What does any of this have to do with Snackeys? Well, it does and it doesn’t. Production took another very short halt while we waited on more silicone to come in and plotted out our next move (and while life funneled our financial resources into yet another black hole of responsibility). Response for Bento Blanks so far has been lukewarm, but it’s a concept we wanted to see come to fruition. Ultimately we decided to press on with it regardless of the overall public response. And if there’s anything you guys have learned about KeyKollectiv, it’s that we’re sticklers for the methods we utilize. For us, proof of concept is more important than simple aesthetics alone. It’s the whole reason we do this at all. If we don’t feel like we are challenging our current skill set, then we feel like we’re letting you guys (and the community as a whole) down. Even if it ironically means upsetting people because they’d rather see Snackeys 1 make a comeback.



Speaking of which, we will probably revisit Snackeys 1 eventually, as we do feel it merits revisiting, but only after we’ve proven that we can do more than that. Are you noticing a pattern here, guys? We believe that revisiting designs should be a celebration of progress—about respecting the fact that we can implement cleaner methods than we were capable of when we first released them. What sucks about that is due to the amount of experimentation on our end, we have learned a lot of things the hard way, sometimes to the point of nearly throwing in the towel altogether. Unfortunately, growth actually requires making mistakes. To make no mistakes would require doing nothing at all. Yet another thing I have to continue to remind myself when I’m feeling down and out, which admittedly I’ve done my fair share of lately.



We have poured our hearts into this last collection, as it’s the fruition of ideas we had back when we decided to make Snackeys 1. I asked what you guys would like to read about on our Geekhack thread, and one of you said you’d like to hear about some of the ideas that didn’t make it into this collection. However—hilariously--this collection is essentially what didn’t make it into the last one. It’s heartbreaking to have to kill your darlings, but this was something we knew we didn’t quite have the chops to pull off yet. As for ideas that didn’t make it into this one, I had really wanted to make a Sakura Jelly key (essentially what sakura sake looks like, but with a custard colored bottom), but Kudos said he didn’t think anyone would know what it was. Also, the gradient/frosted effect in Sakura Sake is technically more challenging so ultimately we decided to go with that. I can’t say too much more because we have plans to revisit those eventually, too!