Homestar Runner

Everyone loves the Homestar runner, he is a terrific athlete!

About

Homestar Runner is a long running web cartoon series produced by Mike and Matt Chapman (the brothers Chaps), which garnered immense popularity in the early days of Flash animation on the web, and still maintains a large following today. Matt Chapman describes the cartoons as "a world full of weird, sort-of-human characters that are missing a lot of limbs."^[1] They engage in surreal antics, and make many 70's 80's and 90's pop culture references.

History

In 1996 by Mike Chapman and Craig Zobel wrote a children's book that they titled The Homestar Runner enters the strongest man in the world contest. It became a flash cartoon in 1999 when "The Brothers Chaps", Mike and Matt Chapman, wanted something to practice using flash on. The website went live in January 2000, featuring a few simple animations. As more cartoons and games were added, the site's popularity grew, becoming arguably the most popular flash-based cartoon of its time.

TIME Magazine praised the site for its goofy humor, calling it "like a postmodern version of the Peanuts gang."^[2]

In 2004, the official music video for Experimental Film, by They Might Be Giants debuted on the site, featuring all the characters of Homestar Runner cartoons. ^[3]

Strong Bad Emails

In 2001, fans were asked to send emails to Strong Bad, the cartoons main antagonist. A series of short cartoons were made wherein Strong Bad would actually answer his real fan email. The toons were a hit – quickly becoming the highlight feature of the website. Thus, even though Homestar Runner is the main character, Strong Bad is more recognizable and popular. These emails spawned new characters and spinoffs such as "Trogdor", and the "teen girl squad".

Trogdor

In 2003, Strong Bad was aksed in an email to draw a dragon, and demonstrate his "skills of an artist[sic]." His response became the most popular Strong Bad email ever, and brought the site's popularity into the public consciousness.

Strong Bad draws a dragon.

Spread

HomestarRunner.com has never advertised and Mike and Matt Chapman claimed that their site spread by word of mouth. The brothers Chaps worked on Homestar Runner cartoons full time, also selling Homestar Runner merchandise on the online store.

The spike in 2004 may have been from it being talked about on NPR. Story here

Game

There was a video game based on the website entitled Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People (or abbreviated SBCG4AP). It was developed by Videlectrix (Mike and Matt Chapman) and Telltale games. It was released for the Nintendo Wii and the PC.

Media

A Homestar Runner Parody:

Kingdom of hearts teen girl squad parody

Trogdor tribute

External References

^[1] IGN – Interview with the Brothers Chaps

^[2] TIME – A Star Is Born -- On the Web

^[3] They Might Be Giants and Homestar Runner – Experimental Film.