In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 191: Donald Duck In Mathmagic Land; Troll Dolls; Defunct Phone Companies; In Living Color(4-16-2025)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 191

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The revolving fad that was troll dolls. Donald Duck and math meet in an educational short film. Some telephone companies who can no longer take your calls.

Episode 191 gives you your weekly dose of Gen-X nostalgia with all of this and more!

Many fads come and go. However it takes a special fad to come and go repeatedly over decades. That is what makes troll dolls different. Cute, creepy, bizarre, these and other adjectives could be used to describe the spiky haired toys. What made troll dolls popular? Why did they fade away and return so often? We do a deep dive into them this week.

Can a beloved Disney character make learning about math palatable? We go way back in the day to watch the 1959 educational short film Donald Duck In Mathmagic Land. It is filled with laughs, music, billiards, a few yawns, and way too many pentagrams. We'll give it a good old review.

If you are told this week to call someone who cares unfortunately you won't be able to use any of these telephone companies. The Top 5 looks at defunct phone companies from over the decades. Did you pay bills to any of these?

There is as always a brand new This Week In History and Time Capsule centered around the debut of the groundbreaking sketch comedy show In Living Color.

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Speaker 00:

Hello world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 191. We are plowing through April. We are plowing headlong through the allergies and the pollen. But I've got the cure, at least briefly, and that is a heavy dose of nostalgia. We're going to kick it off with a weird, fun, and surprisingly popular fad that 90s kids will remember, and that is the Troll Dolls. We're going to go way back in the day and look at one of my favorite educational short films, and that is Donald Duck in Math Magic Land. There'll be a brand new top five. These are the defunct telephone companies that you may remember growing up. And there's going to be a brand new This Week in History and Time capsule centered around the debut of the hit sketch comedy show In Living Color. All of that is coming up right now on episode 191 of the In My Footsteps podcast. So what are we going to talk about this week? About how allergies are here, spring is here on Cape Cod, pollen is here. You might hear it a little bit in my voice. Like I feel fine, but I can tell that there's a touch of allergies going on. Just in case my voice sounds a bit different, it is not your headphones, it is not your stereo. Hopefully wherever you are, the pollen's not too bad, but the weather is great, and you're getting through it the best you can. Thank you for making me part of your week to help you briefly feel young again, my fellow Gen Xers out there. I saw something the other day to go in the opposite direction to make us Gen Xers feel old. I saw that legendary MTV personality Kurt Loder is going to be 80 years old in a couple of weeks. It's like I know time goes by, but then you get this kind of cold slap of reality in the face. It's like, wait a minute, how is he that old? And then I look in the mirror at my increasing number of gray hairs and I'm like, oh yeah, because I got old too. Man, that's depressing. Well, welcome to the show. Sadness has engulfed me, but we're going to have loads of fun. I'm going to take you through some nostalgia. Brought to you this week by our sponsor, nobody, just me. But on another hand, it is brought to you by my Patreon subscribers, who I have to thank to start the show. Lori, Mary Lou, Ashley, Kevin, Marguerite, Neglectoid, Crystal, Matt. Thank you all for being my biggest backers, the Patreon subscribers. $5 a month will get you access to bonus podcast episodes. It's going to get you access to the remastered Without a Map livestreams. That newest one, the third one that I did four years ago, that's going up this week on Patreon for subscribers. Also, in kind of unrelated things, be on the lookout this week on my YouTube channel for the finished video where... I go out to Race Point Light with my friends, producer Frank Durant and real estate broker Brian Mazzilli. As we walk the beach, we finish Henry David Thoreau's hike. We chat about the new movie that we were filming and just chat about life and enjoy the beautiful scenery as we go. So that's debuting on my YouTube channel. It'll be Friday from when this podcast goes live. So if you're listening in the future, it's up there. Go check it out. We can get into more of the housekeeping parts of the podcast when we get to the end. Let's dive into the meat of this nostalgia sandwich before the bread goes moldy. We're gonna start it off looking at a fad that a lot of us that were around in the 90s got swept up in, and that was collecting troll dolls. Did you have troll dolls? Well, let's dive in and share our shame about collecting those right now. Okay, so shame may be kind of a strong word when it comes to troll dolls and the fad that was them. But come on, all of you out there listening have something in your past, something that you collected or enjoyed, where you look back and you're like, man, what was I thinking? For me, I don't regret collecting Beanie Babies. I regret how many of them I collected. Like a lot of us, we probably thought Beanie Babies were going to be our retirement fund, and they ended up being just something that takes up space in the attic. For those of you who are younger and don't know what troll dolls are, or those of you that are older and wondered why your kids were asking for these things from the toy store, troll dolls were these little Plastic toys, they had this wild hair, that was the biggest thing about them. Big spiky hair, wide-eyed grins, and kind of pudgy bodies. They were really weird looking, but yet endearing somehow. They originated in Denmark, they became an unlikely global craze, they experienced multiple revivals. This wasn't like Beanie Babies where they burst onto the scene and went away. There's been waves of popularity of troll dolls throughout the decades. And we're going to do a deep dive into how this simple good luck charm transformed into a global sensation. The troll doll was born in 1959 in the small Danish town of Gjøl. And boy, I tell you, I just had to spend five minutes finding the proper pronunciation of this town. It is spelled G-J-O-L with the O having kind of a slash through it. So hopefully I just pronounced it right. Anyway, G-O-L is where a man named Thomas Dam, a baker turned woodworker, created the first troll doll when he couldn't afford a Christmas gift for his daughter. This was inspired by the trolls of Scandinavian folklore, mischievous yet often friendly forest creatures. So Thomas Dam carved a doll out of wood and topped it with woolen hair. This troll doll quickly caught the attention of neighbors and shopkeepers, leading Dam to begin mass-producing them using plastic under the company name Dam Things, so that's pretty clever. These early troll dolls in the Early 1960s, they were called good luck trolls, and they were intended as small tokens to bring fortune and happiness to their owners. Their exaggerated facial features, pot bellies, glass eyes, and electrified looking hair made them uniquely endearing, if not a bit bizarre. The troll dolls had several distinct characteristics. First and foremost was the bright, colorful hair, standing on end, often neon colors, pinks, oranges, and blues. I was thinking of a scene in a Simpsons episode from season six where Bart had a troll doll, and he was singing, I'm a troll man, and Marge takes the doll and just remarks about its awful hair, and it's got the spiky blue hair, and she's got the same sort of hairdo. The troll dolls also had large glassy eyes. They had kind of a permanently surprised expression, which I guess is better than having them be permanently sad or angry. Their bodies were equipped with stubby limbs, large bellies. Especially later versions would have a gemstone for a belly button. The dolls were meant to be friendly. They had big smiling faces, sometimes with visible teeth or molded wrinkles. So they'd be smiling at you, but they'd also look very creepy. Each of the dolls had its own unique personality, with some being, you know, firefighters, ballerinas, clowns. This added to their collectability. By the early 1960s, troll dolls had migrated from Denmark to the United States, United Kingdom, becoming a full-blown fad. Kids loved the wacky look, and they were small enough to collect or carry around, bring to school, put in your backpack. Companies like Unita Doll Company licensed versions of the troll dolls, although Thomas Dam himself struggled with protecting his intellectual property. I couldn't imagine creating something that then became a global fad. Like, what do you do? You'd think it'd be great, you would make tons of money, but then there's, like I said, protecting the IP, also unauthorized knockoff brands and such. At its peak in the mid-1960s, troll dolls were one of the best-selling toys in the United States. They were particularly popular with girls, often used as good luck charms or friendship tokens. Schools and playgrounds were filled with children showing off their growing collections of troll dolls. Even adults got in on it. Miniature trolls would become popular keychains, pencil toppers, dashboard mascots. Like many fads, though, the initial troll doll craze exploded and then it began to decline by the early 1970s. It came from the market being oversaturated. And kids, you know, short attention spans. Their interest moved on to different action figures and then video games. You can't keep a good troll down, though. There was a major revival in the 1980s riding the wave of 60s nostalgia. It was then followed by an even bigger resurgence, and this is the one that I remember and a lot of you that are around my age will remember, in the early 90s. This was when the Troll Dolls came back and they were called Treasure Trolls or Wishniks. This third time as a charm made it where companies were going to make the most out of this opportunity. So the Trolls were mass marketed with accessories, play sets, animated shows and merchandise. Hasbro acquired the licensing rights in the United States and expanded the line, so then troll dolls were everywhere. On lunch boxes, in McDonald's happy meals, on clothing, even the subject of comic books. This time, at the height of their popularity in the mid-90s, troll dolls were, again, among the most popular toys in the world. I can't speak for anyone else. I know me personally. I had a lot of the smaller ones, the ones that would be considered pencil toppers or keychains. These ones, I can remember the troll dolls being something you could find in the Hallmark stores that were either in the mall or in regular strip malls. I was in high school, and I think I remember at the time wanting to make sure the troll dolls that I got were more geared towards boys. because they were cool, they were ugly chic, but it was also you knew that they were collector's items, so that it was an excuse, I guess, I could make. Yeah, I've got some troll dolls, but they're going to make me money in the future with the burgeoning eBay website that came out in the late 1990s. By the late 90s, though, troll dolls began to lose their appeal. Again, it was oversaturation. You that were around then remember There was that brief time of a few years where troll dolls were everywhere. And if something's not difficult to find anymore, it starts to become passe. With any fad, there comes new fads that will knock it off the top of the mountain. That's where Beanie Babies came in. There was also Pokemon and Tamagotchis. That's why it's going to be difficult to make any sort of children's toys, because even if it's supremely popular, the shelf life might be really brief. So it's like, save your money that you make. There was also legal confusion that led to the decline of troll dolls, with multiple companies making them, often without licensing agreements. So you'd get the cheapo knockoff ones, go on eBay and try to sell it and be like, wait, this isn't a real troll doll. By the early 2000s, that original troll design that you can see in your head, even though it was nostalgic to some, it was viewed as outdated and even creepy by younger kids. Troll dolls became relegated to thrift shops, grandparents' basements. I don't even know what happened to the ones I have. Maybe they're in boxes in my mom's basement. Maybe they're in the trash bins. Maybe they're 50 feet under a landfill somewhere. But you can't keep a good fad down. And even though the original dolls faded, Trolls saw a surprising reinvention with the 2016 film called Trolls. And then it was followed by sequels in 2020, Trolls World Tour, and 2023 with Trolls Band Together. We also can't forget the legendary... Troll films in the 1980s, the horror movies, 1986's Troll, and then the iconic, so awful, it's kind of good, Troll 2. Troll dolls are a perfect example of how a quirky, unconventional toy can capture the world's imagination. It started as a handmade wooden figure in Denmark and became a worldwide pop culture icon that's had waves of popularity. Their days as a toy aisle royalty might be over, mainly because there's not really many stores left that have toy aisles. But you can go on eBay, find those classic trolls, or maybe walk down into your basement now. Maybe you've still got your trolls. All I know is they were definitely a very unique toy, a unique fad. Because really, think about it. What other toy could make you laugh, make you confused, creeped out, and bring you luck, supposedly, all at the same time? That's what Trolls did. This week in history, we are going back 35 years ago to April 15th, 1990, and the debut of the groundbreaking sketch comedy show In Living Color. I cannot believe this is 35 years ago. The show In Living Color was created by Kenan Ivory Wayans, who was already an established comedian and filmmaker. He envisioned a show that reflected the black experience in America with humor, authenticity, and edge. Fox, that was a fledgling network, was looking to make a mark, so they took a chance on Wayne's vision, and with its premiere, In Living Color brought something radically different to primetime. It was a sketch comedy show with a predominantly black cast, a hip-hop flair, and an unapologetic approach to satire and social commentary. At the time this show came out, I was 12 years old, and I was watching Saturday Night Live regularly, starting probably in 1989. The first episode debuted on a Sunday night at 9.30pm, with it being moved to Saturdays at 9 the next week. So it was way easier for me, being 12 years old, to stay up and watch this show. It was so different than anything I had seen before. It was backed by a high-energy theme performed by Heavy D and the Boys. It featured dance interludes with the Fly Girls that were choreographed by Rosie Perez. A big part of In Living Color's success stemmed from the memorable characters and sharp parodies of pop culture, politics, and race relations. If you were around back then, you can immediately think of the unforgettable sketches and characters that were on In Living Color. The first one I think of is Homie D. Clown, who was played by Damon Wayans. He was a grumpy ex-con turned children's entertainer who would refuse to conform and often uttered that famous catchphrase, homie don't play that. There was Men on Film, a flamboyant and hilarious critique of movie culture with David Alan Greer and Damon Wayans playing two effeminate film critics giving their reviews two snaps up. Or if they didn't like it, they would just say hated it simultaneously. There was Fire Marshal Bill, who was a deranged and accident-prone safety instructor, played by Jim Carrey, who had the catchphrase, let me show you something, and he would instantly do something that would ruin everything around him. In Living Color launched the careers of Jim Carrey, Jennifer Lopez, who was one of the original Fly Girls, and Jamie Foxx, who joined in later seasons and went on to win an Academy Award. If you had told me in 1994 that Wanda on In Living Color would go on to be an Academy Award winning actor, I'd have said, what has happened to the world? And of course, you couldn't have the show without the Wayans family. Kenan, Damon, Sean, Kim, Marlon, they were all over the show. They used that show as a foundation for future projects like The Wayans Brothers Show and Scary Movie. And Living Color aired for five seasons, with its last one being in 1994, but its influence is still deeply felt. It paved the way for other boundary-pushing sketch shows like Chappelle's Show, Key & Peele, even Mad TV. Fox tried to revive the series in 2012 for a new generation, but that reboot never got off the ground. It was kind of lightning in the bottle. It was fearless, tackling issues like police brutality, racial stereotypes, and homophobia, but doing so in a way that made you laugh every week. And more than three decades after its debut, In Living Color remains a testament to the power of bold creativity and representation in entertainment. And that show, In Living Color, made its debut, I can't believe it, a whopping 35 years ago this week in history. Oh, and here we go. A brand new time capsule. We're going to stick to the same day. So In Living Color debuts April 15th, 1990. What else is going on in the world of pop culture back then? Well, let's find out. The number one song was I'll Be Your Everything by Tommy Page. You're forgiven if you have no idea who Tommy Page was. I consider myself a pretty good expert at nostalgia, and I had to look it up. I'm like, who in the world is this guy? The song was off of his album's Paintings in My Mind, and it was co-written by Danny Wood and Jordan Knight of New Kids on the Block. This was Tommy Page's only hit song, and sadly, he passed away in 2017 at the age of 49, apparently by suicide. The number one movie was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing $4.22. This is the live-action version of the comic book or cartoon series. heroes in the half shell, the turtles that were kind of in these animatronic rubber suits, Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, Splinter, their rat leader. The film is 43% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, but it made over $200 million on a budget of just over $13 million, making it the highest grossing independent film ever at the time. This was followed up the next year by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 The Secret of the Ooze, which included that awful vanilla ice song ninja rap. The number one TV show was Roseanne. It's about the middle class family, the Conners, and their hijinks. The original series was on for nine seasons from 1988 to 1997. with a spinoff show, The Conners, still on the air in its seventh season. So you can still see the family minus that idiot Roseanne if you want to go check it out. And if you were around back then, April 15th, 1990, maybe you went to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with your kids. You've got to stop off quickly and get a few things at the drugstore or pharmacy. Well, you're in luck. There's a lot of deals going on this week at Osco Drug. Such monumental deals as their Osco Drug Rubbing Alcohol, two for a dollar. An Osco Deluxe Water Bottle for $6.99. Osco Milk of Magnesia for $1.49. Or even an Osco Infant's Enema Syringe for $1.99. So there's some ingredients for a fun night. So that wraps up another time capsule, another This Week in History. If you didn't enjoy that segment, I would say call somebody who cares. But in this new top five, you're not going to be able to use any of these telephone companies because they're all out of business. I feel like telephone companies are the ones that go out of business or merge with others or get bought out more than almost any other company I've ever known in my life. I would imagine that the vast majority of you listening have had your service through various telephone companies over the years, over the decades. And what I wanted to do with this week's top five is look at some of the top telephone companies that are now gone. With this, I'm talking about any self-sustaining telephone company that was out there. They don't have to have gone out of business on their own. They could have been bought out and merged into a larger company. But the bottom line is, these all are telephone companies, in name at least, that are defunct, out of business. With this top five, as with most, they're in no particular order, and we've got some honorable mentions. Did you find any of these company names on the top of your phone bill over the last century? I bet you have. So honorable mentions for defunct telephone companies include Nextel. They were around from 1987 to 2013 before being bought out by Sprint. Another honorable mention is Singular. They were my first cell phone company that I had my bill through. They were around from 2000 to 2006 before being bought out by AT&T. Another honorable mention is MCI. They were around from 1983 to 2006 before being bought out by Verizon. And the final honorable mention is GTE. standing for General Telephone and Electronics. They were around from 1926 to 2000 before being bought out by Bell Atlantic. So those are the honorable mentions. Like I said, Singular was my first cell phone company, so did you have any of these companies on your phone bills? Well, let's get into the actual top five, starting with number one, 9X. No.

Speaker 06:

May we see a menu?

Speaker 01:

Yes. No. I don't know. If it's out there, it's in here. The 9X Yellow Pages. Why would anyone need another?

Speaker 00:

9X stood for New York New England Exchange. They were first formed in 1984 from the breakup of the Bell System. And if you're wondering about the Bell System, stay tuned. I remember those commercials for 9X, the 9X yellow pages, a lot during my childhood. Besides telephone, 9X was into computers. But they got into a lot of trouble. There were strikes against them by their workers in 1990. They were ordered in 1990 to return $35 million to their consumers for overcharging. In August 1997... 9X was folded into the Bell Atlantic Company, so they ceased to exist. Number two is Sprint.

Speaker 03:

U.S. Sprint's long-distance digital fiber optic network is so quiet, you can actually hear a pin drop. On the other hand, it's so efficient, you'll

Speaker 00:

get the best... This is a more recent one. and was one of the largest telephone companies in the world at the time that they were bought out by T-Mobile. Sprint could trace its roots all the way back to the Brown Telephone Company in 1899, which first gave telephone service to rural Kansas. In the mid-70s, there was a contest to give a name to the company. Sprint was the winner, and it stood for Southern Pacific Railroad. internal networking telephony. As of June 2019, Sprint was still serving 54 million customers in the United States. T-Mobile bought Sprint in 2020 for $26 billion and quickly phased out the Sprint name. Number three is the Bell System. The Bell System was the dominant brand in telephone communications in the United States for almost a century. It was basically a monopoly. The company was founded in 1877 by Alexander Graham Bell, the man who invented the telephone. So this was his legacy. As early as the 1910s, people were complaining about a monopoly and bringing antitrust lawsuits against the Bell Company. The company as a whole was often referred to colloquially as Ma Bell. Finally, in 1983, the Bell system was broken up. That's where, like I said a minute ago, where 9X came from. At the time of its breakup, the Bell system had assets of $150 billion in 1984. When adjusted for inflation to 2025, that is equal to $461 billion. No wonder it needed to be broken up. Number four is New England Telephone. One near and dear to my heart were the ones for you, New England, New England Telephone. Those commercials were on all the time during my childhood. This has to do with the New England Telephone that was around in the 80s. There was actually a New England Telephone and Telegraph company in 1878 and 1879. This is not them. New England Telephone was a part of the aforementioned Bell system. They began in 1883. They basically picked up that New England Telephone and Telegraph name and just took off with it. New England Telephone became a part of 9X once 9X broke away from the Bell system, but they were on their own. They were still their own company, just a 9X branch. Even when 9X was bought by Bell Atlantic in 1997, New England Telephone stayed around. It kept its name until 2001. when Verizon bought everything and changed it to Verizon New England. And finally, number five on the list of top five defunct telephone companies is the Bell Telephone Company. This was the original, the very first telephone company ever founded by Alexander Graham Bell in 1877. It was only a year after Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone that he created his first phone company. And you remember when I just mentioned the Bell system, this is the originator of it. And it just kept growing until it became a monopoly. The original purpose of the Bell telephone company was researching and developing and marketing the telephone because it was brand new. In 1881, the Bell telephone company became the American Bell telephone company. Within a few years, the American Bell telephone company evolved into the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, AT&T, which is still around today. But the original, the original Bell telephone company only lasted a few years. It is defunct in name, although AT&T is still around to this day. Did you have any of those telephone companies as the provider for you? I would think that none of you would have the Bell Telephone Company. You'd have to be 170 years old. If you are that old and you have the holy grail that keeps you young, let me know. Send me a message. Otherwise, we're going to shift gears and go from defunct telephone companies to one of my all-time favorite educational short films. Donald Duck in Math Magic Land. This is one of those educational short films that stuck with me from an early age. I can only assume that I saw this for the first time probably somewhere between fourth and fifth grade. Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land is from 1959, so even though it's getting close to 70 years ago, it's a film, an educational short film, that was still being shown in schools as late as the mid to late 1980s. Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land is definitely an intro to mathematics for a younger audience, probably kids that were 12 and under, I would think. It's a little bit longer. It clocks in at just over 27 minutes, which is interesting because I remember when I saw it being very engrossed in it, interested, I think because it's Donald Duck. But I could easily see this being one where kids would start to have their minds wandering. Because when you're 8 to 12 years old, sitting in the dark watching TV for almost a half hour, having to pay attention, it can be hard. The film starts off with some nice whimsical Disney music as they show you all the credits of who created this project. As a kid, I know I didn't care, but when I watched this back for the podcast, The first thing I think of when I see this movie is Donald Duck is in this dark forest. There's a shadow. He's walking in in a hunting uniform with a rifle. They never bring up what he was doing. Was he just out hunting and he wandered into math magic land? And what was Donald Duck hunting? Other ducks? Is he cannibalistic? I don't know. Mathemagic land is just filled with numbers. There's trees shaped like numbers. There's waterfalls that are filled with numbers and shapes, geometric shapes. There's a pencil that challenges Donald to tic-tac-toe. Then he finally, after wandering around, gets to meet the spirit that is kind of the narrator. The spirit says that he's the true spirit of adventure, which when you're a kid watching this, I think that the true spirit of adventure, if it led you to a land filled with math, I don't think that would be an exciting adventure to go on. At first, Donald is not excited about going on an adventure in mathematics, but the spirit tells him that math is connected to music, so that gets him interested. Donald is then taken back to ancient Greece to meet Pythagoras. Come on,

Speaker 04:

let's go to ancient Greece. To the time of Pythagoras, the master egghead of them all. Pythagoras? The father of mathematics and music.

Speaker 06:

Mathematics and music?

Speaker 00:

The spirit goes on to explain how mathematics makes music different, the different octaves of a string. Then we get a whole big musical number with Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans, as they play music. And it's loosely based around mathematics, but Donald gets really into it. They're all playing stringed instruments. Donald brings this jug as a bongo drum. So they're all jamming together. And then it busts into live action, big band jazz music playing. And then it's more classical with piano and violins. While I was watching this, even now as an adult, I could only imagine being a kid listening to classical music in the dark at school. You'd easily start zoning out, falling asleep. I debated fast forwarding through this, but I'm like, no, for the integrity of the review on the podcast, I've got to watch every second of this. Donald ends up getting the pentagram tattooed on his hand, becoming friends with Pythagoras. The pentagram is supposed to be full of mathemagic. Now, I can only speak for me. I don't know you out there. When you hear pentagram, do you think of math or do you think of like secret cults and such? Because that's the first thing I thought of. Granted, this is 1959. But they start talking so much about pentagrams and I'm like, man, is this occult stuff? Satan followers? I don't know. It's Donald Duck. What's happening here? The spirit talks about the magical golden section, which I don't understand music. I'm not a musician. Then the spirit goes into how in the pentagram is a secret for creating a golden rectangle. If you're a lover of math, you probably understand that. If you like Donald Duck and Disney, you will still be able to enjoy this short film. But I'll admit, it started losing me at this point a little bit. It said that this golden rectangle has magical qualities. I don't know what they are. They don't explain it. You're just supposed to accept that. But they show a whole bunch of different images of how this rectangle influenced Greek design, their old buildings. And there's a song showing... Different shapes and the pentagram fitting into it and moving around to try to get you to understand the golden rectangle. Then as if you weren't lost enough with the golden triangles, golden sections, golden rectangles, then there's a golden spiral they talk about. I could only imagine being 10 years old and watching this and saying, where's Donald? I want to see Donald doing stuff and talking. I don't want to see shapes and really learn about math in a math magic film. The Spirit keeps going on about the golden rectangle, about how it's influenced the modern world, you know, the late 50s. But then they talk about how it's the proportions of beauty. And there's this dancer on the screen. So suddenly Donald is back, very excited by this woman. He comes running into the screen, trying to hug the woman, but she vanishes into a pile of rectangle shapes.

Speaker 06:

Boy, oh boy, oh boy. This is mathematics? I got mathematical figures like that.

Speaker 04:

Ah, ah, ah, Donald.

Speaker 06:

Get me quiet.

Speaker 04:

No, no.

Speaker 06:

Ideal proportion.

Speaker 00:

Donald ends up wedging himself into a pentagon, which leads the spirit to show how nature uses these shapes, the mathematics. It shows a bunch of flowers, starfish, sand dollars. But even with all of the shapes and mathematics in nature, it keeps coming back to the pentagram. So every time I would see it, I'd immediately lose focus and think of cults. So we get a few minutes of live action, showing shells on the beach, real close-ups of insects and spider webs. This definitely would have kept kids interested, I think, at least a little. The picture of the fly really close up of its eye, I think, would have freaked out kids my age when I saw it, you know, 9, 10 years old. Then we get a weird kaleidoscope effect as Donald comes back together to be a part of this again. We then move into the story of chess and how chess is mathematics and Donald's on the big chess board. The spirit talks about how author Lewis Carroll used chess as an allegory for part of Through the Looking Glass, so Alice in Wonderland. And the chess pieces start chasing Donald around saying he's a lost pawn. So Donald's running away begging the spirit to help him.

Speaker 06:

He eventually

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escapes. He dives off the chessboard, and there's a treasure chest that has candy in it, and it says, eat one. So he eats it and grows big, and then he can look down on the chessboard. And they show a chess game being performed, kind of in fast forward because chess was boring definitely as a kid. I couldn't imagine sitting and watching people play chess, even today. Donald is as bored with chess as I would have been, as probably some of you would have been. But then he gets excited when they go to baseball and they show the diamond. Then Donald moves on to playing football and they're talking about how it's a rectangle. Next is basketball and how it's a game of circles and spheres played on a rectangle. Then they get into hopscotch and there's Donald with a giant lollipop. Is hopscotch still a thing? I'm trying to think in the 2020s. Do kids play hopscotch? Any of you out there that have young kids, have they played hopscotch? I think we did as kids. Not much. That seems more of like a 1940s and 50s type of game. Maybe they should make a video game version of Hopscotch. I think kids might play that. Then we get into a really in-depth segment about how to play billiards, which I've never been into playing pool, but they really get into showing you how to play it. They show you a specific one called three cushion billiards. So there's three balls on the table. And it's somewhat interesting. Like, you could probably learn how to play pool a bit from this section of the film. The idea with three cushion billiards is that the cue ball has to hit the other two balls, but it has to hit three sides of the pool table first. So it comes down to geometry, knowing how to play the angles. And they show this professional, quote-unquote, billiard player, unnamed, never named. who is showing you how to do these trick shots. They mix it up here where Donald is kind of a part of this live action scene, commenting on the guy's shots. This segment really drags on. Like, if you're not interested in how to shoot Poole, you're going to lose interest pretty quickly. Like I said, this film is just over 27 minutes, and we're looking at five to six minutes of it that is just shooting Poole. After watching this guy do a whole bunch of different shots, Donald finally tries to get in. And he's trying to use math to help him do these shots. And naturally, he's not good at it. So the spirit has to help him. Donald finally succeeds at billiards. Then the spirit says it's time for the most exciting game of all. And that's In Your Mind, which sounds very spooky, especially when you were magically transported from a hunting trip to this math magic land. Like, oh, here's the other side of the coin where the bad things happen. So we go inside Donald Duck's mind and it looks like a dirty office with a whole bunch of file cabinets filled with papers and the spirit's mad at him. But as we go through his mind and look at all the filing cabinets, there's a picture of Daisy Duck with it signed Love Daisy in his mind. The spirit cleans up Donald's mind. Now they have him thinking of a perfect circle, not the early 2000s alt band. Then he has Donald put a triangle inside the circle and starts spinning it. That creates a sphere. Then they start creating lenses with slicing bits of the sphere, so microscope, binoculars, showing how mathematics and shapes influence daily life. It goes on to show circles as wheels with cars and trains and propellers for planes. They do the same sort of discovery with a cone, slicing it and showing what cones can make. We go through a whole montage of different inventions where math is a big part of it, clocks and telephones. The telephone is an old school rotary phone with an operator that pops up and says, number, please. God, that hadn't been something I don't think I would have even understood in the mid 80s when I saw this. It's basically saying that math in your mind, it's where you create your inventions and the different innovations in the world. And again, we come full circle with the pentagrams again. So many pentagrams in this film. I don't know if Disney was trying to get little kids into pentagrams. I mean, wasn't there like the whole Satan-worshipping cults fear in the 1980s? Maybe it was from kids that watched Math Magic Land. That's why they stopped showing it in later years. Too many pentagrams. We get to the end here with a never-ending hallway of doors. These doors are supposed to represent discoveries in the past, so Donald's running in between all the doors, all excited. Until he eventually gets to doors that aren't open, they're locked, and he can't get into them. And the spirit says, these are the doors of the future.

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The

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spirit

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then says that the key to these doors is mathematics. All the doors float away. So then the movie ends with Donald Duck just trapped in Math Magic Land. They never show him going back on his hunting trip or getting out of Math Magic Land. So I guess we're led to assume that he's just stuck there forever. I just went back to look to be sure if they said who the voice of the spirit was or who the pool player was. But nope, they're not important. They're just unnamed. But that's Donald Duck in Math Magic Land from 1959. One of the first educational short films I remember as a kid. Which is wild because it came out, what, 25 years before I started school? And they were still showing it. It's a fun trip down memory lane for people my age and probably especially those older than me. You out there in your 50s and 60s. I'm betting you remember it a lot better than me. They need to make a sequel to this where Donald gets rescued from Math Magic Land. Come on, Disney, get on that. But until next time, that's going to wrap up episode 191 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Thank you all so much for tuning in, for making it to the end. I hope I fulfilled your quota for Gen X nostalgia. I'm always on a never-ending quest to find new topics to share. Next week's going to be exciting. Episode 192 is going to be a new concept. I talked about several episodes back. It's going to be one episode totally dedicated to one year. So we're going to start it with 1985, 40 years ago. We're going to look at the year in TV, in music. Funny and weird events that happen from the year. This week in history will be from 1985. So we're really going to do a deep dive into that year. My plan is to sprinkle those in over time. I'm going to end up choosing any year between basically 1960 and 2005. The first one I thought of was 1985, so we're going to do that next week. If you can't get enough of me, of my wacky brand of humor and my topics I choose, I am all over social media. Find me on Instagram, my Facebook fan page for the podcast. I'm on Blue Sky. I am always sharing new videos on YouTube. I've got a blog that I post several times a week. My specialty is the Initial Impressions 2.0 blog that is the look back at my week that was, the wacky and random things that happened to me. So you can find me all over there. If you want to support me, my content, my never-ending quest to be a self-sustaining content creator, you can subscribe for $5 a month on Patreon. You could buy me a coffee. Links to all that are in the description of the podcast. But of course, the best way to help me out as a creator is to share what I do. You know, I appreciate people that like my posts. I'd much rather you share them with people that aren't aware of what I do or actually click the links. That's really how you help a content creator. I'm a small business, one person. I would love to do more in-depth videos on YouTube or spend more time marketing my content. But don't forget, I have a full-time job in addition to this. And I spend anywhere from 15 to 20 hours a week doing this work on top of everything else. I do it because I love what I do. I've always loved the creativity, making things from my own brain. And I will keep going on that quest. I've always got new ideas. I feel like I have a plate and I'm at a buffet and I just fill it with everything I like. That's where the new idea of acting, voice acting, that's where that came in. I wasn't thinking about that a year ago. It wasn't until Frank basically said to me, I want you to be in my next film. And I'm like, okay, I guess that's a new avenue for me. That's a big part of my 2025, just my overall journey. growth, I guess, as a human is being more open to whatever floats into my orbit. You know, you never know what opportunities might show up each day. That's a big part of just showing up in life. I could literally end recording this podcast, go to my car and go to the store and bump into someone that changes my life forever. They offer me some kind of amazing opportunity or they beat me up and steal my wallet. I don't know. The uncertainty is scary, but it's also very exciting. In the next few months, the film that I just finished up wrapping last month, that'll be out. I don't know what comes from that. You know, my Etsy shop looking for possible casting calls for background roles in films. You never know. And I'm just talking about me with my creativity and what my passions are. Whatever your passions are, you never know what might show up on your doorstep the next day. That's my little slice of inspiration for any of you out there who might need it. If you don't need it, then take this podcast and take a walk outside and enjoy the beautiful spring weather. Hopefully you don't have allergies. Special birthday wishes this week to one of my dearest friends, Deanna, one of the hardest working people I know and definitely an inspiration for me as far as when I say I've got a full-time job and then I do my content creation. She works full-time and she's going to school full-time. So it's hard for me to complain when I see what she does. So happy birthday and I hope it's a great birthday. And remember, in this life, Don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can on this journey we call life because you never know what tomorrow brings. Thank you so much again for tuning in. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, but you already knew that. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

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Christopher Setterlund

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