Your Favorite Martian: The History

Your Favorite Martian, also known as YFM, is a virtual cartoon band created by Ray William Johnson in 2011. The band primarily consists of 4 fictional characters: Puff Puff (vocals), Benatar (keytar, guitar, keyboard), DeeJay (DJ, guitar), and Axel (drums). Their universe is part of the Martian Multiverse, which is shared with the universe of The Upside Downs, another fictional band music project by Ray.

The band doesn't perform a specific genre but typically leans into meme rap, pop, and electronic. Ray is the only consistent member behind YFM, serving as a music producer and the voice of PuffPuff, Generation 1 DeeJay, and the speaking voice of Benatar. Jesse Cale (previously under the alias McSwagger) is the second most frequent member, playing both a producing role until the end of Generation 1.5 and the singing voice of Benatar. As of Generation 2, DeeJay is voiced by Stefan Johnson and Axel by Fistful Of Leaves.

Links

Images are sourced via @MartianArchive on Twitter/X

Gen 1 | Gen 1.5 |Gen 2

Generation 1: Beginnings

Ray had signed under Maker Studios around late 2010 to early 2011, providing additional resources for content creation. Maker provided their content creator recording facilities as they also partnered with other music-centric content creators such as Nice Peter and Epiclloyd's Epic Rap Battles of History [1]. On December 25, 2010, Your Favorite Martian would release its first single, My Balls. This era was animated by Ladybug Studios with Ray commissioning different producers before eventually settling with other Maker Studio-signed musicians, including Jesse Cale.

Discrepencies

Note: this only serves as a collection of different sources. For Your Martian does not claim which party is truth.

Because of newer videos, there have been discrepancies related to the development of Your Favorite Martian such as:

According to "8 Things You Didn't Know About Puff Puff" and "8 Things You Didn't Know About DeeJay", these photos are allegedly the first pieces of concept art Ray did for the development of Your Favorite Martian. However, people have speculated that this is false as the first drawing of Puff Puff, shown to the public first, is seen empty. It is possible that these are simply 2 separate photos taken right as Ray was drawing both Puff and DeeJay, but it's highly unlikely due to the awkward position DeeJay is drawn in on the page, with one of his limbs cropped out, as well as the quality of the photos taken.

In the same video, Ray also says that PuffPuff's name had always just been PuffPuff. However, the channel's 2011 background, published before the upload of My Balls, labels Puff's silhouette as Humbert. This is not addressed in the video.

On September 14, 2011, the band would release Puppet Break-Up, which featured their first non-animated music video directed by Sam Macaroni. It served as downtime as YFM shifted from outsourcing their animation to Cosmic Toast, Maker Studios' in-house animation department.

This would then kickstart Generation 1.5 (also referred to as Generation 2)

Generation 1.5: Beginnings

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Discrepencies

Note: this only serves as a collection of different sources. For Your Martian does not claim whether which party is truth.

Four Psycho [page coming soon] was a previously lost piece of YFM media which was understood as the pilot/pitch episode of Your Favorite Martian: The series. Once it was discovered by TheMysteriousLJ through communicating with a previous Cosmic Toast animator, their personal upload of the episode was promptly deleted and then reuploaded to the Your Favorite Martian YouTube channel. There had been no explanation from either parties on the nature of the original upload's removal.
The YFM Team describes Four Psycho as "An old YFMTS episode that was never finished" and that it was meant to be Episode 4 or 5. There is no mention of the actual nature of how the episode was found. Other evidence that the episode was the first piece of YFM media are as follows:
- The tour bus being red
- The backgrounds of this episode would eventually be used for YFMTS's intro
- PuffPuff's eyes have lines above his pupils, similar to his design in Whip Yo Kids before it was eventually removed from his main design

Images are sourced via @MartianArchive on Twitter/X | source

Separation from Maker Studios and Retiring of YFM

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Proin sem ipsum, ultrices sit amet aliquam nec, lobortis id ligula. Mauris vitae fringilla nunc, faucibus tempus neque. Proin arcu mauris, tincidunt nec rhoncus ac, gravida quis purus. Mauris maximus erat at erat cursus sollicitudin. Vivamus gravida sem eu pulvinar accumsan. Orci varius natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Etiam pharetra metus sit amet lorem porta bibendum. Integer sodales dapibus arcu, sit amet finibus urna tristique a.

Generation 2: Revival

In early 2022, the Your Favorite Martian YouTube channel changed its name from "THIS PROJECT IS RETIRED" to ___. On May 14, 2022, the account had their profile picture and banner changed to the words "JUNE 1" over a blue background. The following day, Ray William Johnson officially announced the revival of Your Favorite Martian, which confirms to have full ownership of. This includes the creation of the official Martian Multiverse X/Twitter and Instagram accounts. He eventually also announced that Jesse Cale would come back as the voice of Benatar and Wax to become a more active music collaborator on May 22 of that same year.

They would officially end their retirement with the release of Orphan Tears: Part 2. They opened the Martian Multiverse Gift Shop October 4, 2022.

Sources

[1] Humphrey, Michael (June 28, 2011). "Ray William Johnson: =3 Adds Up To Most-Subscribed On YouTube". Forbes. Retrieved March 8, 2025

[2] Gutelle, Sam (November 27, 2012). "RayWilliamJohnson Starting His Own Studio With Help From Julian Smith". Tubefilter. Retrieved August 27, 2015.

[3] https://altwire.net/your-favorite-martian-return/