Surviving as a musician has always been a tough business, and many acts sell more than just their music. Band T-shirts have been common since the 1960s, while badges and patches were close behind. More recent decades have seen new merch items rise and fall in popularity. The tote bag had its day, while in more recent years you could buy socks created by Anthonie Tonnon, Nadia Reid, and The Beths, or tea towels by Lawrence Arabia and Hollie Smith. Or for hip hop fans, why not grab a SWIDT beanie or baseball cap? In fact, these days there’s clothing items of all varieties. The rapper Poetik even has his own store in Avondale.

Yet some creative minds have pushed the boat out even further. When Shihad turned up to play a festival in Germany in the 1990s, they reportedly found their local representatives had arranged for joints with the band’s name printed on them. Flying Nun was also very imaginative when it came to merch in the 1990s. I’ve restricted myself to one item from them below, but here are a few other highlights.

Flying Nun ephemera: collectors cards; a sponge to promote Vehicle by The Cleana a Chris Knox Songs of You and Me notepad. - Simon Grigg collection

Another alternative is for an act to do a collab with an existing company. Flying Nun was again a leader in this respect, since Roger’s Ruin (named after founder Roger Shepherd) was the first music-related beer release I could find. The label was drawn by David Mitchell and it was brewed by Mac’s Beer (when it was still an independent company).

Roger's Ruin: the limited-edition lager created by Mac’s for the Flying Nun 15th Anniversary in 1996

Since then, other bands such as Beastwars and Fat Freddy’s Drop have both had their own beers (with Panhead and Hallertau brewers, respectively). Fat Freddy’s have also worked with external companies to put out their own hot sauce and chocolate.

However, in my list below I’ve tended towards items that were created directly by the artist or their team. These are just some of my personal favourites, though I feel like I’m in a good place to judge since my own band (Thee Golden Geese) has produced our own sunglasses, pen, and mousepad!

Tex Morton – guitar, guidebook, comic book

Tex Morton spent his early years as a busker and working as a carny at circuses in Australia (even riding a motorbike on the wall of death). This taught him the need to hustle for a living and when his career took off as a country singer in the 1940s, he applied the same money-making attitude to his music career.

Tex Morton's Wild West Comic, circa 1949 with an advert for Tex's guitar on the back

He used his fame to launch a comic book filled with cowboy stories. On the back cover, there was often an advertisement for his own brand of guitar, which came with a guidebook for novice players. The guitars were cheap plywood models made for beginners so not the best quality, though many of New Zealand’s subsequent country stars learnt their first chords on one, including Gray Bartlett and Rex Franklin.

Farmyard – bag and calendar

Farmyard LP with plastic carry bag

Another way musicians make use of merch is by adding it as a free item that comes with their album, in order to encourage fans to purchase it or to generate media coverage. Farmyard took this approach for its 1970 self-titled debut album. The sleeve was a plastic bag with a hard-plastic handle that owners then had for everyday use, effectively making it a precursor of the tote bags that followed in later decades. The album also included a poster that was laid out as a calendar so that it had a secondary usage for fans who pinned it to their wall.

With its odd mix of country-rock and psychedelic sounds (flute, unusual Latin-inspired rhythms), the album became such a cult favourite that it was re-released by Spanish label Wah Wah in 2020. They even packaged it in a plastic bag, though with a regular slotted hand-hold rather than the hard plastic handle.

Crowded House – toy fridge (with stationery)

The Crowded House album Temple of Low Men (1988) was promoted by creating small toy fridges with their logo on the front. Paul Donoghue worked at their label (Capitol Records in Los Angeles) at the time and laughs at the memory, though he believes it did make a certain amount of sense at the time.

Left: Crowded House toy fridge with extras

“I kinda remember going for something that one would find in one’s house. What better than a fridge that folks could just put on their desks and be reminded of the lads? Then there was the ‘Don’t Dream’ video that highlighted objects from a home.”

The fridges were part of the range of Beetland toy fridges, which included tiny stationery items disguised as fridge ingredients: a pair of scissors was slotted on the back, the pizza inside was a tape measure, the celery sticks were pens, the butter was an eraser, the freezer compartment is a sticky tape dispenser etc. If a young fan had one of these fun items on their desk, then what further encouragement would they need to think, “better be home soon”?

Strawpeople – condoms

Left: Strawpeople's Love Explodes cassingle with condoms

The Strawpeople single ‘Love Explodes’ featured Stephanie Tauevihi singing from the perspective of someone about to leave a relationship, but drawn back in by the pull of love, so it wasn’t really about sex as such. Nonetheless, the group’s decision to include condoms with each copy of the cassingle was no doubt a tongue-in-cheek nod at the title. The packaging design was wonderfully evocative of the era, with the “Raps” condoms box sporting at least five different fonts, as well as incorporating the dayglo colours associated with 90s surf/skate/streetwear. Let’s hope that if love did explode, it was safely contained.

Funnily enough, Shihad also got into the condom game a few years later. In 1998, an artwork at Te Papa of a biblical Mary figurine inside a condom (the so-called Virgin in a Condom) led to protests. Shihad responded by releasing its own “Santa in a condom” for Christmas: a chocolate Santa and a condom packaged together.

 

Chris Knox – chewing gum

If a musician is a visual artist themselves and can create their own imagery then this can make a merch item a natural extension of their music. This is certainly the case with the work of Chris Knox. Often with his then-partner, the artist Barbara Ward, Knox made many of his own music videos, as well as those for Tall Dwarfs, his duo with Alec Bathgate. He also created his own album covers, which he could then re-work for associated merch.

Chris Knox chewing gum

His LP Polyfoto Duck Shaped Pain & Gum (1993) was actually an album with an EP (“Gum”) tacked onto it. It was promoted with its own brand of chewing gum, with each stick of gum having a unique design on its wrapper.

The cunning thing was that it both looked like the design of a real chewing gum packet, but also reflected the design style that Knox had used on the album cover. Whether it actually tasted any good has been lost to the mists of time …

Mint Chicks – flash drive

Ruban Nielson from The Mint Chicks was also an artist, having started the band while still at Elam School Of Art, where he graduated with honours in 2002. The Mint Chicks’ releases always stood out due to the surrealist imagery that Ruban supplied for the cover art. However, by the time of their final EP in 2010, digital downloading had killed the CD market and it was still prohibitively expensive to release work on vinyl.

Mint Chicks flash drive

The Mint Chicks reasoned that they may as well put out their EP on a flash/USB drive, so that fans could get the mp3/wav files that they needed for the iPods or other music players. The added bonus would be that they would also get a 1GB drive that they could use to store other files once they’d taken the music from it and – better yet – it was specially designed to match Ruban’s illustration from the EP cover. The result was the coolest pen drive you’re every likely to see.

David Dallas – piggy bank

David Dallas piggy bank

Around the same time, David Dallas also tried a new approach in response to the rise of online music. He had released his 2011 album Rose Tint online for free, but still wanted to give his fans an opportunity to support the release.

He decided to set up his own pop-up stores at a few locations throughout the country, including Conch Records in Ponsonby, Auckland, and Rough Peel Music in Wellington. Each day he sold the album with a new collectible item. Customers also went into the draw to win different clothing items that he had worn in his music videos – for example, his G-shock watch from the ‘Sideline’ video or the snap back hat from the ‘Life Is’ video, etc. The most striking of the items that came as a free gift with the album was a David Dallas-branded silver piggy bank. What young rapper doesn’t want to “make bank”, after all?

Purple Pilgrims – perfume

Purple Pilgrims aka Clementine Valentine - Perfume 1 for Perfumed Earth LP

The Purple Pilgrims’ second album was titled Perfumed Earth (2019) so what better way to promote it than the release of their own perfume?

Their Extrait De Parfum apparently smelled like “Delicate foliage, medicinal deep green, ancient moss and magical mist ... built around petrichor.”

The accompanying brochure explained that the fragrance could not only be worn on the body, but also burnt in an incense burner to gently fill a room – presumably while laying back and listening to one of the whispery slices of dream pop off their album.

Grecco Romank – candle

When it comes to candles by local musicians, the one which probably sold best was the pretty, sage-scented short white candle released by Yumi Zouma. The group is certainly one of the most successful local indie bands of the modern era and are experts when it comes to merch, with an online store that sells not only clothes but coffee mugs and face masks.

However, sewer pop Tecno freaks Grecco Romank outdid them on the candle front when they released their single ‘Asbestos Tarot’ with their own frankincense and myrrh scented candles. They were a creepy purple colour and in the shape of a bottom row of teeth. The group promised that they would “help usher in the birth of any anti-Christ or joyful occasion.”

 

Ladyhawke – Gameboy cartridge

One of the strangest elements of Ladyhawke having her own Gameboy game is that she wasn’t actually aware it was being built until it was nearly finished. Her love of gaming was well known and she is a semi-regular presence on the gaming platform Twitch, with around 3000 followers.

Ladyhawke Gameboy

The idea for the game came from marketing director Fuchsia Davidson at her record label, BMG. Harry Billinge was studying computer science at the time and was hired to create a game based on the album (with a challenge per song). Then the album’s producer, Jeremy Toy, was asked to make chiptune versions of the main riffs (ie, ultra-stripped down bits of music that could be processed by the Gameboy’s limited software).

Pip Brown (Ladyhawke) told Sam Brooks at The Spinoff that she was ecstatic with the result: “I couldn’t believe it. It would’ve blown eight-year-old me’s brain. What the hell? I have my own game!”

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But wait there’s more!

The Brunettes – colouring book and paper dolls

The Brunettes took a slice of inspiration from 50s/60s girl groups, with a bubblegum pop sound that was balanced out by the dark-edged lyrics. The band was fronted by the duo of Jonathan Bree and Heather Mansfield, who adopted a suitably retro fashion look. This made them the perfect subjects for a colouring book, following on from pop icons of a former era.

Brunettes colouring book and paper dolls

The Brunettes’ first colouring book came out in 2002, alongside their debut album Holding Hands, Feeding Ducks. However, they also revisited the idea for Paper Dolls (2009), which had a colouring book in the shape of a CD booklet so it could be tucked inside copies of the album. There were also the outlines of paper dolls inside the main cover, which could be cut out and then matched with a series of clothes options.

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