The Pacific Northwest's premiere comic + pop culture show Emerald City Comic Con returns soon - March 6 through 9 to be exact. Stay tuned to Popverse for all the ECCC 2025 news, our recs for what to do at ECCC 2025, where to find Popverse, and buy tickets now to find your place at the Seattle staple.

We’ve shared our love of the amazing wooden donut dice boxes of Dodecadonuts before, but as the Northern California-based company continues to be one of the draws of the show floor at Emerald City Comic Con 2025, we figured… why not ask the man responsible just how the concept of dice boxes disguised as donuts even came about in the first place?

“I was watching campaign two of Critical Role, and the main character there, voiced by Laura Bailey, is named Jester; the character was obsessed with pastries,” remembers founder Andrew Davis. “And at about the same time, I had gotten a new piece of woodworking equipment that I wanted a little project for, and I'd also just gotten back into D&D. So, I was like, ‘I’ll make a dice box, but I want to make something that doesn't look like anybody else's dice box.’ And it popped into my head that I was like, ‘Oh, I could make a donut. That would be really funny.’ So, I made one. And if you have one donut, you have to have a dozen donuts. And then when you have a dozen donuts, it's a lot of donuts. So, I was like, ‘Well, maybe I could sell them at a convention.’”

That led to the company’s first con appearance, sharing a table with a friend and selling around two dozen donut dice boxes, which led to more con appearances and more sales. “I was like, ‘Oh, okay. This is something,’” Davis remembers. “At the same time, some of my freelance work, I just wasn't getting as much work as I wanted to. So, I was like, "Oh, well, maybe I can make this work as a way to fill in the gaps income-wise." I sent an email to Chris at PAX West as just a flyer to apply, and I had made a little, "Hey, here's all the stuff we sell," and sent that in. And he sent me an email and we talked, and he got me into PAX West in 2023. So, I did PAX West in 2023, and I did [tabletop convention] Big Bad Con.”

That latter show proved to be a meaningful one to Davis, thanks to one particular customer.

“I sold one of the donuts to Matt Mercer, the Critical Role DM, and it showed up on stage at their big televised London show. And at that point, I was like, ‘Okay, I'm kind of all in.’ It really was like, we're going to the next level.”

What that next level looks like is pretty ambitious. “Next up in the pipeline — we have a Kickstarter live right now for three food-themed one-shots that are like, one is about saving a donut shop, one is about running a food truck and fighting Bobby Flay. (It's not actually Bobby Flay, it's Lord Boblin Flay.) And then the last one is you're basically Indiana Jones on a quest to find Ko’Koa, instead of cocoa, and then you have to recover the idol of Ko’Koa. Then after that, we have a card game called Fantasy Food Fight that we're going to be launching.”

All of this, born from a simple dream to do something fun with woodworking tools, and a simpler core directive: to make people happy.

“I would say the worst reaction we get is somebody walks by and goes like, ‘Doughnuts aren't my thing,’” Davis suggested. “That's literally the worst reaction. No one ever says, ‘Oh, you've done something. You've hurt me. You've offended me. You've hurt my feelings,’ or whatever. I really do love the joy that we bring to people. I’ve talked to people who have the donuts,  even some of the earliest ones which don't look as good as the new ones, and they're like, ‘I see it every day. It makes me laugh every day. Every time I bring it out at the table, it makes me smile.’ And I love that.”

Dodecadonuts can be found at booth 10633 on floor 0 of the Summit building of the Seattle Convention Center for the remainder of ECCC 2025, and online for the rest of the year.

Seattle's ECCC 2025 is coming up faster than you think! Keep up to date with our guide to all the Artist's Alley & Writer's Block celebrities, all the major panels, a grunge-themed playlist for the grunge-themed con, our personal recs for the key things to do at ECCC, where to find us at ECCC, and even what to do while you're in Seattle for the event. Reserve your passes as soon as you can!