MISCHKE: Play Makers (ep. 113)

Summary

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Garage Logic Podcast | MISCHKE: Play Makers (Ep. 113)

Date: May 22, 2026
Host: Mishke
Guest: Michael Kimmel, author of Playmakers: The Jewish Entrepreneurs Who Created the Toy Industry in America
Theme: Exploring how a small group of first-generation Jewish immigrants profoundly shaped 20th-century American childhood—through toys, comics, media, and the very concept of childhood itself.

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deeply into the overlooked history of American childhood, linking beloved toys, iconic comic book heroes, children’s books, and even advice columns back to the creativity and resilience of first-generation Jewish immigrants. Host Mishke discusses with Michael Kimmel how this small, often marginalized group sparked a cultural revolution, building the foundations of “childhood” as it’s experienced today in the United States. The discussion uncovers both the "how" and the important "why" of this phenomenon, delving into the sociological, historical, and human aspects behind the toys and traditions Americans hold dear.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Astonishing Imprint of Jewish Immigrants

• Jewish Innovators of Childhood (03:32 – 09:28):
  • Mishke expresses awe as he realizes how much of his (and many Americans’) childhood—from toys and games to comics, media, and child psychology—originated from a small group of first-generation Jewish immigrants.
  • “Where would I be without Jewish people? I would be terrified to learn.” — Mishke (02:29)
• The Teddy Bear Origin Story (05:37 – 09:28):
  • Michael Kimmel recounts how his great-great-uncle, Morris Michtum, created the Teddy Bear after seeing a cartoon of Roosevelt sparing a bear. The Michtums founded the Ideal Toy Company, at one time the world’s largest toy manufacturer.

Why the Jewish Influence Was So Profound

• Sociology of Childhood & Toy Industry (12:14 – 17:28):

  • Kimmel explains the cultural shift at the turn of the 20th century: Progressive reforms began to create the cultural category of “childhood”—and Jewish immigrants, guided by nurturing attitudes toward childhood and excluded from other professions by antisemitism, filled the creative and commercial needs of this new market.
  • “If you look at parenting books from the late 19th century, you find advice like: never show affection to your children… These Jews come and have a very different idea – children are to be nurtured and encouraged.” — Kimmel (14:34)
  • The barriers imposed by antisemitism led Jews to innovate in fields that were undervalued or unclaimed, like toys and comics.

• The Water Metaphor for Marginalized Groups (17:28 – 19:19):

  • Mishke uses the metaphor of water moving around obstacles to illustrate how marginalized groups find available paths—culturally and economically—based on where they are blocked from entering.

Margins, Innovation, and American Identity

• From Margins to Mainstream (19:19 – 23:03):

  • Kimmel discusses how cultural innovation often comes from outside the mainstream: “Cultural change comes from the margins and moves to the center… the center really has no incentive to change things.” (19:19)
  • Mishke compares the Black roots of American music to the Jewish roots of American childhood culture, noting that the marginalized have the most incentive and energy to push forward new ideas.

• Department Stores and Infrastructure (23:38 – 27:19):

  • Mishke and Kimmel explain that German-Jewish immigrants, who came earlier, owned major department stores (Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, etc.), providing crucial distribution channels for the toys and innovations of later Eastern European Jewish immigrants.
  • “You had, as you said, an infrastructure that was already there…” — Kimmel (25:57)

Imagination as Homeland

• Creating What Was Lacked (29:06 – 30:26):

  • Many first-generation Jewish toy-makers were creating the joyous childhood worlds they never had, transforming trauma and scarcity into gifts for the next generation.
  • “Imagination is the only homeland for the Jews.” — Quoting Theodore Adorno (29:58)
  • Always being the “visiting team,” Jews built their own mini-communities and outlets for creativity.

• Assimilation and Double Consciousness (31:06 – 31:55):

  • The urge to fit in defined much of Jewish immigrant experience, creating what WEB Du Bois called “double consciousness” — being aware both of how one’s community sees itself and how outsiders perceive them.

The Toy and Humor Revolution

• Independent Toy Invention (27:44 – 29:06):

  • Iconic novelties like chattering teeth and the Pogo stick originated with Jewish inventors working independently, often converting engineering backgrounds or doodling hobbies into commercial success.

• Comedic Innovation (35:45 – 37:43):

  • Comedy became an important outlet for marginalized groups, allowing release, critique of society, and the opportunity to “let off steam” through humor.
  • Notable inventions like fake vomit, whoopee cushions, and Silly Putty all trace back to first-generation Jewish creators.

Famous Stories & Unlikely Connections

• The Beatles Cards Deal (39:02 – 41:52):

  • Kimmel shares a favorite anecdote about how Topps baseball card inventor Sy Berger closed a deal to sell Beatles trading cards by bonding in Yiddish with the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein.
  • “They go back into the room and they make the deal for Beatles cards. And you can still get Beatles cards today…” — Kimmel (41:27)

• Failures and Near-Misses (41:52 – 43:38):

  • Not every Jewish-led invention succeeded. Ideal’s “Baby Jesus” doll and their initial rejection of the idea that became G.I. Joe are notable missteps that reveal cultural gaps and lessons in risk-taking.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The architecture of 20th-century childhood—the whole damn thing—leads back to these first-generation Jews. How is it possible that this small group gave so much to me?” — Mishke (11:46)
• “These Jewish immigrants were the masters of that phrase: if life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Yeah, these are the lemonade makers.” — Kimmel (16:32)
• “Imagination is the only homeland for the Jews.” — Quoting Theodore Adorno (29:58)
• “The center doesn’t really see itself because it sees itself everywhere.” — Kimmel on double consciousness (31:55)
• “When you can relax with your own and exhale, think about it as kind of front stage and backstage.” — Kimmel (32:30)
• “I would argue you could have called it ‘The Jewish Entrepreneurs Who Created Childhood in America’ because you really see the tethers go in so many different directions.” — Mishke (38:30)
• “It’s really about resilience. It’s about wanting to fit in. Those are deeply human stories.” — Kimmel (46:47)
• “What I wanted to do is I wanted to give the backstory to a character like Curious George, whose backstory is people trying to escape the Nazis in France, riding a bicycle out of Paris as the German troops are marching in.” — Kimmel (47:09)

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Select Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:32 — Guest introduction; Mishke recounts his discovery of Jewish influences in his childhood.
• 05:37 — The origin story of the Teddy Bear and the Ideal Toy Company.
• 12:14 — Why and how Jews transformed the toy industry; sociological perspective.
• 19:19 — Conversation about “margins” and mainstream cultural change.
• 23:38 — The infrastructure of department stores and their impact.
• 29:58 — Theoretical perspective: Imagination as homeland.
• 31:55 — WEB Du Bois and the concept of double consciousness.
• 35:45 — Comedy as societal pressure valve.
• 39:02 — The Beatles trading card story.
• 41:52 — Failed toy inventions: baby Jesus doll, initial rejection of GI Joe.
• 46:29 — Episode’s philosophical conclusion: stories of people, resilience, and fitting in.

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Tone & Style

The episode is engaging, warm, and full of wonder, balancing Mishke’s personal storytelling and lively curiosity with Kimmel’s expertise and wit. The discussion manages to be both deeply personal and broadly historical, always circling back to what makes childhood, humor, and invention such universal and yet so particular human experiences.

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For Listeners

If you grew up in America, “Playmakers” is a remarkable lens on your own childhood, showing you that much of what you played with, read, and watched was born from the dreams, resilience, and ingenuity of marginalized newcomers. Their story is not only the story of Jewish America, but a study in the power of margins to reshape the center—and the fundamental desires that unite us all.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Great to be with you, Tommy.

[A]

How many interviews have you done? I'm terrified to know the answer, but Throw me a rough figure.

[B]

20.

[A]

20 of them. Good Lord. I don't know how you do it. I had my mouth hanging open through a lot of the reading of your book as I came to realize I don't know what my childhood would be and thus what my adulthood would be without the Jewish folks mentioned in your book. Because they created my childhood in every way, shape and form. So much so that I truly, truly wonder, since so much of those childhood influences actually affected what I did with my life as a radio talk show host. So much culturally about what I am and what I present comes from those developmental years. What I engaged with, what I appreciated, what I wanted to be around, what I found delightful. All of it not only comes from Jewish people, but so much from first generation Jews whose parents had come over often out of poverty, out of misery. The fact that this happened is borderline unbelievable to me. You're going to help me understand how this is possible. What do we got today in 2026? 2.4% of the American population Jewish. What do we got? 100% of my childhood. It's a wild, wild tale. So where to start? Where to start? Let me start with where so many people have started. You actually have a relative connected to one of the great toy stories of all time, something that still has connections all over the place. I mean, every time my kids, when I was raising two boys, wanted a little stuffed animal, it was tied to a relative of yours. Every single time they wanted one. They wouldn't have wanted it if it wasn't for a relative of yours. Let's start there.

[B]

That's exactly where I started with this project. I retired in 2020. When I was growing up, there was this photograph of this older man with Shirley Temple as a child actress sitting on his lap. And it was signed with love from Shirley Temple and Uncle Morris. And I thought, well, I knew who Shirley Temple was, but I had no idea who this Uncle Morris was. So my mom told me that he was my great, great uncle, that he was the brother of my great grandfather. So I thought, okay, for a small retirement project, I think I'll do a small memoir of my family. So Morris was one of these young rabbinical students living in Minsk. He was the younger son, so he was not exempt from military service. And the Russians used to love to conscript young Jewish boys. By the way, he spoke no Russian. He only spoke Yiddish. And so his family decided, we better get him out of town. They declared him dead of typhoid. They had a big funeral, and then he came to the US Instead of becoming a rabbi, he opened a candy store in Brooklyn. If you want to understand the centrality of the candy store at the turn of the century in New York, think of the black barbershop today in the black community. It was the center of social life. It was the only place around that had a telephone. So if you got a phone call, someone would come to your tenement department, knock on your door, say, you have a phone call at the candy store. You'd come down and answer it. So it was a hub. And at the time, There were about 25 daily newspapers in New York City alone. And three of them, three daily newspapers were in Yiddish. He read them all. And one day he read an article about Theodore Roosevelt, who was on a hunting trip in Mississippi. And after three days of not seeing any bears, he was really grumpy. So they found this old, straggly old bear, and they tied it to a tree and they said, president Roosevelt, we got one for you. Come over here and you can shoot it. And he took one look at the bear and he said, no. The story would have ended there had not Clifford Berryman, who was the very celebrated cartoonist for the Washington Post, had he not been along. Berryman did a cartoon of Theodore Roosevelt refusing to shoot this bear. And for some unknown reason, I cannot tell you why, Morris Michtum and his wife Rose thought this was the most adorable cartoon they had ever seen in their life. Morris later said, the czar was never so nice. So they said, let's go down the basement. We'll put together a little replica of this and put it in the window of the candy store. So they did. And people came by and said, what's that? I want one. And so they started making these things. They wrote to Roosevelt and they said, hey, is it okay if we use your name in this thing and call it a teddy bear? And he said, yeah, I don't know that my name would be of any use to you, but sure, go ahead. So they went into the teddy bear making business. And this is the origin story of the American teddy bear. Two years later, Morris founded the Ideal Toy Company. The Ideal Toy Company later made many of the toys that you and your audience played with as children. The Ideal Toy Company was in the 1950s, the largest toy company in the world. And then I started thinking about looking at all of the other toy companies that came to exist at the turn of the 20th century. And there were a lot of them, and they were all founded, all but one, founded by a first generation Jew, first generation that was born here in the U.S. most in tremendous poverty on the Lower east side in tenements. A couple of them came as babies from other countries, were born elsewhere. But that's what I call first generation Jews and all but one of the toy companies that we now know were all founded in that era by first generation Jews.

[A]

I just want to give people a sense of where you ended up going once you headed down this road. And it'll help people understand why I'm in sort of a state of shock. Upon closing the COVID and having finished this book, I just think of my life growing up. I just think of myself at home playing Chinese checkers with my dad, watching my sister with the hula hoop. In this world where Jews make up a very small percentage, they're responsible for those things. I think of the comic books I bought. How many of those wouldn't exist without the Jews who came up with these comic characters. Whether it's Marvel comic books or whether it's the Sunday funnies I'm reading how many times I'm taking in news, newspaper cartoons, Jewish people behind those. If I'm on the back of a comic book and I'm buying sea monkeys, which I did, if I'm buying ant farms, which I did. If I'm buying little green plastic army men, which I did, all created by Jewish folk. If I'm buying my Topps baseball cards, which I did with the bubblegum, once again, Jews behind that. On and on it goes. And I haven't even gotten to things like the books I read. Harold and the Purple Crayon or Curious George, where the Wild Things Are. Jewish authors behind those. Superman, Batman, Spider Man, Fantastic Four. When I played with my beloved Rock Em Sock Em Robots or GI Joe, I had Jewish folks to thank. My Lionel train set, sitting around watching the Marx Brothers. Same thing. Hearing Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel watching the Dick Van Dyke Show. All in the family, Jews delivering all of it. I'm watching Mel Brooks movies growing up, a Jewish guy putting out movies from a Jewish owned studio. And I'm being raised by Catholic parents who unbeknownst to me, read up on parenting by reading the work of Jewish developmental psychologists who helped teach 20th century America what childhood should be. And again, take into account the tiny percentage they make up of this country. There's not only a story here in these facts that I'm spewing, but the why. The why is what's so wonderful about your book. And that's what I want to get into. Because as you Discover all this and reveal all this to the reader. The obvious question becomes, what's going on here? You eventually say the architecture of 20th century childhood. The whole damn thing leads back to these first generation Jews. How is it possible that this small group gave so much to me?

[B]

That was the question, right? So at the turn of the century, all of these guys started making these toys. And not only the ones that you mentioned, but also Pressman and Marx. I mean, Marx was the biggest toy company in the country for the first half of the century. These were enormous. And the ones that you mentioned, Pressman with the Chinese checkers or wham o with the hula hoops. So the question was, why those people, why then and why here? And that was the question I asked myself. You know, I'm a sociologist by training. So what I'm interested in is not simply the parade of awesome things that these immigrant or first generation Jews did, but rather to tell the story of the backstory, why did that happen? So let's look at the toy industry and think about who these people were in 1900. In 1900, most of the toys in America were handmade, were homemade. You know, think of rag dolls and corn husk dolls and little wood toys with wheels on them that, you know, moved around. And if they were nice toys, they were imported from Germany. Germany in the 19th century had all of the toy manufacturing going on. The metal toys like the little tin soldiers, the wooden toys like tops and dolls. And most of the imported dolls in 1900 had porcelain heads, which meant you did not play with them because they were very, very fragile. So 1900, the toy industry was virtually non existent. The second thing is it was the moment that the Progressive era began, which is to say all of the campaigns to actually demarcate childhood began. Compulsory education through high school, for example, the end of child labor, all of those campaigns. So what was happening at that moment was the creation of a demarcated place called childhood, where the work of the child was play, where children were supposed to be playing, they were going to school, and they were not entering the workforce. So the moment was right because you had a population to address and you didn't have any industry for it. And now the third piece, and this involves the Jews. If you were to look, as I did, at child rearing manuals or parent advice books and magazine articles in the late 19th century, this is what you would have found. Children are willful. And the goal of child rearing, good parenting, breaks their will. You never show affection to your children. If you must, you Pat them on the head before they go to bed. If your child starts to cry in the middle of the night, turn them over and give them a good spanking. I am not joking about this stuff. This is actual advice that parents were supposed to follow. These Jews come and they have a very different idea of childhood. Their idea is that children are basically creative, curious. They are to be nurtured, they're to be encouraged. It is not a surprise that the classrooms for Montessori schools were just stuffed with Jewish children. They were supposed to be nurtured and encouraged. And so they were not down with this traditional idea of childhood. So it was the convergence of a moment when children were a category that could be ministered to. It was a moment when new ideas about childhood were emerging and in which there was no material culture, nothing to give them. Now, there's one more piece. So I've given you the state of the industry, which was nil. The idea of child rearing, which they didn't support. But the other important piece here is antisemitism. The Jews who came, they didn't say, hey, let's go into the toy business. And particularly, as you mentioned later, all those comic books, every single one of them was created by a first generation Jew. I mean, every one of them, every single comic book hero that you loved as a child. Well, they didn't want to go into comic books. Stan Lee didn't say, I think I'll do comic books. What he wanted to do was advertising. He wanted to do art for advertising. So these guys would go to the ad agencies, which in the 1930s and 40s was very white shoe and very WASPy. And they would say, here's my portfolio, here's my work. And the managing partner of the ad agency would say, I'm sorry, we already have our quota of Jews. The quota of Jews may have been zero. So they said, well, where are we going to go? And so they went to the pulps, which paid them terribly. But at least they got a possibility of doing something creative. And that's how the comic book industry was born, by these guys who had been rejected by ad agencies and wanted to have some outlet for their art. Siegel and Shuster, who created Superman, not a small brand. They were paid $150 forever for the rights to Superman forever. They got nothing out of it. So now you have the whole picture. These Jewish immigrants were the masters of, you know that phrase, if life gives you lemon, make lemonade? Yeah, these are the lemonade makers. These are the ones who say, okay, you don't want to let us in here. We'll go over here.

[A]

That's something I really spent a lot of time thinking about after reading your book. I thought about water moving, where it gets blocked off and then where it has to go. Because of that, I think often of marginalized groups moving like water. You have to survive. You have to find a way to make it in this world. And it's cut off here and the water goes there, and it's cut off there and the water goes over here. The water is going to move. It's got to move. Where is it going to be allowed to move? And where is it not going to be allowed to move? Just a quick example is the town I was raised in. The Germans and the Irish arrive, and the Germans have all these skills and they start to take all the businesses, the shoemakers and bakeries and the builders. And along come the Irish, who are quite poor. They realize the Germans are taking all these different businesses. Those avenues aren't going to be available. They don't have a lot of specific technical skills, but they're survivors and they're water and they're moving. And what becomes available? Well, the clergy. You can become a priest. What else? Well, they were tough as hell. You can become the cop. What else? Well, politics is just about voting. You can run for office pretty soon. In my town, there's a division where the Irish have the clergy, the government, and the police and fire department. And the little businesses people are shopping at are German immigrants. But people find their place. What I found myself thinking when I read your book was, okay, I gotta get myself in the head of a Jewish immigrant.

[B]

I love the idea of the water hitting a barrier and moving somewhere else. As a sociologist, we always understand that impulses for cultural change come from the margins and move to the center. Because the center really has no incentive to change things. They like it just fine the way they are. So if you want to know, for example, what suburban white boys will be wearing and singing in five years, look at what young black and young gay people are doing in cities today. Because the margins will innovate, and then suddenly the mainstream picks it up.

[A]

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[B]

Yeah, I mean, a lot of the stuff that the margins produce is very edgy. So if you want mainstream approval, you have to kind of tone it down. And that's why there are always, like, black comedians or Jewish comedians or gay and lesbian comedians who are making very edgy comedy and they have to tone it down. Think of someone like Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappelle. If you want to get on the stage at Madison Square Garden, you gotta tone it down a little bit, but you still gotta be edgy enough for white people to come and go, wow, that was funny. They made fun of me for 90 minutes, but it was still funny.

[A]

So I got to thinking about why the water was allowed to move into toys. The industry didn't exist. It's not like they came and took it over from a bunch of wasps. There wasn't a toy industry. They created it. So, okay, I get that. But there's also a sense, I think, that especially if you're reading these WASPy child rearing books that are so stern and talking about how you gotta be hard on your kids, they're willful, they need to be kept in line, don't show affection. That same person making that argument is probably not saying to a kid who says, I'd like to make toys for a living, that's great, son. We'll be proud of you. I think it would be. What are you talking about? Do something respectable. Become a lawyer, a doctor. So what do you mean you want to make toys? Toy making might not have been considered a noble craft. So between about 1885 and 1920, about 2.5 million Jews immigrate to the United States. And what a lot of people don't know is we're talking here about Jews who are coming out of violence, scarcity, poverty. They're coming from places where they were pogroms, where there were organized attempts to eradicate them, just horrific experiences. But they are arriving in a country where there already are a different group of Jews, Jews who came primarily from Germany, who were a bit more, well, to do, who were a different class. And what's extraordinary about these earlier Jews is they end up owning the department stores where these toys are going to have to be sold. So Jews coming out of poverty, making these toys need to sell them. Well, there are these other Jews who came earlier in the 19th century who have Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Gimbels, again, the way it all fits together. And I don't know whether or not it would have been the case that without Jews owning those department stores, some of these things wouldn't have been sold there. But again, when you think about a time when there's not a wild open your arms approach to Jewish folk in this country or in the world in general, and they're having to make it here, a lot of things are lining up.

[B]

That's one of the most interesting parts for me is when these Jews arrived. You know, the German Jews, as you described, the German Jews who had come in the middle of the 19th century were quite a bit more prosperous. They were middle class, they were shopkeepers. Even in your experience, you said that, you know, that was the Germans who owned the stores. That was where they were very middle class. And many of those German Jews were not happy about these 2.5 million unwashed Jews who came not even speaking German, let alone English. And many of them were like, we're not them. Don't associate with them. We're Americans. They're like Jews. But many of them, as you mentioned, owned many of the great department stores all around the country. So you had, as you said, an infrastructure that was already there. The department stores, those store owners, those entrepreneurs understood that the toys they were going to be stocking would sell well and that it would bring new people into the stores. And so the department stores just embraced it. And that was true all across the country. And then in between, you have all of these families. I spoke to several of the families that were distributors that had the sales forces that went out that were the intermediaries between the big department stores and the toy manufacturers. And all of them were first generation shoes.

[A]

Is it the case that anybody, if they just sat around at home saying, what would make a great toy could come up with a great toy? Or was there something about being Jewish and thinking about what would make a great toy and coming up with something? Because I gotta tell you, I don't know, if I sat around on a Saturday afternoon for four hours, I don't know that I'd come up with a great toy.

[B]

Damn, you are good at this. Because that's a great question. That's another really, really good question. Yes, there were these toy companies, but there were also loads of these independent toy developers, guys who were sitting around thinking, as you said, you know, just doodling on a pad. Or, you know, they were engineering students and they were kind of bored and they were sort of thinking, well, if I put this gear here and this switch here, I wonder what would happen. Many of the toys that we came to love were first created in these independent toy development companies that then were sold to the big companies to produce them. Marvin Glass and Eddie Goldfarb, two partners in Chicago, created hundreds of toys. Eddie, who's now 104, created his very first toy. You'll know it. It was the Yakety Yak. Chattering teeth.

[A]

You know, that little thing. I know it well.

[B]

He was an engineer on a submarine during World War II, and he spent his boring time underwater drawing these ideas that he had. My own great uncle created the Pogo stick. Many of them didn't go to college, but some of them did. Some of them studied engineering looking for jobs. And they doodled in their spare time the way that, you know, if you were an art student, you might be doodling a comic book on the side of your great painting. That's what they were doing. And some of them sold.

[A]

You made the point that in creating this magical childhood world, these people who had come out of horrific situations, or if they hadn't, their parents certainly had in Eastern Europe before immigrating. And even in the case of those that came over, because the east side of Brooklyn, where many of these Jews settled, it was still a life of poverty and of scarcity. You made the point that by creating this magical world, they were creating the childhood they wished they might have had. There was this sense that we can use our imagination to make what we would have wanted and what we didn't have available to us. There's something lovely about that, of giving the gift of what you wanted for yourself and didn't have. You quote someone else about Jews and imagination.

[B]

It's a quote from Theodore Adorno, Frankfurt school philosopher. One of his great statements is imagination is the only homeland for the Jews.

[A]

Imagination is the only homeland of the Jews.

[B]

And the reason for that is because Jews never had. Until Israel, Jews never had a country of their own. They never had a place that was theirs. Think of it this way. Jews were always the visiting team. Their homeland was in their imagination.

[A]

So if you think of always being the visiting team everywhere you go, what are you going to do to feel at home? You're going to congregate with other Jews and create a little community where you're not the visiting team. You want to have some feeling somewhere in your life of being home, where you belong, where you're embraced. And it's very difficult to have that feeling anywhere in the world if you're Jewish, unless you create this little world. And so there were these Jewish enclaves. But then from the outside, the non Jews, well, what's these people just all hanging out with each other? Don't they want to assimilate? Then the prejudice starts.

[B]

It's a fantastic article. Why do all the black kids sit together in the cafeteria? And the answer to that is because all the white kids are sitting together in the cafeteria. In a way, my book is really an assimilationist story. It's where are we going to fit in? How are we going to fit in? Where's a place for us that is a universal yearning of people when they move to another place? Where do we fit in this pageant? That's America. Well, every single person here, except Native Americans, had relatives who asked that question.

[A]

I was just thinking about the different ways you look at yourself and see yourself, both from inside yourself and the way others look at you. And you talk about this. This idea of double consciousness. Can you elaborate on that?

[B]

We were talking before about margin and center. The center doesn't really see itself because it sees itself everywhere. The idea of double consciousness was originally an idea of WEB Du Bois in his book the Soul of Black Folk. And he said that black people have a double consciousness. They see themselves, and then they see themselves as others see them. That double consciousness, you're always aware of how you see you or your community and how others see you. And if you're a marginalized person, you better be aware of how other people see you. When you can relax with your own and exhale, think about it as kind of front stage and backstage. When you're front stage and you're confronting your marginality, you have a very different way of being than you do when you're with your people. So that's backstage.

[A]

I've been trying to win something for you guys. I've been trying to get you $7,000 worth of free electrical work at your house by getting you a brand new breaker box, a new electrical panel, the nerve center of your home's entire electrical system. People are shocked at what it costs to get a new breaker panel, but it's quite involved. And having a safe one, a sound one, is critical. Now I came up with the easiest thing I could possibly think of to have you do to win a new breaker box. Snap a picture of your old breaker box and upload [e-mail] breaker right there. That's it. Suddenly you're entered in a drawing to win a brand new breaker box, up to $7,000 in free electrical work. May is electrical safety month. That's why Minneapolis St. Paul plumbing, heating, Air and Electric is doing this. You know how much better you'll sleep knowing you have a house that isn't going to burn to the ground some night? Snap that photo and upload [e-mail] breaker, do yourself a favor. You may win. They're not doing this contest with anyone else, just with me. I was starting to mention earlier something about comedians, and I was talking about all the Jewish comedians that I grew up around, so many of them, whether it was a real little kid with Jerry Lewis or later with Rodney Dangerfield or if I was a kid watching the Marx Brothers and enjoying that, or even watching Mo from the Three Stooges comics. Jews behind that. Toys, Jews behind that. All of it is in this realm of entertainment, something other than we gotta go fix a sink. You know, something practical again. I wonder if the water being allowed to move there was because again, you're a 14 year old kid, you say to your dad what you want to do. I think I want to be a comedian. What are you talking about, you moron? Get an education and do something practical. I just wonder whether this all fits into the same category the same way. In black America they said, you know, here's where we'll let the water go. You can be an athlete and entertain us that way. You can sing, entertain us that way, you can dance, you can entertain us that way. But you're not going to be a doctor or lawyer again. Just watching the water. There's two ways of looking at that water. I mean personally for me, a comedian, are you kidding me? What a thrill. I do that over a doctor, lawyer, any day of the week. A singer, musician, Hell yeah. But that would not have been the message society was passing along to young people looking to figure out what they want to do with their life.

[B]

I think of comedy very often, historically the way that the margin the marginalized get their revenge at Mardi Gras. In medieval France, there was a day when the ruling class stayed inside and the peasants all marched around the city making fun of the ruling class. If you are marginalized, if you're oppressed, if you are, if you are discriminated against, you gotta let off steam. And one of the best ways you can do that is to make fun of your situation by kind of making fun of those who oppress you of saying how stupid they are, how silly they are. And it is not a surprise that the most celebrated comics were Jews or black people, because they were the ones who understood how to make humor out of their situation. And very often by making fun of ourselves, think Rodney Dangerfield, for example, you allow your audience to laugh at themselves a little bit. Can't be Lenny Bruce, another first generation Jew. Can't be too edgy, because then you won't make it into the mainstream.

[A]

You could be Mel Brooks and having fun with Hitler.

[B]

Strangely, Mel Brooks is a great example of something else that we didn't talk about, which was not only the toys, but all of those novelties that we all played with and we all found sort of awesome and gross at the same time. Who do you think invented fake vomit? Who do you think invented the fake dog poop? The shake your hand buzzer, whoopee cushions? All first generation Jews.

[A]

Silly Putty?

[B]

Yep, all of them. In fact, Irving Fishlove, who was the creator of most of those things, he created a fake urinal. It looked Like a urinal. And he installed it in the men's room, one of the men's rooms at Wrigley Field. And then he hid in one of the toilet stalls and watched men use it. But of course, it didn't drain anywhere. And he thought this was, like, the funniest thing. To me, this is Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddle with the beans and the fart jokes.

[A]

Yeah. When I was growing up, there would be these letters to newspapers from parents asking this or that about their kids. And who was advising them? Ann Landers, Abigail Van Buren. Who are they?

[B]

First generation Jews.

[A]

They're helping these people understand childhood and how to be with their kids. And that' that's why when I started this show out, I said, what is my childhood if there are no Jewish folk immigrating to this country? And yet, my God, the percentage. I was just stunned when I saw. Right now, today, 70% of our population identifies as Christian, a little over 2% as Jewish. A big footprint for a small group of people.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

For folks who want to be reminded of the title of this book, it's Playmakers, the Jewish Entrepreneurs who Created the Toy Industry in America. I would argue you could have called it the Jewish Entrepreneurs who Created Childhood in America because you really see the tethers go in so many different directions. I need you to tell the one delightful story that, again, just ties into Jew connecting with Jew and why that matters. And that's the story with Beatles playing cards.

[B]

My favorite story in the book, my favorite one also, I have to say, is Popeye. I had no idea that Popeye's creator was Jewish. But more than that, Popeye himself. The actual model that Elsie Stegar used for Popeye was a Polish Jewish bouncer at a bar in Cincinnati. Seagar used his royalties to support Rocky Fiegel for the rest of his life. Okay, so here's the Beatles story. So Mort Shorin created Topps baseball cards, and the baseball cards were a filler, basically, to sell bubblegum. He originally created Bazooka Bubblegum, which you may remember from your childhood, which had a comic and bubble gum.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. So he created Topps baseball cards, which very soon became the dominant baseball card company because they offered the best deals to all the players. And the baseball card format was, you know, the picture with the fake autograph on the front and on the back, some statistics and some personal information about the players. And the great developer of the baseball cards was this guy named Cyberger. Guy lived in Queens, and he just. And he had the magic touch for figuring out how to do the baseball cards. So in the late 50s, early 60s, he's sitting there going, what else could we do besides baseball cards? And John F. Kennedy had just been elected president. And Berger thinks, okay, JFK cards. JFK had captured the imagination of America's youth. Camelot in the White House, et cetera. And so he created JFK cards, which were an enormous hit. We may not remember them today because on November 22, 1963, JFK cards disappeared. They could not be sold anymore. I still have mine from when I was a child. So Berger is sitting there, late 1963, after JFK had been assassinated, thinking, what else can we make cards out of? And in January 64, he's watching the Ed Sullivan show, as the rest of America is, and he goes, beatles cards. That's the thing. I'm gonna take Beatles cards. So he goes to London and gets a meeting with the Beatles. And they say, we just don't get it. We don't get it. We don't understand how this would work. And bubblegum, what's that about? Thank you for coming, but we're just not interested. Berger is so sure of himself. He's so sure this is a winner. The Beatles manager, Brian Epstein, also a first gen Jew, walks him out of the building from the meeting. And Berger curses under his breath in Yiddish and Epstein responds to him in Yiddish. And the two of them stand in the doorway of the building in which they've had this meeting with the Beatles. And they sit there and they talk to each other in Yiddish for 10 minutes. They go back into the room and they make the deal for Beatles guides. And you can still get Beatles cards today at flea markets and yard sales. They were quite a hit.

[A]

The baby Jesus doll. This was the one that didn't work. You can understand why. Maybe they thought it would be a good idea, a baby Jesus doll. Surely this will be appealing to Christian families. Tell me the story of the baby Jesus doll.

[B]

This is under the heading of the Failures of the Ideal Toy Company. One of them, this baby Jesus doll, Ben Michtum has this idea one Christmas when he's walking around and he sees all of these families stopping in front of churches and looking at the manger. And he thinks, this is a winner. So he and his wife sailed to Italy. They have a meeting with the Pope. They make a substantial contribution to the Vatican, and the Pope gives the idea his blessing. They come back to New York and they start making baby Jesus dolls which sell terribly because no Christian parent is going to let their kid take A little doll out of a straw manger and, like, play with it. This is supposed to be a divinity, so people absolutely didn't buy it. It was a complete failure. Other great failures on the Ideal front. One of their toy developers, Jerry Reimer, came to them in the early 1960s and said, I have a great idea for a toy, a doll for boys. It would be about 12 inches high, and it would be, let boys do what girls are doing with this Barbie thing, and we can put them in, like, a military outfit. And Ben said, absolutely not. Boys will not play with dolls. So Reimer says, okay. Do you mind if I take it to another toy company? Because I think it's a winner. And Ideal says, yeah, sure, go ahead. So he goes to Hasbro. G.I. joe is born.

[A]

Yeah, a dominant, dominant part of my childhood, there was another crazy guy that tried to compete with Joe. I got him, too, when I was a kid, although I'm not quite sure why. There was a guy named Major Matt Mason.

[B]

I'm gonna have to Google him.

[A]

Yeah, you should see who made Major Matt Mason. It was an attempt to compete with GI Joe, and I got Major Matt. I thought Major Matt was pretty cool, but I don't know who made Major Matt. I will say. I just realized.

[B]

I'll tell you who did. Major Matt Mason was created in 1966 by Mattel to compete with Hasbro.

[A]

Okay, there it is. He was cool. I liked him. I didn't say, no. I'm only a Joe guy. I got Major Matt. I also realized I was raised on Mad magazine. Jewish folk behind that publication.

[B]

Oh, Mad magazine was pretty obviously Jewish in many ways.

[A]

I mean, not to me. I don't know that. To me, it's just funny. Why is it obvious they would use

[B]

Yiddish in their stories? They would call someone verschlaggene, which means, you know, stupid idiot. I mean, they would use Yiddish. It was a completely Jewish magazine, including Alfred E. Newman. They managed to change the W to a U just to pretend that he wasn't actually Jewish.

[A]

I think sometimes there are places where I just find myself outside of the obvious in my perception. For instance, when Seinfeld became a hit and everybody said, well, it's the first time Jewish humor is hitting the true mainstream and really making a gigantic splash. And it's the era of Jewish humor. To me, it was just humor.

[B]

The thing about Seinfeld is it's ethnic in the same way it's Jewish in the same way that the bagel is Jewish, which is to say its origins are Jewish. But it's generic at this point. It's urban apartment living. The fact that they meet at the same diner all the time on the Upper west side. It's New York Upper west side humor, to the extent to which New York's Upper west side is Jewish.

[A]

So when I'm laughing my ass off as a young guy to. To Robert Klein and to Andy Kaufman, they're Jews, but it's not Jewish humor.

[B]

Right, I agree. I agree. You know, and that's very important. I think that's an important distinction. Some of it is just people who happen to be Jewish, and some is people who use Jewishness in their work. And I thought Andy Kaufman was a good example of someone who happened to be Jewish, whereas someone like Sarah Silverman is clearly using Jewishness in her work. And so does Seinfeld, I think, which is why I feel that the book is sort of not simply a parade of cool Jews, but it's rather, why these Jews? Why there? Why then? And how did it affect the rest of us? These people created the childhood I lived. As you said that you lived. The material culture of it. The books we read or that were read to us, they have a backstory. The psychologists who theorize what childhood is supposed to be, they had a backstory.

[A]

And there's a way you can pan out, Michael. There's a way you can pan out. And the story you write in Playmakers, it's also just a study of people and how we operate. I mean, it really is just a very, very human story, too, about who we are on so many different levels.

[B]

It's really about resilience. It's about wanting to fit in. Those are very deeply human stories. They're not simply stories about a particular group. And listen, wanting to create wonderful things for your children and for other people's children. You know, you write a children's book and you hope that other parents will read it to their child and their lives will be richer for it. And what I wanted to do is I wanted to give the backstory to a character like Curious George, whose backstory is people trying to escape the Nazis in France, riding a bicycle out of Paris as the German troops are marching in.

[A]

Yeah, there's so much play and so much fun and so much joy in this book. And then behind it all, I mean, including going back to Eastern Europe and the pogroms, I mean, there's always these shadows around it amidst all the fun and frivolity.

[B]

Right, Right.

[A]

Well, folks, I hope you get a hold of this book again. All you gotta remember is Playmakers, the Jewish entrepreneurs who created the toy industry in America. Michael Kimmel is the author. I'm really delighted you gave me all this time. It's been a wonderful conversation.

[B]

Really happy to do it, Tommy. Thank you. It was really fun. You're a crack interviewer. You got every right question.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

It's the best of the 20 that I've done.

[A]

Oh, that's high praise. Thank you.

[B]

Yeah, you were really, really good. I really enjoyed it.

[A]

Thank you so much. Michael. All my best to you.

[B]

You take care.

[A]

You too. Bye.