they're a little more than the average balloon dog!
I have no interest at all in balloons but what you guys are doing is fantastic, certainly not your average balloon dog 
To be of any further help we need to see real data on the LED strips as it sounds like some hacking is called for. There's probably a micro in there so that needs to be replaced or circumvented somehow, but without a circuit and real data there's not much we can do.
Hopefully your local bod can figure something out, either reverse engineer the things or find a data sheet somewhere.
EDIT: When you power up the LEDs do they remember the last thing they were doing or just start and blinking or whatever the first one is. In other words if you get to fade in/out and cycle the power do you still have fade in/out?
Rob