In this day and age, the sight of neon-colored hair is so commonplace that it barely garners a second glance. And for that, you can thank two girls from New York City, Tish and Snooky Bellomo, who unleashed a virtual rainbow of hair coloring on the outlandish glam and punk culture of the late 70s.

Operating their store, Manic Panic, in the heart of New York, they created a line of peacock-esque hair products sure to delight any punk rocker. Gone were the days of soaking hair in Rit dye or Kool-Aid. Gone were the unstable bleach treatments and the need to fry hair to a crisp just for a splash of color. Tish and Snooky offered a complete spectrum of 32 eye catching colors, all vegetable-based dyes, that for a mere price of $10 transformed dull strands into colors as provocative as Vampire Red, Green Envy and Deadly Nightshade.

By the 1980s, what was once limited to the fashion stylings of the elusive underground movement soon hit mainstream radar, thanks to a sweet girl with a powerful voice and a penchant for the outrageous named Cyndi Lauper. Once the world saw how cool she looked in her day-glo hairdos, they were ready to jump on the bandwagon, at least temporarily. The idea of permanently dying one’s hair lime green still made a few people apprehensive and therefore, washout mousse and painted-on hair mascara were far more appealing. Manic Panic provided a middle ground, however, something in between permanence and a one-night stand. With their semi-permanent dyes, you could change colors or eliminate the dye completely with only a few washings. If you found that cotton candy pink wasn’t everything you hoped it would be, you were only a few splashes of shampoo away from Atomic Turquoise.

As the next century rolled around, the shock value of colored hair has given way to the painful practice of body piercing to elicit looks of bewilderment from the older citizens. Hair that would make a parrot proud is an accepted fashion statement that has been embraced by a portion of mainstream America at least. But the trail was a long and colorful one, forged by the foresight of Tish and Snooky - and to whom millions of brightly colored hair-wearing citizens are forever in their debt.