Marquee Bulbs
Retro & Themed · Animated · pure CSS
A pair of incandescent bulb strips run above and below the lettering, every other socket popping bright in a hard, discrete jump — the real Broadway chase, built from tiled radial-gradient dots and steps() rather than a smooth slide. The gold-gradient lettering gets its own soft bevel via a drop-shadow stack, and an optional boxed cabinet turns the strips into an enclosed marquee sign.
How it works
Marquee Bulbs is an animated retro & themed text effect rendered entirely in CSS. It works on a single element — just add the .text-effect class, with no extra HTML.
Controls
Marquee Bulbs exposes 3 dedicated controls — Bulb Hue, Chase and Cabinet — on top of the shared type controls (font, weight, letter-spacing and case). Open it in the generator to tune every value live, then copy the updated CSS.
CSS
/* Marquee Bulbs — made with TEXT-FX · https://text-fx.app
* HTML: just put the class on any element.
* Font: 'Archivo Black', sans-serif (load from Google Fonts).
*/
.text-effect {
font-family: 'Archivo Black', sans-serif;
font-weight: 700;
letter-spacing: 2px;
text-transform: none;
}
.text-effect {
position: relative;
display: inline-block;
padding: 30px 30px;
background: linear-gradient(180deg, hsl(43 82% 88%) 0%, hsl(35 78% 62%) 32%, hsl(27 70% 38%) 58%, hsl(35 76% 56%) 100%);
-webkit-background-clip: text;
background-clip: text;
-webkit-text-fill-color: transparent;
color: transparent;
filter: drop-shadow(0 1px 0 hsl(45 65% 92% / 0.6)) drop-shadow(0 2px 1px hsl(21 55% 10% / 0.55));
}
.text-effect::before {
content: "";
position: absolute;
left: 0;
right: 0;
height: 22px;
pointer-events: none;
background-image: radial-gradient(circle, #fff8e2 0, hsl(35 92% 66%) 3px, hsl(35 88% 46%) 6px, transparent 9px),
radial-gradient(circle, hsl(35 100% 60% / 0.55) 0, transparent 13px),
radial-gradient(circle, hsl(35 30% 22%) 0, hsl(35 30% 22%) 2px, transparent 4px);
background-size: 52px 22px, 52px 22px, 26px 22px;
background-repeat: repeat-x;
background-position: -13px 0, -13px 0, 0 0;
animation: text-effect-chase 0.24s steps(2, end) infinite;
top: 0;
border-radius: 6px 6px 0 0;
}
.text-effect::after {
content: "";
position: absolute;
left: 0;
right: 0;
height: 22px;
pointer-events: none;
background-image: radial-gradient(circle, #fff8e2 0, hsl(35 92% 66%) 3px, hsl(35 88% 46%) 6px, transparent 9px),
radial-gradient(circle, hsl(35 100% 60% / 0.55) 0, transparent 13px),
radial-gradient(circle, hsl(35 30% 22%) 0, hsl(35 30% 22%) 2px, transparent 4px);
background-size: 52px 22px, 52px 22px, 26px 22px;
background-repeat: repeat-x;
background-position: -13px 0, -13px 0, 0 0;
animation: text-effect-chase 0.24s steps(2, end) infinite;
bottom: 0;
border-radius: 0 0 6px 6px;
}
@keyframes text-effect-chase {
0% { background-position: -13px 0, -13px 0, 0 0; }
100% { background-position: 13px 0, 13px 0, 0 0; }
}
Pure CSS — just add the .text-effect class to any element.
- Category
- Retro & Themed
- Type
- Animated
- Browser support
- background-clip:text + repeating radial-gradient bulb strips (steps() chase)
- Capabilities
- pure