MBMBaM 783: Spidey Spaghetti

The McElroy brothers are not experts, and their advice should never be followed. Travis insists he's a sexpert, but if there's a degree on his wall, I haven't seen it. Also, this show isn't for kids, which I mention only so the babies out there will know how cool they are for listening. What's up, you cool baby? One, two, three, four! It's the start of something beautiful. A small acquaintance has blossomed, it's ripened into a precious friendship. I could have never seen what was coming for me. Hangs at the skate park, hangs by the beach. My life, it feels like. Life, ah, it's better, it's better with you. My life, ah, it's better, it's better with you. This is true, ah, it's better, it's better with two. My life, ah, it's better with you. Hello everybody and welcome to my brother, my brother, me and advice show for the modern era. I'm your oldest brother, Justin McElroy. What is up, citizens of TravNation? It's me, your middlest brother and brave leader, Travis, big dog, woof, woof, vroom, vroom, McElroy. What's up, TravNation? It's me, your sweet baby brother, 30 under 30, built for tough, Griffin McElroy. I'm not sure, guys, if I'm even allowed to be doing this right now. Yeah, dude, you should be taking the day off, popping your feet up like all of our government employees. It's anarchy in the USA, we have no government. Fear not, fear not. Not the worst, like obviously bad in a lot of ways, but considering. Bad in so many ways, they're serious, but for the joking of the show. But for the joking of the show, I'm just saying the government's not been great lately. Well? You're welcome. Certain parts of it. TravNation, I want to use this platform to extend the offer of encompassing what you guys call the United States of America. Okay. Let's just go down the list, TravNation, because I really, you know, help would certainly be appreciated. We've burned a lot of bridges lately. The folks down on Capitol Hill. Yeah. And the White House. i should say primarily they are also yeah so all the and the courts so the the parks are closed we'd open those back up how uh just unlocking the gates mostly you don't think you'd get in trouble doing that well we'd start paying the employees so then who's gonna who's gonna stop us the employees that's cool yeah no you can definitely do that every bear is actually a citizen of trav nation automatically every bear you said every bear that's cool even the weird ones the one that i need you to focus on trav and you get trav nation because it is the one that i hate the most about the shutdown i think is that our beloved air traffic controllers will continue to work uh-huh right but will not be compensated for that work that's the exact headspace i want them at baby yeah that's exactly where i want them i want them i want them ragged bone tired yeah and broke and and broken angry here's my plan for that i'm gonna start thank goodness yeah i'm gonna start paying them and i'm gonna hire more of them and i'm gonna give them breaks and comfy like stuff in there i'm gonna redo a lot of this that'll do it man no i'll get the property brothers up in there and have the property brothers like make the tower cute fix all their shit give them race car beds that'll fix it that'll do it tell me the next 10 words and i'll drop out of this podcast right now you know trav it's like it sounds nice i gave you a lot of words justin he how are you funding it he's gonna help out to land in the planes travis break off a little bit of how that sounds if you're in the tower yeah a little to the left little to the left oh yeah you got it now kiss those wheels on the ground smooch them right down that's a good plane kiss yeah for sure that kind of thing for sure that ought to get it and i'm gonna boys and go down what i'm gonna do justin to raise the money to pay for it i'm gonna sell the tanks now i know what you're wondering no i'm not gonna sell them to other countries i'm gonna take the bullets out of them yes good smart the bullets are so big in the tank i'm gonna take the bullets out so there won't be any bullets available don't get it twisted and then i'm just gonna sell them to american collectors i think that there's gonna be a real market for them these things we could put them in parades um just put them all over the place let kids drive them if they want to maybe set up like an amusement park area with a corndog yeah like down for kids yeah but it's tanks yeah you can drive the tank shoot the tank shoot corndogs out super fast that's cool and i'm gonna let tribe nation citizens pay a dollar each per vote to vote on what we're gonna name each tank hey trap can i talk to you over here for a second yeah you notice how uncomfortable this is talking to you about political yeah man here i am talking about selling what's that all about and he's like we're over here having a good time talking about tank town obviously it's a fucking horrifying situation 100 of time all around what tank town but like it's our job it's our job as jokesters to say things like a tank that shoots corndogs justin's over there looking like he has diarrhea and he doesn't know what to do about it no i was thinking yeah i got lost in my own head for a second because of all my good ideas because of how it was it was when you were gonna get rid of all the tanks not get rid of about and sell sell them good this part's important good collectors yeah and you said you wouldn't okay here's what tanks can neither be created nor destroyed so i can't get rid of them to know i could sink them in the ocean and make reefs out of them for the fishes cool that's a good idea yeah that'd be fun hang up juice about tanks oh no it's just when travis started talking about not selling the tanks i started talking thinking about that time in went and scooped up all of our weapons and threw them in the sun yeah part in superman 4 a lot of people don't talk about it but yeah in superman 4 superman scoops up all the nuclear weapons on the planet yeah yeah she knows about this that's he yeah x-rays okay so he gets all the nuclear bombs of the planet and then he throws them in the sun yeah do you think i mean superman's great and indestructible we love it yeah you think he talked to any science guys not that at all and he's like i'm not a bombologist for sure yeah but like it does seem wild that he just kind of made that call do you think too when he landed back and he was like i got rid of all the nuclear weapons like the science guys and stuff were like oh my god you got rid of all the nuclear weapons and all the stuff to make more nuclear weapons and he was like oh shit oh no whoops i'll be right back i gotta go get a bunch of stuff i think soups probably did some back of the napkin math according to they might be giants a million bit inside of one sun and a million nuclear bombs can fit in one earth yeah so that's like a google bombs i think it would take quite a lot to blow up the sun but it would have been nice to know if he had done like a press conference beforehand even shortly beforehand like hey i'm superman i'm gonna take your bombs there's nothing you need to stop me i'm gonna throw them into the sun if you happen to be a sunologist and you know stuff about how that could be disastrous for the whole solar system hit me up and he has like a right now i'm gonna pick them all up i'm gonna park them on saturn as a placeholder and then when you guys tell me it's cool i'm gonna take them to the sun if we want to do them one at a time just 10 at a time i think is okay we'll do 10 at a time if there's like a crazy flare i'll be like whoa whoa whoa it's like yeah it's exactly the firework hi jif jif's daily planet couldn't you just throw them anywhere else in the whole galaxy in the whole universe no because if he throws it so that wasn't he throws it and he doesn't throw it far enough so it comes it falls back down yeah to earth and also you know like doomsday's out there and megazord all the other superman bad guys and they could collect those things up you know what i mean hit the guardians of the galaxy with that then where are we at yeah you gotta be careful with that um captain planet told him to do it and he was like yeah let's do it this is a it is a bad idea to talk about this considering that it is i mean four or five days before the episode comes out while we record this we don't know what the situation is i did see mike johnson on the news this morning that absolutely fucking chode penis wrinkle up on a stage saying if the democrats don't get it together we're gonna have to start laying off federal workers you hate that shit don't you michael michael that's your favorite start gonna have to start we hate laying off federal fuck off chode nuts get him yeah get him griffin i hate how much oxygen i share with that absolute fucking chode wrinkle fuck that dude yeah is he one of the big guys or what's up he came out someone came up to him and was like hey your president's embarrassing himself man and he's like i didn't see the whole military speech thing eat both of these nuts mike johnson you fucking chode did he see the thing where trump posted an ai video of him himself saying a thing he never said michael i did it didn't see that one did say it no i was watching uh the new season of the bear i know i'm a little behind but I haven't been keeping up with current events. I only read Le Mans. Isn't it Le Mans? This is an advice show. I want to help you, the people. I collect rubber ducks. In recent years, this has become pretty common, and they're popping up in more and more stores. As a result, when I mention my collection nowadays, I'll get a casual, oh, I have a friend who collects them too, or something casual like that. The thing is, I bet you've used casual twice in two clauses. My friend, I know exactly what your problem is with this new wave of duck collectors, huh? It couldn't be that they're casual, huh? The thing is that I've been collecting for about 15 years, and have about three, I didn't even finish the fucking question I had your number. Not that exact number. I would have guessed 300 unique ducks. How can I casually assert my dominance as the inevitably superior collector? That's from Buoyancy Bother in Virginia. We're gonna have to put on the hat of someone who celebrates a sort of gatekeeping, which is not our usual position to take, but I do fully, fully understand why it would get your hackles up. My oldest says that he has a rubber duck collection because he gets a rubber duck every time he goes to the dentist. My friends, he has like nine. And some of them are cool. He has one big glittery one. I like that a lot. That's a cool rubber duck. He's got a whole spot in his bedroom where he displays them. That's great. But come on. I don't know. 300. I don't, listen, I'm gonna gatekeep gatekeeping for a second. I don't know that differentiating a collection versus I have several of those. That's more of like, let's make words mean something more than it is gate. If you said, I like rubber ducks, and you said, you don't like rubber ducks, I like rubber ducks because I have 300 of them. But if you're like, yeah, my friend collects those, and you're like, how many do they have? And they're like, five. It's like, no, they have several of them. But it's just like, everybody feels like a phony all the time, man. Not me. I don't need to do any. That's true. Travis doesn't. Some people don't. Okay. A lot of people feel like a phony all the time. You don't have to do anything to make people feel like a phony, right? I understand the compulsion. But if you peacock a little bit, you're gonna feel in the. It's a different bird. Travis is right. He's right on this one. It's a fully different bird. They don't even look anything. If you are ostentatious. Thank you. With your ducks, then I think that they're gonna fill in the blanks. They're gonna see what a joke they are. They're gonna recognize themselves for the jabroni that they are. They're gonna know that you're superiority there. They're gonna know the tip of the flying V, such as it is. Now, let me ask you this, Justin. Is there a scenario in which question asker is talking about, very proudly, their duck collection, and then one of said jabronis tries to steal a little bit of that limelight of like, yeah, I also do that. No, if they frame it like, no big deal, I also do ducks. Yeah, everybody does that. That's when you have to drop. That's when you should, okay. Yeah. There is one pretty good option here, and that is to have a bag of 20 to 30 discreet ducks on you at all times. Burners, not your faves. Not your faves. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You need to be able. You need to be able to toss some on the ground and walk away. That's how good your collection is. Oh, yeah. These are literal trash to me. This is gravel. Hold up like a special limited edition, like Christina Aguilera, like Dirty Era sort of like cross promo record launch duck, and you're like, pretty cool, huh? And they're like, holy shit, where'd you even get that? And you crush it in your hand, you throw it in the garbage, you say, doesn't matter, I have 30 of them. You got 30 of these. I have 30! I want your ducks all over my floor! Oh, my God! We're probably the first people to make that. Sometimes it feels like I feel an energy in the room and it's like, we're definitely the first people to ever make a rubber duck collection-based Christina Aguilera dirty joke. Yeah, I feel like after we do it, sometimes we take like two beats. We take a breath. That was cool, I liked that. For the historians to write it down. Look, okay, that's it. To clip it. Awesome. Clip it out. Clip that chat. It makes it easier for history to find it. When history is trying to find it, later, the big ones-- There's little parentheses around the jokes. They go a little parenthetical, a silent parenthetical. And that was when they changed everything. That's one of the times when they changed everything that week. This was the episode the music died. We'll all remember. I think a great solve for this, and this is one that you can use for so many fucking things that you wanna use as a conversation starter or a subtle means of displaying your superiority in your duck collection, is set it as your desktop on your phone, your wallpaper, whatever you call it. People call it different things in different countries. Your desktop wallpaper on your phone. Make it all of your ducks. People are gonna see that, 'cause it's bright and colorful. They'll be like, "Wow, it's a lot of ducks." You say, "Thanks, they're mine." Do you wanna see more photos of them? Don't tell me about your friend. They'll be too embarrassed. They'll know, if they see it, they'll know that it's not appropriate to bring up their friend. Yeah, I just feel like if you've already dropped a bag of 20 to 30 discreet ducks, that's a lot of ducks on the Griffins. It's just a whole lot of extra. Well, my, Chews, you think about how many times you're doing that a day. They only have 300 ducks, so they could pull off this gambit approximately 10 times. You have to go back for your boys. You gotta get your, you can drop 'em in a-- The ducks fly together, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, you can drop 'em in a flourish, but ducks fly together, Quack. Oh, man, holy shit, though. I almost think, because of my prioritizing avoiding terrible social scenarios, it would be worse to have this be public information, because do you know how many fuckin' Scrowdy Rao, basic ass, canary yellow rubber ducks you are going to get sitting on your, you come in, they know it's your birthday, they put a basic ass rubber duck, like, enjoy. What the fuck am I gonna do with this? I do think-- This platonic ideal of a rubber duck. Come on. There is an early level of intervention, though, where you set that up like, listen, I'd love receiving ducks if, if they are, like, appropriate for the collection, and now you've given your coworkers or friends, like, the hunt, right, where they're gonna bring 'em, like, what about this one? I've done it, this one is special, and when they get the approval on that, that's when it feels so good, and it's like, yeah, that's worthy, you nailed it, that's great. If you had a big rubber duck collection, wouldn't you wanna display it in, like, a huge, like, hook-a-duck rotating aquatic display? Like, you would have a whole room in your house, and you walk, people would walk in, and they're just going. Like, they're not sitting on a shelf collecting ducks. Oh yeah, they're like in a ring of moving water. They're in a ring of moving water, like a carnival game. But these are absolutely not child's prizes, these are adult collector's items. That would be so cool. Man, I hate the use of the word adult before things. It just is, I think it's been ruined for me. The second you say adult collector's items, I'm like, ugh. Ugh. Yeah. What's up with these ducks? They are, they are, they are butt ducks. I love popsicles, and I was thinking about maybe bringing some to work as a delightful afternoon snack. There's a freezer and the popsicles are individually wrapped. What's the etiquette on bringing these treats into the office? For context, I'm specifically speaking about the frozen treats on a stick, not the flavored ice in a sleeve or ice cream. The flavor would most likely be fruit flavored. So no bomb pops? Thank you. You're really building this fucking plane while you're flying it, aren't you pal? These are important details though. They are important details, you know what, maybe it would be better if you said-- What the fuck do you think bomb pops taste like, friendo? Bomb pop, give me a, it's a kadoozy, give me a fucking, a push pop, maybe that would be unconventional, I might, I might-- They're all fruit flavors, there's two kinds of flavors. I know, but Justin, you have to recognize in a professional setting, you see Derek from accounting, blast out a flute flavored popsicle. Sorry, sorry, you said flute, so we have to stop. Flute was playable, like those candies, you know, like tootsweets from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Fuck, I'd destroy a tootsweet right now! Yeah, we all would. But it's, you see that, and it's like, now that's almost a professional affectation. I see a bomb pop, I'm like, that's a child working an adult's job. Yeah, what's the adult, I guess there are like those fucking fancy, chocolate ones that you see, where they like really drizzle on that good chocolate stuff. But it's not an ice cream one, Griffin, it is a fruit flavor. You're right, it's not an ice cream, it's a fruit flavor, you're right. There is the ones, we've tried to do this, where it's like, and there's pieces of real fruit inside, and like give those to our kids, and our kids are like, what do you think I want out of a popsicle experience, because father, this is not it. It's not the world's hardest strawberry, I'll tell you that much. It's just like the gap between, it's like, the biggest gap in the world is the gap between how kids think they feel about smoothies, and how kids really feel about smoothies. For sure. Kids are obsessed, 'cause we had a lot of, we had a lot of cartoons that were in their age, that were like, trying to popularize, you know, healthy eating, right, like you gotta eat smoothies, like Daniel Tiger like went apeshit for it, they love, conceptually love smoothies. Well that was, he was doing protein, he was protein packing, 'cause he wanted to get huge, like his dad, he wanted to get huge like his dad, that was the whole thing where the, do you remember the, like the chunk, the episodes where the lion moved into town And, like, took, he, like, walked up to Daniel Tiger's dad and, like, fucking punched him in the face and then took his house. And took his watch, yeah. Took his house and his wife and his watch. And it's, like, his dad is, like, the power's not gonna cut it, Daniel. If you want real gains, you gotta eat a gazelle. So he had to protein pack on. Do you remember that? It was the one Prince Wednesday did die. He died from the lion attack. Kids don't like smoothies. That's all I was gonna say. I can't. Where you guys at with popsicles? Because I, guys, I bring these flavored treats out to the pool. My kids love them. Yeah. I can't. I don't like any popsicles. That's, that's, I understand that. They give me a tummy ache, weirdly. Especially the ones in the plastic sleeve. It's just, like, straight sugar water. No, you say weirdly. They contain carbon, so I don't understand why it is weird that they give you a tummy ache. I will fuck absolutely with a Philly swirl. Sometimes those come in cups with a stick, but they do make them in popsicle forms. Those are so lit. Justin, you don't. People, people, Philly swirl people, please make a box of the cotton candy ones. You only put two in there, and it's ruining my life. Yeah. Please. I mean, it's my least favorite, but for the kids, the kids gotta have it. Please do a box of cotton candy kids. Oh, hey, as long as we're on this, I see you all out there, popsicle makers, the animals, all y'all, you know you got one good flavor and one shit flavor, and you do combo boxes to get that shit flavor out of the warehouse. Cut it the fuck out. Cut it out. We're on to you. And stop putting people they like on flavors they don't. I'm tired of telling my kid I can't get him Olaf's horseradish crunch because my son Jeremy despises horseradish, so I can't buy it for him. You don't like spaghetti. I'm not getting you the ragu with the battle bus on it, dude. I'm getting Spidey spaghetti. You don't like Spidey spaghetti ever. You hate spaghetti. You love Spiderman. He won't make it taste good. It won't taste how Spiderman feels to you to see him. I know the spaghetti's like webs, but it doesn't. It doesn't translate, honey. It doesn't. It doesn't taste good for you. I can't make the pasta look more like Spiderman. There's only so much I can make it look. I know it fell apart with your spoon, sweetie. You're supposed to. It's supposed to. You're supposed to eat Spiderman. I like it because I like spaghetti, but you don't. You don't. I get to enjoy Spiderman's flavor, but you don't because you don't like it. And I bought the family-sized pack of it because we both thought it was going to be a thing, and we committed to it. Now watch me eat it. You got to label your box of popsicles, first of all, but you also got to know that with individually wrapped popsicle, you are creating a very stealable situation. Oh, the most. One of the more stealable foods. Anything individually wrapped in like a box of more than four, you could totally lose one of those just to theft. Shrinkage. Shrinkage is what they do call it. What if you made your own popsicles? This is a fun summertime activity, and it's not really summer anymore, but it is fun to make a popsicle, and then no one's going to really go after those. And I think if they see you eating them, and they see like little herbs and shit floating around, and there, it does lend it a certain, like, I don't know, veneer of adulthood. Wow, you guys fucking hated that idea. No, I liked it so much. You despised that idea. I was picturing in my head, Griffin, when I'm, anytime we talk about like an office behavior outside of any like regular established procedures, right? Right. I start to think, and how does this translate to, oh, that's Tom, the blank guy, the office blank guy. The office popsicle. The office popsicle guy. Okay, I can see it. Every day, 1.30, he has a popsicle to get him over that hump and make it to 5 o'clock. We love that. Probably good. Bespoke popsicle guy who makes his own like basil lemonade popsicles. I think that's cool. I think that's kind of cool. That's what I'm trying to determine. I'd get into it. Okay. Yeah. I think we might have a solution. In addition to this problem, from Wheeling, West Virginia, with our own budget saver, that company is the company behind Twin Pops. No way. I think Twin Pops might be just the thing. How? Because imagine anytime someone goes to the freezer. Yes. And they come out with one, you have a little bell. Yes. And it's like, ah, ah, ah, hello. Gotcha, gotcha. What are we here? You will not get much work done. You will be primarily watching the kitchen to see if someone comes out with, if someone comes out with one of these pops. But when they come out, it's like, ah, ah, ah, splitsies. Yes. You know, two for, there's two there. One for me, thank you. One for. One for me. One for. One for. Two for, one for. We both get a one for. Two for. One for. We're splitting. Two for us, one for me. We're splitting them. Have you ever tried to split one of those in a clean half? Not doable. Twin Pops. We should get up to Wheeling because we could probably access that factory. You need perforation. Just a little perforation, please. I want little holes. That's all I'm asking. I, get a, get a daughter, get a daughter that cries if you do it wrong. You'll learn. You'll get a real, you'll get fucking, I got, you know, no shit. I got Martin Yan's crazy butcher knife above my, my stove for when my kid wants a Twin Pop and I can't deal with the breakdown and I need perfect, that perfect precision. That perfect forage. That carbon steel. We don't talk about the weird. Fifteen degrees of carbon steel. I've gotten, I've gotten so much carbon steel. I'm so good at eyeballing, splitting a drink into two cups. Like, I'm like, mm, I'm, I bet it's to the micron. You know what I mean? Like I could do. Oh. We got a, we got a pizza delivered earlier this week and something happened to it on route and it showed up and when we opened the box, it was like half squished into like one half of the box. It was a tragedy. A lot of the cheese had just like come off almost all the slices that it all kind of like squished into each other. It was a horrible situation. And Gus is so picky about his pizza. If he sees any sauce through the cheese stratum, he will not, he will not fuck with it. So this is me in the fucking kitchen hovering over this pizza mush trying to create a solid layer of cheese coverage on one of these reconstructed slices and then like putting it in the, in the broiler for a second to try to melt the cheese because if he knows it's patchwork stuff, he's not going to fuck with it. We can rebuild him. It was the most degrading moment of my entire life. Oh, Griff. Oh, Griff, buddy. And then of course, you know, me and Rachel had to eat the slop because the kids got the slices. Gotta eat the slop. That's parenthood. That's dinner, baby. Can we go to the bathroom? Oh, dang it, Griff. I mean, I was going to say it and then. I technically didn't say, I said a series of syllables. Yeah. Can I tell you what's wild? What? I'm already there. Laurel. Shit. I'm in the Money Heist. I'm in the Money Zone. Travis, who's in there with you? You two. No. Travis, that's not us. What? That's not us. Travis, get out of there. You know why I like doing ads for Squarespace? Why? Why? I like a sponsor that is all about creation. That's what Squarespace, for me, it is a creative tool. You got a project you want to do, you don't know the best way to get started. A website is a great place to get going. I bet that if Squarespace was around at the dawn of time, God would have used it to create the Earth. Probably. With these, like, best in class templates. Absolutely, he would have. Yeah. But the problem is that they're created by world class designers, and I don't think there were any world class designers before God made the Earth. Okay, that's the first thing he would have made then, the designers. In the beginning, there was designers. You all take it from here. The word was designers, and the word was with designers. Thank you so much, Squarespace. Oh, there's more. Yeah, yeah, you gotta say more about it, or else people are kind of a little bit confused still. You can use these websites, they're not just vanity things. You can use them to sell stuff. Yeah, you could use them to sell your products if you want. You could use it to organize events, whatever you want to do with a website. Squarespace makes it really easy. Head to squarespace.com/mybrother for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code mybrother to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. I'm ready to launch right now. Into savings. Whoa. With Rocket Money. Fuck. Imagine Rocket Money is like a defense system with little rockets targeted at your unused subscriptions. Wow. And when those unused subscriptions try to hove into your bank account. It's like, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, and it takes those unwanted subscriptions out. Takes them down. That's a little violent. Wow, that's such a violent way of thinking about it, isn't it? I don't know if Rocket Money would like that. I was thinking more like the Space Invaders video game, you know? Okay. There's no gore. There would be no gore, Griffin. Is that what you're concerned about? So you're like, you have your Fart Piano Deluxe subscription that you're using, and you're like, I'm not going to use it. You're like, I'm not going to use it. no blood or anything bad comes out. No, no, no, just Pixels. Just Pixels. And then I don't have to pay $6.99 a fucking week because Rocket Money helped me out, and now I'm saving Buku Bucks every year and meeting all my financial goals. Wait, Buku Bucks? Are you serious? Yeah, man, Buku Bucks. It was Buku Bucks a week. Rocket Money also shows you all your expenses in one place, and it helps you lower your bills and reach your financial goals and grow your savings. I feel like a grown-up. Like a grown-up. They've got over 5 million members that have saved over a total of $500 million and canceled subscriptions, with members saving up to $740 a year when they use all the app's premium features. So cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney.com slash mybrother. Today, that's rocketmoney.com slash mybrother. rocketmoney.com slash mybrother. All right. I don't want to wait. Oh, the next segment to begin because I've got to start right now. That was so cool. I want to munch, squad. All-timer intro. Damn. Welcome to Munch Squad's podcast. This is a podcast profiling the latest and greatest in brand eating. That was a little bit like when Frampton runs the tube from his mouth into his guitar. Oh, yeah, the talk box. The talk box, baby. And he talks through it. That was a really good Peter Frampton talk box impression, Travis. Thank you. Who knew? I could never do it again. Never again? It's rare that an entire movement can be summed up in one image. Awesome. And it's even rarer that I would do that in an audio format. But, huh. We've made it. Yeah. Looks like we made it. Can I say? Can I describe this? Yeah. So this is a trap. Just drop it. What we, as modern-day human beings, might at first mistake for a Wendy's sign. Yeah, big Wendy's sign up in the sky. So, admittedly, without any of the excess stuff on it, just the Wendy's picture. And then where it would say Wendy's, it says Tindy's. Right. And there's a godlike beam of light shining upon it from the heavens. There's a weird number of god rays in this picture. They basically just swapped the W with a T. And you can tell that's what happened because the kerning is, like, fucked up. Yes. Like, you can tell a W was supposed to go there, not a capital T. Yeah. But this is the headline. Without context, though, I just want to say, Tindy's doesn't read like chicken tenders to me. So much as, like, we're going to treat you tenderly here at Wendy's. Yeah. I could see that. There's the headline, guys. A new chicken era dawns at Wendy's. That's the story. We are still cleaning up after the last chicken era. The fact that a new one has settled this quickly sucks. Has already begun. This is going to confuse the future paleontologists who dig up all these chicken bones. Yeah, for sure. There was a whole extinction event that they're not even going to see. Wendy's Fresh. Never Frozen. Square Burger. Never Frozen. Never Frozen. Never Frozen. holds deep roots in chicken, too. With its spicy chicken sandwich arriving in 1995, a good 24 years before the so-called chicken sandwich wars enveloped the category on social media. Okay. But, U.S. CMO Lindsay Rutkowski and the team recognized more pressing trends swirling in recent years. Guys, we're eating a wild amount of chicken. We can't get enough of this stuff. That's the thing. And they cannot sell enough of it through the judicial method. And hence, Tendi's. What is that, Justin? Because so far it just looks like they're announcing they Photoshopped a sign. For Wendy's, Rutkowski says, the brand had two choices, as is often the case when a trend elevates into a frenzy. It could race to join in or it could watch, learn, and arrive to market on its own terms. That's fucking great. It's so cool for a restaurant to be able to do that. It's so cool for a restaurant to put out a press release saying, we're smart. Yeah, we are. These other dummies rushed to market to make money off the trend. We waited until the trend started to die down. And now we're going to try to scrape up all the money that's left. The fix, the leavings. Radkowski says, Wendy's spent more than a year, quote, probably closer to 18 months on development of the COVID vaccine. Why did they put that just, you don't have to correct, you can fix that in the press release. Yeah, I know. Yeah, a hundred percent. They should know exactly how long that they did. This is a news story though. Did you say on the development of the COVID vaccine, Justin? I was just reflecting on how it was a similar timeframe to create the first COVID vaccine. These dandies will kill COVID in laboratory conditions. Yeah. Wendy's involved franchisees and tested through a couple of markets. In addition to flavor and appearance, it wanted to pilot Tindy's in the real world. Guys, they took 18 months to come up with chicken stickers. To change the one letter, yeah. Yeah. They got six sauces, Wendy's signature, sweet chili, scorching hot, creamy ranch, honey barbecue, and honey mustard. Can we not have a little bit more originality in the sauce department, guys? 18 months to come up with what? Tindy's. What? They could have just spent that time going to the Los Angeles Convention Center trying the chicken tenders there, which are my favorite chicken tenders I've ever eaten. Really good chicken tenders. And just recreate those. Just make those. Returning to the broader theme for Wendy's, Radkoski says, it would have been easy to look around and observe the chicken surge. And maybe smart. Maybe we should have done that. Maybe it's a good idea. Yeah, we don't know. Wait, fuck. Wendy's wanted to begin the process with customers. Quote, why are they eating more chicken now than they have? And as we started to do the work on our menu, we were like, as we were looking at the next chapter for Wendy's, staying modern, relevant to younger QSR customers, as we refined our consumer target. So that's why, and then she says, simply, core menu or innovation, quote, we've done a lot with chicken. Extremely sinister. No doubt. So sinister. Most of which we couldn't tell our priest about. Let's put it that way. Yeah, it's evil. There's a wickedness there. We're really no, known for flavor. She adds. So when we thought about what's out there right now, the choices consumers have in the unique place, we believe Wendy's can carve out. It wasn't only about the tender itself, but the sauces became a huge part of the conversation. And really where we saw a lot of excitement when we did work with the customers. If you can get excited about honey barbecue at this point, I don't know what to tell you. You're on a whole nother thing then. I want to get on your level. That's cool. I was on Tik Tok today and I saw an ad for garbage pail kids books written by RL Stein. That just happened, right? Yeah. And you want me to get excited about honey mustard. Yeah. And even that, I assumed just a very small reaction from you. Like that's what it takes. Even that got a huh. Interesting. Can I say honey mustard? To be nutting over honey mustard is crazy. So far from this press release, what I have gathered is, they spent 18 months determining that people like to eat chicken tenders with sauces. I literally still do not know what the news is here. What is the action item for me as a consumer of Wendy's? Well, I mean, I did clarify that the entirety of the story was contained within the image. And I, I was not, I mean, tendies guys, tendies, tendies, they have chicken tenders. They decided to not make them taste like shit. And people like dipping them in stuff. They didn't have a press release. They didn't have chicken tenders before. They didn't. These are new chicken. They didn't. I can't do that with confidence. I didn't fucking know. I didn't know that. So like, who gives a shit? Wendy's. Yeah. Griffin. But then, but so, um, they go on, they go on. There's many paragraphs. Here's another quote from red coffee. You think about a portfolio? What? How do you maximize reach and grow coverage with consumers and have things that are very unique and distinct to Wendy's by having honey mustard? One example is sweet chili. Wendy's could have unveiled a sweet and sour sauce and stayed pedestrian, she says, but this presented a chance to unroll an updated take shot. There's more intensity and balance, and it's relevant to a Gen Z community. The category that floss to sauces. Floss to sauces. That floss to sauces. Something else Wendy's noticed, and guys, this one is really going to trip you up. They noticed the research and hands-on tests where customers, again, with a spotlight on younger cohorts, like to mix sauces and make meals more personal. They combine ranch with scorching hot, for instance. Whoa. That mixability, it really leads to interesting, Endless ways you can create flavor with Wendy's sauce. And that was in mind when we thought about how the sauces complement each other within the lineup as well. That's cool. Was it? You had a good think about like, but what if they mix creamy ranch with that? What if they mix creamy ranch in there? Originally, all of our sauces were sort of chemically repulsive to each other. Like oil and water, they would not actually mix. One of them was baking soda and vinegar. And guys, that was a mistake. That was not a good sauce. Wendy's signature is Wendy's signature creamy sauce with hints of black pepper and hot sauce. I mean, credit to them. I'm not going to put that in my body. Like, I don't know. Do you guys? Okay. Okay. I have a big idea for you. Okay. They recently did a very- You got to get this fucking picture of chicken tenders off my screen, Jesse. It is making me hungry as a wolf. So hungry. Yeah. They did a Wendy's promotion. Wendy's promotion recently was Wednesday, where it was like a bunch of wild sauces, and they were all colored, so you couldn't really tell what the sauces were, and you had to kind of guess. And they had names like blood from a dog. Here's my theory. This is my fan theory. I think that those are all the sauces that they made for tests. And then they were like, fuck, no, this all is too crazy. We can't. Well, let's just keep the normal ones, okay? They didn't like mummy piss, guys. They did not like mummy piss. Chipotle mummy piss. We got to get rid of that. I told you we should have done chipotle mummy piss. That's where the youth cohort is at. Chipotle mummy piss. These young freaks like it's spicy. They don't care that it's piss. It's the spice that they crave. There's a reason Wendy's dropped six options instead of one. Redkoski admits it's a crowded space, but being distinctly Wendy's in a sea of fast food options is nothing new to the brand. marketing ethos yeah okay like none of that means shit like those are just words those are words put in an order that our human brains ascribe meaning to and yet say fucking nothing guys hey speaking of would you like a full quote about why it is called this yeah because you are probably wondering about it right like how could you we like to have fun and it doesn't have to be super serious okay no our name so easily lends itself to a nickname for the product yeah and the way we're gonna talk about it is our tenders are so bold and juicy and crispy and the sauces are so amazing you're going to want to know them on a first name basis this is beyond i think ai wrote this and it's putting me in a headspace of like maybe it's all a like maybe it's all ai matrix human battery and i'm asleep and because there's there's simply no way a human a human being got a hand on this particular ball that is a profoundly wild thing to say i've never been eating any food and thought i gotta know this food's first name do you want to hear a sentence from the boss of wendy's about the people that made up the wendy's i can geek out on some of what the team went through she says of the ideation process it takes time and we had conversations once we knew what we were going to do and we knew what was happening competitively we said we're not going to rush it we're not going to change our launch date we're going to do it our way the the boxes don't say tendies they say wendy's i don't ever want to go there again it didn't take them 18 months that sucks dude i don't ever want to go there again who is can i ask a serious question and we've talked about this obviously on munch squad a lot before yeah you're plugged into the qsr space how many just unwilling unwilling just rough estimate how many major news publications how many verticals are out there covering the qsr space that would need the help of a full press release to write the story wendy's has chicken tenders now qsr is not it's not just for marketing griffin it's about it's a historical document you know what i mean like three or four maybe top publications okay so this is a job for someone it's to write this whole thing the whole thing for those four places and you that's crazy that's like a really bespoke service journalist it's really wild that they're doing it almost feels like vanity journalism like we'll like we'll name a star after you you know what i mean like yeah we'll do a a long feature story about how you came up with tendies yeah so you can frame it i can't stress it looks like i think this is just so they have something to frame in the offices right you've shared the details here with us justin and i once again have to reiterate a little bit of telling on themselves once again 18 months spent people like chicken tenders dipping in sausage sometimes they mix them and have you ever noticed that wendy's sounds like tendies yeah so i want to look at the packaging real quick i know griffin can you just clock if you just look at the packaging um they don't do and i gotta say pictures of chicken tenders without dip are repugnant to me i this does nothing for me yeah it's really rough it's really rough they need to be dipped in something looking at them uh by by it by the way this is a core product offering okay they're having a picnic out on a picnic table they've got their fries sort of splayed out and it looks like the fries are just raw dogging it on the picnic table and they don't want you to look at the fries don't look at the fries right now we're sorry the fries are touching our picnic table it's crazy man um so you look at the the packaging there the details work down to packaging tendies come in vessels built for dunking with a dip cut out vessels built for dunking that's a submarine a submarine is a vessel built for dunking take upon yourself this sacrament take the vessel the empty vessel in a way my children we are all vessels meant for dunking come get baptized cut out it's got a dip cup cut cut did shot didn't it's got a dip cup cut out that holds sauces quote it's a reflect it's a reflection of how consumers want to eat i feel like i'm looking in a fucking mirror yeah it's a reflection of how consumers want to eat we want to enable a better elevated experience of a little perforation or a cutout for the sauce i do like preparation those are things that take a little bit of time travis an 18 month timeline in total and then producing for 6 000 restaurants in the u.s at scale training our system for a better experience of a little perforation we wanted to do it the right way which made it maybe rush it derrick said let's get it out there and we fired him this is what she's which maybe meant it wasn't maybe the fastest as you think about some of our competitors and other things that have launched recently i'm looking right now at the wendy's online website at the menu for placing a delivery or pickup order at wendy's and this particular menu item is found under tinders and you can get three-piece tenders or four-piece tenders they don't even call them wendy's tendies on the menu the the this i've never i've never thought of this before i never thought this of a press release but it's lying like it's lying the press release is actually lying and none of this is actually true or happening um the so they uh they the chain often frames their approach as quote not outspending the other guys but outplaying them which is 4d chess yeah man don't tell us about that that's the podcast game we've been playing the whole time yeah be late to trends do them very poorly you see it everywhere from sass on social media to collaborations such as its spongebob crabby patty setup to the more recent wednesday meal of misfortune i.e please take all these grody sauces we don't know what to do the landfill smells weird and we can't put any more in the landfill the landfill guy the landfill guy said we couldn't put any more there he said no more so we gotta you gotta eat them please he said rats have been crawling out of the landfill wrong yeah because we've been looking into like a cave system in nevada where they said we could store these things for up to 50 years but i thought he said they've been crawling out strong so i do feel a little bit better i feel a little bit better about wrong than strong i guys delicious and smoky but incorrect from a physiological sort of standpoint um this is the i'll tell you the how this ends because it really does go on like we will make it really fun and bring to life a craft that went into the development of the product itself the experience the sauces so that people can experience it in a hands-on immersive way that's because the attendees locations are going to have a red carpet feel there's going to be attendees restaurants you see a red carpet feel attendees experience it's a playful takeover approach where are these going to happen because if i don't fucking see it i am not going to believe it probably california man they get all the fucking fun stuff man and probably yeah and one thing redkoski wants to make clear however is tendies are not a fleeting moment in the product timeline oh okay joining's windy central offerings and giving the brand another anchor to leverage a chicken category that's driving growth and solutions throughout the segment and again she says that's why we took the time to do it right to leverage our tenders i want - I'm gonna eat chicken tenders so bad. - Yeah, not these, maybe, but like any, they're all kind of the same. - Well, there's a Popeyes by my house that I think I might order lunch from now. - Yeah. - Thank you Wendy's for making me think about Popeyes. Thank you Wendy's for reminding us about Popeyes. - I mean, I do need to like, we can joke, but like you guys still like Wendy's, you guys still like Wendy's, right? - Not again, Griffin. Nice try. - Trav, Justin would've, I would've gotten Justin. - I know, I know Justin would've, but I can see into the deep dark pit of your soul, sir. Thanks, Travis, I appreciate it. - Yeah, baby, let's wrap this up, I'm tired. - I'm Travis. - Hey, thanks so much for listening to our podcast. I hope you're enjoying some Wendy's chicken tenders. Griff, do you like Wendy's? - We got some new merch up in the merch store over at mackroymerch.com. There's a Taz Hunger beanie. It's some rad eyeball design. It's gonna keep you warm and spooky in these cold and spooky months. And 10% of all of our merch proceeds this month will be donated to Border Angels, which offers services like educational programs, water drops in the desert, day laborer outreach, Familias Reunitas, immigration bond fund program, and shelter aid support in Tijuana to aid migrants and asylum seekers in need. It's again, mackroymerch.com. And hey, we got a few more shows coming up. Not much, not many opportunities to come see us. If you live in or around Salt Lake City or San Diego, we're coming up there in just like, I don't know, next week, I guess? - Something like that. We've also got the Taz show we're doing on that tour is going to be our 50th Taz live show. So to celebrate, we're doing a balance show with Erica Ishii as a special guest and Griffin is gonna be running that one. - It's gonna be so much fun. - Tickets are on sale now. You can go to bit.ly/mackroytours. Also, Champions Grove is coming back for its third year for Memorial Day weekend in May. - Sponsored by, Travis, didn't you say it was gonna be sponsored by Wendy's? - No, and the tickets for that are gonna go on sale November 3rd at 12:00 p.m. Eastern time. Get all the details at championsgrove.com or by following Champions Grove on Instagram. - Yeah. Hey, thanks to Montaigne for the use of our theme song, Life Is Better With You. It's a great album, that new album, It's Hard To Be A Fish. All Montaigne's music is so great. I love to listen to it at home. It gives me a break from listening to Imagine Dragons on my sort of public house speakers. Juice, do you like Imagine Dragons? - Hey, Griffin, do you have the Montaigne album on CD? - Do you like Imagine Dragons, Justin? - Do you have the Montaigne album on CD? - Justin looks like he's been killed. Justin looks like he's been killed in his chair. - Do you have the Montaigne record on CD? - I just, I, yeah, I have it on CD. - CD smells. CD smells. - I feel like not, I feel like not, okay. Travis, do you wanna, do we have a fear? - We do. - I'll read it. See these nuts. - This year, I will live faster than my fear of witnessing a tense social situation in public and being approached by John Quinones after I've failed to intervene. - That's fucking good and true and powerful. - My name is Justin McElroy. - I'm Travis McElroy. - I'm Griffin McElroy. - This has been My Brother, My Brother, May Kiss Your Dad. - Square on the lips. ♪ It's better with you ♪ ♪ My life ♪ ♪ It's better, it's better with you ♪ ♪ Is it true ♪ ♪ It's better, it's better with two ♪ ♪ My life ♪ ♪ It's better with you ♪ - Maximum Fun. - A worker-owned network - Of artist-owned shows. - Supported directly by you. you.