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Put your Awesome Mix Vol. 1 into the Walkman, press play, and get ready to be hooked on a feeling.

If you were like many, many people in North America and around the world, you had probably never heard of the comic book heroes Star-Lord, Rocket Raccoon, Groot, Drax the Destroyer or Gamora prior to the moment you heard “Ooga Chaka Ooga Ooga” blaring from movie screens (or smaller screens) playing the trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy. More to the point, if someone would have told you that a movie featuring an anthropomorphic raccoon, a talking tree creature whose dialogue is composed only of his name, and a guy best known as the star of a low-rated NBC comedy would be part of one of the biggest movies of 2014, you would have assumed they were either crazy, weird, or some combination of the two. Financial website The Motley Fool certainly didn't think it was possible.

And yet, Guardians of the Galaxy held the title of #1 film in North America all the way through 2014, though it will be overtaken by The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 somewhere close to the MLK Jr. holiday weekend. It was a hit overseas as well, taking the #2 spot behind only Transformers: Age of Extinction (though again, it has a shot at losing a position to The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies by the time it finishes its international run).

How did Disney and Marvel achieve such an unlikely result? When the project was announced, comic book fan boys were the only ones excited, as no one else even knew who these guys were. And even then, Guardians of the Galaxy was a minor title for Marvel. Consider this: Iron Man was a lesser known super hero prior to the release of those films, but he’s atop the A-List compared to the Guardians. And Spider-Man, who had a movie released earlier in 2014 prior to Guardians of the Galaxy is considered one of the three or four premier comic book characters. It had only so-so results by Spidey standards. Surely there was a threshold for a space opera with such a motley crew of characters.

In the weeks leading up to the release of the film, we started to see signs that such a threshold did not exist in this case. Fanboys and people new to the series responded extremely well to the previews, as the humor was emphasized, making the film look like a playful romp through the stars with cross-demographic appeal. Although the initial trailer received mixed reactions, glowing reviews in the weeks leading up to the film’s release gave fans and non-fans confidence in the quality of Guardians of the Galaxy.

Also in the positive column was Chris Pratt, heretofore most famous for his work on the television series Parks and Recreation. He was an appealing leading man with charisma that hearkened back to Han Solo and Indiana Jones. For kids, there was a hilarious talking raccoon and a funny tree creature.

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