Buffer Phones Home to 1982 With Three T-Shirts That Each Reimagine a Different ‘E.T.’ Scene

Buffer has announced a collaboration with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Steven Spielberg‘s 1982 science-fiction film about the friendship between a lonely boy named Elliott and a stranded alien. The collection translates three distinct moments from the film into individually conceived T-shirt graphics, each approaching its source scene from a different visual angle rather than defaulting to a single repeated motif across multiple colorways. A fourth tee, designed independently of the E.T. license, rounds out the apparel lineup alongside a small accessories range.

The first of the three collaboration tees, “Thumb Sucker,” uses E.T.-branded ballpoint pens and figurines as its primary graphic elements, composing them into a visual world that imagines the kind of loose, sketchbook-style drawings Elliott might have made after parting ways with E.T. at the end of the film. The design operates in the register of after-the-fact memory rather than direct scene recreation, treating the merchandise and ephemera surrounding the character as emotional artifacts rather than literal depictions. It is the most conceptually layered of the three collaboration graphics, pulling from the idea of a child processing an extraordinary experience through the mundane act of drawing.

“Reborn” anchors itself to one of the film’s most visually symbolic sequences: the moment when wilted, dying plants suddenly spring back to life, signaling E.T.‘s revival. Buffer’s interpretation overlays blooming flowers onto the motif, reinforcing the scene’s theme of regeneration while moving the imagery away from a strict film still and into a more illustrative, emotionally expressive register. The graphic reads as a meditation on renewal rather than a direct screenshot, which is consistent with Buffer’s broader approach of filtering source material through its own visual language rather than reproducing it wholesale.

“Fly Me To The Moon” is the most immediately recognizable of the three, built around the film’s defining image: the silhouette of a bicycle crossing the face of a full moon. The graphic is illustrated by Tomo Oriyama, whose warm, hand-drawn brushwork gives the scene a softer, more intimate quality than the crisp, backlit cinematography of the original. Oriyama’s contribution marks the design as the most artist-driven of the three collaboration pieces, with the illustrator’s individual style functioning as a deliberate interpretive layer between the viewer and a scene that has been reproduced countless times across four decades of merchandise.

The fourth tee in the collection, “Matinee,” is not part of the E.T. collaboration but a Buffer-original design by visual artist JUN. It draws from the visual culture of cinema’s golden age, incorporating motifs like theater marquee signage and film distributor logos into a graphic composition that elevates mid-century movie ephemera into street-inflected artwork. Its inclusion alongside the three E.T. T-shirts positions it as a companion piece that broadens the collection’s thematic scope from a single film to the act of moviegoing itself.

All four T-shirts are built on Buffer’s original body, which references classic American silhouettes from the 1980s through the early 2000s. The collection also includes a poster, a cap, a sticker, and a sling bag tag, all of which are exclusive to the physical Buffer Store location in Shibuya.

The E.T. x Buffer collection releases July 11 in-store and the Buffer official online store, with the poster, cap, sticker, and sling bag tag available in-store only.