Hello to all of you. Unconventional conventions. Welcome to Rocky Talkie. I'm Meg. I'm a and I'm Jacob. And this week we're asking a question. But before we do, let's do the thing. How was your week guys? Did you get up to anything fun? Oh, man. All right. So I love, I love, love to bike biking is like my favorite thing in the whole wide world and I, I've been alive on this earth and biking for like the past five years. And it's such a, like, it's not that obscure, but I don't know, in Rocky there aren't a lot of like fitness enthusiasts who are like, yeah, I fucking love to get out and, and do shit. Like there's a lot of a lot of night life and stuff. So I haven't run into many people that I can be like, hey, do you want to go for a bike ride? But this past like month ago, one of my friends I've learned is uh runs every now and again. Her name is Sarah. She's on our cast. Shout out Sarah and I invited her on a bike ride and for like the second time in all my five years of biking. I got to bike with a friend. I, this past uh Tuesday we went on a wait, not Tuesday. It was yesterday. So this past yesterday day, which was Wednesday, I think. Yeah. Holy shit was so fucking recent. God. The days just mel together went on a fucking bike ride. I woke up at the crack of nine goddamn AM and had a good old time with Sarah. So that was awesome. Yeah. What about you, Aaron, isn't it? Just I uh I do not bike. I did all of my biking when I was a small child also. It terrifies me to like even think about biking in New York. Holy crap. Uh Yeah. No, I just, I mean, I don't trust anybody on this road. Uh I certainly wasn't biking this week uh because I've been a little under the weather. My apologies to all of our listeners out there if I sound like somebody has bashed me over the head with a bag of cotton balls. That is what my head feels like. Uh But I am here to talk to all of you. So uh that should be a lot of fun. Uh I'm, I'm bouncing back feeling better but uh still still got the sniffles, still got the sniffles, sweetie. What have you been up to? What have I been up to? Um I do bike but I ride a stationary bike so I can't bike with him very much. He would have to go very slowly. I should get a second stationary bike from my office and we can, like, smoke weed and ride our stationary bike together because that's really fun. Uh, or you should purchase a bike bike and we could bike in the outdoor air. I can't even like, walk in heels that well, my, my coordination leaves a lot to be desired. You should have seen her, she put on a new pair of Frank heels yesterday and like, oh legs up to here and by, I mean, she had fallen and flipped over and her legs were up up all the, all the way, all the way, like a turtle back tummy in the sun. She was like, help me and I was like stupid turtle. Um So what did I do? I took a walk. I went on a really fucking good walk around Washington Square Park with one of our cast members, Rob yesterday and that was a lot of fun. It was like the first nice day out. So we just were both in the city and I was like, let's, let's meet up in the park. So we met up in the park and we walked around and it was like popping because it was the first nice day. So everybody wanted to go and get outside and it was like really good people watching. There were a lot of jugglers who had illuminated little juggling pins and things and there was a girl who had poi balls that she was playing with and just, you know, people playing music, people doing stick and poke tattoos, um, lots of stuff. So it was, it was a nice evening. It was fun. Then we had dinner. All right. Enough about regular nor me life. I think it's time. Um, I got a little question we want to ask. Right. But before we do that, I've got a quick boner to pick a quick little Jacking it with Jacob if you will. Now, before we continue audience, I need you to know that. I, I know I brought this on myself. Jacking it with Jacob is like, it's a moniker I embraced. It's a sentence I, I lavished in at first, but it's gotten to a point that I say that and I think about saying that and my head cringes. It's like, oh God, that's so disgusting. I like Jacking it with Jacob. What am I like a, a homeless in the street? You know, I feel like that meme of, of, I, I don't know many people who are listening will not have seen this meme, but there's a meme of an adult woman standing very elegantly in a dress and a man looking malnourished and beaten up and, and it's like, honey, time for your 12 o'clock ball flattening and the implication is that this man's balls get flattened regularly. And it's like every time I've got to say, checking it with Jacob. It's like the money machine. The, the Rocky Talk money machine is milking me. It's flattening my balls for that money line. It's ruining me anyway. That's all I needed to say. Continue. I mean, I've, I've got some good news then. Like it, it's, it's not called Jacking with Jacob anymore. Holy crap. I did not even, it did not even register that the next line. Was that no longer will the segment be called that? This is great news listeners a few weeks ago. A little context for all you listeners out there. We went to the American Dream Mall in New Jersey. You don't have to do Jersey dirty like that, the mall isn't that far. And let me tell you, it's, it's a mall. It's really hard, really big. Like, it's huge and when you go in, you're like, oh, wow, this is a really huge mall. But it's just like, it's not special. Like, it's just like a mall times 10. It's still like, like, it's a dead mall, you know, it's like, it's kind of sad. There's, yeah, I'm not like, you're gonna go and you're gonna see some cool stuff. Like there's an amusement park indoors, but there's like a, a snow slopy thing. But it's also just like, it's a mall, man. If you're expecting anything more than a mall, you're gonna be sad. Yeah. Like, I was super excited to see. There's the Nickelodeon theme. Park. Right. They've got a couple of roller coasters. There's that ski slope that Jacob just mentioned. Like, I want to see that stuff. I was like, ok, I wanna see like the world's biggest indoor ski slope in New Jersey and I was just like, let me check this shit out and yeah, that stuff was cool. But at the end of the day, we also stood in line for a cappuccino that took like 35 minutes. And the only entertainment, what we did was the saddest looking DJ playing late nineties hits for six year olds that were trying to break dance. So that was really weird. I felt for that guy. He was clearly getting paid but he was d jing to a mall food court. So, no, no, this place is fucking huge though. It has a million things in it. Ok? You guys are a bunch of Debbie Downers. You don't go to the mall because you like need to get something from the mall. You go to the mall as a millennial AAA large majority of like my high school years were spent just going to the mall to walk the fuck around and you walk around and you go into the stores and you look and you see what's up and you wait in line 35 minutes for a cappuccino because that's how long it takes because it's understaffed and run by like other high schoolers. And there's a sad mall DJ and like a guy in an Easter costume, taking pictures or Santa or something and you just go to, like, people watch and take it in and maybe you find something to buy. But really it's, it's just an excuse, I think, I think that's the spirit of malls now in this, the year of our Lord, 2023. Excuse for what to go do something to go, like, stand around with your friends and like have a goal, right? You're not going to the bar, you're not going to dinner, you're going to the mall. It's just like somewhere to go hang. I think it was really fun. Yeah, I, I did get some beef jerky and I found out that there is a Toys R Us that still exists. So that was cool. Like we watched a kid throw up in a, a candy store but that can store was like three flights tall. You don't see that every day and that was an adult. Me, it was an adult, right? You know, keeping it classy over in the jurors. I think if you're throwing up at a candy store, you're a kid in that moment. Uh No, certainly he was not. And you know how I know he was not a kid because when a child vomits, people react, right? Even if like the greater room doesn't like care or react, your party reacts because because you usually have an adult with you and your adult is like, oh fuck my child just vomited. This guy was with three people, another couple and his partner presumably. And shortly before he vomited the other couple sensing what was about to happen. Got up, walked away, his partner, pat him on the back, also walked away but not as far as she was still nearby, but clearly was trying to get away. And then the man just sitting in a regular mall chair leaning over a table just eruption from his mouth and no one did anything. His partner didn't come back or rub his back or say anything. She walked further away. The other couple went down the stairs to another floor. Like a minute later, I think one of the store attendants came over and like had a mop and stuff, but he was just mop and vomit and the guy was still sadly, like leaning over the table looking down into a pool of his own vomit. It was so sad and, and terribly hilarious at the same time, it was pretty funny. He, he looked so sad like he, he came to this nice mall in New Jersey and got so drunk so he could go to the candy store and eat a milkshake. And that was the thing that put him over that I don't know. It was, it was funny as shit though. It was pretty funny. How is this about Rocky? You may ask? Well, let me tell you dear. Listener while we were at this supposed American Dream Air Quotes Mall. We also went to the hot topic and I don't know. I don't know. I feel like I've been sold a lie as I do whenever I enter a hot topic, I had been told a dirty, disgusting falsehood. Supposedly hot topic. Is this goth or punk store. And Rocky people used to shop there or something. At least that's what I've been told. What I do know for a fact. Well, this was a sad, sad store in a very big and even Sadder mall and it sold fun pops and empty promises. Let me tell you pop topic is like if they cut out, like the 1/10 of Target that is four people dressed in black and they put it into a store and we're like, well, what other things do people dressed in black buy? And how can we market it up the most? And none of it? Nothing feels real. Oh, my goodness. It's just like, uh, like stand after stand of tiny trinkets that are me. Me. Nothing. None of it is like, feels any one sort of way. It's all just sort of clearly like you feel like a big guy in a suit is, is trying to sell you something at the highest price that he thinks maybe a goth person would enjoy. Um, and they don't have, they didn't have a t shirt for any of the bands. I like, so I hated that. How, how long had it been since you've been in a hot topic? Probably. Mm. Pre pandemic was the last time I was in a hot topic because they only exist in malls. And that was the last time I was in a mall. Sure. So, but, but sometime within the last five years, so you've seen the decline of hot topics over at least the last, like, decade or so. I don't think I pay enough attention to the content of hot topics to have recognized a decline. But if you tell me, Aaron that there's been a decline, I trust you. God, I have supporting evidence. There has been such a decline. Are you kidding me? When I was in high school, you would go into the hot topic and it was like the coolest place because you thought that it was intimidating to like the norm, you know, and you would go in there and you would buy your eyeliner and your fishnet tops to wear underneath your regular tops and like your trip pants and your little little skaters, schoolgirl trip skirts, which are terrible, by the way, those are so bad. Do you remember how hot we thought those were and you manic panic hair color and you would, you would go and you would come out with all of these things either like in exchange for money or shoved in your trip pants that you stole all the time. Before you felt so edgy and everything smelled like weed in there for no reason because it was in the mall. Like nobody was fucking smoking weed in there. It was all sprayed with weed scent. It really was like the way that Spencer's gift is, it was sprayed with Spencer's actually sold weed scented spray. So that one I can kind of understand why did we want these things? It's cool. It smell like weed, man. All right. My room with artificial weed. It's so your friends think you're cool. And they're like, whoa dude, hook me up. You want to smoke? You're like what? No, man, I don't smoke. I'm cool. I have weed scented spray like it's what hacky sacking smells like. So what's the deal here? I've always heard hot topic was where Rocky people shopped and they had rocky stuff. I didn't see it. There were like two shirts and maybe a pin or something. Clearly. I am not of that mall rad. Hot topic. Orange Julius and Panda Express generation. But what gives, I feel like their online store has more Rocky Horror stuff than I saw in that mall. I mean, that much is true right around the 25th anniversary. So I think like late nineties, early two thousands. Both hot topic and Spencer's gift did have exclusive Rocky Horror merchandise and like a lot of it. I mean, most of this was more junk than not, but it's all the stuff you would expect, you know, pins and buttons and records and T shirts and action figures and posters and toys. And, I mean, you, you get the gist of where I'm going. Yeah, there was none of that when we went, uh, funk all pops anime stuff. So, oh, my God. There was so much anime stuff. Uh, the saddest collection of bachelorette parties, sexy toys and overpriced team. Goth clothes. Oh. Oh. And those rubber gauges? Josh. But which was the whole reason we went to this mall in the first place was specifically for rubber gauges. But like, ok, here's the thing. Totally. That's what it is now. It didn't used to be like that. Both Spencer's and hot topic had a lot more variety and a lot wider of a stock back in the early two thousands. And they were always around to sell you like a $5 pair of fish nets because let's be real five bucks or 20 bucks, fish nets are gonna fucking rip no matter how much you spend on them. Yeah, I know. I've heard people say it but I don't see it. How did it get like that? Why was it, the store for a generation of Rocky Horror fans? And where did all the Rocky stuff go? And why was it, that store weren't there other stores that had Rocky crap? It just doesn't add up, man. I'm telling you. So this ask a question is all about Rocky retail. What? No, that, I, I guess I, I just wanted to bitch about hot topic but if you're gonna have to go and make a thing of it, I suppose we could. I mean, you're always doing this where you, you take the thing I was excited about and you turn it into the thing. The Rocky Horror picture Show released in 1975. The idea of merchandizing for feature film releases was still a rarity. Just a few years later when George Lucas was negotiating with 20th century Fox over his little film in a galaxy far, far away. You may have heard of it. It's called Star Wars. When George Lucas was making Star Wars, he traded half a million dollars of his director fee in exchange for keeping the merchandizing rights. It sounded like a great deal for Fox. In the late seventies licensed product tie ins were mainly for TV shows aimed at kids, trading cards, toys, lunch boxes of the monkeys and the Partridge family, as well as Merch for musicians like the Beatles and Elvis Presley. So if you wanted to film merch, you were stuck with what the theaters had posters, lobby cards, promotional buttons or T shirts, right? But all of that was really designed for the theaters to use or like for their employees. It rarely made its way into audience hands. Occasionally there'd be a tie in paperback novel or like a soundtrack album. But in 1975 it wasn't the norm. So when Lucas traded up half million dollars to retain the merchandizing rights for Star Wars in 1977 nobody at Fox really questioned this. A fun fact. As of 2021 Star Wars has sold over $12 billion worth of toys while the films themselves had collected half of that between the box office and home media sales. Wow, that's crazy. So, yeah, they, they like, they sold 200% of what like made them famous in the first place. That damn like imagine. Yeah. Holy shit. So God, that's, that's crazy. Oh my God. So I guess that George Lucas guy might have known what he was doing. Yeah, but that, that wasn't on anybody's radar when Rocky Horror released Fox had produced some shirts, his promos. But I mean, these were a rarity even then other than the soundtrack album, there wasn't much out there. But as midnight screenings became a thing, there was a gaping hole that the community wanted to fill a this resulted in a lot of bootlegs, t-shirts, pins and a P props like matches and bags of rice. Imagine bootlegging a bag of rice. These are produced at kitchen tables and in basements and garages always varying in quality and price and, and they were hawked at midnight shows, the sellers walking up and down the line of waiting audience members. According to the Rocky Horror, wiki, the first known fanmade merchandise was a hand drawn silk screen sweatshirt of Frank. It was produced in late 75 by two teens who saw the film at U A Westwood theater during the opening weekend, they were Holly Field and Hillary Laddin. So with a lackluster release in 1975 and midnight shows not really taking off until 76 Fox didn't really know there was even this need for merchandise to be filled. Early issues of the Transylvanian newsletter produced by the fan club out of New York had the very minimal official offerings and they were limited to the kinds of things we mentioned before. Jerry Linger, movie material store sold the stuff that the theaters had access to the posters, the photos, the buttons, you could even get a copy of the movie trailer on 16 millimeter film for only $18.50. And the other merchants that were listed in the Transylvanian had the t-shirts and the soundtrack album and, and, and really officially that was it. And all of this was mail order only. I'd have to get out my check book. Yeah, I'd have to get out a checkbook. Uh or, or you could send a money order. Grandpa, you're talking gibberish again, take your pills. It, it was almost four years until the first officially licensed items were released. A set of six pin badges that were created by A and B creations, but this wasn't until 1970 nine. Not long after a series of products began to become available starting with the Hanken book and followed by trading cards, the 1980 calendar and the movie novel. But all of this was still kind of seen as an oddity. In 1981 Tim Curry and Meatloaf appeared on Saturday Night Live and they were just lampooning the idea of this official Rocky Horror merchandise. It's such a good sketch. Yeah, Tim and Meets one Stop shop. That's, that's really interesting to think about, like just in context of having Rocky Merch. Now that, that damn, yeah, the joke resonated then, but seems so ridiculously outdated. Now, the film Merch is just there for everything, not a single Disney or Star Wars or DC movie comes without a huge pile of merchandise tie ins. So I guess all this merch started to get out there, but I can't imagine there was a hot topic selling it back then. You had to mail order this stuff or, or what, maybe a record store or a bookstore might have it in stock or, or maybe you were lucky enough to have a local store that catered to the obscure. Pretty much. That's how you could find it. But with the eighties rise in consumerism, the ubiquity of teenage American mall culture and the pop culture explosion that was ushered in by the launch of MTV. In 1981 you saw a lot more interest in merchandizing tie ins for films TV. And just other iconic parts of pop culture. In 1983 you saw the mad frenzy shoppers punched and clawed their way towards cabbage patch dolls. Transformer sales reached almost 950 million in the 19 eighties. And as we alluded to before Star Wars redefined the kinds of products that could be brought to market. As Rocky grew into a cult sensation throughout the eighties, it found itself in this landscape of increased consumerism and often what consumers wanted was merchandise about pop culture. One man noticed this trend and his name was or Madden. Madden was a vice president of Children's Place and accessory place divisions at the Federated department stores. And if you don't know the Federated department stores, well, you do. It's a mega corporation that is one of America's largest retail chains stores like Bloomingdale's Birds, Lazarus and Sterns. Madden was a man with a lifelong devotion to contemporary music. And when MTV first made waves in the early eighties, he really realize that there was a huge consumer market for pop culture, inspired apparel and accessories. He saw that while the market was being served by smaller independent local stores, it was being largely overlooked by any of the big national chains. At the end of the decade, Madden and his wife put all of their savings into the opening of the first Hot Topic store located in a mall in Montclair, California. The store sold band t-shirts, music posters and trendy costume jewelry. But his vision for hot topic was far bigger than one store. He wanted hot topic to be a national chain prevalent in every upscale mall. And over the next few years raised over $11 million to open new stores all around the country. And they followed the same pattern as the flagship, a low lit gothic teenage nightclub with inventory that shocked parents and delighted their kids. Yes. So the story of hot topic itself is quite fascinating but long story short, they found a huge success. They kept up with the trends and the stores were just jam packed, not with just shirts but a massive assortment of novelty items. The company formed a huge team of buyers to canvass for new items to feature in the stores. They made sure their products turned over fast. They were always trendy and they hit the shelves, right? As the trend exploded into the pop culture landscape for employees all over the country. If a sales person went to a concert, the company would pay for the ticket if they wrote up a fashion report. The next day, this helped track regional and local trends and fashions. In one case, a hot topic employee attended an all night rave and the next day presented the company with an idea for creating special jeans pockets to store glow sticks. Within months, it was a store exclusive. W why would there be pockets? What's the like? Why do you need a pocket just for glow sticks like a glow stick shaped that in a way that pockets can't handle. You know what I mean? Like regular pants have pockets that you could put glow sticks in. Well, if you're super fucking high and your, your glow stick gets stuck in the bottom of your trip pants pockets, like you gotta put your hand all the way down to your ankle to find that fucker. You know how deep were pockets in the eighties? What I sense you have not worn bondage pants in a while. Yeah. Do you not know how trip pants work? Uh I don't know what either of those are bondage or trip pants. I mean, I assume bondage pants are just like leather. Like no, there's there those big ass canvas like uh like black baggy pants that have like straps all over them and they have like all this kind of like they're just super baggy and like all over the place. I looked up bondage, I looked up trip pants and bondage pants and the image results for both is like exactly the same. What the fuck are they? Is is one of those is a sex thing and one of them is not. No, no, no. So they marketed them as called bondage pants because they have all those strappy bullshit things on them and they're kind of a sex thing because they're really fucking hot. That's only you. Those are some sick pants. Those are, I think the guy from Kingdom Hearts wears those not gonna lie. So by the mid nineties on the back of their bondage pans hot topic had sales of over $44 million and it opened to almost 80 locations nationwide and right around there, this is the early into the mid nineties is where Rocky Horror is suddenly back on the tip of the pop culture bubble. Rocky had endured successfully for the better part of two decades and it was now nearing the 20th anniversary. It had more fans than ever and the fans had proven that they were hungry for merchandise. You saw everything you saw shirts and pins and jackets and comic books and purses and lunchboxes and even those, the, the ever so terrible, those headliner bobble heads, those creepy not fun things. Yeah. And I mean, hot topic stocked a huge variety of this Rocky Merch. It was now by the mid nineties, a property that both kids and their parents recognized. It had nostalgia, but it still appealed to modern pop culture and it had ties to hot topics. Ever evolving alternative music flavor, right? It was first punk and goth and later new metal and emo and so on and so on. And however they got to, I don't know whatever they do now. Anime web stuff. I, I, I, I, I don't know. Yeah. Go, anime web stuff. You also saw hot topics. Main competitor, Spencer's Gifts getting in on the action founded in 1947 as a catalog company, Spencer's had been in the mall retail game since the early sixties acquired by Universal Studios. It grew to over 700 stores in the nineties. Spencers also saw increased demand for pop culture merch and throughout the decade pivoted their inventory to the novelties, clothes, really shitty sex toys, horror figures and those weird electric ball thingies that define the Spencer's experience by the late nineties and the early two thousands, the now largely gen X and millennial Rocky Horror generation was gearing up for the 25th anniversary. A massive opportunity for any merchandizing department. This saw the launch of a whole new line of merch and finally we got toys, uh vital toys launched their line of figures though the run was never completed after the initial three toys were released, Sad Face. Uh This was also when those bendy figures came out and like that big ass talking Frank doll. That thing was actually a Spencer's exclusive. The back of those Bendy figures is a perfect time capsule of the late nineties, early two thousands mall landscape. It was featured at Sun Coast on Q media play and Sam Goody all record or movie stores, mostly C DS and DVD s. By that point, Koala had this kind of uh check out adjacent Choy Crap section, think like uh Barnes and Nobles still has. This is also when we saw those official fox bag costumes. You know those terrible ones that you see every year at Spirit Halloween. Fun fact, it was in 1999 that Spencer's gifts acquired Spirit Halloween. So that's why you saw all the bag costumes and the masks appearing in Spencer's by 2013 Spirit Halloween stores alone comprised about half of the Spencer's gifts total annual company revenue. This sounds more like the heyday that people are talking about when they use hot topic and Rocky Horror in the same sentence. I mean, it really was, you would go to hot topic and they would have Rocky shirts and socks and like figurines. Uh they'd have pins and hats and records and then you'd go dispensers and they'd have more shirts and posters and toys and fucking bag costumes and wigs and both stores already stocked. All the other shit that appealed to the Rocky going sort of people. They became the most obvious place, especially in small town America to shop for generic Rocky crap. Pick up a poster, check out the fish nets, the corsets, maybe find a Columbia Mood ring in their shitty jewelry section. And then they've got all that crazy makeup and the hair dye that you need to get that proper Columbia fake red. Not to mention they had all the other shit we all liked Marilyn Manson t-shirts cartoon Network Merch Nightmare before Christmas tarot cards and of course all those shitty sex toys. But after the 25th anniversary. So this is after around the early two thousands, there just aren't a lot of huge milestones that put a pop culture property like Rocky Horror back at the top of social consciousness. At least not until the 50th anniversary. So as we get into the mid two thousands, the quality and the variety of Rocky products declined and hot topic and Spencers were left with a lot of Rocky Horror stock that they offered at very steep discounts. I feel it's also relevant to point out that we're right around the time when the internet and online shopping start to actually be a huge thing for the vast majority of Americans. Absolutely. I it contributed a ton. So you saw in retail a lot safer choices in Rocky Merch in 2005, you saw the Rocky Horror Trivia game, but that was positioned as a mass market product that appeared in big box stores like Walmart and Target the mall novelty stores also stocked it, but it was far from the exclusives that had showed up during the 25th anniversary. And like probably the best example of this decline in quality is one of the last Spencer's exclusive products from 2007, the Rocky Horror 3d poster. Ok. I've bitched about this thing before. It was, it was basically a shadow box kind of 3d poster of the lips and just the Rocky Horror picture show in, in a blood font, except when Spencer's made this, the lips are flipped horizontally and the font isn't even remotely the official double features. Rocky font. It's actually an experimental version of a Rocky font that was made by a community member was leaked online and was never intended or licensed to be used for official merchandise. This things sold so bad. I remember stacks and stacks of these things just sitting and Spencer marked down to like 10 bucks and I mean, good that the product was fucking terrible. And I've got to say in the last 10 years or so, at least most of the merchandise I'm seeing these days, it's pretty generic. Rocky is kind of an evergreen but still niche property. But seeing as there's no big event to make manufacturers excited, we aren't getting a lot of interesting merchandise. It's further compounded by the fact that pop culture products aren't really a niche market anymore. In fact, I'd almost call pop culture the primary market, at least in a lot of categories. You've got companies like urban Outfitters and forever 21 that both have stocked lines of Rocky horror apparel in the last, I don't know, five years or so. But all of these bigger companies are doing very limited, very safe lines like logo t-shirts, the lips, very iconic, but it's also real generic. You gotta think that it's because they're forced to compete with licensed online retailers like Adam Age, not to mention all the unlicensed stuff that you can find all over Etsy red bubble and any of the t-shirt printing sites. For real. So, what's left for places like hot topic to stock now? Well, they're stuck with the stuff that you see today. Basically fun pops. And I, I, I think part of that is because they've expanded to the point where other parts of the hot topic. Empire have taken over entire product categories. Like Torrid now gets all of the official licensed Rocky logo shirts and bags because yes, Torrid is a subsidiary of hot topic. Well, technically they're separate now but they were whatever, it's not important and hot topic no longer really seems to Overstock to the point of clutter. Like it, it's pretty easy to find almost anything online these days. So why keep a massive inventory for items like that? Like you were saying, Jacob, in some cases, it kind of just is there to serve as window dressing. Like if no one's buying Rocky Horror socks, why keep them around? And I mean, let's be real. I buy a lot of Rocky crap and I do 99% of my shopping for Rocky stuff on ebay or Etsy or Amazon. Right. Like occasionally hot topic will have some cool online exclusive Rocky shirts usually around Halloween. But that's it. They did those sweaters a while back, but those products rarely make it into the stores. Or why would they, it's a limited run. It's seasonal and just easier to sell online than shipping boxes of shirts to retail locations. So, I mean, is the heyday over probably, but I mean, maybe we'll get some cool merch for the 50th. Who knows so far the stage show 50th hasn't launched anything that I've been particularly excited about. What would it have to be? What would you have to learn that a hot topic was selling for you to go? I gotta make my way over to the New Jersey American Dream Mall and get into that hot topic to buy the thing. What's the item? Aaron? Oh, I don't know. Um, something to do with the 50th. That hot topic would stock, that would get me to go to it. Uh, can I get a castle play set? Can I get like a toy Oakley Court Castle? I mean, new figures would always do it right. If you tell me there's an exclusive toy, right? An exclusive action figure, uh, Frank and surgeon gown or something, you know, that, that was like that, that would get me, that would get me there. I, I'd go over and buy 10 of them. I'm a simple man and be a simple kind of man. What about you? Sweetie? What would, what would it take to get you to? I mean, I know you just go over to a New Jersey mall for fun, but like, what would you be like? Ok. I gotta drive there and, well, all right, I gotta take the bus and go get one. What is it? Yeah. First of all, I'll just go to the mall. Like if any of the listeners just want to go to the fucking mall with me, hit me up. You all have my contact information. Uh Let's go. Second of all, you know, what would be great? Something uh that we can wear something that we can use, something that can be a real costume or prop. They just came out, I don't know who they is but somebody in the world just came out with these, uh, Rocky Horror Janet, uh name plate necklaces and they're horrible. Who made them? You just bought one? Um Oh yeah, they were a, uh, they were a blind box for, uh, one of the, one of the big, uh, you know, the online retailers that do like the, the get a box of Horror merch every month or whatever. And yeah, a couple of months back they had the Janet necklaces in them and man, they look like bling like we, we have one, we own one. There's one in this apartment and it looks like you're iced out. Uh, if we could have anything, a Janet necklace, um, a brad bow tie, a Columbia bow tie. Like anything that can be used on stage is a real thing. That would be one less thing for all of the shadow casters everywhere to have to make because it just exists, right? If these manufacturers are going through the trouble of making these items. Let's make them correct. Come on. Like, let's do us all a favor. It, it makes me really think that Spirit of Halloween is going to be our place for that. Right. I hope so. That would be great, man. If they could release some sort of, even if it was like a high end costume line or bag costumes that were even a little better, just help me out. You know. Come on hot topic. We've been together for so long. What about you, Jacob? I know that you aren't exactly hunting. No, I don't worry. I've, I've had you guys answered, I've had time to think about this. All right. What do you, so this isn't like this would never happen. Obviously, like the on the internet channels would be a much easier way to sell this if this ever came about and it wouldn't be sold by hot topic if it ever came into existence. But if hot topic had had a set of magic, the gathering cards that were Rocky horror themed and one of them had Eddie. If there, there was one card that was like an Eddie card, I would be on that shit, like white on a brick painted white on the next bus, no matter how dirty and homeless smelling right into New Jersey American Dream Mall for that magic card. I would, I would fight you for a seat on that dirty homeless bus to get there first. I, that would, you know what? Fuck my answer. That would do it. Come on. Wizards. This feels like less of a pro. Yeah, this is like a, something to take up with wizards of the coast. Why not talk about this? They don't manufacture magic cards. Well, the question was, what is the item that would get me into? Hot topic? Meg and that's the item? All right. I don't, I don't know what to tell you. Hot topic. Magic. They do. They do. I saw them. I saw maybe I'm confusing. One of the many other dystopian hellscape stores that we walked into. Can you imagine if they fucking sold magic cards at hot topic? Um Not, not now. No. Yeah, they don't have enough anime titties on them. I feel like my high school experience would have been so different. All right. Well, there's three awesome awesome options for you guys over at the Rocky Horror Company marketing department. Uh, get on those and wizards of the coast. Yeah. But I mean, if they're gonna do that, you're gonna do it as a secret layer that you gotta pay 100 and $50 for. And you only get six of them and you have to buy it and it's gonna be sold out within 20. And that's our show. As always, we'd like to thank our editor Aaron from Tennessee. We appreciate all your work buddy. If anybody has a question that they'd like us to research for our ask a question segment. Maybe some community news that you'd like us to talk about or even just a cool story to share with the Rocky community. We would love to include it in our show. Just go to our website that's rocky talky podcast dot com and fill out the contact for him to tell us all about it. If you're enjoying Rocky Talkie, please help us out by rating, reviewing and subscribing to the show. And if you want even more rocky talky content, check out our blog at rocky talky podcast dot com and our social accounts on Facebook, youtube and Instagram all at Rocky Talky Podcast. We'll talk to you next week. Bye bye. Did you guys know Spencer's has been fined many, many, many, many times for selling sex toys to people under 18? That's why they don't stock as much of it anymore. Anyway, the more you know, hello to all of you. Unconventional. Conventional. Welcome to Rocky Talkie. I'm meg um ja un unconventional conventions. What did I say? This thing that everyone says wrong, unconventional, conventional. You sound like a damn fool when you say it wrong. That's a conventional list. That's like people who want things to go the regular way, but they want it to go the regular way in a weird way. It's like that I want things to go the right way. The amount of people in the community that say this is wrong drives me fucking bat shit crazy because it makes no fucking sense. And it's not a list of names. Do you have a list of names of everyone who says it wrong? Starting right here with Mr Holy crap. I did not even, it did not even register that. The next line. Was that no longer will the segment be called? That? This is great news listeners? Ah it is. If I, no, you can skip that line then that's perfect. That's perfect. Can you read the line? Can you read the line as it was scripted in this script? Just so our listeners know what came next because I had one comment on this script and it's hilarious. If that's the next thing I have to say it is if I call it that New Jack Box, see it, it was funny. But no, this is way funnier. So we're gonna keep the other one. All right. Remember how Jacob just talked about the Rocky talky money machine, milking him. You don't have to do Jersey dirty like that. The mall isn't that far. It is listeners. It's so far. You have to go all the way to ferry Jersey. I had to take a fucking bus. I've lived in New York City and had friends in New Jersey for several years and I've never in my entire life of even traveling to other countries and states have I had to get on a fucking bus to go anywhere. And for the fucking New Jersey Mall, a bus is, is like fucking requisite. It's either a bus or a car, there's no trains, there's no, there's nothing, there's no New Jersey transit to the New Jersey Mall. It's, it's drivel but it is, wait, I'm gonna, I'm gonna to retake that line and we're going to start from the script again and we can put all this shit in the bloopers and then anyone who listens will know what we actually think. Oh, you wanna go back? Ok. Sure. Yeah, that was, that's fine. Ok. Yeah. Uh It's pronounced orange Julius. I knew I just wanted to see it that way but I'll, I'll record it again if you want daddy. No, not after that. Wait, I can do it better. I got to channel my inner horny. Hm. I'm gonna give a few gig just so we have like like ones to choose from. Ok, I'm all out that one. That's great. Option. Options. You have options, sweetie. Use the good from the first one and the I from the second. Yeah, I think I won't. Hillary Laddin. Oh my God. That almost sounds like Aladdin. If you Hillary Latin, Hillary, Latin, Hillary, Latin, there's Aladdin hiding in your name, sir. That's really cool. Stores like Bloomingdale, Lazarus Sterns and Birds. I don't know any of these except Bloomy. What's that second one? Bird? Yeah, all four of these have stores within two blocks of us. Really? These are all Fifth Avenue stores, dumb ass. I don't know, bi bi, that one may not exist anymore actually. But I don't really know. Sterns either. I don't, I think they do watches or some bullshit. I'm not really sure. Oh, that makes sense. Weird. Electric ball, you know, you know, those four things that they have in the back corner that are like, they look like the top of like uh one of those like a, like a borg maturation chamber or like a recharge station where it's like the, they're like a Tesla thing, but they're on like a ball or a flat disc or something. You just compare one of those electricity things to a borg maturation chamber. Yeah, I mean, they, they used those when they were making the, did you just use a thing? I don't know bo maturation chamber to define a thing. I don't know the light up electric bally thingy. It's a tesla coil at a ball that you could touch and it like sparks towards your finger. That's it. Yeah, it's purple and it, it zaps your finger when you touch it. Yeah. No, I don't think. OK, a pork maturation chamber sounds more fun. So it's what I Googled first and it's a child in goo, what does a child in goo have to do with the tesla? And you could have said the tesla coil thingy where you press your hand in the like the little electricity thingy meets your hand. But the fuck is, this is creepy. This has nothing to do with Tesla. Well, it's right, it's right above it. Yeah. I, I mean, I guess it's probably not the actual match. It's, you know, they use them on the recharge out coves and they have them right above the. Yeah, but this is not, I, I feel somewhere out, someone out there is just gonna be like move on. I, I know what you're talking about. Aaron. So. Sure. Sure. Yeah. You always fight me on Colombia having a mood ring. I feel like I've mentioned that 8000 times and you're always like mm mm She doesn't have a mood ring. It's, she has a ring. It's not actually a mood ring. Most people, it, it, it just has most people. So why did you, why did you write down Mood Ring in the script that you had total control over? Huh? Aaron, what's up with that? Huh? Because most of the community calls it the wrong thing. Oh, so you're just gonna bend to the crowd, I guess, huh? Just when the crowd says it's one way you really like. Yeah. Uh crowd, you're right. I, I understand we all gotta bend sometimes. That's just who you are as a person. OK. I went to a mall in the, in, in the early two thousands. I absolutely care what my peers think. Oh, by the way. Um Bloomingdale is the only store in that list that still exists or has existed in the last 20 years. Wait, that's those stores that you were like, Aaron, what are these stores? And he said, oh my goodness. Oh man, that, er, that's a loss for Aaron. Oh boy. I mean, if she didn't check my facts, I would have gas lit her perfectly. Yeah, I know what stores are on Fifth Avenue.