Rest in Pieces Bin Weevils
I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. It torments me. I see them everywhere. The Weevils. I’m losing happiness points over this. Is my nest cool? Mulch. Dosh. The ‘Nerf Nitro®’. Bin Weevils is haunting me, and I fear that as a society we haven’t properly unpacked the emotional toll that it placed on us. Bin Weevil’s won a fucking BAFTA for Best Website, not once, but four times.
In. A. Row.
How on earth are we claiming to be well adapted human beings, when this flash game from hell lurks beneath us? Bin Weevils has injected itself into every part of my life, and we need to talk about it. Move over Club Penguin, there’s a new horrifically laggy, slightly problematic, bug riddled, deeply iconic flash game to crash your parents' 2012 HP Spectre on.
Whilst it is often (wrongly) called a Club Penguin knockoff, Bin Weevils is the originator of vaguely anthropomorphic society-replica flash games coming out in 2004 from the minds of the supreme council of Weevils at 55 Pixels, Nickelodeon, Prism Entertainment, and Creative Entertainment Group - truly the founding fathers of a flash game generation. Bin Weevils followed anatomically incorrect depictions of Weevils who lived in the ‘bin’. As a Weevil, you could live life carefree, assuming you contribute to the Weevil economy in its many work-based games to earn in-game currency of ‘Mulch’ and ‘Dosh’. It was known for its wildly inconsistent animation quality, horrendous sound design that can be summed up as ‘squelchy,’ and all in all, being a slightly unhinged but very fun flash game. Dedicated Weevils flocked to the Bin to play, and an army of nine year olds created an aggressively devout Bin Weevil fanbase. It became a cartoon, a movie, an app, was plastered on merchandise of every kind, and made into two (much less successful) spin off games.
A flash game goliath like Bin Weevils wouldn’t have gotten to where it is without some help though - the game was well known to partner with a slew of big brands to get the graphics department some dosh. Most notably and arguably by far the most unhinged, was their collab with the ‘Nerf Nitro®’ - a nerf gun that shot cars instead of foam ‘bullets’. For months, players were inundated with ads for the ‘Nerf Nitro®’ which eventually seeped into ‘Dirt Valley’, the aptly named Weevil themed Mario Kart knockoff game. ‘Nerf Nitro®’ graphics and cars were plastered in the game, frustrating dedicated Weevils and running many computers into the ground. ‘Nerf Nitro®’ eventually got rid of in-game graphics and returned to gargantuan pixelated billboards, but anti-Nerf sentiment plagued the Bin.
Sadly not all Bin Weevils scandals were this wholesome. In 2017, it was revealed that a group of hackers released the data of 1 million Weevils to the public claiming that they had hacked the unhackable (read: the Bin Weevils user database) and had the IP addresses of 20 million Weevils. 20 million isn’t a number they plucked out of nowhere by the way. In 2013, at the height of the terrifying reign of the Weevils, there were 20 million active users reported on the site. I’ll just say that again. 20 million real-life human people played Bin Weevils. And even more hilariously (and very grimly), 20 million dedicated Weevils got their IP addresses and emails datamined. Bin Weevils didn’t dignify the violation of 20 million people's privacy with anything more than an automated email response. The statement, ‘I got doxxed on Bin Weevils’ — while categorically insane became a brief reality for some people.
The death of Bin Weevils was swift and grim. 55Pixels, the parent company behind Bin Weevils’ creative direction, aptly described by ‘binweevilrantcentral.weebly.com’ as “incompetent, ignorant and unprofessional” and “even worse than EA”. The company was liquidated in 2021 due to bankruptcy. Sadly no megacorp thought it was worthy of a buyout. On the last day of Bin Weevils’ reign, the Weevils gathered in Flem’s Fountain, donning some now very questionable headpieces, jumping, dancing, and crying out “Weevil On!”. It seemed like a peaceful yet saddening end to a much loved childhood classic.
55Pixels got their comeuppance for selling out, and the karmic scales of the universe rebalanced as their evils died out. We moved on. Or so we thought. Much like how other famous flash games got remade after the tragic death of Adobe Flash Games (hi Club Penguin), Bin Weevils Rewritten was reborn just months after the original game got shut down. Just as one Weevil dies, the blood, sweat, tears, and mulch of dedicated fans bring it back to life.
I fear that I will never know peace.