About

TubbyCoin refers to an April Fools' Day joke and a donation campaign launched by WildBrain in April 2021. A Teletubbies-based cryptocurrency parody, the campaign had users sharing the #TubbyCoin hashtag to increase the amount of money donated by the company when it debuted during the holiday.

Origin

On March 31st, 2021, the official Twitter^[1] account for Teletubbies teased an announcement to be revealed later that week. The tweet used #Bitcoin hashtag and received over 12,700 retweets and 53,000 likes in two days (shown below). Additionally, the Teletubbies social media accounts changed their profile pictures to an image of Po with laser eyes, a reference to the Laser Eyes Bitcoin social media trend.

On April 1st, 2021, the account announced^[2] the introduction of TubbyCoin, an alt-coin based on HugTech technology, as its April Fools' joke for 2021 (tweet shown below). The tweet received over 5,700 retweets and 19,000 likes in one day, with the Instagram^[3] post gaining over 2,000 likes.

On the same day, WildBrain, the company producing a spin-off animated Tiddlytubbies web series, made a blog post about TubbyCoin.^[4] In the post, the company revealed that it would be donating $5,000 Canadian dollars to the Kids Help Phone charity and an additional $1 for every post using the #TubbyCoin hashtag on social media.

To mine TubbyCoin, all users need to do is share Big Hugs! tokens on social media with anyone who needs a hug, accompanied by the hashtag #TubbyCoin. Then, sit back and let HugTech do the rest, as your TubbyCoin grows in value by collecting good vibes from being so nice. […] For every TubbyCoin shared or liked on social media, we’ll add one additional dollar to our donation, up to a total of $10,000 CAD.

Spread

Starting on March 31st, following the teaser tweet, users on Twitter started making jokes and comments about a potential Teletubbies cryptocurrency. For example, on that day, Twitter^[5] user @Renkindle posted a tweet that gained over 1,600 retweets and 6,700 likes (shown below, left). On the same day, Twitter^[6] user @LizardRumsfeld made a post that gained over 290 retweets and 5,700 likes (shown below, right).

On April 1st, 2021, following the announcement, TubbyCoin continued to remain a viral topic of discussion, with a number of users praising the donation campaign (examples shown below).

On April 1st, the joke was reported on by multiple news outlets including The Guardian^[7] and Pop Culture.^[8]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References