THE makers of Morphsuits have reached a multi-million-pound deal with Marvel Super Heroes for fancy dress costumes that interact with smartphones to show "special effects".
The skin-tight Scotland-designed suits use Nasa technology that allows wearers to show images related to their character's powers on their phone. The devices sit in chest plate compartment and are connected to a person's movement.
The all-in-one costume range created a sensation when launched flat five years ago.
The deal with the famous world-wide franchise is the latest in a global push by former Edinburgh flat-mates Gregor Lawson and brothers Fraser and Ali Smeaton, who launched the party costumes that let wearers see others while remaining anonymous.
The latest £44.95 suits have generated about £2 million worth of inquiries for Spider-Man alone.
The "wearable technology" element of the Marvel Morphsuits was partly developed by Mark Rober, an engineer on the Mars Rover, who teamed up with the Scots firm last year to launch what is claimed to be the world's first such fancy dress costume.
Wearers download an app that allows their smartphone to show video of character traits such as Spider-Man shooting a web.
Other ideas from the designers include Halloween costumes with open chest wounds filled with flesh-eating maggots or a beating heart, and jumpers showing animated log fires for Christmas.
They are to create the new costumes for the Marvel Super Heroes in Europe. The founders each put in £3000 to the venture and now the expanding empire handles £11m a year.
Mr Lawson said: "Creating Marvel costumes has long been a dream of ours and they are easily the most popular requests from our fans - we've had over 50 thousand searches for Spider-Man alone on our website.
"So when the opportunity arose we wanted to make sure they were the best costumes ever produced and that's what we have achieved."
He added: "By downloading the smartphone app, users can bring the costumes to life by picking the relevant animation which turns smartphone handsets into integral, animated costume elements.
"We haven't quite cracked invincibility, Spidey senses or accelerated healing yet, but we're working on it."
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