This project was a tribute to G4TV, which was a big part of my childhood. When Attack of the Show relaunched in 2021, it premiered a new branded Pizza Hut character named Ripp Blazer, who I instantly fell in love with. After a couple years of researching, I came up with a pretty darn accurate costume, and was able to chat with several cast and members in the process. It was a blast. Sadly, I didn’t finish it while AOTS was still on the air, but its cancelation was the push needed to finish the costume.
The first part of the build was the headphones that Ripp Blazer often wears. I googled “worst gaming headsets” and after a bit of scrolling, found the amazon link. I believe they’re “Butfulake” brand, which sounds like an awful euphemism. I painted them silver, gave them some red “hut” decals, and suddenly had a finished prop!
Next up was the hat. A cheap Marty McFly hat, an even cheaper translucent plastic sun visor, combined through a bit of sewing, gave me this:
Next up, the gloves, which are Torc motorcycle gloves with the knuckles painted white, and the wrist-mounted time machine, which is a smart phone holder for jogging. I sewed on some silver trim to the outside of the phone holder, but much later, found through photos of the screen-used items that it was white EL-wire. Not shown here, I also assembled an alarm clock kit to shove the motherboard into the phone holder. The screen used one was a printed picture on foam-core, which helps explain why I couldn’t find anything like it.
The only other major parts of the build were the jacket and pants. By this time, I was a little rushed to get things done for DragonCon, so I didn’t document much. I believe both the jacket and pants are Jogal brand, a sort of cheap novelty dresswear maker. By the time I was making mine, the jacket was long since discontinued in the red color I needed. I got lucky and found one for sale from a drop-shipping site. The white holographic print on the chest was tough. I thought it was non-fabric vinyl at first, as that’s the only material I could find that looked accurate. Eventually, I found some printed spandex options, but I had to order from like 5 or 6 sources before I was sent some that was accurate. Most of them were cream colored, some were light gray. Only one source I found was truly white.
Here’s the stiff calendared vinyl:
vs the final printed spandex:
After that, I lined everything with red EL wire, just like the production did. I mimicked their stitch spacing the best I could. There’s a lot of areas where the EL wire is pretty unwieldly because of it, but the screen-used costume seems to have the same challenges.
The pants were much the same. Instead of a white stripe on a red base, it’s a red stripe on a black base. I didn’t document that part, sadly.
I also made a custom pizza box with a QR code, which I used to give away free pizza all weekend, just like in the show.
Nobody knew who I was until I ran into one of the hosts of Attack of the Show, who put me on his Twitter. It was a lovely interaction, the first of two with him that weekend, and he really made the whole build worth it to me. Thank you WWE Superstar Xavier Woods AKA Austin Creed, as well as Gina Darling for BTS shots of the costume, and David Kennedy who played the character, who was incredibly supportive throughout the entire process, answering questions, and gawking over my costume with me. I couldn’t have done it without you all.
