Peter Arnell & Martha Stewart discuss the vast array of Peter’s collections .
Martha Stewart interviews Peter Arnell and discusses his various collections and his latest health food for children.
Martha Stewart:
“Now I am so excited because I have Peter Arnell my friend on the show. He’s one of my best friends. That’s right. Yes. And he’s a neighbour. And he is the father of my favourite children. And he is one of the most creative people I know. Peter is a brand inventor. His company, the Arnell Group created the brand DKNY company, I’m sure you’ve seen it 1000 times. But equally and just as importantly, Peter is an collector and a hobbyist and his collections are just incredible. Peter, your animals, your little creatures over there are creating havoc, where I’m always telling Peter that these robots and he has an amazing collection of robots are going to come alive one night and take over your house.
So tell us about the robots because these are fascinating. Where do they come from?”
Peter Arnell
“Well, they come from all over the world, but most of them are from Japan, some from Korea, and it started out”
Martha Stewart
“A man or a boy?”
Peter Arnell
“A boy , and they started about 50 years ago and they made their way through science fiction films. And next thing you know they were in toys and in remote control.”
Martha Stewart
“Do you have one of every single one ever made? And Peter, Peter has an amazing, amazing museum of robotics and these are I love these but that one.”
Peter Arnell
“The one of the raptor on the floor. It’s a 12 channel remote control and it does everything from sound to walk to sleep to talk to bite to attack.”
Martha Stewart
“Have him attack that one.”
Peter Arnell
“Okay, okay, let me the dog out here. Hold it.”
Martha Stewart
“Watch this. Okay, we’ll have the first robot attack on TV.”
Peter Arnell
“So this is Wowe the Raptor here and he will just do nasty things to him. And you see, he could just do anything. Actually, if you look at it carefully, it’s quite amazing. The one on the left, the big one is all remote controlled. And the little one is, it’s automatic. And he just said it. And it just goes that it’s not doing a nice thing to…”
Martha Stewart
“The little bow. Wow. Now what about this guy?”
Peter Arnell
“This right here is very sophisticated. And this is Robo Nova. And Robo NOVA is a very, very new robot. And it’s out of Korea. Okay. And it it actually simulates human behaviour. And it’s it’s incredible when you when you watch it, do its thing here. Let me just watch that . That’s pretty cool. Right? Oh, wow. Okay, good. Good. Good. Good. And because of course it’s from Asia. Of course it bows and thanks, and it does all those smart things. It does, right. Nice to meet you, too. Anyway, what it really does amazing is it actually can balance itself out in an amazing way in any position and actually perform any kind of aerobics or Olympic. Ah, you..”
Martha Stewart
“Fell over. Here. Let me do Yeah, but he gets up.”
Peter Arnell
“He gets up. He gets up.”
Martha Stewart
“I saw him get up before.”
Peter Arnell
“He just couldn’t do it. One more time. Okay. All right. Now you have to all watch it carefully. And here we go. Very quickly.”
Martha Stewart
“So it was all by remote. Okay,”
Peter Arnell
“Come on. Come on. Come on, come on”
Martha Stewart
“And so just go quickly through all of these”
Peter Arnell
“These. So these are all solar powered. You don’t need to feed the fish anymore, right? No need to feed the fish anymore. The fish are in the aquarium, and they’re all solar powered. And they just go forever and ever and ever and ever. And they come in all different types of fish summer, you know, bottom feeders somewhere on the top. This little snail like thing here cleans it automatically. The turtle has a little sensor out of it. So it you see two arm here. Yeah, so every time it gets close, it kicks itself off and it keeps on going. So you don’t need to actually feed them well. And what about shark shark here? You know, if you have a pool and you want to scare the kids, you could just take monsters shock it’s a fan robot tail in there. And and this whole thing goes like that..”
Martha Stewart
“And so they’re very strong.”
Peter Arnell
“They’re very, very strong and they go on forever. A robot like that can last about a half hour in the in the pool. This one which is one of my early ones from around 1981 Is the TX R. And the checks are look at that remote fighter one and a come over here. But you see it goes like that. And it’s got all this incredible grace to it on a center pin. And it’s the first time it’s 12 channel remote controls the first time ever, that remote control robot was made. And it’s from Japan,”
Martha Stewart
“And so Peter has this extensive historic collection of all these things. Now, what about the trains? The trains are, I think your real love the trains?”
Peter Arnell
“The trains are my real love this about 16,000 trains in the collection now. And the trains you’re looking at here actually have been made for me. I was born in Brooklyn and right right by the right by the train tracks right by the D & the N and the R and then they are and of course you can’t buy these trains, the IRT the BMT, the IMD nobody makes. So I found somebody in Asia to actually make them they’re made out of this metal here. And, and they’re hand painted, it takes about 100 to 150 hours to make one of these trains. And they’re in an actual perfect detail. Everything including the actual stop locations, and train numbers number,”
Martha Stewart
“There’s a number for the IRT IRT Columbia, when I went to school,”
Peter Arnell
“So the trains are incredible. And the trains are amazing, because they’re in all different types of scales, you can collect them, anyone can get involved in them. I always wear my little train hat when I do my trains here. So what? And the fact of the matter is, is that here, if you look, if you look here under the microscope with some light, right, you can see the detail of all those trains. And normally when I’m playing with the trains, I have that thing on there. Because are these here, which are these little switches, because you can see exactly the details of the trains. And what’s important …. it’s that you can, you can make all the sounds and you can create everything, and it could be completely surreal. And the trains are amazing. I have four and a half miles of running track in the house. Now I’ve seen it and four and a half miles of running track at scale, smaller scan the world. And then I, I have all these things and they go and I have people’s voices on here, and recordings of conductors from all over the country, etc, etc. And crossing gates and steam whistles and everything like that. It’s really fantastic. Here Yeah, so and they go I’m so nuts about trains that when I travel as you know, I get kind of sad not to be my trains because trade is really important. So I’ve created travel luggage with my trains. And there’s, depending upon the length of the train, the elect the trip, the length of the train track has been set up. So I can actually sit on a plane and actually play with my trains. And this is while we’re kind of around holiday, but this is one of my holiday ones that I just did with little Christmas, tree. And there’s my train. And I actually and you see I changed the trains depending upon Oh gogogo depending upon which train I want locomotives, engine steams, etc. And I travel with this thing all over the world. And I have four”
Martha Stewart
“What gauge do we call this one?”
Peter Arnell
“This is a Z scale, which means it was 1859 just before the Civil War that it was invented. And it was invented in Germany by a company called Marklin. And it’s the smallest gauge in the world. That’s that one there. That’s the one there. And that’s a typical starter kit, which anyone can get started on. And you can have two loops, and a switcher.”
Martha Stewart
“Now I got one for my nephew because of you. We were in Japan. We were and and you know what? I haven’t asked him how he likes it. Charly, how do you like your little Marklin? You see what you can do? As soon you can have four and a half miles of train. Yes, right. His mother will kill me.”
“So now we’re looking at communications,”
Peter Arnell
“Communications, early communications, my friend Mr. Edison. Here we have some phones from the turn of the century. And here as we go up in the 30s and the 40s and the 50s. And then of course”
Martha Stewart
“Never had one of these ever”
Peter Arnell
“European right. The phone as I call it, right? And then this one which is incredible. This is The first cell phone that I owned in 1984. Right? 26 ounces. Right? Yeah. You receive calls and you take you take calls and you dial calls. And that’s it right”
Martha Stewart
“Now reduced to how many ounces?”
Peter Arnell
“A little under three and a half ounces.”
Martha Stewart
“This is the pre precursor to the iPhone that you’ve all been hearing about the, and this is the Samsung, this has been out for a year. Yeah, this is incredible. Everything but the but the touchscreen,”
Peter Arnell
“Everything but the touchscreen. And this is mp3 and camera and cell phone and PDA and your full web. And it’s, it’s, it’s like wonderful. And it’s very convenient. It’s got a full screen. And if you go quickly with your thumbs, this helps. Well, this thing is incredible. This is the patent model, by my friend Mr. Edison, you could see his picture.”
Martha Stewart
“You know, he lived in the next town to me in New Jersey,”
Peter Arnell
“Orange, my favorite fruit, fruit oranges. And basically this here is a record right and this one here, Martha’s a wee bit Oh, a song, you put this on here like this. And then you put this here on it. This is called a speaker. Right? This is called a speaker. And you put that on here, right? And then you close that up, and you get it up to the right speed”
Martha Stewart
“And that’s how you listen to recordings in the olden days. Fantastic.”
Peter Arnell
“Okay, and this is this is the first Sony television right so this is the first television portable, miniatures, small I didn’t have that came to United States, AC DC off very simple, right? four channels, right. And here’s the second one they came out with. And I had one of those so it was all about portable and all about mini tours. So what and I like to collect any electronic, you turn that there all the way there, okay, and then you pray.”
Martha Stewart
“Pray that it goes there. Okay. Now when we were talking about going from very heavy and cumbersome to very light and streamlined, Peter used to weigh when in the most very recent past 400 pounds, and now you’re 150 pounds”
Peter Arnell
“150 pounds.”
Martha Stewart
“And he’s kept the weight off for 2.5 years , and I just want to tell everybody how you did it because this is this is part of his. You’re a fanatic.”
Peter Arnell
“I’m a fanatic. But 200 ounces of water a day green tea, seaweed, grilled vegetables and a little protein and one meal a day and a touchable brand. Syrah was soy milk in the morning and that was it. And in that way, you eat lots of a lot of oranges for snacks. I eat about 50/60 oranges a day. So I never get sick”
Martha Stewart
“Imagine and and now he now He’s always busy with so many interesting things. And he and a boxing legend, another healthy eater, Mohammed Ali have just come out with a delicious and healthy new snack food called goat G period o period a period G period right? It’s the whole time of course it is. And the snacks are over here. So tell us about these too because I just want you to know that Peter really is a busy man. Not only is he playing around with all these amazing collections, and you’re such a good influence on everybody else for for collecting and for also for eating well. Do you remember I tasted the prototypes? Well,”
Peter Arnell
“Martha was one of the first people to taste the prototypes. It was raining it was about five in the afternoon. It was between my garage and outside the garage outside and she said give me that let me try that. Okay, well give me more spices here. I’m a little more pepper there and your little more dill there etc. So we took notes down. So she was very early into this about two years ago when we started developing the basically we wanted to make nutritionally correct snack foods for kids for the first time ever. Well under 150 calories 30% Calcium 30% protein and 30% Fresh Fruit”
Martha Stewart
“Bag of these are Holy guacamole,”
Peter Arnell
“Picnic Chick, Thriller dill and all those fruit rumble bars spme of these energy crunches. Well healthy.”
Martha Stewart
“Everyone in the audience is getting a healthy snack. So give us some food. Thank you for coming. This was so much fun.”
