At a Pasadena bookstore earlier this year, Jenine Pastores hid behind a giant inflatable alien costume while a room of strangers sang a cartoon cookie song. Josh Jackson, listening from nearby, felt the emotion. Neither creator had expected almost 400 people to show up. Neither has fully stopped thinking about what it meant.

The moment arrived at what feels like a pivotal point for their Los Angeles-based creative business. Since 2019, Josh and Jenine have built Tubby Nugget, a wholesome cartoon alien character, into a 10-million-person community spanning daily short-form video, plush toys, a Penguin Random House graphic novel, and live events that keep growing in scale. 

On June 25, they return to VidCon Anaheim as featured creators for the third consecutive year, this time carrying specific questions about where to take the IP next.

“I think this year will probably be more intentional about talking to the fans and hearing, ‘Hey, what do you guys want to see?’” Josh says. “A lot of you guys have grown up with Tubby Nugget at this point.”

A Booth, Not Just a Stage

Many featured creators at VidCon move through a schedule of appearances and panels, then leave. Josh and Jenine treat the convention differently. They operate a booth across all three days, maintaining a physical presence that blurs the line between creator and fan.

“We love being at the booth because it’s a chance for us to see our fans in person in a less formal situation,” Jenine says.

VidCon and LA Comic Con are the only regular in-person events the brand schedules each year. For a community built almost entirely through screens, those gatherings carry unusual weight. Regulars return year after year, and conversations pick up mid-thread from previous visits. “Some couples have gotten married, some have had kids,” Josh says. “It’s always nice to catch up with them.”

This year’s VidCon booth goes further. Fans will be able to pose questions directly to Tubby through the mascot costume, while the meet-and-greet shifts toward something more personal: Josh and Jenine plan to draw custom characters on the spot, asking each visitor what their own version of a Tubby Nugget looks like. They also bring new microphones, with the intention of filming fan interactions as content.

When Ten Million Followers Start to Look Like Just Numbers

One of the less-discussed pressures of building a large online brand is the way scale eventually stops registering. Follower counts and view totals accumulate, but their meaning diffuses. Jenine describes the experience directly.

“At some point, we’ve just become numb to it,” she says. “We’re like, ‘Oh, we got this many views. And that’s great. Maybe the algorithm’s changing, maybe I don’t know if people still want to watch us.’”

In-person events interrupt that drift. “When we have millions and millions of followers, it’s crazy to think that it doesn’t hit the same way,” Jenine says. “And then these people show up in person, and they completely rewrite that narrative in our brains.”

Both creators name the mental health dimension plainly. Seeing the audience face-to-face, hearing what the content has actually meant to people, provides a form of grounding that metrics cannot replicate. For Josh, the connection is also relational. “Maybe the relationship begins on the screen,” he says, “but it means it’s so much deeper and so much more powerful when you get to talk to your favorite creators in person.”

What Happened When 400 People Sang the Chocolate Chip Cookie Song

The Pasadena bookstore event last year served as the clearest preview yet of what Tubby Nugget could become in a physical space. The creators expected a small crowd. Almost 400 people arrived. Jenine performed the character’s original songs live for the first time. The room sang along.

“Little chills went down my spine when I heard them all sing the chocolate chip cookie song together,” Josh says.

The event expanded their sense of what the brand could do. “It really did show us the possibilities, you know, of what could happen,” Josh says. “Maybe a tour, maybe a show, maybe what? Anything. And we’re open to anything.”

Jenine connects the moment to the brand’s founding logic: getting the character in front of as many people as possible, through whatever format fits them. “Our big goal for Tubby was to make him as accessible as possible to people around the world,” she says. “Some people aren’t online. They want to do it in person.” The bookstore event confirmed that the off-screen audience is real and waiting.

The TV Show Dream Has a New Possible Route

Josh and Jenine have long said they want a Tubby Nugget television show. That ambition has not changed. The path toward it looks different than it once did.

VidCon sits squarely in YouTube’s ecosystem, and both creators have been watching how animation is shifting. “A lot of animators are shifting towards independent animation on YouTube,” Josh says. “Part of our discussions was, should we just make the show ourselves and put it on YouTube and have the audience enjoy it there, rather than have them wait to have it professionally produced?”

No decision has been made. What is clear is that 2026 will involve more experimentation with long-form content. The transition Tubby Nugget is navigating involves questions of format as much as story, and VidCon, as a gathering point for the YouTube creator world, feels like a useful place to think them through.

“It’s a fun time for the two of us to see how Tubby can continue to adapt with the audience that he’s growing up alongside,” Jenine says.

The Year They Stopped Waiting for Perfect

One piece of advice Josh and Jenine offer other creators comes directly from a mistake they made themselves. In the period before this year, they pulled back on posting because each video needed to clear an internal standard before going live.

“We were making so much less content because we’re overthinking it, and we’re scared to post sometimes because we want it to be perfect,” Jenine says.

The lesson they drew from that period is blunt. “You don’t need to have your vision fully figured out if it’s keeping you from posting,” Jenine says. “At the end of the day, are you sharing your creations? Are you letting them sit in the corner and just build up dust because you don’t want them to see the light of day just yet?”

The advice applies to their current moment as much as it does to anyone else’s. Tubby Nugget is in a defined transition, and the next format is not locked down. The working answer is to keep creating and let the audience, including the one that shows up at VidCon every June, help point the way.

VidCon as a Listening Session

This year at Anaheim, Josh and Jenine arrive with open questions rather than announcements. Where does the IP go as the fans who grew up with Tubby become adults? What format fits a brand that has already outgrown short-form video as its only outlet? The convention, they say, is partly where those answers get shaped.

“We’re going to be more intentional about talking to the fans,” Josh says, “and hearing, hey, what do you guys want to see.”

Jenine puts the underlying priority more plainly. “We’re just excited for the opportunity to have a space with them again, that’s just for them and not serving any algorithms,” she says. “At the end of the day, they’re the ones that we’re making content for.”

Ask Josh what he wants a first-time visitor to feel in the first thirty seconds at their booth, and his answer returns to where the character began: a private drawing made to cheer someone up, shared because it might help.

“Feeling a sense of warmth and encouragement,” he says. “There’s so much going on in the world, and a lot of that is on social media. We just want to be a safe place. When people see Tubby for the first time, they want to feel like they’re in a safe place to land. They can be silly. They can be happy. They can just come as they are.”

VidCon Anaheim 2026 is returning to the Anaheim Convention Center from Thursday, June 25, to Saturday, June 27, 2026. Follow this link for more information.

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