Jeff Bruneau Interview

Interview Transcription
MIXERRULES - Don't crash on me. There we go, welcome to the interview. I am MIXERRULES and we got here Jeff. How you doing today Jeff?

Jeff - I'm doing great. How are you guys?

MIXERRULES - I'm doing good. We're also here with Librarian Larry.

Larry - Hello. I'm one of the wiki editors, so, I've been researching Funkeys for a little bit now so I'm so happy to be here for this interview.

Jeff - I hope it lives up to the hype, I don't know.

MIXERRULES - I mean, I'm pretty sure no matter what happens, the wiki or the Discord is just going to be like "Oh my God it's Jeff the legend himself!"

Jeff - I don't know about 'legend', that might be overstated a bit.

MIXERRULES - Naw, you're definitely a legend in the Discord, I can say that for sure.

Jeff - Well it's been fun being there, it's been really nice kind of getting exposed to it again, after having really put it behind me for so many years.

MIXERRULES - So, my first question is: "How does the Discord make you feel to be honest?" because I know lots of people are pinging you everyday and they're all saying "We've got that emote of you now!" and all that nonsense.

Jeff - Shut up, you like that. No, it's completely flattering, you know in some regards obviously I wasn't working in a silo and there were a lot of people involved in it, but it's a real testament to the work we put into it and, you know some part of it are very timeless you know and especially you know the storylines which I'll tell you about it kind of was an evolution to the game, it wasn't part of the original kind of storyline or the original game itself. This wasn't story-based per se and so I'll get into that in a little bit. But yeah I know, I think it's fantastic and it's nice to see everybody kind of love the graphical representations. And then also to see what they do on their own and take it kind of, and take it to another level, or take it to their own interpretation of Funkeys too, so that's very rewarding as well.

MIXERRULES - Alright, so since the U.B. Funkeys team actually disbanded due to Mattel, how have you like been?

Jeff - How have I been?

MIXERRULES - Yeah, like, so I know you now have a job in, telecoms I believe?

Jeff - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I run a website for a telecom company and so it's much different, you know my career has been kind of obviously in marketing, but it's also been very across genres. I worked for an online auction house for a while, I worked for, you know I started off working for Fossil watches, for 13 years, before I joined Radica. And then I've also worked for a company that owned motorcycle dealerships across the country, running their marketing department, so very wide and across the board. You know, a lot of different things I worked on, but it's all marketing, you know.

MIXERRULES - Yeah, yeah, so have you personally seen any of the mods that have come out for Funkeys so far?

Jeff - You know, I haven't yet, that's so something I want to do and I need to see. Because I keep getting asked about that on here and I'm like "Oh yeah, I got to take some time to kind of--"

Larry - My personal favourite one is the one that changes every Funkey into Con.

Jeff - Nice, nice.

Larry - Every NPC is just Con.

Jeff - Great. Con's the man. Nice.

MIXERRULES - So, is there anything that you would like to tell the viewers about yourself before we actually get into the rest of the questions?

Jeff - About myself, I don't know. I'm married, I have two dogs, I live in a small town just outside of Dallas, and I've been here for a long time now I guess. And I'm originally from Michigan, I grew up there and went to school there and moved down here. Partly to get away from the cold, but also just to, you know, kind of get away from just a smaller town into a bigger town. Bigger city.

MIXERRULES - So you're staying cool. Okay, so Larry, would you like to start off with the first few questions?

Larry - Sure, so originally, how did the idea for U.B. Funkeys come about?

Jeff - Well actually, the story for U.B. Funkeys or the game, the idea for it came before I even joined the company. I was working at Fossil with a developer there on a project and was kind of growing restless and he wanted to kind of maybe leave, and he said that he knew a company that I might be a good fit for, and I interviewed with them and it turned out it was a really good fit, and so I joined Radica. And I guess that would have been 2005, I guess, and when I did, it was like "Oh great, I can't wait, this is going to be fantastic, yeah, we're working on this game, it might be kind of a cool edgy kind of thing." Back then MMOGs were really popular. So originally it was, and I'm not sure if I shared any of these images but I think I might have. It was originally like a USB stick, and you would plug it into the game, and it would open a world, with different games. And you could--

MIXERRULES - Ooh. I don't think you've said anything about that before.

Jeff - Alright. Well I had the whole thing back then, you know?

Larry - So, just a quick question, MMO--

Jeff - So, when this first came around, the idea was that it would... that you would walk around this world, and play different games within them. And different USB keys would put you in different worlds with different games. That was originally the idea, each a separate kind of entity. But--

MIXERRULES - So is that, since there were two USBs that you guys made. Were those what they were originally going to look like where it was the head that popped off and then--

Jeff - No, no, this was before the whole design of the Funkey was even around yet.

MIXERRULES - Oh, wow.

Jeff - It was just a slim, on the initial sketches, it was just a slim stick, USB stick.

MIXERRULES - No personality to the metal.

Jeff - No, not very much, not very much at all. No, it was strictly meant for games and that's kind of what we were, and what we ended up seeing was that because we did do a lot of research on these guys and testing in front of kids, is that we found out that they were more interested in the character on screen then they were really about the games, and it was like "Oh, interesting." So maybe we ought to kind of write a biography for each of these guys, and so we did. That's kind of what we started doing, and we wrote these biographies, and then we tested it with them as well. The game was really doing well, but there was one thing missing and we couldn't really put our finger on it. And finally, we tested a group, and the group came back to us and said "Why are we doing all these things? Why are we running around this world? Why are they there? What is this?" Like, they had all these why questions. Like, "Why, why, why, why, why, why?" And we were like, "Yeah, we didn't even really think about that." And so we just completely rethought the entire game, and said "Let's give these guys a purpose. Let's put them there for a reason. Let's give them a backstory." And we'll kind of have this, you know, character that will guide them along, and that was Mayor Sayso. And he kind of guides along the Funkeys and such. But we needed an antagonist, and that's when we kind of came up with the idea for Master Lox. And just that whole idea and aspect, it had never really come to us before. And when we did that, and tested again, it was just a home run. I mean, on every level. Everybody was coming back saying how 'amazing' it was, and "I was going to do insane numbers".

Larry - And how did the idea for the figures come about? Like, how did it change from, like, USB sticks to having figures that you would plug into the Hub?

Jeff - Yeah so, those were more kind of based on a, I mean, it was based on urban vinyl. So we had studied a lot of different urban vinyl, and that was a trend too, with monkey, and stuff like that. You know, and you put these things on your desk and collect them, but they didn't really do anything. So, our idea was to have these things actually have a purpose, and that you would collect them, and the more you collected the more games you could play. So, it was a bit of a razor blade, razor kind of, you know, program for the stores, whereas you bought the Hub and then you bought the games, and that incentivized you to come and buy into it.

Larry - And that brings me to my next question, about, since U.B. Funkeys was the first ever "Toys To Life" game ever made, how does it make you feel, to have actually created a genre, like not only a game, like an entire genre that's still around to this day?

Jeff - Well, I mean, when you're in the middle of it, you don't really understand the impact that you're having or what you're really doing per se. But, no, looking back at it now I think it was huge. Obviously it's not a genre that's really kind of around that as much anymore, at least to my knowledge. But, I mean, I think that it had it's moment where it was a really good thing, and unfortunately, and we'll talk about this in a little bit, well unfortunately it didn't have to end. It really didn't. And it was just all kind of a political thing with Mattel and stuff, so...

MIXERRULES - So, I just quickly wanted to touch on the fact that you said that you joined in around 2003. Do you know how long back Funkeys was actually in planning?

Jeff - I joined in 2005, so that would have been, I think it would have been maybe six months before that, three months maybe, they had worked out some of the electronics, they'd had some of the initial development. This is before Arkadium even, I think, was even on board. I heard maybe they've just come on board. But yeah.

MIXERRULES - So, when U.B. Funkeys was first launched, what were your long terms for the project?

Jeff - Well, I think our long term list was for a short little fall run of a cool project people liked and see where it goes from there. But nobody could have, certainly I didn't, expect it to be the big hit that it was, I mean, when we started, I think the first year, this would have been after Funkiki Island. It was a 30-million dollar brand. And we were in, all the four major toy stores- Target, Toys "R" Us, K-Mart and Wallmart, and we were outlicensing it, we had gotten our placement into a Speed Racer movie, that came about as Mattel obviously, but I mean, initially, when we first had that very first set out, it was just after Mattel had bought us. Because we had already planned everything out more or less. And they just helped get us placement in the stores a little better. But it was mainly our group that was really trying to get out there and sell it and hustle, and especially from our side, the development side.

Larry - And was Mattel in charge of, like, manufacturing the figures, or was that also Radica? Like they just gave you the money, or were they like helping you create the figures as well? Like, in the design process.

Jeff - No, they weren't helping us with the design process. They ended up, towards the end, helping us with packaging a little bit, and not design-wise but just production-wise. And I don't think they ever helped us with production on the Funkeys or the Hubs themselves. I think that was all us, in our factories.

Larry - And, what was the process for creating a new world in U.B. Funkeys? Were the characters designed first, or were the worlds made first?

Jeff - Good question. You actually... We always had some extra characters floating around. Anything that didn't make the cut, things that we thought were gonna be in, but for one reason or another didn't make it into that world, didn't really fit the whole thing, it was almost like picking songs on an album, you know, it's like, you have a theme of an album. Some things just don't fit as good as other ones, and so sometimes we had made those hard calls, and sometimes those things would then lead us to the next world, where we might build around that and kind of build off where we had originally kind of been coming from. So, it wasn't as hard and fast as you know, it always started with the characters and then we went to the worlds, or the worlds, but generally speaking, it was the worlds that kind of ran it, you know. We would come up with the worlds and try to find characters that kind of made sense within there.

Larry - So, how far in advance did you guys actually plan out the Funkeys storyline? I know you and me had a discussion in DMs about the orange portal that Master Lox went through, or I guess "robot Tinker".

Jeff - Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, it's funny, you know, when you're always balancing things. So, you know, when you're planning out a toyline. So like this, for instance, when we were doing the initial line, we were aiming for like a ship date around August-September, you know, in time for the holidays. And so, by July, we were kind of nailing things down from a production standpoint, in a design, but before that, you're doing commercials and you're planning out animations, and you're having to do some of that stuff before the design of the actual characters is deemed final and you're just hoping that you nail it right on. Some of it you can change post-production but, some of it you just kind of have to get around, you know, it just wasn't exactly, but hopefully nobody notices, and obviously, because it was such a beloved toy, clearly with you guys, you've seen things that are the average person may not pick up on, but that you guys are under a microscope looking at, and that's cool.

MIXERRULES - I remember, in the 2007 U.B. Funkeys release trailer, like the main trailer where we see Deuce going "If U.B. Funk-eh". When we, in that trailer, I believe, I think it's that one, there was someone, I believe it was Sir Lako, someone in the Discord, they had zoomed in on the like, middle piece of the land, where you would walk across the bridge to get to the other section of the-- There was a... So normally there's a statue in the middle there, but it was behind where Gabby's house is, and they're just like "What is this? Who did this?"

Jeff - Yeah, yeah, there's some things like that where we're afterwards we were kind of like "Wait, what did they do?" The animation groups that we were working with to do some of those things, you know, you had to balance whether it was accurate versus whether it just looked really good, and so sometimes we had to make that call where I was like "Well, it looks really good, I know it's not completely accurate, but it is what it is." But, it gets the point across. Nice though. Yeah, you know it's funny though, because sometimes, you work on these things, and you think, when we were getting back for instance, some of the initial hype that I started getting out there, was, you know, YouTube was still kind of young, relatively, and so I ended up taking a lot of these early animation clips, before they'd even been cut into a commercial, and started putting them out on YouTube, and floating them out there, and the weird thing was, is that it really started taking off virally that way, and I think I put out maybe three or four of the animated clips, and before I knew it, like kids were putting up their own videos, and stuff, by the time the Funkeys had hit the stores they were put in, filming their own characters, putting their Funkeys in almost treating them like action figures, and putting those videos and uploading them, and then they were putting him in the game, and showing like, doing screen captures of how far they got ahead of them, and they came up with their own storylines, and it just kind of grew from that, just where people took it and ran with it, just like you guys are.

MIXERRULES - This is pretty embarrassing, but I remember doing some of those videos. So, my grandpa, used to be really into woodworking. And he made me like this hotel house thing, and I used to do this series like a Funkey hotel or something like that. And it, I'm pretty sure it's still on YouTube so now everyone's gonna go and witch hunt it from the Discord, so I just like exposed myself.

Jeff - It's up there.

MIXERRULES - But, yeah, I'm pretty sure it's still up. And oh, god.

Larry - Yeah, I have a confession to make, I was one of those kids too, so...

Jeff - Yep. Hey, you guys weren't alone. You were a part of a humongous group of people doing it. It was crazy. Yeah, that was really exciting, I think that was the first time we actually realized that we may be on to something, it was when I started putting up these clips before the product had even shipped and people were just like devouring them, asking up all the questions, and just going crazy over them and it was just like, "Oh. Well, what have we stepped into here?"

MIXERRULES - Speaking of those clips, Larry, who is the one who found the old, I believe it was the Hidden Realm commercial.

Larry - Uh, Dream State.

Jeff - Dream State, yeah.

MIXERRULES - But, he had originally found a clip. And did you ever upload those? Like from the later animations?

Jeff - Yeah, I uploaded a lot of those things early on. I just like to leak them out there and just kind of get people kind of excited about them, and you know, to see people, like, if they would like him and honestly it was a good gut check too for us. If kids liked them and they thought it was cool, then yeah, okay, we'll just keep going down that road then. If they didn't, if they thought it was dumb, or they said something, I might change direction a little bit.

MIXERRULES - So does this mean that Larry found your hidden YouTube channel?

Jeff - I guess so. Maybe so.

Larry - Maybe.

Jeff - Do you know where you got it from?

Larry - I forgot, it was like a two second clip of Marshall saying like "If U.B. Funk-eh".

Jeff - No, I know that, but do you know where you got it from? Where you found it?

Larry - It was like, part of a compilation of like, a bunch of clips from like 2007, I just stumbled upon it, so. Like 2008 YouTube. Yeah, it was a little weird. But yeah.

Jeff - It might've been something I did, yeah.

MIXERRULES - Okay.

Jeff - I know at one point, we had a lot of those spliced together and we did have a clip, it was like a super clip of it. Of all the different cutscenes and everything.

Larry - Well, it was like a clip, it's like a compilation of a bunch of like Radica's stuff too that I found it in.

Jeff - Oh, yeah. Oh, other things.

Larry - I found like a different clip in that one, so.

Jeff - Mmm. Yeah, I'll have to check it out sometime.

MIXERRULES - So, I know we were talking about it, but how does the story, like the, Lox / Evil Tinker / Good Tinker storyline actually end? Did you guys have that planned out?

Jeff - Well, yeah, I mean, I think I told you as well, but, I mean, we kind of always saw it kind of going down where Tinker kind of gets away, and, he ends up in his own little world, so it's a world with just him, you know, and, kind of running things I guess there, and what happens when we start introducing Funkeys into this world that's not a Funkey's world, where he comes into it, but we flip it. And it's a Master Lox world, with Tinker, and all these Robots all around, and the Funkeys kind of finding out about this. And what happens then? What do they, you know, is this some place that they are trying to, you know, capture, you know, Tinker, are they going there to do kind of espionage in some way, and find some kind of hidden, things that are there that they didn't know about, that kind of tell their story, just some more insight into kind of how they came to be, and maybe that was explored a little bit, but you know, we never did. We never got it past maybe the storyboard stage.

MIXERRULES - Do you happen to have any of those storyboards?

Jeff - I don't think so, but I'll look around.

Larry - That does sound like an awesome idea though. I would have loved that, I know that.

MIXERRULES - Maybe that's where the Master turn off switch is. For all of the Henchmen. And once you got there, all the Henchmen just turn off fully.

Jeff - Hmm, yeah. Or the big button, you know.

MIXERRULES - Ooh, don't torture us like this Jeff! What does it mean?!

Jeff - I can't believe you guys haven't figured this out yet.

Larry - Damn.

MIXERRULES - We've looked through every section of the code and we can't find it.

Jeff - It's like, all the clues are right in front of you for the thing. Yeah. It was rare when people would come up to me and tell me that what the button was for, I was was like "Oh, finally, somebody figured it out." We'd knew this would come around at some point. And they're like "I'm not telling anybody." I'm like "Okay, good, good."

MIXERRULES - We need to know!

Jeff - Yeah, you know, I mean, just some people are able to get it right away and some people just aren't. I mean, it's very obvious when you press the button the effect that happens.

MIXERRULES - Can you give us a hint? 'Cause, either we're all slow, or VMs don't work like they're supposed to.

Jeff - I think that was the hint. I think that's it.

MIXERRULES - It gives you an effect. Okay, you got it Funkey Discord. You got to figure out what this effect is, because I'm blind.

Jeff - Well, clearly something happens, it wouldn't be a button if it didn't do something.

MIXERRULES - Well no, because doesn't it say at the top of the screen every time you click "It's a pointless button."?

Jeff - It does, it does. And maybe that's the clue.

MIXERRULES - It's so confusing.

Jeff - Pointless button. So, what's a pointless button? Hmm, think about that for a little bit.

MIXERRULES - Jeff, you better be thinking, this isn't okay.

Jeff - Noodle on that. You'll get it. I'm confident.

Larry - In the meantime--

Jeff - I know the whole community here is very confident that you will break this code.

MIXERRULES - Oh god. All the pressure's on me now, oh no.

Larry - Alright, well, while Mixer thinks over the big button, let's move over to the next question in the meantime. Were there any ever plans to release U.B. Funkeys on other platforms? Like, video game consoles, or maybe smartphones, or tablets, as, like, in the later days of the brand?

Jeff - We did talk about, not smartphones, but we did talk about doing some kind of a phone app. It wasn't like a smartphone because smartphones weren't really that far along when we were in there, but, it was more just kind of like, how could we integrate somebody that had a phone, into the game. So you would do something on your phone, that would translate into the game and then you could, yeah, things like that. That's what we're talking about.

Larry - And was that going to tie into the chat Funkeys at all? Because I know like you I think you guys added in like cell phones like in game during that.

Jeff - No. It wasn't.

Larry - Okay.

MIXERRULES - So--

Larry - Mixer, do you wanna--

MIXERRULES - Yeah, what was the first Funkey ever made, like, either like on the production line, or which one was the first one that you guys actually thought of with all the persons?

Jeff - That's a good question. I'd have to go back and look, but I would guess it would either have been Lotus, or Bones.

MIXERRULES - Very solid choices, either one of them. Both of them amazing--

Jeff - I'm pretty sure it was Lotus.

MIXERRULES - Lotus, wasn't he in like 90% of the Hub packs? Pretty sure?

Jeff - Yeah.

MIXERRULES - He was the most common one?

Jeff - Yeah, yeah. He was. I mean, we did so many different Hub packs though, we did them as exclusives, we did the Speed Racer, Hub Packs 2, and stuff, but yeah he was definitely a popular character. I mean across the board, overseas, I mean just really excited.

MIXERRULES - Well what do you epxect? It's a cute little panda.

Jeff - Exactly, exactly.

MIXERRULES - Okay, so this next question is gonna make you think. You ready for this?

Jeff - Sure.

MIXERRULES - Is U.B. a boy, or a girl?

Jeff - You know, it's funny, I always kind of thought UB was neither. Just kind of a, asexual. You know, kind of wasn't a boy, wasn't a girl, just, reflected everybody. Boys and girls.

MIXERRULES - He's just U.B..

Jeff - He's just U.B. He's neutral. He's a U.B..

MIXERRULES - And, do Funkeys have genders, or is it just like everybody's, did they--

Jeff - Yeah, yeah sure.

MIXERRULES - What gender is Ptep then? I mean because all you see is it's eye.

Jeff - I mean, I think some of them are easier to notice than others, obviously, Sprout is much more of a girl, Twinx, you know is a girl.

MIXERRULES - Trixie?

Jeff - Yeah, Twinx. And, you know, you've got Funkiki Island. You know, I think some of those, Flurry, I think Flurry is much more of a--

MIXERRULES - Sol?

Jeff - Sol, also more of a boy.

MIXERRULES - I always figured Sol was much more of a girl to be honest. I don't know why--

Jeff - Webley, I always thought was a girl.

MIXERRULES - Really?!

Jeff - Yeah.

MIXERRULES - I mean, I thought that for like the common variant, but then like, I thought with either, with likem the very rare it was like, that was the dude, one of that line. Know what I mean?

Jeff - The dude one.

MIXERRULES - Yeah.

Jeff - Aw, yep. Nice.

MIXERRULES - So, in Daydream Oasis, there is a staircase near, which game is that Larry?

Larry - I haven't been in Daydream for a while. I'm sorry, I forgot.

MIXERRULES - Ah. Well, it's sort of, so it's up in the upper left corner of the map. Pretty sure. It's like this staircase that looks like it's ascending up to heaven, it goes off screen or whatever. There's a, like, giant bear creature and it's like, it's called "Lox's Goon" I believe? Or, "Goon" in the files? What, how do you beat that, or what was it?

Jeff - It was just a, something we were going to lead into. We were going to develop off of that and it was going to lead someplace else, we were just never able to get it done. It was one of those things that we wanted to put out as like, almost like a service pack, or, yet, kind of an expansion pack, or if you go up to that thing, you had to defeat the bear, and then you would get past the barrier, and you would go up the steps and, it would lead into something fun. A small little world. Like a Funkiki Island or something.

MIXERRULES - Kind of like, Angus' Manor, the elevator?

Jeff - Yeah, yeah, very similar, actually. Nice.

MIXERRULES - So, just let us look at our notes really fast.

Jeff - Yeah.

MIXERRULES - Wanna do the next one Larry?

Larry - Sure, but before that I just want to throw in one, I just thought of right now. Out of all the worlds in U.B. Funkeys, which one is your favourite?

Jeff - It's like saying "What's your favourite kid?", you know. I mean, I really liked Hidden Realm, I thought it was really good. That was fun. I really liked Funkiki Island. That was probably my first real favourite one, because it was the first one we were able to do after we had had some success with the first series. And you know, Nightmare Rift was kind of fun too, that whole, area over there, with, in Dream State, so.

Larry - I know personally, my favourite is Daydream Oasis, as I just loved like all the colours and how like vibrant it is.

Jeff - Yeah. Yeah. Dyer and stuff like that. Yeah.

Larry - Yeah. Woah bro.

MIXERRULES - Woah man.

Larry - Playing Funkeys when you're older is pretty fun too. You get to latch onto some other references.

Jeff - Yeah.

Larry - So, if the game had gotten tot he point where you ran out of broken portals to repair, how would the Funkeys get to new worlds?

MIXERRULES - Would it be like, how they did, boat, that takes you to, Hidden Realm?

Jeff - That's a good question. If the game would have gotten to the point where you ran out of broken portals to repair, I don't think we would have ever let it get to that point. There always would have been one portal, that wasn't repaired. But I think, yeah, I think it would just take you, you would have some kind of like, a, I don't know, I don't know. That's a good question. I haven't really thought about that before. No broken portals. I guess we would have had to have created a new portal. Or a reason to create a new portal.

Larry - And, the final question, in this section of the interview, which is one that I know everybody's going to want to know about. In version 1.0 there was a racoon Funkey named Bandit who was later removed from the game. Was this Funkey planned to be released, and if so, like, which set was he supposed to be a part of?

Jeff - Hell yeah, he was supposed to be released. yeah, well, he was all set and queued up. But he got cut. Yeah. I'm trying to remember what, where he was originally gonna be part of.

MIXERRULES - Was he going to be like Dot, how Dot appeared in 1.0 and then later had a place in, by the Funkey--

Jeff - No, he was, sorry, I'm just kind of looking back at some of my notes I have here. He was like, series ...

MIXERRULES - People in the Discord are freaking out right now because Jeff is online.

Jeff - How do they know? Are they watching this?

MIXERRULES - No, they're looking at the Discord and they just see that you're solid green, online, so.

Jeff - Oh, I see, got it. I don't see any notes on this per sse, but, you know, thinking back at it, I think he was part of Hidden Realm.

MIXERRULES - Hidden Realm?

Jeff - And I think that we ended up swapping him out. We were originally only going to have four, no I think we swapped him out for Raj.

MIXERRULES - Ooh.

Larry - Oh. That does actually make sense.

Jeff - Because Raj was actually kind of a late addition and we went with him instead of Bandit.

MIXERRULES - You're staying cool. Ah, okay. I just thought of a question, since we were talking about Hidden Realm. What do you think would happen if Funkey Fighters became like it's own little eSport?

Jeff - I always thought it could have a good little fighting, like a little Funkey Forum, where people could go there and they could fight and stuff.

Larry - Yeah.

Jeff - I think that would be good.

MIXERRULES - If we could ever get online mode, working, would you like to be part of the first tournament?

Jeff - Ah, for sure. For sure, sign me up. If there's a part where you have to play against them, people would be like "Yeah, sure!" as long as I get to pick my character. You know. Each one's got to have a different move.

MIXERRULES - Yeah, I guess. Oh, were there any plans to expand the Funkeys that were allowed to fight in the Dojo?

Jeff - Yeah. Yeah sure. At some point, we were going to let them all be in there.

MIXERRULES - Ooh.

Larry - Oh.

MIXERRULES - I really want to see what Mulch's would be. I think, wouldn't it have something to do with a backpack, like he has a special where he just blows the enemy away?

Jeff - I love that idea. Yeah, that would be good. Yeah.

Larry - Mixer, take notes for 3D Funkeys.

MIXERRULES - I got this man! I got this!

Jeff - Boggle, you know, each thing comes out of his three eyes, you know, something can come out of each of his eyes--

MIXERRULES - Laser beam!

Jeff - Yeah. I mean, why not? Nice.

Larry - Alright, so the next section of the video is going to be about the Speed Racer world, because there were some, unfortunately there's some cut content in that world, then like a few mysteries as well that we want to ask about.

Jeff - Yeah.

Larry - But, before we get to that, we wanna ask like how did the idea for a Speed Racer tie-in come about? Like, originally.

Jeff - Mattel got the license for Speed Racer, for the movie that was coming out, and there was going to be a big launch, and so typically what happens is once they get a license like that, is they rally every game group. And they say, "Hey, what are you going to do to support this movie?" And so, each group kind of comes up with it's own thing. So you might have board games come up with a Speed Racer version, you may have, you know, action figures'll come up with a version, Hot Wheels will come out with like a Speed Racer cars and stuff like that. And then for us, it was, you know, we can do this Funkey version of Speed Racer, and that's kind of how it came about.

Larry - And, did Warner Brothers have any say in what the Speed Racer world was like or did or was it mainly the Funkeys team that designed everything?

Jeff - No, no they definitely had to say for sure. Yeah, there are some things. I mean it wasn't as bad as D.C. but there were some things he just had to be on point with and stuff. Especially with regards to the way the new movie was coming out. So it had to reflect the movie, as I recall. It couldn't be like classic references too much, it had to be more of the modern kind of, you know, we previewed the movie beforehand, so.

MIXERRULES - Would that be why the old cartoony version of Speed wasn't released?

Jeff - Yep.

MIXERRULES - Wow, okay.

Jeff - It's not like today, like nowadays, like when you play a game, you might get a skin for like an, you know a classic version of the character and stuff like that, back then it wasn't like that. There were just solely focused on whatever they were promoting. And they didn't see that. Now, I think that nowadays, like pulling those classic characters back in as well is really cool. I like that idea.

MIXERRULES - So, I have one more question really fast, and I'll let Larry get back to the normal list. But, did you ever get any of the postcards from Funkiki or the Speed Racer zone sent to your email, from other members on the Funkey team?

Jeff - For sure, for sure. Yeah. Absolutely. Yes, I love that idea. Why, did you not think I did?

MIXERRULES - I just didn't know, I mean, you were one of the testers, you said, correct?

Jeff - I was.

MIXERRULES - Yeah, so, you're in game so much, you'd probably see them, so I'm just wondering.

Jeff - I did.

MIXERRULES - In team joke, you know?

Jeff - Yeah. Absolutely.

Larry - There's something I've actually been curious about for a while. Was there ever going to be like a plot in the Speed Racer world? Or was it always just going to be minigames?

Jeff - It was just planned to be games. We had considered doing a plot, but it was just, the more we dug into it, it would have been a much bigger undertaking than we wanted to really, frankly give Speed Racer. We wanted to, save those kind of big launches for Funkeys, for our regular line of Funkeys. So this was just something to support the movie, a little one off kind of thing. If the movie was successful, great, we'd have upside, if it wasn't, then, no harm no foul. And obviously the movie was not successful. No, going into it though, there was a big host, because the directors where the guys did the Matrix and stuff, so it was, you know, Wachowski brothers, so we thought that gosh, this could be a really big hit. But it wasn't.

MIXERRULES - For me, it looked pretty damn successful, because you got me to buy every single Funkey in the Speed Racer zone, you know?

Jeff - No I mean, it was really successful for us, but the movie wasn't successful.

Larry - And, a little off topic, but was there a planned story for the D.C. world also then? Like later on, or were you just going to make that the same kind of deal with Speed Racer?

Jeff - The same kind of deal, you know?

Larry - Okay.

Jeff - We didn't really, we wanted to keep the storyline, Funkey based. And we felt by mixing those worlds up, it was really going to cause more problems, than, you know, that there wasn't as much upside. You know, the other thing too, is that you know you have these licenses for a finite amount of time, so when the license is up, now all of the sudden we've got to reengineer it, pull all that stuff back out of there. It's because we don't have the license to do it anymore, and it just seemed like a really big hassle. Whereas the way we built it, we could just turn it off, and, be done.

Larry - Also, why was the second half of the Speed Racer Funkeys cancelled?

Jeff - Yeah, it kind of sunk. It's because the movie bombed. Movie wasn't good, no need to do more toys. No, but yeah, it kind of bummed this out a little bit because we had pretty good, I mean did you see the characters that were planned for it, or...

Larry - Well, I know I've played Speed Racer's minigame and I have accessed Taejo, using like, the portal jammers, but as for figures, I've seen common Taejo, and I think that's about it.

Jeff - Yeah. Yeah, there was a, I think we had, trying to remember what ones we had. But it was, we had Chim-Chim, we had a special Speed Racer one, we had Taejo, and another kind of Speed Racer looking guy. Different coloured ones like that, but yeah, it was a shame, especially Chim-Chim, I wanted to see one of those Chim-Chim ones.

MIXERRULES - So, we've, wasn't there an alternate version of Chim Chim? I thinm I saw something about, I know there was an alternate for Cannonball Taylor and Racer X that looked more like the older cartoon style.

Jeff - Was there?

MIXERRULES - There was an image floating around, I don't know if it's legit. It's omewhere, I'll try and find it after the interview, and--

Larry - I think I might have it.

MIXERRULES - Yeah. Not sure if it was legit or not though.

Jeff - Well we had Chim-Chim as you know, different like, but it wasn't the classic one, you know? I think any classic versions of it, were probably just based on our concept art that we were talking, in the early days doing. I don't think that we, I know we didn't ever go to production on any kind of classic Chim-Chim. Or classic Racer X, even.

MIXERRULES - Like, the version of Racer X that I remember seeing, like, it basically had a full mask over it, it had the giant X but it like had a giant visor covering it's entire eyes and the rest of it pulled up over it's mouth.

Jeff - Yeah. That was, my guess without seeing it to be sure would be that it's probably, it was early artwork, the artwork that we pitched the, you know, we'd pitched people on before we'd even done the actual development of the game.

MIXERRULES - Ah, okay.

Jeff - Because we had nothing to base it on before we knew what the movie was going to look like, so we were kind of just spitballing basically.

MIXERRULES - During the launch of Speed Racer and of the Speed Racer zone, did you guys, get set in a room and get to see the movie early then?

Jeff - Yeah, yeah it was fun. We went out to the lot, we went out to, what was it. DreamWorks, I think, and we got to see the entire movie there and I think the director was there, but I don't think any of the stars were there, but yeah. Packed the house, we saw the whole movie, and we even found our, we knew where the Funkey was going to be in the background, and so we saw that happen.

MIXERRULES - Where did the, could you give us like a little hint on where it is, because I don't want to have to redownload and watch the entire movie again, and again.

Jeff - I've got a screenshot of it someplace, I'll get it and send it to you. But I was looking for it a little before the call here today, but I couldn't find it off the top of my head. Basically, it occurs, when, it's during a race, and there's a dialogue between Matthew Fox and somebody else, in like a suite, and like if you--

MIXERRULES - Ooh, I know where that is.

Jeff - --And if you look out past that, and in the background, there's a giant Funkey as a blimp kind of floating around, going by. It's quick, if you don't catch it, it's really quick, unfortunately, but it's kind of cool.

MIXERRULES - I think I now remember seeing it.

Jeff - Yeah. Okay, I'll look for the screenshot.

MIXERRULES - That's during, the, race where they go in the desert and stuff, correct? That's the one where they got to help Taejo.

Jeff - No, I think it's--

MIXERRULES - I think that's where--

Jeff - You could be right, it's been a long time since I've seen it, but I know that the theme is inside of a dome. It's like a big humongous dome everywhere, and there was all these kind of everything going on, and they're in one of the suites in the film.

Larry - Speaking of Taejo, back in 2009, a Taejo Funkey somehow ended up on eBay. Do you know the story behind this and how that ended up happening?

Jeff - No.

MIXERRULES - And was it real? Was it real?

Jeff - I don't know, I hadn't seen that, that's interesting. I know that it didn't work, because obviously we never put it in the game. But we definitely--

MIXERRULES - Oh no, the--

Jeff - Huh?

MIXERRULES - It's in the game. The sprite works, you can access it.

Jeff - Correct, but we never released the characters. So, they may have gotten it because we had tons of prototypes of those floating around, so I'm sure somebody took one of them and sold them on eBay or something.

MIXERRULES - So, I remember someone in the Discord, I think it was "Ressing"? He had, he was an owner of a Dot, so we tried getting him in the server, and we successfully did, but he said something about him knowing someone in Indiana I believe or something, but one of his friends there, knew someone who owned the Taejo Funkey.

Jeff - Hmm.

MIXERRULES - So, could that have been one of the like pre-production ones?

Jeff - Yeah. For sure, it probably was. It's very well possible. I don't know how it got in Indiana, but it's possible it could have traveled from up here to up there, I know one of the guys thats was not on the Funkeys team but worked for Radica that went on to work up there in Indiana, so, I mean, who knows, maybe.

MIXERRULES - Well, maybe that's him.

Jeff - Maybe so.

Larry - And, I'm just going to jump ahead as this question was meant for a later part of the interview but while we're on the topic, do you know what happened to the other prototype Funkeys that were shown?

Jeff - The other what?

Larry/MIXERRULES - The other prototypes.

MIXERRULES - Do you know who would have them nowadays? Or anything?

Jeff - I used to have them all, but I didn't end up keeping them.

MIXERRULES - Aww.

Jeff - But, yeah, you know, when the, well, I'll tell you about this later, but a little sneak peak. But when the product line got canceled, it really kind of bummed us out, and really bummed me out. And maybe quite frankly, pretty angry, because there was never really a good reason why, and you know they flushed a product line that most people would consider a massive hit.

MIXERRULES - I mean just look at the subreddit. We now have 325 people who are following it as of today. I just checked it. And we have almost 200 in the Discord already.

Jeff - Geez, that's crazy. Yeah.

MIXERRULES - Like, people still remember this.

Jeff - Yeah.

MIXERRULES - Like, very well.

Jeff - Clearly, it resonates with people. So I, yeah.

Larry - I know it's a bit anecdotal, but I have, like, all my Funkeys on my shelf in my room, and pretty much whenever I have friends over, they almost always remember either the commercials or playing the games so I, like people still know of the brand.

Jeff - Yeah.

MIXERRULES - I mean, people are still playing it today. I mean we recently, a new member of the Discord, I helped him pick out a set to get, they got a few rares, but, now I believe they started playing Funkeys over. So. Pretty cool.

Jeff - That is pretty cool.

MIXERRULES - They also played it like, once before this. And they joined the Discord and were like "Hey, I really remember this. I remember playing."

Jeff - Wow. Nice.

Larry - And jumping back to Speed Racer, when we were looking inside the files, we found two unused cutscenes about Royalton and Cruncher Block visiting Funkeystown. But does this mean that a Speed Racer adventure pack was planned at some point, and was any content made for it?

Jeff - It's funny, they were in there. Wow. Really?

MIXERRULES - Yeah, they haven't even been taken out even in 5.0, I believe we still have them in the 8.0 also. 4.0, 4.0 not 8.0. Not 4.0, 4.8!

Jeff - Yeah.

MIXERRULES - Jesus, I can't talk today!

Jeff - Yeah, I mean originally we had kind of thought of that like I said we would integrate them a little bit more but I think once we got into it we were just like "I don't know if this makes sense." And no, there wasn't any content made for it. Just the cutscene that we thought we might use, and kind of build off of and then we didn't.

Larry - Okay.

MIXERRULES - So, one more question on the Speed Racer zone, that I just thought of, why is the, like, goon for that realm or whatever, for the world, why does it have no sprite? That's supposed to be, like, Cruncher Block or someone right?

Jeff - Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it just, again we wanted to take, I think, just wanted the, yeah I mean, I think that we originally just wanted them to not resemble Funkeys as much. Why he doesn't have a sprite is kind of weird though. I'm not really, I can't remember why though that would be. But-- hmm?

MIXERRULES - Maybe, since the actual Funkey wasn't going to be released, you guys were just...

Jeff - Yeah, I mean, yeah. It could be. We just, yeah, I just remember the whole time, thinking big ideas and we had all these cool ideas and it's being kind of being pulled back in, and I'm just like "Okay, let's do this and we can do this. See, and we'll show him something" and I'd be like "Okay, pull it back in" and so we just kind of eventually got to the point where it was like "Okay, let's just stop going down this road, it's just going to be games." So. And cool characters.

Larry - And, most of those games, we're directly from Arkadium's site, correct? Just reskins, right?

Jeff - Yeah. Exactly.

Larry - Okay.

Jeff - Exactly. They had already developed all these games, and every time we would go into a development meeting up there with them, they would show us new games they were working on, things that could be turned into Funkey games, because the games they were doing were never really done in a mass way I guess, and so we were kind of taking those to the masses for them.

Larry - So, this next section of the interview is going to be about the U.B. Funkeys TV Show. So, for all of you who are watching who don't know about this--

Jeff - Jimmy Cricket.

Larry - U.B. Funkeys was supposed to have an animated television series, that's about all we know about it, so, Jeff could you give us like a little more, insight?

MIXERRULES - No, we know, one more thing. It got replaced by Monster High! Why?!

Jeff - So, here's what happened. This is, you got to remember that this is this is at the height of Funkeys when it was really popular. Mattel set up two meetings. One with Cartoon Network, and one with Nickelodeon. And so we flew up to New York and met with both of them, and pitched them, but it wasn't just, a pitch. It was 2 groups. It was us, and it was Monster High. Each pitching the networks on a cartoon series. And, trying to see which one they had more interest in. And so, we worked really long and hard on the screenshots, and developing something about a, kind of a common idea with the different characters within that more of a story based kind of thing. And we had up everything, we had it all set up. When we went up there we pitched to them, and I remember it was a foggy day. And it was like on the, I don't know, 60th floor or something that was way up there in the clouds. You know, and this high skyscraper and, we did everything right, it just was a slam dunk. And we got news that, shortly after that, we got news that it was kind of more of a less a done deal that they were already gonna be probably be getting Monster High, and that really we were just there to kind of show them what we could be dong with this property. It was like "Well why is that?" and it was because, U.B. Funkeys was a Radica idea, and Monster High was a new platform that they saw launching and toys and all this other stuff. And they came up with it, so that's what they ended up pushing. And so they pushed behind that, I think Nickelodeon was the one that picked them up and, there it was.

MIXERRULES - Had of been possible for Radica and Arkadium to go to him directly instead of going through--

Jeff - No. When Mattel bought Radica, we became a division of Mattel. So anything-- Sorry, my dogs are barking if you can hear them.

MIXERRULES - Hello!

Jeff - So, at that point they owned all rights to everything Radica. And so we, it was there to do with what we will, what they could. Arkadium had no... We just licensed the games sometime. They had no interest in the brand, in it. No invested interest in the brand.

Larry - What was the show supposed to be about? Like, was there a storyline developed for it, or was it just like a basic idea you guys had at the time?

Jeff - I think we pitched them two ideas for possible episodes. And I'd have to go back and check my notes to see what, if I have that information still. But I shared with you some of the artwork on there, and basically we had those on cards. And we would, this guy that worked with us on the stuff, he kind of told the story and would show different cards in different moments in the story that he was narrating. And so just to kind of give you an idea of how that episode would progressed, and kind of where, would, how it would have played out on screen, if that makes sense.

Larry - And how do you think the show would have affected the U.B. Funkeys game, if it had been greenlit?

Jeff - I think it would have taken it to another level, honestly. I think it would have gone, we would have probably been started developing games for it, I think that would have, obviously the licensing opportunity would have been even bigger than it was, T-shirts selling out, and stuff like that, I think we would have been doing multiple licenses, multiple instances, I mean I really could have seen it really going... A lot of new places. So, but yeah.

Larry - The next section of the interview is going to be about unused content for Funkeys. Mixer, do you want to ask like, through the questions here first?

MIXERRULES - Yeah. So, based off of the prototypes that were shown at the one Funkeys convention, the one convention, I think it was CES? I think that's what it was? Or, wait--

Jeff - Comic-Con?

MIXERRULES - Comic-Con. It was Comic-Con.

Jeff - Oh, yeah. Mhmn.

MIXERRULES - I kept getting them confused last interview with, with Brian. The voice actor for Jerry. I kept getting them confused and I was like "Ahhhh!" So, based off the prototypes, that we saw there, like a white Marshall and I think there was a "Goli", a Dali, and a normal Marshall figure. Whatever happened to them?

Jeff - Which ones did you see? There was a what, golden Dali?

MIXERRULES - There was a Dali, it was a, I believe it's a, I can never remember how to pronounce these names. But it's the flower, like flower enemy, and then the blue flying, like, dog thing, and then there was a Marshall figure. I can never remember the names! I don't play those worlds enough.

Jeff - Goya?

MIXERRULES - Yeah.

Larry - Yeah. And Marshall, and Goya.

Jeff - Dali was the flower. Marshall--

MIXERRULES - Dali was the flower?

Jeff - And there's white Marshall, there was the, what's the other one. King Sidd?

MIXERRULES - King Sidd was from...

Larry - Hidden Realm.

MIXERRULES - Hidden Realm, yeah. But whatever happened, how would his model had a fit on to U.B.?

Jeff - Who, King Sidd?

MIXERRULES - Yeah. Because he--

Jeff - You know--

MIXERRULES - He's sitting criss cross in his chair, like that.

Jeff - Yeah, but his, he had a small platform at the bottom. And that's what he'd be put on.

MIXERRULES - Oh, okay.

Jeff - And same with, you know, Kane, and Oni, I mean those guys were in Hidden Realm, but, I mean we had a lot of these things all kind of lined up, and I really liked the Marshall character, that was like our Clint Eastwood kind of character.

MIXERRULES - Speaking of unused content, I just wanted to know why did you guys give U.B. a voice, in the Wendy's discs?

Jeff - I knew that would come up. It was a bad idea, we, it wasn't our idea to do so. But they, I think it was right around the cartoon, so they were trying to get some kind of connection between that, but... It was a bad idea. It's like that part at, where you know, in Star Wars, where they remind George Lucas of the TV special. And you're just like, "Oh god, that was so bad singing and dancing droids." Yeah, those kind of, this was our Star Wars TV moment.

MIXERRULES - So, for other things regarding that, unused content, Larry had found, some CG scenes from the Hidden Realm and D.C. Funkey trailer. Was that supposed to be in an official video, or was that just like, concept stuff?

Jeff - I don't know, I'd have to look at it and see, what he found, but we did have another line initially planned for Speed Racer, like I mentioned, I think, but it just never happened. When the whole series died, everything just kind of shut down on that.

Larry - Do you know when it like, I'm not sure if I've asked you this already, but do you know what like, what happened to those prototype figures, like the Marshall, and the Goya. Like, after the convention, do you know where they went, or where they might be now?

MIXERRULES - Does someone still have them?

Jeff - Well they are out there someplace, yeah, I mean, I would get that certain people have them. I don't think I ever had one, but, yeah. They're around. They're around.

MIXERRULES - Well, I just thought of another question, since you said you own those. Did you ever own a Dot?

Jeff - Yeah, sure. We had, at one point we had a box full of them, and we were like handing them to everybody at Comic-Con. Just trying to get rid of them all because we didn't want to give them back.

MIXERRULES - Well, you only had like, 2000. It's not that much. [All laugh]

Jeff - Well, there were a lot! There was just, it was the only point we handed them out. But, yeah. Everybody had a Dot. Do you not have a Dot?

MIXERRULES - I don't have a Dot! I want one! No!

Larry - So, there's only about 2 people in the server that own Dots. They're very, very, rare these days.

MIXERRULES - So, there are--

Larry - Yeah.

MIXERRULES - 3 or 4 people now. Because there's Ressing, Heisto has his Dot, there's Avani and Shiny--

Jeff - Was one of them in the package?

MIXERRULES - Shiny has one in package. Shiny--

Jeff - With the flower package around it?

MIXERRULES - Yeah, and-- But he has 2 Dots. So does Avani. Avani has 2 Dots. And, Avani paid, I think he said, I don't remember how much he said, but he paid, he paid a lot for it, I think.

Jeff - Avani's has a huge collection. Does he have the biggest collection in the group?

MIXERRULES - He has the most dupes.

Larry - Yes, he has over like, a thousand, I'd say.

MIXERRULES - He has the most dupes. He's missing, two Funkeys I believe.

Jeff - Oh really.

MIXERRULES - And Shiny has all the Funkeys except for two also, I have all of the Funkeys except for Dot, the 2 USBs, and some of the rarities. But I do have every Funkey technically.

Jeff - Mmm.

MIXERRULES - Like, on the 3.1 checklist.

Jeff - Yeah.

MIXERRULES - Speaking of that, was there ever a checklist that involved, like a U.B. Funkeys downloadable checklist that had the Mulch, and the Ace, and all those guys in it? Or did you guys stop after the Speed Racer zone? Because I think that's as far as it goes under a 1.-- the 3.1 checklist.

Jeff - So the checklist, yeah. I think that was the last one we did, yeah. I mean I have documents on the other ones but I don't think we've ever produced another checklist like that, past that.

MIXERRULES - Understandable.

Larry - And just going back to these one last time, but the Dream State figures, there was like 2 Marshalls shown, like one in his normal clothing, and one that was white. Was it supposed to be like, some kind of variant? Or...

Jeff - No, it was actually going to be a different character.

Larry - Ooh.

MIXERRULES - Really?

Jeff - Yeah. So, it was going to be, you know, with every dark there's a light, you know, and kind of, if, he was going to be like the light version, so he was not as dark and mysterious and kind of like that. He was going to be much more of uplifting, and kind of more of a, just a downright, outward hero. Where the other one is kind of more, kind of, borderline.

Larry - Wow. Where are we? I remember--

MIXERRULES - So, for Angus Manor, we haven't talked much about him, bu,t was there any more plot to his storyline? I know he was the man who created the "Funk Trunk", the one who could go "in between portals" and found all the ways for us to get inside of certain people's houses and stuff.

Jeff - Yeah.

MIXERRULES - But was there any other things planned for him, besides his elevator? And his house?

Jeff - Well, when you say 'planned', I mean, that might be an overstatement, but, we definitely, I know I definitely wanted him to have a full time character in the game, that we could sell also, that would be an actual character. But just didn't have enough time around, around the time. There was so many of these, that were like, just, we had plans for, or we had them on the sidelines, kind of on the, bench, ready to go, and you ran out of time. When they shut it down it was like "Shut it down, move it over, pass everything over." Like, what?

Larry - And, speaking of Angus in his Manor, the last floor of it is unobtainable. Was there any plans to add that, like, something special to this floor?

Jeff - No, no, there was not. It was just always going to be unobtainable.

MIXERRULES - Oh. Wow, leave us on a cliffhanger, okay! I see. Well, a cliffhanger that's never going to happen technically.

Jeff - Exactly. Keep them wanting more.

MIXERRULES - So, I just realized, we are in the unused context section. Or the unused content right now. On the side of certain Hub Packs, like I believe with my Daydream Hub that I just got, it was like, alternate versions of characters on the side. Were those fan, or were those early creation?

Jeff - On the artwork of the packaging?

MIXERRULES - Like, on the side, it always had, "And many more to collect!" and it showed a few Funkeys, and then on the bottom, it said "Keep an eye out for these!" and "Coming Soon!", and then it had like, I believe it was all redesigned, or different designs of the Hidden Realm Funkeys.

Jeff - Oh really?

MIXERRULES - Like, there was an alternate version of Yang, I think there was one of Singe. Bandit was on there, white, was white Sprocket on there, or am I thinking wrong?

Larry - No. But that would be a question we're going to ask soon, so.

Jeff - Yeah, I mean I think that we were always trying to, kind of, I don't know, get people excited about new ones coming out, and so when we would do these, it was a good opportunity just to be able to showcase some of these ones, because we would do these Starter Kits, and they were exclusives. So we may not have launched a series before, you know, but we were always launching those Hubs. As exclusives, of different versions, of whatever, so those were really easy to kind of pepper in there. Little sneak peaks at things that what to come, but, clearly obviously some of those things did not actually end up coming into fruition.

Larry - U.B. Funkeys ended up getting a bit of merchandise, such as shirts and USB drives. Were there any other plans for merchandise that never got made?

Jeff - Yeah, I mean we had a lot of different things, we did the speakers, that, those were pretty cool, had a little green light around the edge and stuff.

MIXERRULES - I have those. Did you know--

Jeff - Do you?

MIXERRULES - Did you know that they actually, whenever like, base hits on them, and sounds being outputted to them, the light around the thing, or like, it'll blink.

Jeff - Mhm. Mhmn. Yeah.

MIXERRULES - That's just very cool. I really like that.

Jeff - I wish I could take some kind of credit for it honestly, all I did was approve the design, and approve the packaging. It was a total outlicensing, so companies would come to us, and they would license the name of Funkeys in order to put it on there and sell it and hope that they would sell some. Yeah, we did the USB sticks, and we did that, and we did the few T-shirts too, we had a whole line of clothes, originally designed. There's quite a bit of outlicensed stuff. Backpacks, lunch boxes, just trying to think what else?

MIXERRULES - So there were T-shirts and landyards also.

Jeff - Yep, lots of T-Shirts. We had made some T-shirts and handed them out in different times. You saw in some of those pictures I was wearing the Bones one. But yeah, they were, very popular. Let's just say, we ran out of those T-shirts a lot.

MIXERRULES - So, I have one more quick question, so this isn't really pertaining to unused content per se, but what happened to inflatable Deuce? I want him. I want to put him in my house.

Jeff - Inflatable Deuce. Yes, we had him for a while. Yeah, I don't know where he ended up. Someplace. We also had these big ones, I don't know if you can see in some pictures. At Toy Fair where we had these ones that were like 2 and a half feet tall Funkeys, that were solid.

MIXERRULES - Ooh.

Jeff - Yeah, there's one, yeah, I remember there was a, one of them was, I have to think about which one... One of them was, right off the top of my head was, Tiki, I remember Tiki one and there was another one too. I want to say like Vroom, or something.

MIXERRULES - I believe I saw, I remember seing solid Vroom. Somewhat. I don't know.

Jeff - Yeah.

MIXERRULES - I think that was in your art show, wasn't it? There was a solid--

Jeff - Yeah, we had--

MIXERRULES - Vroom figure there? In the room--

Jeff - We moved him around a lot, so yeah it could have been. They were like waist high. I think, or something that was just under waist high.

MIXERRULES - Oh, speaking of the art show. Were there ever plans to have, like the winner of that have their Funkey placed into the game?

Jeff - No, there wasn't anything like that, but we, it was just so cool. Because all we did was give these guys one white blank Funkey, and they just went crazy with it. And so, if you look at some of those designs, it's just phenomenal what they ended up coming up with. You know, one guy did one on Steamboat Willie, you know, like the Mickey Mouse film, and I ended up winning that one. But it was just, blew my mind what they came up with. The Octopus one was just crazy, and I mean, just so many of them so they took him in so many different ways that we would, definitely wanted to do it again. Of course, those were all auctioned off for charity, and so then we, so we just kind of wanted to do something like that again, I think.

Larry - Okay.

MIXERRULES - Well--

Larry - I'm sorry Mixer, you go ahead.

MIXERRULES - So, for like the art show, I remember there was like a tentacle monster. How did you think of that one?

Jeff - How did we think of it?

MIXERRULES - Yeah.

Jeff - We thought, if we were walking along and something grabbed us, what would we want to have? Yeah, I like that one. That was a good one.

MIXERRULES - Also, since you were talking about how you guys had white base Funkeys, in the Terrapinia, the Great Terrapinia Library I believe it's called? In the, like Book of Funkeys, there is a base Funkey. Like it was a yellow, a blue and a red I believe? Were there ever plans to have--

Jeff - Was it Dali?

MIXERRULES - Like, they had eyes. They were like U.B.. But just one color, and, were they ever planned for release, or anything like that?

Jeff - No, I'm surprised those were in there actually.

MIXERRULES - I think it was just like an overall biography of Funkeys.

Jeff - Mmm.

MIXERRULES - Or how they are, or whatever.

Jeff - Yeah. Yeah. No, there was never plans for anything like that. We liked, we enjoyed too much, coming up with new designs for them.

Larry - And, a little off topic but something I just thought of now but is U.B. like a Funkey tribe, like every other Funkey? Or is he just like an individual kind of Mayor Sayso or Jerry or something like that?

Jeff - He's more like a Mayor Sayso, and Jerry, exactly. Kind of a ward of the Funkeys area.

MIXERRULES - Were there ever also, since there was so many different Hubs, like there was a black Hub, the Daydream Hub, et cetera. Was there ever plans to make it, or if you connected one of those certain Hubs, it would change your in game U.B.'s look? Like the default U.B. to be like the Speed Racer U.B., or the Red-Pink Hub...

Jeff - Mmm no, there wasn't any feeling for that. But I thought that there was when you plug in the hub that the U.B., in the game changed colour to whatever your Hub was, right?

MIXERRULES - From what I've seen, it's a, I've used every single Hub that I own and they've all been the same.

Jeff - Always the same?

MIXERRULES - It's always the same U.B. from what I know.

Jeff - Mmm. So there was an idea at one point then to change that, to match whatever Hub you were plugging in. I thought we did that.

MIXERRULES - Maybe it was in your last branch, because then didn't you guys say you were working on like 5.1?

Jeff - Yeah.

MIXERRULES - Maybe that's why it was, but we didn't see it in 5.0, 4.8.

Jeff - Mmm.

MIXERRULES - 1.0 or 2.

Larry - While we're on the topic, do you want to tell us a little bit about 5.1 and like what was supposed to be included in it?

Jeff - Yeah, I'm not really sure honestly. Just off the top of my head. I'd have to look and see about it, yeah. I'd definitely have to look and see. I think we were originally, it was more kind of, yeah, I think we were just looking at different new ways to explore some of the existing stuff and then kind of maximize it. Was recycling in a--

MIXERRULES - Mulch? Mulch was in 5.0.

Jeff - Mulch, I don't know.

MIXERRULES - The one with the backpack?

Jeff - Yeah.

MIXERRULES - Yeah.

Jeff - Yeah. Right.

MIXERRULES - He was released.

Jeff - Yeah. Because didn't we, I'm just trying to look, we had Bomber and Recycle, Tadd...

MIXERRULES - And Rastro.

Jeff - Right.

MIXERRULES - The three-eyed alien. Yeah. I think it's three eyed. I don't know what he is--

Jeff - Yeah.

MIXERRULES - --I can't reference his model.

Jeff - So, I mean I think that was in Paradox City. That was really the kind of finality that we were kind of working on, and everything, you know we had the different tools kind of optimized. We had Recycle, we had iFunk. Yeah.

MIXERRULES - iFunk?

Jeff - Yeah. He was going to be a musical one. So--

MIXERRULES - Ooh.

Jeff - I don't think that one ever got like, put out there then. Because this is the first I think I've heard of it.

Larry - Is it that one from the Funkey Tools commercial?

Jeff - I'd have to look and see, but I think, yeah it was him, there was Recycle, he was the last tool that we had. And he had, it was like a music thing where you could do different, I forget what it was now. I will have to remember. I'll have to check my notes and see, but by that point we had Holler, Gabby, Rewind, Rom, and then we were launching Bomber, Recycle and iFunk. And then D.C. was originally supposed to be before them, that's really where we were headed, the next round that was kind of developed, we were working with D.C. on that, and it just turned into the biggest nightmare. D.C. was really hard to work with. They made us think, we couldn't switch them without them, I forget what it was. They put this big stipulation on it too where they couldn't... They wouldn't let us switch them in-game. They had to be separate characters. So their alter ego had to be a separate character. I think that was one of the things that they told us.

Larry - So like--

MIXERRULES - That's so weird.

Larry - Yeah.

Jeff - I mean, yeah, it was something like that, and it just really made things difficult for us from a development standpoint. Because it broke our model basically, how we do things in there. We wanted to have it, see, one of the big times, I remember what it was. It was like, if you have an Aquaman on there, and you take him off and put Batman on there, on screen, that's going to switch over to that character, right? They didn't like that. Because that made it look like, Aquaman was turned into Batman, or whatever it was, and so we had to provide some kind of a transition, a different kind of transition, it was just, yeah. It was like pulling teeth.

Larry - Was there any plans for that transition, like would U.B. just put on like a costume or something, or...

Jeff - Yeah, I think that's what we were trying to work out, is like how those would actually work out, so, okay, Superman has got to go into a booth, you know, telephone booth, and, you know, Batman has to go someplace either shoot up in the air and drop back down with somebody else. Or something like that, I think is what we were trying to come up with is that they would see as being acceptable to them.

Larry - And, was there any development done for the D.C. world at all or was it just like all concept stuff?

Jeff - No. It was just all concepts. Well, no, I shouldn't say that, we did development in terms of like, yeah, we had some initial gameplay kind of done out, and we had some initial worlds built out I believe. But it was really early stages. Early, early stages stuff. And then of course we had some of the designs that we were working on.

MIXERRULES - So, I have a quick question regarding the Aquaman Funkey that you were talking about. Would the Aquaman Funkey, like, be able to dive into the water off of Funkeystown, or been able to go to Kelpy Basin?

Jeff - Well, that's a really good question. That would have been in our second line of D.C. actually, we were planning him, and Mr. Frost, and somebody else, but yeah, I mean that was the idea, is that if we do start bringing these worlds together a little bit, but if we did I think it would probably be, he would be in that world, I'm not sure if Funkeys would be there, as well, but, I don't know. We never really got to that far, I guess.

Larry - And--

Jeff - Again, we like to keep those things kind of separate. We wanted Funkeys to be it's own little world, and to be able to like, keep growing the Funkeys world. These guys may have been Funkey-like characters, but they had to exist in a different land.

Larry - --I just have two more questions about the D.C. world if that's okay.

Jeff - Sure.

Larry - Like, was there going to be a singular world like Speed Racer, or was it going to branch out into multiple worlds, like Batman, Superman, Aquaman?

Jeff - Yeah, I think there were four worlds. I think there were four different worlds, one for each character, so we had like a Gotham, a, I don't know a Metropolis, and yeah for the Joker it was like an arcade or some kind of like beat down plane, and they were like a carnival, and, who's the last one, what am I forgetting? Wonderwoman? I don't know.

MIXERRULES - The Green Lantern.

Jeff - Green Lantern.

MIXERRULES - You showed a Green Lantern--

Jeff - No. Yeah, but it was not him. It was Flash.

MIXERRULES - Oh. Flash! Duh!

Jeff - Yeah. He was originally in the four, and he would have had his place, and whatever.

Larry - And how did the idea for a D.C. crossover come in, was that meant, like was that Mattel also?

Jeff - Yeah. I mean obviously, you know, it was something that we, saw the potential of right away. Just because, I mean, it just landed itself so much so easily to it, you know, so it was something that we wanted right away, and we were pushing. But we got Speed Racer first, so honestly I wish that we had got the D.C. stuff before we got the other. But again, we ran into so many problems from it, trying to get approvals from D.C. and stuff on it. It was really not a pleasant experience, so.

Larry - And, was there any other licensing opportunities that were, like, in the works for Funkeys? Any people that were interested, or any ideas you might have had?

Jeff - Yeah. I mean I think you saw that image that I had posted that had like SpongeBob on it, like we had talked about doing a SpongeBob world. SpongeBob Funkeys, and there was another one too that I can't think of.

MIXERRULES - And there was a Zim Funkey.

Jeff - Oh, who?

MIXERRULES - It was an Invader Zim Funkey.

Jeff - Yeah. So, things like that, we were just looking at, and just always trying to keep our eyes open to something that made sense, but, more or less, it was a support. We were supporting licenses within Mattel, while really trying to push the boundaries of the actual game, and the characters that we had.

Larry - Mixer, you want to ask about the Funkey tools stuff?

MIXERRULES - Oh yeah. So, first of all, I got to know, is that Funkey like a speaker? Or is it a fan, or is it like a jet fan hybrid?

Jeff - Which one?

MIXERRULES - The one that was featured in the Funkey Tools Commerical. Like the actual Tool Funkey.

Larry - Do you want me to pull up like a picture of it?

Jeff - Yeah, yeah.

Larry - Yeah. I definitely have it somewhere, let me just check up on it.

Jeff - Refresh my memory.

Larry - Yeah. It was in the commercial for like a little bit.

MIXERRULES - I'll see if I can look also, so we can do this two times faster.

Larry - Yeah, I found one photo. I'm just going to post it in the group chat real quick.

Jeff - Do it.

MIXERRULES - It looked-- Oh! Hey, I found the one about the Speed Racer. The old Speed-- Let me send you that one also so you can get a look.

Larry - It's like that fan guy in the middle, like the white one.

Jeff - Oh yeah, that's him.

MIXERRULES - So, what is he?

Larry - Was that--

Jeff - That's iFunk.

Larry - Oh.

MIXERRULES - It's iFunk? Okay. So, I'm guessing then he's a speaker system and the likes.

Jeff - Yeah, he was, it was all bout music, as I recall. I can't think of exactly, how it worked, but it was something about music that we had tied in. Well, they were planned--

Larry - Was that related to the playlists that we saw? As, I remember in one thing, there was a thing about the playlists. Like, there were going to be playlists for each individual Funkey.

Jeff - Yeah, yeah. I think that's right, where you can take different songs and create different playlists with them, and modulate the, you can play with the actual music and kind of, where it could actually be user generated content.

MIXERRULES - Oh, and here are those Speed Racer Funkeys that I was talking about. Where X has that really weird variant.

Jeff - Yep.

MIXERRULES - The one that's next to Speed is Cannonball	Taylor, I believe? And he looked so much different than how he is now.

Jeff - Yeah, yeah. So thiswas a very early kind of pitch, as to how they might look. Yeah. Just very early art. Good, but very early. Yeah, I forgot about that.

MIXERRULES - Because I would honestly still love to see that Speed Racer model, because it's very early like--

Jeff - Yeah, yeah. It definitely had a lot of cool things there for sure.

Larry - Also just that--

Jeff - Do you have a list of all the biographies?

MIXERRULES - There is one in the game itself, but we're still putting them on the wiki.

Larry - Is that image like official that I just posted, or is that like a fanmade? Because I've always been curious about that.

Jeff - Of whether that was official, or fanmade?

MIXERRULES - Yeah.

Jeff - It was just something we created real quick. That board back behind there?

Larry - Yeah, and also like the Funkeys like, it has Chim-Chim, like a very early design, Racer X...

Jeff - Yeah. That was at a show at Toy Fair, when we were talking about doing them. We hadn't done them yet though.

Larry - Oh.

MIXERRULES - Are those Funkeys still around, or... Did you guys store them away as soon as you were done with them?

Jeff - Well I don't know if we threw them away, but I don't know who ended up with them, or where they ended up.

MIXERRULES - Because I would love that Racer X, Whoever has that Racer X, shoot me a DM on Discord. I'll totally buy it from you.

Jeff - There you go. Yeah.

Larry - Speaking of prototypes, on the Mattel support site, under the very rare Sprocket, there's a picture of a white Sprocket figure instead of a black one, do you know the story behind that, and why it was eventually changed to black?

Jeff - There is a white Sprocket?

Larry - Yeah, I have a picture of it, I can pull it up.

Jeff - Okay.

Larry - Like, this has been driving the community crazy for a while, because it's still on the Mattel support site, if you go there like now. That photo.

Jeff - It is?

Larry - Yeah.

MIXERRULES - White Sprocket. Ahhh!

Jeff - Yeah.

MIXERRULES - So, I think we have touched enough on the lost content. So, I want to know, I know you went on a mini rant to me on Facebook, and Discord, about Mattel. But, so, I know you said, you think Funkeys was just cut for no reason. So, what were you--

Jeff - No, I didn't say that. I didn't say it was cut for no reason, I just said that their reason was not a good one.

MIXERRULES - So that basically means essentially, no reason. Give or take.

Jeff - So, at the time, so this would have been, 2010 I think-

MIXERRULES - 2009, 2010.

Jeff - Yeah, somewhere around there. So they, basically what happened was, you got to remember this is right around when the financial crisis hit. And so everything was, you know, jobs were, companies were shutting down and stuff. And they decided to take the brands that we had done in Funkeys and move them back over to LA. We were working out in Dallas. And they were going to do them all in house, and they ended up shutting down Radica, and basically some of the designers came back over there with them, but everybody else was cut loose, and they fired us all, and closed the doors on it, and moved all the brands, as one of the last things I had to do at Radica, was basically, send over all this stuff to the new brand manager, who had never done anything with this before in his life. And you know, we had already the next series set up and ready to, you know, go on it, but what ended up happening was they didn't. They just took a, by that point it had gone down, it hadn't been a 30 million dollar brand anymore, it was more like a 15 million dollar brand. Rough, right? But a 15 million dollar brand, because they had basically cut our legs off on a lot of different things. They had cut our buy down. They had taken our commercial, our advertising, to where we could only run 10 second commericals and 15 seconds commercials instead of the traditional 30 second commercial. And our spend on it was very small as well, so we weren't getting as many commercials out there, and so there was just a, it was a concerted effort just to kind of shut it down. And put that money and that effort towards something else, so. That's what happened. They just shut it down, they basically flushed that whole line down the toilet. They never did another thing with it. They did not try to, they sold off what they had in the stores and it was done.

MIXERRULES - So, it's--

Jeff - Obviously me, and a couple of other people, but, you know, speaking for myself, I was really hurt by the way they did all this stuff, and so I was very upset. Clearly, some of that is now coming back to the surface. But it just, it seemed like such a waste, and I think that's what really gets me- And it was really hard for me to get over it, honestly. And it really was. And so, I think at one point I was just trying to fight the good fight, and I was holding on to some of it but I just ended up from my own mental health and well being. I think I just had to get rid of it. And just kind of put it in the rearview mirror because I knew it would never come back around or so I thought. And so, I just really kind of put it in a box and put it away and never thought of it again. Until, you contacted me and I was just like, "Wow." And I was just, "What?" And I had no idea there was people involved, so.

MIXERRULES - Yeah. I know, I think when you joined we had around 150-ish men. How does it make you feel that we're now almost at 200?

Jeff - Well, I figured that 50 of those are probably people from Mattel tuning in to see what I say about them, and... And the other 5 are probably ex-Radica people seeing what I say about them.

MIXERRULES - Hey, I mean, if you want to catch some Radica people then I'm fine with that. I mean, the more the merrier. We got the Funkey team role for a reason.

Jeff - That's right. No, I think it's, yeah. I mean, I would love to take some of the credit, but I think this is all you guys. You know, and it's your, to your efforts that this is actually kind of coming about. And really become, you know come back around, where people are enjoying it again, so my hat's off to you guys.

MIXERRULES - Oh, quick question, I do remember you saying in question for devs chat, you know the two people who ran Ark One. Like the two main people who know about it. Did you ever do anything with Ark One? Did you have any direct interaction with it at all?

Jeff - You're talking about Arkadium, right?

MIXERRULES - Yeah, it was Arkadium One. That was the like--

Jeff - Server.

MIXXERRULES - --server software, that ran, Funkeys.

Jeff - Uhuh. Did I have to do anything with Ark One?

MIXERRULES - Like, did you ever learn how to use it, or anything like that?

Jeff - No. No.

Larry - And it was--

Jeff - It wasn't really my, like I wasn't a software engineer. I wasn't into software at the time, and just, wasn't my thing. I managed the brand, and I was working with the design group and stuff.

Larry - And when Paradox Green released, for some reason only the very rare figures were put out in the stores? Do you know why that is?

Jeff - I do. Because, normally we would launch the regular, the rare and the very rare. And in this case, they were shutting things down, and so we decided to only put out the very rare, just to give the fans, like the very rare ones out there. Which is ironic now, looking back on it that just the regular line and the rare were more in demand as prototypes. But, we were just trying to give them something that we thought was cool.

MIXERRULES - Before, one second my brain's starting to die now. I remember when I originally contacted you, I had told you about the wiki. You said you took a little bit of a look at it. How does it, how do you feel that there's a whole wiki dedicated just to Funkeys? Like an entire site basi--

Jeff - It blows me away. Blows me away. I mean, you know, when I started, helped start this thing, there was very little social media presence. I started hitting up all the social media stuff, and trying to get them listed on Wikipedia, and just trying to get things, get some kind of momentum going on it. To build it, so that it would be a brand to last, and, you know, so to see that you have an entire wiki devoted to it is just, it's amazing. It's amazing to see what you've done with it. And, honestly you've had to piece together most of it. It hasn't been like, just handed to you on a silver platter, here's everything. It's been very much, you know, just kind of made you have to go out and find out this information. And you know, hopefully if I can clear up some of it, I can.

Larry - We have like learned more from you than with like, all we knew like beforehand so it's been very helpful. The wiki, and just the community in general, so.

Jeff - I don't know, When I hear you guys talk about some of the stuff I'm like, "What? What are we talking about? We did that?" It's like crazy, you guys deep dive on some of it. Unfortunately, I just haven't seen a lot of that stuff in a long time. It's been, 10 years almost?

MIXERRULES - So, speaking of that. Damn it, I just had a question and I forgot it.

Jeff - The 10 year anniversary? Something like that.

MIXERRULES - Oh yeah, so, remember how we had talked about possibly doing like either the 15th or 20th anniversary of us doing the livestream with you, are you hyped for that?

Jeff - Totally.

MIXERRULES - That you try out Funkeys after so long?

Jeff - I'm in. Yeah. I can't wait. Really, again, I actually am excited about it. To get some looks and feels, and, to go out for a test drive.

MIXERRULES - Oh, so, ever since I actually contacted you and you got associated with Discord, how many Discord servers have you actually joined? Like-

Jeff - Two, I think. Just on the Dungeons and Funkeys, and this one. Are there more that I'm not aware of?

MIXERRULES - I mean, there are some other Funkeys Discords. I believe there are 2 fan projects. There's the one that I'm spearheading with Wynaut, and a few others.

Jeff - Cool.

MIXERRULES - And then there's another one, but I think they've went out of production for a bit, there's nobody there.

Jeff - Yeah.

MIXERRULES - But I will definitely send you those.

Jeff - Sure, sure. Happy to account who I am. No, it's really been fun seeing different people and their different personalities, and getting their personality, and then putting it into a Funkey almost. It's like, their personality comes out within the Funkey that they are creating and stuff. I think that's really the best part of this whole thing.

MIXERRULES - I just thought of another question. If you were a Funkey, which Funkey do you think you would be?

Jeff - Founder Funkey, obviously. I mean, is that really--

MIXERRULES - You'd be Funkwell.

Jeff - Yeah, Funkwell. For sure. Big platforms. Disco ball head and all.

MIXERRULES - Yeah.

Jeff - Exactly. Yeah, no, I mean I'd just be me, I'd be, the Funkey! The Funkiest of Funkeys!

MIXERRULES - Everyone in the chat, everyone in the Discord is still like, "Mixer, do the interview!" I'm like, "I'm in the interview right now!"

Jeff - Well, we said it would be an hour, and so 2 hours later, you know?

MIXERRULES - Yeah.

Jeff - Not that I'm complaining, I don't care. I've got time, so. Oh, I think that, I'm glad everybody's getting excited, hopefully there's something in here that they enjoy, and that I was able to answer some of their questions, at least. Some of them kind of threw me. Some of them were technical ones, that Librarian Larry here threw out. "Uhh."

MIXERRULES - Sorry about that.

Jeff - I mean, how about that?

MIXERRULES - Oh God, everyone's saying "Mixer, do the interview!"

Jeff - What?

MIXERRULES - Look in the Funkeys general on Discord. Just everyone's saying, "Mixer, do the interview!"

Jeff - Aw, geez.

Larry - Jeff, you should type that in, just-

Jeff - Oh my god. You got everybody on there--

MIXERRULES - Oh, well. Ah. What happened? Oh, he joined gen!

Larry - He joined gen, should we just go in there?

MIXERRULES - Okay, well.