7 Weird Kickstarter Campaigns You Won’t Believe Existed

Crowd-funding is all the rage at the moment. Websites like Kickstarter give ordinary people the opportunity to share their ideas online and receive financial support from those who admire their visions. They give a platform for creative people who might previously have been turned away from business opportunities. They also cut out the middle man, creating a bridge between creators and their customers. Quite simply, it’s revolutionising the whole idea of consumerism.

The amount of amazing products that have been made because of Kickstarter backing is incredible. It was responsible in reviving the cult TV show Veronica Mars as a movie. It helped innovate virtual reality technology in the form of Oculus Rift too. However, as you may imagine, for every stroke of genius on Kickstarter there are dozens of campaigns that are, well, somewhat questionable. We have found 7 hilarious, bemusing and downright shocking examples of these weird Kickstarter campaigns. Take a look at them below.

Grand Theft Auto, Skyrim, Mass Effect. They are all great video games. But as Farjay Studios are quick to point out, they share a common problem — none of them let you play as a bear. The studio attempted to rectify what they saw as a ‘tyranny’ orchestrated by the fat cats of Washington DC. They took to the crowd-funding website to raise money for a FPB (first person bear) game in which you live life in the wild. You can hunt for trout, you can steal honey, and when the day is done you can retreat to your cave for a snooze. This weird Kickstarter campaign generated an amazing $100,000 from 3871 backers.

Last February, a man tweeted the Mayor of Detroit. He asked for a Robocop statue to be erected in his home city. He explained that Philadelphia had a Rocky statue and Robocop could easily “kick Rocky’s butt”. The Mayor swiftly rejected his suggestion, but the dream was kept alive via this weird Kickstarter campaign. Believing that the robotic crime fighter is a great ambassador for the city, they attempted to raise $50,000 to build a 10-foot-tall statue. It exceeded the amount by reaching $67,000 on March 27th 2011.

Former office worker turned entertainer Charles Johnson wanted to tell his own story in a special one man show. He took to Kickstarter to raise $300 and cover the cost of renting the Templar’s Hall in San Diego. The only problem? The video that accompanies the campaign, showing off what backers could expect from the show, is torture to watch. He plays a dodgy ukelele cover of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to a room of bored adults. He tells a creepy adventure story — which he screeches at high pitch — to the silence of bemused kids. The campaign also boasted sword fighting in his show. Yes, sword fighting. The project received two backers and raised a total of $21.

Fans embarking on a trip to Bestival last summer were provided with rare opportunities to see Elton John, Snoop Dogg, Franz Ferdinand and… Lionel Richie’s head? That’s right. The public artists known as Hungry Castle wanted to make a giant pop up head of Lionel Richie that they could erect in Robin Park for the four-day music event. Fans could walk in and receive a phone call from Richie that sang: “Hello? Is it me you are looking for?”. The hilarious and weird Kickstarter campaign received double the amount it asked for — a stunning £8000.

This weird Kickstarter campaign should be a warning guide to everyone who wants to fund their movie via the website. Robert Poorman wanted to make his film treatment Jules Express into a movie with $2500 worth of crowd-funded backing. The plot? He described it only as ‘the need to examine your past, removing the importance it has’. His credentials? None in sight. And what would the money fund? “My novel was lost twice when my PC was thrown out in the dumpster and I am badly in need of a new one” as well as “food for myself, and my 12 year old son.” Would you trust your money to this guy? For all we know, it could have been fake. The project was unsurprisingly one of the website’s biggest failures making absolutely no money whatsoever.

Visitors of the incredibly weird Burning Man festival in the USA were in for a shocking sight after this weird Kickstarter campaign successfully found funding. The Black Rock Arts foundation wanted a 50ft electromechanical serpent to slither through the festival, a week-long event that revolves around the burning of a wooden effigy in the Nevada desert. The terrifying creation would be controlled by a rider that sits just behind the head of the serpent.

If you like the plays of Shakespeare but think they could do with a few more murderous cyborgs on the run from shape-shifting assassins, the Husky Jackal Theatre have a solution for you. They attempted to crowd-fund a stage production of James Cameron’s classic action movie Terminator 2 told entirely through the words of William Shakespeare. They called it Terminator The Second. Fans came out in their droves to back the weird Kickstarter campaign. The initial $3000 goal exceeded $10,000. The theatre company were staggered by its success. “Now we’re thinking we may be able to figure out a way to pull off that helicopter chase after all,” they wrote in an update.