The participation of the general public in funding launches, either through subscriptions or ticket sales, represents one of the major ways in which the introduction of aeronautics coincided with a developing commercial system. While there is a clear connection between launches and increasing active consumer behaviour, this period also sees entrepreneurs taking advantage of the popularity of this new trend to incorporate aeronautics into a variety of other cultural venues in addition to launches. In a growing consumer culture, savants and amateurs alike saw multiple opportunities for selling balloons and balloon-related merchandise to members of the general population. In this instance, rather than developing a new branch of consumer behaviour – namely, trying to attract customers to attend, and pay for, launches – people attached aeronautic ideas to existing areas of the marketplace. Balloons become a theme that crossed through different kinds of material, and immaterial, consumption. For a limited time, lighter-than-air craft made food more exotic, clothes more fashionable, furniture more desirable, plays more exciting and so on. The range of items to which people might apply the new area of aeronautics appeared unlimited expect by their imaginations. This does not mean that every area of balloon marketing achieved great success; but it does imply that marketers seemed willing to apply this trendy new scientific invention to just about any product. As a result, within print culture balloons appear in plays, music, poems, novels, pamphlets, almanacs and treatises.