This episode has been previously recorded Some elements have been edited for the audio format!
Join Eric LIVE for a celebration of Synergy Loves Company—and Disney’s ever-expanding web of brand magic! From Mickey Mouse on Formula 1 cars, to Star Wars teaming up with Coca-Cola, to Marvel popping up on your breakfast table with General Mills—we're unpacking the latest in Disney's corporate crossovers.
We’ll also revisit some favorite moments from the show, take your comments and questions live, and throw in a few surprise connections you definitely didn’t see coming.
🌀 Because when it comes to Disney… everything is connected.
00:10 --> 31:23 We have this coterie of rich franchises, the company now that people want to engage with. I came here to try and continue what Walt Disney and his associates set in motion 50 years ago, which is to experiment with every new innovative kind of entertainment possible. It's what they hope to do here, to really develop something that, well, just more than an entertainment enterprise, it's something that contributes in many other ways. Hey, this is Synergy Loves Company, where we explore how Disney connects to everything. So you can feel connected to Disney when you can't be at the parks. I'm Eric and today we're live. So it's a little bit of a different kind of an episode. It's kind of a new format that I've never done before, and hopefully I get to, to hear from some of you in real time live. We got some time later when we're going to do a whole kind of activity. We'll do an activity together. It'll be fun. But anyways, if you've been listening to the podcast, I've been talking about this coming up, this live stream. It's the kind of episode that I would love to do as time goes on, do more of these, kind of invite more other Disney creators on to kind of do some. Some of those interview shows I did in the past would be great to do those live in this way so that you could be. You could be part of it, too. So, like I said, this is going to be a different format today. It's kind of like the Synergy Loves Company variety show. We'll get into a little news. I got kind of a feature presentation section that we'll do. We're going to talk about the show's run so far. So this is kind of a celebration of some milestones of Synergy Loves Company. We're going to do some. Some other random things. I got some Lorcana cards I want to open up and we, like I said, we're going to do a little activity and of course, I'd love to chat with you. So if you're listening, let me know in the chat where you're, you know, that you're here, what's going on with you and, and what you're excited about for this stream today. So, you know, let me know you're here, drop a comment in there and I'll definitely give you a shout out. So with that, I, like I said, we're going to kick it off with some news. So let's actually, let's actually do it. Let's get to our first segment here for some synergy news. So I have the little sting there. It started us out there. We're into the news segment and I do want to talk about the kind of news that we'll usually do on this show. It's not going to be necessarily the most breaking news. We're not going to talk about an animatronic Walt Disney or anything like that. Going to want to talk about more like the synergy loves company news. So, like the news of Disney connecting to other stuff. So this is that news that's right up the alley of how Disney connects to everything. Not like that park news, breaking news, kind of stuff like that. It might be a little bit older news in some ways, but maybe some news that flew under the radar. Sometimes it'll be business news, like what's going on in the Walt Disney Company. And other times it'll be, of course, my favorite Disney brand collaborations. So let's get, let's get our first story up here because this one is probably the most, you know, it's happening right now in front of us. Coca Cola's refresh your galaxy promotion with Star Wars. So we started out this summer and Coca Cola was like, putting names of people on their random names of, you know, they got some cans that said, like, share a Coke with your bro. But now you can share a Coke with, you know, Princess Leia or something like that based on these cans. So they have all these different, these different designs of cans that, that have Star wars characters on it. But there's a little bit more to it than just Star wars characters. There's apparently this, like, AR experience. I haven't gotten a chance to try it yet, but there's an AR experience where you can make like a hologram message of yourself. Kind of like Princess Leia's Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope kind of thing. And then you can send that to other people. So it's kind of a, a full, like, experience that they're going for, which is, is kind of neat. I gotta flip over to this because it shows. I, I mean, they're kind of small from where you're seeing them, but there's all the cans and bottles and things here. There's apparently 30 limited edition cans and bottles. And these pictures come from one of my favorite Instagram accounts for snacks, Marky Devo. So shout out to him. But they have different cans come with different characters. So you can't get exactly what you want on, on any given can. If you like Regular Coke, you're gonna have certain characters you can get. And if you like Coke Zero, you can have different characters you can get. And if you like Diet Coke. Well, there's not anything for Diet Coke. They're doing their own thing, I guess, but Diet Coke is kind of like its own thing. So I think they kind of kept that out of the mix. But if you're going for the original Coca Cola Classic, you could get Lando, you could get Obi Wan Kenobi, Padme, Kylo Ren, ahsoka, Darth Maul, K2, so, Boba Fett, Poe Dameron, the Mandalorian. Just the Mandalorian, though. More on that in a second. You could get Cassian andor General Grievous or Emperor Palpatine. Regular, Original Coke, those ones. If you're a zero sugar kind of person, though, you want Coke Zero, you could get Darth Vader, Yoda, Princess Leia. I kind of like this list. This is more like classic list here. You know, Anakin Skywalker. You can get Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker on Coke Zero. They should have split it so that it was one on each, but there you go. You can get chewbacca, Han Solo, BB8C, C3PO, R2D2, Finn, Ray Grogu, and an Imperial Stormtrooper. But there's going to be some, like, special edition ones that you can only get at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. And that's the Mandalorian and Grogu together. A first order Stormtroopers like the, the newer one and Chewbacca. You can only get those at. At the Disney parks. So there's kind of like a. You got to go to the parks for some of them. And they're kind of. They're. They're up in the little corner of all the bottles. But in addition to that stuff, Coca Cola is selling some like Coca Cola, Star wars branded merch. So there's also like special T shirts and sweatshirts. If you really love Coke and you're a Star wars fan. Like, that's. I guess this is the perfect thing for you, you know, Disney connecting to Coca Cola. So, you know, you could go check those out if you want. That's kind of a weird merch item, which I think is kind of cool. So once you get the can, or apparently you could, you know, no purchase necessary. I think there's like QR codes on billboards and stuff around too. You can scan the can and then it gets you into this AR experience, like I said, where you can. You can learn more about the whole thing here, this refresher galaxy. Or you can create that holographic message and then send it to a friend. So yeah, Coca Cola in Star wars is kind of, I mean every, I love Star wars, but like it kind of, it kind of caught me off guard. There's not like a new Star wars promotion. So like Coca Cola plus Star Wars. I'm, I'm here for it though. But there are some, you know, promotions going on that aren't just Coca Cola putting pictures on. Actually, before we go on to it, I would love it if Coca Cola would have made like a new flavor, like a Coke creations flavor for Star wars instead of just like Coke Zero and Coke and we put Star wars characters on it. So maybe I'm not as here for it as I was originally thinking. I would love it more if there were like a new flavor. They did those Coke creations. It would be awesome. But anyways, even though that's kind of out of the blue, there is some more stuff that's happening this summer that, that got some tie ins. Some stuff Disney plus something else. And, and that's of course for Marvel. Go to the Marvel world and get into the Fantastic Four. Some tie ins where Fantastic Four, Marvel and Disney are connecting with some other products and experiences and stuff like that. So the first one I want to talk about is with Fantastic four coming out July 25th, just about a, what, a week or so week and a half away coming up close, they're getting into some, these, some of these collaborations with products and food. Food. We did Coke, get that Coca Cola and get a pizza to go with it because Little Caesars and the Fantastic Four have this new four in one pizza. And so it's like one quarter of the pizza is devoted to different Fantastic Four members. So there's cheese, pepperoni, sausage and bacon. I guess that kind of makes it look kind of rocky. More on that in a second. And then there's like a pepperoni and jalapeno section too. So I kind of think they tried to make the four different parts of the pizza like match the Fantastic Four characters. So you got like the, the pepperoni on its own I guess is supposed to be Reed Richards because the cheese part is like in, it's like invisible toppings, I guess. And then the, the sausage bacon kind of gives it that rocky bouldery look like the thing. And then of course the, the spiciness from the jalapeno would give us like that Human Torch feel. So I, I kind of would like the the Mr. Fantastic part, to have, like, extra cheese pull or something like that. I think that could be cool to get that stretch element. But I, I, I gotta say, they, they did a good job trying, and they got something kind of interesting that I don't think they've really done that much in the past. So I kind of like this. There's four different box designs that could be put together, but I don't really know why you're going to collect and keep a pizza box unless you ordered, like, four pizza boxes. But chances are you're probably gonna get, like, three of the same one and then, like, one different one. And then you'll be like, come on. Why, why did I order four pizzas? So, yeah, I don't recommend collecting pizza boxes, but I guess any, like, pizza box could be considered collectible if, if you want to save a greasy pizza box. So, you know, there's that. So I commend them for trying. But more collectible with Fantastic Four coming out are these really cool cereal boxes. So Fantastic Four takes place back in the 1960s, and General Mills has collaborated with Disney and Marvel to make these kind of throwback, these throwback cereal boxes, which are pretty cool, except, like, I mean, Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Reese's Puffs didn't exist together. Like, they didn't exist in the same time as the movie's coming out. So, like, okay, I get the Lucky Charms, the Cheerios, but some of these new ones, these kind of, like, retro versions of the newer cereals. It's kind of cool, but there's one box for each of the characters, kind of like we had with, with Little Caesars. But these ones kind of give, they give us a different, a different character on each cereal. So these are like the top four here. We've got the Honey Nut Cheerios with the Human Torch. We've got the Cinnamon toast crunch with Mr. Fantastic, Reese's puffs with the Thing, and then we've got the Invisible Woman Lucky Charms here, the Lucky Charms box. That retro box actually appears in the movie. So that's, that's a pretty cool thing. And then there's a couple extra boxes that I don't have shown here, but that are coming out, like, exclusives to places. So if you go to Kroger, you can pick up a Herbie, the robot friend of the Fantastic Four, on, like, a retro box at Tricks, which is really cool. And then Walmart has a retro Cocoa Puffs with Galactus on it. So, so there's that. And they're also going to do the, the Lucky Charms, like limited edition box that comes with a Johnny Storm collectible that you can get in the box, which is kind of cool. So that's coming out later too. Fantastic Four cereal. That, that mid century throwback look is really cool. Keeping on with a Fantastic Four. I got a lot of Fantastic Four products. Here is this idea of this, this AR thing is coming back, the bottle with the ar. So the first time I saw these I was like, this is just Snapple with a character on it. And I wasn't going to talk about it, but then I found out that there is an AR experience. I watched a little video of it and it really just is like it shows the bottle and then it. You can watch the trailer and do some stuff. Apparently it's a big deal because the AR was designed by Blipper, this company that does AR experiences and that was like a big deal for them. So if you're into Snapple and you're getting excited about the Fantastic Four, you pick one of these up, you can scan it and see the trailer, the little animation where the characters pop off. And then there's a. You could enter some sort of contest on there too. So Fantastic Four crossovers with, with Snapple. There you go. So let's get on to another Synergy news piece. We've got the Summer of Stitch happening in children's hospitals all around the world. Really? So a few months ago, I did an episode about imagineering outside of the parks and we talked about Disney's work with children's hospitals and how they do a lot. It's not just imagineering that works with them. It's kind of a lot of different facets of the company. So I wanted to talk about this special stitch event. So all summer, Disney and Starlight Children's foundation are bringing like Stitch themed events to children's hospitals all around the world. There's like special screenings of Lilo and Stitch that they started last month. They're bringing of course, like in the picture here, a walk around character of Stitch to a lot of hospitals to meet with the young patients. And, and they have some like Stitch plush and merchandise giveaways. So you could see that they're even in their philanthropy, they're given some, you know, synergy marketing opportunities there. So yeah, if you didn't check out that episode I did, it was about five places that that Disney Imagineering has worked that aren't in theme parks. And one of those is their work with, with the children's hospital. So kind of a cool thing to note there. All right, we've got another one. This one was announced about, I don't know, about a month ago, and it's that Disney and Formula one racing are coming together now. Warner Brothers and Apple just put out that F1 movie. So I mean, that's kind of related, but that's not exactly it. Disney is getting into the real deal, Formula one racing. So I, I don't really know what this is going to be, but it's going to come sometime in 2026. Formula One racing and specifically Mickey Mouse, not just like all of Disney, but specifically Mickey and friends are collaborating on this. And so Disney released a statement on it and I think it kind of puts us where we, you know, we really know what it's going to be yet. But this is what they said. They said. As we celebrate nearly a century of Mickey Mouse and friends, our collaboration with Formula One offers a unique opportunity to bring two powerhouse entertainment properties together to create products that fans will love. So it sounds like it's going to be something they might even do some. Like, I'm imagining Mickey will show up at a lot of Formula one races. They've got this car so they, they, you know, might use it and we'll see. They claim that it will be an unforgettable content and experience tailored for Disney and F1 fans alike. So I think it's one of those like F1 fans and Disney fans coming together in that world of whatever this promotion crossover is. Who knows, maybe there will be enough that we could do a whole video about it, but I don't know yet. So we'll see what that means. But Disney has done some stuff like this back in the past. In the 80s there were some times when they sponsored the Indy 500. And I know that throughout the years they've done some product tie ins and things with nascar. So they've worked with like, you know, the racing leagues and all that. And we'll have to see what happens with, with F1 and Disney, which will be kind of an interesting, an interesting one, you know. So, yeah, that's, that's what I have for my, my top news stories here. So with that, we'll probably, we'll probably get into our next segment which is kind of our feature presentation. So let's, let's do. All right, so usually I would love to do a feature presentation on these live shows where we would, you know, maybe have like a topic that we're talking about or maybe have a guest on here. I've done some guests in the past. But for this first one, since this live stream is supposed to be a celebration of, of Synergy Loves Company and some of my recent milestones, I, I wanted to kind of just talk about the show a little bit. So first things first. Synergy Loves Company. This is our, our 70th episode. This is. The show's been on for three years. I've been kind of doing it. Maybe not every, like it's not a weekly show, but every month or every two weeks I've been putting out episodes. And so three years ago it started and when it started it was just a podcast, like audio only podcast. If you listened way back then in the day, three years ago, in 2022. Well, you know, thanks for listening so long. If you just found it more recently, you'd know that we, we became more of a video show. Now there's a lot more video component and kind of the YouTube part of it, which I love exploring that YouTube stuff. But anyways, I started about three years ago in the spring of 22. It wasn't the first time I ever podcasted. I have another podcast I do with some friends called the Rare Cuts Media Society. And we had been doing that one for about a year and I was like, well, I think now I got a grasp of it and I want to take on the Disney style podcast because I, I love, I love Disney. So my original idea was to do that audio only podcast that would be mostly interviews, have guests on all about Disney topics. And so I started with friends and family and I had those members of the Rarecuts Media Society come on and guest on the show. So it was, it was kind of fun to have them. And then what happened is that first summer I came back from a Disney trip, actually we came back from a Disney trip and I wanted to put out an episode each month and I didn't have a guest lined up. I was like, what should I do? I'm not prepared for a guest. And I did kind of like a, like an essay style episode where I kind of talked about how I think Walt Disney's like use of synergy developed over time. And I kind of like just that me doing that like, you know, monologue, essay, solo podcast thing. So I started to incorporate video or video. It wasn't videos yet. I started to incorporate little kind of like one off episodes that were just me talking. I continued with guests, but then I did start posting some, some clips on, on YouTube. I actually, I gotta tell you, let me take a drink of this water. I gotta tell you this is not my first live stream. I actually went live during that first year and kind of did like a really warts and all recording session of some episodes to try that out to see how it worked. I didn't really promote it. Not many people jumped in and watched. So it was, you know, kind of an unepisod, like an unedited set of episodes back then. So I don't know, maybe one day I'll revisit those ones that I did live and kind of clean them up a little bit. But they were about Disney and like the Hearst collabs like, like A and E and Lifetime, how Disney is a majority stake owner in those. And then I did one about Disney's heavy metal albums way back then too. So maybe I will revisit those and, and kind of clean them up. I think that could be pretty cool. But then about a year into. Or actually, but no, it's now two years. About a year ago I went in on video kind of more in a big way and I started making my episodes video first. I'll still now and always do like the audio feed thing. Like you could still listen to Synergy Loves Company where wherever you find your fine podcast. I know that's terrible to say because I mean you could listen to your podcast anywhere, but seriously, it's, it's still there where you can listen. In fact, this episode, this live stream is going to be uploaded to the, the podcast catchers also. So you'll be able to listen to this and maybe you are in the future. Hello in the future if you're there. But anyways, I started making those video first episodes and kind of putting more effort into YouTube. And I just like a year into it I hit that thousand subscribers mark. And that's when I started telling myself we'll do a, a live stream to celebrate. Right now we're up to over 1300 subscribers, which is, I mean, even more exciting. And so I thought it would be cool to kind of go back and look at some of the episodes that were kind of like big milestones along the way through those, through those years. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna pop up my, my screen here again and we'll talk about kind of like the, the past three years and some milestone episodes that, that went into these, these 70 synergy loves company episodes. So here's, it's kind of. I popped them all up here real quick, but I want to talk about these ones real quick. So kind of the first audio only podcast episode that broke real big was One that I did with my daughter about Perry Grip and Disney. And that one just kind of. I think it's still my most listened to episode. Like people go back on the. On the. Mostly on the listening feed and listen to that one still today. I'll get, you know that all sorts of messages that people have been listening to Perry Grip and Disney, even though it's. It's now three years old. So that one's kind of. That was kind of the first one that kind of got legs and like I started to notice people kind of latching onto, which was exciting. Then another one I got to talk about is the first you see that Aero development in Disney. I did an episode on Aero Development and their work with Disney. And I was joined by Adam Dworkin who had a podcast at the time. I mean it pops up every once in a while now. But he had a podcast at the time called Engineering Theme Parks and it was kind of the first non friend related person to me that I got to guest on the show. So it was kind of like, now we're making this thing happen, we're making it happen for real. So those were in my first year and that was when we were back when we were audio only. And then in my second year I did this thing which I was like, you know what? I'm gonna do a series where like these episodes link up together. This is still the audio only days. And so I did like the, the main, the main characters from Only Martyrs in the Building and kind of their connections to Disney since it is a Hulu Disney kind of show. And so I did. It was called Only Legend in the Series. And it was like we were trying to find out who the Disney legend is. I mean you could just google it and find out who it was. But we kind of. I kind of tried to make it kind of sound a little true crimey. And I had fun kind of doing some of the outside of the box thing with that. And it was cool because it was like a little miniseries and I love a little miniseries. And I started to incorporate it more into the videos I would do. So I had. I have some more. Well, I have another miniseries I took that I'll talk about in a second, but I got a couple more episodes. I want to mention is my video about Las Vegas and Disney was actually my first. Like, I'm gonna try this YouTube thing. I'm going to make the video first before I make the audio. So like really plan out the video stuff. And so that was about a year and A few months ago when I did Las Vegas and Disney after I came back from a trip there. So that was really cool. And I, I, from there I like, you know, never turned back. It was like, now we're going to do this video thing. And then I kind of took my miniseries and video idea and put them together. And in the fall I did a whole series about 80s, like pop royalty like Madonna, Michael Jackson and Prince. And the first video in that series was about Madonna and Disney. And that one really took off in a big way. So I was like really excited when that happened. And then that just kind of kept me going more and more in on these video ones. So that was pretty cool. I love to do an outside the box episode every once in a while. Like in that series I did one where I kind of did a character in the Prince video which was kind of fun. It was like Camille was like a character Prince did. And I tried to incorporate that in there. If you didn't check it, like go take a look and you'll see what I mean. But I also did some other outside the box episodes that I think I want to mention here real quick. I did one with my wife and we, we sampled a bunch of Disney family of wines. So like Disney has all these like wineries that are somehow related to the company. And we, we tried those and we kind of recorded the episode over the course of a few weeks or like a week where we would try one and kind of talk about it and then talk a little bit about Disney and it'll be like the next, the next time we try another one. That's pretty cool. That one is one of those old audio only ones. But as far as like thinking outside the box and doing some more interesting weird episodes, just recently I did one about David lynch and Disney. And if you're a fan of David lynch and his Twin Peaks especially, he did these things where they would, would film in this like it was called the Black Lodge. It's like the iconic red curtained room and they would film the, the scenes like the voices backwards and then play them forward. But it was like forward talking backwards. It's really eerie. So like I, I worked on, I worked on saying all of my intro to the show backwards to do like a Black Lodge voice. So I love when I get to experiment with things like that. It was really cool to do some of those. And you know, here, here we are now adding, adding more experimentation in here with a live stream. So in addition to, in addition to this, like if you're if you're listening and you have a favorite, like, oh my. I mean, I've been talking about my favorite milestone episodes of Synergy Loves Company, but if you have one and you're like, this is the one that I really enjoyed, you definitely pop it in the chat because I, I'd love to hear it from you. And we'll, we'll definitely give that one a shout out too. But I, let's talk about the future of Synergy Loves Company because I was talking about how I love those, those miniseries. And so I have a. I actually had Sean Jacks on the show two episodes ago. It was a interview episode. And I read his, I read his book Dreaming in Digital and we were talking all about video games in Disney. In fact, that's what the book's about. It's called Dreaming in the World of Disney video games. 50 games from 81 to today. And so as I was reading it, I was like, there's some stories in here that I think need to be kind of expanded and told in my, not just our interview, but like, I want to kind of do my little video essay thing with those, those games and those companies that Disney worked with. So as you can see, I've been marking this all up and that's where we're going later this summer. Like the next few episodes, we're going to be going into the video game realm. I wish we were going in there like Tron and we could be beamed in there, but maybe we'll have to try something like that. Anyways, that's where we're going next, the miniseries. That is all these, you know, Disney video game companies that they worked with. So I, I'm excited about that for the future. So, yeah, like I said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna love to do more of these, more of these shows, these live shows in the future when we have different, different topics. Like I said, I'd love to bring guests on the live shows. Let's go back to, let's go back to, to me here. I'd love to bring guests on, maybe do more of the interview shows in this live format because then it would be cool if you could, if you could join me in all of that. So, so definitely keep, keep your eyes peeled for that. Just know that we're going to be doing, like I said, more video game centric episodes coming up in the near future. And, and so, you know, come in. I, I would love it. I. Well, first off, thanks for spending your time with me today on this live special. Live episode of Synergy Loves Company. And you know, remember that Disney magic isn't just in the parks. It is all around us. It's in the Shrinky Dinks right here, too. So go out there and keep discovering the magic in everything, and I'll see you next time.