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Series 1 and 2 have been great successes and now it’s time for Series 3! That’s right, after we far-exceeded our Kickstarter goal a few years ago, we’re back! We’ve already created 71 Melty Misfits characters and we can’t wait to create at least 40 new ones. We’ll use the same custom-made sticker paper and old-school printing presses to create a new set that feels nice and nostalgic. Naturally, we’re exploring some cool new printing processes and those always take a lot of time and money!
The Melty Misfits is a set of vintage-style trading cards/stickers created by artist Buff Monster and produced by Sidekick Labs. The cards are offset printed using custom-mixed inks on custom-made sticker stock, kiss-cut and packaged in a vintage-style wax wrapper (each one is folded and sealed by hand, one at a time!). And you’ll find a variety of special inserts (read about those below!). We’ve actually created 5 different versions of The Melty Misfits over the last 5 years:
2012: Series 1 of The Melty Misfits
2013: The Sundae Gang (the Japanese version)
2014: The Metal Misfits
2014: Series 2 of The Melty Misfits
2017: Heladitos (the Spanish version)
The NEW art process: Every stage of this process (painting, pre-press, printing, packaging) is incredibly more time-intensive than you may already know (check out the Series 2 Kickstarter for more info!). We always examine the old school way, and then we see what’s possible today. When it comes to making the artwork, I feel that we’ve fully honored the old school by hand-painting 71 Melty Misifts characters. So with this new series, I’m going to be creating all the artwork digitally (with Procreate on an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil). This will allow me to create layered files (which is a big help for some of the cool new types of cards I want to do) and will save the time it takes to photograph and touch-up the pieces. I’ll still be drawing the tight pencils by hand (see below!).
A little more info about some of the inserts (all images are from the second series):
Cards: We call them trading cards, but they’re actually stickers! And we’re not messing around—this sticker paper is custom-made for us, to our exact specifications.
a/b versions: There are two cards featuring each character. The base set includes all the (a) and (b) versions for a total of 80 cards.
Variation cards: If you look really closely at your favorite trading cards, you’ll find little variations on different pieces of the same card. We add some of those in for extra fun! These also have different back designs too!
Signed cards: We leave the backs blank on several sheets of stickers so I can sign ‘em! Since the fronts are the same, you always gotta flip your cards over!
Sketch cards: Blank-back cards printed on extra thick stock. Perfect for a sweet little pencil sketch!
Error cards: I love the errors! We ask the printer to mess around with a few sheets. Colors are intentionally printed off-register, colors are left off, art from the back is printed on the fronts, and so on. The results are always unexpected, and always interesting.
Foil cards: The same designs printed on rainbow foil paper. So nice! So shiny! And so hard to photograph! We put reproductions of the tight pencil sketches on the backs. Sweet! (Just like last time, these are a stretch goal).
Golden Ticket: For Series 1 we made 1, for Series 2 we made 2, so now let’s make 3! These are super duper rare, but they’ll get you something really awesome!
New Characters for Series 3! Here are just a few tight pencil drawings for Series 3. Once you pledge, you’ll get emails with photos of more of these guys!
Together we can make the Series 3 dream a reality! Check out all the rewards below!
If you'd like an add-on, select the reward level you'd like, and then increase your pledge amount by the amount of the add-ons you'd like. So if you want a complete set ($40) and a small toy ($30) select the "Complete Set" reward level and pledge $70. At the end of the campaign, we'll send out a survey and you can tell us what you'd like for the extra money you pledged. Thanks!
IMPORTANT: Please leave a comment on Kickstarter saying which item you're pledging for so we can keep track of these very limited items before it ends. And please, just one of each item per person. Thanks!
We’ve also signed on with Crowd Ox for the survey process! Let’s say you want 2 complete sets, or you want a second framed piece of Series 3 art, or you want an extra Ultimate Master Set for a Christmas present. Well now you can! We planned all the rewards very carefully, but you can only select one set of rewards. This changes that. So at the end of the Kickstarter campaign, you’ll get an email to fill out a survey. This is where you tell us which specific add-ons you want, and your shipping address. Anything you order at that point will be added to your order and ship with your other Series 3 goodies! Sweet!
Risks and challenges
We’ve done this 5 times before, so we know what we’re doing. Naturally, we rely on a bunch of vendors to get the very specific materials that we require. If something happens to one of these vendors, we might be delayed. We’ll do our best to stick to our production schedule and you’ll get plenty of updates along the way. With this campaign, we really want to get others involved so we can share the old-school printing processes we use and to make the biggest and best series of trading cards that we can.
If you’d like to get some of Series 2 or the Heladitos for your collection or to see the quality of the finished product, you may order them at StayMelty.com. Thanks!
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Funding period
- (27 days)