THE FIRST COLLECTION

The first Balloonshop collection came at a pretty rough moment in Star Cadet history. We were deep in the struggle of trying to make ends meet. Anyone who has run a small business knows things ebb and flow, and at that point we were very much in the ebb.

Olan and I were stretched thin, living between Nashville and Los Angeles. I was juggling both The Soda Parlor and Star Cadet, and Olan was buried in season two of Final Space. Nothing felt stable or planned. We were not even sure what the next release should be, and then someone said, almost as a joke, “What if we made Balloonshop merch?”

Which was wild, because Balloonshop merchandise had literally never existed.

That question instantly pulled us back to being nineteen years old, sitting in Thomas’s bedroom, arguing about whether they should ever do shirts at all. I very clearly remember no one being able to agree on anything. One person was dead set on American Apparel. Another just wanted a basic Hanes heather grey tee. That debate went on for years until the group eventually went their separate ways. No merch ever happened, unless you count the small batch of DVDs we burned ourselves, slapped stickers on, and sold out of our high school lunchroom.

I also do not think people realize just how young we all were back then. Of course Balloonshop did not last forever, we were all eighteen to twenty years old. The fact that the group made as many videos as they did is honestly a testament to their creative instincts at such a young age. 

Today, teenagers having YouTube channels is not unusual, but at the time it genuinely was. There was no blueprint, no algorithm chasing, no real sense of what any of it could turn into. It was just people making things because they felt compelled to. I was there for all of it. I even popped up in a few videos, but most of the time I was off camera holding a blazing hot halogen light, trying not to giggle while my friends yelled the most ridiculous things imaginable straight into the lens.

Fast forward to 2019. Fueled by imposter syndrome and fully convinced that no one would get any of these references, we decided to do it anyway. The collection ended up being an absolute smash.

We pulled directly from the I’m Quite Peeved video. At the time, Thomas was literally Olan’s roommate in Los Angeles, so with his blessing we included his likeness in the doodles.

The artwork was intentionally rough and doodle forward. Loose line work, loud colors, like something ripped straight out of a notebook margin in 2009. It was never about polish. It was about capturing the feeling of the sketch itself. “Bagoush!” and “You’re Cruisin’ for a Bruisin’” were not just punchlines slapped on a shirt. They were visual callbacks for people who immediately got it. If you knew, you knew. And if you did not, that was kind of the point.

Wait, Nineteen Years?

These are the newest Balloonshop items, and it honestly feels a little surreal to even say that. It has been years since we released anything new. Like five years exactly. Somehow, Balloonshop is now nineteen years old. Yeah. Go ahead and sit with that for a second. We certainly did.

To mark the occasion, we decided to do a small commemorative release. A hoodie, a t shirt, and a beanie. Simple, classic, and long overdue.

This finally makes the heather grey t shirt a reality. Even though it is not Hanes OR American Apparel, we feel pretty good about how that debate ultimately resolved itself. We also finally put the iconic Balloonshop logo on a beanie, which honestly should have happened a long time ago. Some things just take nineteen years to feel right.

This release was less about reinventing anything and more about honoring the longevity of something that was never meant to last forever in the first place. Nineteen years later, Ballonshop is as old as we were when they were making it.  And here we are, still making things, still laughing at the same jokes, and still slightly shocked that Balloonshop is somehow old enough to almost be twenty.