00:03:16.020When you're on the road going from Laura Ingalls Museum to Laura Ingalls Museum, you're inevitably going to go to a lot of Laura gift shops.
00:03:25.000There's little porcelain jack dogs for $10.
00:03:29.160Oh, there's a Laura Ingalls Wilder Homies. I might have to get a coffee cup.
00:04:38.000Minnesota, Kansas, Nevada, New York, Illinois, Georgia, Ohio, California, North Dakota, Germany, Oregon, Norway, Idaho, Texas, Virginia.
00:04:56.680When Laura Ingalls Wilder set out to write her life story in the Little House series, she wanted to be a writer, an author, a successful one.
00:05:06.740Today, almost a century later, between the books, TV show, and the intense tourism culture
00:05:14.080around her, Laura is undoubtedly a brand.
00:05:18.580Anyone who writes books today, much like Glynis and I do, know that writers have to become
00:05:23.780a sort of brand in order to survive, to build an audience, and to sell enough books to keep
00:10:03.600where they'd been for years and had uprooted and come to DeSmet and taken over this bed and0.95
00:10:11.280breakfast in the heart of DeSmet. We had to book into their, you know, months in advance to get
00:10:16.240that spot to run this. And it was, and when we talked to them, they just went on about how much
00:10:22.300they've loved the television show, Laura, and the fond memories of being read the books in school.
00:10:27.200And it just, I mean, we know this, but also it never ceases to sort of amaze and surprise at like the reach she has, but also like the level of devotion, right?
00:12:55.860As pageant director Bill Richards explained to us.
00:12:58.220We use a lot of local people for supplies, for lumber, for concrete, for construction work, electrical, plumbing, all of that kind of stuff.
00:13:07.500The businesses that get the biggest boost would be probably like the convenience store, Nellie's Cafe and the bar and things like that.
00:13:18.520The other ones are more, I would call, secondary effect, where because you have people that we hire out here, that has a multiplier effect as well.
00:13:28.340Those houses, museums and stores are all independently run.
00:13:32.780But then they also sell and profit off the things that are licensed from the books.
00:13:37.500the books themselves, and the many, many sequels and offshoots of them that came long after Laura
00:13:42.660passed away. And what I keep thinking again and again is whether or not Laura would have actually
00:13:48.240wanted this. How did Little House go from just a book series to a brand that can actually be
00:13:55.160licensed? Of course, I had to talk to Glynis because she is the expert on all things Laura.
00:14:01.460All right, so we're looking at the big business of Laura, all of the stuff that's being sold, all of the TV shows, the extra books. Do you think that this is what Laura would have wanted for her legacy?
00:14:19.500It's so hard to say, because could Laura have envisioned any of this is a question I wonder.
00:14:24.920Could she have envisioned the books having this impact and having this legacy? We know that she
00:14:29.440wanted to leave a significant part of the Little House rights to the local Mansfield library.
00:14:35.960And that feels, though, like very in keeping with Laura, like sort of a small vision for
00:14:40.820her afterlife, so to speak, of like, these could be a nice thing for the local library and the
00:14:46.700town that I've lived in for decades that she didn't even really leave after the books. I think
00:14:51.360she left once after the books sort of became successful. So that feels like a small, sweet
00:14:55.980vision of her giving back. And that's definitely not a description, as we know, of what has actually
00:15:03.840happened to the legacy. And that didn't happen because Rose ignored those wishes and granted
00:15:13.220the literary estate to Roger Lee McBride. Yeah. I mean, this has to be one of the great
00:15:21.220random inheritances in literary history. I mean, Roger Lee McBride's
00:15:26.960fate intertwining with Little House is wild. And even as a kid, I would be like,
00:15:33.480this is Roger Lee McBride person that keeps getting mentioned on the back cover of the book.
00:15:37.980Laura never met him, which is incredible, don't you think?
00:15:44.780And at the same time, we know from all the episodes we did that Laura and Rose's life, emotional, financial, everything, life was so enmeshed.
00:15:53.660So maybe Rose thought that she had not just permission, but the right to do what she wanted with it.
00:15:59.480And it was Roger who ended up selling the rights to the friendly family.
00:16:06.180Yeah. I mean, we know that Laura and Rose had turned down offers from radio to serialize the
00:16:13.780books. This is sort of before TV was such a huge thing. And we know they consistently turned it
00:16:18.620down. So as soon as Rose dies, almost immediately, Roger does a 180, takes it to Hollywood to meet
00:16:28.200with Disney, and then fate intervenes and he ends up selling it to Ed Friendly, which is how we
00:16:33.420have Michael Landon. Well, which is how we really have the business of Laura, because the friendly
00:16:38.760family took on the copyrights and they've created a massive industry around Laura and Little House
00:16:48.640that I don't think she ever could have imagined. I mean, I don't know that I could have imagined it
00:16:55.140as a child. So much of this is internet fueled, too, I think. I would just like try and make
00:17:01.500these clothes for myself as a kid are like staple brown yarn braids to everything I owned. And now
00:17:07.400you can go to Etsy or to Amazon and buy all of this stuff and it all exists. And that I think
00:17:14.600is like the collision of fandom legacy licensing, the internet. It's just, it's so accessible now.
00:17:23.160When we get back from the break, we are going to talk to the family that ended up with the
00:17:27.180rights to all things Little House? How'd they get it? And what's their intention with Laura's
00:17:32.080legacy? And finally, what kind of stuff is being created from it?
00:17:43.800My father at Friendly acquired the rights to the Little House books from a man named Roger Lee
00:17:50.920McBride. That's Trip Friendly. You heard from him in our TV episode telling the story of how
00:17:57.100his father created the Little House television series. These days, Roger Lee McBride's daughter
00:18:03.060still owns the copyrights on the Little House books, but the Friendly Family owns the licensing
00:18:08.500for products and media. Friendly Family Productions owns film, television, merchandising, theme park,
00:18:15.980and other rights to the classic books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, as well as to the Little House
00:18:21.240on the Prairie trademark. When the television program was first broadcast on NBC in the 1970s
00:18:27.600and early 1980s, my father created a licensing program which included lunchboxes, dinner plates,
00:18:35.020beverageware, posters, puzzles, board games, calendars, costumes, McCall patterns, and many
00:18:40.780other items. The Friendlies take their role very seriously. They know that Laura holds sentimental
00:18:47.280value for a lot of people. None of us know how Laura would feel about these products today,
00:18:53.580but the things that are licensed definitely feel in line with the wholesome, cozy nature of Laura's
00:18:59.400children's books. We've worked with a selective group of licensees that we believe reflect the
00:19:06.200values of the Little House on the Prairie brand and which we hope would resonate with families
00:19:12.140and fans today so simple joy optimism charm and craftsmanship i would say are integral parts
00:19:20.400we would probably reject any inquiries that are not consistent with the brand values or
00:19:26.220are quote-unquote r-rated such as alcohol gambling other sort of vice products how much
00:19:36.660impact can a product actually have when it comes to the legacy of little house there's so much
00:19:41.780stuff that I wanted to find an example of a company truly manufacturing in the spirit of
00:19:46.580Laura Ingalls Wilder. The Queen's Treasures in particular has been a longtime licensee
00:19:51.640and they continue to expand their line of dolls and doll accessories. That's Rebecca Friendly,0.90
00:19:59.860Tripp's daughter and one of the driving forces behind continuing Laura's legacy.0.62
00:20:03.180They have some beautiful 18-inch dolls. We started with Laura, then Mary, and most recently Nellie.
00:20:10.720They, of course, each have a variety of outfits and accessories, and there are some amazing doll-sized scenes.
00:20:21.120So we have, obviously, a Laura doll, and Laura actually comes in a nightgown with a cap like they used to wear, and her box turns into a bed, so even the box can be used.
00:20:35.880That's Joanne Cartiglia, the president of the Queen's Treasures Toy Company.
00:20:40.000Queen's Treasures makes pretty much every accessory that you could possibly imagine for a Little House doll set.0.59
00:20:45.920Mary comes dressed in a pretty blue dress and she has a lunch pail, which has the typical things that she would have brought to lunch.
00:20:54.120Cheese, a hard-boiled egg, a little molasses cookie, a biscuit, that kind of thing.
00:20:58.460And she comes, of course, with a little chalkboard.
00:21:05.620We're actually working on a Olsen's Mercantile, which is really going to be cool, that kids can open up and they can play shop.
00:21:15.060Joanne started her toy business in her garage in 2003 by making doll trunks and accessories.
00:21:20.940Eventually, she started focusing on Laura because she thought that story would be inspiring to young kids.
00:21:26.480We wanted to do Women Who Changed the World. And Laura Ingalls Wilder was literally the first
00:21:35.980novelist I became obsessed with. I have reread those books, I can't tell you how many times.
00:21:42.680It just transports you to a place where, for me, looking back, children don't go now.
00:21:49.660You know, every child you see has something electronic that they're obsessed with and staring at, and they don't have any sense of what history is.
00:22:01.720But Laura, she just resonates with me.
00:22:08.020I think people are looking for a simpler time for children.0.56
00:22:13.960Joanne's goal isn't just to tap into demand for Laura and Little House.
00:22:17.480but to use those stories to influence people, small people, children.
00:22:23.540We put these Imagine This cards in with each product that says,
00:22:28.620imagine life over 100 years ago when there was no electricity
00:22:32.540and to cook on a stove you had to bring in wood and wait for the stove to heat up.
00:22:37.720And, you know, we just go through scenarios that maybe children wouldn't even think about today.
00:22:43.740um we have a lot of homeschoolers that love our products so we really do try to keep it in an
00:22:52.100educational vein Laura was all about language if you think about it and for me she was I believe
00:23:01.10064 when her book got I'm hoping I got a few years for that not that many I'm hoping at 64
00:23:08.860Or something really crazy goes on with this company, too.
00:23:12.660But until then, I'm going to still keep developing and designing toys and trying to bring inspiration to children and try to get them to read and play and pretend they need their own voices now.
00:23:32.840It's not just the kids who are learning from these dolls.
00:23:35.540Joanne told me herself that she's felt way more connected to Laura and the lessons of the Ingalls and Prairie Life while she's been building this brand.
00:23:43.920I feel a little bit like a pioneer, if you will.
00:23:48.740You know, persistence and being able to face a problem and move on.
00:23:56.220They had so much adversity that happened in their life, and they still smiled at the end of the day and appreciated what they had.
00:24:08.620It's the simplicity that we keep coming back to.
00:24:12.320The urge to go back to basics, have real, concrete experiences, get offline.
00:24:19.720We hear it over and over and over again in our increasingly connected digital age.
00:24:25.720Now, so far in this episode, we've been looking at businesses that start with Laura,
00:26:15.620Yeah. Her net worth is, according to the internet, something like $50 million. She has built a TV
00:26:23.400show, a magazine, a massively successful digital empire based off her prairie life,
00:26:31.380which I would argue is a direct continuation influenced by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
00:26:37.000I mean, absolutely. It's hard to see how it's not. Yeah.
00:26:41.420And then you have things like the American Girl dolls, Kirsten, the prairie. She was my American Girl doll, my first American Girl doll, and her life on the prairie. Again, not directly based on Laura's life, but definitely influenced by the prairie nostalgia that is in these books.
00:27:05.820And more recently, you've got the nap dress phenomenon.
00:27:50.300I talked to social media and branding expert Stephanie McNeil about the fact that during the pandemic,
00:27:55.960Hill House Nap Dresses, Hill House is the big nap dress company,
00:27:59.800were selling over a million in inventory in something like 12 minutes.
00:28:05.040Hill House is really interesting because the nap dress is a very kind of cottagecore look.
00:28:12.220They're definitely capitalizing on it.
00:28:15.120That's the author and reporter Stephanie McNeil.0.95
00:28:17.840She covers influencing, branding, and marketing on social media.
00:28:21.300I called her up because I wanted to run the theory by her that cottagecore is fueled by a longing for a simpler, cozy time just like life on the prairie.
00:28:51.720I think that kind of is behind a lot of these trends that are based around identity and
00:28:57.520personal style and lifestyle is I think people are really just looking for connection. And I
00:29:03.240think sometimes it's easier to be, I'm going to go in on a cottagecore and connect with people
00:29:08.540online who are really into cottagecore than it is to, I don't know, go to a gym class and find a
00:29:13.740friend. Again, we circle back to the idea that these prairie-inspired trends are just a longing
00:29:20.180for a perceived simpler time, a false nostalgia and a desire for connection in an over-connected
00:29:26.980world. But you all know from listening to this podcast that Laura's life wasn't actually that
00:29:32.660simple. Her family lived in poverty. She experienced so much trauma as a child. Her
00:29:38.660ode to a simple, happy, cozy life is mostly fiction. But that fiction continues on social
00:29:45.920media today. Often, you know, you look at these accounts and it's moralizing and prioritizing
00:29:54.200a type of simplicity that is actually quite expensive and quite inaccessible to most of us.
00:30:00.880That's Sarah Peterson, another expert in social media marketing and branding and the author of
00:30:04.980the book Momfluenced. I think the construction of this imagery is really interesting because often
00:30:13.640it requires quite a bit of money and quite a bit of aesthetic investment. But it's always done in
00:30:19.720this like, oh, it just happened to be like this. And I'm not putting a lot of effort in. Effort
00:30:23.720seems to be at odds with the performance of this type of pioneer femininity.1.00
00:30:28.880Sarah's right. These products are expensive, and it takes a lot of disposable income to be able to0.99
00:30:35.180afford $100-plus prairie dresses and all the sourdough starters, pots, and mugs that influencers
00:30:40.940and cottagecore companies are selling to us these days. And I think it's worth taking a second to
00:30:46.220think about exactly what we're buying into. What is this sphere of influence? What are we trying to
00:30:52.920achieve with all of this stuff? I think the prairie chic aesthetic is so big on Instagram,
00:31:01.180particularly for momflencers, because it taps in to our cultural understanding of mothers as being
00:31:10.140connected to the divine feminine, as being connected to the earth, being connected to
00:31:17.900domestic spaces. I really think this prairie, you know, nostalgic aesthetic directly taps into
00:31:26.800our cultural construction of the ideal American mother in a way that makes for, you know, big
00:31:34.000business. I can't stop thinking about this, about what makes the ideal American mother,
00:31:42.860the ideal American woman, how dresses and mugs and the collection of all of these trappings of
00:31:49.440prairie life play into our desire to buy our way into being more complete and happy women.
00:31:55.800There's a lot of brands these days that are working to create a place for women to figure out
00:32:00.340how to be in the world. And one of those is actually called Modern Prairie. And it was
00:32:07.060created by TV Laura Melissa Gilbert herself.0.97
00:32:11.480Who better to encapsulate all the sides of Laura's influence
00:32:15.100than the woman that played her as a little girl?
00:32:18.760Modern Prairie does sell a lot of stuff that we've been talking about.0.90
00:32:22.520But it also promotes healthy ideas for how to live in the world as a mature woman.
00:32:27.840Something that the world doesn't always recognize as valuable.
00:32:31.900It's genuinely a very unique take on the Prairie lifestyle brand.
00:32:35.480But I've got to say, its beginnings are very similar to the other brands we've talked about.
00:32:40.800Like we've seen time and time again, Melissa felt drawn to the ideals of Little House during the pandemic.
00:32:47.660I think we all really rediscovered cozy during lockdown, too.
00:32:51.740Just before 2020, Melissa and her husband Tim bought a cabin in the Catskills and renovated it into their permanent home.
00:32:58.180In her memoir about that time, Back to the Prairie, she recounts the joy she felt in letting go of the life that she'd built in L.A.
00:33:05.480She let her hair go gray, she took joy in cooking and gardening, and essentially rediscovered
00:33:11.480herself in this genuinely simpler life.
00:33:15.100When she founded Modern Prairie, she wanted to capture this simplicity for others.
00:33:18.940I think Modern Prairie is a space to remind people of that cozy, basic, homey, warm, those
00:33:29.580nostalgic feelings brought up to the current times.
00:33:35.480The initial idea for the brand started with just one product.
00:33:39.020I have had this sort of little patchling of an idea for a couple decades that there is something more to do with just the entire sort of prairie ethos.
00:33:53.400It all for me starts with, of all objects, the Butterbell.
00:33:59.180You put the butter in it, and you put it in the crock, and you put it upside down in water,
00:34:03.320and it keeps your butter fresh and soft without having to refrigerate it.
00:34:08.580And I always thought, let's create something around a butter bell and go from there
00:34:13.100and take us back to these sweet, simple things, which really are the best things after all.
00:34:19.060Just full-on Laura Ingalls Wilder celebration.
00:34:23.180Modern Prairie now sells that butter bell for $49.50, plus so many other things.
00:34:28.260Go on their website. There's backyard rooster quilted placemats, a Modern Prairie iron stone-handled one-gallon crock, pot mitts, a set of farmhouse aprons, pinafore aprons, tablecloths, and my personal favorite, the deep dish baking pan.
00:34:44.260But what feels special about Modern Prairie is that they provide more than just products. They're actually creating that sense of community that so many women online are looking for.
00:34:52.460It's a place for, obviously, women over a certain age, the mature women like me.
00:35:00.560And it's not just about buying things.
00:35:05.540And we have all these workshops and everything from, you know, how to paint with watercolor to how to deal with grief during the holidays to how to get unstuck, which is a big thing with women over a certain age.
00:35:21.100And we're reassessing what we want to do with this last third of our lives.
00:35:25.740All of these things that we're dealing with at this part in our lives, there's no space for a community for people to talk about these things.
00:35:32.280So we created this space with these workshops.
00:35:35.500And that's kind of the heart of Prairie for me is the community aspect.
00:35:42.140I love being older because I don't feel like I can do something.
00:35:45.800I can sit at home and learn something.
00:35:51.100What I think is so interesting is that almost everyone we spoke to in this cottagecore, prairie life world seems to be striving for a simpler life.
00:36:03.160The people that are making it, the people that are buying it, everyone is trying to get to something simpler through commodification.
00:36:13.600Yeah, it's a strive for simplicity and also self-sufficiency in a world where neither of these things really exist.
00:36:24.220And I think, are we all so miserable and overconnected and overworked that we'll pay for simplicity?
00:36:31.600This feels like a big joke that capitalism is playing on us, by the way, because I think the answer is yes.
00:36:36.920Absolutely. But I also think this desire to get back to the simpler life, which is so well represented by Little House on the Prairie, is not a recent phenomenon. I'm just thinking of those old commercials we found from the 80s being like, come home, come home to the simpler life.
00:36:53.900Like, there's always this fantasy around getting back to this simple life, which, as we know, never existed, right?
00:37:04.100Like, they did not have a simple, easy life.
00:37:17.880It's so pervasive that people will pay, you know, $50 plus for a Butterbell or $300 for a prairie dress that is essentially a nightgown.
00:37:29.020And there are entire stores in Brooklyn that just sell things that look like they could have been on the prairie.
00:37:36.360And also, I kept thinking about how everyone wants to use Laura as a gateway to something else, as a gateway to simplicity, as a gateway to community.
00:37:50.560And it reminded me that it's always bigger than Laura, the human being.
00:37:56.800It's bigger than these prairie stories.
00:37:59.300It taps into our very humanity, what we desire, what we're hungry for.
00:38:06.360And as this episode showed, what people are willing to pay for those things.
00:38:12.940Yeah. Pay for a sense of community and safety and coziness and simplicity.
00:38:17.880And maybe you too can make a doll out of straw and have just like a direct connection to sustainability.
00:38:26.400I'm going to open my own Etsy shop after this episode.
00:38:29.340Don't worry, I'll check in with the friendlies and make sure that it's kosher.
00:38:32.400And I'm going to make some pig platter toys.