On April 20th, 2013 this happened:
Snoop Dogg (at this time he was going by Snoop Lion) watched a video of a Knockout and said:
"That was awesome. That was fucking awesome. Oh my God. That was some of the most clever shit I've ever seen".
That video ended up going viral and for a lot of people it is the first time they ever saw the Knockout.
The story behind this video is pretty much the story of our first big break.
It all began with a contest on the popular online community Reddit. "The Munchies" as it was called, was a new annual awards event by stoners and for stoners. That year Snoop Lion had agreed to announce all the winners on 4/20.
When we first heard about the awards we were very interested. We decide to submit an entry for the category of "Greatest Stoner Engineering Feat".
At that point we had been secretly working on the Knockout for over a year and we hadn't posted a video on YouTube yet. So we filmed a quick video in our kitchen and posted it.
The Knockout used in the video was a prototype and the only one that existed at that time. We used the party animal mask because we had normal jobs and didn't want to risk getting fired.
Doing the actual Knockout was difficult with the mask on. There's a small window to light the bowl while you're chugging and with a mask on it can be pretty tricky to get it done. We said let's get this in one shot, and we did.
You might notice the song "Gin and Juice" playing in the background. We thought it would be cool if Snoop's music was on while we did the Knockout. Sometimes it's the little things that make a big difference.
We were really nervous when we submitted the video on reddit. To win an "award" you had to get the most upvotes in your category. We kept checking our upvotes multiple times per day. By the end of the week it looked like we were going to be announced as the winner.
On April 20th (420) we checked again and found that they had posted a video of Snoop announcing all the winners. When we first watched Snoop's reaction to our video we were in shock. He seemed genuinely impressed. It was all the motivation we needed to make sure we got the Knockout made.
In the following months we got organized and bought the first batch of Knockouts that we would start selling August 2013.
We owe Reddit and Snoop Dogg a debt of gratitude for creating The Munchies. Without them, there's no way we could have made such an impact over the following years.
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