With the launch of its new “Phygital” Toy Collection & Experience on e-commerce giant Amazon, the popular NFT collection Pudgy Penguins saw explosive interest and sales.

According to project CEO Luca Netz, Pudgy Penguins saw over $500,000 in purchases over the first two days, surpassing 20,000 individual toys sold. 

Across several Twitter Spaces yesterday, Netz said the team’s thesis is that “they want Pudgy penguins to win but also push the space forward,” adding that they are focused on bringing millions of users into the Web3 space in ways that the team doesn’t even yet fathom.

 NFT Revolution

Pudgy Penguins NFT Craze Takes Flight as Daily Volume Tops $11M in Ethereum

Want to get a sense of which NFT collectibles series are currently in hot demand? It’s simple: just check out Crypto Twitter. Amongst crypto industry luminaries and enthusiasts, you’ll find the classic CryptoPunks as well as the more recent Bored Ape Yacht Club avatars. And lately, you’ll often find Pudgy Penguins. Pudgy Penguins hardly break the mold for Ethereum-based NFT sets. There’s 8,888 of them in total, each depicting a different cartoonish penguin assembled from an array of randomized t...

Alejandro Navia, co-founder and president of NFT content and analysis website nftnow, posted that the toys dominated Amazon sales charts over the past 48 hours, beating legacy brands like Disney, Transformers, Pokemon, Barbie and Legos. 

The recent launch on Amazon is in line with the project’s approach, which is to get the largest companies and A-players from the music or sports world involved to bring in millions of users that haven’t delved into the NFT space yet, said the Pudgy Penguin CEO yesterday. 

Pudgy Penguins is one of the few Ethereum-based projects that “bucked” the NFT crash, raising $9 million dollars this year in a round led by early-stage investment firm 1kx—with support from Big Brain Holdings and Kronos Research, among others. 

 NFT Revolution

Luxury Fashion House Balmain Drops Unicorn Sneakers Bundled With NFT Version

French luxury fashion house Balmain today launched its latest Web3 initiative, dropping a limited series of NFT sneakers based on its Unicorn footwear line that each come with a pair of matching limited-edition real world shoes.  The Unicorn Phygital Wearable Collection, on sale starting today, consists of 130 Unicorn sneaker NFTs bundled with identical physical counterparts. Five unique sneaker designs are debuting via the collection’s Unicorn bundles, which each cost between $1595 and $2095 pa...

Launched in 2021, Pudgy Penguins capitalized big on the NFT boom, driven in part by a New York Times story, leading the team to confidently post on Twitter: “We aren’t waiting for mass adoption… we’re creating it.”

With a team of six gif artists, Netz ended one his interviews on Twitter with an ambitious declaration: “I want Pudgy Penguins to be the face of NFTs,” making it “unequivocally clear for everyone that they are the most familiar NFT on the market.”