Classic Smosh is back!
Smosh founders Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox are finally reunited and just bought back the YouTube channel to go back to their roots.
Padilla and Hecox shared the news through a YouTube video posted on the Smosh channel and talked about the acquisition journey of the channel.
Smosh was created way back in 2005 by the duo “as a way to make each other laugh and just have fun,” Hecox said.
The duo became prominent in the late 2000s and early 2010s for their video series like Food Battle, Death Note, and That Damn Neighbor.
Their content, which resonated with millions of people turned into a career and quickly became one of the most popular channels on the website, now has over 25 million subscribers with over 10 billion views.
However, “After six years of doing almost everything ourselves and the rate at which we were putting out videos, we realized it wasn’t a sustainable thing and we needed help,” Hecox shared.
Prompting them to sell the company to Defy Media when they were approached by the company in 2011, helping them make better content and offering them more projects.
In 2017, Padilla left the channel due to creative differences with the company and chose to pursue his own separate channel.
“After about six years, I realize that this company’s goals for Smosh were just too different from my own,” Padilla said.
He expressed, “I realize that I had no time or energy to commit to creating the sketches that Ian and I made together which I felt was the foundation of what made Smosh, Smosh, so I kept pushing through.”
On the other hand, Hecox stayed, as he felt there is still “so much more to do in the channel,” and has been with Smosh up to now.
In 2018, Defy Media went out of business, and the channel has been acquired by American comedy duo Rhett and Link’s company, Mythical Entertainment, and was the home of Smosh until now.
According to Padilla and Hecox, they started talking in 2022 and discussed the possibility of acquiring the channel once again.
“Ian and I started hanging out a ton and we realized that the sketches that we’d made weren’t just great because they were products of the times, I wasn’t just being blinded by the nostalgia when I’d go back to get a laugh at the old videos, they were a reflection of the magic that we felt when we were making something together,” Padilla said.
As such, they announced that they decided to officially buy Smosh, re-establishing it as an independent entity once again.
Hecox said, “What you can expect on this channel is a sketch comedy written by and starring Anthony and myself.”
They assured that the other channels, including Smosh Pit and Smosh Games, are staying the same, with the same content and with the same cast.
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