Original subtitles

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- Gross-out toys go back for centuries.

Gross-out humor is humor as old as civilization.

- There's a story associated with the Emperor Elagabalus

back in 218 AD, and he was a teenage emperor,

the youngest emperor ever.

He loved putting air-filled cushions

on the seats of his guests at dinner.

- It made this flatulent sound, (blows raspberry)

(audience laughing) people laughed their ass off.

Even in ancient Rome, farts were funny.

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- [Narrator] Poop, pee, puke, slime.

For generations now, gross-out toys mean big profits.

Toys that celebrate the disgusting

and distasteful have earned billions.

- I was a buyer in the toy industry for about 10 years.

If it burps, farts, or has a slimy nose,

we would buy it because gross sells.

- We love the gross-out toys because it's rebellious.

It feels a little bit bad, so it's exciting.

- [Narrator] But how did the rude and crude

become its own segment

in the $100 billion global toy industry?

- [Announcer] No one is safe from the slime!

- [Narrator] And how did history's biggest discoveries

give rise to some of the grossest toys of all time?

- It smells? (sniffs)

- When in doubt, gross it out.

- [Narrator] This is "The Toys That Built America:

Gross Out Icons."

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(impacts pounding)

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Man's obsession with foul forms of fun goes way, way back.

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- Even as far back as the Middle Ages,

you can find examples of court jesters turning things

like pig bladders into the prototype whoopee cushions

and pranking people with them.

- Potty humor is the most base form of comedy, right,

as one of the first things a child learns is funny, farts.

(fart resounds)

- [Narrator] But it's not until the 1930s

that the whoopee cushion becomes a mass-produced novelty toy

thanks to advancements in a brand new material.

- In the 1930s, vulcanized rubber

is really coming into its own as a really critical material

for industry for all kinds of, you know,

waterproofing and so forth.

But people are also finding, shall we say,

alternate uses for this new material.

- [Narrator] One of those companies is JEM Rubber,

a Canadian manufacturer best known

for selling tire repair kits.

In 1930, they begin experimenting with ways

to use scrap pieces of rubber.

The result, an inflatable bag

that makes a familiar sound when forcibly deflated.

(whoopee cushion farts)

- Whoopee Cushions got their name around 1932.

At the time Eddie Cantor had a very,

very famous song called "Makin' Whoopee."

It had a variety of names before,

but that's kind of the one that ended up sticking.

- Something I think is important to keep in mind

with all toys is that it's a technology industry

so a lot of this is driven

by the materials that are available.

Dolls blink because they have weighted eyes,

and specific kinds of plastics enable that.

- [Narrator] In 1907, Belgian chemist Leo Hendrik Baekeland

combines formaldehyde with a waste product of coal.

By accident, plastic is born.

- It allows for the imagination to expand to meet the needs

of Americans in ways they couldn't imagine before plastic.

Most things are not necessarily pliable

in the way that we think about plastic.

- Before plastic, most toys were made of wood, paper,

cardboard, and it wasn't until the late '50s,

early '60s that we saw plastic

really revolutionize the toy landscape.

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- [Narrator] While plastics initially lead to iconic toys

like LEGOs and the Fisher-Price telephone,

it also jump starts gross-out toys.

- A great example of this is the Betsy Wetsy doll.

(child crying)

- [Commercial Announcer] You can play mommy right now

with Ideal's Betsy Wetsy.

- To be able to take care of a doll like Betsy Wetsy

who can urinate, that's very exciting for a kid

to have these imaginary responsibilities.

- It's so realistic that you don't have to pretend,

which I think is funny because the whole point is pretend.

- [Narrator] The original Betsy Wetsy doll

is sold for over 30 years,

and is re-released to a new generation in the '80s.

While plastics help toys mimic bodily functions,

a new substance will soon project the trend even further.

- Latex develops in the mid-20th century

as this incredibly important industrial product.

- [Narrator] Synthetic latex quickly becomes essential

in healthcare and construction,

but one toy might have benefited most from the new material.

- Fake vomit.

- [Narrator] Toy maker Irving Fishlove,

famous for selling novelty items like gag boxes,

nudie glasses, and Yakity-Yak Talking Teeth

spends weeks experimenting in his home kitchen

before finding the recipe for what he calls

the perfect fake vomit.

- It's malleable. It will kind of stick to things.

It moves different, and you can make it even thinner.

- It was as though he had the nuclear codes.

It was a very closely-held secret

because he realized the tremendous

potential for something

that was so gross but would also be so desirable.

- [Narrator] Consumers agree, and fake vomit

hasn't left store shelves since its introduction in 1959

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- Psychologists show that kids from about three to age nine,

especially boys, are into gross stuff.

They think jokes about poop and boogers are just like,

so funny, and these toys capitalize on that.

- [Narrator] But synthetic regurgitation

is just the beginning.

Soon, industrial breakthroughs

that have nothing to do with toys will lead

to cutting-edge innovations in gross,

new substances that will take on

even more disgusting shapes and forms.

- My mom was like, "What are you doing with your money?"

Like, "What is that?"

- [Narrator] But there's one breakthrough product

that will revolutionize gross toys forever.

- Our bodies create a lot of toys. I'll just say that.

- [Narrator] While bodily fluids and functions

dominate the early gross-out toy industry,

modern science takes gross-out to a whole new level.

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- In the mid-20th century, American scientists

are developing all kinds of synthetic polymers

that are gonna have tremendous use in all aspects

of industrial life and medicine and many, many other things.

- [Narrator] One early use, a silicone insulating grease

which revolutionized flight,

allowing aircraft to fly at higher altitudes.

- But they also along the way

develop all kinds of famous toys.

- [Narrator] These new polymers lead to classic toys

like Silly Putty, and a new gross-out substance.

Parents and biologists might call it mucus,

but toy makers call it slime.

- Slime is kind of an interesting substance

because it's not a liquid, it's not a solid.

It can't be manipulated in that way,

but it's great for toys.

- It was something that let kids get kind of messy

and it was also maybe a little spooky.

(slime bubbling)

- Slime is first released by Mattel in 1976

in this little garbage can looking container,

and it's meant to be this gross, green thing.

- Slime turns out to be an incredible hit.

It flies off the shelves and it does so

because it appeals to, among young people,

that sort of love of things that are gross.

(balloon deflating flatulently)

- To a little boy, anything that's slimy and green is fun,

whether it comes from your body or not. (laughs)

- But also there's actually a lot of shame associated

with like, oh my God, you have a booger, ew.

Or like, you had a potty accident.

- I think the aesthetic of slime is actually not as fixed

as it seems like it would be.

Like, it's not always gross. It's playful, it's tactile.

It's something kids control,

and if you're around something enough,

it becomes normalized.

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- [Narrator] Then in the 1980s, the entertainment industry

catches on to slime, catapulting it to even greater stardom.

- Back in the '80s, gross was a big economic driver

and not just in toys.

I mean, like in movies.

- "Ghostbusters" and "Gremlins" really kind of solidified

the slime craze in America because the movies

were filled with slime imagery.

And so what did kids wanna do? They wanted to play with it.

(monster screaming)

- [Narrator] Because Mattel can't patent the slime substance

other toy manufacturers get in on the action.

- Slime became immensely popular,

especially when it was attached to previously existing

kind of franchises and toy play sets and stuff.

- [Narrator] In 1986, Kenner, best known for its line

of Star Wars action figures capitalizes

on the Ghostbusters phenomenon.

But because Mattel does own the trademark to the name slime,

Kenner calls its version Ecto-Plazm Play Gel.

- The difference between Ecto-Plazm

and slime was entirely color.

Slime was green, but Ecto-Plazm,

there was like a purple-pinkish to it.

- [Narrator] Mattel quickly counters,

adding slime to its own famous franchise.

- "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe,"

you had the villain, Hordak.

Hordak had like, a slime pit play set.

- It was a way to sort of, you know

sneak slime into your house if your mom didn't want it.

It's just like, oh, it's a slime pit, you know?

It's all self-contained. It's gonna fall right in there.

What could go wrong?

- [Narrator] The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

are also primed for a slime makeover

thanks to their radioactive origin story.

- Green slime became kind of synonymous with the the slime

that transformed the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

That was the canister from their origin.

It just made perfect sense for that.

- [Narrator] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

and their mutant ooze

are some of the top-selling toys of 1990.

- The gross-out toy world has a lot of flashes in the pan

that kind of come and disappear,

but slime is an example of something that really started

with this pretty simple purpose to just gross kids out,

but it's like, taken on all these other lives.

- [Narrator] The success of slime tees up

the 1980s golden age of gross out with a new kind of toy

so disgusting the entire world takes notice.

- They were disturbing and graphic and gory and gross.

They were so awesome. They were so awesome.

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- [Narrator] Despite the rising popularity of slime,

toy companies are already on the lookout

for their next big hit

- In the mid-1980s,

it was like the height of gross-out culture.

You had movies like "Gremlins" and "Ghoulies"

and "Ghostbusters" on screen.

Everything was gluttony and gross and farting and belching,

and the toy industries really took notice.

- [Narrator] Inspired by this '80s creature craze,

manufacturers turned their attention

from gross-out substances to gross-out characters.

- Madballs are foam balls that have faces

and really distorted features and gross textures.

There's all these different characters,

and so they're collectible and you want more

and more of them to have all the gross characters.

- Is he supposed to be a pirate?

Is he supposed to be a zombie pirate?

I'm going zombie pirate.

But also notice we got some green ooze.

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- [Narrator] Dubbed "the ugliest toy ever,"

in 1986, more than 10 million Madballs fly off the shelves,

raking in more than 100 million in today's dollars.

- They didn't bounce very well 'cause they had all,

you know, eyeballs sticking out and nose rings

and stuff like that, but the boys loved them.

- [Narrator] The enormous success of Madballs

launches a gross-out character arms race,

with toy companies competing to create the weirdest,

most disgusting creatures imaginable.

- He-Man was losing its popularity.

That's where Stinkor came to be.

- [Narrator] To cash in on the creature craze,

Mattel introduces Stinkor along with a mini-comic

called "The Stench of Evil."

- Stinkor is a villain who is a humanoid skunk man.

- We were getting deep into the He-Man line at this point

where they started combining a lot of animals

and all sorts of other strange creatures.

- [Narrator] But what makes Stinkor a gross-out classic?

It's one of the only toys ever produced

whose action feature is an odor.

- They actually used patchouli oil that they mixed in

with the plastic formula to make him stink.

- It smells?

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- Oh yeah, there it is.

- If there's like a gland on this thing, I'm burning it.

- [Narrator] Not to be out-grossed,

Hasbro launches its own line

of strange mutant creatures in 1986.

- Inhumanoids are an action figure line

that are based on like rotting botanical matter.

- One that had like this big exposed ribcage.

There was one that had these sort of dangly tendrils

that would come down.

- [Narrator] Soon the marketplace is crowded

with nearly every kind of gross-out character imaginable

from the Food Fighters to Monster Face to Boglins.

- Boglins, it was like these weird creatures in a box

that looks like it's a little cage and everything.

They look weird, the eyes,

they jiggle around and everything.

They were very, very cool.

- [Narrator] But the popularity of these toys

is quickly dwarfed by what becomes some

of the most successful gross-out characters of all time.

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- Garbage Pail Kids were a series of cards put out by Topps

that were actually stickers.

They were, generally speaking, getting killed, exploding,

or just doing something super gross.

- They were sort of the bastard stepchild of Cabbage Patch.

One would have acne.

Another girl would have snot coming out of her nose.

- They were so bad you couldn't even look at 'em

if you were eating.

- [Narrator] Garbage Pail Kids quickly become a phenomenon,

selling over 800 million cards between 1985 and 1988.

- Young kids love these Garbage Pail Kids because they know

that they are breaking all the rules, right?

They are thumbing their nose at the moral majority.

They are subversive, they're outrageous,

they're disobedient, they're disrespectful.

- [Narrator] But they may have been a little too gross.

- They were banned in a lot of schools

because they were considered inappropriate and distracting.

- [Narrator] Despite the bans, in 1987,

the Garbage Pail Kids inspire their own feature film.

- They're still making different iterations

of Garbage Pail Kids, whether they be in a trading card set

or an urban vinyl set, and they're still popular.

And it's that gross-out function that people still want.

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- [Narrator] With gross-out characters

boosting bottom lines, toy companies explore new avenues

to keep the trend going.

And a new age of gross toy spinoffs leads

to some of the most infamous gross-out toys of all time.

- If this was on your Christmas list,

you're on the naughty list for life.

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- [Narrator] By the mid-'80s, overall toy sales explode,

becoming a record-breaking $13 billion industry.

With more successful toys on the market than ever,

manufacturers on the hunt for even grosser offerings

turn to a new strategy,

giving hit toys a gross-out makeover.

And not even the best-selling doll

of all time is off limits.

- What do you do with the woman that has it all?

And so Barbie's got a pooping golden retriever.

(dog whines)

So the mechanism on Tanner is, you press down on the tail.

It tilts its head and looks away in shame as it poops.

It would come with pellets. It came with the leash.

And that's really all you need, right?

Oh man, I wish I had the poop in it.

- I understand Lawyer Barbie

and Doctor Barbie and Policeman Barbie.

I will never understand dog poop Barbie.

- I mean in her optimal life,

Ken is doing it or Skipper's doing it.

She's not doing it. She's got Zooms all day.

(dog barks) (Glenda laughs)

- [Narrator] Manufacturers also try grossing out

popular girls' toys to appeal to boys.

- In 2002, Hasbro puts out the Queasy Bake Cookerator.

It is a parody of the Easy-Bake Oven,

which had been a staple of American toys for,

you know, many decades.

- [Narrator] But a toy that bakes Crud Cakes

and Dip 'n Drool Dog Bones fails to catch on.

- One of the things that they forget

is that the way that you play with it is the same.

So if most of your demographic

is not interested in baking a cake,

giving them a re-skinned Easy-Bake Oven

isn't going to make them want to bake a cake.

- [Narrator] But the misstep doesn't stop Hasbro

from looking for its next disgusting hit.

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Releasing the Oozinator in 2006,

a gross-out version of the Super Soaker.

It comes with a supply of Bio-Ooze

that can be shot up to 20 feet.

- I saw this gun. I thought this was incredibly cool.

I've always loved that stuff in movies

where it's kind of organic and kind of technical.

- [Narrator] But it's the Oozinator's commercial

that makes it truly infamous.

- [Commercial Announcer] The new ooze-blasting Oozinator.

- It's hard to imagine someone on that set

did not raise their hand and go,

"Randy, is this really what we're doing?"

If this was on your Christmas list,

you're on the naughty list for life.

- [Narrator] But perhaps the grossest makeover ever achieved

was thanks to Skyrocket Toys

and their reinvention of a classic.

- Yes, it's Poo-Dough, so it's a moldable kind of clay.

So you can make a plethora of poo

if you're into that kind of thing.

- Who's the kid that wants to play with a piece of poop?

This is too realistic

to just be someone's artistic interpretation.

Do you actually put peanuts in it?

Oh, this is nasty. Get this away from me.

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- [Narrator] In recent years, gross-out fun

has become one of the biggest segments of the toy market.

Games and toys featuring booger picking, zit popping,

and flatulence have moved to the front of toy fairs

and the top of wish lists.

- We cater to that really primal urge to like,

laugh at stupid stuff.

And if we can put it in the toys, that's what sells.

- Snot It is one of my favorites.

You put on the glasses.

You have a hanging piece of snot,

and you have to pick up the boogers out of a bowl.

It's super gross, but it's really fun.

- For decades, kids have reveled in these gross-out toys

that mimic the nastiest things that bodies do

and that's big bucks.

- Gross is infinite, gross is eternal.

Everybody poos, everybody throws up.

Everybody has flatulence, and it's,

they're a quick and easy laugh.

It's just one of those categories

that will always remain.

- We love the gross-out toys because it's something we feel

like we're not supposed to have.

You're constantly being told to be respectful,

but if I have a Garbage Pail Kid or fake vomit

to prank someone with, that goes against everything

that has been taught to us as normal.

So it's fun, it's exciting,

it's got a little adrenaline to it.

It feels a little bit bad,

like you're not supposed to have it.

- The toy companies are not gonna stop selling these toys

because the kids want them.

Poop and bodily functions, you know, you're told

after a certain age it's not appropriate to talk about,

but the toys are there because the kids wanna play 'em.

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