Syrup Traps: Waffle Brings Episodic Animated Comedy to Gear VR

Fresh off its successful launch on Facebook, we’re excited to share that Waffle’s brand of millennial humor is now available on Gear VR!

Waffle includes three animated series that bring weekly episodic content to VR: All-Star Party, Dessert Island, and Water Bear. With vocal talent from Bob’s Burgers, Children’s Hospital, and The Mick, the shows cater to fans of off-beat comedy. We asked Waffle Co-Founder Alex Plapinger what makes these quirky cartoons a treat you should savor.

Alex Plapinger: Every Waffle show is intended to be a universe that exists across all platforms and takes advantage of all media, from video and music to camera-based AR experiences and VR. We want to bring our characters to audiences everywhere and offer people lots of different ways to experience and connect with them.

It’s great having episodes on Facebook where it’s easy for anyone in the world to watch on-the-go and share with their friends—and by bringing them into VR, we get to offer people a totally unique, immersive experience where they can actually enter the animated universes we’re creating. We’ve also always been really interested in bringing fun, serialized comedy experiences to VR. Comedy still seems underrepresented in the medium, and VR is great for enhancing emotional responses, so we wanted to apply that immersion to the experience of laughter.

AP: The core Waffle audience is 13- to 34-year-old fans of comedy and animation, like the people who dig hilariously imaginative shows like Rick and Morty. Our series feature voices from shows like Veep, Bob’s Burgers, Children’s Hospital, and The Mick, so if you like those, you’ll hopefully enjoy what we’re putting out. We’re ultimately inspired by stuff like Calvin and Hobbes and The Simpsons—character-driven entertainment that everyone can enjoy.

VR is a stellar way to reach our audience because, fundamentally, we just care about making characters that people can relate to and want to spend time with. The magic of VR is that it lets audiences literally get closer to characters like Water Bear and Conan. It’s an ideal way to meet them—and an incredible way to get to know them even better. Plus, our bet is that the same people who like VR are going to enjoy hanging on a tropical island with starving desserts and kicking it at the greatest party on the astral plane.

AP: We’ve always been focused on series. For us, the best way to introduce new characters to the world is by giving people lots of chances to connect with them.

There are so few series in VR—and certainly no animated VR comedy ones. We wanted to create a reason for people to come back to the headset the same way they tune in to TV shows. That’s why we’re really excited to make the Waffle app the first-ever home for animated VR series. To start, we’re putting out three series that will release new episodes weekly—which, as far as we know, has never ever been done before.

Making multiple episodes of a show is also just really fun. It gives our creators more freedom to tell different kinds of stories and expand our show worlds in really imaginative ways. Lucas Kavner did an amazing job with that when writing Water Bear. Plus, it gives us the opportunity to introduce new characters, which means we get to work with more great voice talent like Kurt Braunohler, Rob Huebel, Kate Berlant, Sam Richardson, Scott MacArthur, and more.

AP: It’s been amazing to see how audiences connected to our previously released episodes and started seeking out new ones. People quickly got into quoting the show and sharing it with their friends. Hopefully that continues to happen. We’re going to make many more episodes of all these series.

AP: For us it opens up infinite opportunities to both entertain people and deepen their relationships with our characters. What especially excites us is not just how the spectrum of experiences available keeps growing (e.g. 2D v. VR), but how the lines between consumption and creation are blurring. While we’re putting people in headsets to experience the worlds of our characters in VR, we’re also using AR to put characters into the worlds of our fans—so they can interact and create their own entertainment. That way, the story we’re telling with these characters becomes collaborative, and the ways they can exist in the world become limitless.

At the core of it all, we’re always going to approach these tools with an eye on how they enable us to establish and share characters in ways that surprise and delight audiences.

AP: In addition to rolling out episodes on the Oculus Platform, we’re releasing episodes on Facebook along with world-expanding, ancillary content like music videos and AR experiences that anyone can use to create and share their own show-based entertainment. We’re really excited to see what people out in the world make.

We also have many more original shows developed and preparing for production with amazing talent. We’ve got some collaborations coming up with incredible partners that we can’t talk about just yet, but we’re excited to share details when we can.

Thanks for the delicious Q&A, Alex! We can't wait to say hello to Waffle’s lineup of quirky characters.

Dive into some syrup traps with Waffle on Gear VR and find out what happens when a bear gets stranded underwater, stars go partying, and diverse desserts co-exist on a tropical island.

Need more breakfast-based treats in your life? Subscribe to the Waffle newsletter for latest updates and follow them on Facebook.

— The Oculus Team