Y'all when I started researching for this

video I honestly thought it was going to

be faster

huh

I thought I knew everything I genuinely

did I was a backer for the Lisa Frank

Glamour Dolls campaign back in 2017

I really thought I knew the story

I saw other peoples videos on it

and I was in it, I did

all of the things, I was part of it.

My friend, oh-my gosh, I did not know.

There was so much that I did not know

It is so fucked up, like I am just-

I am absolutely blown away.

Because the thing is, the more I started

looking into it, the more things that I found

And the more connections I was making

And I was like oh my gosh.

This is a story, my friend.

There is so much that happened

in the Lisa Frank Glamour Dolls Collab

That we did not know, because everything

wasn't laid out through hindsight

we know hindsight is 20/20.

Now we're seeing 20/20 my friend.

And the rainbows are not rainbowing,

and the unicorns and the peguseseses, and

they're not, it's not good, it's very bad.

So if you are ready, to go on this

wild journey with me

This is Behind the Controversy.

And its starting right now.

[Music]

I would dare to say, pretty much

everybody watching this video

has been online and seen something

that you never intended to purchase,

but you had that impulse feeling.

You had that feeling because,

for some reason, you didn't know

that you needed this,

and you needed to buy it.

Maybe it solves some kind of problem

in your life, maybe it was some kind of

advancement on something you already knew

or maybe it was due to nostalgia.

Something that reminded you of your childhood

or just when you were younger,

something that made you feel happy,

during that time.

And maybe its even something that made

an entire generation feel happy.

That's the feeling that the backers had

when we saw that Lisa Frank was

coming out with makeup with a company

named Glamour Dolls.

Now we did not, a lot of us had never

heard of Glamour Dolls.

Imma be 100%, I'd never heard of

Glamour Dolls before.

But I had heard of Lisa Frank.

And I was freaking out because

I was a sticker collector.

I-I will tell you though,

the scratch-and-sniff stickers

were my favorite, but Lisa Frank

stickers were super cool too.

They were very very popular,

and that's the way it was

for a lot of people that were GenX

or older millennials.

Mostly, probably mid-millennials as well.

If it wasn't the stickers,

maybe it was the school supplies.

Because Trapper Keepers were a thing.

It was not just a regular notebook.

It was a cool notebook.

And they were kind of pricey,

so if you had a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper,

you were cool.

Or if you were like me, you had a knock-off

version from K-mart, which made you

moderately cool. Not really.

But we pretended we were.

"I'll never forget the day

I got stuck on Lisa Frank.

The stickers were so cool, the colors

were awesome.

I gotta find more. So go to the store,

And WOW, there's tons of awesome

Lisa Frank stuff. I gotta have it!

What more can I say?

Pretty soon my friends, Ashley and Lindsay

are going Lisa Frank Crazy too."

And like I mentioned earlier, the company

that started all of this wasn't super

well known. They're called Glamour Dolls,

so they had to get their name out there

somehow, so they used an uber popular

youtuber, at the time,

named Candy Johnson.

And Candy Johnson was the perfect influencer

for this campaign.

I don't even know if we were calling

people influencers at that point.

But anyway, my point is that Candy Johnson

was top of her game. Everybody freaking

loved Candy, she was like the sweetest,

sweetest, kindest person.

And she has this really light voice.

And everybody freakin' loved Candy.

"Hi guys, 2016 is behind us, but

I am gonna share with you

my Best in Beauty of 2016.

Make sure if you have not subscribed,

subscribe, join the family,

become a Candy Corn. Candy Corn,

like a Unicorn, but like candy corn,

I don't know, I'll have to think

about that one.

And follow me on Snapchat, Twitter,

Instagram, Facebook for all kinds of

different and awesome things."

So when Candy announced the collaboration

between Glamour Dolls and Lisa Frank,

people lost their minds, they opened

their wallets to the tune of over $300,000

Almost 6,000 people backed this project.

Now, if you don't know what

I'm talking about as far as Kickstarter

and "backing" a project,

basically, it's kind of like a GoFundMe-ish

kind of thing, but for a business.

So the business wants to make a product,

but they don't have the money,

so they go and they tell people

"Hey, we wanna make this product,

if you back us, if you give us money

at different tiers, you'll get X products

for helping us to create the product."

This story has been told many times before.

But I don't think it has been told

in this way, because what I'm gonna

focus on in this video is the point of view

of the backers. What was it like to be

a backer from the beginning, and what

kind of tactics did Glamour Dolls use

to keep us hanging on for well over a year.

Where many, many people, including me,

did not ask for refunds even after

they were over a year late in sending out

products.

Some of you are probably sitting there

thinking, like, "why didn't you know?"

like, "why didn't you see the red flags?"

Like, "what happened?"

I'm going to tell you.

I'm going to share with you what they

did to us.

I'm pointing down because of a 22 page

script here with all the fucked-up shit

that they did.

Because, if you haven't figured it out yet

Yea, we didn't get anything.

[wheeze] Well some people got a little bit,

but I didn't get anything

And the vast majority of people got

absolutely nothing, the people that did

get things, got very very little.

It's layered. It's multi-layered.

So lets just jump in to the very beginning

which was the start of the Kickstarter

in February of 2017.

[Music]

Something you might want to remember

about 2017 was that we didn't have

the inundation of weird collabs,

like we do now, I mean,

the Glamlite Pizza palette was still about

a year away, and that one broke

the internet.

It was like the first really weird collab

that people were like "that's odd, but

also kind of cool".

The kind of collabs we were getting

at the time were things like

Wonder Woman and Luxie

and PUR and the Trolls Movie.

A makeup collaboration with Lisa Frank

had literally never been done before,

so people, naturally, were very excited

due to that strong feeling of nostalgia.

The Kickstarter launches with a maximum

bid of 40 dollars to get a few products

and a goal of 30,000 dollars.

And the lowest buy-in to get something was

pretty cheap, at 5 dollars for what they

called, a digital background.

It was an image that you could use as your

background on your phone,

or on your computer, or whatever.

The kickstarter ran for 45 days

from February 16, 2017, to April 2, 2017.

It's also important to talk about the fact

that Glamour Dolls said that backers

would have a say in the products

being created.

That there would be polling and voting

and people would get sneak peaks,

people would also get the products

at a discount, because the products

would eventually end up at retailers

but the backers, because you bought

in a bundle, would get things cheaper

than you would get if you bought

the products individually.

Just 3 days into the campaign,

Glamour Dolls posted their update.

They were so so excited.

They said that Lisa was "opening

her vault and would be sending

1000 vintage goodies to be included,

for the first 1000 backers".

They promised a second treat,

if they hit 2000 backers, and Lisa

had something really special planned

if they made it to 10,000.

They're just hyping the heck out of the

backers, because they also promised

something called "stretch rewards".

And they way they described it is not

how it turned out.

Basically, what they said is that

if the backers, as a community, complete

a set of challenges, that something will

be unlocked, and this something was going

to be very very exciting.

Challenges included tasks like creating

a Lisa Frank-inspired makeup look

and taking a picture of it, writing a rap

about Glitter and tweeting it, and they

even had a challenge where a person

had to create a foil unicorn horn and put

it on their head and take a picture

of themselves in public, wearing

the unicorn horn.

40 people had to take a picture of their

vintage Lisa Frank products and submit

those pictures.

See, the community's participating,

they're excited, they're talking about all

the things that they're doing because

in every comment section under each post

there's a place for people of the

community to communicate, to talk about

what's happening. Its almost like a

little, not a message board, but just

kind of a place to dump things that people

were thinking after the update.

So people are hyped about this, they're

so excited about their stretch reward.

And this is the first big disappointment

for the backers.

Because it was not an extra item added to

the bag, it wasn't even a reward, because

when you think of a reward, you think

that you're getting something.

What it actually was, was a mock-up photo

of an image of three-piece nail polish set

and this is the kicker about it,

no pun intended, that the nail polish set

wasn't included in any of the levels,

so nobody that had put in any money

at this point was going to get the

nail polishes that were featured

in the picture, in order to get the

nail polishes, you had to now increase

your bid by at least 15 dollars

because Glamour Dolls had just created

new tiers that required more investment

and the backers were like "what?"

"That's it?"

What we just worked so hard for, we just

did all the challenges, 40 of us sent

pictures of our Lisa Frank stuff that we

dug out of our basement or out of

our attics, and we found the stuff and

we took the picture and we did

all the work, and we got a drawing of

something we're not getting unless we

spend more money?

That's what happened.

I'm gonna put the whole post on the screen

for you to read, but I'll read one of the

key points.

"We started this collection with a handful

of products, but a big part of this

Kickstarter is expanding the collection

with the community and developing new

products to add to it.

What maybe separates this Kickstarter from

others is that we don't know how big the

collection will ultimately be.

It all depends on community engagement".

But the thing was is that they told people

how big it was going to be.

Because that's what they put their money

in for because it said if you put the

money in for this amount, then you'll get

this stuff, and now she's saying that it

may get even bigger than that.

Because what was about to happen is they

were about to add even more tiers with

even more products.

The explanation continued with this,

which was the kicker, "we would have told

you from the beginning" that basically it

was only a drawing of a mock-up of

something that no one was getting yet, but

"we only developed it last week.

In response to fan engagement after we

researched cost formulations. For many

people, the challenges were a fun way to

unlock it and we'll be clear going

forward so you can choose whether

to participate".

Unlock what? They unlocked a picture of

something they had to pay more for.

Thing is is that kind of the way that

these stretch rewards work, but they

didn't explain it to people that way.

When people see a stretch reward, they're

going to think that they're getting

something as a reward.

What it is traditionally called is

a "stretch goal" and that is not something

that is officially part of kickstarter,

but something that Kickstarter campaigns

do often. They usually call them goals,

not rewards, and from what I was reading,

a lot of the stretch goals typically happen

after the backers already have their first

set of products because they have gotten

their products, they're excited about it,

they're loving it, and now they want

something more.

So in order to stretch their amount that

they've collected and create more products

they have a stretch goal. So let's say, If

I get 100 people to donate 20 more dollars

we can create X products, so lets see if

we can get to our stretch goal, rather

than, it's a mystery, it's a game, it's a

reward, it wasn't.

They just completely missed represented

that to backers. But I'm telling you,

that snafu is mild, compared to what is

coming next, like that-that's just

extremely minor. It gets so so much worse.

So trying to backtrack, Glamour Dolls

tells their backers "hey, if we get to

3,500 backers, then we're going to include

in everybody's bag, the first 3500 people,

a Lisa Frank designed crease brush.

Sometimes they call this a crease brush,

sometimes they call it a blending brush,

its the same brush.

The promise of the free crease brush,

I am not kidding you, according to the

Kickstarter brought them past that

3500 backer mark in 24 hours.

So at this point in time, highest level

includes everything that they've said

so far, plus the nail polishes at a $60

price point. But people were still mad,

people were like, this is not what you

said it was going to be, sir, ma'am, sir.

So in response, Glamour Dolls was like

"ok, well, we will add something else,

we'll add something from our own line",

It was what they called their

"Gypsy Eyeliners" to the first

2000 backers who complete a survey

to pick their preferred color of this

liner. They were going to add that into

the boxes, and that I think kind of

calmed people down a little bit,

they were like "ok, that feels more like

a reward." And people started getting

really excited about everything all over

again. A backer named Marsha said

"Wow, thanks yet again, the entire vibe

of this campaign totally reminds me of

what it felt like to open my noisy

Lisa Frank Trapperkeeper, write with

my pencils, play with my erasers, that I

never used, to keep pristine, like dolls

LOL, etc. in school. It made me smile

and dream. I feel like we're all reliving

our childhoods through this campaign and

your team is making this fun. I'm hoping

this will begin a new generation

of Lisa Frank fans, when kids see us using

our stuff".

Little did Marsha and the rest of us know,

we'd never use the stuff, we're not

getting the stuff. In March of 2017,

the Kickstarter is still going on, and

one of the founders and CEOs

of Glamour Dolls came on to clarify a

couple things. You're gonna see his name

coming up a lot. His name is Peter,

he looks like that. Just so you can get

a visual of who we're talking to.

Peter, CEO, founder, Glamour Dolls,

along with a chick named Jessica,

that's Jessica. Back in 2017, unless you

were in the makeup industry, there wasn't

as much information readily available

about how makeup manufacturing worked,

so Peter felt like it was important

to explain to the backers, kind of, what

we were in for with this. He explained

something called minimum order quantities

and he said "as we get more pledges we

have to order more units and if the order

gets big enough, we are able to consider

adding new products, knowing that we will

be able to meet the factory minimums for

packaging and filling".

And then he says "as we add new products,

there will need to be some higher pledge

tiers, there no way around it. I wish I

could tell you exactly how much the

highest tier will be or how many products

we'll end up with, but we came here to

figure that out with you. But, you may see

the problem with this, in that they

haven't even created or started to create

the products they've already promised,

and now we're talking about adding on

another layer, more tiers, more products,

that also they don't have any plan for how

they're going to make them. There's no

artwork from Lisa frank, there's no colors

picked out, there's just a concept

in their minds, that's all that exists.

And as we go through this, you'll realize

they didn't even calculate the financials

on how much all this was going to cost,

or if they did calculate the financials,

they didn't care, they were like, we'll

figure it out some how.

And then Peter said something that stuck

in the minds of backers for the rest

of the campaign. This is what he said,

"Ultimately, whatever we do and don't

figure out, these products will be

available for individual purchase before

the end of the year". The end of 2017.

Kickstarter backers will just be getting

them first. They didn't.

So you remember how I said they were

adding all of these new products, and

either they didn't calculate the

financials to figure out how much they

were gonna cost or they did know, but they

"oh we'll get the money from somewhere"

they kinda figured out how they might get

the money. They tapped into a creator

named Wengie, now back then, there was

a big boom around creators who did DIY

challenge kinds of videos. I'm gonna show

you some of Wengie's thumbnails. She got

tens of millions of views on these videos

Wengie was huge in this space, especially

with kids. At the time, Wengie only had

6 million official subscribers

on her channel, but she had way more

watching her.

Wengie: Hey guys, it's Wengie Welcome back

but today I'm here to make a special

awesome announcement, I'm so excited

to announce this, like I can't even right

now. I'm going to be collaborating with

Lisa Frank and Glamour Dolls on an

eyeshadow palette, like What?! for those

of you who haven't heard about Lisa Frank

she is so amazing. She is, like, literally my childhood.

And her art is all about rainbows,

unicorns, colorful, like

everything I'm about.

Like, her art is my aesthetic, but

the most amazing thing is

you guys get to be involved as well

because you guys are my Wingy-con fam

and if I'm going to work on my first

huge collaboration, 
it's got to be with you guys.

So, I really want you guys to help
contribute to our creative.

Choose the colors with us, 
choose the designs of the pallet.

And we've partnered with
Glamour Dolls Make-up

to make this come alive.

Because they are a high quality, 
vegan, cruelty-free brand.

Not only that,

they make super affordable makeup,

because I want this collaboration 
to be affordable to everyone.

And the great thing
about this whole process

is this was Internationally available
no matter where you are,

you can pre-order this palette.

I'm not a hundred percent
on this timeline, but it seems

like this is when they added more tiers.

They added a seventy dollar tier, 
a one hundred dollar tier,

and two hundred dollar tier,

but what they added that
was the most important thing

that I think really turned everything,

was the additional of the
Trapper Keeper palettes.

These were going to be six pan
eye-shadow palettes that

looked legit like a trapper keeper.

No one had ever seen anything
like this before and the

nostalgia overload. Oh my gosh. 
People lost their minds when

they were thinking, 
"Oh my gosh, a trapper keeper

eye-shadow palette, I need to have this 
in my life!"

So, along with Wengie
trapper keeper palette

there would be a naturally glam
palette and a bold a bright palette.

All adorned with Lisa Frank artwork.

Just an hour before the kickstarted ended,

Glamour Dolls made another promise.

They said that everybody, thanks 
to their participation,

anybody that participated in the 
Kickstarter was going to get a goody bag.

What was in the goody bag?
No idea - no one ever got it.

But they promised, they said 
"There's gonna be a goody bag added,

thank you so much for backing 
this project.":

According to the community,
at the time, it looked like before

Wengie launched her video, 
they were at about

two hundred fifty thousand dollars 
in pledges.

After Wendgie launched her video, 
they reached their peak

at three hundred seventy thousand dollars
and almost six thousand people.

That was an average of about sixty two
dollars spent per backer.

The one hundred dollar tier got everything
from the collection.

And the two hundred dollar tier got two
sets of everything in the collection.

Now me not having a ton of money, 
at the time, and being a procrastinator

I waited until the last minute to
back this campaign.

So I joined in at the very last moment
in the very last day of the campaign

at the seventy dollar level, so I paid 
seventy dollars plus five dollar shipping.