Godzilla. Again to the Future. Hey Kitty. Is the guitar world taking a leaf out of the web gaming playbook, and are we about to see extra crossover collaborations between guitar manufacturers and fictional characters and franchises?

When Fender Japan unveiled three Godzilla-themed Stratocasters earlier this month, the guitar neighborhood went nuts. With distinctive paintings depicting the King of the Monsters – and one even sporting a button unleashing Godzilla’s mighty roar (hopefully with out the Atomic Breath, as well) – our article on these six-strings was one of many best-performing of the previous few weeks. Readers cherished them.

And when Gibson started teasing the approaching arrival of a Again to the Future Marty McFly-inspired Gibson ES-345 on social media – with glam pictures of the guitar set towards the movie’s traditional DeLorean time machine automotive – it despatched gearheads’ pulses racing.

These guitars – a $20,000 Customized Store mannequin, alongside a way more inexpensive Epiphone model – had been formally launched final week, and our supply at Gibson confirmed they’d offered out on-line in about an hour. Yep, a $20k guitar – 88 made (corresponding with the 88 miles an hour wanted to time journey within the BTTF universe, after all) – offered by way of in an hour. You are able to do the maths on that one your self…

Such furore just isn’t at all times rapid, nevertheless. When Fender partnered with Sanrio to launch its Hey Kitty Stratocaster in 2006, it went largely underneath the radar. That’s, till YouTuber TheDooo started importing movies of himself enjoying the guitar within the late 2010s, inflicting on-line searches for the six-string to tick dramatically upwards. Common itemizing costs on Reverb rose 254%, too.

There’s now a collection of Fender x Hey Kitty guitars, equipment and merch, and even a spread of child-friendly Loog x Hey Kitty guitars, too.

On-line video video games have been doing crossovers with fictional characters and franchises for years. Take Name of Responsibility and Fortnite, for instance. With its Warzone platform, CoD recurrently launches purchasable skins and weapons themed like traditional characters and their fictional worlds. Some standout CoD crossovers have been with Noticed, Rambo, The Terminator and Squid Sport. However that is only a tiny pattern. Godzilla is now a beast which has appeared each within the guitar world and Name of Responsibility universe.

Fortnite is much more prolific on this entrance. Epic Video games’ huge cross-platform battle royale has seen crossovers with the likes of Marvel and DC Comics, Star Wars and Dragon Ball, and even recurrently with real-life stars together with Travis Scott, Daft Punk and Ariana Grande.

So what’s the perception to take right here? Properly, skilled collaborations, essentially, are designed to maximise returns by permitting every social gathering to faucet into the viewers already created by the opposite. And within the case of Name of Responsibility and Fortnite, they’re clearly working and are clearly profitable, in any other case these firms wouldn’t proceed to do them.

Such collaborations are additionally a means of maximising a buyer’s lifetime worth. A participant purchases the newest Name of Responsibility title, and at this level their cash stops funnelling to the sport developer. That’s till they see their favorite film character playable in a downloadable content material pack…

Map this onto the guitar world: a participant – one who’s not a collector or a complete gear head, at the very least – buys a guitar, and it covers all the things they want. However additionally they occur to be a part of Again to the Future’s big cult following. And when Gibson launches an Epiphone Marty McFly signature mannequin, they suppose, ‘Perhaps it’s time to broaden the gathering.’

It’s argued by many who the guitar was perfected a long time in the past. Certain, there have been important enhancements in elements, for instance, however the triple-single-coil Stratocaster has remained largely unchanged since its invention.

Certain, all of us closely concerned within the guitar house like to wax lyrical on the newest in pickup design, glow-in-the-dark fret markers, or why wooden sourced from some distant island within the Pacific means a 2.3% enchancment in resonance.

But it surely’s necessary to recollect there’s additionally an enormous market on the market for guitarists who aren’t completely obsessive about the trivia. I’ve had associates not immersed in guitar tradition – however nonetheless play – ask me on a number of events what’s modified with guitar design within the final 50 or 60 years.

For guitar manufacturers, crossover collaborations might improve the chance these informal gamers will dip their toes again into the guitar market and make one other buy. And that’s a superb factor for the remainder of us, too, who merely need to see extra folks be a part of the guitar neighborhood and have it thrive.

Whether or not Godzilla Strats, Again to the Future ES-345s and Hey Kitty Loogs mark the beginning of a brand new pattern within the guitar market, or whether or not they’re only a spate of coincidental crossovers stays to be seen. But when the previous, our minds are actually racing as to what would possibly come subsequent…