Last Wednesday our guest artist and one of my best friends, Shea/HoneyHerds, passed away after a very abrupt illness. If you frequented Florida conventions or Goblin Market, you probably have met Shea or have at least seen their art and products. Shea was a positive influence and an incredibly kind person in the Florida art community, making friends wherever they went, usually over shared interests in video games and anime. 

Shea and I met through Instagram and became friends after being mutuals for a few years. In February 2025 they invited me to booth with them at Goblin Market. From then on Goblin Market was an experience we always shared and would have a blast boothing together. Shea was one of my biggest supporters, and I was one of theirs. We helped each other through rough patches in our personal life and with our art business. We were constantly bouncing ideas off of each other, sharing work in progresses, and boosting each other up. They also took on a mentor role and their encouragement is what led to this BackerKit project. They cheered me on and provided SO much help in the plush designing process, insight into running a crowdfunding campaign, etc.  

Because Shea was so special to me and a big part of this project, I'd like to create something to help them be remembered by. I haven't decided what yet, maybe a small sticker featuring one of their characters with Benny.

To everyone who ordered one of the stickers that they created, thank you. I know Shea was so excited to be a part of this project and loved sharing their work with others.

Shea was deeply loved by so many and will be missed.  💔

Hi everyone!

Some quick updates:

Surveys will be coming out soon! Being new to BackerKit, I've been a little bit confused setting things up in Pledge Manager, primarily shipping costs. I'll be reaching out to BackerKit Support to make sure that's set up properly. Once that's squared away, a few test surveys will be sent out and then you all will receive the official surveys. I'll keep you posted.

For those of you who have asked, you will be able to adjust your pledge and add additional items to your order if you'd like. 

I've updated the artwork of Benny's other friends that you helped unlock by reaching all the stretch goals:

These mockups will be close approximations to what the pins should look like. I had to simplify the details a lot a little bit from the OG designs drawn 2 years ago, but I think this better translates to the pin medium. 

I'll be reaching out to my manufacturer soon to get these started. If there any changes to the designs (color or details), I'll be sure to you know.

Great news! Plush manufacturing will start soon.  🎉

I don't have the exact date yet, but I just placed the order this morning for the batch to be made. I am requesting a small change to Benny's design that was overlooked when the prototype was made:

One of my close friends pointed out in the original prototype that it looked like he had kissy lips instead of the intended cutesy toothy grin. So this should fix that. 😅

Manufacturing is expected to take 45 to 50 days once it starts. If everything goes smoothly I'm anticipating that Benny will be setting sail to OsoCuteClub's den (my home) by the end of the year. 

Thank you all for your support. I'll keep you posted with new updates as we move forward!

Hi everyone!

First off thank you soooo much for a successful and amazing campaign. We funded Benny's plush and enamel pin production AND unlocked ALL of the enamel pin stretch goals! That means there are 7 enamel pins in total to choose from!

Secondly I'm currently traveling so I apologize for the delayed update, but I figured you all have gotten a lot of emails from BackerKit the past few days.

If you missed the campaign, I will be setting up a pre-order store through BackerKit. 

Within the next two weeks BackerKit is working on processing the pledges. Once that's done I'll send out the project surveys. I'll post more information about that once I'm back home. 😊

Eli the Egg Benedict Dumbo Octopus is the winner of our Stretch Goal poll!

I've set up a new achievement to keep track of the progress to unlock them. If we pass that stretch goal then it looks like Raymond the Egg Manta Ray will be next! Would you like to see a keychain versions of these characters as future Add-On options once they're unlocked?

The campaign ends on Monday, September 28th at 12:00 PM PST. 
As of now we have the Bananahead Shark plush and four enamel pins unlocked. We're pretty close to unlocking Eli, so we may have five enamel pins by the end of the campaign. 🤞 

Thank you again for all your continued support and feedback! I can't stress enough how grateful I am. This has been an amazing first crowdfunding campaign experience and I'm hoping to be able to host more in the future, so if we aren't able to unlock the rest of Benny's buddies there will most likely be an opportunity in the future to do so. 💛

We did it AGAIN! A week after launching, the plush and all four pins have been unlocked. Thank you sooo much!!

The full enamel pin set has been unlocked as a pledge option and is also an add-on option.

As mentioned previously, if we passed the $3000 funding goal, I would create a poll to vote on the next set of characters to unlock as stretch goals. That poll is now live and will be up for the next 15 days. These designs still need to be redrawn to work as screen printed dyed enamel pins, so expect another update in the future with the updated design.

🎉 StudioFluff's Chocoroll Shark campaign is halfway funded! 🎉
If you haven't checked out her campaign, now's there perfect time to pledge. As a reminder backing both project will get you super sweet freebies from both us as a special thank you. 

I've designed an acrylic shaker keychain featuring characters from both of our campaigns:

StudioFluff designed this adorable Sweet Life pin banner:

 Click here to visit Studio's Fluff campaign 💖 

 

Thank you all again! Seriously, I'm blown away by the amount of support my campaign has received and all the love Benny and his friends have been getting. 🥹 I'm looking forward to seeing who our next stretch goal (or set of stretch goals) will be.

Talk to you soon. Have a great weekend~

-Angie