Full Transcript – Joe Pellettieri – Wild Business Growth Podcast #228

This is the full transcript for Episode #228 of the Wild Business Growth Podcast featuring Joe Pellettieri – Big Mouth Billy Bass, Toy Choreographer. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Joe Pellettieri 0:00
Just to see the reactions, real reactions for the first time that people were just busting out laughing and they push it again and then in the news gonna happen they just kept pushing it

Max Branstetter 0:25
Take me to the river, and welcome back to the Wild Business Growth Podcast. This is your place to hear from a new entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning who’s turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I’m your host, Max Branstetter, Founder and Podcast Producer of MaxPodcasting. And you can email me at to save time with your high-quality podcast. This is episode 228 and today’s oh so very talented and famous or infamous guest is Joe Pellettieri. Joe is the inventor of Big Mouth Billy Bass. The singing fish that took the world by storm swam the world by storm. And he’s also the inventor of several several several several singing and dancing toys including dancing hamsters, all sorts of figurines of famous celebrities and historical figures. The guy just has a knack for inventing toys. In this episode we talk the incredible story of Big Mouth Billy Bass as well as what goes into making a toy or product go absolutely viral. And some insights from the toys that seemingly had potential but didn’t quite make it. It is Billy well it’s it’s actually Joe but it’s kind of Joe and Billy. Enjooooooy the shoooooow!

Aaaaalrightyyyyy we are here with Joe Pellettieri, who you might know from Big Mouth Billy Bass and some other amazing dancing toys that have been deleting people for years and years. Joe thank you so much for joining super excited speak to you today. How you doing

Joe Pellettieri 2:12
good Max How you doing good.

Max Branstetter 2:15
I’m doing good. I’m doing good better better now that I’m speaking with you. But really excited to dive into your calling it the singing and dancing toys design story and I think so many of us so many listening and me myself I can think back to when my family and I first got Big Mouth Billy Bass and delighted where we were in Myrtle Beach on vacation at the time and in the home thereafter. So it’s a very unique and just nostalgic feeling that comes with some of the some of your creations but before we get into that you are a fellow IU Hoosier and Kelley School of Business grad so always always cool speaking with the company there but

Joe Pellettieri 3:00
I was there for the ’81 title. Oh, you were perfect. There is my freshman year my first very first class was a billiards class and Isiah Thomas and Jim Thomas were in the class. Oh my god so I have story actually beat Isiah Thomas and pool we played straight pool we had to play everyone in the class. I crushed them I felt good. It

Max Branstetter 3:22
wasn’t any good at sports

Joe Pellettieri 3:23
right as I beat Isiah Thomas and pool but he wasn’t happy about it.

Max Branstetter 3:28
Oh my god, you should just say you. Do you tell people that you beat Isiah Thomas in 1-on-1?

Joe Pellettieri 3:33
No, that wouldn’t happen.

Max Branstetter 3:36
One on One billiards. We’ll give it to you. Well, that’s awesome. My My parents were actually yeah, I think they were and my parents were both there as well for the 81 title, which is just awesome. My dad will never stop talking about it. And I wouldn’t either who we need another one. But anyway, was in addition to beating Zeke in billiards, is there anything that from your time in Bloomington that foreshadowed that maybe you would get into the toy, your product development space wonder,

Joe Pellettieri 4:06
I have got two finance degrees in a marketing degree I was in a programs I went five years straight through I was substituting MBA classes for undergrad classes and I put doing and I decided like between my fourth and fifth year that I didn’t want to do anything in finance. I’m a very analytical person, but I’m also a creative person. And I wanted to do something that was creative, and I just didn’t see myself, you know, in the finance area. So that’s in I had one class my last year is Professor Thomas Ustadh, who is product management. And I just loved that. I thought that was Yeah, I was fascinated with that class. And basically when I graduate I interview with all the Procter & Gambles, Kimberly-Clark, General Mills, all those guy wanted to be a product manager. Nobody wanted me though, because they wanted people who had work experience because people most people I graduate with went to work and then came back and got their MBA. So those are the people that got hired for those jobs. So I went into retail and it worked out. It did, I

Max Branstetter 5:07
would say so I think you, you stumbled onto a couple of popular things. You did something, right. You hit that a lot with people get into the finance space or accounting spaces. Like there’s excitement at the start, and then you realize, like, Oh, this isn’t for me. So yeah, there’s clearly something that skewed you to that creative and product development side. Like back around that time when you’re in college and early in your career. What was it that sparked an interest in creating designing toys?

Joe Pellettieri 5:32
I’m not sure I just wanted to do it. I remember when I was in high school, I actually was played baseball I stole like a temporary home plate feel bad about it now but and I I painted home sweet home on it. You know, I didn’t really nine put it up on a wall and they go, Yeah, I want to make items like that. It was like the first item I made was at home sweet home played on stolen property. So at that point, it kind of interests me when I was in college. I I had a business wasn’t my idea. I was gonna go back to get my MBA. I went to Lexington, Kentucky and I had a partner and two partners. One I went to school with an IU and one who was like a Student Body President University Kentucky we were starting businesses. But then of that summer realized I needed to work for a company before I could do that because I didn’t really know enough. So I went back and he had this idea, this campus mat. So I sold basically I had these placemats that I gave to all the fraternities and sororities, I print like 30 40,000 of them a month. I went to all the local businesses, I had to sell 18 ads around here, like Domino’s Pizza had bought two spots and ball four and like a flower play. So all different local businesses. And I was just given to return these and sororities and then I did that did like three mats each semester and sold the business when I left. And I liked the idea of being an entrepreneur and doing that never actually became an entrepreneur. I always worked for somebody, but it made sense based on what I was trying to do.

Max Branstetter 6:59
Yeah, definitely. And I think you have lots of entrepreneurial and innovative qualities. I mean, there’s no there’s no questioning that. How far along the way did you start working with Jimmy?

Joe Pellettieri 7:10
While I was in retail for 13 years, I was venture stores in St. Louis and Dominick’s Finer Foods in Chicago and they damaged finer foods. They had 100 Some stores, they were opening up a division called Omni superstore. That was like 100,000 square foot store way bigger than a dominant store at least double the size of most of them. But it was had 20,000 square feet of general merchandise non food stuff. That’s what I did. I bought that liquor and seasonal candy. So other things. And so that was over all the all the different categories. And so I’ve learned a lot about businesses and I didn’t ever have five buyers working for me at the end, but I didn’t have enough people. So I ended up so always bought seasonal and toys. Those are like to be the hardest categories to buy. Because you had to be right you didn’t you couldn’t react when once you got it if it didn’t sell, you know, you’re stuck. And but they kind of closing the division, had to get a job and actually took a job in Washington DC. I was working. I was going to work for Ron Ziegler who was the press secretary for President Nixon when he was president. He was he headed up national association to train Chain Drugstores she’s excuse me, and they CDs and I guess I would have worked with programs with the different retail chains, I would have probably been lobbying congressman or something like that I would have worn a white shirt, I would have been a bureaucrat. And then three days after I took that job, Jimmy Collins had her interview with them and they offered me a job and has decided do I want to be a bureaucrat or want to make toys and so I went to Toy route.

Max Branstetter 8:45
It’s so funny that you mentioned that. You gotta be right with toys we had on Episode 204, which my wife Dana always gives me shit for I did look this number up. I don’t remember them all anymore. But we had Carlton Calvin on who basically brought the Razor scooter to the US and you know, another product that just took everything by storm. And he had invented so many products, or, like, you know, commercialize so many products before that, and he’s just like, yeah, a lot of them are like viral very quickly, and then totally disappear. And then some just don’t get any attention. And it’s like, you just don’t sometimes you’re right, sometimes you’re wrong.

Joe Pellettieri 9:23
It was hard to predict. Sometimes you think it was gonna be really good and it’s just okay, and sometimes an item. Let’s try it and then it takes off and he’s just people, you know, you really can’t forecast it. It’s just you’ve got everything’s got to click for it to work.

Max Branstetter 9:41
So let’s get a little fishy. Sorry, my under under the sea puns, but big big mouth, Billy Bass. So I would I would say Billy is an icon in the world of toys and gifts and whatever industry you want to call it but so much nostalgia there and just record say polls and attention and PR and everything in that standpoint. So, how in the world did you first get an inkling of an idea for this friendly fishy guy?

Joe Pellettieri 10:11
Okay, so when I when I, when I went to Jimmy I went my title was like director of retail development or some BS title. I mean, I just wanted to get in the door and make toys. You know, that’s that was my goal. So when I went there, I would, you know, someone left like the person did the music left. So I’ll do that license, were loud, do that. And I started doing everything. And I was involved in all the product development meetings. And I remember one time I sent an email with like, 10 items, you know, just 10 different ideas. And I still have that immediate email. Because if I look back on it, like seven of those items became big kids. For us. It was like the first 10 ideas I threw out there. And so I started working on them. And number seven on that list was big mouth, Billy Bass. I mean, it was It wasn’t my initial idea. My wife and I were driving, we saw Bass Pro, and we’re thinking about, you know, brainstorming, and look, we do kind of She goes, Well, how about a fish on a plaque singing? That’s a good idea. So I kind of put it down, it became one of those 10 items. It just took us back a year to get that thing done. I mean, it was it was it was horrible. It was a clownfish. It just wiggled on the plaque. And it we probably would have sold some but it had been horrible. So I, I just I decided there’s something there. And so I remember I was in in Hong Kong, I would go a week before all the salespeople Go me and the creative director and we would set up the showroom, I would have in my part, I would go into China and work get make sure all the products get out of China and Hong Kong, and he would set them up in the Hong Kong showroom. Well, my last day I went to the Hong Kong showroom, and I saw the fish for the first time done. I mean it is it took a year and it just it was very slow. No one wanted to do it. And it was up on the wall put up on the wall. I looked at it for like 10 minutes. And then I just took it down off the wall, took a train back into China was going back home the next day. So I had to get back to Hong Kong and everything. But I just said can you make the head turn? And and that’s that’s that kind of did it. And once once the head turned it became an item. I mean, the people just took him by so much by surprise. And that was that was the hook that head turning.

Max Branstetter 12:12
Oh my god. So there’s a couple of key insights there. head turn. I definitely want to talk about before that Bass Pro Shop. So what what was it about Bass Pro Shops that, like gave you the image of a fish on a plaque in the first place?

Joe Pellettieri 12:26
Well, you look at their logo, if you go to drive by Bass Pro store, their sign is a big bass fish.

Max Branstetter 12:33
Think about that. Yeah, it could be a brand sponsorship there.

Joe Pellettieri 12:37
And they were the first person when we when we launched it, we launched it. We’re very smart about it. We launched it to all the specialty retailers first because we knew once we went into Walmart and Target those people the price point would be driven down and then they couldn’t be in on it. So we gave him like a six month headstart and basketball was the first was like Cracker Barrel and Spencer Gifts and KB Toys and people like that. But the problem is it sold so well that we told him you know we’re gonna sell it the mass now, but they came back anyway. Yeah, they don’t care. I mean, he’s he was selling so fast. And some of them got hurt at the end because only lasted about a year. And so at the end, Someone got hurt with excess inventory, because they kept coming back to the well. And even though we told him, which you don’t normally do in business, you know, don’t buy it. But they did anyway,

Max Branstetter 13:22
shout out Cracker Barrel. My wife, Dana always says they have the best apple butter. I don’t know why that came from. She didn’t even sound like that. But she doesn’t impress. But okay, so so there’s the idea. And then so the head turn or head flip. Now, I would call it an iconic or infamous head turn, which I hadn’t thought about it. But when you do think back to, you know, brand new big mouth, Billy Bass, the fact that it moves in, like looks at you, I don’t know what just like strike something inside you like, oh, wow, this is something different or something fun. So that’s, that’s a really key insight, what went into the technical side of actually making sure that you know, it could move like that and do it at the proper time to the song then all that? Well, I

Joe Pellettieri 14:09
do like I pretty much choreograph all the movements of all the items I’ve done. So with that one. Soon, as he turns and he’s saying is taking to the river. That’s the first thing he thinks to you, you know, please take me to the river, the timing, and a lot of that a lot of the animated toys I’ve done. It’s just a pause here or there. If you got two motors, you make this motor move here, this motor move here, like on the fish, it starts with just the tail wagging. And then and then it turns and then the mouth moves. So there’s three movements in it. And at the time again, again, there’s like a gorilla singing hot, hot, hot. It’s just going side to side. I mean, there wasn’t this kind of expertise out there. And so my engineers did a great job and they I had every one of my engineers when I asked them to turn the head and then I guess one of them figured it out how to do it and it just took off from there.

Max Branstetter 14:58
This is a song so Yeah, Take Me to the River, which is hilarious how you’re staring at this fish and first thing, it’s, it’s singing, it’s preaching to take me to the river. And you know the song is, Don’t Worry, Be Happy. Both of them. I think you have different feels to it, but the they just fit so well with Billy and the product and the toy. What other songs did you consider that didn’t make the final fish?

Joe Pellettieri 15:23
Then? Basically, it was always taken once my wife suggested the idea. I think I shot back there. Yeah, could sink Take Me to the River. You know, that’s the thing and probably more of the talking heads version than the Al Green version. But I think the green version was better. The other song, don’t worry be happy. That was the owners idea. He came up with this. This is put two songs in it. And so that was a good choice too. So they both worked. But But then again, we did so many spin offs. So after the bass, I mean, we had a cat fish, we have shark we had the shark with the jaws theme. cat fish, I can’t remember there’s just a slew of songs. We had a lobster, sing a couple songs. So a lot of there’s many songs after that in knock offers and we knocked ourselves off. Basically,

Max Branstetter 16:06
I’m imagining a lot of B-52’s references with the lobster, Rock Lobster.

Joe Pellettieri 16:12
Hit that song It tried, they wouldn’t give us the rights to it. So we couldn’t use it. So I think I put I did John Fogerty “Sea Cruise” or, you know, the and then there was another song and a two I can’t remember.

Max Branstetter 16:23
What was the process for getting the licensees to or licenses however you pronounce that to the two songs you actually used?

Joe Pellettieri 16:30
Well, it’s just you got to get the publishing rights, we always rerecord everything. That’s why I totally quit, it took over the music because then we had it, we couldn’t use the master because that was another license, you know, to be used the master recording with Al Green’s voice that is going to cost you twice as much or more. So we would just get the rights of the song put in there. And we’ve worked with publishers, I mean, Jimmy had already started that, then I took over that process for the rest of my time at Jimmy and then the other companies too, that I’ve been at, and you just know how to work with the publishers. I mean, if something’s really big, you can offer more money to get a lower rate, you know, or he can threaten that, you know, if you know, give me this rate, I got these five other songs I can do, I’m just giving you first shot at a type of thing. So there’s different negotiating tools. But they weren’t going to say no, after it started selling us for sure.

Max Branstetter 17:21
And we see that in the podcast world too. It’s like, music is important part of podcasts and has personality to it. And yes, if you want, you can, you know, spend hundreds of 1000s or millions or whatever it is to get like actual recordings from the big name artists. But it’s far more feasible from the budget standpoint to use music that you can license that like a much lower cost that kind of resembles the style of music or things like that. But you got some really, really good versions for Billy. Yeah, I’ve

Joe Pellettieri 17:50
got over the years all the different cat. We did like hip hop Frogz and Dancing Hamsters, and there were hundreds of songs in these. And I mean, the frogs were a hip hop song. And those are really tough to get because there’s like one rider, there’s like six, seven riders on each song and whoever’s in the room and they wrote the song gets a writing credit. So you got to get all of them to agree. You know, so we got a lot of top songs too. But the most important thing is this familiar people liked the song, they know the song, the classics work, but you got to get getting a mix in new songs as well. So we did a good job over the years there of doing the old and the new songs, depending on what we were putting it in.

Max Branstetter 18:26
You mentioned Yeah, at some point, it’s time to start selling the thing. So we’d love to dive into the world of Billy kind of taken over the world in terms of sales. What was the sales strategy? When when you and the company first started pitching Billy to different outlets?

Joe Pellettieri 18:43
Well, we there’s no advertising we didn’t do any advertising. It’s all word of mouth. So I’ll try try me is a big part of everything that I’ve done if basically the idea is to get them to push the button, get them to smile and like the first five to seven seconds and then you got him you know, you know, you get them to you got to do a quick he can’t wait to like 20 seconds and in the song. They’re throwing the hook and you got to get it in early. Yeah, so there’s no and no marketing budget. So it’s just once you start got in and started selling now the first the first versions, we didn’t do try me yet we’d hadn’t hadn’t developed the primary package. So it was a closed box version. But we were doing especially retailers, they could all display it, they would take it out one out of the box, put batteries in it and display it in the store. But then we develop the trial version, we sent it to Walmart, Target and Kmart and those people

Max Branstetter 19:30
there’s not I mean, just hearing the words try me makes me want to push a button and hear music. What was the first indication that Billy Bass was starting to take off?

Joe Pellettieri 19:43
before it ever sold in the store? I knew it was huge because I was I was over like all the sports stuff. We did NFL and college and MLB and stuff. So we were at the sporting goods show in I think it’s Orlando, it was Orlando. We so we just play it Jimmy had a booth It was mostly the all the sports items just like a gorilla waving a pennant for baseball and a football player, you know, dancing or whatever, we build up a one hole like side of just big monopoly batteries just masked out Billy Bass. Everybody who came and they brought their family the next day. I mean, I mean, it’s just people keep well, it was just like constant line. All the other vendors around me were kind of ticked because I mean, everyone was our booth, just to see the reactions, real reactions for the first time that you’d be able to just busting out laughing and then push it again. And then then the new was gonna happen. They just kept pushing it. So when I saw that ago, I didn’t think this thing’s gonna work.

Max Branstetter 20:44
Was there a point where it started to feel like you were gaining media attention as well?

Joe Pellettieri 20:50
Oh, yeah, I was. I mean, I was on in People Magazine and Washington Post wall says on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Like the article was the picture was on page six, but I can’t say it was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Yeah, so there were a bit it was a short lived and then because it but it was it died so fast. I mean, it was said it’s only lasted a year. And then it’s just time to move on. You know, I got tired of it after a while because I was developing like dancing hamsters and Pop Code, these other things that, you know, I had cred now I can pretty much do what I want it, you know, they weren’t gonna say no, at this point, you know, you know, so I was just, you know, you move on, you know, I, I turned down a lot of requests, I could have been on game shows, and all this stuff I didn’t want to do that was going to, if that thought it could help the business, I would do it, but it wasn’t gonna help the business at that point.

Max Branstetter 21:37
I appreciate you playfully accepting this interview request, and not throwing me to the woods. But that’s the that’s the reality with viral toys and viral sensations is it’s amazing and growing and growing. But at a certain point, you know, it comes to an end or starts to decrease or

Joe Pellettieri 21:56
the hotter an item gets quicker dies, usually, you’d like to sustain it a little bit of his sudden is a flash in the pan. Sometimes it doesn’t doesn’t make it very long.

Max Branstetter 22:05
What is it to you that makes the toy in general, go viral?

Joe Pellettieri 22:10
It’s hard to say no one really knows. I’ve read these. You know, I’ve read a lot I read. I used to read a lot. Now listen to more podcasts. But I read a lot of nonfiction, a lot of history books, and people have how to make a blockbuster toy and on the net get like 30 way through the bug. These guys don’t know what they’re talking about. They never made a hot toy. And you got to learn to prioritize. First of all, because we’re working on quite a few things. I tell people I fail more than anybody I know. Because I’ve tried more than anybody I know. I’ve had a lot of items that that didn’t work. But the ones that did you build on those and he said you got X amount of bandwidth. So you can’t work on everything you got to know when to Okay, I got to stop working on this because I don’t see it. But again, the as I said before, it’s a smile if I can get people to laugh. But I developed it was different than most of my competition. A lot of people start with the character they’ll start with the Santa Claus or snowman and what we haven’t do because I’m saying that’s the last thing I think about is the character I think about the mechanism movement, you know, in the case of animated toys, and then the song that can go with it that matches the movement and then you can try to find a character that does it like for the dancing hamsters dance. We sort of Lot dancing hamsters, we sell well over 100 styles. It lasted for quite a few years. We made a collectible made a series. It just did really well.

Max Branstetter 23:29
Who doesn’t love a dancing hamster? Didn’t you have like a kung fu hamster

Joe Pellettieri 23:33
as well? Yeah, that was the biggest one where it’s been. It’s been the nunchucks I didn’t I didn’t know I was gonna do a hamster. When I did that. I was challenged. The engineer said I wanted at that point, all the plushies bigger. I wanted something small. I wanted the smallest piece of animation out there. Yeah, then come up with several different movements for it. And then we’ll build a line with it. And I was told no. So many times. I mean, these is no you can’t do it can’t do it can’t do it. I go wait a minute, you can make this mouse move on this piece. You can make the shoulder move on this bat. So I’m pretty persistent at times if I think I’m right. And so we did it. We decided to make it hamsters. And it worked. And then the Kung Fu was one of the mechanisms we did we had this spinning nunchucks and then we had him go left. Blank is boxing too. And that was it was a good item.

Max Branstetter 24:23
Good items all around. And if you’re interested in invention, entrepreneurship stories like this, and you also find yourself interested in podcasting, maybe, maybe you want to start a podcast one day or you already have a podcast of your own or for your business. The Podcasting to the Max newsletter is for you. It is where podcasting meets entrepreneurship. And you can sign up at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. You might even see Big Mouth Billy Bass making its way into the newsletter. Yeah, you never know you really just never know. Now, let’s get to a bit more of the genius behind shows singing and dancing toy inventions. That transition swimmingly pun intended. You have, as you mentioned, invented and been a big part in so many toys. Obviously Billy Bass, you’ve got the dancing hamsters, hip hop frogs is, I think, a new personal favorite. And didn’t you have you had some figuring was it Abbott and Costello, you had?

Joe Pellettieri 25:25
Yeah, I had a Pop Culture series. And that started. James Brown was the first in that series. And basically, we had this hip swinging module that we were someone else started it, but we had our own hip swinging module. And it was like a 12 inch piece with normal normal body configuration. And I had two engineers, Chinese engineers that worked in the Dallas office, and I would meet with them a couple of times a week. And I was sitting at their desks and say, I had the hip swing module, and there was this big skeleton head over on the right. And I said, well put that skeleton, head on it and show me so they did. It was exaggerate was pretty cool. We’re gonna go now make the mouth move. Okay, now make the shoulders move, you know, and all sudden, it was cool. And so James Brown’s manager called me before this, and I said, I can’t I don’t have anything for you. No, sorry. And then I called him back. I said, I think I got the perfect piece for it. This would be a great James Brown. And the one thing with licensing sometimes when you do sculpted pieces is so hard to get them approved, because the likeness has to be exactly alike. And you go back and have to use their sculptors. I mean, it’s just a real process can really drag out, but by making these big heads or caricatures now, and so I started with James Brown than it did Dean Martin. Bing Crosby both has Christmas and then every day, Rodney Dangerfield, Abbott and Costello, Lucy doing the Vitameatavegimen, Luis Armstrong, Hank Williams Jr. There’s a lot it was a big series. It was running the same time as the hamsters and I thought the pop culture would end up being bigger than the hamsters, but I think the hamsters just outlived them a little bit longer.

Max Branstetter 27:03
Isn’t that there was some, like the hamster song as well. Hamster dance.

Joe Pellettieri 27:08
Yeah, I actually put that in one in the second we did. A couple years later, we did a second generation little called mini hamsters, even smaller versions. And I worked with the guy who control that song. He wanted. I didn’t want to do a license piece. But I said, let me just put that song and it worked out though. So we worked as I put the hamster dance into the dancing hamsters, but I believe the dancing hamsters came first. I don’t think the hamster dance was came after the dancing hamsters, I believe I’m not 100%. Sure.

Max Branstetter 27:36
Yeah, that’s, that’s another song that constantly gets stuck in your head. It’s like the BK Whopper commercial at the time of this recording. Sorry, everyone. But I’m fascinated by your approach of how I mean, even going back to Billy Bass of how, like you had a pretty cool and fun toy. But you were thinking like, how can we make this better? And that’s where the head turn came in. Same thing with James Brown of like, Oh, if he can move in this different way. So like, you have a real knack for identifying seemingly small tweaks that make a big difference? How do you go about that to like, keep your mind open for enhancements like that.

Joe Pellettieri 28:15
I like change. I just like new things. And I just, like keep trying things. And, you know, I’m very, very analytical person, you know, I got a kind of unique blend of analytics and creative. And I really dive in to understand the business, you know, what’s selling, what price point you have, where’s the merchandise, color, size, you know, whatever, what types of characters. So I’m, I’m really, I kind of dig deep into it. And a lot of people I compete with, they’re very creative, and they’re a lot of artists, and they can build a spreadsheet to save their life. And yeah, me I’m, I’m building all these Excel sheets, and you know, you know, managing, managing everything through analytics, basically, you know, anything after after time, I got a good memory, I guess I remember what’s selling and I just kind of build on what worked. Okay, if this worked. And then we can do this. But also, I spend a lot of time in stores. I like to go to department stores and specialty stores, not necessarily mass stores, and look at some of the new things that they’re doing. It’s a well, that’s great there. But what if we took it then did this make it like half the price and made it move or change it this way? So it just kind of I look at things differently because I look at something and say what what can it be not what it is?

Max Branstetter 29:31
i You have me thinking back to our Kelley roots because I majored in entrepreneurship. And one of the classes probably one of my favorite entrepreneurship classes was basically focused on how to get ideas. I think it’s Venture Ideas. And our professor said like really early on, like, look is extremely hard to come up with a brand new idea like damn near impossible to come up with a brand new idea. But if you can take existing ideas and put your own spin on it or combine them multiple ideas together. That’s where the magic happens. So that’s ties exactly back to what you’re saying about going to different stores and saying, Oh, if we could do that, we could do that. And you could build off of it.

Joe Pellettieri 30:10
Yeah. And a lot of times, it doesn’t hit me right away. I mean, I, you know, but the smartphone area, I just take a picture of everything, I’m taking picture of something. And I’ll just put it in a folder. And when I’m ready to do like the Halloween line, or the Christmas line or develop toys, then I’ll kind of pull out that folder and look at everything and think about it again, give it a second second run through. And some of them, you know, go well, yeah, I like that. What did I like about that? And then, you know, just kind of build from there.

Max Branstetter 30:37
So besides randomly going into stores, and taking pictures of stuff. I’m not trying to paint you as a stalker just now.

Joe Pellettieri 30:47
I’ve had to apologize. I didn’t take a picture of you, I took a picture of that item. Might be a customer, I didn’t take one of you.

Max Branstetter 30:56
In addition to that, and exploring and kind of seeking after things that are new, what do you do in your free time that helps you stay creative and brainstorm?

Joe Pellettieri 31:05
Well, one thing and one thing that has helped with my, my lines is music. I love music, and they all all kinds of music from you know, the old standards to hip hop, you know, whatever, I pretty much Listen, I don’t really listen to a lot of, you know, country country and maybe some Texas country. So except for but I have done quite a few items with country music, you know, in you because I still understand what was what the hits are and what I kind of like in those genders. So the music is a big part, a big history, I’ve done a lot of reading and a lot of history. I listen a lot of podcasts like Dan Carlin and Patrick Wyman on different history eras learning about the Greeks or dawn of man or the Middle Ages or whatever. They always want to learn new things and try to fit the pieces together. You know, hey, I don’t know much about the late 1800s. Let me go listen to a couple of podcasts or read a book on that. So learn about that. See how that fits into the two areas I do know. So that’s I think history, loving history. I don’t know if it helps me build it, but it keeps me sane. And also, I’m 61 years old, and I still play full court basketball three times a week. And most of the guys are 3040 years younger than me and I can still hang with them. So they think he’s my competitor. I’m pretty competitive person. And I like to win and I can still go out there and score and somebody, it’s, I enjoy it.

Max Branstetter 32:28
I’m getting on the next flight to Texas and playing basketball because we I miss playing basketball actually, recently, the time of this recording, we were down in Florida, my wife’s family’s community and there’s a basketball court there. No one was on the court and a ball was sitting there. So I picked it up and started shooting around and realize, man, I really miss playing basketball. The downside of not playing in years is that I think I was like one for 40 from the free throw life. I got some work to do.

Joe Pellettieri 32:57
But the thing is best I just never stopped playing. So I always say I want to play going forward. I got to four to go. Let’s go to 50 and the 50 Well, let’s go to 60 and I don’t think I can make it to 70 but I want to hang on as long as I can. Yeah. So I can still get up and down the court. So it works. Yeah, you

Max Branstetter 33:12
can you could get it your dunkin’ like Mac McClung out there.

Joe Pellettieri 33:19
Let’s

Max Branstetter 33:20
switch gears a bit. This is a second segment that is extremely unique to you. So we’re going to try it out. But this is I’m really fascinated just to hear about a few toys they could be singing dancing toys, or just toys in general that you worked on that you thought would be a big hit and it didn’t pan out for some reason.

Joe Pellettieri 33:39
What happened to I try I had this item called the Pig Wigs and there is basically they were pigs they started plus on a sculpted them and when they made the baby soft PVC super squishy. And they had different hats and there was the technology where if you plug in the hat, it’s got it reads it and and tells you which hat that is. So if you put put in a chef hat or sing a certain song or put it in a cowboy hat or sing a country song or have different sayings and stuff like that, I thought it was pretty creative and it didn’t work. There’s others like that too. It’s just you know, no, you know, just that was wrong on that one. They were called pigs pig wigs.

Max Branstetter 34:23
What is it that you think that didn’t pan out for those?

Joe Pellettieri 34:26
I don’t know may I’m saying maybe because they were pigs but there’s been Peppa Pig and all these other big things toys. You know?

Max Branstetter 34:33
My mom’s a Peppa Pig superfan. Yeah,

Joe Pellettieri 34:35
so maybe it wasn’t the pig maybe it was just allows the idea.

Max Branstetter 34:40
What are some other ideas that maybe had some potential or novelty that for whatever reason didn’t go viral?

Joe Pellettieri 34:47
Well, I did licensing, you know, my whole time at Jimmy you know, for the most part. And you know, I always wanted to get the Elvis license. When I started. We had a Jimmy had had an L was figuring that he had like a gold satin jacket and he was on a bass team he moves slow and it was an actual sculpt took them like years to get the scope right for Elvis to approve it and and so it didn’t work I mean it was expensive and so I want I wanted to make Elvis work I’m an Elvis fan. I’m my brother in law plays an Elvis Tribute band. I mean, the band that everyone all the Elvis impersonators hire to do play so he I know a lot about Elvis. You know, I’ve watched This Is Elvis many times with him on his couch in St. Louis. At nighttime, but so I did put a business plan together and it was like the best business plan I ever put together. It was like on the I wanted to do hound dogs singing Elvis songs. It was saying the original version of the song would be Elvis, his voice. I had like three different or started out three different ways like fit 1956 Elvis had three dogs from 1956 I had movie Elvis, like three dogs in there. And then there’s another one I can’t remember. But, you know, they look great. And they sounded great. It didn’t sell why didn’t the some of I sold them into Walmart. And so I’m gonna keep b I sold them into quite a few people and they sold but it was just okay. Thinking back after analyzing the after, why didn’t they sell I think it was probably because the price point where I was selling the dancing hamsters, right? Under 10 bucks the frogs under 10 bucks these things because it had the Elvis license it had the publishing rights to the song license, they had the Elvis master recording license had three licenses on it. So something that probably should have been, you know, 999 to 1299 was like 1499. And I think the price point, you know, privacy matters. You know?

Max Branstetter 36:42
I think that’s the harsh reality if it’s if you can’t sell this then it’s it’s it’s not selling maybe maybe with the the more recent Elvis movie that came out maybe it will there’ll be a second lifer for Elvis toys like that. I’m realizing in hindsight now that this segment is like putting you through torture, so appreciate you hanging in, go into the products that I thought would work, but

Joe Pellettieri 37:07
I just can’t remember there’s so many that didn’t work. I really had to think about it a little bit.

Max Branstetter 37:13
What’s the protocol for a toy that doesn’t live up to expectations? Like how quickly do you pull the plug on that?

Joe Pellettieri 37:21
Well, you would know we typically get sales data from retailers so you will see the sell sell throughs and if you can, you know initially if it’s not working, don’t don’t push it because you know, sometimes you have to get too bent on the retail you don’t have to get marked down money. There’s other things in the negotiations too, but you don’t want to push something that’s not going to really take off so we had so many other things in the hopper. So okay, Elvis dogs don’t work you know, forget this move on to these three things.

Max Branstetter 37:48
It sounds fair. I mean, you said it at the beginning like you’re hoping that you make stuff that that works and really takes off and like it really needs to take off to be sustainable in this toy space. It sounds like a surprisingly high pressure job to be in the toy space. How do you how do you handle the kind of do or die mentality there? You gotta

Joe Pellettieri 38:07
be right you know and you are you are you got to cut bait when when you know you’re wrong. Yeah, so you’re not working on on the wrong things.

Max Branstetter 38:15
Appreciate the bait pun. That was nice. Yeah, I

Joe Pellettieri 38:19
develop like now I pretty much just do seasonal products I have other divisions in my company that do the toy products and so I’ll develop I’m working on Halloween and Christmas 2024 So I’ll come up with over 200 items for each category. And a lot of them are brand new items you said it’s hard to get a brand new item but it’s I’ve been doing it for so long I’ve just it’s just I have a knack for doing it because I’ve been doing it for a while but not all of them are just brand spanking new some are just okay this is old this is like a line refresh or a line extension of what we did before we take this take this and now do this with it. So there’s there’s a there’s a reference for everything usually and send that some of them are just was just off the wall brand new things to you know in seasonal you don’t have a chance to reorder if something was great if set the burden in and blows out right away. You don’t have time because it’s all coming from China you don’t have time to get it back into the stores so you got it you try to maximize it the next year well the problem is by time you get to next year all your competition saw you had an item that really blew out in the stores and they’re all knocking it off to get knocked off by so many I’ve been in so many like trade fairs and stuff for I’ve seen my items they’ll take my exact item and they’ll you know they’re put a different base on or something like that. Or I go to Module factories it’s funny, you know, and they would modules you know the animations and they would show me all their items new items ago. I did that 10 years ago no no no, this is ours. We know this is brand new. Oh no. That’s my that’s in the same song I put in it. Yeah. This is pretty obvious, is that you just kind of roll with it. I mean, you can’t do do anything about it, none of the stuff I do is really patented. I mean, it’s all. I mean, you just got to stay a step ahead of competition. That’s why you got to do something new the next year if you do the same thing next year as you did last year, it’s going to do worse. You got to you got to constantly move forward and try to try different things.

Max Branstetter 40:16
Imitation is the greatest form of flattery than you are like the most flattered person of all time. Sure, there’s more. Alright, let’s wrap up with some Rapid-Fire Q&A. Ready for it? Sure. All right, let’s get Wild! You have had some pretty cool pickups just in terms of pop culture and TVs movies, entertainment world and when it comes to big mouth belly bass, what is the one that like totally caught you off guard? Like is this real?

Joe Pellettieri 40:46
Like think like with the bass when I wouldn’t President Bush is given one or no, President Clinton gave it to Al Gore and Queen Elizabeth on the front page, you know, playing with a fish. It was just it was it was pretty cool. You know?

Max Branstetter 41:01
That’s making some headlines. Are you able to eat fish to this day?

Joe Pellettieri 41:07
I’ve never been a big fish fan. It’s I’m Catholic. And this is you know, Lent, I can’t eat meat on Friday and I dread Fridays.

Max Branstetter 41:17
Oh, man, that’s great. real irony there. And are you able to listen to those two famous or infamous songs to this day?

Joe Pellettieri 41:27
Yeah, I do. I like Al Green’s got a song called “Rhymes” that I just played the other day. It’s just it’s just just such a great song. And I like that type of like that soul music. Yeah. So no, I have no problem with that. I made Al Green a lot of money. I tell you that he got he got a big royalty checks from Big Mouth Billy Bass.

Max Branstetter 41:47
That’s awesome. Doing good there. What’s the funniest story you’ve ever heard about someone’s interaction with Big Mouth Bill bass?

Joe Pellettieri 41:56
I don’t really I know, there was a story where a burglar got caught because the motion sensor he activated the motion sensor and Billy and then and then the people heard them in the basement or something like that, or whatever. There’s a lot I don’t know is it’s over 20 years now since the since Billy was popular. So this starts to fade. I have to I’ve moved on to other things. So I don’t I don’t reminisce as much as other people do sometimes.

Max Branstetter 42:25
And speaking of over 20 years, which was less but the ’81 National Champion Indiana Hoosiers, what’s your favorite memory from the celebration of that championship?

Joe Pellettieri 42:36
Not a lot because I was actually in Hell Week in my fraternity I couldn’t go out so maybe one of the guys actually snuck out I wasn’t brave enough to I didn’t want to you know there wasn’t like hazing or anything like that but you didn’t do it and so we want to watch the game but we didn’t go out afterwards is probably okay because my my roommate ended up getting arrested and spent the night in jail for celebrating so maybe it was a good thing I didn’t go to that one.

Max Branstetter 43:06
God that that is a legendary time to have Hell Week. I can’t believe that Wow. All right. Well, it was you didn’t end up in jail. Yeah, you got a story to tell. Yeah, my dad always talks about there were people like you know climbing trees and all in the fountains and I Oh, that’s where the fish the fish got stolen too right?

Joe Pellettieri 43:23
Oh, it did it I didn’t I didn’t remember that. I think it was tied back

Max Branstetter 43:27
to is a whole legend of the fish in that Showalter Fountain getting stolen but great times. Well, Joe, thank you so much. This has just been absolutely amazing and fallen astrologer and insight and fascinating and endlessly grateful for you and Billy and dancing hamsters and hip hop frogs and everything. So thanks so much for coming on. Where’s the best place for someone to connect with you or learn more about you if they’re interested? Well, I

Joe Pellettieri 43:52
do I have a YouTube I’ve had several YouTube channels like one for dandy one for occasions and I have one just for me. It’s just Joe P but there’s a some music artists whose name is Joe P. And if you put in Joe P you’ll never find me. It’s all his music videos and stuff. So if you just type in Gemmy prototype or Occasions Prototype, and then you’ll see some of them and so I kind of talk about some of these items to kind of like the behind the scenes of the reason why we created them. I’ll show some old videos that I have. And I’ll show some same old samples. I don’t have a ton of samples, but I have some. And then I’m on Twitter too, but that’s more for sports.

Max Branstetter 44:31
I’m with you. And so Gemmy is spelled with a G at the start and actually in prep for this interview. You sent me a really cool clip from the German show GALILEO that has awesome coverage of you and some actually you and some kind of like a an artistic rendition of you and your development.

Joe Pellettieri 44:51
Yeah, I did that I did a couple years ago with them and it was it was nice, but they do have these actors coming on and, and and portraying me and the He put me in a ponytail like drawing drawing at the art table. I can’t draw. I have no artistic talent whatsoever. I mean, so I’m a designer that can’t draw, but I just know what I like. I know what looks good. I know how to give them references, you know what I want? And then I’ve worked with artists to get what I want, but I’ve never drawn a thing in my life. So that was really it’s fiction.

Max Branstetter 45:23
Obviously, something about you just screams “Hey, I used to have a ponytail.” Yeah, so it’s in. It’s all over YouTube now. But Joe, thanks again. Last thing, Final Thoughts, stage is yours can be a quote, Words To Live By just kind of words of advice, whatever you want. Send us home here.

Joe Pellettieri 45:39
I remember I had a product development class product management class in Indiana, Professor Thomas Hustad I really liked he had one quote there. He always put it up on the overhead projector was never tried to teach a pig to sing and waste your time and annoys the pig. And I’ve always I’ve used that quote a lot over the years I thought that was pretty good quote.

Max Branstetter 45:59
Maybe that’s why Pig Wigs didn’t work out when it came down to it

Joe Pellettieri 46:02
Probably why I did the Pig Wigs in the first place. So he steered me wrong.

Max Branstetter 46:09
We got seeing pigs seeing fish Joe going coast to coast for the game winning layup or slam dunk. Joe, thank you so much for coming on the podcast sharing the incredible Big Mouth Billy bass story, your toy inventing journey. And thank you, Wild Listeners, for tuning in to another episode. If you want to hear more Wild stories like this one, make sure to follow the Wild Business Growth Podcast on your favorite app and tell a friend about the podcast and then sing the famous songs of Big Mouth Billy Bass with them and you know, just don’t worry about it be be happy and take them to the river. You can also find us on Goodpods. And for any help with podcast production, you can learn more at MaxPodcasting.com and sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. Until next time, let your business Run Wild…Bring on the bongos!!