You forgot some steps with the heat shrink tubing: You cut a piece, you solder the connection, you see that you forgot to put on the cut tube first, you unsolder the connection, you put the tube on the wire, it shrinks because the unsoldered wire was not cooled down enough, you rip it off, cut a new piece, slide it on the wire, solder the connection, slide it over the still hot solder joint where it shrinks on good enough... 😉

Hi Scott! I had this exact toy back in 1969. The moment you showed the plastic toys and the “machine” my brain went back 55 years to a great memory. THANKS!!!

What the hell, a Scott Manley found-footage horror movie?! 😂

The 1948 Red Skelton movie "The Fuller Brush Man" uses "plastic memory" as a plot device wherein a hairbrush is deformed into a murder weapon and, upon heating, is reformed back into a brush. Perhaps shape-memory polymers have been around for a while.

My dad worked for Raychem for many years. In the 60s, yes, every so often he would bring home a few of the plastic cubes, and we would throw them in a pot of boiling water for the big reveal (no need for the strange change machine). Also - I got one of the tang bottles and heated it up in the oven to get a space capsule. It was amazing to see the transformation! The funny thing about the tang bottles is that my recollection is that tang could not advertise that they would turn into a space capsule, as recently enacted safety regulations prohibited telling kids to put something in the oven. So millions of these bottles were disposed of without the owners even knowing.

I never expected a Scott Manley video to include a jump scare... well done Mr. Manley, you got me good.

Its also amazing that the plastic still functions that way after all those years

I can see Scott’s wife saying “Stop playing help me clean up this place” ☮️😂

Downsizing and emptying a house is a helluva a chore. I've been involved in a couple but had siblings involved also. My one plea: save some of the old stuff no one in your family wants, in a couple of generations someone will be glad to get it. That's how I ended up with an 1860s kaleidoscope and a unique letter from the Civil War and a big Funk & Wagnall's 1904 dictionary, as well as some cool old books.

I played with these as a kid back in the 70's, back then the plastic squares were sold at toy stores individually. No machine/toy, all you had to do was toss a square in hot water and watch them go. I believe that I still have the octopus somewhere. It was my favorite.

Hello, Scott - I got this toy for my birthday in September of 1968. My brothers, friends, and I spent hours squashing and reanimating various creatures. Never got burned!

Honestly Scott, you could do a completely non-space gardening episode and the majority of us would be happy !

Okay, the toy itself is amazing, but the "closet within a closet" is what's really going to stick in my mind.

That time when industrial machinery was considered toys.

Fun fact, when they make heat shrink, it's cast to the shrunken size and then expanded to introduce stress. When it's heated it allows the stress to release, and it shrinks back down. It also releases as much heat during stretching as it takes to recover it back down to it's original size.

As someone who pushed an orange Lux for years as a cleaner in my teens - those things never die. Change the brushes, wash the bag, and you're good for another decade.

Dangerous toys from my youth - Jarts (giant lawn darts you were supposed to gently tose into a hoop), Mattel's Thing Maker (oven and metal molds and liquid plastic goop that you would pour into the molds and cook to harden), chemistry sets with all sorts of nasty chemicals included, wood burning tools (basically a soldering iron with different sized tool ends to burn different shaped patterns into wood). Such good (harmless?) fun!

“What are ‘em?”- the manliest of Scotts

People in the space age: "It either kills you or gives you super powers. I'm willing to try my luck!"

I once did some work with Mattel engineers. They were some of the most creative people I've ever met - so clever at figuring out ways to do things that seemed quasi magical with super cheap existing materials/components

As an electrician, a Raychem product, I use a lot as self regulating heat trace. It’s used for keeping pipes warm. It works by some semi conductor, polymer conducting electricity to generate heat, but as it warms up, it conducts less than less until it reaches it desired temperature and stops conducting. They make these depending on formula for different temperature ranges.

The 60s. What a time to be alive.

5:32 "You put it over the connection you just made..." Actually, I forgot to put it on at all and now I need to desolder the joint and do it again because the heatshink doesn't fit over the connectors

See, this kind of thing is why I love this channel. Sure, the usual space content is all good... but it's these "I found something weird and cool and got distracted by it" videos that provide an unexpected bonus to my day.

😂 I see, Scott inadvertently found the mimic, hiding in the closet at the end. 😂😂

"More vacuum cleaners". When cleaning my grandma's house after she passed, we kept finding rolls of toilet paper and mega-size rolls of kitchen-paper tissues. All closed and without use of course. It was a paper roll cornucopia. They were everywhere.

Those bottles are maybe the coolest thing I've ever seen.

I had one of these. Squishing them back down into the same block without gaps as when they were fresh was tricky. If you left the softened figure in the chamber too long, it would scorch...and that charred section of plastic was charred forever more. Oh well. Also, it was really easy to melt those tweezers on the plate.

Electrolux vacuum cleaners are an example of really good industrial design, I love that 50s/60s machine look and the logo.

Yeah, I remember the Raychem infrared heat gun I used to use when I was at McDonald’s Douglas, while building wire harnesses

I had one of those and loved it! Never got burnt, or at least not more than once. I never had problems cycling the creatures between their two states. You also could heat up two or more creatures and put them in the compactor together to make bigger multi colored blocks.

I worked in a factory using this process to harden polyethylen pipes for salt water or other strong chemicals. They call the material PEX, for Poly Ethylen Crossed because of the molecule cross links. Yes, they use radiation to create those cross links but can also use slow cooling to achieve similar result

Completely off topic of the main video, if that vacuum that's a cylinder with a hose on it still works (or you can get it to work) is freaking AWESOME TO USE! And they last seemingly forever.

Thank you, Scott, for the memory. My brother and I had one of these (b. 1961). All the best. Fly safe.

”Nothing sucks like Electrolux” True advertisement of the Swedish vacuum cleaners from the 1960's. And ”It was entirely intended as a double entendre. You know, make ’em smile...”

Just watch, there turns out to be a collector market for vintage Electrolux units and you hit the big one with this load.

I'm a mid-60s kid. In the late Apollo era, I remember my mom heating up the Tang bottle to make the command module. Wish I still had it! ....PS: Can you imagine a company trying that now? Putting a plastic container in an oven?? I grew up with some arguably unsafe toys!!! Loved them!! Even the wind-up robot with the spark wheel in its chest. Mix that with a gas stove leak.....

Don't throw these away, someone will pay big bucks for these.

I was expecting something involving radioactivity, but this is pretty mind-blowing as well.

My cat and I enjoyed your video. I enjoyed you talking and my cat enjoyed you talking with your hand!🐱

We used to make bag tags out of chip packets before they changed them. You got the chip bag and put it in the oven and it shrinks down and you put a keyring through a hole in the corner and put it on your bag. I had dozens of them.

put all those vacuum cleaners in series and create your own vacuum closet 😂

Cool toy! But… my dad was an Electrolux salesman my whole childhood. I’ve used all of those, and worked on them too. The one on top of the first pile (red badge on the side) is 70ish-90ish years old! Love the vids, sir. You’re must-see viewing for me.

The strange change machine was my favorite toy as a little kid. Now I crave Tang. Brave heart with the house processing.

I too had one of these as a child, and it worked exactly as intended. I played with it a lot, and the heating coil eventually burned out. The tech involved completely perplexed me at the time. Thanks for explaining it so clearly.

As a retired electrical engineer who spent most of his career at a nuclear power plant, we used RayChem sleeves consistently for electrical connections, especially on safety related equipment. I never knew that it was associated with a toy. Thanks again for another excellent video!

I had a strange change machine when I was a kid. I felt guilty when the guy didn't completely unfold.

Now I see why you've achieved a great deal. I hate moving too, but you've taken the art of avoidance to new levels! Great job. I'll have to remember your techniques.

Good on ya taking care of family stuff, and making the best of it.

Having that box adds a lot of value to somebody who collects toys... and that collection of vintage vacuum cleaners! Chef's kiss!

Okay... Now I have to get all the coffee spray out of my keyboard.... Thanks Scott, I love you!

I had one of the Strange Change Machines. It was one of the few toys I still remember from 50 years ago. It was very cool.

I remember ages ago getting some D&D miniatures sent by mail because of Wizards Dungeon Master Rewards Program, and they were all squeezed because bad packaging and I just discovered by luck that if you dump them on a cup with some boiling water they would stand up and recover the original intended molded form, not the same materials but the same principle it seems.

There's a video on UKposts by Andrew Seltzman where he sends a heavily shielded GoPro through an industrial electron beam irradiator that is used for making plastics like this. The title is " GoPro Ride Through an Electron Beam Irradiator at Full Beam Power (GOPR0016trim)" and it's rather frightening.

I find it absolutely staggering that these original polymer figures still work after 50+ years😮 I have seen many much newer plastic parts just fail from aging, or from their softeners condensation out. Thanks a lot for sharing, great story 👍

6:56 I _KNEW_ there had to be some sort of irradiation involved! Man, the 60's were the best! Sorry to hear about you mother-in-law. My condolences.

I love the mental picture of you starting to clean out this house but then just getting obsessed with this 60's fire hazard. 🤣

cool video, i did my phd work with shape memory polymers. they basically function by exploiting phase transitions in the material, such as the glass transition temperature. that should ping some regular scott manley viewers to make the other space connection - the o-ring failure on the Challenger. Feynman actually demonstrates a step analogous to the smashing of the toy in his famous televised appearance when he put the o-ring material in cold water, clamps it, and shows that it stays (for a bit) in the clamped shape.

Great video! I watched it whilst using a propane torch to shrink about 10m of heat shrink tubing over industrial elecrical connections. I was initially yelling at my phone to tell you that heat shrink is a shape memory polymer from years ago! But you finally mentioned raychem and their products! I can breathe again 😂😂

Thank you Scott Manley for posting :)

Mr. Manley- As others have already commented, thank you for your "Strange Change" toy report. It triggered long dormant, 55 year old memories from my 1960s childhood.

I HAD ONE!! It was fun… for about a week

Sorry to hear about your Mother-In-Law, Scott. I've had two aunts die in the last two years and I've been executor for both of them. Currently eight months into clearing the second one's house and only just beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel, so I feel for you and know exactly what you're dealing with. And yeah, vacuum cleaners...🙄

This is the same process used to produce PEX-c piping (PEX-a is produced using peroxide to induce crosslinking and is softer and more flexible than PEX-c) as well as XLPE wire insulation. The memory effect is important in the systems that use cold expansion fittings (eg, Uponor/Wirsbo), and is why plumbers can sometimes stop leaks solely by heating the connection for a few seconds with a torch or heat gun - the compression force of the pipe and the ring of PEX trying to return to its unexpanded size is increased by the heating. Given the popularity of PEX piping, a lot of us depend upon this very technology every day without realizing it.

Good Lord! I had completely forgotten about that toy. I had one as a kid too. I remember that thing smelling pretty bad as it heated up probably from burning off the POLs used in stamping out the metal parts. It's a miracle I don't have cancer. Like most kids, I lost interest in it after a while and it languished in my toy bin. Fortunately, I never burned myself with it, nor did I get impaled by any Jarts, get "fragged" by plastic shrapnel from a set of "Clackers", or become a projectile while laying on the platform in the rear window well of the family sedan on long road trips. In certain respects, the 1960s and 1970s were far more innocent and at the same time far more dangerous than today.

Thanks Scott, this one had all the right elements to speak to me like no previous Scott Manley video has before. Came for the radiation teaser, expected a proto-luminescent technology or something. I was AMAZED and THRILLED that it was actually the surprise Christmas gift that my sister and I had a lot of fun "playing" with when we were little. I say play, but mostly I remember just trying to get what the point of it was as a toy for us kids to play with more than once or twice for the novelty. Aside from the obvious transformation trick. Like, there just HAD to be more to it than that, over and over. But nope! So in our waning interest, my attention turned to wondering how it worked - we were just old enough to even think about that kind of thing. I NEVER forgot that toy, but totally forgot its name. So thank you for telling me what it was called! After a few sessions, I managed to burn myself on it. As I recall it was the metal vice jaw, which must have absorbed enough heat of the plastic as it cooled into a block. That plastic slide cover wasn't foolproof, and I was probably impatient to take it out of the vise. But by standards of the time, it was clearly safe enough for unsupervised 7 year olds. Mom told me it was a first degree burn, and then I knew what a burn felt like. I don't think we ever played with that toy again. We bugged our mom for Tang too. But quickly lost interest in it once she brought some home, it just didn't taste that good. I was gaga for all the Apollo Moon landing freebies and toys, but never knew about the shape change Tang bottle - dang! I loved your ending too, well played. Oh, and welcome to Boston. At least we're not getting floods here. Sorry about your mother in law, and the house clearing task. But I really appreciate your sharing this toy. It's wonderful that it still works.

LOVED the "Signal Lost" ending!

Thanks, Scott, for the blast from the past. I had one of those and played with it for hours. My friends loved it too. That, the Thing Maker, and the Easy Bake Oven were from a time when kids could actually play with dangerously hot toys- and learn the hard way...

Raychem probably used high energy X-Rays to crosslink. When I was a service engineer for high vacuum and lab equipment I serviced a vacuum system used for a high energy X-Ray machine to crosslink a continuous sheet of synthetic rubber passing through an aperture. This was in a special room with seriously thick concrete walls which was eerie to be inside working on the equipment. The tech told be if the X-Ray was turned on I would get a fatal dose of radiation...cool!

Brings back so many memories!!! Spent a lot of time playing with this and Creepy Crawlers!!

Had one of these too. That toy has crossed my mind a number of times and couldn't recall what it was called. Thanks for the memory 8)

Condolences Scott

I had one of those toys! I also had Mattel's Creepy Crawlers which made bugs out of plastigoop in a Mattel Thing maker. The Thingmaker was a heating element that got hot enough for water droplets to to dance around on. You had flat metal molds with several bugs per mold. Plastigoop came in lots of colors. You would fill the mold with Plastigoop and place it on the heated Thing maker tray. The Plastigoop would change to a deeper color as it cooked. When it was done, you placed the mold into a dish of water to cool it down. Then you would remove the wiggly jiggly bugs from the mold. Mattel had to discontinue their various Thing maker lines because of burns as well. But they continued to sell the Plastigoop to support the Thing makers already sold.

There’s another Raychem product that uses memory: the “Tinel Lock” system for securing cable shielding onto connectors. It uses a hooked ring of nitinol metal which is loosely snapped over the shielding mesh. Then a resistance soldering unit is used to pass a large current through it, causing it to get very hot. The ring’s memory then causes it to shrink, firmly clamping the shield to the connector. I’d love to try them for fun, but they’re insanely expensive. They’re rarely used outside of the military. (Tinel is Raychem’s trademark for nitinol alloys.)

Even without irradiation, many plastics will show shape memory if deformed hot and cooled in the new shape. Take a normal soda bottle and hit it with a heat gun and it will shrink because they are blow molded from cast pieces that have the threaded part already formed.

Yes! I had one of these! I begged my parents to get me one for Christmas. I think my mom had reservations about it but I got one and just wore it out.

I had this toy growing up in the 90s. One of my foster parent's grandmother had it and gave it to me. I loved it!!

Clicked for the Strange Change Toy, stayed for the jump-scare 👍

We had one in box at our Nan & Grandad's house, belonged to our uncle- used to play with them in the late 80's. So great to see this after so many years!

My mind is completely blown! And those electrolux vacuums should be worth some money. Those things were awesome vacuums.

I still have mine.I got it for Christmas as a kid.Hours of fun and it still works.Thanks for sharing.

I really love when algorithms deliver proper results and content… A few hours ago I was reading about Shape-memory alloy, NASA, clips and here I am, after watching the Tenacity video you made. Thank you for your work!

OMG I had one of those back in the 1960s which I got for Christmas. It was one of my favorite toys. The heating surface got hot enough to cook on! I used to crush stuff in the compression chamber. I never got my favorite creature, the big eyed alien with membrane wings

This is so very interesting, that back in the 1960s, such technology existed. Great video Scott, fascinating subject.

OMG I want one! Thanks for taking us on this journey, Scott. That was truly fascinating!

Thanks. I had totally forgotten about this toy. None of us had one, but i now remember the commercials.

We need to bring back the heard thinning toys from the 60's . Back then surviving your childhood was something you could be proud of.

Really cool. Thank you Scott for finding this. Amazing.

The jump scare was a nice touch. 👍👍

Wow, those vacuum's Electrolux grandparents and my parents that's same models, my childhood memories for especially the front load vacuum w/mustache brushes. That's Scott 😍🎉

Wow. I had a toy similar to that in the mid/late '60's that made rubbery bugs and stuff (spiders, frogs, etc.) It was more of a metal electric oven with different metal dies in the shape of the "bug". You put a gob of goop in the die, cooked it, cooled it off, and pried your new "bug" out of it. I still remember the smell of it! lol Thx for the old memory. Edit: Somebody posted below about the same thing. It was Mattel's Thing Maker, and it made Creepy Crawlers. Took me back 55 years or so!

I love your de-constructed no frills camera in hand type of videos. Don't ever be afraid to talk about your other interests and hobbies!

I got a Strange Change for Christmas in the early 70s. What a blast. Loved that thing!

OHMYGOSH! You just solved a 50+ year old mystery for me. Thanks for that, and for taking me back to some good times! :)

that is such an impractical and yet amazing toy idea..

I had one of these and a "Thingmaker". Hot plate based toys from the good ol' days!

Fascinating - thanks, Scott!

I recall hearing about creating crosslinked rubber sheets for the tire industry using electron beams. It limits rubber fluidity and movement during vulcanization.

We had that toy when I was a kid. Thanks for the reminder.

Played with one of these at a friends for hours as a kid. What a welcome reminder.