Today I have three great Kickstarter campaigns to recommend. I’ve already kicked in on all of them, and I think a lot of my readers will be interested too. Also note that two of these have not funded yet, and need to reach their goal by the end of April (early next week), so pay attention.

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done a Kickstarter Alert here in PopCult. There are a few reasons for that. The main reason has been that campaigns have been getting shorter, and with many of them, by the time I have room to fit them into the blog, they’ve ended. That’s the case with some of these, but I’ve also been battling some outside forces that have kept me from writing this until now.

Frenchy & The Punk “Midnight Garden”

First up we have the latest album from Frenchy & The Punk.  This band should be familiar to fans of Radio Free Charleston, going all the way back to our video incarnation, where they first appeared in 2010. After releasing a very cool cover of Souixsie & The Banshee’s “City of Dust” six months ago, they are now campaigning to fund an all-new album, Midnight Garden. They are close to their goal, but they need a push to reach it by next Tuesday.

Here’s what they have to say about their history and the new album…

Frenchy and the Punk’s first album, Eternal Summer released in 2007, was an all-French stripped down indie cabaret type of record. We’ve written and recorded seven full-length albums and one EP since then and our sound and stage show continues to evolve. Our most recent release was Zen Ghost in 2022.

This new album we are kickstarting here, Midnight Garden, will be our eighth recording under the name, Frenchy and the Punk. It continues our evolution of sound bringing in even more dance rhythms, soaring vocals, undeniable melodic and catchy guitar lines and the signature Frenchy and the Punk eclectic and creative sound our fans love!

To kick in on the campaign and help Midnight Garden come to fruition, go HERE and select a reward level. They have a variety of cool rewards ranging from the new album to their back catalog on CD, vinyl digital and flash drive, Kickstarter exclusive apparel, and other really cool reward options. Act fast because this campaign ends next Tuesday.

Watch the video for “Hypnotize,” the lead single (which will open next week’s RFC) here…

Toe & So Long #2

I recommended the first issue of this delightully different comic book last year. At the time, I figured the best way to describe it was to quote liberally from the Kickstarter campaign. Let’s go back to what I posted then for the campaign for Toe & So Long #2…

“Toe and So Long” is an oddball/nonhuman sci-ish-fantasy buddy comic series that refuses to scream at you (or not be weird) about indecision, trauma, & addiction. Toe is a big gray guy, and So Long is a cat. I think I’ve cleared things up here for everyone. Oh, you want more? Ok, well, this whole thing got started by Jacob Michael Campbell, who wrote, designed, and is coloring (and will do the lettering) for this comic project. He’s been a professional graphic designer since age 16, as well as a general creative guy. Think music, illustration, and general ideasmithing. Well, Jake’s also got tremors! So he went out to find Alexis Vivasllo, the best comic book artist to translate chicken scratch into pure gold. We hope you’ll support this project and join us for a long time on the Plain of Doors with Toe & So Long!

The Kickstarter page went on to describe the story…

Toe, a hulking gray humanoid, and So Long, a fluffy black kitty, wander (endlessly) a Plain of Doors that lead to an infinite amount of scenarios for them to experience. It’s a routine that’s left this dynamic duo in an accepting haze. They share many memories from their adventures, but there’s a missing piece to every journey that they’ve always just…ignored. Soon, the pair will find a purpose for their searching impulses, starting a new journey along a path they thought they’d already traveled a dozen times before.

Issue #1 of Toe & So Long is a 34-page romp exploring the routine that the two find themselves in. Magnificent displays of interdimensional power and world-wielding entities abound, but a wash of malaise begs more questions with every otherworldly exhibition. Every answer introduces a new query.

I love this kind of bizarre existential fantasy and enjoyed the hell out of the first issue. Chances are, if you’re a fan of Adventure Time, The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, Rick and Morty, Doctor Who, The Forbidden Zone or Grumpy Cat you’ll probably find something to love about Toe & So Long.  The first issue did not disappoint, and Issue #2 is funding now, and needs to reach its goal by April 29.

There are a variety of reward options, starting at a mere five bucks for a digital edition, and if you missed the first issue, you have the chance to catch up now. This campaign is less than a hundred bucks from funding as I write this, but don’t let that damper your sense of urgency. Go fund it now, HERE.

Check out the video…

The Prisoner Action Figures Wave Two

Before 2023 there had never been officially-licensed action figures made of Patrick McGoohan’s classic Science Fiction/Spy epic, The Prisoner.  That changed when the rewards for the first batch of Prisoner figures finally showed up, more than two years after the campaign funded.  You can find a few of the leftovers from that wave now at Nacelle.  These are five-point figures in the popular 1/18 (four inch) scale, and the end result was very impressive.  Now they’re ready to do it again, with a much more impressive array of figures for The Prisoner Action Figures Wave Two.

Because of the expense of creating the first line of figures, they really only had one body type, which was used for Number 6 and with a different head sculpts, other characters.  This campaign was such a success that they are being more ambitious with the second wave, offering figures made with five body sculpts (including a female body) and several different headsculpts. In this wave you can get Leo McKern’s Number 2, as well as Angelo Muscat as his butler.  Fans of the show know that there were several different “Number 2s” (both male and female) during the run, each one seemingly replaced after they failed to break the will of Number 6.

The figures available in this wave include: Number 6 disguised as The General; Number 2 from Checkmate; Number 2 from Dance of The Dead; Number 50, The Watchmaker’s Daughter; The Taxi Driver from Arrival; a second edition of the sold-out Number 6 from Wave One; Number 6 from Chimes of Big Ben; a two-pack featuring Leo McKern’s Number 2 and his Butler; a two-pack featuring Number 2 and Number 100 from It’s Your Funeral; and several bundles and combinations of figures. If you go for the whole deal, you get an exclusive T-shirt.

This campaign ends on May 16, but it is already beyond being funded. You can kick in HERE, and watch the video below…

I do need to warn you that the Prisoner campaign uses BackerKit, a service that isn’t affiliated with Kickstarter, to charge shipping after the Kickstarter campaign ends and is ready to be fulfilled. I understand all of the reasons that folks running Kickstarter campaigns use BackerKit. It’s great for them. It apparently has all sorts of advantages in terms of organization and helps them manage their campaigns.  By not charging for shipping until the project is ready to go, the folks running the campaign don’t get surprised by any shipping rate hikes. It makes a lot of sense for folks to use BackerKit to manage their campaigns.

As a patron/customer, I despise BackerKit. I hate having to log into a separate service, and than have to provide my payment information to a third party, and deal with their clunky interface. Most of all, I hate that I have to enter that payment info and pay even more to get a project that I helped fund months (or years) earlier. It’d be a tiny bit less annoying if BackerKit accepted PayPal, like Kickstarter does. Having repeated that, I did indeed kick in on The Prisoner campaign because I really want these figures, and they won’t be delivered until June of next year, so it’s reasonable to wait and see what the shipping charges will be.