As he rounded a corner of the display floor, Bowen saw the booth that would change his life—and eventually the lives of many others. It belonged to a company that made tube signs, gaudy 3- by 21-foot inflatable banners with peel-and-stick lettering. He imagined them swaying in the Nebraska breeze above a new appliance store or a spruced-up coffee shop, visible for blocks. Bowen immediately signed up to be a local distributor. He’d found a new gig—one that would have his kids climbing onto Omaha rooftops to install the signs over the next few years. But that was only the first weird twist waiting for him in the inflatable sign business.
When the parent company folded, he bought the leftover vinyl and some cheap fans, and contracted with a tarp-making company to sew up more inventory. By the early 1990s Bowen was shipping hundreds of signs around the country. He had to contend with different zoning restrictions in every jurisdiction, which was a pain, but whatever—the best part happened at home, when Bowen would hand his kids a rag and let them zip into the blow-ups to clean them. With a person horsing around inside them, the signs would contort and flex into all sorts of funny shapes.
Wait a minute, Bowen thought. Why not put people inside them? Converting the inflatable banners into walking blow-up signs that people wore like a costume would mean that he could dodge all those code restrictions. In 1991, Bowen hand-cut a prototype, a giant panda, for an existing client, a Chinese restaurant in Japan. The operator would wear a lightweight nylon belt with a shoulder strap that supported a 12-volt battery and fan. Bowen reinforced the fan’s housing with steel pins to make sure it wouldn’t crack or shift speeds if jostled, and he vented an intake coil out the leg of the costume. Now the contraption inflated from the operator’s thigh, at the fan, which helped maintain air pressure. The suit was virtually sag-proof—excess air leaked through the seams, just like in the old tube signs. The method turned out to have an added bonus: “We are able to push a lot of body heat out,” Bowen says. It was hot inside, but the pilot wouldn’t roast to death. Sales took off immediately—not just to stores, but to anyone who wanted a giant walking advertisement. Bowen found himself in the mascot business.
The costumes turned out to have a major problem—one Bowen didn’t see until he sold his first major sports commission to the University of Nebraska a couple of years later. When the grinning, kid-like cherub called Lil’ Red debuted on Husker sidelines in 1993, he was big, bulky, and, well, just sort of stood there. “If I’m standing on the sidelines and fans can’t see the game, it pisses them off,” says Brad Post, one of the first Lil’ Red operators. The suit got booed.
But Post, a pre-engineering student with no formal mascot experience, provided the solution. He’d been curious about the new suit from the start. “Mostly, I just wanted to get inside it and see how it worked,” Post says. He realized that while operators couldn’t do the same gymnastic maneuvers as classical, furry-suited mascots, diving and mugging up and down the sidelines, they also had fewer physical limitations. It didn’t matter what happened inside the suit, as long as the action outside looked cool. Post came up with a new move: He would lie on his stomach, pull his feet out of the legs, do a somersault, and stand back up with his feet in the costume’s head. Voilà! Lil’ Red seemed to have somersaulted into a headstand. Post also pulled the character’s head and feet together—it looked like he was shrinking. The boos turned to cheers. “It was really sort of a blank slate,” he says. “I just did what I thought would get a reaction.” (Post’s special genius was eventually rewarded—today he’s the mascot coordinator for the Denver Broncos.)
Bowen took what Post had figured out and ran with it. Back at his workshop, he added internal handles so operators could spin and jump at all angles inside the suits, straps to twist facial expressions, and swiveling couplers that allowed for flexible intake coils. By 1999, pro teams and major brands were calling with their own crazy design ideas. The Florida Marlin—the baseball team’s mascot—now spits on fans of the opposing team at baseball games, thanks to a pressure washer built into his mouthpiece. The Philadelphia Eagle shoots fireworks from the top of his head. Bowen’s outfits—his company, Signs & Shapes International, sells them as “WalkArounds”—appear in everything from Disney’s Toy Story 3 on Ice (think: super-expandable Slinky Dog) to Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark on Broadway (pop-up, supersize supervillains) to in-store promos for Purina cat food and Tyson chicken. “If something looks cool,” Bowen says, “we’ll do it.”
The field of sports mascotting would never be the same. “Lee is very good at digesting these pie-in-the-sky ideas and then making them a reality with some simple engineering,” says Robert Boudwin, mascot operator for the Houston Rockets. (In other words, he’s Clutch the Bear.) Boudwin was instrumental in coming up with Air Head Clutch, an extra-rotund costume that can “swallow” a cheerleader by unlatching a hidden mouth compartment. It’s a special power lots of other mascots have bought since then. (The cheerleader is usually regurgitated unharmed.)
When the parent company folded, he bought the leftover vinyl and some cheap fans, and contracted with a tarp-making company to sew up more inventory. By the early 1990s Bowen was shipping hundreds of signs around the country. He had to contend with different zoning restrictions in every jurisdiction, which was a pain, but whatever—the best part happened at home, when Bowen would hand his kids a rag and let them zip into the blow-ups to clean them. With a person horsing around inside them, the signs would contort and flex into all sorts of funny shapes.
Wait a minute, Bowen thought. Why not put people inside them? Converting the inflatable banners into walking blow-up signs that people wore like a costume would mean that he could dodge all those code restrictions. In 1991, Bowen hand-cut a prototype, a giant panda, for an existing client, a Chinese restaurant in Japan. The operator would wear a lightweight nylon belt with a shoulder strap that supported a 12-volt battery and fan. Bowen reinforced the fan’s housing with steel pins to make sure it wouldn’t crack or shift speeds if jostled, and he vented an intake coil out the leg of the costume. Now the contraption inflated from the operator’s thigh, at the fan, which helped maintain air pressure. The suit was virtually sag-proof—excess air leaked through the seams, just like in the old tube signs. The method turned out to have an added bonus: “We are able to push a lot of body heat out,” Bowen says. It was hot inside, but the pilot wouldn’t roast to death. Sales took off immediately—not just to stores, but to anyone who wanted a giant walking advertisement. Bowen found himself in the mascot business.
The costumes turned out to have a major problem—one Bowen didn’t see until he sold his first major sports commission to the University of Nebraska a couple of years later. When the grinning, kid-like cherub called Lil’ Red debuted on Husker sidelines in 1993, he was big, bulky, and, well, just sort of stood there. “If I’m standing on the sidelines and fans can’t see the game, it pisses them off,” says Brad Post, one of the first Lil’ Red operators. The suit got booed.
But Post, a pre-engineering student with no formal mascot experience, provided the solution. He’d been curious about the new suit from the start. “Mostly, I just wanted to get inside it and see how it worked,” Post says. He realized that while operators couldn’t do the same gymnastic maneuvers as classical, furry-suited mascots, diving and mugging up and down the sidelines, they also had fewer physical limitations. It didn’t matter what happened inside the suit, as long as the action outside looked cool. Post came up with a new move: He would lie on his stomach, pull his feet out of the legs, do a somersault, and stand back up with his feet in the costume’s head. Voilà! Lil’ Red seemed to have somersaulted into a headstand. Post also pulled the character’s head and feet together—it looked like he was shrinking. The boos turned to cheers. “It was really sort of a blank slate,” he says. “I just did what I thought would get a reaction.” (Post’s special genius was eventually rewarded—today he’s the mascot coordinator for the Denver Broncos.)
Bowen took what Post had figured out and ran with it. Back at his workshop, he added internal handles so operators could spin and jump at all angles inside the suits, straps to twist facial expressions, and swiveling couplers that allowed for flexible intake coils. By 1999, pro teams and major brands were calling with their own crazy design ideas. The Florida Marlin—the baseball team’s mascot—now spits on fans of the opposing team at baseball games, thanks to a pressure washer built into his mouthpiece. The Philadelphia Eagle shoots fireworks from the top of his head. Bowen’s outfits—his company, Signs & Shapes International, sells them as “WalkArounds”—appear in everything from Disney’s Toy Story 3 on Ice (think: super-expandable Slinky Dog) to Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark on Broadway (pop-up, supersize supervillains) to in-store promos for Purina cat food and Tyson chicken. “If something looks cool,” Bowen says, “we’ll do it.”
The field of sports mascotting would never be the same. “Lee is very good at digesting these pie-in-the-sky ideas and then making them a reality with some simple engineering,” says Robert Boudwin, mascot operator for the Houston Rockets. (In other words, he’s Clutch the Bear.) Boudwin was instrumental in coming up with Air Head Clutch, an extra-rotund costume that can “swallow” a cheerleader by unlatching a hidden mouth compartment. It’s a special power lots of other mascots have bought since then. (The cheerleader is usually regurgitated unharmed.)
by Ben Paynter, Wired | Read more:
