion for solving mysteries. Yeah,
and and I'll say it, he has a lovely singing voice.
He does, it's very true. I don't know. I feel
like he's more of a sidekick though fair enough. Joe
(36:01):
corn Tassel, Yeah, he's a drawing corant task completely. He
would he would uh, he would wrinkle at at that
second second fiddle status. But we'll see, we'll we'll get
with his agents. We'll see what he we'll see what
he prefers. Um. Also, it's always huge. Thanks to Alex
Williams who composed our theme, Christopher Hastiods Neaves, Jeff Coates
here in spirit and to you Ben. I'm not sure
(36:23):
which of us is which, but between the two thos
who make a hell of a team for solving you know,
ridiculous history mysteries and you know, beating down the man.
Let's do a hearty boys. Oh, we'll do a hardly boys,
so we don't get super love it. We'll see you
next time. Books. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
(36:46):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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