I remember the first time I saw a pair of BluBlockers. Not on TV, not on some influencer’s face, but in real life, on a guy outside a gas station in Detroit, 1993. He looked like he was seeing a different world, like the light itself had been EQ’d—bass boosted in the reds, highs rolled off in the blues. His grin said he knew something the rest of us didn’t. I asked him about them. He said, “Man, these are from NASA.” That was it. I was sold. I didn’t even know what they blocked, but I wanted in on whatever spectrum he was tuned to.

Back then, BluBlockers were the stuff of myth. You’d see Joe Sugarman on late-night TV, that hypnotic infomercial voice, telling America these shades could change your life. They weren’t just sunglasses—they were portals. The pitch was absurd but strangely spiritual: block the blue, see the truth. And in some cosmic way, it worked. The world through those amber lenses was warmer, slower, a little more analog. It was like turning down the harsh LED brightness of modern life decades before we even knew that was the disease. I didn’t have the words for it then, but BluBlockers were vibing on an early anti-anxiety frequency.

People forget: this was the eighties rolling into the nineties. The world was about more light—neon, chrome, shiny everything. BluBlockers came in like a protest song, filtering that overload into a psychedelic calm. Sugarman marketed them as science, but what he was really selling was chill. I think about that sometimes—how ahead of the curve it was. Before mindfulness, before sleep apps, before screen-time limits, there was this amber-tinted rebellion against overstimulation. A pair of glasses that told you to take it easy.

To slow your eyes down. Then came the crash. Like all cults of cool, BluBlockers hit their peak and nosedived. The internet killed the infomercial star. The same signal that had brought the brand to every living room got buried under a billion channels of noise. You can’t out-hype the algorithm. BluBlockers went from space-age tech to thrift-store punchline. I’d find them at flea markets next to old pagers and lava lamps. Still, when I picked up a pair, I’d slip them on and think: damn, this color grading still hits. Nostalgia with a purpose. Analog saturation. The vinyl warmth of eyewear.

Then, like everything that ever had too much swagger, they came back. Around 2015 or so, the world rediscovered the blue-light problem. Screens were frying retinas and brains. Everyone was looking for a fix, and the new DTC eyewear kids—Felix Gray, Warby Parker, Zenni—came in like sleek remixers of an old classic. They dropped the orange tint, made it transparent, more “office-ready.” But let’s be real: BluBlockers were the original sampler. They filtered the chaos before chaos went digital. So when I saw them popping back up, worn by fashion kids and wellness influencers, I smiled. The ghosts of Vegas infomercials had become retro chic.

Now it’s 2025, and BluBlockers are alive in this weird nostalgic half-life. You can still buy them online, still read Joe Sugarman’s copy that sounds like a cosmic ad-lib. The company’s smaller, but the idea—filtering the noise to find your rhythm—is more relevant than ever. We live in blue light now. Every phone, every billboard, every studio monitor is a low-grade glare bomb. Sometimes I think everyone’s pupils are permanently dilated from overstimulation. So when I throw on a pair of BluBlockers, it’s not just a fashion choice—it’s like hitting the mute button on the world for a second.

Maybe that’s why I love them. They’re analog mindfulness. They remind me that sight itself is a remix, that perception is a mixdown we can tweak. BluBlockers were born as an optical hack, but they ended up being a philosophy. Block the noise. Find the tone. Let the warmth back in. If I ever DJ a sunrise set on Mars, I’m bringing two things: my USBs and a pair of BluBlockers. Because even on another planet, you’ve got to protect your vibe from too much blue.