Episode 10
Big Button Energy (ep 10)
In our new episode on Cuisinart, we learn that Weird Al Yankovic described his brain as a “pop culture Cuisinart.” Interestingly, the episode itself is a sort of pop culture food processor, full of digressions on topics like Macbooks, 30 Rock, American spycraft, and even Con Air (1997).
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territorial is an advertising agency that helps brands find their place in the world. To see our work and learn more about what we do, visit weareterritorial.com and follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/weareterritorial
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Show art & design by Chris Allen
Editing by Steph George
Marketing by Billy Silverman
Episode music by Blue Dot Sessions
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Subscribe to our mailing list: https://forms.gle/YH9y99y1d9ZVKNm28
Transcript
Welcome to Strange Coordinates, the show where we use brands as roadmaps
Speaker:to arrive at surprising places.
Speaker:I'm Robert Balog.
Speaker:And I'm Topher Burns.
Speaker:Robert and I founded an advertising agency called Territorial.
Speaker:We help brands find their place in the world by exploring how history,
Speaker:culture, desire bounce off one another to reveal fascinating insights
Speaker:about what's cool about being human.
Speaker:And that's basically the premise of the podcast.
Speaker:So every episode, one of us gives the other a brand to explore.
Speaker:And that person has to kind of trek off into the wilderness and come back with
Speaker:a story that they find to be the most interesting or engaging or compelling.
Speaker:It could be something fun.
Speaker:It could be scary.
Speaker:It could be about murder.
Speaker:It could be about lions flying in planes.
Speaker:Uh, those have all been things that have happened on this
Speaker:podcast and they've shown that we
Speaker:in the same episode.
Speaker:yeah, exactly.
Speaker:Uh, and it's really about using brands as compass points to discover
Speaker:more about the world around us.
Speaker:And, you know, we've been doing some discovering.
Speaker:You know, this is a new podcast.
Speaker:We're still, you know, figuring stuff out and, um, trying new things.
Speaker:But, I think it's also an important moment for us to take a pause.
Speaker:We have been discovering more about the world around us using Bran's
Speaker:Discompass Points for now ten episodes.
Speaker:This is our tenth
Speaker:episodes.
Speaker:Yeah, it's pretty, it's, it's kind of amazing.
Speaker:It feels like more, honestly.
Speaker:I, I agree with you.
Speaker:And, you know, technically we have our stranger coordinates podcast, uh,
Speaker:where we interview really interesting people and we give them a little quiz
Speaker:and we turn them into, uh, omnipotent brand managers for a little bit.
Speaker:But, you know, those aside, I agree.
Speaker:Uh, it's a testament to the journeys that we've gone on together, the
Speaker:breadth of understanding that we've shared with each other in the
Speaker:I think it's, we've just covered a lot of ground too, like we
Speaker:have, we've been peripatetic here.
Speaker:We've gone everywhere.
Speaker:We have explored crevices and secret back rooms that, uh, I
Speaker:never, never thought we would.
Speaker:Um, so it feels like we're really just being encyclopedic.
Speaker:And, and now we're just really, um, tooting our own
Speaker:horns right now, aren't we?
Speaker:Well, I don't know.
Speaker:We're just saying we had a great time, and I hope everybody
Speaker:listening has been enjoying as well.
Speaker:Speaking of Time Topher, this is an early one for you.
Speaker:This is an early record for you.
Speaker:How do you, how do you feel about this early morning record?
Speaker:You know, I my alarm went off at 630, and I said I'm gonna be in front of
Speaker:a mic in an hour, and I looked at my cat, and she looked at me, and
Speaker:she put her head back down, and I was like, Yeah, I feel you, girl.
Speaker:Uh, But here we are.
Speaker:I had a little, little, little bit of decaf coffee and some
Speaker:choco, choco puff cereal.
Speaker:so
Speaker:Is that just a generic couple of Cocoa Puffs basically?
Speaker:They were, there's like a really interesting, I've got this,
Speaker:like, you know how everything, they're like making everything
Speaker:that used to be made with starch.
Speaker:They're like making it with protein now.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:like Jake literally came home one day recently from Costco with a bag of chicken
Speaker:chips, which, you know, I cannot endorse.
Speaker:Uh, I think they are more adjacent to dog treats than they are to
Speaker:things that humans should consume.
Speaker:But the cereal that I had this morning is sunflower seed based chocolate cereal.
Speaker:It is really good.
Speaker:I highly recommend that.
Speaker:Don't eat dog treats.
Speaker:Do eat like, sort of like, toasted
Speaker:Noted.
Speaker:cocoa flavored things.
Speaker:love that.
Speaker:Maybe this could become a new segment.
Speaker:Yeah, just like recommends.
Speaker:what, what Topher has for breakfast, which is
Speaker:It is far ranging.
Speaker:Yesterday I had the roasted sablefish on some rice, uh,
Speaker:with some, like, Thai flavored
Speaker:it's part of almost every, every day, uh, of our kind of every day of our agency, we
Speaker:kind of explore Topher's dietary journey.
Speaker:In a, in like a, there's someone in a different dimension that is using my
Speaker:breakfast as like a fortune telling device, like so, you know, they're like
Speaker:seeing into what I do and like some, the way that some people look at entrails,
Speaker:some people look at the flight of birds and somewhere someone is looking at my
Speaker:breakfast and saying like, you know, you really should divorce your husband.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:I mean, it's amazing that we're talking about food and, uh, thereby
Speaker:the kitchen because of today's episode.
Speaker:Oh yeah, and you know, may I say, in the, we're, we're, we're taking a
Speaker:moment to look back at, you know, our grand 10, 10 episodes of doing things.
Speaker:And the thing that, you know, you're like, Oh, you had to get up a little bit early.
Speaker:Yeah, I had to get up a little early, but I'm in the co pilot seat today.
Speaker:And so in this journey to the kitchen, I get to kick back and
Speaker:just kind of let you do all the.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:the
Speaker:mean, there's gonna be some participation, as you, you know, we've, we've kind of
Speaker:refined that here on Strange Coordinates,
Speaker:I'm here to be, I'm here to be collaborative and supportive, but I also
Speaker:am excited for you to take the helm.
Speaker:And so as we go into the kitchen, you will of course be leading us
Speaker:through the brand of Cuisinart.
Speaker:That's very true.
Speaker:And ironically, we're not going to start in the kitchen today.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Twist right out the gate.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:I'm already more awake than I was before.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So we're going to start here where we're sitting, both sitting.
Speaker:Um, because you have, uh, you have an Apple laptop, right?
Speaker:You have a Mac Mac
Speaker:Mm hmm.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Well, there are actually ways in which your Mac book is connected to Cuisinart.
Speaker:Go ahead.
Speaker:So, you could kind of say we're podcasting from a distant cousin of a food processor
Speaker:right now, which is pretty exciting.
Speaker:So, the story goes like this.
Speaker:Um, it's the early 80s, and Steve Jobs is working on the computer
Speaker:that's going to be, the personal computer that invents a category and
Speaker:changes the world, the Macintosh.
Speaker:So, um, We don't need to go too much into this.
Speaker:Everybody knows it, but Steve was not an easy person to satisfy.
Speaker:I think what's kind of like been well established and as you can imagine, the
Speaker:process of kind of landing the exterior design of the computer was pretty brutal.
Speaker:It wasn't just sort of like, you nailed it guys.
Speaker:Great job.
Speaker:You know, that was not, that was not what was happening.
Speaker:So he was basically killing version after version after version of
Speaker:the form factor for the computer.
Speaker:Um, I think after the Apple II, he wanted something that felt like, friendly,
Speaker:and he was looking for a certain thing.
Speaker:But he was like, it's too boxy, it's got the wrong bevel, there's a lot of no's,
Speaker:a lot of like, I don't like this, but not a lot of, what am I actually looking for?
Speaker:he was a prolific borrower, as we know, like he got the idea for the Mac operating
Speaker:system from Xerox and the way in which it was a super user friendly interface.
Speaker:And so, apparently, he goes off to the mall.
Speaker:this is the the story he he goes off to Macy's apparently maybe he's
Speaker:looking for another a turtleneck or something I don't know.
Speaker:All right, so he's wandering around the kitchen department and Perusing the
Speaker:appliances and then he kind of spots it and it's the Cuisinart food processor.
Speaker:So this is the like early 80s 83 84 so early generation
Speaker:So the one we all kind of picture when we
Speaker:The one Yeah.
Speaker:And it's kind of one of those Eureka moments.
Speaker:He like, it's got that neutral molded plastic, right?
Speaker:Like it's got beautiful curves, really nicely beveled.
Speaker:It's got
Speaker:And like, only like two
Speaker:super generous buttons, really simple.
Speaker:And there's sort of like utter approachability and
Speaker:the service of utility.
Speaker:Um, so he's like stopped in his tracks and he sees this thing and
Speaker:he, he rushes back to his designers.
Speaker:He says, you need to go buy.
Speaker:a food processor and that is what we need to be basing this on.
Speaker:So
Speaker:You know, so I'm, the success of Steve Jobs is such that I was like, why didn't
Speaker:you just send them a picture of it?
Speaker:right, right, exactly.
Speaker:Like why didn't
Speaker:that wouldn't happen for another, yeah, it wouldn't happen for another 20 years.
Speaker:But, uh, Sorry, sorry to
Speaker:no, not at all.
Speaker:I think it's, I think it's just, first of all, I have a very difficult
Speaker:time imagining Steve Jobs and Macy's.
Speaker:I don't know why there's just,
Speaker:It's very
Speaker:just a huge disconnect there.
Speaker:yeah, I can't imagine he like, he, he, his like, Constitution
Speaker:even allowed him to pass the
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And like I can hear him wandering through the aisles and like Taylor Dane is playing
Speaker:softly in the background or something.
Speaker:It's just very, doesn't make a ton of sense.
Speaker:. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:Aren't you a big Taylor Dane, Stan?
Speaker:No, but like, aren't we all?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Alright, so the question is, how did the Cuisinart make its way to that
Speaker:Palo Alto Macy's kitchen display?
Speaker:Like, how did it become so influential?
Speaker:So Topher, this is interesting because the origin story of Cuisinart is
Speaker:basically a mirror image of another brand that you've assigned me in
Speaker:the past, which is NordicTrack.
Speaker:Whoa.
Speaker:like, when we were talking Ferrari, you kind of, you kind of, Low key
Speaker:accused me of serving you up like heteronormative brands, hyper
Speaker:masculine, um, engineering brands.
Speaker:I feel like you're giving me retro gadget brands without knowing
Speaker:Uh, that very well could
Speaker:Which I'm, I'm here for.
Speaker:I'm totally here for.
Speaker:Well, let's just kind of look at the kind of similarities because they,
Speaker:they're, it's, it's pretty amazing.
Speaker:So you start with the sort of the, the inventor with a personal
Speaker:I was wondering if there was like a personal
Speaker:Obviously, yeah.
Speaker:So in this case, it's a person named Carl Sondheimer, who was
Speaker:an electrical engineer and a food enthusiast, a French food enthusiast.
Speaker:And basically Carl's claim to fame in this realm is that he brought
Speaker:the food processor, which was at the time, like a French commercial
Speaker:device that was used in kitchens in, in France to the US market in 1971.
Speaker:So he saw this thing when he was living in France.
Speaker:He said, this would be amazing.
Speaker:I think I can, I think I can engineer that down to a form factor that can
Speaker:be suitable for American kitchens.
Speaker:And another interesting thing about Carl is that another one of his inventions from
Speaker:a previous company that he had founded was used in the Apollo Moon program.
Speaker:It was like a, a navigation component.
Speaker:So like, in terms of coverage, in terms of influence and coverage, Carl's like
Speaker:basically got the moon and like a good percentage of Earth, which is amazing.
Speaker:Pretty amazing.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So you've got Carl.
Speaker:He started, he founded the company.
Speaker:He was kind of a brilliant guy.
Speaker:Had a little bit more marketing savvy than our friend at Nordic Track originally.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:There's no, um, there's no Nordic jock in the wings here.
Speaker:Like this was, he was like Cuisinart.
Speaker:It makes tons.
Speaker:Cuisinart.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um, so there's also kind of like similar rise and fall.
Speaker:that's tied to a single breakthrough product.
Speaker:So, for Cuisinart, it was the food processor.
Speaker:Um, uh, which was, you know, Cuisinart was basically synonymous with food
Speaker:processor for the first few decades of its existence, which is a thing
Speaker:we'll talk about a little bit later.
Speaker:And during the 70s and 80s, the food processor completely
Speaker:transformed home cooking.
Speaker:And there was a really interesting quote I came across from Jacques Pepin who was
Speaker:talking about how he would have to make like a, like a, like a mousse before.
Speaker:And it was like, you take a thing through a screen, and then it was like
Speaker:you take a meat through a screen, and then you would use, redo it again,
Speaker:and you chop, dice it and chop it.
Speaker:It was like 17 steps.
Speaker:And it would take, you know, half a day or whatever to do.
Speaker:And the food processor was like, you can make these incredibly
Speaker:refined, French and, um, European, technique meals in an instant.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:So, it, you know, transformed home cooking, and because of Cuisinart and
Speaker:others that followed up, cause, cause of course everybody's like, that's a
Speaker:great idea, I'm gonna make one, like, Ulster, Sunbeam, all those folks.
Speaker:Mm hmm.
Speaker:Mm
Speaker:Pretty soon, almost 50 percent of households in
Speaker:America had a food processor.
Speaker:So super fast household penetration, which is awesome, but at the same
Speaker:time, it means the market tightens.
Speaker:Everybody who has one, who wants one, has one.
Speaker:And so he, you know, by mid, you know, late 80s, he kind of
Speaker:sensed the writing on the wall.
Speaker:He sold the company to another consortium.
Speaker:They mismanaged it for two years and it declared bankruptcy.
Speaker:Sounds almost exactly like,
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:exactly like NordicTrack.
Speaker:Um.
Speaker:And so, like NordicTrack, Cuisinart was actually also resurrected as
Speaker:a brand, by another big parent company and now flourishes with
Speaker:a much more diverse product line.
Speaker:Um, so, Cuisinart is, uh, owned by, Conair.
Speaker:and obviously as a side note, as soon as that came up, I started
Speaker:looking at the movie Conair because,
Speaker:always, I always, always, like anytime I see Conair I encounter it most in hotels.
Speaker:Um, you know, like it seems to be the brand of choice of
Speaker:like the hotel hair dryer.
Speaker:And I'm always like, Nicolas Cage with an inadvisable haircut.
Speaker:Yeah, it's, I wish, I mean, it's a shame that we're not a, a film based
Speaker:podcast because I went down a bit of a rabbit hole there and there
Speaker:was, there's so much wild shit that happened in connection to that movie.
Speaker:Oh, really?
Speaker:just, just crazy stuff like.
Speaker:They were all sequestered in the desert, like a remote part of
Speaker:the desert for like eight weeks.
Speaker:And it was just a bunch of dudes that just like the testosterone built into
Speaker:a bit of a Scirocco of manliness.
Speaker:And like everybody had their shirts off.
Speaker:They were doing like prison workouts all the time.
Speaker:Like Danny Trejo was there just like amping people up.
Speaker:There were fistfights just nuts.
Speaker:Yeah, it was, it's crazy.
Speaker:You should look into it.
Speaker:It's really, really ridiculous.
Speaker:Unfortunately.
Speaker:like, yeah, I like started and I'm like, that sounds fun.
Speaker:And then by the time I was like, that sounds terrifying.
Speaker:I don't want it to be there at
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And they actually, the scene where the plane, um, um, Hits the casino.
Speaker:They actually ran a plane in the casino because the stardust was
Speaker:being demolished at the time.
Speaker:So they, they were like, Hey, can we just drive a plane through your casino?
Speaker:And yeah, it's like wild
Speaker:Do you think that it actually happened the other way where somebody was
Speaker:like, did you know, do you hear that they're like demolishing the stardust?
Speaker:And somebody who's like, wait, let's run a plane
Speaker:I think partially.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Because what I heard, what I've read was that like, it was just this sort
Speaker:of like, process of one upsmanship between the writers and the director.
Speaker:And so it'd be like, well, what if we did this?
Speaker:And what if we did this?
Speaker:And what, and like, I kept on trying to amp it up such that Jerry Bruckheimer,
Speaker:who was the producer eventually thought that they were basically
Speaker:making a spoof of a Bruckheimer film because it was getting so ridiculous.
Speaker:He was like, are you fucking with me?
Speaker:yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty insane.
Speaker:And you mentioned, of course, Nick Cage's hair, which is legendary.
Speaker:There's a whole story there that like He was briefed that his character was sort of
Speaker:based on like a Greg Allman kind of guy.
Speaker:And so he showed up, on set for the first day with like long
Speaker:flowing hair and a huge beard.
Speaker:And, and Bruckheimer was like, I'm paying 20 million for this face.
Speaker:You're not going to hide it behind hair.
Speaker:Shave, made him shave his beard, but Nick would not, would not cut his hair.
Speaker:And that's why like the whole beauty shot of his hair waving in the wind
Speaker:is just so hilarious because he, he was really attached to his hair.
Speaker:I respect that choice.
Speaker:Yeah, totally.
Speaker:Me too.
Speaker:I mean, it's a, it's a classic.
Speaker:It's a cult classic.
Speaker:Unfortunately, totally unrelated and irrelevant to our discussion today, but,
Speaker:but it came up and I knew it would come up for you as soon as I said Conair.
Speaker:definitely.
Speaker:So, so that's the basic history of Cuisinart.
Speaker:We don't need to go too much into it.
Speaker:Basically, you know, breakthrough product, huge sales.
Speaker:A little bit of a dip, reinvented as a, as a product line leaning on the brand name.
Speaker:Um, but I think what made it so influential for, influential for Steve
Speaker:Jobs and actually for many others was really the work of another person, um, an
Speaker:industrial designer named Mark Harrison.
Speaker:So Harrison was a pioneer of what's called universal design.
Speaker:So universal design is the design of buildings, products, or environments, to
Speaker:make them accessible to people regardless of age or disability or any other factors.
Speaker:So
Speaker:so like Oxo kind of,
Speaker:yeah, I mean, it's kind of strange to, to, to have to, to, to think of it now
Speaker:that we needed to call that something different, but the prevailing philosophy
Speaker:and design for many decades, especially industrial design in the last century.
Speaker:Well, the you design for the average.
Speaker:Like you design for the average size, the average height, the average
Speaker:age, ability, all those things.
Speaker:And so,
Speaker:Which meant men also, by the way.
Speaker:yeah, yeah exactly.
Speaker:And so, Harrison actually himself had suffered a brain injury as a child.
Speaker:and had to relearn basic functions like walking and talking.
Speaker:And so he brought that to his design career.
Speaker:And so when he was asked to redesign the food processor by Cuisinart in like the
Speaker:mid 70s, it was like the second generation of, of food processor, he brought these
Speaker:precepts of universal design to bear.
Speaker:And you, you called out some of them earlier, right?
Speaker:His design created the iconic features that we still associate with the
Speaker:core, Cuisinart food processor.
Speaker:These sort of oversized, like easy to press paddle shaped buttons.
Speaker:There's only two.
Speaker:There's basically on off.
Speaker:the large handle, like think about all food processor now, they are
Speaker:almost unique in appliances in that they have this really oversized,
Speaker:big, easy to grasp handle and then bold and readable typefaces.
Speaker:If I think about those Cuisinart buttons, it's like huge on, huge
Speaker:off, and it's very, very simple.
Speaker:And that just made sure that cooks of all stripes could use this amazing device.
Speaker:And so, like, it had a, it had a real impact on its popularity because people
Speaker:who didn't feel intimidated by the machine could actually engage with it.
Speaker:And so in universal design, which kind of came to, to, um, commercial
Speaker:product design or residential product design through the Cuisinart, it's
Speaker:actually kind of infiltrated, You know, tech culture, app culture,
Speaker:device culture and things like that.
Speaker:And it started in many ways with the Cuisinart.
Speaker:I mean it definitely, you see, I was thinking about it the moment you
Speaker:said it, just the um, it, Steve Jobs encountering it, I'm like, well now
Speaker:the like, I want an iPod with just one button totally makes sense, you
Speaker:know, if that's like the direction he's going, he's just like, I just want an on
Speaker:Mm hmm.
Speaker:I just want to be able to interface with just like that,
Speaker:the tiniest amount of input.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And hide the other stuff inside, you know, like put the, apparently the
Speaker:first version of the Apple, the Apple one was like clear, a clear case
Speaker:where you could see all the inner workings and like the circuit board
Speaker:was kind of exposed and all this stuff.
Speaker:And I think he just had a major allergy to that.
Speaker:So Jobs wasn't the only notable fan of Cuisinart and I think like the story of
Speaker:Cuisinart really is a story of influence in many ways like it influenced design
Speaker:Through apple it influenced design through you know it through other channels as
Speaker:well it influenced chefs Uh, you know early on america's most famous chef julia
Speaker:child was a huge booster of, of Cuisinart.
Speaker:She,
Speaker:sense that her, like, if, you know, if she cut her teeth, so to speak, on, like, the
Speaker:crazy complicated French dishes, you know.
Speaker:So we all know Julia, we all know JC, Jukies, as she was called as a kid.
Speaker:Topher, do you have any idea what, what her first recipe was?
Speaker:Uh, no.
Speaker:is kind of a trick, trick question.
Speaker:Then, chocolate
Speaker:No, shark repellent.
Speaker:Oh.
Speaker:Ooh.
Speaker:So, shark repellent, yeah.
Speaker:I knew she was an adventurous gal, but I didn't
Speaker:I know.
Speaker:Well, so did you know that she was actually in the precursor to the CIA?
Speaker:I did
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So before
Speaker:know she was a spy.
Speaker:she was a spy, she was a spy in training, maybe She wasn't actually doing spy work,
Speaker:but she was in the, in the organization that was responsible for intelligence.
Speaker:So, and this was before she had any interest in food.
Speaker:She actually came to cooking much later in her life, like in her late thirties.
Speaker:Um, But during World War II, she was in the OSS, um, and she was part of a
Speaker:group that was, uh, looking at, um, uh, naval rescue, how, how do we retrieve
Speaker:sensitive, um, downed, assets in the Navy.
Speaker:And so, apparently, a lot of people, there was a bit of like a shark, shark paranoia.
Speaker:Like they had, there were maybe like some, like 20 shark attacks,
Speaker:against downed pilots or people who had, who had gone in the water.
Speaker:And, um, the OSS wanted to find a way to, to assure them that
Speaker:they would be kind of safe.
Speaker:And so there was all these materials about like, you know, what to do when a
Speaker:shark approaches you, which is just wild.
Speaker:And they're all like animated and like, you know, like are
Speaker:illustrated in these very, uh, you know, New Yorker cartoon styles.
Speaker:It's, it's just very bizarre.
Speaker:But they were, they wanted to reassure the Navy that they
Speaker:would, were working on a solution.
Speaker:And so they were developing a shark repellent that pilots could put on
Speaker:themselves if they went into the water after having it down, uh, being shot down.
Speaker:And so the story goes is that she was sort of, uh, like actually concocting these,
Speaker:like mixing different things together to try to figure out what was going to work.
Speaker:And they, they came up with one which is basically like, um, um, a metal,
Speaker:a particular metal that kind of, that repels sharks that you would put on
Speaker:with a paste and things like that.
Speaker:But That was really her foray into, uh, into combining ingredients.
Speaker:And obviously she went on to do a whole lot more.
Speaker:While she didn't just know how to repel sharks, she was also
Speaker:extremely toxic to homosexuals.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I, you know, I, there was a, there was an allusion to that in like our
Speaker:wiki and then like a really quick, like, but she, she learned when
Speaker:her friend died of AIDS and it's
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, it was, uh, she, she has a lot of bad quotes on the record, but she came
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:Was she just like,
Speaker:had to lose an entire generation of
Speaker:that's yeah, exactly.
Speaker:her sympathy.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well, she, she was, um, her and Jacques Pepin and others, James Beard actually
Speaker:was a, um, early user of the Cuisinart.
Speaker:So Cuisinart really got into chef culture really quickly.
Speaker:And at that time, I think there was also this chefs influencing home cooking
Speaker:in ways that then I think we're seeing again now, but like, there was the first
Speaker:wave of that, uh, that, that wave of like, you can do amazing things at home
Speaker:right.
Speaker:Yeah, it totally fits with Julia Child's brand, which is just kind of, she, she
Speaker:did the very traditional, she learned like the really laborious, exacting, Uh,
Speaker:you know, hand done French ways to cook everything, but she also kind of, sort
Speaker:of, broke it down in a way for the home chef that was like, you can do this,
Speaker:you know, like, uh, so it totally makes sense that Cuisinart would be a welcome
Speaker:addition to that entire proposition.
Speaker:So we talked a little bit earlier about how like Cuisinart became
Speaker:synonymous with food processor.
Speaker:I think during the 70s and 80s, it wasn't like, I need a food processor.
Speaker:It was like, I need a Cuisinart or I'm going to use the Cuisinart.
Speaker:Yeah, like the Band Aid and the
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, yeah.
Speaker:You mentioned, I was just going to say like, there's a bunch
Speaker:of brands like that, right?
Speaker:Kleenex, Jacuzzi.
Speaker:That's one of my favorite ones.
Speaker:Jacuzzi is a,
Speaker:I didn't actually even know that was a
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:Jacuzzi is a brand name that became synonymous with hot tub.
Speaker:No,
Speaker:responsible Italian.
Speaker:How would, if you were going to say it in Italian, how would you say jacuzzi?
Speaker:Um, it wasn't originally Jacuzzi.
Speaker:It was originally I A C U Z
Speaker:Oh, Yacuzzi.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But Americans would never, like could, I could never.
Speaker:Never.
Speaker:I
Speaker:yeah, that
Speaker:know what I mean?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So jacuzzi.
Speaker:Brand name.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Like, I don't know.
Speaker:There's others.
Speaker:Q tip.
Speaker:Did you know that zipper was a brand name?
Speaker:I did not know
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Zipper was a brand name.
Speaker:Uh, scotch tape.
Speaker:I always forget that scotch tape is a brand name.
Speaker:Oh yeah.
Speaker:But the, you know, just like, just like Kleenex and Band Aid, it's
Speaker:preventatively difficult to provide the actual name of the product.
Speaker:Like, What do you get?
Speaker:Adhesive bandage?
Speaker:You know, like, you'd never ask somebody for that.
Speaker:And like, facial tissue?
Speaker:like Q tip.
Speaker:Cotton swab.
Speaker:Cotton swab?
Speaker:No one likes to say swab.
Speaker:I mean that's interesting though because like you bring up a point that
Speaker:it's not a simple equation whether or not becoming like synonymous with the
Speaker:category is a good thing or a bad thing.
Speaker:It's not, it's not a always yes or always no.
Speaker:Is it right?
Speaker:kind of dependent on, like, how easy the noun or verb is to, like, say as well.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Cause like zipper, it don't think it worked out great for the zipper company.
Speaker:Really?
Speaker:Well, like do you think of, you know, do you think of the, we first,
Speaker:we didn't know it was a brand.
Speaker:And then like,
Speaker:I mean, I'm a YKK man
Speaker:Obviously.
Speaker:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker:I think everyone's a YKK and that's, that's fun
Speaker:I don't think they have much of a choice, actually.
Speaker:well, they just piggybacked like zipper created the category and
Speaker:then they become the brand that defines it, which is pretty awesome.
Speaker:And like for, Kleenex, I don't know.
Speaker:It's kind of a wash for Kleenex, right?
Speaker:Like there's, there's still probably the category leader.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And like Q tip, like Q tip really, really dominates, really owns it.
Speaker:I don't even want to look
Speaker:When he gets on the mic with Janet Jackson, there's no beating him.
Speaker:Hehe.
Speaker:I always thought that was, I'm like, look, you know, of all
Speaker:the names, what is his name?
Speaker:Quentin?
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:I don't know either.
Speaker:But like cute.
Speaker:Oh, come on, man.
Speaker:Not, I, I don't find it a
Speaker:Maybe it's cause
Speaker:Does it feel very dynamic to
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Maybe it's cause he had like a soft delivery or something.
Speaker:He gets in
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:He's real gentle.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:The thing they didn't do in their first run was actually then take that name
Speaker:recognition and then diversify off of it.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:They didn't, the, the founder was like, no, I mean, I, this is what we make.
Speaker:And like, if we're going to, and it's such high standards for quality is like,
Speaker:if we're going to put something out there, it's gotta be as good as this.
Speaker:This is this thing we made is perfect and ideal.
Speaker:And he just really never.
Speaker:Like springboarded off the Cuisinart name and so when it folded and it was
Speaker:repurchased by Conair Nicolas Cage, uh, it was The first thing they did
Speaker:was like well We got to use the name and then kind of like build off of the
Speaker:back of it, which is super smart Mm
Speaker:goes to that, like, to me, the idea of we're going to do one thing
Speaker:and we're going to do it really
Speaker:hmm,
Speaker:feels very European.
Speaker:right
Speaker:also feels very engineering minded in general.
Speaker:So it sounds like this guy was kind of in that world, but it does seem like the type
Speaker:of thing that like, you know, in European mindset is kind of like very focused on
Speaker:Classic European mindset, I should say.
Speaker:Strikes me as being very focused on kind of like, nailing the fundamentals,
Speaker:establishing, um, trust for yourself, thinking about the business as
Speaker:a long term sort of like, play.
Speaker:Whereas in America, it's kind of grow or die.
Speaker:Like, if you don't start eating other categories, your
Speaker:business will be cannibalized.
Speaker:And so, it like, in some ways makes me feel a little, Like, sad, that that's
Speaker:how America, like this guy couldn't, that Cuisinart couldn't just be the best,
Speaker:right
Speaker:company to make food processors, but, uh, you know,
Speaker:But it's really interesting because like you think about, um, Europe as a place
Speaker:where legacy is so important that people's family names became associated with the
Speaker:thing that they did for generations.
Speaker:Like we're the Smiths because we just blacksmith for generation
Speaker:on generation on generation.
Speaker:Um, which is not a thing, which is really that, that sort of lack
Speaker:of mobility I think is kind of anathema to American culture.
Speaker:Uh, which I never thought of before.
Speaker:Thanks, Topher.
Speaker:Just expanding my mind.
Speaker:yeah,
Speaker:Well, so Cuisinart, the name has become obviously a massive brand equity.
Speaker:I think, you know, as soon as you said Cuisinart, I was like, Oh, amazing.
Speaker:And we were talking to a colleague yesterday and And said that we were
Speaker:going to be doing Cuisinart on this episode and she was like, that's awesome.
Speaker:I so excited to hear about that.
Speaker:So like definitely carries a lot with it and it's infiltrated
Speaker:culture in some fun ways too.
Speaker:Um, so this, I'd love this cause I love him.
Speaker:So Weird Al Yankovic.
Speaker:Do you say Yankovic or Yankovic?
Speaker:I always say Yankovic because I feel like that's a weird Slavic thing,
Speaker:Yeah, I give it the vich.
Speaker:Well, Weird Al Y.
Speaker:It's pronounced Yakutsi.
Speaker:Weird Kuzi . Uh, he's described his brain as a pop culture, cuisine art, which
Speaker:I totally see
Speaker:makes total sense.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I was reading an article about him and he is like, it's funny because he's
Speaker:managed to stay relevant longer than many of the bands that he's actually Lampoon,
Speaker:Mm, mm-hmm
Speaker:you know what I mean?
Speaker:Like he's
Speaker:Well, they had the whole gag on 30 rock of like weird owling being like a, a verb.
Speaker:And then like, so he weird Ed Jenna's single and she hated it.
Speaker:So she tried to normal owl him, or she like made the, she made
Speaker:a thing that was like so off
Speaker:Oh, I remember.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:make it weirder.
Speaker:And it was about like broccoli farts, I
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And then, uh, he turned it, he was like, the chorus was Fart So Loud,
Speaker:and he turned it, he normal led it, and turned it into Heart So Proud,
Speaker:about like, his dad going off to war.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Amazing.
Speaker:Amazing sense of humor, that guy.
Speaker:And it just manages to still be relevant.
Speaker:So his whole thing was like, he just takes, he's always like absorbing pop
Speaker:culture and mixing it up in his brain.
Speaker:And so like, you know, Cuisinart just becomes the perfect metaphor for that.
Speaker:And the other, another really fun one, Of the brand kind of punching through
Speaker:culture is, uh, Is in one of the kind of my favorite sequences in one of my
Speaker:favorite comedies Um, and it's Spaceballs and I think it's worth kind of watching
Speaker:this Because it's so ridiculously funny
Speaker:I do not remember a Cuisinart moment in Spaceballs.
Speaker:it's part of like a very long series of things in which there's like a great joke
Speaker:after a great joke after a great joke
Speaker:Okay, so it's just kind of
Speaker:But it's it's like the
Speaker:two of
Speaker:Yeah, but it's like the one, you know, it's like a classic
Speaker:Mel, Mel Brooks moment.
Speaker:the Cuisinart line gets overshadowed by Ludicrous Speed.
Speaker:Riot.
Speaker:like, the idea that the Cuisinart was both, like, a powerful thing,
Speaker:but just not up to like hyper jets.
Speaker:I just think it's so funny.
Speaker:And then later on in the same sequence when like they crash and his helmet
Speaker:gets like super squished and he's like days, Rick Moranis is dazed.
Speaker:And he's like, how are you doing?
Speaker:Smoke them if you got them.
Speaker:It's like so funny.
Speaker:Well, Topher, it's been a journey at ludicrous speed through the
Speaker:universe of influence that Cuisinart has cooked up over the years.
Speaker:I hope that you've had a good time on this whirlwind.
Speaker:I absolutely have.
Speaker:I appreciate the whirlwind reference as well.
Speaker:I, you know, one of the things that you is, you know, you were
Speaker:talking about in terms of like how.
Speaker:Cuisinart moved from an apparatus, it solved a problem
Speaker:and then moved into culture.
Speaker:Uh, it really makes me think of how that happens now.
Speaker:You know, this, um, you can just think of the world of food in a world where like,
Speaker:I definitely get barraged with kitchen appliances and, you know, hacks and stuff
Speaker:like that on, Instagram all the time.
Speaker:It makes me think of kind of like how, how companies are trying to kind of like
Speaker:find that conduit into culture as well.
Speaker:But like, you know, Cuisinart did it the old fashioned way by like actually just
Speaker:like having a better widget by like, just really, we found a totally new thing
Speaker:that like people don't have access to.
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:It's interesting you bring that up because I think that like, and listen, there's
Speaker:obviously new things being invented, sous vide devices and things like that.
Speaker:Yeah, and I even thought like, Ron Popeil, uh, food dehydrator,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I'm you know, like I'm not not to say that there's no Like hardware
Speaker:progression that's happening.
Speaker:But I do feel that like a lot of the energy in, um, cooking appliances
Speaker:and supplies and utensils is around, it's like the typical, um, district,
Speaker:like startup disruptive approach.
Speaker:Like how do we make, how do we change the supply chain?
Speaker:So I can give you restaurant quality pans, you know, at a better price.
Speaker:So like, you know, um, Caraway and, uh, was it made, made in, made for, yeah.
Speaker:Like that's where I think a lot of the, like the wow is now not in
Speaker:like, Hey, here's the device that actually fundamentally changes the
Speaker:way in which you can prepare foods.
Speaker:Like that, that don't, I don't see that as much.
Speaker:And even like the ramp appeal stuff was really just kind of playing at the
Speaker:peripheries, but there are these major moments, I think, in, in, um, uh, you
Speaker:know, kind of machine development that, You know, really moves cooking along,
Speaker:really move culinary tastes along.
Speaker:It seems like it also kind of happened at a time when, culturally, there was a
Speaker:lot more interest in kind of like, chef quality, everything, you know what I mean?
Speaker:Like people were, you know, they were home cooking shows.
Speaker:There was cooking moved from kind of like a chore.
Speaker:You did to just kind of like keep your, keep your special guys going to work and
Speaker:go into school and moved into a thing that was like really kind of about,
Speaker:you know, exploring new techniques, uh, being able to take pride in that.
Speaker:And so it makes sense that like the access to, French kitchen technology would kind
Speaker:of be something that could fit into that
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And it makes me wonder like, what's, you know, what's going to have to, almost
Speaker:like, what's going to have to change in our desire to have food in order for us
Speaker:to have another sort of like category
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:doodad.
Speaker:Well, there's like this there, especially in quiz in culinary development,
Speaker:there's been this back and forth between like professional and amateur.
Speaker:And like, Um,
Speaker:hmm.
Speaker:and it's always sort of been that way, like the, you know, I was
Speaker:reading something about how the notion of set proportions and
Speaker:ingredient portions is relatively new.
Speaker:Like measuring spoons and measuring cups were an actual like radical invention.
Speaker:And the idea that, and I think as, as recently as like 1900 is when it was sort
Speaker:of became, I think started to become more.
Speaker:standardized.
Speaker:But you know, that's because like a chef working in a more professional environment
Speaker:would just kind of have that knowledge replicated and replicated, replicated.
Speaker:But if you're trying to share that knowledge with 100, 000 people through
Speaker:a recipe, very difficult to say like, I don't know, grab this much.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So So then there's that play.
Speaker:And then like what we're seeing through Cuisinart was like.
Speaker:There was a moment where those techniques then that had been
Speaker:advanced in professional kitchens were, there was a translation
Speaker:into the, the home environment.
Speaker:So how do you, how do you give people the ability to do the same things that
Speaker:these massive commercial kitchens can do?
Speaker:And then open, that opened up a whole realm of, of food.
Speaker:So like what is the next?
Speaker:Are we going to have like at home molecular gastronomy?
Speaker:Like are we going to be making foams?
Speaker:I mean, kind of.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, you do sorta.
Speaker:But then also, I was even thinking, like, what is What does like, uh, uh, the
Speaker:climate future bode for our, food systems?
Speaker:You know, is it going to be about saving the water that you're, that you're using
Speaker:or like, you know, like, are there just kind of like, Oh, we're going to need
Speaker:to sell food in more efficient ways.
Speaker:And so like reconstituting things is going to matter or, you know,
Speaker:uh, but I don't know, just one, just one direction that food could
Speaker:Totally.
Speaker:Alright, well, there it is, man.
Speaker:speaking, speaking of looking into the
Speaker:Ooh, nice segue.
Speaker:I'm, I'm curious about my own future and the future of the ears of our
Speaker:listeners by knowing what we're going to be looking into next, next episode.
Speaker:it's, it's interesting that you used the word ears.
Speaker:It's interesting that you're bringing us to a place.
Speaker:Located kind of in the upper part of our, of our anatomy, um, because the
Speaker:brand that I would love you to look into has, you know, had its theater of
Speaker:operations as the primarily the, the face, the face of, of, uh, of a human.
Speaker:Um, and it's a thing that I've always been, um, I've always
Speaker:kind of just heard the name and been like, Oh yeah, that's that.
Speaker:And then I, and when I break down the name, I'm like,
Speaker:what does that actually mean?
Speaker:Where, what is that from?
Speaker:So the brand that I want you to look into next time is oil of Olay.
Speaker:Oh.
Speaker:Huh.
Speaker:It's only a place.
Speaker:Is it a person?
Speaker:a person?
Speaker:Is it a, is it an ingredient?
Speaker:Is, is it oil of oil?
Speaker:Is that what that basically says?
Speaker:Is it like, cause the root would kind of suggest that it is, but.
Speaker:Yeah, right?
Speaker:Okay, I have no, I have no
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We haven't done a, we haven't done a beauty brand.
Speaker:And I
Speaker:haven't done any,
Speaker:yeah, I thought it would be fun to, to dive into it.
Speaker:Super
Speaker:My, Oiler Valet was like my mother's go to brand when I
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I just know the word.
Speaker:Like I just know, like I have not really much of a personal
Speaker:connection even to using the product.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:There was like a regenerate, I think I tried regenerate once.
Speaker:Cause I was like, Hey buddy, you gotta, you gotta slow the ravages of time.
Speaker:And I was like, let me just beep, beep, beep.
Speaker:I, you know,
Speaker:it worked amazingly by, I've been meaning to
Speaker:Thank you so much.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's one of those words.
Speaker:It's one of those like brand names too, where I, where I have never
Speaker:separated out the pieces of it until I started to think about it.
Speaker:And I'm like, all right, so you're just leading with oil.
Speaker:That's like, you're go, you're just going with oil.
Speaker:And then there's this Ole hanging out there.
Speaker:So yeah, I'm really curious to see where you take this.
Speaker:I mean, there's definitely, oils are back.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:in terms of like, being used on the face body.
Speaker:Because there was a while where they were like, verboten.
Speaker:Or like, the
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:wanted was oil.
Speaker:Uh, hmm.
Speaker:Okay, I'm going to dig into it.
Speaker:I can't wait to see what we see.
Speaker:Love it.
Speaker:Okay, well that's going to be us next.
Speaker:Um, but I think, you know, we were talking at the top of the show about 10 episodes.
Speaker:Before we sign out, I would just like to say a big thank you to everybody
Speaker:who's been listening along with us.
Speaker:It, it does, you know, we do this and we have a wonderful time.
Speaker:It is really meaningful when somebody's like, hey, I listened to blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:And it happens rarely enough for us.
Speaker:Cause like, you know, we're just, we're just out here doing our thing.
Speaker:Um, that it like really is meaningful.
Speaker:What I would like to offer to people, if you're listening right
Speaker:now and saying like, Oh yeah, this has been a kick, like, you know,
Speaker:I'd love to, I'd love to hear more.
Speaker:Find one person who you think would enjoy listening to this Cuisinart
Speaker:episode and send it to them.
Speaker:Is it a home chef?
Speaker:Is it somebody who is a little bit of a gadget fiend?
Speaker:Are they a Julia Childs fan?
Speaker:Find, find one person, send them this episode.
Speaker:We would love, uh, your help in sharing the joy of Strange Coordinates.
Speaker:the more people that can go on this journey with us, the better.
Speaker:and thank you everybody for listening along with
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker:So, As we've been alluding to, you have been listening to Strange Coordinates.
Speaker:This is the show where we use Branz's roadmaps to arrive at surprising places.
Speaker:Your hosts are Robert Bailug and me, Topher Burns, to learn more about
Speaker:our agency, territorial, Go to our website it's we are Territorial
Speaker:dot com Join our mailing list.
Speaker:Uh, we send out really fun stuff in email on a semi regular basis and we think
Speaker:you'll find it a treat and follow us on LinkedIn if you want the updates there.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:Thanks so much.
Speaker:Everyone.
Speaker:We'll talk to you next time.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:sorry.
Speaker:Robert, I can't hear you right now.
Speaker:And was it used in terms of like, is he destroying evidence of a crime?
Speaker:Like, what is
Speaker:No, okay, but it's so funny you bring, it's so funny you bring that up because
Speaker:the, the number of times in which like a food processor was accessory to a, to
Speaker:hiding a murder is like grotesquely Yeah
Speaker:is it pieces of a person?
Speaker:No!
Speaker:to the fact that people thought that this machine was a real workhorse that they
Speaker:were like I could Grind up this person.
Speaker:I just murdered.
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:mean the femur, that's not gonna do anything to a femur or a
Speaker:No, no, you're not going to get bone in there, but like there's, yeah, isn't that,
Speaker:Oh my.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:You know what?
Speaker:There's, I gotta say, like if, if, if your endeavor is to dispose of
Speaker:human remains, the last thing you want to do is make ineffectual mess.
Speaker:And like, that's gotta be the one.
Speaker:Like, oh man, I just blended up, you know, miniscule parts of this
Speaker:person and managed on doing nothing to like, hide my actual crime.
Speaker:All I've done is create more
Speaker:it everywhere.
Speaker:But I also like, I mean like if you were trying to dispose of a,
Speaker:but like let's say 150 pound, I wouldn't do it four quarts at a time.
Speaker:Do you know what I mean?
Speaker:Like that is just a, it's really,
Speaker:Yeah, totally.
Speaker:The emotional toll alone just has to be horrific.
Speaker:That's
Speaker:Oh man.
Speaker:Wow!
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker:I think, I mean, like, it's What, has this person never heard of, like, vats of lye?
Speaker:Come on.
