- Can we guess the first product
your favorite company ever made?
- Let's talk about that.
(cheerful music)
Good Mythical Morning.
- Now anybody who was alive in 2007 knows,
you were not cool if you weren't wearing
a moose on your shirt
that was so tight it cut off all circulation to your nips!
I'm talking Abercrombie and Fitch, folks.
Now what was your stance on the A&F back in the day?
- I was more of a cheaper American Eagle guy.
'Cause I mean, the shirtless buff dudes
that smelled like Abercrombie,
I never got past those guys, literally.
- The lights were on in American Eagle,
so you could, I was like "I can see what I'm buying!"
- I can see the clothes,
I can see that the price tags are a little more reasonable.
- Okay.
Well did you know that when Abercrombie,
and I can't say the word.
Abercrombie.
- Amberncrombie?
- Abercrombie and Fitch, it started over a century ago,
they actually started as a sporting goods company
that marketed to affluent outdoorsmen,
selling things like fishing poles and rifles
to stuffy aristocrats.
Here's a picture of a vintage A&F rifle
that a nobleman on safari may have used.
- Okay, so they're,
Abercrombie, it was kinda like Remington,
or Bass Pro Shops.
- Yeah, the very first Bass Pro Shops.
- Well, as it turns out,
a lot of giant corporations
we know for selling specific products today,
actually started by selling something
wildly different at first,
and it's gonna be up to us, Rhett, working together,
like Abercrombie and Fitch,
to guess what those items were.
It's time for,
"What if Fisher-Price Once Sold Big Shiny Knives?
Would it Be No Surprise or Would it Fill You With Strife?"
Stevie is going to school us on a variety of major companies
whose first ever products are incredibly different
from the kind of product that we associate with them today,
and we're gonna guess what that product was,
and much like a barbershop during wartime,
we're gonna be given two options.
The best part is, we have that product,
or a close recreation of the product,
right here, hidden in this box.
Well, it's not hidden now, we weren't-
- Oh, hey, Link, high five.
Okay, that didn't work too well.
Okay, if we need help guessing,
we have three lifelines available,
and once you use a lifeline, you can't use it again.
We can one, stick it,
where we get to poke the item just one time.
Two, we can sniff it, where we take a big ol' whiff
of the inside of the box,
or three- - I'm demonstrating this
so you understand what he means.
- Swipe it, we can swipe a metal detector over the box
and see if that helps us at all.
If we get four or more correct, we get to win a framed photo
of the very first time
we ever won a game on Good Mythical Morning.
What is that gonna be?
And if we lose, we get a framed photo
of our very first loss.
That'd be upsetting.
Let's play.
- [Stevie] First up is a fast food joint
you both know all too well.
Before they were the big boss of fire sauce,
Taco Bell built its fast food kingdom
by selling one particular item.
Did they begin as a modest little hot dog stand,
or a modest little kabob stand?
- This is so strange. - Hot dog or kabob.
- Were they called Taco Bell,
or you're not gonna answer that question.
- [Stevie] I am not going to answer that question.
- See, Rhett, we got the little tour
at the Taco Bell headquarters that one time.
- With the timeline in the hallway!
- The timeline in the hallway.
- I think they took this part out of the timeline.
- 'Cause we're working together here,
and I have this flag that we're gonna place.
Let's see, which one do I have?
I got the hot dog. - I got the kabobs.
- I'm pretty sure it's a hot dog, man.
- It's gotta be hot dogs.
They started so long ago.
- Don't you remember that we had a conversation about
"Man, they started with hot dogs?"
- Hm, well, if you remember that,
you definitely should put the flag over that,
because I don't.
- We think it's hot dogs.
I mean kabobs is so specialized.
- Yeah, it makes more sense
that you would start with hot dogs
and maybe move on to tacos.
- [Stevie] Taco Bell founder Glen Bell
opened a small hot dog stand in San Bernardino, California
in 1946.
Once Bell introduced tacos to his menu,
they became such a smash hit,
he switched focus and got rid of the hot dogs altogether.
- Screw those hot dogs!
- But did he call it Taco Bell?
- [Stevie] That couldn't have made any sense.
Next we've got LEGO,
the company that quite literally built an empire.
Way back when LEGO was just another word
to shake the neighborhood dog off your ankle...
- Ha, leggo! - Haha, Stevie.
- [Stevie] What product did the company sell first?
Was it tabletop radios or wooden toys?
- Well, the transition from wooden toys to plastic blocks
feels pretty natural.
- I mean we could poke it,
but I don't wanna waste my poke at this point.
- I'm good at smelling wood.
- I watched that episode of, yeah.
- If there's wood in there, I'll smell it.
- [Link] I'm pretty positive-
- I don't think we should waste
a lifeline on this one, this can't be radios.
Come on, now.
- [Stevie] You guys are feeling so confident today.
- Yes.
- [Stevie] Founder Ole Kirk Christiansen
began manufacturing wooden toys in 1932,
and officially named his company LEGO in 1935.
- Oh, I could've totally smelled that.
- [Stevie] The first plastic bricks
weren't even marketed until 1949.
These are actual early wooden LEGO toys,
built in the 1940s and 1950s.
- No they're not, are they?
- [Stevie] They are, we got them off eBay.
The boat you'll be sad to hear
cost 199 dollars and 99 cents.
- Whoa, let me see that wooden boat!
- What if I'd have done something stupid to it
before you told me that?
I would've felt horrible right now!
- Hundred and what, almost $200?
- I don't know, like bit it, or, I don't know, peed on it?
I don't know what I would've done,
probably drop it. - I was just thinking about
peeing on this truck.
That's the weird thing.
If you like the idea of collecting old vintage collectibles
like that old wooden boat,
well, it's not exactly the same thing,
but we've got a vintage lunchbox and thermos set
that you can only get if you are a Mythical Society
third degree member.
But you got to join third degree quarterly or annual
by March 31st in order to do that, okay?
MythicalSociety.com for details.
We should maybe do a wooden boat.
- Yeah, we could do that.
That's one of the fun things about the Mythical Society,
is that we get to create collectibles.
- Yeah. Collectibles.
- [Stevie] Today, we know Samsung for their flat screen TVs,
and those with iPhones cringe at the ghastly green messages
sent by their cell phones,
but way back when, Samsung started by selling
something else entirely.
Was it fine jewelry, or packages of noodles?
- Either one of these is a little bit unusual, but,
in jewelry, you're kinda dealing
with precious metals already,
and every piece of electronics
has some sort of precious metal in it.
- Yeah, and many electronics are precious.
We could sniff it to make sure there's no ramen in there.
- I think we should, 'cause at this point,
I feel like we're going for the Queen Sweep.
We both gonna sniff it?
- Yeah, we can both sniff it.
Close your eyes, open your nose.
- You smell jewelry?
- I'm smelling the slight hint of jewelry.
- I definitely don't smell ramen, so, I think jewelry it is,
which is mine over here, if you wanna hand me that flag.
- Oh, there it is.
That is our official answer, jewelry.
- [Stevie] Founded in 1938, Samsung Sanghoe
was a small business that shipped its own brand of noodles.
- [Both] No!
- [Stevie] To customers in Manchuria and Beijing
before expanding into the global electronics giant
we all know today.
- Well those noodles don't smell like anything!
Y'all got smell-less noodles to trick us!
Don't ever do that again.
- [Stevie] These days you thank Wrigley for fresh breath
and something to chomp on when you're bored,
but as it turns out, gum wasn't the first product
sold by the mega-company.
Were those actual first products soap and baking soda
or bras and pantyhose?
- Bras and pantyhose?
- Chewable underwear.
- Well that's, I mean where did edible underwear come from?
- You gotta chew it before you can et it.
- Yeah.
- I mean, we could sniff to see if it's underwear.
- No we can't sniff it, because we used the sniff.
- Oh, shoot. Not that I like to sniff.
- But you kinda do.
- I didn't say that.
We could poke it.
Nothing like poking underwear.
- Okay, baking soda and soap, move to gum,
not that big of a transition.
Bras and pantyhose?
Like why would you go from trying to secure body parts
to then "Hey, have some gum."
You know what I'm saying?
Like, what's the logic there?
- I can't come up with any connection.
Do we wanna use the poke it? Stick it?
- Let's poke it.
- All right.
- Just one poke.
- [Link] One poke. Three, two, one.
Feels like you. - Okay, I mean that's hard.
I mean, unless that's pantyhose that feels like a box.
I think baking soda and soap it is, right?
- [Link] Yes, yes, it's gotta be.
- [Stevie] William Wrigley, Jr.
started his company in Chicago
in 1891 selling soap and baking soda.
- Yeah he did, we poked you, man!
- It's vintage, dude,
this is the actual stuff. - [Stevie] Listen to this.
Free gum was offered with his products to entice customers,
and soon the gum itself became the company's main draw.
So, yes.
- It's like baseball cards being offered with free gum.
Free gum was a thing back in the day.
- [Link] Scour and polish.
- [Stevie] This is a real bar
of Wrigley's mineral scouring soap from the 1890s.
So please do not pee on it.
Today, we all know Nintendo as the king of video games.
However, long before siblings were fighting gladiator style
over who got to play Mario and who got to play Luigi,
what product did they sell first?
Bamboo mahjong sets, or playing cards?
- I mean, playing card is kinda boring.
I mean I say, you got the thing?
I'm gonna vote for the bamboo mahjong set.
- But you have a metal detector over there.
We gotta use it at some point.
- But neither one of these things would be metal.
- Right.
(crew laughs)
It's just to feel like, yeah,
it's a little bit closer to
a console. - I think they're baiting us.
You know what, I think they're doing that to bait us.
So let's switch it on 'em.
- The playing cards.
- Yes.
- I like the way you think, man.
- Yeah, we think.
- Ha! You think you can outsmart us?
You think "Oh, let's put the,
they don't even know how to say this,
they'll definitely think it's Nintendo."
- Go ahead, Stevie. - We're not idiots.
- [Stevie] While Nintendo did
eventually market mahjong sets,
they began by manufacturing Japanese playing cards in Kyoto
in 1889.
- Is this the real deal?
- [Stevie] Yes it is.
Nintendo eventually expanded- - We're acquiring
some old, vintage stuff! - [Stevie] to manufacture
other games in 1963,
and finally arcade machines in 1974.
- Feel how hard they are.
- We might need to open our own eBay business.
- Look at, yeah, let's start an eBay store
and get all the good ratings!
I'm gonna get a 99.9 score!
- We've already won, but there's plenty more to learn,
right Stevie?
- [Stevie] Of course. Always.
Speaking of eBay, which you did in the last round,
that's what I'm gonna use as my transition.
- Yep, throwback transition.
- [Stevie] eBay is now the place to buy
virtually everything your little heart desires.
It had to start somewhere.
Back when it was known as AuctionWeb-
- Oh, yeah, I was a big fan then.
- [Stevie] What was the first product eBay ever sold?
Was it a broken laser pointer,
or a Kermit the Frog bobble head?
- [Link] Huh...
- Well, the broken laser pointer is so specific and weird
and who would buy it?
- Why would that be the first thing to launch a business?
I mean, the frog, of Kermit variety-
- Yeah, right, that's how they say it.
That's how it was described on AuctionWeb.
- It says to the world,
"We're collectables."
- And you also have the metal detector.
And I don't think it can detect Kermit,
but it can detect a laser pointer.
(detector beeps)
- Oh, yes, yes.
Yes.
- Hold on, Link, there's metal on the corners of this box.
- Oh, okay.
- [Rhett] So what if you-
- Here, you try, Rhett.
Nothing in the middle?
Reach around in front.
All right, this is leading me to believe
that it's gotta be the Kermit.
- Okay.
- 'Cause it bobbles without the use of-
- Well hold on, it just detected the air!
There's metal here in this air.
- Okay. Hm.
It's suspicious.
- There's metal in the air!
I don't think we should be breathing this air.
- [Stevie] Okay, you sticking with Kermit?
- Turn it off!
It's got a switch.
We're sticking with Kermit.
- [Stevie] The first ever item sold on eBay was
a broken laser pointer.
- [Both] Why?
- [Stevie] And this is the lucky guy who purchased it,
there's a photo.
This is Mark Fraser, and he bought it for 14.83
back in 1995.
And I guess that at the time,
laser pointers were over $100,
so he was thinking,
"I'll just get this broken one and fix it."
- Oh. But why would that be the first thing?
And why is the picture framed to emphasize that wreath?
- [Rhett] Well, because it's a beautiful wreath.
- [Link] It's a beautiful wreath.
- [Rhett] Matches his shirt.
- [Stevie] So guys, even though you got that last one wrong,
I do believe you won the game,
which means you each get a framed photo of your first win,
and again, we'll probably hear about this
in the comment section,
but we went back to what we thought your first win was,
based on like, points and stuff.
Your first win, Rhett, was season three, episode 20,
"Walmart Brand vs Name Brand Taste Test: The Game."
and Link's was season three, episode 40,
took you 20 episodes,
the "Super Word Game of Abbreviations."
- But I haven't lost since.
- Haven't lost a game since, that's the story of Link Neal.
- Thanks for subscribing and clicking that bell.
- You know what time it is.
- What's up, Mythical Beasts?
Brock here from Defiance, Ohio, in my semi,
in the snow, getting ready to unload.
And it's time to spin the Wheel of Mythicality.
- I'm glad he wasn't moving.
(indistinct) I'm stationary right now.
Click the top link to watch us guess
what weird first job our Mythical Crewmembers had
in Good Mythical More.
- And to find out
where the Wheel of Mythicality's gonna land.
Get the latest quarterly collectible item,
the Mythical Snackiverse lunchbox and thermos set,
by joining the Mythical Society third degree
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Visit MythicalSociety.com.