How a shared love of Star Wars, Doctor Who, He-Man, collectibles and everything pop culture turned into a passion project that has been more than a decade in the making.

Every great adventure has an origin story and NerdiPop’s began long before YouTube, social media or even the idea of starting a blog. It began with two siblings growing up in South Africa, a love of all things geeky and an endless fascination with the worlds of film, television and popular culture.

Now, as NerdiPop celebrates reaching 10,000 YouTube subscribers, it seems like the perfect time to look back at how it all started.

And what a journey it’s been!

Watch the NerdiPop story here.

Once Upon a Time, There Were Two Geeks…

My brother and I have been geeks for as long as I can remember.

Growing up, our world was filled with He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Star Wars, science fiction, fantasy, cartoons, movies and just about anything that sparked our imaginations.

We loved the characters, the stories, the adventures and, of course, the collectibles.

There was something magical about these fictional worlds. You could travel to a galaxy far, far away, visit Eternia or become completely absorbed in a story that seemed so much bigger than everyday life.

And we never really grew out of it.

In fact, we’re still collecting, watching, discovering and talking about many of those same things today. But being a geek in South Africa, particularly where we grew up, wasn’t always easy. Finding merchandise, action figures and collectibles was a challenge. We didn’t have endless specialist stores filled with the latest fandom merchandise and ordering things from overseas wasn’t nearly as convenient as it is today.

If you wanted something unusual, you really had to hunt for it. And even then, there was no guarantee you’d find it. Perhaps that’s why we appreciated our collections so much. Every new discovery felt like a little victory.

2015: NerdiPop Is Born

Fast-forward to 2015.

After years of sharing our enthusiasm for everything geeky, my brother and I decided to start something of our own. And so, NerdiPop was born.

Even the name was a combination of the two things we loved.

The Nerdi part represented nerd (or geek) culture, particularly the collectibles, characters, franchises and fandoms we’d grown up loving. And yes, we deliberately chose the word nerd. Back when we were kids, we weren’t called geeks. We were nerds! We were the kids who collected everything, knew far too much about our favourite characters and could talk for hours about the fictional worlds we loved. Long before geek culture became mainstream, being a nerd was simply who we were.

The Pop part represented popular culture, the ever-changing world of entertainment, television, movies, trends and fandoms.

Together, the name summed up what we wanted our little corner of the internet to be. We didn’t want to limit ourselves to one subject.

Why should we? We loved too many things!

One day we could be talking about Star Wars, the next about a classic television series, a new movie, a collectible or something completely different. The original idea was to create a blog where we could share our interests, discoveries and entertainment news with other people who enjoyed the same things. And, being collectors ourselves, we decided to take things a step further.

Our First Business Adventure (And a Few Lessons Along the Way)

In the early days, NerdiPop also had an online store. We thought that if we struggled to find geek-related merchandise in South Africa, surely other fans must have the same problem. So we started importing items from overseas and tried selling them locally. It was exciting. We were working with products we genuinely loved, exploring the possibilities of running a business and hoping to make some interesting merchandise more accessible to fellow South African geeks. But reality soon caught up with our enthusiasm. Importing merchandise wasn’t always straightforward and building a customer base for a relatively niche market was challenging.

It turned out that starting a business was a lot more complicated than simply loving the products you wanted to sell. The store never quite took off the way we’d hoped. Eventually, that chapter came to an end.

But I don’t regret it. It was part of the learning process and it taught us a great deal about what it takes to turn an idea into something real. More importantly, it didn’t change why we’d started NerdiPop. We still loved geek culture. And we still wanted to share that love with others.

Blogging Between Work, Weekends and Everyday Life

The blog became the heart of NerdiPop. For years, my brother and I worked on it whenever we could. There’s something important to understand about NerdiPop: it has always been a passion project built around our full-time jobs. Neither of us had the luxury of spending every day writing articles, creating content or working on the website. We have careers, responsibilities and the usual demands of everyday life.

So NerdiPop happened after hours, on weekends and whenever we could find some spare time. Sometimes we’d have plenty of ideas and enthusiasm. Other times, life simply got in the way. And that’s the reality of running something you love alongside a full-time job. It’s not always glamorous and it certainly isn’t always easy. Over the years, the blog had its busy periods and its quieter ones. Eventually, there was a period of roughly a year or two when very little happened. Not because we’d lost interest. We simply didn’t have enough hours in the day.

But NerdiPop was never forgotten. It was still ours and the passion that started it was still very much alive.

2023: Enter YouTube!

In 2023, I decided it was time to try something different. I’d been thinking about YouTube and the possibility of bringing NerdiPop to a whole new audience.

The only problem? I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing!

There was a lot of experimenting, figuring things out, learning how to create videos and trying to understand what worked and what didn’t. And believe me, there was plenty of trial and error. But I decided that instead of trying to fit the channel into one particular category, I would simply share the things I genuinely enjoyed.

Movies, television, nostalgia, science fiction, fantasy, fandom news, gaming, collectibles, K-dramas and just about anything else that caught my attention. Because surely I couldn’t be the only person who loved such a strange and wonderful mixture of things? I believed there had to be other people out there who enjoyed jumping from one fandom to another. People who could get just as excited about an old television series as a brand-new film. People who loved rediscovering forgotten entertainment, exploring fascinating stories and discovering something they hadn’t heard of before.

And so, I started uploading.

Just like the blog, the YouTube channel had to fit around my full-time job. Most of my videos are researched, created and edited in the evenings after work or over weekends. Some evenings are spent researching stories. Others are spent recording, editing, working on thumbnails or planning the next video.

And sometimes an entire weekend disappears into creating content! It takes time, especially when you’re doing it because you love it rather than because it’s your full-time occupation. But there’s something incredibly satisfying about taking an idea, turning it into a video and sharing it with people who find it just as interesting as you do.

Still Collecting, Still Creating

Of course, our love of collectibles and geek merchandise never disappeared.  My brother and I also both run our own Redbubble stores, giving us another creative outlet for our interests. In many ways, it’s a continuation of what we were trying to do when we first started the NerdiPop online store.

Although the original import business didn’t work out as planned, the enthusiasm for merchandise, collecting and creating something of our own has stayed with us.

The blog, the YouTube channel and our Redbubble stores are all different expressions of the same passion that brought NerdiPop to life in 2015.

And that’s what makes this journey so interesting. NerdiPop has changed quite a bit over the years, but the reason behind it has never really changed. We simply love this stuff.

Finding Our Fellow Geeks

Perhaps the biggest surprise since launching the YouTube channel has been discovering just how many people share these interests. And not necessarily in the way you’d expect. Some people discover NerdiPop through a nostalgic television video. Others arrive because of a movie, a fandom story, an obscure piece of entertainment history or a subject they hadn’t thought about in years. That’s the wonderful thing about geek culture.

There’s no single way to be a geek.

You might love Star Wars but know absolutely nothing about anime.

You might be obsessed with K-dramas but have never watched He-Man.

You might collect action figures, enjoy classic films, play video games or simply love discovering interesting entertainment stories.

And that’s perfectly fine. NerdiPop has never been about telling people what they should enjoy. It’s about celebrating the things that make us curious, excited and nostalgic. One of my favourite things about creating content is seeing people share their own memories, experiences and opinions.

Sometimes a video brings back a childhood memory for someone. Sometimes it introduces viewers to something completely new. And sometimes it’s simply nice to know there are other people out there who remember that strange television show you thought everybody had forgotten!

Three Years, Thousands of Videos Watched and 10,000 Subscribers!

And now we’ve reached a milestone I could hardly have imagined when I started experimenting with YouTube in 2023.

10,000 subscribers!

Ten thousand people who decided NerdiPop was worth following. That’s an incredible thought.

The channel has grown, become monetised and continued to reach new viewers, while the NerdiPop brand itself has started a new chapter. For me, this milestone represents much more than a number on YouTube. It represents all those evenings spent working after a full day at my regular job. The weekends spent creating content. The videos that did well, the ones that didn’t and everything I’ve learned along the way. It represents sticking with something even when progress feels slow.

And it takes me right back to 2015, when my brother and I decided to start a little blog because we loved geek culture.

It’s been quite an adventure. And we’re incredibly grateful.

The Next Chapter: NerdiPop’s OG Club and Beyond

So where do we go from here? Well, I certainly don’t intend to stop at 10,000 subscribers!

There are still so many fascinating stories to explore, classic movies and series to revisit, collectibles to discover and new ideas to bring to the channel.

I’m also excited about making NerdiPop more interactive and giving the people who support the channel a chance to become more involved.

One of the next steps is the launch of NerdiPop’s OG Club, a new community-focused part of the channel where we’ll explore different types of content, including unboxings, nostalgia, discussions and, eventually, contributions from fellow fans. I’m hoping to involve more family members along the way, too.

After all, NerdiPop started as a family adventure. It seems fitting that family should continue to be part of its future. I also want to keep developing the NerdiPop blog and exploring new ways to bring our love of entertainment and fandom to more people. There are plenty of ideas.

Now I just need to find a few more hours in the day!

Thank You for Being Part of the NerdiPop Journey

If you’ve watched one of our videos, subscribed to the channel, read an article, left a comment, shared a post or supported one of our stores, thank you.

Every bit of support makes a difference. When you’re building something around a full-time job, you don’t always know whether the time and effort you’re putting in will lead anywhere. You do it because you love it.

But knowing that other people enjoy what you’re creating makes it all the more worthwhile.

To everyone who has joined us along the way, whether you’ve been following NerdiPop for years or only discovered us recently, I’m so grateful you’re here.

And to my brother, who started this adventure with me back in 2015, who would have thought our shared geekiness would take us this far? From two kids watching He-Man and Star Wars, dreaming about collectibles that were almost impossible to find in South Africa, to a blog, an online store, creative projects and now a YouTube community of 10,000 subscribers.

It’s been a journey filled with nostalgia, experiments, lessons, challenges and plenty of wonderful discoveries.

And we’re not finished yet.

Here’s to the next 10,000 subscribers, the next chapter of NerdiPop and many more years of celebrating everything geeky.

Thank you for being part of our story.

Stay geeky, stay curious and never stop enjoying the things you love!

With love and appreciation,

NerdiPop!