Have You Ever Seen A Keyboard Shaped Waffle?

Written By Benjamin Rudzinski

Of all of the different themes and concepts that the mechanical keyboard community has co-opted for inspirations and designs over the years, arguably none are more ubiquitous than that of food. (Except for maybe anime that is, but the weebs don’t need any more recognition than what they already get.) Keyboards, keycaps, and even switches have all had their fair share of food related designs and names, with the latter being an especially prime target for drink-based naming schemes. Rather than digging deep into the switches in this article today, though, I wanted to take a pause at this intersection of ‘food’ and the ‘mechanical keyboard hobby’ and instead travel down the much less frequently walked path of keyboards and food. While this path was most recently traveled by Omnitype for April Fools 2025 with their Bauer Lite Maker Series, this food grade silicone mold for making chocolate or ice keyboards is not the stop that I had in mind for this discussion. Nor is it that of TheKeyCompany’s Skillet keyboard designed out of cast iron for April Fools 2021, either. Instead, I wanted to take us all the way back to the earliest days of the modern keyboard era to late 2014 when one tiny little Kickstarter campaign unleashed a meme that still gets referenced to this very day over a decade later – the Keyboard Waffle Iron. But this campaign didn’t just set in motion a more than a decade long meme encompassing two of my personal favorite hobbies in keyboards and cooking, it also directly spawned one of my personal favorite niche documentation practices that is both still ongoing in the hobby and also not nearly as well known as it should be. I figured this was more than worth the short article, even if its not quite about switches…

Figure 1: I would buy the hell out of some little butter balls in the shape of an MX style switch to go with this...

Back in the era when u/Ripster55 was still doing “Switch Science!” on r/mechanicalkeyboards and also fighting with iMav and the Geekhack crowd, a then unconnected 3D modeling artist by the name of Chris Dimino launched a small Kickstarter campaign on November 25th, 2014 pitching a simple yet definitely never conceived of before product – a waffle iron in the shape of a 60% keyboard. Made out of die cast aluminum and a heat resistant bakelite handle, the product was actually a brought to life version of a homework assignment Chris had had back in 2002 at the School of Visual Arts in New York City which asked him to link together an old familiar item with a new, unrelated purpose. Linking together a plastic mold of Corona-matic Typewriter with some metallic finish, a handle, and some ingenuity to make it look as if it could be used to make waffles, he not only passed the assignment but also the approval of the early internet at large, netting over seven million page views on his website sometime around 2004-2005. Despite the passing grade and rather large digital footprint the joke rendering had, which he stated to me even resulted in a producer from the Big Bang Theory reaching out at one point around 2007-2008 to see if it was a real product that could be gifted to Sheldon on the show, it ultimately wasn’t an idea he chose to turn into a reality until many years later in 2014. Unlike other keyboard groupbuys which were being ran at the time with at most a dozen people participating and hardly any companies in sight to back them, the Keyboard Waffle Iron project boasted ten different donation tiers with everything from just a waffle iron for $60, to limited edition colorways with signed and numbered boxes from Chris for $125, and even a catered Keyboard Waffle breakfast for 20-30 guests for the low price of $3,000. While nobody opted for anything beyond the limited edition teal, red, or black waffle irons, the campaign itself was wildly successful and managed to reach $66,685 in backing from 850 different patrons on an initial ask of $50,000. The months following the success of this campaign not only saw customers happily receive their Keyboard Waffle Irons but also saw even more attention from various news outlets on top of the viral success the original render had with Wired, Gizmodo, and even Kickstarter themselves hailing the success of this small and very unique product launch. With all campaign promises having been delivered for by the tail end of 2015, Chris closed off his one and only Kickstarter campaign on Christmas Day 2025 and moved onto other art adventures – though not without still keeping in touch with some his original backers to this very day.

Figure 2: Chris' original homework project result which jumpstarted the idea of a keyboard waffle iron.

Figure 3: The much more comical and absurd end of The Keyboard Waffle Iron donation tiers from the original Kickstarter.

Following the release of the Keyboard Waffle Iron, I imagine that it made its rounds on r/mechanicalkeyboards at least a good handful of times. While the subreddit back then was still largely just the ramblings of Ripster interspersed with commentary from other Geekhack ex-pats, I’m more than sure he’d have snuck in mention of it at least a few times over. However, the subreddit began to pick up a life of its own around this time and suddenly thousands of new users were joining the budding beginnings of one of the now largest platforms for mechanical keyboard discussion. Paralleling the rise of people joining that subreddit, though, was also the general worldwide awareness of the Keyboard Waffle Iron. The success of the Kickstarter matched up with the post-campaign marketing from various platforms to parallel the rise of r/mechanicalkeyboards subreddit and ensure that the community would never truly forget about it ever again. Even back then you’d get the occasional sparse post of either keyboard shaped waffles or the original campaign itself, often receiving a few laughs and upvotes until being passed over again for some length of time until the cycle repeated itself. However, the recurring cycle of new people coming into the newly growing mechanical keyboard community, posting the Keyboard Waffle Iron, and then forgetting about it for some weeks or months never quite stopped. Ever. And it was after witnessing this many times over that user u/Soulcloset had thought it would be a funny idea to keep track of how frequently the Keyboard Waffle Iron or keyboard shaped waffles were being mentioned on r/mechanicalkeyboards. A meme-like jest inspired by those classic “Days Since Accident” signs found in any industrial workplace, though focused on keyboards and waffles. Starting all the way back in 2017, she then went on to begin what is not only still continuing to this very day but also is one of my personal favorite niche documentation projects in the keyboard community – a tracker of the number of days it has been since a keyboard waffle or the Keyboard Waffle Iron was last posted on r/mechanicalkeyboards.

Figure 4: The official beginning of the 'Days Since Waffle Post' track by Soulcloset on r/mechanicalkeyboards.

Since July 1st of 2017, every single time a keyboard waffle or the original Keyboard Waffle Iron is posted on r/mechanicalkeyboards, Soulcloset can be found somewhere in the comments resetting her own running clock since the last post and linking it into an ever expanding hyperlinked daisy chain of waffle posts throughout the community and from over the years. In the eight years to the day since this project officially began, this has resulted in a chain that is 109 comments long – including everything from a brief swing onto an r/mechmarket WTB post, a record setting four keyboard waffle posts within the same day, and even a pair of milestone posts after the subreddit managed to go 122 and 254 days separately without having posted a keyboard waffle at all. If you hop onto this journey at any point along the line, you’ll be able to click through her comments to the previous waffle post from before that one and travel all the way back through a lot of modern keyboard history in the process. The COVID community spike, Stealios, the beginning of the modern switch “recolor” era, the rise and fall of the Holy Panda aftermarket, the ending of “Switch Science” from Ripster himself, and so much more are all crammed somewhere along this continuing timeline tracking keyboard waffle history, of all things. While this may not be the most explicitly keyboard related documentation project out there, and is certainly far from something that I can really dig into for pages and pages, I wanted to share it because it really captures a certain essence of the keyboard community that used to be focused on doing things. Building things, documenting products, or even just sharing weird ideas about keyboards amongst friends because they were cool and funny is such a core tenet of what got this hobby going in the first place and yet it also is something that I feel like has been lost a bit in recent years with a much more sterile, driven focus on driving sales, gaining a following, or just flexing on others. Even if this is a small and simple project, the dedication to keeping a fun idea and tiny piece of keyboard history together and accessible for anyone in the community who may come across it some way is nothing short of admirable and there’s very few people left from the “old” days that are still contributing in this fashion. It’s for these reasons, as well as the fact that the day that this was originally posted marks the exact 8th birthday of the keyboard waffle chain, that I wanted to memorialize this project and tiny, slightly sweet corner of the keyboard community.

Figure 5: An old mention of a breakfast based brushing with Ripster himself.

Figure 6: The most recent 'milestone' post with the second longest gap in between waffle posts in the subreddit history.

While I did actually read through all 109 of Soulcloset’s comments from over the years in the preparation of this article, and could thus flex some editorial muscle in ascribing some rationale to her decision making over the years or apply a grand narrative to the waffle obsession, I also felt like it would be infinitely more valuable to just ask her directly. After all, she’s still out there lurking and waiting for the next keyboard waffle post. Thankfully I didn’t have to post one to get her attention, and instead simply reaching out to ask some good old fashioned Q&A about this project was enough to get her response. Here's what Soulcloset had to say about keyboard waffles:

Q #1: What was the simplest, most fundamental reason that you decided to start tracking keyboard waffle posts on r/mechanicalkeyboards of all things? One of your initial comments had mentioned that you found it humorous to keep track of the frequent posts in similar fashion to industrial signs tracking “Days Since Last Accident” and related memes, but was there anything deeper than that?

A: It wasn't much deeper than that. I was 18 at the time and got a lot of my validation from Reddit karma, so in trying to make a funny comment for attention, I just said "days since last waffle post: 0" and people liked it! I can't imagine I even got that many upvotes, but it was enough for me to continue, and once one person replied to acknowledge that this was a trend, I knew I could never stop. I didn't know I'd still be doing it 8 years later, though, haha.

Q #2: The earliest link in the waffle chain, which was from July 1st, 2017 suggests that you couldn’t go back any further through your comment history to older dates you tracked. Do you know if you were still tracking days since waffle posts before then? Do you recall if it started before the end of the original Keyboard Waffle Iron Kickstarter in 2015?

A: I was, but not by much. It was definitely later than 2015, and I want to say it started only a few months before that July 2017 date. Something must have been in the air to have everyone talking about the Kickstarter and the product in 2017, but there were constant posts (and that's why it was worth counting it the first place). I was very new to the community when the original run ended, because I started browsing r/mk in my senior year of high school in late 2015.

Q #3: In some of your older posts before Milestone #2, you had referenced a group called the “Waffle Squad” on a few occasions. Can you explain who this group is? Are there any particular members from over the years that you feel are deserving of eternal recognition for their contributions to the group?

A: Back when posts were more frequent, several people informally made it their mission to tag me first on a new waffle post. As a token of appreciation to those people, I started referring to them as the Waffle Squad and tagging anyone who awarded the comments in the chain. Notable members have been u/yurikhan, u/Teedacus, u/JackWestsBionicArm, and especially u/DaoDeer, who dedicated a keyboard waffle in my name after discovering the chain.

Q #4: In an old comment, you had mentioned being pinged by Ripster himself about missing a waffle post. Since it has been a long time since he graced the community at large, can you comment on how it feels to have been present in the community throughout it’s history from those very early days all the way until now? Do you have any thoughts about the current status of the community or what you hope it might look like some more years into the future?

A: Talking about all of this waffle post history has had me reminiscing about the earlier days of the community and it's wonderful. I've got nothing against today's keyboard landscape, but there was something magical about the days when "genuine Cherry switches" were still a selling point and Topre was seen as a gift from the heavens. Watching the explosion of this hobby, both in size and available options, was so cool, but in some ways it feels bittersweet. Having so many options means you don't really need to talk to other people or engage with "the community" to find information on what's out there - you can go to Best Buy and get a decent board from Glorious without knowing what "mechanical" even means. I can't deny that this is a good thing, but a part of me is sad we're not all as tight-knit anymore. Maybe I've just moved on.

Q #5: Lastly, do you have a Keyboard Waffle Iron of your own and/or have you ever consumed a keyboard shaped waffle?

A: Yes and no. My friend is a keyboard nerd and actually "recognized" me when I met her because she knew about the waffle post chain! Once she and her now-fiance (who was my roommate at the time) were more established, she gifted me a keyboard waffle iron for the holidays. Unfortunately, right after that, I moved to a new apartment with an electric stovetop, so I have yet to actually make a keyboard waffle. But trust me, when I'm living somewhere with gas, there will be a post on r/mk with my first taste of the thing I've tracked for so long :)

 

Figure 7: A very touching homage from u/DaoDeer to Soulcloset for the years of effort in keeping track of waffle posts…

Figure 8: ...and even a bit of recognition from the man who started it all.

 
Benjamin Rudzinski
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