The 13 Most Successful Kickstarter Projects Of All Time

Fanboys and fangirls rejoice! Kickstarter, the popular crowd-funding website is famous for being an online launchpad for projects of well, erm, pretty much everything. In honor of Veronica Mars' Marshmallow's success, let's take a look at the 13 most successful Kickstarter projects in each category since the site began in 2009.

13. Youth America Grand Prix's 'Ballet's Greatest Hits' Gala

businessinsider.com

Category: Dance

Well, since it's already been settled that Kickstarter provides more funding for the arts than the government, kudos to them for helpin' out. For a five dollar donation you and your gravatar could be an esteemed patron of the arts.

12. The Catlow Theater

businessinsider.com

Category: Theater

So the people of Barrington, Illinois wanted to save the Catlow Theater. Instead of chaining themselves to the building someone tweeted, "BRB starting a Kickstarter, LOL".

11. Ukiyo-e Heroes

businessinsider.com

Category: Art

There are those heavily crowd-funded projects that appeal to the masses, and then there are those heavily crowd-funded projects that appeal to .04% of the global population. Jed Henry's project of traditional Japanese woodblock prints with Japanese video game characters on them fall under the latter category, which I'd like to call "cult-funding". Henry received $313,341, but he only asked for 10k. YaseewhatI'msayin?

10. The Nomiku

businessinsider.com

Category: Food

The Nomiku has a video with that good, old-timey early 2000s infomercial feel (think: magic bullet, yeah you know that one) . If anything deserves $586, 061 it's a cooking device that cooks things like custard and steak FOR YOU...in a PLASTIC BAG. It's like the microwave, but better.

9. Planet Money T-shirt

businessinsider.com

Category: Publishing

Who would really be surprised that This American Life and NPR's lovechild "Planet Money" used a crowd-funding website to prove their point about manufacturing, fashion, and the global economy? Not very many. But is anyone really on the same page as they are about why they used the squirrel? "What, we concluded, is more accessible and fun than a squirrel hoisting a martini glass!". Um.

8. The 10-Year Hoodie

businessinsider.com

Category: Fashion

A lot of people paid a lot of money for this ten-year warrantied unisex hoodie. That's right. This one.

7. The Order of the Stick Reprint Drive

businessinsider.com

Category: Comics

Ahhhhh, comic geeks. You can always count on them for a unbridled display of devotion through cult-funding. We don't know what this thing is, but we know you love it and we're all very happy you have it.

6. Amanda Palmer and The Grand Theft Orchestra Album

businessinsider.com

Category: Music

Musician Amanda Palmer is like the Lady Gaga of the Kickstarter world. She's eccentric, she's bold, sometimes it's kind of hard to tell if she's a man or a woman, and she likes to stick it to the man (e.g. her letter to Morrissey published on Salon, on why he should use the site to produce his next album and not the music industry). She also raised a million dollars, so there's that, too.

5.

businessinsider.com

Category: Photography

The ARKYD Space Telescope earned $1.5 million with the tagline: "SPACE: INSERT YOUR FACE HERE". Although that isn't exactly what they said, they did use the phrase "space selfies" in the description. Points for being relevant AND talking about space at the same time.

4. The Form 1 3D Printer

businessinsider.com

Leave it to the guys from MIT to make almost 3 million dollars on Kickstarter with a revolutionary 3D printer. I could just see, in my mind, the tiny size of my brain in comparison to theirs. The best part though, was when they explained how it works in their video, prefacing it with, "the way it works is very simple...".

3. The Veronica Mars Movie Project

businessinsider.com

Category: Film & Video

So here she is, the girl of the hour, and the inspiration for this list, Veronica Mars who made it to over 5 mill. in a mere thirty days time with over 90,000 backers and is the third highest-grossing KS project EVER. I know the Marshmallows had something to do with it, but I really think it was Kristen Bells' sloth stunt on youtube that pulled in that cash so fast. In all honesty it is quite the feat and definitely a defining moment in the history of the film industry. It will be interesting to see what happens now that so many other celebrities are monkey-see, monkey-do...ing. (You know who you are SPIKE! BRAFF!)

2. The Ouya

businessinsider.com

Category: Games

In the number two spot is The Ouya, a super-cheap, super-sleek gaming console that looks like something from Apple. Although it brought in a whole ton of money and threw the words "free" and "games" around a lot it received some pretty poor reviews and there is talk of a second Kickstarter project to help Ouya provide more games for its disgruntled users. Kinda seems like double dipping to me. Am I right?

1. The Pebble E-Paper Smartwatch

businessinsider.com

Category: Design

This watch of the future that connects to your smartphone brought in ten million dollars.

Ten. Million. Dollars. All for a watch that let's you use the "Couch to 5-K" smartphone app. It does do other things to, lot's of them, but let's be honest with each other.