There are a few things you’ll unavoidably see many players with at any given FGC event. Of course, you’ll see your standard tournament equipment: things like arcade sticks, pad, and the occasional hitbox–but you’ll also see plenty of “gamer swag.” Some players adorn themselves in bead art, others carry plushies with them–but by-and-large the most common sight would be gaming T-shirts.
Eighty Sixed is a vendor specializing in officially licensed wearable merch, providing primarily shirts and keychains for players and fans. They have products based on a number of different franchises, including Street Fighter V, Killer Instinct, Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, and Skullgirls. They also produce gaming-themed shirts of their own original designs, and even have worked with YouTuber Maximilian Dood to provide a collection of shirts themed around him and his exploits (Yo! Videogames).
The shirts feature a wide variety of cool exclusive artwork, some of which are even glow-in-the-dark. Street Fighter is currently leading the pack for the widest variety of available shirt designs, but there’s a varied selection for most of the featured games. Most shirts will set you back $24.00 USD each.
They also sell some other items aside, from shirts. Their most recent announcement centered around new Street Fighter V keychains, which depict about half of the original cast so far. More will undoubtedly be released, so if your character isn’t available yet, simply being patient should solve that problem for you. There are also keychains available for Killer Instinct and Skullgirls, which you can see below:
Each keychain is a decent size, big enough to appreciate the character artwork, but small enough to not be a pocket-burden. These are all also original designs by Eighty Sixed, each keychain made of soft rubbery material. They’re a great way for fans to show off their love for their favorite characters–as cute, “chibi” designs. Their keychains generally run between $6.00 and $8.00 USD.
In addition to those, they also sell buttons–and even mouse pads–for a handful of their supported franchises. They range in price from $5.00 to $10.00 USD.
Their focus as a vendor is naturally on providing clothing and accessories, but they also have been known to help out fighting game communities more directly. A specific example: they recently ran a sale on all Skullgirls products, with a percentage of sales going towards the donation drive aimed at flying international players to Combo Breaker. (This donation drive has since concluded.)
You can see Eighty Sixed’s full catalog on their website, and follow them on Twitter for updates (and the occasional promo code).
Source: Eighty Sixed