Caine Monroy
“Caine’s Arcade”
Caine's Backstory
In 2011, at the age of 9, Caine Monroy spent his summer vacation building an elaborate DIY cardboard arcade in his dad’s used auto parts store in East Los Angeles.
Caine loved arcades, and dreamed of the day he would have lots of customers come play. He spent months building and preparing his arcade, perfecting his game design, making displays for prizes (his toy cars), designing elaborate security systems for his Fun Pass, making his own Caine’s Arcade STAFF shirt, and even hand labeling paper-lunch-bags for customers to carry home prizes.
However, his dad’s auto part store (located in an industrial part of Boyle Heights) received very little foot traffic, so Caine’s chances of getting a customer were very small, and the few walk-in customers that came through were always in too much of a hurry to get their auto part to stop to play Caine’s Arcade. Caine never had a single customer, but Caine never gave up.
On the last day of summer, by chance, Nirvan Mullick walked into the auto parts store to buy a door handle for his ’96 Corolla. Caine asked Nirvan if he would like to play his arcade. Curious, Nirvan asked how the arcade worked. Caine explained that for $1, Nirvan could get two turns, or for $2 he could get a Fun Pass (with 500 turns). Nirvan bought the Fun Pass.
Nirvan became Caine’s first and only customer, and he loved Caine’s Arcade. It turned out that Nirvan was also a filmmaker, and he came back to ask Caine’s dad if he could make a short film about Caine’s Arcade. It was at that point Nirvan learned that he had been Caine’s first and only customer. Nirvan decided to organize a surprise flash mob of customers to come play Caine’s Arcade, and make Caine’s day.
Words can’t describe Caine’s response – so watch the film. After the flashmob, Caine told his dad that that was the best day of his whole life.
Post-Film Update
Caine’s Arcade was posted online on April 9th, 2012, and became an global viral phenomenon. The film received over 1 million views in the first 24 hours, and trended worldwide on twitter. As part of the film, Nirvan set up a scholarship fund for Caine, hoping to raise $25,000 for Caine to go to school. The first day the film was posted, over $60,000 was raised for Caine’s Scholarship Fund! The next day, we had raised over $110,000. To date, over $240,000 has been raised for Caine. Kids all over the world were also inspired to create cardboard games and creations. And we received thousands of emails from educators and parents, sharing stories of kids in their communities, and asking what we could do to help support the imaginations and dreams of kids worldwide. Inspired by the response to the film, two days after the film was posted Nirvan began to form a non-profit with a mission to “find, foster, and fund creativity and entrepreneurship in more kids like Caine.” Just 5 days later, the Goldhirsh Foundation awarded a $250,000 Challenge Grant to help start the Imagination.org, which launched an annual Global Cardboard Challenge that has engaged over 750,000 kids in creative play.
Watch the follow-up film: “Caine’s Arcade 2 : From a Movie to a Movement”
What's Happened Since the Film?
Tens-of-thousands of people from around the world visited Caine’s Arcade after the film went viral. Caine and Nirvan began being invited to travel around the world to share their story. Caine became the youngest entrepreneur to speak at the USC Marshall School of Business. He traveled to France, where Caine became the youngest ever speaker at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, and he was flown to Sacramento where Caine received the Latino Spirit Award from the California State Assembly. His arcade has been exhibited in the Exploratorium and Hammer Museums, and the film was purchased as part of MoMA’s permanent collection. Caine and Nirvan have spoken at several TEDx events, Caine spoke solo at TEDxTeen in NY, and Caine and Nirvan gave a Google Artist Talk. After giving a talk together in Colorado at the COIN Summit, Caine was offered a full scholarship to Colorado State University School of Business by the CSU’s Dean, as well as a free trip to outer space! Caine has also been invited to the White House to meet the President and take part in the White House Maker Faire!
Over $240,000 has been raised for Caine’s Scholarship Fund, with over 100,000 kids in 50+ countries taking part in our Annual Global Cardboard Challenge, which culminates in a Day of Play for children worldwide (on the anniversary of the October flashmob that made Caine’s day in the film!). Nirvan also started the Imagination.org after the film, to foster creativity in more kids. Imagination has continued to grow, engaging over 750,000 kids around the world in our Global Cardboard Challenge, and launching Imagination Chapters to foster kid creativity year-round.
Nirvan and Caine continue to share this inspiring story at conferences and speaking engagements around the world – Contact us for info about having Nirvan and/or Caine speak at your event.
In August of 2013, on Caine’s 11th birthday, Caine retired from running his arcade full-time. But the spirit of Caine’s Arcade lives on via our Imagination Foundation and our Global Cardboard Challenge. Our goal is to engage over 1 million kids in creative play each year. Help bring this to kids in your community by taking and sharing the challenge: imagination.org and continuing to share Caine’s Arcade Part 1 & 2!
• Caine’s Blog •
June 14, 2019 – Hello my name is Caine and I want to tell you my story. In 4th grade, I noticed I was different from my classmates.
As all of you may know there are three different kinds of learners: fast learner, average learner, and a slow learner.
I was a slow learner.
I was a struggling student. School was very hard for me and I stuttered a lot when I spoke. Also, school was very difficult for me and I would often daydream.
When I first built my arcade out of cardboard, I was nine years old. It started while I was on summer vacation in my dad’s auto parts shop. He kept the packaging from the parts he sold in the back. I saw that he had stacks of cardboard, and so I decided to build my first arcade game, a finger-based soccer table using cardboard and little green action figures to act as goalies to make the game challenging. After I built this game, it became like a fun challenge to me, because I wanted to create different, and more complex ones. Through the entire summer, I spent weeks creating and building!
Even before I founded Caine’s Arcade, I was really into art and design, so I was already making my own art, inspired by sports teams, specifically baseball. I learned that I was a creative person and that I enjoyed building things with my hands. I was also interested in starting my own business, so I sold snacks such as chips and water in my dad’s shop. Through this experience, I learned about money management, profit and loss, and what it takes to run a small business.
I had no idea that people would be so inspired by the arcade I built, and that the video would go viral. It made me happy when I saw that my arcade was inspiring other kids to create games and build things out of cardboard. Using recycled materials is really important to me because that’s what I had available to me when I built my Arcade. In fact, one time while my family was on a trip, I found a “barf bag” and wrote some notes on it—one of them was “use recycled materials!”
If I could talk to myself at nine years old, I would tell myself to never give up and to keep dreaming. And to always stay optimistic and ambitious; because when people weren’t playing my games, I didn’t get discouraged, and kept on building!
March 1, 2019
March 1, 2019 – When I first built my arcade out of cardboard, I was nine years old. It started while I was on summer vacation in my dad’s auto parts shop. He kept the packaging from the parts he sold in the back. I saw that he had stacks of cardboard, and so I decided to build my first arcade game, a finger-based soccer table using cardboard and little green action figures to act as goalies to make the game challenging. After I built this game, it became like a fun challenge to me, because I wanted to create different, and more complex ones. Through the entire summer, I spent weeks creating and building!
Even before I founded Caine’s Arcade, I was really into art and design, so I was already making my own art, inspired by sports teams, specifically baseball. I learned that I was a creative person and that I enjoyed building things with my hands. I was also interested in starting my own business, so I sold snacks such as chips and water in my dad’s shop. Through this experience, I learned about money management, profit and loss, and what it takes to run a small business.
I had no idea that people would be so inspired by the arcade I built, and that the video would go viral. It made me happy when I saw that my arcade was inspiring other kids to create games and build things out of cardboard. Using recycled materials is really important to me because that’s what I had available to me when I built my Arcade. In fact, one time while my family was on a trip, I found a “barf bag” and wrote some notes on it—one of them was “use recycled materials!”
If I could talk to myself at nine years old, I would tell myself to never give up and to keep dreaming. And to always stay optimistic and ambitious; because when people weren’t playing my games, I didn’t get discouraged, and kept on building!
Caine’s Arcade
Caine’s Arcade is a short film about a 9 year old boy’s cardboard arcade, and his dream of having customers. The 11 minute short film became a global phenomenon in 2012, with over 10 million views online. It received international media attention and was added to MoMA’s permanent collection. The filmmaker, Nirvan Mullick, set up a scholarship fund for Caine as part of the film. To date, over $240,000 has been donated for Caine to go to college. Tens-of-thousands of customers visited Caine’s Arcade to play, and kids around the world began making their own cardboard arcades. Shortly after posting the film, Nirvan founded a non-profit called Imagination.org which launched a Global Cardboard Challenge to foster kid creativity worldwide.
