This is a company called MondoMedia; a studio where they specialize in animation, art and primarily focused on adult entertainment. Typically, I wasn't going to talk about this company since nothing really has been failing them even though they've been on a steady decline when it comes to any series they release. It's kind of similar to when I talked about Toei Animation with the downfall of the content they produce as well as trying to censor people. However, this one is totally different and that for them it's hard to find original content they create because it will only last for an episode or two and will be immediately forgotten. So this is the story of MondoMedia
Brief History / Origin:
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| MondoMedia website on February 22, 1997. |
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| MondoMedia website on September 30, 2007. |
MondoMedia was founded in 1988 in San Fransisco, California by John Evershed (CEO) and Deirdre O'Malley (DBD). The two other key people for this company include Christina Chavez (CMO) and Douglus S. Kay (CFO). In the early days, they were video game developers and produced lower budget titles like Critical Path for PC and The Daedalus Encounter for the 3DO (a console no one wanted or owned). In the late 90's, MondoMedia shifted their focus on things like animation and webseries. The website was established in 1997 originally calling it Mondo Media Internet Solutions and gave out links to the other clients like LEGO as an example. The first animated webseries they made was back in 1998 titled Joe Cartoon (which is still ongoing to this day). The most popular series from them are Happy Tree Friends (1999-2016) and Dick Figures (2010-2015).
The Continued Rise:
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| MondoMedia website on November 30, 2014. |
For the next 7 or 8 years in the animation production, Mondo continued to rise in spiritual success regardless if you loved it or hate it. Around January of 2007 (around the same time when the website was being updated), they created their YouTube channel to post videos of the series they've been making or creating new ones. As the years progressed, the site would become more and more up to date. When it comes to their channel, viewership would play an important role and as of today they have over 3 billion views in total making it one of the highest in viewcounts (I'm not sure which is the highest). Views would fluctuate to each of their videos gaining them between over 50k-500k views to some videos gaining over 1M views. Nevertheless, many users still liked their content and it was considered their golden age at the time.
The Downfall:
The Drop in Quality / Short-Lived Series / Dick Figures Movie Scandal?:
So this first topic is somewhat of a scandal and that is the people who created Dick Figures Zack Keller and Ed Skudder decided to create a Kickstarter project for the Dick Figures Movie they planned on creating. The pledge goal was $250,000 and it succeeded, earning them $313,411. During the production of the film people had some questions and concerns about the project as to why they needed the money to create the film when it's no different to the actual series on YouTube. My guess would be most of it went to accessories like T-Shirts, music and possibly the duration of the film? I'm not sure. Anyways, the film was released early to the backers along with the soundtrack and the first 4 seasons of the show. However, many backers of the project were never given a link to the actual film, just only the soundtracks. This left the backers disappointed and they waited and waited for them to get the links all due to no such luck. By the time the movie was released to the public, the review score was pretty mediocre earning a 6.6 out of 10 on IMDb. There were also plans for a sequel film, but it never made it off the drawing board.
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| The drastic drop in viewership. |
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| Mondo collabed with Spin Master to create a show called SickBricks. |
Some speculated that this was the beginning of MondoMedia's downfall, but it wasn't until 2015 and 2016. Dick Figures ended in 2015 and Happy Tree Friends in 2016. Since then, MondoMedia started to trend downward in terms of visual quality of their content as well as trying to find originality on what shows to come up with. While they are still rising in subscribers, newer videos on their channel struggle to gain views, many of which only surpassing 10k-50k views at a time. It's not much of an issue if you're a small creator, but this is a company with over 5M subscribers so for them to generate a lower viewcount says it all. Also when they create a series (primarily short-lived) on YouTube or on their website, it only lasts for a few episodes before being cancelled altogether. A primary example of this is when they collaborated with Spin Master to create a show called SickBricks for TV but that was short-lived due to low ratings. Animation takes a long time especially if you're good at it and it takes a lot of passion to do and it's unfortunate that MondoMedia is going for a short-lived route.
Now the last thing I wanted to discuss is something that is the lowest of the low for MondoMedia. Roughly 12 days ago, they collaborated again but this time with a very new company called Veve which specializes in the NFT market and is just an illegal pyramid scheme. Mondo decided to do business with them to create 3D models of the characters from Happy Tree Friends. As a result, this was met with negative reception with users claiming that they would rather have new episodes of the show rather than pay just a 3D modeled NFT. It's honestly the most disgusting practices and the NFT market is a fucking joke. For them to do this is a mistake.
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