The image above says it all: merch just isn’t what it used to be. Walk into a Hot Topic in 2014 and instead of being blinded by a rainbow of giant, neon cartoon imagery reflecting off of foil print “Stay Brutal” shirts, you have little more to choose from than black, white and several shades of grey *crying face emoji*
If u miss the glory days of coontail extensions, flatirons and sidekicks then this post is for you!!
What better way to start than with (former) scene icons THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA? At the time I thought they had their merch game on lock (and I guess they did in terms of sales) but most of these are shockingly shitty in terms of aesthetics and borderline childish– like, they wouldn’t look out of place at all in Deliah’s or Justice.
Of course my personal favorite is the “before they were tr00″ collection. Hey TWY, CARNIFEX and WHITECHAPEL, you’re not fooling us– we remember when u had neon cartoon animals on ur shirts like 3 years ago.
Not only was this PIERCE THE VEIL shirt an excellent example of the “cartoony block letters” aesthetic, they somehow managed to get placed in TWO of that year’s biggest crossover hit videos (JASON DERULO “In My Head” and NEW BOYZ “You’re A Jerk”). Myron hard.
ALL TIME LOW dropped a few hammers in the neon era, most notably these two– I *LOVE* the “middle school girl’s doodles” aesthetic and they nailed it. I found the artists site once but lost the URL. His work was awesome though, and a fixture in the “scene” section of the Hot Topic t-shirt wall!
While putting this together i noticed that there was a whole subgenre of “light blue shark” shirts. Probably a few more I didn’t even find. Weird.
For one of the most neon bands ever, FOREVER THE SICKEST KIDS had a surprisingly small amount of iconic neon merch. That said, their good stuff was REALLY good– I owned both of these.
I consider this the “missing link” stage between neon and tr00: you can tell they’re trying to be “metal” but the colors are too bright and the drawings are too good/fun.
And last but not least, the undisputed kings of neon monster scene merch, ROCKETT– featuring a truly spectacular SET YOUR GOALS shirt. *standing ovation gif*
What was YOUR favorite neon merch? Will this aesthetic make a comeback after people are tired of grey and floral print logo merch?? Should we all confront today’s tr00est bands with the evidence of their neon past???