Details, Where to Shop, More – WWD

In roughly 20 years, The Hundreds’ Adam Bomb character has taken on a life of its own and is now gearing up for a more expansive presence in the fashion world. 

The streetwear brand is launching a separate Adam Bomb brand to center on the beloved cartoon mascot, which has been one of the core tenets of The Hundreds since founder Bobby Hundreds introduced it into the brand shortly after it launched. 

As the brand is celebrating its 20^th anniversary this year, Hundreds and cofounder Ben Hundreds decided now would be the right time to launch the new label to both explore the opportunities of the cartoon character across fashion, technology and entertainment and address customer confusion. 

“In those years, [Adam Bomb] became so popular that The Hundreds really started to be conflated with the bomb,” Bobby Hundreds said. “To this day, people say they know The Hundreds because of the cartoon bomb, so we made a conscious decision recently to focus more and more on making Adam Bomb just his own brand. He’s always been his own brand. We’ve always had product that was Adam Bomb-related, but we were like ‘why don’t we make it a very conscious divorce between The Hundreds and Adam Bomb in the sense that they’re all a part of the same universe, but they have their own individual identity.’” 

The Adam Bomb brand is launching first with a partnership with Zumiez, which will carry Adam Bomb apparel and accessories in more than 200 retail stores. The brand is meant to be more accessible and target a younger audience than The Hundreds. The founders explained that while The Hundreds is more targeted toward a customer in their 20s and 30s, Adam Bomb targets a high schooler or college student. 

The brand’s launch is the first step in exploring an expansive IP universe for the Adam Bomb character. The founders explained they have aspirations of utilizing the character in graphic novels, animated content, collectibles and digital goods. 

The Hundreds has already experimented with these types of initiatives with Adam Bomb. The character has appeared on an array of apparel launches throughout the years, and has been utilized for the streetwear brand’s NFTs. 

“To us, everything is fashion,” Bobby Hundreds said. “We look at everything through a fashion lens because fashion is really just about identity and self-expression. We’ve been capitalizing on Adam Bomb in different ways already beyond what you would traditionally define as fashion.” 

Bobby Hundreds introduced Adam Bomb into The Hundreds a few years after the streetwear brand launched. He posted the cartoon’s image on his blog and asked followers to come up with a name for the mascot. He stated that after the Adam Bomb moniker was decided, the brand used the image on a basketball-themed shirt, which made the character skyrocket in popularity among the brand’s fans. 

“The bomb has always been a metaphor for The Hundreds in the sense that he doesn’t always entirely explode,” Bobby Hundreds said. “He’s just meant to be right under the surface of going mainstream or going wide scale, so we’ve always likened The Hundreds to that bomb — riding this line of going mainstream and staying underground.” 

The Adam Bomb brand launch comes a few months after Bobby Hundreds released his latest book, titled “NFTs Are a Scam/NFTs Are the Future,” which discussed The Hundreds’ initiatives in Web3, NFTs and exploring new technologies. 

The founders think that the Adam Bomb brand will continue to resonate with The Hundreds’ customers, and bring in more younger fans to both labels.

“[Adam Bomb] has a little bit of edge to him in culture, but he’s still very family-friendly and just relatable as a character,” Bobby Hundreds said. “I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge his pairing with The Hundreds being a core, pioneering streetwear brand from the early 2000s. Those two are always living symbiotically. Being hand-in-hand, they’ve informed each other, so when you wear The Hundreds, you’re expressing that you’re a part of this subculture.”