072 Hit Or Miss Trivia

Bob Smith 0:00
Cinderella’s slippers weren’t originally made of glass. That was a mistranslation. What were they supposed to be made of?

Marcia Smith 0:07
Can you name any of the three top best selling toys of all times?

Bob Smith 0:12
No, no. Did I have any of the answers to those and other questions coming up in this episode of the off ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith?

Welcome to the off ramp a chance to slow down steer clear of crazy and there’s a lot of it right now. And take a side road to Saturday and just enjoy some trivia. So we’ve got some interesting questions today. Let’s start with yours. The three best selling toys of all time.

Marcia Smith 0:55
It is Christmas and I’m out there trying to get an unviable toy for our son. That X Box x is not easy to find. I can tell you it’s making me crazy. But anyway, so that got me down the rabbit hole of what are the best selling toys of all time. And I got the top three here Kenyan Barbie would be one of them. Number one ding ding Davis Barbie. Yeah, really, for over 50 years, she’s been around and there’s been over a billion sold. Wow. And just as a side note, in 2016, they finally added three new body types to that top heavy type we’re used to. And

Bob Smith 1:31
that was wrong with the tarp. I thought that was a perfectly good

Marcia Smith 1:35
you ever see what a real woman would look like? Okay, and then they also added various skin tones. And so number two is the yo yo. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah, it was actually invented 2500 years ago. So it has been took a while. It took a while. But it didn’t take off until Donald Duncan. That’s right. Does that sound familiar? He

Bob Smith 1:57
was a promoter who kind of I think it was a Filipino product or a Filipino culture. He

Marcia Smith 2:02
saw it when he was on vacation or something. Okay. And around 1928 He bought it from this Street guy and bought the rights to it and then it became Dunkin yo Yos and they have sold

Bob Smith 2:14
in the street vendor he bought it from he actually hired him to demonstrate it. So he became a partner with

Marcia Smith 2:18
Yeah, right. That’s exactly right. And the third the third top selling toy. I don’t know if you or your sister probably your sister, but I can see you playing with this.

Bob Smith 2:28
Well, if it was my sister, I’d say chatty. Cathy. Yeah, there was

Marcia Smith 2:31
that in the tiny tears and all the dolls that had various body function GI Joe.

Bob Smith 2:37
No. Okay, well, no,

Marcia Smith 2:39
it was the Easy Bake Oven.

Bob Smith 2:40
Oh, no, no, I didn’t I thought it was Etch A Sketch because that was a good way to us. These were all but so the Easy Bake oven was the third. Yes. Do you have numbers on these?

Marcia Smith 2:50
That one? No, but there were millions kids became their own little chef in their own little kitchen in their bedrooms. You know, setting the drapes on fire. Thanks, Susie have one. She may

Bob Smith 3:00
have had an easy bake oven. Is that the one they had? Like? It was just like a light bulb in the back of it.

Marcia Smith 3:05
That’s exactly I had one. And I will never forget the taste and the smell.

Bob Smith 3:10
Well what was the taste and smell like not very good.

Marcia Smith 3:14
But the big Salar was Barbie doll Barbie and there’s been over a billion sold thinkers

Bob Smith 3:18
that now 1000s of years from now when they dig through the rubble of what was modern day America and they find a billion of these dolls ago. What kind of religious cult was this? They use these Yeah, these had tremendous significance. Oh, yeah. Okay, another childhood thing is the childhood story of Cinderella. We’re all familiar with that. And how she had those magic glass slippers which we always wondered how do you put your foot in a glass slipper? Right

Marcia Smith 3:43
very carefully,

Bob Smith 3:44
but her slippers weren’t originally made out of glass in the original story. What were they made out of Naugahyde?

Marcia Smith 3:50
No, okay, well, what?

Bob Smith 3:54
Okay, they were actually made out of for her they weren’t made out of her. Her slippers weren’t made out of glass they were made out of for the glass molding technology to make wearable glass slippers. Well, that just did not exist in the 17th century. And when researchers were investigating they found the problem was apparently in the oral tradition of the story. The tale of Cinderella had been told over and over throughout the years by the spoken word and apparently the French word for for had entire been corrupted into a similar sounding word for glass, ver ve R R E F air. And by the time perros set the story down in a Mother Goose books. The first slippers had been transformed into glass slippers but originally with first slippers, which was still something only rich people could have, you know.

Marcia Smith 4:38
All right, Bob, did you know that the word tips like leaving a tip for a waiter or waitress was originally an acronym? Yes. It’s something you do. Well, it

Bob Smith 4:49
is it’s something to ensure promptness

Marcia Smith 4:51
to ensure prompt service. There we go. That’s tips. Our tip. It also was to ensure promptitude going back to the 17th century in this is all British, they had little bowls. They had little bowls printed at the coffee houses and they had just said to ensure prompt service, you throw your money into the bowl. And that’s what they did. Just be caring and tips. Yeah.

Bob Smith 5:17
Speaking of England, I have an English question.

Marcia Smith 5:20
I got always a lot of English question. Okay.

Bob Smith 5:22
Why did England that tiny island lead the world in industrialization? Now think about it. That’s where the Industrial Revolution. I saw

Marcia Smith 5:31
the first factory Yeah, yeah. Why did they leave the world? Well, because they had shipping available from because they were an island. I don’t know,

Bob Smith 5:39
the British were not first in line is as far as explorers were concerned. You know, the Spanish crown that was the world’s greatest power, they focused on treasure. So they were always looking for gold and silver and romantic legends like the fountain of youth, Britain, which was a small country was overrun by sheep, they needed a place to sell their wool and other products. It’s true. So its exploration always focused on trade and colonization. So setting up colonies that would serve as markets and sources of more raw material. The British did that in the Americas and India and in Asia. And eventually the focus on global business made London the industrial, economic, social and cultural capital of the world. It was that by the time of the American Revolution, okay,

Marcia Smith 6:23
Bob, okay. Currently, what percentage of American households have Amazon Prime?

Bob Smith 6:30
Now? What do you mean by that the TV service or the fact that they have quick deliveries? Because that’s what Amazon Prime began as? Yeah,

Marcia Smith 6:36
that’s the same thing. You get the TV service Amazon Prime, if you have the delivery, Amazon Prime covers both those things. I’d say 33%. That would be a lot of people it would, but guess what, what 82% You can see now it went up quite a bit in 2020. Because COVID Yeah, but roughly 142 point 5 million households have Amazon Prime success that is for that? It is Isn’t that amazing. It Okay, here’s my second one. Sort of a related question. Why are shopping centers called malls?

Bob Smith 7:14
Why are they called malls? Well, there were always weren’t malls terms for shopping areas in major cities back in centuries ago. Well, like in Belgium and France and in Holland and in England with their malls. No, no, it’s not

Marcia Smith 7:30
that far off. Shopping Centers mushroomed in the 1950s but weren’t called malls until 1967. That comes from the popular 16th century Italian ball and Malad game parlor, Maglio which came to England as Pall Mall pronounced pell mell. Oh, by the 18th century. By the 18th century, the game had been forgotten except on the name of a London street where it was played, and on a parallel ritzy Avenue named the mall where fashionable aristocrats strolled and shop. So their street was called the mall. And then 1967 That name was attached to shopping centers. Yeah, I’ll be darned. And now it’s Amazon Prime.

Bob Smith 8:15
And a mall generally is always an enclosed place. A mall means an enclosed shopping structure versus an open air one which like a strip mall or some of the other terms are hybrids. Now, of course, I’ve got a art question. You’re the art critic and art expert in art. Oh, yes. Bring it on, baby. Okay, so this is one of your famous impressionists. All right. What famous artists studied long

Marcia Smith 8:39
you can do Humphrey Bogart.

Bob Smith 8:42
Okay, baby. He’s quite famous already.

Marcia Smith 8:45
I married an impression. Okay.

Bob Smith 8:46
What famous artist studied law and worked as a law clerk. Obviously, you don’t know this person for that. became a famous artist, but he originally was going to be a lawyer. Okay,

Marcia Smith 8:57
I’ll just say, I’ll

Bob Smith 8:58
give you his first name. Henri Matisse. That’s it. Yeah, one of the great artists of the 20th century known for his artistic mastery, right? Yeah, he was lovely. He was originally going to be a lawyer. He studied the law. He passed the bar and worked as a clerk at a law firm but he attended drawing classes in the morning before going to work. Oh, really. And his father wanted on re his eldest child to take over the family grain business, but he wasn’t interested in that either. What do you think got him interested? What triggered his interest in art? Say

Marcia Smith 9:32
flowers? It was the basis of beautiful flowers.

Bob Smith 9:37
No, it was a medical lots of fruit. Trying to give you a try to give you hints here, Marsha. I see I don’t give you here. Okay.

Marcia Smith 9:42
Yeah, the hints help.

Bob Smith 9:44
It was a medical condition. Oh, got me. appendicitis. His mother helped trigger his passion during his recovery from appendicitis surgery in his youth. Oh, that’s he had months of confinement in bed for his long recovery and that bored him so his Mother gave him a paint box to lift his spirits. It triggered his passion for art. And so he tried to go into law but he left that job. He defied his father’s wish to take over the family grain business. And he moved to Paris to pursue art. We all benefit and he did his last work. Matisse did his last work in 1954. So he lived a long time, I’ll say, Yeah, he did a circular stained glass window commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller, and it still in the Union Church of Tarrytown, New York. I’ve been to Tarrytown, but you didn’t know that it was appendicitis that caused Henri Matisse to want to be an artist.

Marcia Smith 10:35
You are so Continental. Thank you so much. All right. You ready for this? Next so how did I partially eaten pizza inspired the arcade revolution of the 1980s? Really a

Bob Smith 10:47
partially eaten pizza inspired like Pac Man and all those things? That’s

Marcia Smith 10:51
exactly what inspired it. Now think about it all because

Bob Smith 10:55
so PAC man’s eating and other things? Yeah,

Marcia Smith 10:58
but picture a pizza now. Yeah. And the guy ate two pieces of pizza out of it. What is the pizza look like with two missing pizzas? Pac Man, that looks like a mouth opening?

Bob Smith 11:08
Oh, darn. I didn’t know that. Tell

Marcia Smith 11:10
me the story. Pac Man creator, Toru Iwatani was 27 and working for a Japanese video game company. And he had a pizza one day and he was looking at it while he was eating and it was missing two slices. And he thought it resembled a mouth. According to him. That was the inspiration for the game that ate its way through untold quarters and single handedly ignited the arcade revolution of the 1980s. Pac Man. So yeah, so that’s where he got the idea for that clever little icon so

Bob Smith 11:44
you never know where an inspiration for something’s gonna come from. It came from food. PacMan came from food. Yeah. Okay. I have a question about food. What famous dessert? Oh, is its inspiration to the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. What happened? It was a last minute thing that somebody put together. I’ll give you a hint. It’s a famous hotel.

Marcia Smith 12:06
Oh, okay. That Okay. Brandy Alexander. No, that’s not a desert. Let’s see the desert.

Bob Smith 12:12
The desert is not named after the hotel, but. No, okay. Something very basic. Yeah. Okay.

Marcia Smith 12:21
I think I know this, but I can’t think of it.

Bob Smith 12:23
I’ll tell you who came up with it. Okay, Bertha Palmer, who is the wife of the former House Hotel owner Potter Palmer. She found herself in the middle of a desert dilemma and at 93 she was headed to the World’s Fair Columbian Exposition in Chicago with her squad. She needed a portable pastry that would please the ladies. She was going to have their with her they were going to box lunch with her there. So she asked the hotel’s pastry chef for help. And he came up with something. Was it a cream puff? No, it’s a cake like square with walnuts and apricot glaze called fudge brownies. Fudge Brownies were invented at the Palmer House Hotel The term brownie came later. The first imprinted use of the word was in the Boston cooking school book three years later in 1896 by Fanny farmer, but the Palmer House still bakes up batches using the original recipe from its restaurant. So the fudge brownies were a last minute thing that the wife of the hotel owner wanted to take to give to her

Marcia Smith 13:21
friends at the fair I’ll be well I was wrong. I didn’t know that three

Bob Smith 13:25
other famous eating items were also introduced at the World’s Fair in 1893. Can you name them? No. One is from Milwaukee. A certain kind of beer.

Marcia Smith 13:36
Oh really was it slips no

Bob Smith 13:38
paps taps one was a type of popcorn that was coated with

Marcia Smith 13:42
caramel. Okay, caramel corn Cracker Jacks. Oh really.

Bob Smith 13:46
And one was cream of wheat from North Dakota, North Dakota contributed cream of wheat those those three things were introduced at the World’s Fair along with fudge brownies.

Marcia Smith 13:55
Hmm.

Bob Smith 13:56
So we had some good things come out of that fair.

Marcia Smith 13:58
In 1930. Bob United Airlines originated stewardess service what specific kinds of women were chosen for the job?

Bob Smith 14:08
What specific type of women were chosen for the

Marcia Smith 14:12
job type of woman they were the first stewardesses ever in the air.

Bob Smith 14:16
Were they singers or dancers? I’m not kidding. There. There was there was a time when there were entertainers they hired for flights. The first airline flights.

Marcia Smith 14:27
This is a this is a year after Amelia Earhart flew across the Atlantic and then they decided, hey, let’s put women on the airplanes. But they all were one kind of person. What were they? They were all registered nurses. Oh, no kidding. That makes sense. Eight registered nurses were hired for planes on the Chicago to San Francisco route. Why nurses? cabins were not pressurized flying was routinely rough and passengers were frequently stressed out or sick. Back in those days, stewardesses were encouraged to slap a hysterical or hyperventilating flyer.

Bob Smith 15:08
Just just slap them.

Marcia Smith 15:09
You need an AR N for that. Yeah. Now nowadays they have to do that if you’re not wearing your mask, slap them in

Bob Smith 15:15
a medical way. Something that’s interesting. It’s related to that, you know, so you’re talking about the first attendance on a plane other than the flight crew meaning other than the pilot who is steering the plane, right? You’ve got a medical person. Interestingly enough, I’m reading the Mayflower book again by Philbrook. About the pilgrims. Yeah. And he talks about how ships were these great big, high tech divisions of labor. You had the people dealing with the sales, you have the people who were steering, you had the people in charge of the freight? Yeah, the captain. And you also had a surgeon on every boat that went out back in the 1600s surgeon was very important because people would get sick and so forth. So there’s always a medical person on board. And here, this is like the same kind of tradition three or 400 years later on airplanes. So there’s some so many similarities. Yeah. Okay, gotcha. Have a medical professional. You have a pilot who’s in charge. Quite interesting.

Marcia Smith 16:08
All right, Bob, you probably know, what the oldest ancient artifacts would be. What do you think?

Bob Smith 16:15
Well, the oldest ancient artifacts would be stone tools, probably the answer.

Marcia Smith 16:20
But how old are the oldest ancient artifacts?

Bob Smith 16:24
They only date things back about 10,000 years, or maybe No, no, maybe? No. I’m thinking of No, no, I was thinking of. I’m thinking of things like the stuff they found down in New Mexico this about 35,000 years ago. I think. So what’s your answer? That 35,000 years

Marcia Smith 16:40
that that these tools? Yeah. Oh, Ne Ne ba okay. Tell me. They found stone tools. Now. Try to wrap your head around this from 3.3 million years ago. Oh, my goodness. They were found in Kenya. And it predates Homo sapiens. Oh, really? Wow. Which means our ancestors had the mental ability to craft tools before any member of the HomoSapiens was even born. artifacts they found included anvil cone and flakes. I don’t know what up Flake is. But anyway, that’s, you said cornflakes.

Bob Smith 17:16
All right. Let’s just take a moment and take a break. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith. We’ll be back in just a moment. Okay, we’re back.

Marcia Smith 17:27
Alright, Bob, let’s get serious. I’m

Bob Smith 17:29
serious.

Marcia Smith 17:30
How long is the longest handmade egg noodle?

Bob Smith 17:35
Again, what do you get these things?

Marcia Smith 17:37
It’s my private

Bob Smith 17:38
this must be the your private place. Is that the Guinness Book of World Records maybe? Okay,

Marcia Smith 17:43
so we’re going actually that one’s not. Oh, okay.

Bob Smith 17:46
Is this one of those ridiculous things where the longest handmade noodles of two miles in length or something like that?

Marcia Smith 17:52
No. Okay. You want to just get it? Give me it in feet. Okay. 100 foot, okay. 602 feet launch, Japanese chef Hiroshi Kuroda created an egg noodle, that 602 feet long, about the same as the Seattle Space Needle. And that single strand noodle took an hour of cooking in a very large walk. So he he cooked it and he made it by hand, and then put it in a hot

Bob Smith 18:24
walk. I would take a long walk after I did that to

Marcia Smith 18:27
think about it long as the Space Needle. That is amazing. Yes. I wonder how many people ate on there. Okay,

Bob Smith 18:33
go ahead. But you know, something like it doesn’t last as long as the Space Needle. That’s the That’s why it’s not that significant in my mind.

Marcia Smith 18:40
All right, Bob. What bird is considered the strongest bird of prey?

Bob Smith 18:47
The American Eagle the bald eagle.

Marcia Smith 18:49
It’s the female harpy eagle. And she weighs in around 10 pounds. Butts capable of hunting animals equal or superior in size like up to 20 pounds she can bring in in that amazing. She brings in now. howler monkeys and sloths. Her talons are five inches long monkeys.

Bob Smith 19:09
Where is this bird?

Marcia Smith 19:10
Oh, she lives in southern Mexico and can be found all the way down to Northern Argentina. Wow. So

Bob Smith 19:17
if they ask a politically incorrect question, wasn’t harpy a term they use to talk about women that were too strident? Yeah, geez, pretty Harpy.

Marcia Smith 19:25
It did occur to me. And you know, my nails do get very long. Just watch what you say over there.

Bob Smith 19:34
Oh my god. All right. Okay.

Marcia Smith 19:37
It’s not the egg noodle question, but it’s of significance. That’s pretty good, mighty female Eagle.

Bob Smith 19:42
This is related to one of my earlier questions, but you probably don’t know the answer to this.

Marcia Smith 19:47
Don’t be surprised what

Bob Smith 19:48
is unusual about the original Mother Goose.

Marcia Smith 19:52
Wow, give me a little hint here.

Bob Smith 19:54
Yeah. Mrs. Elizabeth Goose. What was unusual about her

Marcia Smith 20:00
didn’t exist. Oh, the

Bob Smith 20:03
original Mother Goose was a man. A Frenchman named Charles Perrault He lived from 1628 to 1703.

Marcia Smith 20:10
Not there goose was sick. Yeah, you’re crushing my soul. He wrote the

Bob Smith 20:14
tales of Mother Goose that came in 6097 All the stories were not just French fairytales they were European stories that have been told for centuries, and included the stories of Cinderella person boots, Bluebird, Sleeping Beauty, Tom Thumb and Little Red Riding Hood. Those were all first published in that book. But they had they were centuries old, published by this guy who claimed to be mother ghosts. So that was funny. Some of those stories also are similar to Swahili and Hindu tales. So the fairy tales are universal from around the world. We don’t think of global books, but

Marcia Smith 20:47
they really were. Yeah. And so mother was a father. That was there was a father. Yeah, that’s interesting. Okay, 1963 Bob, every third tube of toothpaste in the United States that was sold was crest why

Bob Smith 21:07
every third tube of toothpaste was crest. Well, they had a terrific marketing. They did all those competitions on seeing who had fewer cavities. They like mama cavities.

Marcia Smith 21:18
That was a famous line. Actually, the

Bob Smith 21:20
original ads, which only people of a certain age would remember. They had like huge teams of people, 30 or 40 people and they said our group had so many fewer cavities with Crest. So I would assume that’s why but

Marcia Smith 21:32
why? Why did they have fewer cavities

Bob Smith 21:35
because they had fluoride.

Marcia Smith 21:36
They were the first to adopt fluoride. And this follows the huge controversy in the 50s about fluoride in the water. And scientists said it was proven to fight tooth decay and be good for your teeth. But some people said it was a communist, Communist Party. That sounds familiar. Okay, so the scientists one out and had loved this part. So Krista, this was their motto, and they put it on every tube and it ran on TV and everybody heard it a million times this was it. Crest has been shown to be any effective decay preventive dental frizz that can be significant value when use

Bob Smith 22:15
in a conscientious Asli applied oral program that was in all of their commercial Yes,

Marcia Smith 22:20
and on their tuba toothpaste at ridiculously long

Bob Smith 22:24
and other other when other manufacturers started doing that. They insist that I want that on my toothpaste tube too. And so all of the toothpaste brands eventually had that on there because crest had at first he had that long description. Could you read it again?

Marcia Smith 22:37
I’d love to Bob crest has been shown to be an effective DK preventive denture Friss present preventive dental office. Yes, that can be of significant value in using a conscientiously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care. Yep. I mean, that just rolls off the tongue. Well, actually, a lot of us memorize. Apparently you were listening more than I

Bob Smith 22:59
was that was even used in. Well here, take a listen to this.

Speaker 1 23:05
Ladies and gentleman, I’m speaking to you from a typical American home in Hyannis Port Massachusetts. Since January of 1960. This family of smiling and happy people has undergone a change. You might say they’ve been engaged in a new and different type of experiment. Sir, as head of this average family, what was this new experience undergone by you and the members of your households? Laughter two years you’re brushing with the Crest toothpaste to our group. Our group had 21% fewer cavities with crafts

Bob Smith 23:45
that is from the first family albums from like 1962 where they play JFK and yeah, that was just the joke was that all the President would say something Well, what’s

Marcia Smith 23:54
his name? That comedian one liter on water heater? Yeah, very good. Okay.

Bob Smith 23:58
Speaking of presidents, what was John Adams prized pet?

Marcia Smith 24:04
Abigail? No,

Bob Smith 24:06
she was a price. John Quincy Adams actually I’m talking about this was his son a whole different. He was an animal lover.

Marcia Smith 24:14
Okay. his prized pet I don’t know was a goat, not

Bob Smith 24:16
a dog. Not a cat. Not a goat might well swamp reptile and alligator, a full grown alligator, which was given to him by the French military officer Marquis de Lafayette. He kept a full grown alligator in the White House bathtub and he showed it off to any guests brave enough to pay him a visit.

Marcia Smith 24:36
That poor animal just lived in the bath towel for a while.

Bob Smith 24:40
Who knows how long it lasts. Cool. Okay, now Thomas Jefferson. He didn’t have a pet like that. But he did have something that had been an animal What did he bring to the White House? Tell me he had the bones of a mastodon ship to the White House, and he attempted to construct a full skeleton for display. Oh, he’s presidents in their hobbies. That those are pretty interesting. They are. Alright, you got something to wrap things up. I

Marcia Smith 25:07
do. I’ve got. Okay, I’ll finish up with three more bumper stickers. Okay.

Bob Smith 25:12
All right.

Marcia Smith 25:13
I try to prove my house, but they still got in. And here’s one from me to you. If you want breakfast in bed, sleep in the kitchen. Oh, thank

Bob Smith 25:24
you. Last time you get coffee in the morning. Oh, I bring up the coffee in the newspaper. But no more new, new new.

Marcia Smith 25:31
Let me finish up with one more. Okay, my favorite. Okay. Women who seek equality with men lack ambition.

Bob Smith 25:41
Oh, that’s a mean thing to say. Okay. All right. Thank you. That’s

Marcia Smith 25:45
my bumper stickers for now.

Bob Smith 25:47
Okay.

Marcia Smith 25:49
How can I miss you if you won’t go away?

Bob Smith 25:53
There you go. That’s almost like it’s not you. It’s me. Yeah. Okay, that’s it for today. I’m Bob Smith.

Marcia Smith 26:00
I’m Marcia Smith. Join us again next time on the off ramp.

Bob Smith 26:20
The off rep is produced in association with CPL radio and the Cedarbrook Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai