After a successful Irn-Bru funeral or 'Bruneral' in their Dundee bar, the team at Abandon Ship Apparel decided to say a final farewell to the last of their original recipe cans.
Abandon Ship Apparel opened their shop last week and to celebrate, decided to host another Irn-Bru funeral.
Owner Rich Davies said of the idea behind the 'Brunerals': "The whole thing started last January when Irn-Bru announced that they were changing the recipe so we designed a t-shirt that said ‘I’ll always love Bru’. We did a campaign and said that whatever money was raised from the t-shirts, we'd use it to stockpile original recipe Irn-Bru.
Picture: Picture: Abandon Ship Apparel Facebook
"We bought around 1200-1500 cans - we basically emptied Dundee of original recipe Irn-Bru - and stockpiled it. Over the course of the last 18 months or so we’ve been getting through the stock but I realised a couple of months ago the best before date was June and at this point we had about 400 cans left, so we wanted to share the wealth.
"We did an event last month at our bar in Dundee where we created a fully custom wrapped coffin with artwork based on the brand and we filled it with cans of Irn-Bru. We sold a pin badge and sticker pack and a t-shirt pack, and if you bought one of these you got a free can.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxPQP84nYpX/
"We’ve still got about 150 left, so we decided to do another event as we’ve just opened our shop last week. To celebrate that we are going to have another ‘Bruneral’ so we are going to get the coffin back out and do the same kind of thing as before, by giving away cans when people buy a t-shirt pack a pin pack."
The event will run from 11am-5pm this Saturday (11 May).
Picture: Abandon Ship Apparel Facebook
As well as this, Rich and his team are busy getting ready to open Gnarly Pizza, which will be a delivery service from a 'low-key location' of pizzas and apparel from the Abandon Ship shop.
"Obviously the pizza is the number one focus but a big part of the company will be the branding and the brand concept," Rich says.
"We started with a guerrilla advertising campaign with about 20,000 stickers that feature an alien riding a pizza slice on them, and they’re all over Dundee now.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bw7S8qXn2ZH/
"The pizza boxes will also feature our artwork, in a very similar style to the Irn-Bru coffin. It’ll be delivery only to start with but the idea is to create a whole new brand for people to get behind. We are going to be selling t-shirts that you can buy when you order a pizza so we will basically be delivering pizza and clothing straight to your door.
"My 11 year old nephew and all his school friends have been playing hunt the alien (stickers) but they didn’t know what it was about. My sister had to tell him as the stickers have accidentally become this viral thing so when we reveal the branding people can put two and two together and hopefully it’ll explode in popularity.
"We are having a soft launch on Wednesday 15 but our main focus is on Friday 18 May as it’s National Pizza Party Day, which fits in with the brand concept."
