aNewDomain — Major blogs and news sites took the awesome Kickstarter success story of Exploding Kittens and ran rabid with it until the project’s numbers, and even some of their cats, exploded.
I’m kidding about the cats, of course. No cats were hurt in the funding of this project. The amazing popularity of this project is the sheer numbers in donations and donors. Those giant lumpy Oatmeal numbers. This is record-breaking stuff, folks. Let’s talk about it: As of 10 a.m. MT, Monday, Feb. 2, 2015, we were talking 129,657 backers that have pledged $5,112,183. And it keeps growing.
Here’s the Exploding Kittens Kickstarter video:
Video: Exploding Kittens – A new card game on Kickstarter
Kickstarter History
Remember the OUYA? It had just under 64,000 backers. From what I researched, the previous record holder was by Levar Burton and the Reading Rainbow campaign.
Levar asked for $1 million in funding and got $5.4 million, but only had 105,857 backers. That campaign ended in July 2014. Exploding Kittens still has 17 days to go. Any guesses on how many backers they’ll end with? I’m going to say right around 200,000. Leave your guess in the comments below and in a few weeks we’ll see who’s closest.
Exploding Kittens nailed its 10,000 goal in the first 20 minutes and, as the awesomely cute, yet eerily sadistic kitty earth fireball poster states, 1,000 percent was funded in less than an hour. This was all accomplished before the deluge of backers major blogs and news sites would bring. Exploding Kittens is a testament to the power of a good meme, The Oatmeal fan-base and gaming abilities of Elan Lee and Shane Small.
From the Wall Street Journal, Polygon and CNET to Mashable, the Verge and even Forbes, there is one word going around: “Wow.” I can’t help but reminisce on one of my favorite South Park episodes from this latest season entitled, “Go Fund Yourself.”
The Oatmeal
The Oatmeal, according to Wikipedia, generates about half a million dollars a year. Congratulations Matthew — between you and your two super genius kitten exploding cohorts, you’ve managed to quadruple your earnings, all from some colorfully happy, explosively humorous kitten cards.
Let’s not forget that Matthew Inman is no noob to digital fundraising. Remember the Tesla Museum? He had an Indiegogo page up for that back in August 2012. It beat its goal of $850,000, finishing up at $1,370,461 with 33,253 backers. Not too shabby.
Especially when you are awesome enough to get a tweet from Elon Musk saying he’ll not only drop you a million dollars for the Tesla Museum, but he will also build a Tesla charging station there. What a boss!
I should say that out of all the cool random Kickstarter projects I’ve come across, this is the first and only one I’ve ever pledged hypothetical money to. Ever. I’ve thought about a couple here and there, but the ones I was always interested in were way over my budget.
Bottom line? Matthew Inman is basically a celeb-web, god-toonist (yeah, I just made that up), and I absolutely cannot wait for July when the decks start shipping out.
Are you ready for the links? Here’s how to get connected with all the Exploding Kittens social systems. Follow @GameofKittens and @Oatmeal on Twitter. Stop by TheOatmeal.com and check out the rest of his comics and books. Also don’t forget the Exploding Kittens site itself, which is your one url stop for everything Exploding Kittens related.
Coolness, Matt!
Thanks! I can’t wait for July to get my NSFW deck lol.