HyperColor T-shirts

T-shirts that would – in theory – change colour if you touched them. In reality, you had to pull the shirt to your mouth and breathe on it really hard to inspire any kind of change. Sweating would do it too!.

Unfortunately, since the colour change was brought about by temperature change, the first time your mum washed this it would look like a tie-dyed T-shirt instead and be totally knackered.

The colours were also rather naff. EG: When a mustard coloured T-shirt kicked in with the colour-changing thang it would turn neon pink!

Introduced by Generra at the tail end of those colour-crazy ’80s, HyperColor promised a T-shirt revolution. The patented “Metamorphic Colour System” caused the shirt’s colour to change when it came in contact with heat. Press a warm hand onto your belly, and your purple shirt would have a temporary pink handprint. How cool was that?

Body heat, hot breath, blow dryers – any heat source was enough to change green to yellow, blue to green, and so on. It was like a Mood Ring for the body and matched up with acid wash jeans, it made you the most outrageously outfitted fashion plate in your school.

Unfortunately, wearing a HyperColor shirt seemed to give everybody the right to put their sweaty palms all over you or breathe on you.

The HyperColor craze faded like a bad tie-dye by the early 90s, and Generra had to lay off a quarter of its staff by the spring of 1992.