Greenville College graduates Kris Truitt and Chase Castaldo created a website, www.Manbabies.com, in the spring of 2007. Co-founder Kris Truitt told WGEL it all began with a trip to Springfield for the two to be fitted for Kris’s wedding.
“After eating a ton of pizza, and I think it was like 1 o’ clock in the morning or something, some crazy time already, he (Chase) came across a picture of a man with his head swapped with a baby,” Truitt said. “It was probably the most hilarious thing we’d ever seen in our lives, so Chase actually asked me, ‘Hey, could we make one of these?’”
They created 15 “manbabies” that night. The website went viral soon after its creation and was featured on Rachel Ray and several popular websites. The site’s popularity has since cooled to a simmer, but Truitt says he has no regrets.
“I maybe could have sold it for a little bit, probably not a ton of money, but I don’t know if the extrinsic value of selling for a small amount of money would be worth it versus, you know, the intrinsic value that we’ve gotten, the joy we’ve gotten out of doing the website.”
Truitt is now a web developer at Greenville College. He says he hopes to begin updating the website on a weekly basis soon but has no intention of returning to daily updates.
