Science Museum Sells $400K In 'Stranger Things' Shirts, Hoodies

ST. PAUL, Minn. (WCCO) -- The wait is over for fans of "Stranger Things."

In season two of the series, one of the show's characters wore a retro brontosaurus sweatshirt from the Science Museum of Minnesota. The sweatshirt was from the 1980s and long out of production.

So, the Science Museum scrambled to make them before the holidays. As WCCO's Molly Rosenblatt shows us, fans of the show were finally able to get their hands on one before they go extinct.

It's been two weeks since we first saw Dustin sporting the retired retro hoodie, and after the museum's mad dash to recreate them, now fans can wear one too.

"Very rarely does Minnesota get a shout out like this so it's pretty cool to be able to capitalize on it and especially for the Science Museum, which is one of our beloved institutions here," Miranda Cole of St. Paul said.

"We had thousands of fans from all over the world flood our online store front at 8 a.m.," Science Museum Spokesperson Kim Ramsden said.

Ramsden says their site became so inundated with traffic, it caused the online store to crash a half hour after it was live. And at the museum gift shop, fans flew in right as doors opened at 9 a.m.

With the high demand, they've expanded from the hoodie to sweatshirts and t-shirts. Sizes ran out rapidly, but not to worry, several more shipments are on the way to the museum.

"I was hoping for a hoodie but it looks like they ran out of sizes so I'll have to go back online because that's what I want. Gotta have the hoodie right?  That's what Dustin wore," Cole said.

Their online store was up and running again by 11 a.m.  Within a half hour, it sold $132,000 worth of shirts.

"We've stepped up our online servers to be able to handle all the traffic so we're ready to meet the demand," Ramsden said.

A demand coming from nostalgia for the 80s, love for the hit sci-fi show and of course our treasured Science Museum of Minnesota. The museum says it sold a total of 10,000 shirts and hoodies on Tuesday. That's $400,000 worth of "Thunder Lizard" merchandise.

With Wednesday's shipment, they expect to have the hoodies, in all sizes, in the gift shop by 3 p.m.