Quick overview!

• Freezy Freakies (a.k.a. “those color-changing gloves from the ’80s”) are coming back!
• Time-tested, original ’80s designs!
• Produced in adult sizes for the first time ever!
• We added some modern performance touches to the inside: a soft microfleece lining and a warm Thinsulate(TM) midlayer!
• Excessive use of exclamation points, just like in the 80s! Why? It’s just an ’80s thing!

Background! (OK OK, we’ll stop with the exclamation points)

In 1987, our hands were smaller because we were six years-old. Please email us if you have any questions.

Anyway, because of their smaller size, our hands could fit into the kids-only Freezy Freakies gloves. And those gloves quickly became the most radical gear in our lives. Why? Because they were high-technology (in layman’s terms, ”hi-tech”) winter gloves that were printed with awesome designs. The most critical part of the design would only reveal itself when it was cold outside. We’re talking about designs like fighter jets and unicorns, race cars and extreme skiers. Totally gnarly stuff. At school, we made sure everyone saw us wearing them, and we actually looked forward to the cold days so we could activate the colors. To us, Freezy Freakies were a defining part of our ’80s childhoods.

Never heard of them before? For all those handwear history-buffs as well as the newcomers, here’s some good web stuff to catch you up:

Buzzfeed – What Happened to Freezy Freakies, the Greatest Gloves of All Time?

Dinosaur Dracula – Freezy Freakies: Gloves of Glory

Childhood Relived – Who Killed the Freezy Freakies?

Key feature: Thermochromic ink

What made all that magic happen? A fairly simple ink technology with a complicated name: “Thermochromic Ink” (a.k.a. ink that changes color with the temperature). The ink is transparent at room temperature, but turns colorful at cold temperatures. Some might call it science, some might call it tubular. Either way, science class is officially over. Tubularism reigns supreme.

Why we’re doing this

After years of searching for Freezy Freakies as (sort of) adults, we realized two things: 1) they’ve been out of production for a while, and 2) they were never even made in adult sizes. The other glove brands that have survived since the ’80s all seem to have matured in their styles, regardless of the fact that many of us did not. Totally uncool, right? Well the solution became clear: we had to bring back Freezy Freakies in their original ’80s designs, adding some more modern materials for comfort, and in adult sizes for the first time ever.

Rewards

We’re offering 4 of our favorite ORIGINAL DESIGNS. There were more designs available in the ’80s than we’ve been able to count. We wanted to focus on 4 of them that we remembered well and that still seemed pretty awesome today. Here they are:

DESIGN #1: UNICORN (base fabric is neon yellow)

DESIGN #2: TURBO (base fabric is black)

DESIGN #3: SKI ALPINE (base fabric is neon pink)

DESIGN #4: FIGHTER JET (base fabric is powder blue)

More about the gloves

Updated materials: We did make a few changes from the originals, mainly to the guts of the glove. We decided to use a super soft microfleece lining to make the glove feel nice on the inside. And in between this fleece lining and the outer shell is a modern-era midlayer of Thinsulate(TM) that, according to our lab technicians, is “mad snuggly.” We wanted to make sure they looked original on the outside, but inside, they were still a good, high-quality glove.

Our unisex sizing scheme should fit 95%+ of adults, whether male or female. We’ll gather your sizes once the campaign is completed using a detailed sizing chart you can refer to.

Only adult sizes? Seems weird… This whole Freezy Freakies idea started with us just wanting them for ourselves. We’re halfway certain that there are at least a couple other grown-up kids out there in the same boat. We could have brought them back in kids’ sizes too…but kids have touch-screen tablets these days, and those things change color even when it’s not cold. So we settled on only bringing Freezy Freakies back for the legion of nostalgic fans who still have fond memories of their greatness. Adults who still act like kids.

Limited-edition first batch: We’ll be producing a limited quantity of each design for this initial Kickstarter batch. Just a fair warning, because if we run out, there’s a chance we won’t produce these same designs again.

Product Details: 

• Contents: front shell: 100% polyamide; back shell and palm patch: polyurethane, polyester; Thinsulate(TM) interlining: polyethylene; lining: polyester

• Imported

How we got here

We reached out to the great folks at Swany America Corp. who originally created Freezy Freakies (you may have seen their gloves…they’re everywhere). They were excited by our idea and agreed to an arrangement to bring these gloves back. After that, we were off to the races!

Actually, not so fast… We thought it would be a simple task to just reproduce something that previously existed. Welp, we were wrong! More or less, we had to start from scratch to produce these in the modern manufacturing world, since things in the ’80s were done a bit differently. Apparently, basic pencil sketches no longer suffice. Folks use fancy computer programs now. So we hired a designer to recreate each design, selected a manufacturing partner, did the materials sourcing and a few rounds of prototypes, and here we are, ready for production.

Why we’re doing it here on Kickstarter and why we need you!

This is our fourth Kickstarter project. Our first, Griz Coat, went surprisingly well and got us hooked on apparel. Our most recent project, Griz Rug, looks to be another 100% on-time project. We love the people at Kickstarter, the community of backers, and the excitement it generates, so that’s why we keep coming back. [gush]

We’ve done all the “heavy-lifting” to date, but now we need your help to fund the initial production run and bring these puppies back. If we have any excess funds after our campaign, they will likely go to funding the purchase of as many packs of baseball cards as necessary to provide a full mouth of chewing gum.

Warning! Freezy Freakies might make you utter the following adjectives: awesome, fresh, cool, gnarly, bodacious, righteous, radical, tubular.

Opening music geniusly-crafted by James B. And a shoutout to Fred, Joyce, Pete, Lucky, Molly, Rajah, Dangaga, Dale, and the great folks at Swany for helping us make this happen!

Freezy Freakies (R) is a registered trademark of Swany America Corp., licensed to Buffoonery Factory, LLC.