2023 Entrants - Bubblegum Stuff
Company Name Bubblegum Stuff
Products Entered 5
Tell us about your business
We're a small novelty gift and games company from East London. And our bread and butter is creating fun products in relation to pop culture and celebrity trends that are out of the ordinary. Everything we produce is designed in-house and reflects our sideways look on life - especially in relation to TV, film, social media, and celebrity culture. We hope people get just as much pleasure from our products as we get from making them.
Tell us about the products you have entered
Death By Coconuts is our second fully-funded Kickstarter game. Following Covid, we wanted to increase our B2C activity and directly involve our audience in the creation of our games. Death By Coconuts started as a “Which is most deadly?” trivia game that was packaged in a cigarette-style box. The working title was May Cause Cancer and the aim of the game then was to outrun a chaser, which took the form of the Grim Reaper’s scythe. Having consulted our audience, there were changes, and the game became a race to the finish where players compete against each other instead of a mechanical spectre within the game. The means by which players move is betting up to three chips on three causes of death per round to reach the finish first. And for the name of the game, we drew from one of the most widely shared factoids to make it into the public consciousness: falling coconuts are responsible for an average of 150 deaths per year. We continued to interact with our audience throughout the Kickstarter campaign and the game that emerged was a quick-fire 1950s Americana-tiki-tropicana-themed race-to-the-finish board game with boosters and trapdoors reminiscent of Snakes & Ladders. It’s fun, it’s addictive, and you’ll learn a lot about the things out there that are actually deadly.
Motorway Service Stations is one for our UK audience. Its genesis is in those very British conversations about the things we hold dear that are, in essence, crap. The service station is emblematic of the things that are uniquely British: bad food, high prices, and poor standards. The issues we complain about but put up with anyway. And those three issues as well as ambiance and parking spaces rounded up the five categories that players use to outscore each other to steal every station and become the last player standing. We had a lot of fun researching this one, and there was little consensus in the office around people’s favourite stations. Which is exactly what we want Motorway Service Stations to provoke. It’s not just a card-stealing game, it’s a conversation starter that’s bound to lead to heated debates about something that is part of our national DNA.
Loud & Proud is a follow-on from our successful game, Girl Power. And like Girl Power, Loud & Proud is based on the super-speedy spoons card game, which is a race against your opponents to pass cards around the table, collect a full set from a category, and snatch a central card to secure your place in the next round. Once you’re in the final, it’s all about having the fastest reactions to bring home the big W. This game is populated by the most iconic and inspirational people from the LGBTQ+ spectrum, and it’s designed to create a dual-purpose gaming experience of fun and education. By making these games, we’re hoping to showcase trailblazers within marginalised communities to show the great work being done by individuals to further the cause of equality.
The Disco Ball Hanging Planters are part of our wider houseplant range. They are signature Bubblegum Stuff since we’ve taken a largely mundane but functional item and given it a jazzy makeover that relates to a current trend. Disco balls are being turned into lamps, bags and hats, but seeing as we don’t make furniture or clothing, we decided to add a bit of glamour to our growing range for young plant parents.
UK Huns is a UK-centric card game that we produced in homage to hun culture, a recent cultural phenomenon that’s best described by its significant features. These include reality TV moments such as CBB’s “David’s dead!”, Eastenders' “I’m not your real mother!”, and Alexandra Burke’s “Elephant in the room.” In addition, there’s bottomless brushes, cheap rose, goblets of G&T, and everything that Gemma Collins have ever said. In short, we wanted to celebrate this culture and the women within it. So we’ve populated this game with all the big hitters, including Alison Hammond, Nigella Lawson and Natalie Cassidy, as well as beloved TV characters, like Pat Butcher, Dot Cotton and Pamela Shipman! It’s hun-lovers’ jobs to outscore their friends using the five categories and collect every hun to win. The design takes inspiration from Instagram pages like @LoveofHuns and @Hunsnet and our aim is to spark the ultimate debate at every hun brunch: Who is the ultimate hun?
Why did you choose to enter the GOTY competition? have you entered in the past and has it helped your brand grow?
We have entered GOTY in the past and it has always helped us and our products reach a wider audience. It's also a mark of quality in terms of influencing customers' and consumers' purchasing decisions.
What other products will you be bringing to market in 2023
We plan to bring more card games to market with the top trumps mechanic. They include a game called Top Deck that features the best cast members from TV's Below Deck; an aesthetic finder called That's My Aesthetic that fits with the Barbiecore/Cottagecore/Retrocore, etc., trend; a rude slang game called Snatch Phrase where players draw, describe or act out words and phrases for their teammates to guess; Sticky Fly Traps that catch fruit flies, preventing them from laying eggs in the soil of pot plants; and Mushroom Moisture Meter that slots into the soil next to houseplants and measures the moisture, telling plant parents when to water.
Where can your products be purchased
Our products can be purchased directly from our website, and from numerous other retailers including Firebox, IWOOT, Find Me A Gift, Pretty Little Thing, Urban Outfitters, and Red Candy.
Website www.bubblegumstuff.com
Instagram handle https://www.instagram.com/bubblegumstuff/
Twitter handle https://twitter.com/bubblegumstuff
Facebook handle https://www.facebook.com/bubblegumstuffgifts/
