Looks like the non-profit Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul is going to have a bit more cash for upcoming exhibits. The facility sold at least $600,000 worth of purple Brontosaurus hoodies, all thanks to the popularity of Stranger Things.
Update: It was originally reported that the Science Museum sold 80,000 hoodies, totalling about $3 million in sales. They’ve told io9 that it was actually 18,000, and the originally reported number was “a misinterpretation of our sales and units sold figures.” They’ve promised to update us in the coming weeks as sales continue.
The museum’s “Thunder Lizard” logo gear, featured in the first episode of Stranger Things 2, was sold in the mid-1980s as part of a traveling exhibit. Costume designer Kim Wilcox told Newsweek that the show’s team found an original online while hunting for vintage threads and loved it, so they bought it and made their own “with this great dinosaur art in Gaten’s size.”
Demand quickly skyrocketed for the purple hoodie, with plenty of knockoffs immediately surfacing. But why get a ripoff when the original source is on board? The Science Museum of Minnesota quickly took notice of the rising demand and promised to bring back their classic hoodie. According to the Star Tribune, the museum didn’t have any file art and very few records of the design, so it had to turn to Netflix to use the network’s copy of it.
On Tuesday, it was released online and over 18,000 hoodies were sold in a single day, temporarily crashing the museum’s website. Fans have also been crowding the physical store to get one, with lines going out the door. The museum sold out before noon on Tuesday, and a new batch should be available at 10am on Thursday.
Given that the Science Museum is a non-profit, this can’t help but feel really, really good. Not only do Stranger Things fans get a piece of memorabilia, directly from the place it first came from, but the boom in sales will aid the museum’s mission to help kids learn more about science and the world around them. This is definitely a win-win for everyone involved—except for Dart. Because, well, he’s probably dead.
[Newsweek]