Fans Lose Their Heads in Pursuit of Daft Punk Helmets - WSJ.com

People are daft about Daft Punk, crazy enough to spend thousands of dollars on helmets resembling what the two pop stars are usually wearing.

When the French electronic music duo release their new CD, "Random Access Memories," on Tuesday it is likely to become one of the world's top-selling records of the year. The first single, "Get Lucky," has already topped the charts in 55 countries.

Despite the hype and the pair's massive popularity—they have been around since the 1990s—Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, 39, and Thomas Bangalter, 38, can still stroll through throngs of die-hard fans at their own shows, entirely unnoticed. Some concertgoers doubt the pair is really on stage at all.

That is because, for the past decade, Messrs. Bangalter and de Homem-Christo have rarely appeared on stage or at other public events without the Space Age, face-obscuring helmets, sometimes decorated with light-emitting diodes programmed to display text and images.

Now, as fans awaited the release of Daft Punk's first new album in eight years, demand has soared for facsimiles of their iconic headgear. Some cash-strapped fans are proposing long-term payment plans; others are fretting over whether they will be able to find models that fit their heads.

"Price is not an object," wrote 27-year-old Boston-area fan Trevor Bates in a recent posting on a popular Daft Punk fan site, saying he was prepared to spend at least $2,000 and warning he also had "a large head."

Mr. Bates, a stagehand, said it was fortunate the band's new album and impending tour were coinciding with his "finally having a job" so that he could afford the helmet of his dreams. "That being said I am not a millionaire and I can be picky," he added.

The market for knockoff Daft Punk helmets emerged just over a decade ago, after the electronic music pioneers commissioned a California special-effects company to create a pair of helmets with programmable LED displays for the release of their second album, "Discovery."

Photographs of the pair in their helmets appeared in French magazines a month before the "Discovery" album: Mr. de Homem-Christo's was gold and featured a rainbow-flanked smiley face in lights; Mr. Bangalter's was silver with a narrow red visor. He is the taller of the two. Thousands of tiny wires cascaded like thick hairs through the back of their helmets to control boards in their backpacks, which the two men lugged around to public appearances.

Kevin Furry, whose former company, LED Effects Inc., installed the electronics, said the initial sight of the contraptions "scared our receptionist." Fans called incessantly, he said, requesting duplicates, but he refused, putting a notice on the company's website to warn fans it wouldn't make replicas without Daft Punk's permission.

Fans got to work constructing their own, or enlisting independent craftsmen.

Harrison Krix, 30, was working at an ad agency in Atlanta when he decided to try his hand at re-creating a Daft Punk helmet for a prospective buyer in California four years ago.

After months of blueprinting, mold-making, sculpting and sanding, Mr. Krix shipped his helmet to an automotive shop that specialized in chrome plating, installed circuit boards and eventually delivered a shimmering gold specimen nearly identical to the first one worn by Mr. de Homem-Christo, complete with rainbow LEDs.

His time-lapse YouTube video documenting the 749-step process, according to one fan's count, "How to Make a Daft Punk Helmet in 17 Months" has clocked more than three million views.

"I was just kind of winging it," says Mr. Krix, who received so many offers after fans got wind of his work that he quit his ad-agency job and went into prop-making full time.

Jennifer Barclay

Mr. Krix grabs a bite at an Atlanta diner in a helmet he made.

Now, though, he says he just sells do-it-yourself kits instead of finished helmets since he got a "terrifying" email from a Daft Punk representative who was concerned that he was making it sound in an eBay ad as if he were a member of the band. Daft Punk declined to comment for this article.

Hayes Johnson, 23, an assistant graphic designer at Johnson State College in Johnson, Vt., said his first attempt to make a replica out of a baseball helmet, red Christmas lights and soda cans while in high school was "really primitive."

Several years later, he fashioned a more respectable pair that fetched $1,000 on eBay. Now, Mr. Johnson is in the process of updating a chart he published in 2010 entitled "A Visual History of Daft Punk Helmets," which diagrams the subtle evolution of helmets worn by the band.

"To the naked eye, it looks like Daft Punk helmets haven't changed in recent years. I feel really dorky when I talk about this stuff, but they are actually very different," said Mr. Johnson, noting shifts over time in color and style.

Kevin Sanders, founder of the Daft Club, a London fan site, says he started seeing so much helmet-hawking in discussion forums that he created a special page where buyers and sellers could connect.

Mr. Sanders said his website has tracked a 365% jump in the number of members seeking helmets last month from the year earlier. Helmets without programmable light displays cost from $200 to $500; computerized designs run up to several thousand dollars.

"People are so desperate for these things that they are willing to wear everyday household buckets," says Mr. Sanders, adding that official Daft Punk merchandise is hard to find.

Helmet selection can be nerve-racking. Michael Wilson, a creative director at a tech company in Toronto, worries about having a "fairly big head" because he expects good-quality helmets run small, since serious fans are after a snug, sleek fit, not something "comically large."

Mr. Wilson, 32, thinks displaying the helmet in his home would be a "great icebreaker" to ignite discussion among guests. (He also plans to have his girlfriend take photos of him wearing the helmet while he performs everyday tasks.)

Helmet-makers aren't necessarily hip to the band's music. Thomas Spragge, a 54-year-old prototype toy-maker in Massachusetts, had never heard of Daft Punk until three years ago when his daughter asked him to make a helmet.

Her headgear got such "an incredible response" that he decided to make 10 more to sell. The first one he posted on eBay received more than 60 bids and 3,000 views before selling last month to a fan in Texas for $1,125—nearly three times what it cost him to produce.

As for the tunes, they are growing on him. "It's kind of like new disco," he says.

Write to Hannah Karp at hannah.karp@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared May 21, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Fans Lose Their Heads In Pursuit of Daft Punk Helmets.