Since launching in 2009, Kickstarter has leveraged the power of internet masses to fund many extremely successful products and projects — from the instantly-viral Coolest Cooler (the drinks cooler that comes with a blender, speaker and a charger among other tools) and the foldable travel tripod to the more than $40 million readers paid to get in on the "secret novels" from popular fantasy writer Brian Sanderson.
The Kickstarter platform allows internet users to put money toward a project they'd like to see brought to life — while many ideas get swallowed by the abyss of the internet, some shoot up and raise enough money to become a full-scale company.
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The latest crazy internet idea to go viral began when, on a hot summer day in 2018, Munich resident Sebastian Walter started thinking about how the toy water guns sold in stores did not have the range to truly get one soaked like the ones sold during his childhood in the 1990s.
Spyra
The Internet Helped Fund Three High-Power Super Soakers
Together with friends Rike Brand and Marius Rudolf, Walter put up a proposal to "reinvent the water gun and take water fights to the next level" on Kickstarter in the summer of 2018.
"Squirting pathetic water streams after minutes of pumping?" they wrote in the original Kickstarter proposal. "That's not what water guns should be like in 2018."
The idea of a powerful soaker clearly appealed to many and donations quickly started to pour in. By committing to tiers starting at €1, backers raised €460,965 ($499,933) by September 2018.
These funds allowed Walker to hire a team of designers and toy developers to put together a real-life product called SpyraOne. In April 2023, Spyra unveiled a third water gun to the lineup of products available on its site and Amazon (AMZN).
The SpyraThree costs $179.99 and has three modes — one full-strength blast of water and two or three smaller streams coming at one's water fight opponent in different places.
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It also comes with a digital display showing how much water and battery one has left as well as a "League" mode that locks you out for 10 seconds to signal that one needs to reload so that you never truly run out of water.
As long refill times were one of the toy water gun "defects" that initially motivated Spyra creators, the three guns all take no more than 14 seconds to reload once one dunks it into a full body of water like a pool or lake.
"The individual shots are strong but not painful," reads the product description for SpyraThree. "Part of the fun factor is that you feel the hit, but you shouldn't be knocked out by it."
From the start, the Spyra vision was marketed as something more "badass" than what was being sold by mainstream toy companies like Hasbro (HAS) and Mattel (MAT). Spyra founders said that they cannot predict the rise of changing laws in the future, they have worked out the regulation details for the countries where they ship — at the moment this includes the US, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and countries within the European Union.
"We have studied all relevant regulations in detail in order to make sure that the Spyra One can legally be played with like any other water gun toy in all countries we are shipping it to," the founders wrote when the Spyra product was ready to be shipped.
