Why are American symbols for "Toys" so old and weird?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 ธ.ค. 2021
- A look at American toy culture and symbology... just in time for Christmas!
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HASHTAGS: #toys #history #christmas
One kind of stock toy that I think is not mentioned here is a colorful ball. Not of a specific sport kind but the one that is usually depicted big, having multiple colors (with dominant red) and including a five pointed star.
Pixar
Excellent point! Now that you've pointed it out, I would say a any kind of ball is a serious omission from the standard toy symbology. Could be a beach ball, basketball, baseball, soccer ball, or football.
Luxo Ball
Yes! the Toy Story ball as I like to call it!
Toy cars as well. Especially of the small variety.
I have no idea how you can consistently come up with such unique and interesting ideas
Because weed is legal in Canada
There are a lot of elements to culture people can explore
he's a thoughtful, perceptive guy
Taking very little for granted
He seems to like a lot of retro videogames.
I think another reason these kinds of icons still persist is that many modern toys are more trademarked, many popular toys have stood the test of time but might be too tied to a brand to be featured as generic toys.
Yeah you are right. I thought about Lego bricks as toy symbols but they aren’t generic enough
@@SuperMistertoast I think they actually are, since other companies make similar bricks. Nintendo even did once, which inspired a themed level in Super Mario Land 2.
@@TheAlexSchmidt I mean yes they are in a sense and of course they are very influential toys, but seeing them as a symbol will always make you think about the Lego company and not toys in general
@@SuperMistertoast True. You can't say that about any of the toys mentioned in the video.
This
Tech has some of my favourite archaic iconography. The save icon being (typically) a 3.5" floppy is a particularly fun one considering to the majority of todays youth have never seen a floppy and only know it as the save icon. Phone icons that use the landline handset, or better yet, the rotary style phone (or the touch tone landlines that look identical in silhouette) have a similar outdatedness to them but one that transcends the mere 30 years of the floppy. The lock icon with the characteristic skeleton keyhole is somehow both more outdated and yet also more recognizable, likely because actual locks haven't changed that much.
On a Christmas note, there was always a strange tradition in my house to have a miniature train going around the skirt of the tree, I always passed it off as just a strange thing but this at least clears up why it likely started.
Oh god...the save icon = floppy...you just reminded me of a funny-sad little moment I had a few years back. I was in the grocery store, and I saw this guy wearing a t-shirt that said "KNOW YOUR ROOTS" with a picture of a floppy disc, an audio tape, a VHS tape and an Atari-style joystick.
I said "I love your shirt!" and he said "Thanks!" and then told me how the other day, he'd shown an actual 3.5 inch floppy to his...daughter? some young female relative, and her response was:
"Oh that's so COOL, you 3D-printed a save symbol!"
....
(facepalms while trying not to crack up laughing)
@@robinchesterfield42 Oh my god hahaha
The floppy disk save button was the FIRST thing I thought of. Haha
We had a Christmas train that mounted to our Christmas tree (so not in the skirt, but above it towards the middle of the tree) it was cool but it was a lot of work to put on the tree so we stopped using it. It was also one of the old style locomotives that aren’t really in use anymore
For that matter if you look for an icon of "car keys", and just the fact they're so commonly referred to in the plural, you'll often get two simple stamped-metal keys on a ring harking back to the days ('80s and earlier) when you had one key for the ignition and a different one for the door and trunk locks (or one for the ignition and doors and one just for the trunk which was a Mopar thing).
As a parent of a three year old boy, I can assure you that toy trains are still a huge deal to little boys. Also, when kids are given musical instruments, they only want to play with drums. Same thing with teddy bears representing stuffed animals. The representative toys aren’t necessarily out of date until you get to the tweenage years!
Same for the blocks, you can't go past a good block!
Idk I always preferred teddy dogs
As a parent of a 7 year old, I was thinking the same thing. Most of those simple toys are still staples of toddlerhood. Even at 7, my daughter has a massive collection of stuffed animals, some teddy bears, even. Actually, while we tend to think of Teddy bears themselves as being a prime example of what an anachronism is, there are still extremely common, even amongst adults. I promise you that, no matter how old you are, your wife or girlfriend would probably love it if you bought her a teddy bear for valentine's day. So...I think there's an interesting cultural phenomenon here where we thing of certain things as being anachronistic while they also remain a significant part of our culture. For example, I'm 57 years old and I still mess around with "toy" trains and cars. As a matter of fact, it's shocking how much adult men spend on such things. Anyway... what was my point? 😂
As father to a current 8 year old, I want to echo these comments most vociferously.
That skull of crossbones associated with internet piracy is the best example I could think of, kind of funny since skull and crossbones were far less common during the actually pirate age
That’s a good example, where a symbol that wasn’t even common in its own time nevertheless becomes a common symbol of it. The “keep calm and carry-on” posters are that too.
@@JJMcCullough And when a Pittsburgh doctor discovered that kids associated the ☠️ with the Pirates baseball team, he came up with Mr. Yuk, an icon which could not be associated with anything else.
Our image of pirates is so incredibly outdated. It's as if we forget that pirates still exist nowadays in parts of Africa where they use submachine guns instead of swords.
@@happygilmore5948 maybe it’s outdated because we don’t want to think about the fact there’s still crews stealing and killing in the Modern day
@@chucklebutt4470 😂
The stock archetypes of jock and nerd also evoke iconic garments: suspenders and high-waisted pants for nerds and varsity jackets for jocks. Yet nerds haven't worn suspenders in many generations, instead this look references '60s nerds who are themselves out-of-touch by wearing accessories that were last mainstream a generation before during the world wars. I'm curious how much of stock "American highschool" looks are strictly 50s-60s anachronisms
Of course, the oldest visual anachronism is the "arrow" of course related to the several thousand year old weapon that we now use everywhere in diagrams to designate flow, causality, etc.
Hah, that’s a good one didn’t think of it!
People still use bows, especially for hunting. Heavily stylized arrows work well for indicating directions as it's a tapered angle.
@@slamshift6927 And kids still play with toy trains as well as rocking horses.
Truly bizarre! 😅
@@slamshift6927 This. Archery is a very popular Olympic sport and many people still hunt with bows, especially in places where owning firearms is not legal. While Jack didn't say people no longer used them, the term anachronism usually suggests something that's no longer recognized or practiced.
In the US, and I would imagine Canada, the toy firetruck seems to have become a stereotype of what a boy might want for Christmas; which I imagine is a result of the 1950s wave of Christmas culture that you mentioned.
Report that bot.
Firefighters are the backbone of society.
for camping symbols they show triangular tents, 1950's style camping trailers, and old wooden canoes. Even though tents are more often round and kayaking is more popular than canoeing
Love this thoughtful response in a sea of people saying "the save symbol is a floppy disk"
those are such good examples!
What about the typical symbol of an unprotected campfire, despite the fact that almost all campfires are now burned in stone or concrete pits?
I would argue with the Canoe/kayak thing , but thats based only on my own personal experience so there is some bias there. But I can say in all my years camping I have never slept in a triangle shaped tent. The closest I have come is making a shelter with a tarp that has a peak like one of those tents.
@@chriswitmer9754 I wouldn't say that canoeing is rare or unpopular but for a majority of people who want quick fun or its their first time camping they pick a kayak. Its more stable (the big fat plastic ones for rent), easier to maneuver and more individual than a canoe, which takes more experience.
blinkers in modern cars are like this. you know the tick-tock sound they make? yeah, that's fake. in older cars, it used to be caused by two metals, closing and opening an electric circuit by expanding and shrinking with heat (which is the thing that caused the lights to 'blink'). people got so used to it that engineers artificially added it to modern cars.
also, sorry if i made any mistakes, english isn't my first language.
That thing is called a relay and was a mechanical device. Now everything is solid state there is no sound so the audible feedback has to be produced using other means
My car has ones that are pretty quiet and I've noticed passengers being a bit weirded out by not hearing it sometimes over the sound of the engines. Several times I've been worriedly asked why I didn't indicate before making a turn, even though I did. So I think it does help for some people to have an audio cue that the indicator is working. It's a sort of happy incidental feature of the older tech.
Technology Connections has a few good videos on cars and blinkers I'd highly recommend watching
It's a relay, it operates by electromagnet, not heat. The click would give the benefit of an audible notice that your blinker is still on. In certain wiring, it would also tell you if a light was out because it would click and blink faster with less resistance in the circuit.
The sound is reproduced to reduce unintentional signaling.
@@dirtdiggity1714 thanks for the correction! guess i understood my professor wrong haha
I think that copyright issues might play a big part in using dated toy symbols. If your toy pics look too much like a popular Matel or Nerf product you could be in legal trouble. So why chance it when you can convey your meaning with icons that can represent so much more across many different groups of people.
Very good point! 👍
@@annetoronto5474 agreed
Yes!
How is depicting that in any way illegal though?
@@muhilan8540 well it is kinda product placement when you use images depicting [hottest toy of the year here].
One of those symbols that's just kind of here to stay is the pearl necklace. It's such a symbol of jewelry/beauty/femininity even though I haven't seen one on a person in a while.
Great example
Nowadays pearls can be farmed which lowers the cost and you can get a somewhat decent imitation for even less money, due to luster and pearlescent material being readily available to manufactures. I wonder if as it became more accessible for lower classes it lost some of its status and desirability. I only ever see very conservative types wearing pearls these days- probably because they still admire all the traditions and trappings of femininity from bygone eras.
@@kraewe2367 perhaps. And probably for the second part about Conservatives.
I actually wear pearls. 😅
I'm from the Southern United States where preppy styles are popular so that probably the case.😁
@@mollietenpenny4093 Cool! With regularity or just on special occasions? I'm totally interested in more old-fashioned style as a man who still regularly wears suspenders.
I think a lot of tech symbols still rely heavily on the 80s-90s aesthetic. Handheld game systems are almost always Gameboys. Video games themselves are almost always 8-bit and feature chiptune. Even computers look at least a decade behind.
8bit and chiptune?? say you havent played a game in a decade without saying you havent played a game in a decade
This ain't it
@@yaktojason ...I'm talking about anachronisms. I know they're outdated; that's what the symbols usually are.
@@Kevin-zv6ds ??? I'm answering his question about anachronisms.
JJ himself uses a lot of that in his videos with the 8 bit sound effects and the 8 bit text and (to a lesser extent) graphics.
Fun fact if you didn’t already know is that the symbol we use for “pause” comes from sheet music, I don’t know the actual era it originally came to be but the reason why a pause button is the 2 lines is because that used to indicate a pause in a musical composition
One thing that falls into this category is something you can actually see Pacman Jr. wearing in this video and that’s the colorful propeller hat (beanie). It’s used to indicate someone is a child although no child has worn one in the last 50 years.
I really wanted one of those when I was a kid.
we used one of those in a high school play to indicate that the dude that was 6'2" was the 5'6" woman's 7 year old child
Remember the Calvin and Hobbes story arc where Calvin ate a ton of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs to get a propeller beanie thinking it would make him fly
I've always thought of Rubik's Cubes as the most iconic "toy" but I guess since it wasn't invented till the 70's it wouldn't have been part of the traditional Victorian Christmas
It's also still trademarked.
@@lhaviland8602 and needs color and it's sides need to be visible.
The sound of a needle scratching a record is still used to signal confusion or discontinuity even though the technology that made LPs obsolete is now obsolete.
Settings menus are often represented by a gear even though computers haven't really had gears since the vacuum tube was invented.
If you want to have a quick laugh I would recommend looking up early Victorian Christmas cards. This was before the establishment of most Christmas iconography like what we taking as Santa, Christmas trees, snowmen, etc. So many of them are so random and weird. Common themes in these cards are anthropomorphic animals (especially frogs and birds), anthropomorphic foods, creepy children, and clowns.
My city is home to Hallmark which is credited with popularizing the modern Christmas cards (at least according to the Hallmark museum, lol).
Also just generally creepier art styles, there are some sinister looking snowmen on Victorian Christmas cards.
This is great thanks 😹😹😹
@@ezraclark7904 tbf, i think most of those things BECAME creepy after the fact when people actively anted to make something creepy.
I guarantee that clowns wouldnt be seen nearly as scary if IT and that one clown murder weren’t a thing.
I love how I always learn as much from JJ's community in the comments as I do from the actual video. Such a great group of people who love learning
Agreed!
A wonderful comunity. I'm gonna tell an anecdote whose memory was sparkled by to two prior comments on the video: I had a *floppy disk* with PC ports of Sega Genesis games, for reasons I didn't understand at the time and didn't bother to look up later, installing the games caused Windows95 to crash. So to mark that disk as something we shouldn't plug again, I drew a *skull and crossbones* symbol on it. Also, the computer was a second hand Frankenstein-monster-like amalgamation of hardware whose original operative system was Windows93. Fun times
The biggest symbolic anachronism I can think of is probably the save icon. In many cases, it still depicts a floppy disc, which is weird considering that most people haven't used one in over 15 years. I am in my early 20s and I have a vivid memory of asking my father why we had save icons lying around the house.
I have heard a lot of versions of this story
This comment reminds of how iPhones or other digital cameras have shutter sounds even though they’re digital cameras
@@seamusmckeon9109 same with the force feedback option for on screen keyboards.
I don't know if my country was technologically behind, or was it in the language, but i remember vaguely knowing what floppy disks were for, because my parents used them for work. I think my language borrowed the word from the French, because here floppy disks are called diskettes, so it is easy to assume they were used similarly to a disk, for storage. I'm currently 21, and I think because I had my primary (although extremely limited) experience with a real floppy disk, I somehow didn't come to think about the save icon when i see FDs
@@JJMcCullough it's one of those stories as many times as I read it, I still don't really believe it's ever actually happened in real life.
A lot of people are mentioning the Floppy Disk "Save" icon, and I have to wonder what we'd use instead if it ever were replaced in visual shorthand. USB Thumb Drive icons? Clouds for cloud storage? I work in a call center right now as well and the oldschool home phone icons for calling, pausing and hanging up are all done with traditional land line style phones, and I'd be curious when/if/how the transition to cell phones in icons would also change.
I have seen the cloud icon, and I don't like it (but it still might be the best alternative). It feels really weird, I think because the "cloud" is just a concept, not a physical object.
I think the "download" icon of an arrow pointing down at a disk drive might work.
Some games a few years back used CDs as a "modern" equivalent, but I think nowadays they are have also become increasingly obsolete
Want to go farther back in time and use an arrow pointing down into a folder?
@@cmyk8964 Yes! Thanks for the reminder about those; I had forgotten. I believe that physical folders still see enough usage that that's a good choice.
The top three toy symbols in India in my opinion consists of this weird blue,red and yellow stripped plastic ball,a kite and a cricket bat.The lesser toy symbols,the more interchangeable ones would be a doll,a toy car, a badminton racquet,and a teddy bear. Unlike the Americas,most of our toy symbols come from what I think is the 2nd half of the 20th century,the ball has a plastic look to it,the toy car as well.It looks like post independence era consumerism,with a mix of colonial era symbols and a few older ones.The badminton racquet was invented in colonial India (although the toy symbol racquets are usually blue which makes them look like plastic and hence a later thing) and the love of cricket was the Brits passed onto us during the raj period too.I have trouble ascribing a period to the dolls because the toy dolls are always wearing western dresses and bows and while that wouldn't have been unseen in colonial India,many Indian girls at the time would have had more Indian dolls dressed in their local attires so I'll have to go with post independence consumerism for that too.
We introduced cricket to you, and you proceeded to absolutely dominate the sport ever since!
@@MGustave Not only dominate the sport, but dominate the popularity contest as well (a little too much ig since cricket is literally the only sport we are good at internationally). I mean look at Bollywood, both Jersey and 83 (two big blockbuster releases about cricket) coming out this year! In the UK, its all about football.
The symbol for phones has changed yet is still outdated. It used to be the classic rotary house phone silhouette on various signs but now you're more likely to see the old cellphone silhouette with the antenna, small screen and buttons on signs
Strange, I haven't seen that symbol in ages (beside one road sign with words "Your car is not safe (meaning that steel box)" and pictograms of things in car), they use some generic smartphone here. As of the landline goes, I haven't seen them in any use for some time.
First, it probably takes a while for old signs to wear out and need replaced. 2nd, newer items are probably harder to represent. A smart phone looks like a bland rectangle.
Or just the handset part of a landline phone.
this topic always makes me wonder about ancient cultures like the romans and how many anachronistic symbolic thingies they had that we may take at face value
That's an interesting thing to think about. Considering how slowly technology advanced back then though, things probably took a lot longer to be considered anachronistic (or that effect might not have even been noticable). I also wonder if, sticking to the Romans as an example, this kind of thing was more region based rather than time based. Symbols might have been set as a standard throughout the empire, but the physical objects they referred to might only be recognisable to people in certain regions. If I had to guess, there probably were fads/trends in fashion and toys that influenced symbols though, so who knows.
@@caseyshearer9519 it makes me think of a historian in 2000 years going "heres an accurate reconstruction of an american christmas circa 2020" and the model is of a kid wearing contemporary clothing yet playing with victorian toys, really sets in how much of ancient history is just educated guesses and inference
@@dudebro2852 i always think of this! things in the modern day change so much from year to year-fashion from 2001 is much different from fashion in 2011and 2021. it makes you think how accurate it is to generalize "18th century fashion" or what have you
Some of the decorative elements in greek marble temples are based on the look of wooden trusses they used before.
What a cool way to think of it! Especially if you consider the cave art of ancient humans around the world, some symbols very graphic and abstract symbols are easy to decipher - patterns of weather, certain animals, people,, but there are symbols you can find used very regularly in some cultures that made rock art that modern anthropologist truly have no clue what the symbol could refer to. Awesome to think that they were maybe just culturally accepted symbols of abstract ideas or times gone by that were used as visual shorthand. Human beings are so cool and people often forget ancient humans had the same brains as us and were capable of symbolic thinking and record keeping
One strange thing about teddy bears is that Willam Howard Taft tried to have his own made. it was an opossum called “Billy Possum” it really didn’t catch on.
Is that true?
@@JJMcCullough apparently yes: th-cam.com/video/KAk7ZMxqedg/w-d-xo.html
@@JJMcCullough yes look it up there is a good video on it.
I want a Billy Possum!
Sounds like a toy Dame Edna Everage would market
I'm from Central America, in my home town the average temperature is 30°C (86°F) but all Christmas decorations have an awful lot of snow, you see Feliz Navidad in snow capped letters 😂I have to admit, it feels more Christmassy.
Sounds like the best of both worlds to me!!
😁
yep same, always felt disappointed as a kid about never seeing snow until i moved to america haha
The light bulb was such a good idea it became a symbol for good ideas
I was walking by the lightbulbs at Sam's and i was reminded of the old GE commercial where one kid tried to tell another a joke and he answers "why would anyone need to change a light bulb?"
A lot of people still collect/construct "Christmas villages" or "Winter Villages" in America around winter time. It's common to see people have multiple shelves of modular buildings or set pieces that seem to mostly be set in the 40s/50s.
yess love a good winter village
Guilty of this lol.
Winter villages are GOAT
Yes, a friend has some called Dickens' Village. But they are American made--there is a 1920's style gas station (!?) with bin labeled Trash instead of Rubbish
Model trains, particularly O gauge such as Lionel, are correctly sized to pair well with these villages. I would actually recommend that over putting the train under the tree. The train/village layout is often my big Christmas project.
When I was teaching overseas, the "symbols" of toys were always represented as a ball, robot, puzzle, and/or a doll.
When you put a Telsa "into gear" it will begin to move after you take your foot off the brake. There is no reason for this except that it is how ICE cars work, so EV designers made the car work like that even though it would make more sense to only go after pressing the "gas pedal". I wonder how many other functions of an electric car only exist because that's how people expect a car to work/look.
Also, I still use phrases like "gas pedal" "into gear" and "roll down/up the window". Will kids who only grow up around EVs still use these terms?
"Open the window" just sounds too binary!
@@JJMcCullough you just "typed" that.
I think it’s common (at least I do) to use the word “film” about any video recording. Like “hey can you film me do this?” Even though it’s being recorded with an iPhone and nobody has used actual film commonly in a long time.
I have been thinking lately what to call the "gas" pedal in an EV. Even in a "traditional" (i.e. ICE) car, it's also known as the "accelerator". This name works just as well for an EV, which is to say, somewhat poorly in my opinion, because I think it's kind of a misnomer. Maybe the "power" pedal? Any other ideas?
@@xp8969 That only happens with internal combustion cars with automatic transmission.
The obvious examples of the floppy disc save icon and the envelope email icons. But really all the symbols used for Photoshop. Many of them are based off of dark room tools, like the dodge stick and using your hand to make a burn hole. Most people working in Photoshop have likely never touched an enlarger.
I think that envelope aged better for emails than once used @.
Well, in that case there aren't really any more recent alternatives since it's all digital and abstract after that.
Some European road signs feature anachronistic symbols: steam trains, old timey motorbikes, horns and mopeds, and level crossings with fences. Those last ones always used to confuse me as a kid because a simple metal bar now consists as the barrier in most of Europe. A few countries have modernised and now feature electric trains or more contemporary motorbike designs but in most countries the old symbols have taken on a life of their own and I don't see them changing any time soon.
Very good point. In my country the silhouettes on the sign are often a bit more detailed than the very simple figures in other countries, and on some signs workmen can be seen wearing flat caps and clogs, as if it's still the sixties, instead of modern equipment. There is still a really detailed sign for banning hand carts and horse wagons on a road where they even draw spokes in the wheels. Mopeds dont look like modern mopeds on the signs, but like "mobilettes" from the eighties or earlier...
I think my favorite sort of anachronism is referring to the act of inputting a phone number as “dialing” despite rotary telephones (and even landlines themselves) being out of date
How else would you refer to it?
There's still some use of "hang up" to mean ending a call, and that comes specifically from wall-mounted phones where the handset or possibly just the earpiece hung on a hook which was rigged to break the circuit.
And the dialling system of those old rotary phones was implemented electronically for decades after the phones themselves stopped being made. I remember several landline phones that had a switch on the back for selecting between Tone and Pulse dialling. Not sure whether modems included such a switch or whether they were always set via software, but later ones from the 56k era certainly were.
@@BadgerCheese94 Punched or keyed in the number--I've read that sometimes.
landlines are still commonly used, though, especially by businesses.
Bombs being black balls with a dynamite fuse on them are a good example.
Or dynamite sticks when most modern explosives came in form of squares.
My favourite visual anachronism is the AIGA pictogram for "shops," depicting a neatly wrapped parcel with a bow on top, a book, and a tobacco pipe, as if those are things that the average traveler would be buying in an airport or train station.
A similar one in airports is the use of a martini glass for "bar". Maybe not entirely an anachronism as people do still drink martinis (and related drinks served in the same glass such as cosmopolitans) but not nearly to the degree as in the "Mad Men" era when the icon was created.
This reminds me of how people still click on a floppy disk in order to save a document.
Floppy disks are like Jesus, they died to become the icon of saving.
That’s a great example
@@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102 as a Catholic, i agree
Until today I just thought that was just a weirdly drawn folder.
@@sempersuffragium9951 'Everywhere at the End of Time' just started playing in several hundred gen Xers' heads.
The floppy disk icon on all computer software that has a save function is probably the first example that comes to mind.
Also that archaic "Atari" joystick as a symbol for Gaming™
@@mtacharlie649 Indeed. We're lucky if we get an NES, Genesis, SNES or PlayStation 1 style controller as the symbol of choice.
@@danielmuiter1282 Oh this is neat! Any examples?
Interesting, I am so used to keyboard shortcuts or using something like files -> save as (for new files), that I had to open and close some programs just to check whether it is still ture.
Email icon is usually a regular old letter envelope. Telephone is a usually an old style handset phone.
Another one i can think of is the metronome icon in a bunch of music making / metronome apps. I have seen a real one at my grandparents, but i doubt most people know what an acoustic metronome is. That and the tuning fork to represent tuning.
Also i find it interesting that the 8th note or quaver 🎵 or 🎶 seems to be the universal "music" note, along with a treble clef 🎼(see TikTok, itunes, apple music, etc.) These aren't really outdated symbols in music as they're still quite common, but the 8th note is not usually the default to a musician, just one of many types.
I also notice on stuff where they put sheet music on a product (picture, socks, water bottle, etc.) the default seems to be the entertainer by Scott Joplin if it's real music.
The “real” metronomes fell out of use thanks to phones but they’re also much less accurate than ones we can now have on our phones. I remember my old clarinet teacher (he was pretty old) told me not to use an “acoustic” metronome because their precision and accuracy issues. They tend to slow down if left on for too long, and you can only set them to approximate bpm.
As for the music notes thing, it is funny because many of the popular musicians of the last 60+ years were musically illiterate and could not read western notation. Classical musicians (and most jazz musicians) can read music because it’s pretty much a requirement past a certain point, but in popular music it is not, and they communicate music in pretty different ways. Yet, even for popular music, the default is still a music note. It’s also what laymen think of when they think of notated music. Most of them don’t know what it means, but they know “it’s a note.” Something also interesting is that notes don’t really mean much without context, so just looking at an eighth note doesn’t say anything to me as a musician
Great comment!
No royalties have to be paid on "The Entertainer"; it's probably one of the more widely recognizable tunes in the public domain.
@@hydrogen3266 We had used them in physic labs at secondary grammar school for some measurements (interesting they had more of them than the music lab had), maybe we were learning how to calculate standard deviation. Well that is quite possible as you can set them to various speeds and so.
May I have Question? (I suppose that you are American) Kids in your schools don't have basic musical theory? Here we have "musical education" from the first grade up to some 9th and it is 1 our a week, it is mostly about singing (children love it especially in first 5 grades), but we learn but about history and how notes look like and what they mean. So In theory even people playing things like rock, should be able to read music at leas on basic level.
I still use a winding pendulum metronome from time to time, actually. Granted it's an antique and definitely obsolete at this point.
I actually first found out was a metronome was from the ‘Gary Come Home’ song from SpongeBob.
Teddy Bears are supposedly named after Teddy Roosevelt. There are different tellings of the legend, but most involve an unsuccessful bear hunt. After being unable to track a real bear, the president was given a stuffed toy bear in jest. From that point on, these toys became known as Teddy Bears.
Another one is he refused to shoot a baby bear and a candy store owner started making and selling stuffed bears after hearing the story.
@@ajzeg01 The version I heard is that someone brought him a tied up baby bear for him to shoot and he refused.
The story I heard was that the bear was injured (or maybe it was a baby?) and he wouldn’t shoot it…. But one of the men he was with had no qualms against shooting it. Lol
Personally I don't feel like a lot of those toys are necessarily out of date. Teddy Bears and Dolls *in* particular are still something kids play with and while parents could shy from giving their kid a drum they likely won't shy from giving them some musical instrument to play with - *some of which may* be difficult to draw. Other things like building blocks are also fairly *representative* of lego, picture puzzles, and dominoes. Things like toy trains might be a bit out of date since lots play with toy trucks these days but that isn't to say it would be a bad toy for someone environmentally conscious. *Edits*
Maybe trumpet?
A lot of kids play with trains today, considering Thomas The Tank Engine is a thing
Yeah. When I was a kid wooden assemblable tracks and trains were a big thing where I live (brand BRIO) and I believe they’re still
pretty popular. Also Lego (duplo) trains I’ve seen so many of todays toddlers have. It’s just fun for kids to attach the different train carts together and make it really long, can’t do that with cars :D Out of all the icons shown I remember having more than half of them in some form in early 2000’s.
Edit: Also on the musical Instruments, I remember colorful xylophones, little electric ”pianos”, tambourines and maracas being really popular as kids toys, but Idk how it is with today’s kids.
@@MrToradragon Somone gave my niece a wooden flute.
Based on what I have seen, tricycles are now anachronistic as kids go from those bikes with no pedals, to bikes with training wheels thereby skipping the tricycle stage.
I know when I was growing up, there was a symbol for memory of a finger with a thread tied around it. I had no idea what it meant and still wonder about the concept as a whole.
If you leave the string on your finger you are pretty much thinking about whatever it is u need to remember until you take the string off
An out-of-date icon commonly seen here in America is the old-style telephones. We mostly just use cellphones, now, of course, so seeing rotary phones and other such designs being used to mean "call someone" is odd.
I do like calling people with my rotary phone, though!
i still have a landline phone though and it looks recent
Not to mention using the word "dial" to describe inputting someone's phone number.
I think the main reason that stuck around is that old phones have a much more distinctive shape than modern cell phones, which are all just black rectangles. Maybe you could draw an old school flip phone or something instead?
Rotaries are out of use pretty much but landlines are still very much in use even if not inside homes, for sure in businesses and govt instituations.
The concept of visual anachronism made me think about audio anachronism, like the flash sound effects or the ringing sound effects on cellphones.
Or that every video game is apparently an Atari, even when the player is clearly holding a modern controller.
As a web developer, I use iconography quite a bit and it's neat to see which icons are used to represent certain ideas. I use something called Material Icons quite often and it is fairly opinionated on which icons should represent certain concepts.
*shudders in Material UI and Materialize*
I’m a pretty basic bootstrap guy, myself
I do like Material Design icons, though, but I almost always use third-party extensions of the original icons.
I just make SVGs from scratch.
Okay, I lied, I use MS paint
The Atari 2600 controller. Not a single controller has looked like it in decades, yet it's always in the forefront of any art representing "Videogames". Same could be said about the original Gameboy.
To be fair the original Game Boy was popular for more than 10 years, which is quite long by game console standards.
I feel like knockoff xbox controllers are more common to see now
@@coolnormalandwelladjusted That's probably because that's pretty much the ideal design for video game controllers.
@@TheAlexSchmidt yeah, I guess it’s just interesting that it’s usually Xbox’styled controllers vs PlayStation ones. Even the Switch’s pro controller is directly copied from Xbox except for the order on the A B X Y buttons
@@coolnormalandwelladjusted The Switch retains the traditional Nintendo layout of the face buttons that they introduced with the Super Famicom, Microsoft likely took their design from the Sega Saturn, but taking out the C and Z buttons. The way the lower shoulder buttons are called ZR and ZL comes from how the N64 had 3 shoulder buttons because of it's unusual shape.
One can argue that the traditional toys are still popular today, just with modern equivalents. Toy drum = any musical instrument, traditional dolls = OMG dolls (though they teach VERY different things...child rearing vs. Rampant consumerism), toy train = toy cars or even remote control drone, wood blocks = lego/minecraft/roblox, toy soldiers = first person shooter or sports game on a video game console. Different forms ofnthe same basic concepts.
The move away from child rearing to consumerism shows what made Barbie dolls so special when they came out, since they were full grown women and not babies.
@@TheAlexSchmidt she also provided positive reinforcement to the idea that math was indeed hard.
I always thought it was interesting that the go-to icon for settings or systems preferences on a smart phone or computer tends to be a gear or some form of clockwork. What an interesting image to use to represent the framework of your electronic device that can be tinkered with, fixed, adjusted, and altered in much the same way a turn-of-the-century clockmaker would do the same with analog devices. It’d be hard to find a better symbol and yet it remains pretty outdated since very few modern smartphone owners or computer users would even know how to tinker with a complicated system of gears, in fact very few technologies in our modern era rely on this type of mechanism.
I think food may fall into a similar outdated category, as even though the culinary landscape is very diverse and continuously evolving, I think that when we portray food, we always go for food associated with big events like a whole chicken, ham, the t-bone steak and similar sorts of food.
You know when a cartoon character goes shopping and comes back with a baguette, a carton of milk and a stick of celery in a plastic bag
@@nathanmcgill7249 I’d say a brown paper bag would be the more stereotypical one
@@nathanmcgill7249 That is not anachronism! They must have seen me shopping quite recently.
Some of the most common symbols of food I see is apples, bananas, and carrots
I've always loved how an ancient laurel wreath is used to convey "winners" or victory. It's not as ubiquitous as the floppy disk symbol, but you do see it from time to time.
I've also heard that students will wear a laurel wreath to their graduation ceremonies in some countries. But graduation ceremonies might be a video topic in itself... Just think of the Scandinavian sailor hats. :D
2:12 The "Activities" set of emojis includes the following: various ball games, a kite, skateboard/rollerblades/ice skates/sled/ski gear, a bicycle, a palette, musical instruments, dice, chess pieces, playing cards, video game controllers, jigsaw puzzle, and a teddy bear.
That being said, I'm surprised building blocks appeared on neither list, but the 2021 toys image shown legos, which are a modern twist on them (even though JJ was sarcastic when he called them "timeless classics")
Skydiver here… 🪂
I bought my nephew new wooden alphabet building blocks 5 years ago.
The other day I was on a plane and their little symbol for airplane window just looked like an airplane window... which meant it was hard to recognize because it was basically just an oval. And I remember thinking they should just use a symbol that looks like a house's with four windowpanes because that would be more recognizable as "window." I guess that's an example of how people can prefer less accurate but more familiar symbols.
Anachronistic icons: telephones are still usually represented by a landline rotary phone or handset. “Save file” is often an image of a floppy disk. Digital “folders” are icons of manila folders.
Working in a bank, UPS, and many school offices, manila folders are still widely in use.
Email icons are usually a snail mail letter.
JJ can make u think about things u never thought you'd think about
One example I can think of for a visual anachronism where I live is a road sign that represents the train station with a symbol of a steam locomotive. And as much as I love steam locomotives, chances are you won’t find one there on a typical day.
I have seen EMU as symbol for train stations in recent years.
An idea for you, JJ: a video about how color is perceived in Western culture. I’m reading the book Chromophobia by David Batchelor and it’s blowing my mind. He digs into Western color “givens”-like how white is deemed pure, houses and clothing are generally neutral colors to be deemed “respectable”, and bright colors are seen as vulgar or flamboyant. Yet a lot of “great Western art” was actually brightly colored at its time, it’s just faded to white now, making westerners imagine that great art lacked color (like Roman architecture and sculptures). It seems like a subject you would make a great video about!
Definitely! I’d love to see this video
..well, i think its a bit more complex then that with a bit if nuance. like from the napoleonic wars and before, cloths were VERY colorful outside of austere Protestant sects like quakers. a part (not the whole) was the connection of flamboyancy with aristocracy along with some other aspects like britches. there are various interrelated processes that changed and influenced design and color. and if you go somewhere like the netherlands or spanish america you can see more brightly colored buildings.
@@midshipman8654 you literally just proved why a video on it would be interesting haha
@@midshipman8654 of course it's more nuanced than that. The book I referenced, Chromophobia, outlines the concept more in-depth if you'd like to learn more!
We still use a snail mail letter for email, which is a very famous example of a visual anachronism, and the old-fashioned phone icon on your home screen is another!
I mean. It's not like physical envelopes in the mail don't exist anymore, so people are still familiar with it.
@@evangelosvasiliades1204 With the vast majority of these things they still exist too, just less used
@@evangelosvasiliades1204 No, but they don't represent an email accurately. Also many of those old style toys are still made.
@@shrimpflea Sure, but you would have to go out of your way for those. If anything I wish I could avoid the constant full mailbox of junk.
I would say the common disability symbols or accessibility symbols on buses, trains, in parking lots, or for "accessible" spaces. It is still typically a depiction of a cane, a wheelchair, and a stork/pram/pregnant woman, because when disability accommodations started happening we still mostly saw deafness as "haven't learned to lip read or talk normally yet", blindness as "haven't learned Braille yet", and chronic diseases and invisible disabilities as hysteria. I am disabled, but like many disabled people, I don't use a wheelchair or a cane. Yet, the public accommodations I do need are always labeled with these.
What symbols ten you would propose to use? In my country we use symbols of wheelchair, pram, sitting person with cane for elderly, sitting person with big belly for pregnant (mostly only in trains), person walking with stick in front of them for blind and crossed ear for deaf.
Another thing to take in consideration is that symbols in public spaces must be easy to understand and in minimal necessary amount. Imagine that you would have symbol for every imaginable disability and you would want to label seat in train as "for disabled." Amount of stickers in the wall behind seats would be just insane.
It seems like part of the reason, aside from Victorian Christmas nostalgia, for toy symbols being so outdated is just how tied up so many popular toys of recent decades are in copyrighted intellectual property. So many popular toys are based on things from popular media aimed at kids, like TV shows, movies, or video games. So it can be hard to represent them without treading on any toes. You could always make a generic version of something but that can sort of just look like you're making up a new toy.
Aside from that, popular toys seem particularly susceptible to fad trends that will be very quickly dated. Many really popular toys have a short run of big hype and then kind of disappear, which freezes them in time a little. Fidget spinners as an example that is generic, were hugely popular just a few years ago but which would now seem extremely dated.
So, what you're saying is that newer toys are too young to be considered antique yet.
Related example: older planned cities like Washington, which at the time were considered tacky and retro just like modernist cities are now.
AWESOME! I still have my Mom's old "Kiddie Kar" she got for Christmas in 1927, made by CCM in Toronto. I have an adorable photo of her riding on it in their front yard. My brother & I used it, then my four kids, and now my (so far) four grandkids. It's been the base for amazing forts & castles, and become a great maker of imaginary popcorn, hot dog stands & rocket ship launchers. Merry Christmas, Everyone!
I was not expecting a video today, but boy am I grateful for one! Merry Christmas JJ!
I think it's funny that we still talk about "rewinding" in the digital age, since there's no more reels to wind.
Also, "(video)tape" and "film" used to mean video recording in general
I'd love to see a video on the American sentimentalization of the 1950s that you brought up towards the end! :)
It’s a rich topic that’s been the subject of some interesting pop culture takes over the years
Especially since I don't think any decade has loved a previous decade the way the 1970s loved the 1950s. Probably because the 1950s seemed so optimistic compared to the 1970s.
A good example of a visual anachronism widely used today is the “Save icon” for games, which is a floppy disc.
good question- my second thought was "but i think of barbie, legos, and hot wheels when i think of toys"
and then my third thought was, "wait, how old are barbie, legos, and hot wheels?"
60 years?
But they never gone out of style tho. I was born in the '90s and those toys were super popular then and in the early '00s and still popular today.
They're all from the general time frame of the 1950s-60s. A preliminary type of Lego brick was introduced in the 1940s (based on older toys by other companies) but they attained their current form that made elaborate constructions possible in 1958. Barbie is from 1959, Hot Wheels from 1968, though both of them were again inspired by slightly older antecedents.
Probably the most anachronistic for a modern device is the hourglass shown when computers are loading. Images of analog clocks, a jug with xxx to mean liquor, the Edison style light bulb with a big, curly filament, a faucet with two valves with pointed ends, a reel of film to denote movies, Model-T type car silhouettes on signs, and a camera with flash-bulb depicting photography.
Lego, I would argue has become the most recent iconic toy that has stood the test of time. The company’s been around for a very long time, but especially recently has become an icon
I was so happy to see Barry Lyndon briefly featured in this video. The two second clip was enough to fill my heart with the mixed emotions I feel in that movie. I have to go watch it again! Easily Kubrick's best (and most underrated) film.
I know nothing of the film, I just needed a scene with a drum and someone suggested it lol
The terms ‘cut’ and ‘paste’ harken back to old time layout where paper outs literally be cut and pasted into place.
I can already imagine the many awards this video will win.
One I can think of is the symbols on aircon unit. Like a snowflake for cool. And other squiggles for the other modes
In regards to anachronistic and outdated symbols, the fact that most people still use the general appearance of steam locomotives.
Most countries have long since abandoned steam locomotives, (the last non-heratige operations in the US and UK being phased out the 1950s-60s) yet they were such a major part of railroad history that we still see trains as steam locomotives.
Also helped that because of their mechanism, their profile is more unique than those of diesels and electric locomotives
True, electric locomotive could be mistaken for a tram. Even thou maybe if you took something like Vectron with both pantographs up, it would not be so confusing, but still would be less recognizable than steam locomotive.
Floppy disk as a save icon comes to mind, as anachronistic representation of things.
Can't remember in Canada if it's "Happy Christmas" or "Merry Christmas", but whichever one it is, I hope you have one. Many of the symbols, especially for services, on highway signs seem to reaching the anachronistic stage.
Happy Merry*
That sound you played at 6:37 for dolls brought a crazy childhood memory back to me of playing Mario Paint and the music maker part of that game. I remember that sound distinctly! Now if only I could remember what icon made it!
I love your sound effects! haha
As another example of an out-of-date symbol continuing to be used, the space between lines of text in typography is still referred to as "leading" even in the case of digital type, where the strips of metal that would separate hand-placed type are a non-entity.
Great video! There's also this kind of thing in military iconography, at least for sure in the US military. The 1st Cavalry insignia still has a horse, the 10th Mountain Division has crossed swords, and there's lots of use of images of arrows, old-time field cannons, etc.
Most other channels on TH-cam: (have a persistent theme throughout most of their videos.)
JJ: "Hell no, I ain't about that."
My personal favorite are out of date phrases that are still used, things like hanging up a phone or rolling up the windows.
The scythe is still a symbol of both Death and harvest even tho everyone has a lawn mower and a tractor mow
Communism too!
@@JJMcCullough I guess for commies it makes sense cause they glorify wheat and some of them literally tried to undo the industrial Revolution ie Indonesia. but truly thank you for making this toy video cause I used to be obsessed with toys like these cause some of them used to be hand made in America but I never knew why pop culture was obsessed with RED toy soldiers and toy drums. I hope one day the Lego Brick can be a standard American symbol for toys
@@joestendel1111 They did not try to undo the industrial revolution, but they used hammer and sickle as symbols of working class, union of workers in industry and agriculture.
The icon for "computer" is almost always either an IBM 5150 or OG Macintosh, "video game" is usually a Space Invader or an Atari 2600 joystick, and until very recently the default icon for "save" in most word processing programs was a 3-1/4 in. floppy disk (now it's a boring piece of paper with a colored arrow that's blue if you've saved or red if you have unsaved changes; I hate it and I miss the anachronistic floppy disk).
I for one prefer the SNES controller to represent video games. :p
Despite being outmoded ever since the personal computer was invented, the mechanical typewriter remains a common symbol for authors, journalism, publishing, and writing in general. (I suppose you could say the same about the fountain pen or quill & ink...)
Also, can we talk about how the paper envelope is still being used as a symbol for E-mail? Or how the image of the 19th century schoolhouse with a bell tower is still used to represent schools (and the concept of education) to this day?
What about the use of an old-fashioned movie camera to represent digital video or video-phoning? (FaceTime, Google Meet, video calls in WhatsApp/Facebook Messenger, etc.)
A lot of writers still use a typewriter, albeit usually not the mechanical type, because it's a distraction-free typing experience.
The "save" icon is still a floppy disc
One thing I've always found strange is the icons on your smartphone, for example the clock and phone apps, both have pictures of old fashioned analogue clocks and landline telephones as their symbol, despite the smartphone itself making those devices, and by extension, those symbols somewhat obselete.
I think a toy that's starting to come in as an anachronism is the action figure, for example in toy story, most of his toys are kind of old timey like dolls and stuff but then the "new toy" buzz is almost an action figure and then you eventually get combat Carl who is fully an action figure, I dunno just something interesting I noticed considering how much I played with them growing up
I grew up in the 00s and I can't remember having any straight-up action figures. I heavily associate them with the 80s.
@@Eddies_Bra-att-ha-grejer I was born in '03 and played with them constantly growing up, and they're still all over store shelves so I don't know what you're talking about, especially considering how much better they are now than they were in the 80's
@@williamking6787 I was born in '94 so I grew up in the 2000s and action figures were super popular. Maaaybe not as much as the '80s but for sure popular.
I have realized that a generic video game controller has become one of the many symbols of toys along with the ones you mentioned. It’s the only modern one I can think of and it’s usually a controller that resembles an Xbox one. I find that fitting since it’s the only American produced console out of the big 3.
Isn't the playstation's similar looking, though!?
@@adrianblake8876 the placement of the thumb sticks is different. For Xbox the left stick is higher and the d-pad is lower. For PlayStation the thumb sticks are even and the d-pad is in line with the buttons.
@@coolnormalandwelladjusted Then the emoji is definitely the Playstation one 🎮
@@adrianblake8876 Yes, the only emoji vendor that has the thumbstick level with the face buttons is Microsoft, because obviously.
Teddy Bears were named after President Theodore “Teddy”Roosevelt. The name came from a cartoon depiction of a real incident of him not shooting a captive bear.
My favorite anachronistic representation is the call button on phones being the receiver of a much older phone
The canon of mainstream American Christmas music seems to be deeply rooted in the 1940s/50s/60
The soccer ball (football) was only ever the design we associate with it in 1970, bc of the World Cup. That was also the first World Cup in color. The ball was so iconic it's the universal symbol for the sport (Americans didn't help)
It helps that ball designs based on the Telestar are still being made and sold today.
The sound effects and mini-jingles were especially on point for this instalment.
Always love these types of videos where you examine the symoblism of everyday things and their origins. I love how you make interesting videos about topics I would never consider researching myself before seeing the title or thumbnail, and I say that as someone who has had an extreme Wikipedia addiction for most of their life and finds almost EVERY topic interesting and reasearchs tons of obscure and niche topics as a result. Keep it up JJ, we love you ☺
What an interesting topic. Thank you for making this film and putting the footage on YT!
The past is typically viewed more positively than the present. Not just now, but throughout modern history nostalgia and sentimentality remind us of the joys of childhood... which is more fun than adulthood.
I recall John Oliver doing a bit on this: if you ask people of various ages when "the good old days" were, the consistent pattern you find is that it's usually when they were children, and adults took care of all the scary or disturbing stuff. If not then, it's when they were teenagers or young adults.
It's pretty wild that domestic imaginative play sets still have corded house phones if not rotary phones. The Western Electric model 1500, introduced in the 60s is still a pretty standard shorthand for all telepones.
A boat represented as a semi circle base with a simple triangle flag seems like something that would be used to represent toys
Toy soldiers and Christmas make me think of The Nutcracker, which I do recall seeing on British TV at Christmas more than once.
The Nutcracker and Babes in Toyland have probably done a lot to make a historical military uniform look downright whimsical.
Off the top of my head in addition to the floppy disk save icon also mentioned here by others, the Atari joystick. I was watching the wild Kratts with my kids and there's a character that's in love with this controller, he's the pilot of their turtle shaped ship, and the controller that he has but he carries around almost as a totem is an Atari joystick, something that I myself barely remember using at 38 years of age, let alone my children who have never seen an Atari.
Speaking of television culture (as JJ did at 10:49), the symbol for TV is often one with a CRT, two tuning knobs, and a rabbit-ears antenna. It's been a while since I've seen one of those in use.
Rabbit ears were long gone by the time I was a kid but I still remember drawing them in my cartoons as a child.
The most typical symbols for microphones tend to be either based on 1940s ribbon microphones such as the RCA 44 and the RCA 77, as well as 1950s/60s dynamic mics like the Shure 55 and Shure SM58.