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That's right, Kazubi Kazoo Factory and Museum. Today we have Sarah Barnwell telling us the story of the factory. And giving us a little kazoo history. Here's Sarah. We do have a vintage gold kazoo.
It's plated in 24 karat gold. I love this little one, mostly because it has a jazzier sound to it, I guess.
So, but it's kind of my favorite. Yeah, baby.
So Rick Hubbard was an entertainer, and you know, he would go and perform, and you know, he plays many instruments and things like that. And I think he just liked the kazoo. He had a kazoo that he kind of held on to for a long time that he had as a kid, and it just basically was something that I think, you know, as an entertainer and things like that, he saw, you know, gosh, I'd really like to. I wish there were more kazoos where I can get a hold of these. There's not like everywhere.
So it really just started as something a a a small kind of uh project that he di did. And um and then it just grew from there.
So it's it's you know th those kind of stories where it starts off very small and surprising and then it turns into you know, a kazoo-kazoo factory. We've been around for about 20 years. We manufacture about a million kazoos a year and we average about 5,000 a day. Our kazoos are dishwasher safe. They're not one-time used plastic kazoos.
You hand let them hand dry, they're good as new. Our kazoos have, you know, gone to Hong Kong for a marathon, done DreamWorks animation for movie premieres, lots of things, Trader Joe's, things that people are familiar with, and down to people using them as business cards or a gift or Cersei for weddings. And they're really popular for birthdays, but the most common birthday age we get is actually 80 years old. We have done kazoos for all kinds of things, Burning Man, some celebrity weddings, lots of fun things, because the kazoos is meant to be fun. We've also done kazoos though for more somber times, funerals and things like that.
So it's kind of an odd mix of where our kazoos are going. What separates us from all of these kazoo manufacturers that we find around the world? There's really not, there's like three of us. Is we imprint on ours.
So if you want your face on a kazoo, that's where we come in. That's kind of what we do. Uh but the kazoo It's a pretty cool instrument. It's one of the few American-made instruments. It came out of the mid-1800s in the South, about the same time, I believe, as like the banjo, kind of similar stories where we think they derived from slaves that were making these instruments and, you know, kind of bringing some of their culture over to here.
And that's what we think the kazoo was based from. In Africa, they would have a merlitone drum sort of thing, or they would take bone and gourd and hollow it out.
Sometimes they would use leather. My favorite is they would use the egg sack of spiders. As their membrane, that resonator to make it vibrate, and they would just kind of stretch that over that object that had the hole in it, and they would kind of hum into it.
So we think that's where the kazoo kind of originated. There is a legend. But it is just a legend. We can't say for sure if it's true or not. But the story is that a German clockmaker named Thaddeus von Klegg and a freed slave named Alabama Vest got together in the 1840s.
They came up with the Modern design of the kazoo. They debuted it in 1852 at the Georgia State Fair in Macon. And it took off from there. We're not really sure where the word kazoo came about. We know the gentleman that first patented it, but as far as where he got that word, we're really not sure.
But it has changed shape, size, and sounds over the years and different materials and kind of taken on a life of its own.
So, we are actually mostly a factory as far as assembling and shipping our kazoos all over the world and putting those pictures and company logos on them. But we do have a gift shop and a museum. And we do give kazoo tours here.
So we have factory tours. They come in, we watch a couple videos. There is everyone's favorite video, the second one, and that's the history of the kazoo. A favorite from all just because we literally have little kazoos. Like dressed up like little people telling you the story.
So it's cute and funny, and people love it. We start in the mid-1800s when we first see the legend appear of Alabama Vest and Thaddeus von Clegg. And we start seeing patents and blueprints of different designs of the kazoo. And each time you change the design and material, it's gonna change the sound a little bit.
So then you kind of get, and we kind of go through times and decades, you get into the turn of the century. These are some of my favorite kazoos actually are in the ones between like the 1900s, 1930s. You start seeing them kind of geared more towards kids.
So they're adding really pretty colors on them. You know, there's been books about kazoos. I love looking for kazoo artwork.
So, some of those things we've put in our museum that we've found. Then, I think kazoos take a little silly turn, which is my favorite. As we get further along, we do actually have the Partridge Family Kazoo in there, one of the original kazoos from the Partridge family. But when you start to get like 70s, 80s, and today, I kind of love the kazoos that come in those eras only because they get a little more fun and exciting.
So, one of them is the fish collar. You can look this up, they're little novelty vintage items you can find now. But someone had the idea of putting a kazoo and it's attached to a rubber hose and then a funnel. And so, you're supposed to put the funnel in the water and then screet, like yell into the kazoo and call the fish. I always tell people not to suck in because they're gonna take in some water.
And then, we have like a Sasquatch kazoo where they, you know, it sounds very, it's a kazoo, but it kind of makes more Sasquatch sounds. The 80s, you know, is the kazoo kid, Brett, the famous kazoo kid. And then, you know, we get to our Advertisements, the kazoos started being used as advertisements as well.
So we have some older kazoos that we first started seeing in the 40s where they're using them for toothpaste advertisements, things like that. In today's time, when they first made the first few versions of Minecraft, all the animals in Minecraft on the game, their noises are made from kazoos.
So weird little places they they end up. I think it's the instrument for everyone. I think there are a lot of us that. You know, I would love to pick up an instrument and be able to play maybe as easily as some others. You know, some just can catch on a little bit quicker, but this is an instrument that you don't have to spend years developing a skill, you can just kind of pick it up and immediately have fun and start to connect with other people.
You know, it's a way of being silly and kind of drawing yourself out. And I think it kind of breaks the ice in a lot of ways and just, you know, kind of brings people together. It's always fun to have people together with kazoos, especially adults. I sometimes think adults have more fun with kazoos than kids. I also love seeing the change.
And we get people come in with teenagers or kids that are grouchy or older people that are with a group and they don't necessarily want to be here, but the other parts of the family do. And by the end, you know, you can't help but smile and chuckle when you're sitting there humming and making noise and singing into a kazoo. It's kind of one of those that instantly kind of puts a smile on your face. The Arkazoos you can't accessorize. We kind of went Dr.
Seuss on uh a little bit.
So we have our kazoo. you know. Yeah. But then we accessorized. We wanted to make sure there was more air coming out the wazoo.
So we put a horn. On our kazoo.
So now it's a wazoo.
Now we took a bugball trumpet end.
Now we have a Wazugo? And then you take your horn off, and now you have the kazoogle. Da da da da da da da da da da da da. We have the Kazobo as well. The Kazobo has been around for over 100 years, and it's basically just a larger kazoo.
It's got double resonators and a longer horn. And we're the only place in the world that makes a plastic version of the Kazobo, so if you want to get the loudest kazoo out there, the Kazobo is the instrument that you want to get. Beep beep. Say it's a little bit louder. We've got accessories for Arcazoo and Arcazobo, and we have all kinds of uh little instruments and you know, literally bells and whistles.
We always tell people it's the perfect place to buy gifts for someone else other than your kids. Yeah. Yeah. We even have one that has the instructions on it. This one, maybe it's for older people.
It's supposed to be funny. But it says hum, don't blow because that's the most important thing with the kazoo: you have to hum. A lot of times people will want to blow air into it. That's not going to give you that vibration.
So it's really important that you make noise so you can get that resonator, that membrane to vibrate around and give you that sound.
So lots of fun things come from the kazoo. Plus, it's always fun to try and explain someone when you're like, I work in a kazoo factory. And they're like, no, you don't. And I'm like, no, really? That's a thing.
Uh And thanks to Sarah. What a delight. What fun. The story of the Kazubi Kazoo Factory and Museum here. on our American stories.
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