SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: How Play-Doh Works

26:18That was my vote. That was the working title? Yeah. All right. Well, I will kick the chemistry off, and maybe I will spark your interest. Are you ready? Yes. Do you have your beret and your smock on? This isn't even the fun chemistry. You get to burn things. No, this is the chemistry of compounds. You're just adding them together. There's a little heat involved, as we'll see. Possibly, yeah. You could start that flame. Okay. Okay? So the whole basis of Play-Doh, it turns out, is an interaction between starch and water. That's right. And starches are polysaccharides, which are sugar molecules. And there's basically two varieties, or two types, that combine.

27:02There's amylose, and there's amylopectin. That's right. And amylose is like a string. Amylopectin is branched. And when they get together, they form a starburst shape. They form a molecule in a starburst shape. And it's arranged around a central area, a hollow, called a hilum. H-I-L-U-M. I'm going with a hilum. And it's all held together thanks to hydrogen bonds. And then you have all that, these polysaccharide chains all mixed together with hydrogen bonds forming a starburst. And my friend, you have a starch molecule. And when you have the starch molecule, you have one of the two bases of palito.

27:42Yeah, and this article does have some pretty handy illustrations. If hearing this doesn't make as much sense, you can follow along on your own computer. Look at the illustrations. If you add cold water to starch, the granules are going to absorb some, but when things really get interesting is when you add warm water or when you heat up that cold water to be warm water. Like you can mix it ahead of time and then warm it up. And basically what you're doing is making a gelatin. Just like when you make jello, it's got to be warm water. Right. Like if you've ever had like cornstarch or flour or whatever and you add cold water to it, they just kind of separate, right?

28:23Yeah, it's really untoward. It doesn't do much. It's almost like the starch protects itself against the cold. It's like brr. Yeah. You stay over there, cold water. but when you use warm water or a mechanical action of mixing it together, it forms, like you said, it gelatinizes. That's right. And now you're starting to get the basis of Play-Doh. But the problem is when you just add warm water and the starch, in this case it's wheat starch that they use, right, because they have to warn against gluten. When you add those two things, they mix together well. They form a nice gelatinous goo. but as it dries, you've got the problem of retrogradation.

29:04That's right. And that's trouble. Yeah, because it really depends on the breakdown of amylose to amylopectin is the key. If you have a lot of amylose, it's gonna take more swelling to gelatinize. Right, but you get a nice, robust gel when you have a lot of amylose, but the problem is that excess amylose separates some from the water binds to itself, and then you have something that's not a full compound anymore. It's basically like a couple of, it's like you've got that gel and then some extra amylose, and it's dry and brittle, and it's not good. Well, yeah, and in the case of making a product for kids to play with, it's too firm.

29:44Like, they had to get this recipe just right to make it firm but still pliable. Right. And a lot of work went into this, I'm sure. Yeah, because any time, like, they started with a starch and a water, put it together, fantastic. but then that created this problem. And then when they went to solve this problem, it created this problem. So then they had to solve it with this problem. And then after adding like seven things, they finally have this like precariously balanced compound. That's perfect. That's perfect. But it's pretty neat. It's really complicated and it's self-complicating, which I find very interesting.

30:18It is. And what they ended up settling with as far as percentages go for that wheat starch was 25 % amylose and 75 % amylopectin. They found that to be the secret sauce, as our buddy Chad likes to say. And the reason they have the amylopectin is because the amylopectin is a waxy starch, and it keeps the amylose from binding to itself. So you've prevented that retrogradation problem, right, where the amylose separates from the water and just binds to itself. The problem is now that you have this extra amylopectin, The amylopectin, it keeps the whole thing together, but it does it too much. And now you have a sticky, tacky compound.

31:01Yeah, you don't want it sticky. No, and anybody who's ever played with Play-Doh and tried to make something, you can't make it sticky. It'll stick to your hands or it'll stick to itself. It's not going to make a cheeseburger like that. No. No. So they added something else, a lubricant. That's right. In this case, I don't know if that's part of the secret or not, but it's probably some sort of a vegetable oil or mineral oil. Well, they think possibly it's a mineral oil, which is derived from petroleum, which is why it's non-toxic, but you still shouldn't eat it. Yeah, I did see that there was petroleum.

31:33I bet you they're going to come out with a gluten-free Play-Doh. I'm surprised they haven't already. But that would almost be like admitting your child is eating this or can't eat it. Well, some of that new stuff, like the sweet shop stuff, I'm actually, I would be very surprised if they hadn't done some R &D of different flavored Play-Doh. Right. You know, because they have the different colors and this is supposed to look like this frosting, this is supposed to look like this frosting. So I wonder if they were like, well, we can make this taste like vanilla or cotton candy or whatever. But yeah, and then they kind of shook their heads off and were like, wait, wait, wait, we can't have kids eating this stuff.

32:12Or I wonder if they've done R &D on how much of it you can eat before it makes you sick. Like if they're making something that looks like a cupcake, some kid is probably going to eat that entire thing at some point. And like we said, they've pretty much always been like, you can make fake food with this. Pizza Hut gave us money to do this. But don't eat it. Right. It's a weird mixed message. It is a totally mixed message. But you were saying they use the petroleum oil as a lubricant. Yeah, and that keeps it from being all sticky. So if you've ever played with it, you know it's very pliable and moist, but it's not going to stick to your fingers, which is the key.

32:46Right. So you have added the mineral oil or some sort of lubricant to prevent the extra amylopectin from making it sticky. And the whole reason you added amylopectin was because too much amylose can cause retrogradation. So you've got all these solutions and you've got the lubricant solution. The problem is you can't just put like, you can't just drop it into lubricant and expect it to stick. the lubricant won't bind within this compound. So you have to add yet another thing, the surfactant. Yeah, surfactants you'll see in a lot of household cleansing products if you use that chemical junk to clean your house.

33:29But a surface active agent is another name for it. And it basically, they're artificially manufactured, they're molecules, but it's going to suspend something in water. That's the whole key to being a surfactant. Imagine a surfactant has two ends, and one end is hydrophilic, which means it attracts water and is attracted to water, and the other is hydrophobic, which means it repels water, and it's actually attracted to fats, lipids, right? Yeah, or afraid of it even. The cool thing about a surfactant is that if you take it and you throw it into a solution of water and oil, fats and waters, right, one end will attract the fat molecules and another end will attract the water molecules.

34:11and the end result of all of this is that you can basically suspend fats in water or water and fats so that you have effectively, molecularly speaking, a compound that's all mixed together. It's not going to separate like oil and water because the whole thing's being held together by surfactants. That's right. That's pretty amazing. Yeah, it actually binds to the molecules of the lubricant. It's a chemical reaction that's taking place. And keeps them all mixed together it won't allow them to separate. So, we've got the lubricant in there. The whole thing's being held in place by the surfactant.

34:48All lubed up, ready to go. We've got a little extra water, Chuck. What are we gonna do? Well, I don't think we mentioned earlier, the reason it dries out to begin with if you leave it out overnight is just because evaporation. Right, and Hasbro recommends that if this happens, you take your Play-Doh modeling clay and you wrap it in like a damp paper towel, put it back in the can, put the cover on it, leave it overnight. It should be good as new. Yeah. And I've seen you can also add a little water to it as well. Yeah. But I've never tried that. So that my friend is, it's a very fine tuned mixture.

35:21Like you said, they had to, I'm sure it took a lot of work over the years to get it just exactly right. And we're going to learn how you can make your own right after this break. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

35:58There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person billion-dollar company, which would have been unimaginable without AI, and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents in small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. the moments that shape us often begin with a simple question what do i want my life to look like now i'm dr joy harden bradford and on therapy for black girls we create space for honest conversations about identity relationships mental health and the choices that help us grow as cyber security expert camille stewart gloster reminds us we are in a divisive time where our comments are weaponized against us.

37:00And so what we find is a lot of Black women are standing up and speaking out because they feel the brunt of the pain. Each week we explore the tools and insights that help you move with purpose, whether you're navigating something new or returning to yourself. If you're ready for thoughtful guidance and grounded support, this is the place for you. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Lines and Tines with Spencer Graves on the iHeartRadio app is a podcast designed for hunters and fishermen to enjoy success. I like the idea of like, hey, put me on a big deer.

37:39You know, hey, there's a big deer out here. He's doing this. Be looking for this deer. But I also love doing it on my own. I love going out there and saying, running my cameras. I love patterning the deer. I like showing up at the right time, checking the wind, knowing what stand I need to be in. and then whenever it all comes together and it happens, that's the most satisfying thing ever. So when you do it on your own, it's like I then can hang my hat. But if I had somebody say, hey, pull up on these dots and catch them right here and you're going to win. And then when I go in, it's like, yeah, that's cool.

38:13I won the tournament. The ultimate goal is done. But it's like, dude, when you find them and you make them bite, that's the puzzle. I love it. Listen to Lines and Tines with Spencer Graves on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

38:32So Chuck, we should have said there's a couple other things that they add. Like you get excess water, so they added a little salt. Yeah, sure. And apparently for the excess salt, they brought in a new chemist. Yeah. So it's just perfectly fine-tuned stuff. And you've got to color it, of course, and give it its scent. Yeah, and then possibly make it taste in the future. Who knows? I'm betting on that. Yeah, and the salt also adds a little antimicrobial element to it. Right. Which is nice. So it acts as a preservative as well. And to make Play-Doh, you just put all this stuff in the right measurements and apply heat to it and mix it together and package it, and that's Play-Doh.

39:17Yeah, and it's gotta have that shelf life. It's really hard to come up with a product like this that meets all those needs. And we'll still like, I'm sure there were times early on where like, oh, this stuff's two weeks old on the shelf. It's like a brick. Back to the drawing board. Put on your beret and your smock. Remember in our How Twinkies Works episode, they dealt with that initially. Oh, the shelf life? Yeah. Right, so they just made it infinity. Man, that was such a good episode. That was good. One of my all-time favorites. Agreed. We still get emails from people that are like, I found the banana Twinkies.

39:50Yeah, they have them in limited release from once in a while. Yeah. I have yet to try one. I remember trying one years ago, but it wasn't my bag. I don't like banana-flavored things, but I like bananas. Huh. You're a very complex man, Chuck. Well, they don't quite get it right, I don't think, ever. I've never tasted a banana-flavored thing that got it right. Gotcha. I'm hard to please. So, man, you just totally threw me off. What were we talking about? I think we were to the point where we're going to make our own, right? Right. So it's very tough to make until you come upon the recipe. But apparently, a lot of people, even though it's a proprietary recipe, a lot of people have come up with their own recipes for Play-Doh.

40:30Sure, and it's fun to do with your kid, you know? Like if they like playing with it, then you can teach them a little chemistry along the way. Right. Make it a learning moment. If you want to save some money. That too. Or you don't want to feed the corporate beast. That too. Or yeah, you just want to do something with your kid and make it. You can do all this stuff. It just takes a little elbow grease and work. And there's recipes all over the internet. There's some for like glow-in-the-dark Play-Doh. Oh, really? There's some for glittery Play-Doh. There's a couple of recipes in this article on how stuff works.

41:02But basically, you're doing the same thing. You're adding starch to water. You're adding some sort of lubricant to it, something to hold the whole thing together. In this recipe, it's a cream of tartare, which stiffens eggs and gives Play-Doh, homemade Play-Doh, its firmness. But there's a lot of recipes online that if you wanna not only just play with Play-Doh with your kid, but make it, that's a great chemistry teaching experience, I think. Agreed, and you can explain what each ingredient is doing, and then at the very end, you're gonna have Play-Doh, and your kid's gonna say, this play-doh stinks.

41:42It's not nearly as good as the real thing. Unless it's the peanut butter variety. Then I'll bet you're like, ooh, this is tasty play-doh. Do they have that? Yeah, there's a recipe for it in this article. So peanut butter is one of the ingredients? Yes. Interesting. Yeah, or you know what? You could make it with your kid while you listen to us stumble through the explanation. Yeah. And to everybody who's doing that right now, hello, hello everyone. And your kid's going to say, who are these jerks and why does my Play-Doh not work? Can we just go to the store and buy some Play-Doh please? Yep. Well we're portable.

42:18We go around on MP3 players so we can go to the store with you too. Exactly. What else you got? And then you can listen to our episode on temper tantrums on the way to the store. That was a good one too. It was. What else you got? I've got nothing else. I've got plenty more. Oh, well please. Mr. Bill, remember him? From Saturday Night Live? Of course. He was made of Play-Doh. Yeah. They made the first Mr. Bill short for 20 bucks. That's pretty good stuff. What else you got? Fun facts? Play-Doh fun facts? There's not just one, but two at least Play-Doh 3D printers on the market right now. Really?

42:56Yeah. It's pretty awesome. So you put a hunk of it in there? Uh-huh. Different hunks in there. Oh, no, no, no. And I was about to say a hunk in there, and then it whittles it down, but that's the opposite of 3D printing. No, no. It extrudes it. It builds up. Yeah, that's crazy. There's one on ThinkGeek for like 50 bucks that plugs into your iPad, so that's where your schematics are, and it tells it what to do, and it makes pretty cool little 3D Play-Doh stuff. That's kind of fun. It is. At the same time, it's kind of like, you know, I mean, you're really building a little geek there, but the imagination and the hands-on thing is kind of taken out of it a little bit.

43:32Well, I think that's the new imagination, my friend. I guess so. to follow forms and schematics to a T. Maybe so. It would be cool as if you could design your own schematic and then 3D printer. Which I'm sure you can. Yeah. And then Play-Doh has one called the Do Vinci. I saw that. And that's a 3D printer too. And then one other thing I found, we were talking about Play-Doh ads earlier. There is a series of banned Play-Doh ads that were published in Singapore a couple years back. Oh, band as in, I thought you meant like bands recorded music. No, no, like B-A-N-N-E-D. Yeah. Taboo Play-Doh ads that are very adult-centric.

44:16Really? Yeah. Can you say what? How about this? Yeah. I made a slideshow of them on our site. You can go check them out. They're pretty crazy. Okay. They're not like naked or not adult in that way, but like kind of violent and a little dark that this ad agency made basically without the approval of Hasbro. Yeah, clearly. And Hasbro came in and denounced it and everything, but they're pretty great. So if you go to stuffyoushown.com and search banned Play-Doh ads, it will come up. And Hasbro had a news release that says, we don't endorse this use of Play-Doh brand moldable clay. Right. They just kept working the name in there.

44:56Yeah. It's pretty crazy. I learned all about something called scam ads where advertising agencies basically create ad campaigns based around brand names without the brand name's permission simply to submit them for awards consideration to expand their prestige. Interesting. Well, and if you want to be a TV commercial director, you have probably made some spec or fake ads yourself just to have on your reel. Like, you know, I'm going to make a Dorito. Well, Doritos does that contest every year. Right, so this is that same thing, but sometimes they really run afoul of the spirit of the brand. Sure.

45:35And there's scam ads. Yeah, they're like European commercials, which are always way better and risque and funny. Yeah. Get with it, America. So if you want to learn more about Play-Doh, including a few Play-Doh recipes, you can type Play-Doh into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this another MPAA called the Golden F-Bomb Hey guys, I discovered your show and he says hello to Jerry and spelled our name right too Oh, that was nice Which doesn't happen often No The spelling that is I discovered your podcast while looking for something interesting to listen to while I worked on my organic farm in Kauai Nice I heard the MPAA show and I just had to write in Growing up, my friends and I were always looking for a way to sneak into movie theaters via the exit door, having an older friend or parent buy his tickets, using a single ticket stub, pass back through to get in on the same ticket, etc.

46:33He had all sorts of ways of stealing. Our goal was to get into an R-rated movie underage, with NC-17 being the ultimate prize. PG-13 always felt like we had failed or were settling, so to make it fun, we would count how many expletives we heard and compare notes after the movie. He really took things to a different level. Yeah, there must have been a time when movies weren't as good as they are today in the theaters. No, movies have never been this bad. I know, man. It is really out of control. It's terrible. One pattern we soon realized was that PG-13 movies are allotted one F-bomb. Listening for that one F-bomb became the looked-for moment, making the PG-13 movie experience a tad more interesting.

47:16It's something I look out for to this day still. There are some real classics, including Ron Burgundy's Anchorman. most recently in Skyfall when Judi Dench uses that naughty word. She did. I don't remember that. Judi. The first one in the Bond series, he claims. Judi, Judi, Judi. Oh, I just saw Philomena, by the way, finally. What did you think? It was fantastic. Wasn't that just an amazing change of pace for her? She always plays like the sharp, pulled together boss lady. Or the queen. In this one, she was just kind of working class. God, that was a good movie. It was really good. Love that movie.

47:51Highly recommended. And then I notice the rating rule is not ironclad, however, because recent examples of Lincoln and Philomena, hey, how about that, had two of those naughty words apiece. Lincoln had it in there, huh? So that Spielberg gets away with anything. Well, he's the one that had the whole thing changed. Oh, yeah, he was the one that created it, didn't he? PGA 13, yeah, and then he ran afoul of it. Jeez. Anyway, my absolute favorite PGA 13, golden goal, naughty word, not mentioned anywhere else that I've researched. was the one that got me out of my seat cheering. Like, the President's Speech in Independence Day is from Oblivion.

48:30Tom Cruise's character waits to the very end of the movie to deliver the perfectly timed line to his enemy. That movie stunk. Did it? Yeah. I heard the other one was pretty good, though. Edge of Tomorrow? Yeah, that was really good. Oblivion stunk. And he closes by saying, Mahalo, Nui Loa. Thank you very much for all you do to Infotainus. And that is Evans on Kauai. And yeah, sorry, Evans. Oblivion was no good. He said he liked it a lot. But you know, to each their own. I'm not going to poo-poo his taste. Good for you, Chuck. Thanks for your game and your thievery. If you want to talk to me and Chuck about movies, we are always down for that.

49:09We love talking about movies. We should just do an episode where we just say, have you seen this movie? Oh yeah, I love that one. For like a half hour. There'll be a couple of people out there that are like, oh, this is a good episode. There are podcasts exactly like that. You know that. What was I just saying? Oh, yeah, if you want to get in touch with us, for whatever reason, movies or otherwise, you can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com slash StuffYouShouldKnow. You can send us an email to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. And you can join us at our home on the web, StuffYouShouldKnow.com.

49:52For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com.

50:03Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, we always say new year, new me, but real change starts on the inside.

50:38It starts with giving your mind and your spirit the same attention you give your goals. Hey, everybody. It's Michelle Williams, host of Checking In on the Black Effect Podcast Network. And on my podcast, we talk mental health, healing, growth, and everything you need to step into your next season, whole and empowered. New year, real you. Listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Everyone needs to take care of their mental health, even running back B. John Robinson. When I'm on the field and feeling the pressure, I usually just take a deep breath.

51:20When I'm just breathing and seeing what's in front of me, everything just slows down. It just makes me feel great before I run the play. Just like Bijan, we all need a strong mental game on and off the field. Make a game plan for your mental health at loveyourmindplaybook.org. Love your mind. Brought to you by the Huntsman Mental Health Foundation, the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, and the Ag Council. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.