Press from Air Cannons

Free stuff makes people happy, but free stuff shot from cannons makes them jump and cheer like crazed monkeys.

That's good for Jake Wilson. His Denver company, Air Cannons Inc., sells CO2 guns that blast T-shirts and other prizes high into the stands of sports arenas everywhere. This winter basketball fans at Duke University, the University of Michigan, and dozens of other campuses will catch scores of souvenirs fired from Mr. Wilson's colorful gadgets.

Each launch helps colleges obey the first rule of modern sporting events: Entertain relentlessly.

Marching bands? Dinosaurs from an era of longer attention spans. Today's paying customers want the wonders seen in the palaces of professional sports: videos, lasers, and towers of flame.

And they want to hear the whoosh of the Twister 325, a 12-pound launcher whose 24-inch barrel can propel a T-shirt over 100 yards. The top seller in Mr. Wilson's five-gun line, the Twister, costs $2,195. A lifetime warranty runs $700.

A sound investment, says Mr. Wilson, 35, a pioneer in this niche industry. A few years ago, he was working a construction job. He didn't know much about air cannons, but he did know a welder named Terry David, who was friends with Rocky the Mountain Lion, the mascot for the Denver Nuggets basketball team.

The connection proved fortuitous. In 1996 Rocky was looking for new ways to excite fans. So Mr. David rigged up a giant air gun in his garage. When the first T-shirts flew, Nuggets fans went wild. Soon, the company was born.

Around that time, a handful of other vendors were hawking similar guns to college and pro teams. Demand grew steadily, and in 2004 Mr. Wilson left his job to run the business side of Air Cannons. The three-person company now fills about 200 orders a year.

The job allows Mr. Wilson, the president, to support his wife and three children. It also lets him say cool things at parties. "I build air cannons for a living," Mr. Wilson says. "Everybody loves it."

The T-shirt launcher strikes an American chord. It melds sports, consumerism, gun lust, and the thrill of the lottery. "It's like gold," says Nathan Terry, associate director of marketing for Iowa State University's athletics department. He has seen airborne shirts, like foul balls, unleash the competitor in otherwise timid spectators. "You watch these things fall down," he says, "and maybe throw an elbow into somebody."

Recently, Iowa State ordered a Hurricane 400 — painted cardinal red — from Air Cannons. The 15-pounder shoots four shirts at once, with a range of 130 yards, good for reaching those poor souls in the cheap seats. "Arenas are so big," Mr. Terry says. "This is a way for us to make contact with that one fan."

It's also a way to please business partners. Typically, banks or restaurants sponsor the T-shirt cannon for a game or an entire season — deals that help colleges recoup their investments. For a fee, Air Cannons will put a removable logo panel on guns. Some businesses slap their logos on the shirts.

Flying souvenirs are a clever way to build brand loyalty among students, says David M. Carter, executive director of the Sports Business Institute at the University of Southern California. After all, the video-game generation craves what he calls "over-sensory experience."

Some spectators, Mr. Carter concedes, may long for simpler times. "Once, you could have a conversation with someone next to you," he says, "and not worry that you had to duck the air cannon."

Maude Flanders did not duck, and she paid the ultimate price. In an infamous episode of The Simpsons in 2000, cheerleaders fired a barrage of T-shirts at Homer, only to hit the beloved wife of his neighbor, Ned Flanders. Maude fell from the top of the bleachers and perished.

Sometimes T-shirt guns are dangerous in real life, too. Recently Mr. Wilson learned of a man who lost an eye when the plastic barrel of his homemade air cannon exploded. Commercial models, with their high-grade aluminum parts, are generally safer than their crude ancestors, such as the potato gun.

Projectile technology has evolved rapidly. Primitive T-shirt cannons were connected to bulky backpacks that carried CO2 tanks, but today's models, like paintball guns, are self-contained. Knobs allow users to control the gas pressure, which determines how far the ammo flies.

Each Air Cannons gun also features a built-in safety mechanism that disables the trigger if the pressure gets too high. The company has no knowledge of any injuries resulting from its products, Mr. Wilson says.

Since the cannons can fire objects at 80 miles per hour, though, he does not recommend putting anything hard in them. Among the objects clients have successfully fired from his cannons: stuffed animals, baby onesies, and Nerf balls. Also, tightly wrapped hot dogs and subs.

Mr. Wilson, who earned an engineering degree from Brigham Young University, hopes the company will make the industry's next breakthrough. How? Double barrels, Mr. Wilson says. Maybe even triple barrels. He has also developed a prototype for a six-shooter with a rotating chamber.

"We still think we're on the upswing," he says. "Will the demand ever run out? Maybe."

Maybe not, says Drake Stahr. A senior at Murray State University, Mr. Stahr has proudly wielded the T-shirt launcher at several football and basketball games. He has figured out how to fold shirts tight and thin, so they fly better. Packing them firmly into the barrel is key, he says.

Moreover, there's an art to aiming the cannon. Mr. Stahr values height over distance, and angles the gun accordingly. "The higher it goes, the longer the fall time, the more anticipation you can see on people's faces," Mr. Stahr says. "It's pure excitement."

One day, a gray-haired woman approached him at the bank where he works. A regular at games, she had yet to catch a T-shirt. She wanted him to know exactly where she sat.

http://chronicle.com
Section: Short Subjects
Volume 54, Issue 19, Page A1

Air Cannons, Inc. Announces New Shrink Wrap Service

With the introduction of their new shrink-wrap service, Air Cannons Inc. announced that each T-shirt will be wrapped in plastic and ready to launch, providing a nice professional look when a person catches the shirt. The shrink-wrap also protects the T-shirts from dirt and scuffs in case it hits the ground. Previously, T-shirts were wrapped in tape or rubber bands to keep the t-shirt together while in flight.

Personalized cannons built by Air Cannons Inc. have been featured in such shows as “American Chopper”, “Pimp My Ride” and in a commercial for ESPN. Air Cannons are used as a marketing tool at events to excite the crowd, but also to brand the sports team or their sponsors. Besides shooting T-shirts, the air cannons can also shoot other items that include coupons or other branding materials.

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, had this to say about Air Cannons in his January 15, 2007 blog posting, “The minute the T-shirt cannons or slingshots come on the court, field or ice, every man, woman or child of any age is up screaming their head off trying to get a free T-shirt. They have no idea what is on the shirt. They know the chances of getting one are slim, but it doesn’t matter. It’s T-shirts gone wild.”

Air Cannons also provides custom promotional products to individual companies. Products range from foam formed bottles, cans, stuffed animals and soft toy cars. Promotional products can be imprinted with coupons and contact information.

“We know the crowds light up when our cannons come out during breaks, and we’re looking forward to seeing that happen more often with our continued growth at arenas and events worldwide,” said Jake Wilson, co-owner of Air Cannons Inc.

About Air Cannons Inc.:

Air Cannons Inc., has been in business for 10 years and is a leader in the T-launcher industry. They have provided air cannons to hundreds of sports teams, radio stations, universities and marketing companies.

For additional information on Custom Air Cannons visit www.aircannonsinc.com or call (720) 207-9077.

Air Cannons shoots, sports fans can score

The Denver Business Journal - by Bruce Goldberg

No, he's not the locker room attendant at the Playboy Mansion. Nor is he a beer taster for Coors/Molson/Miller/World Conglomerate Whatever.

As owner of Air Cannons Inc. in Aurora, he gets to play with big, fake guns -- and make people happy at the same time.

The company makes air cannons that propel T-shirts and other promotional items into crowds during breaks at sporting events and concerts.

Perhaps you've bowled over an innocent child, or even injured yourself, chasing after one of these coveted items at an Avalanche or Nuggets game. Not that we would make a spectacle of ourselves for a cheap trinket -- and our injuries have healed just fine, thank you very much.

"We also customize," Wilson says. He's created air cannons shaped like a guitar, Coke bottle, Powerade bottle, F-16 fighter jet, basketball, hot dog and more. Air Cannon has shipped its shooters to more than 20 countries and all 50 states, Wilson says, and makes about 200 customized products annually. One example: Chick-fil-A bought an air cannon to shoot stuffed animals (cows, of course) into crowds.

Items that can be shot into a crowd include T-shirts, rally towels, hot dogs (tightly wrapped, of course), stress balls, miniature footballs, candy, coupons, money, "whatever you can fit in the barrel," Wilson says.

Wilson also offers the "Big Blast Air Cannon," used at charity golf tournaments. Golfers can shoot golf balls in closest-to-the-pin and distance contests. In this, he works with Advantage Golf of Addison, Texas, which organizes golf tournaments.

Anybody ever get hurt operating one of these? "Safety is a big concern," Wilson says. "We've never had anyone injured using our product, to our knowledge. We have multiple safety features built into the air cannons.

"I got a call from someone in California who tried to design and build an air cannon. It exploded, and the guy lost his eye. It's not something you want to tackle yourself."

Bruce Goldberg, associate editor of the Business Journal, can be reached at 303-837-3522 or via email at bgoldberg@bizjournals.com.

Sports crowds usually go wild when the air cannon shows up to pop prizes - usually T-shirts - high into the crowd.

But a Denver company, Air Cannons Inc., is trying to popularize a new use for its personalized devices, such as the guitar launcher pictured, positioning them as golf ball launchers.

The company is working with Advantage Golf to provide cannons at golf tournaments, primarily charity events. Players could use a cannon to make their opening shots instead of teeing up, helping those worried about their swings. The cannons can launch a golf ball farther than a human swing, which could create interesting battles between man and machine.

Pop shots: Air Cannons BILL HUTCHENS; The News Tribune Published: January 4th, 2008 01:00 AM | Updated: January 4th, 2008 07:31 AM What are they? Air Cannons.

Foooomp! You see them at sporting events all the time, these launchers of T-shirts, Nerf balls and other (soft) prizes. Squatch, for instance, used to use an air cannon to shoot fun stuff up to Sonics fans in the rafters of KeyArena.

Origins: But where do these things come from? Can anybody get one? Do they come in more than one flavor? Air Cannons Inc. has all the answers at – surprise – www.aircannonsinc.com. The company’s basic air cannons range from the amply powered Breeze 125 model to the megablaster Hurricane 400 cannon.

By the numbers: The Hurricane is the “Grand Daddy of all T-shirt launchers,” according to the Web site. “This mighty Air Cannon will reach the back row of practically any sized venue.” That’s a believable statement when you consider the fact that the numbers after the names indicate the distances the cannons’ projectiles can reach. Too bad it’s not the price. The Breeze costs $900. The Hurricane is on sale for $3,000.

Custom models: For $3,500 to $4,500, Air Cannons can build just about any kind of launcher. They’ve got T-shirt-launching guitars, jaguars, rifles, golf clubs, Coke bottles, baseball bats, hot dogs, toothpaste tubes, bazookas and even drivable tanks.

Don’t shoot: As much fun as these things are at sporting events, imagine how they’d liven up a church service, physics lecture or session of Congress.

Professor Frink: Aaaaand who’s gonna break down the second law of thermodynamics for me? You! In the back!