Blunders to Wonders is a half hour television series for teen boys and girls that will explore disasters and mishaps, which eventually became amazing triumphs. But to make things even more interesting, Blunders to Wonders is actually a show within a show. Each week the School Video Podcast Club must research, write, shoot, edit and upload their show and even include international students who Podcast stories from their own country with a specific Blunders to Wonders story.. This fast paced program will educate children with stories that illustrate how success can spring from failure while inspiring them to produce their own video project. In essence it’s Nancy Drew meets Broadcast News.

The Cast

The Podcast Club will consist of five young teens who will take on the task of creating the show.

Zedo is one of the show hosts. He is a smart looking Eurasian boy who is friendly and motivated.

Corinne is the other show host. She is blond and blue eyed. She is the Brainiac of the group. She is always full of good ideas and is full of energy.

Freddie is the red headed camera boy who smacks of a light resemblance to Napoleon Dynamite.

Charlie is our thirteen-year-old high-powered computer animator who will design everything from show logos to animation of the Blunder to Wonder. He often takes things a step further on his computer and crashes the Tower of Pisa due to attacking alien ships or mutates penicillin to become large disgusting creatures.

Taylor is the video editor and tech geek. She is an outspoken teenage girl who hates to have her work critiqued by anyone including the professor.

The Professor is the team leader.

Story examples will include:

The engineering catastrophe that became known as the leaning Tower of Pisa and the wonder that it has provoked.

Levi Strauss went out West to sell hard goods to Gold Rush settlers including canvas for tents. It turns out that the one item desperately in need were pants. Being a determined man, Mr. Strauss converted his tents to jeans including sturdy pockets to hold the gold nuggets. This venture soon became the company we all know today!

A coal trader wrongly sent his ship full of coal to Newcastle, England, the coal capital of the world only to find that the a coal strike was in progress and he was able to sale every last piece.

The owner of The Toll House Inn in New Bedford Massachusetts ran out of bakers chocolate while making cookies. As a substitute she used some chocolate pieces expecting them to melt into the cookie but this was not to be. When The Inn Keeper opened the oven she found that she had accidentally invented the chocolate chip cookie known widely today as Toll House Cookies.

George de Mestral blundered into a wild field of cockleburs and came back a sticky mess. While de-burring he became fascinated with natures designs and set out to recreate of the minute hook and loop affect of the cocklebur. The end result was the invention of Velcro

After accidentally leaving some natural rubber and sulfur on his stove and burning it, Charles Goodyear found that the rubber had hardened and become melt-resistant and more elastic. His name is synonymous with tire manufacturing.

Irving Berlin wrote “White Christmas” in 1939 and then threw into a trunk where it remained for there years until a song was needed for Bing Crosby in the movie “Holiday Inn”. Bing had hesitations about the song since he was a staunch Catholic and did not want to commercialize Christmas. He soon recorded the song in 18 minutes and saw it become an all time world wide hit song.

An angry chef in Saratoga Springs NY decided to cut his potatoes extra thin and fry them in retaliation for a complaining customer. To his surprise the fried slice was not only loved, it soon became known as the Saratoga Chip and known world wide as a Potato Chip.

Glue was developed at 3M that was thought to be useless until a scientist who sang in a church choir decided that he needed a solution to his falling book markers. He applied the glue to markers that would stick but not damage the pages. Thus, the Post-It was born!

Similarly, Scotch guard was developed at 3M after a researcher spilled an experimental fluid on her shoe: The water she used to try to clean up the spill simply beaded.

Christopher Columbus’ failed at attempting to find a short cut to India and discovered The New World instead.

The French attempt at building The Panama Canal was a fiasco until The United States stepped in and brought with it her American ingenuity and equipment to do the job and build a true wonder.

The British were ill prepared as they attacked on Louisburg in present day Halifax. The ladders were too short for the high walls and their cannon could not be carried close enough to hit the fort. Fortune was on their side still however as French cannon were found at an outside battery that matched their own cannon balls and unfinished walls in the rear of the fort were soon overtaken.

During WWII, engineers tried to make synthetic rubber out of silicone. When an engineer added Boric Acid he made a gooey substance that would bounce but do little else or so it seemed. In 1949 an engineer came up with the crazy idea to put the goo in a plastic egg and sell it as a toy. He called it Silly Putty.

”The Wizard of Oz” and “It’s A Wonderful Life” were box office flops only to become two of the greatest family movies of all time.

• It's A Wonderful Life was originally made for Liberty Films, is one of the most popular and heartwarming films ever made by director Frank Capra. It was actually a box-office flop at the time of its release, and only became the Christmas movie classic in the 1970s due to repeated television showings at Christmas-time when its copyright protection slipped and it fell into the public domain and TV stations could air it for free. Frank Capra regarded this film as his own personal favorite - it was also James Stewart's favorite of all his feature films.

• Oddly enough, The Wizard of Oz was considered a failure in its first run. It didn’t make back its production costs, for many reasons. One is the fact that many of the tickets purchased for the film had been reduced price children’s’ tickets, and two, 1939 was perhaps the greatest year in Hollywood history, forcing Oz to compete at the box office with other classics like Gone With the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Gunga Din and more. But The Wizard of Oz would of course eventually find its fortune and place in cinema history…just a little further down the Yellow Brick Road.

Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space and The Rocky Horror Picture show both bombed in theaters but later became cult classics for very different reasons.

Elixir Pharmacist, John Pemberton decided to make a cure to relieve exhaustion and headaches.
When he mixed the syrup with water and ice he found it was delicious. The next time he mixed the concoction he accidentally used carbonated water and thus was born Coca Cola. Instead of a cure all, Pemberton realized it would make a great fountain drink named after the coca leaves and coca nuts it contained.

The late chief executive officer of Coca Cola, Roberto Goizueta, presided over one of the greatest blunders in business history when he replaced traditional Coca Cola with a sweeter version, new Coca Cola, and saw his decision summarily rejected by consumers. But learning from his mistakes, Goizueta went on to build a more prosperous company centered on Coca Cola
as a brand, not as a product that sold on the basis of taste.

A German scientist, Wilhelm Roentgen was experimenting with a Crookes tube using weak electrons called Cathode Rays. During his experiments he accidentally photographed a key that was within the pages of a book. The rays that accomplished this were unknown and were thus called X-Rays. Roentgen went on to win the Nobel prize for his discovery.

Percy Le Baron Spencer was forced to go home change his pants. While experimenting at the Raytheon Corporation, his favorite candy bar melted in his pocket. This chocolate mess was the first food to be nuked by the invention of the microwave oven.

The Volkswagen car as we know it today came about. It started when Ferdinand Porsche designed the "peoples car." When the car first came into production people didn't want such a different looking car. Some people thought it was ugly. There were a couple of different prototypes for the first VW car. A few were not accepted. The one that finally made it was different than the other ones because it had a window in back and a slightly different front end. The real blunder came to be as the Nazi party collected money as a savings plan for families to own their own VW. Instead the money was spent on war resources and everyone lost their investment. Of course after the war, the VW would break all records as the hottest car on the international market.

9 year old Frank Epperton mixed some soda powder with water and accidentally left his drink in his porch with the mixing stick still inside. Overnight the liquid froze and, to Franks delight, made a delicious snack and a big hit at his school. 20 years later Frank Epperton went into business selling frozen drinks and utilized seven fruit flavors known as the Popsicle.

During WWII, a naval engineer noticed a spring fall from a project he was working on. The spring flip-flopped along springing a clever idea upon the engineer. Soon America would enjoy the toy known as The Slinky.

Alexander Fleming was studying bacteria near an open window and discovered that some mold had blown in and contaminated the material he was watching. Although it had spoiled his study, he continued to watch the affects under a microscope. To his amazement the mold was dissolving the deadly bacteria and Penicillin was soon introduced to the world.

In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell was experimenting with a telegraph transmitter when he accidentally discovered that harmonic frequencies could be received and transmit matching sounds. The telephone was born.

The sweet story of the artificial sweetener Saccharin came to be as a chemist noticed that his bread was extremely sweet tasting. He soon found that his hands were the contaminant and he quickly went back to his lab to figure out what made his fingers so sweet. It turns out that he discovered a sweetener that is 400 times sweeter than sugar but has no calories. This became a huge success for decades until it was discovered that Saccharin caused cancer.

At the end of WW1, a German doctor and his dog were walking with a soldier who had been blinded by battle. When the doctor had to make an emergency stop, the soldier was left with the dog and leash. When the doctor came back, the dog and soldier were gone. He later found the dog guiding the soldier across the hospital grounds. The doctor realized what potential this had and began to train other dogs to help with the blind. This was to directly lead to the guide dog program for the blind across the world.

About Groff Films:

Reginald Groff has been producing television for over twenty years. His company, Groff Films, Inc., includes six full time employees who cover all aspects of the production process. Over the last ten years Groff has written and produced numerous infomercials that have generated almost a billion dollars in revenue. In the late nineties Groff shot and directed an animated series for Nickelodeon Network called “Action League Now!”, which won a Cable Ace Award. In between these projects are hundreds of commercials and numerous network shoots including three full episodes of Forensic Files for Court TV. His production capabilities include Betacam packages, HDV cameras, Super-16mm Aaton camera package, three non linear edit suites, HMI light packages, dolly and track, Jimmy Jib and a small studio. Bottom line is we are ready to roll!