Obama, McCain, Palin T-shirt arms race goes nuclear

Over at Zazzle, where users can customize hats, shoes, mugs, bags and a bunch of other products with their own original designs, there's been a flurry of political T-shirt making. The result is a kind of user-generated commerce -- which, like YouTube and other user video sites -- creates a spectrum of results, from the top-notch on down (and down).

The 2008 election is spawning a kind of T-shirt arms race. A search on the site for Sarah Palin already yields more than 2,500 results. John McCain gets about 9,000, and Barack Obama about 20,000 (Joe Biden paraphernalia is in very short supply.)

"V.P. = Very Pretty" reads one shirt with a photo of Palin. "Omamma" says another. 

And showing how online T-shirt design is barely a half-step behind the blogosphere, current events-wise, there are already Zazzle shirts riffing on the "lipstick on a pig" nontroversy, and from both sides of the aisle. One simply says: "Palin: pig with lipstick" above the image of a big hog. Another declares, "This Little Piggy Likes Palin."

Obama and McCain also have plenty of supporters and detractors. In a strike back against criticism of Obama for his stint as a community organizer in Chicago's troubled neighborhoods: "Jesus was a community organizer," argue the shirts. (Not everyone agrees.)

Obama also has a healthy number of funny shirts that don't deify him quite so much, like the one that says "NO" and uses his famous campaign logo (with a red line through it) for the 'O'.

Zazzle has actually organized T-shirts into "anti," to make it easier to find shirts attacking the candidate you don't like. 

McCain takes some good licks here. "No country for old men," says one shirt. Another with a picture of the candidate's face declares, somewhat ungrammatically, "Less Jobs, More Wars." McCain has plenty of supporters too, but it has to be said that -- at least judging by the shirts on Zazzle -- they're not as imaginative when it comes to slogans.  "McCain is my homeboy"?

Zazzle sells your T-shirt for you and gives you a meager 10% royalty -- which doesn't seem like much, given that you did all the hard work of coming up with a catchy slogan and typing it in to the Internet. It's hard to see anyone making much money that way. Still, it's fun to design your own shirts -- here's what I came up with after fiddling around with it for a few minutes. These puppies are going to go like hotcakes.

-- David Sarno

(no, i didn't actualy list the shirt)

Comments

[You can make WAY more than 10%]

You posted some wrong info:

"Zazzle sells your T-shirt for you and gives you a meager 10% royalty -- "

You can make as much as you want on products at Zazzle. Your quote "Zazzle sells your T-shirt for you and gives you a meager 10% royalty -- " is actually very wrong. 10% is the default, but you can make products up to 99%.

[Rude Retro]

Yep. Zazzle actually pays out a minimum of 10%. If you wanted to sell your shirt without making a profit you couldn't. (I think). Here is a selection of Obama shirts with a few Paris for President thrown in for good measure.

http://www.zazzle.com/rudepolitics

[David Sarno]

@first commenter above:

You conveniently neglect to mention that as you raise your royalty percentage on Zazzle from the default 10%, the price to the buyer goes up proportionately. So it's not as if you could just allocate yourself 99% of the revenue and 1% for Zazzle. The higher you go, the more the shirt costs...and nobody's paying $500 for a T-shirt, I don't care how clever.

[Wing Zingers]

We've been collecting the best Obama T-shirts since April and Sarah Palin t-shirts just last week.

It's definitely an arms race--sales are going through the roof over the past few days.

[Terri]

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/issues/issues.taxes.html

[Cindi]

I designed this one this morning. What do you think?

[Speak]

Well Obama T-Shirts was definitely winning the race against McCain T-Shirts. However, Palin T-Shirts are a force Obama didn't see coming. We offer great shirts for all the candidates, but some of the new Sarah Palin ones are pretty good.

[greg]

If you're unhappy with both choices, why not vote for Admiral Adama from Battlestar Galactica, as portrayed by actor Eddie James Olmos at www.adamaforpresident.org !

Of course , if you saw this most recent season , you know that the shirt logo could apply to son Lee as well....

[Paul]

Remember, the McCain campaign LIED about Obama calling Palin a pig. Obama hadn't even mentioned Sarah Palin in his speech yet when he was talking about lipstick on a pig - he was talking about McCain's policies. Respected journalists and newspapers are calling the McCain campaign out on it, but much of the mainstream media and Fox News are spreading the lies still, goaded on by Limbaugh and other right wing pundits.

Also, McCain himself has as Youtube video running around showing him using the SAME lipstick on a pig joke when talking about Hillary Clinton's policy.

[Albert Lozoya]

Wow! My sales have more than tripled in the last feew days! http://www.zazzle.com/spacedust

[Michael Wendell]

I just checked out Obama's pig/lipstick speech up on the YouTubes. I think it was a deliberate, yet sly, reference to Sarah ("What's the difference between a pitbull and a hockeymom? Lipstick!") Palin. Let me say that I'm all for Obama, and the idea of the conservative and sheltered Ms. Palin as veep scares the crap out of me. Still though, I think it was deliberate. The man, and those in his camp, know the power of words. They knew what they were doing and what they were saying, which in my mind was "you can dress her up, but she stil shouldn't be vice-president." Anyway, I think it's sad that they're stooping to the level of the other party, which has been all about personal attacks and redirection since the beginning.

All that being said, the topic was t-shirts. Check out the ones on LargeXL, they swapped the names of the candidates into the opposing logos. Pretty spiffy.

They're at http://www.largexl.com.

[Wilsongeek]

So you want to hear the sad but unsurprising unintended consequence of this t-shirt arms race on Zazzle.com? My buddy is the guy who designed the first two Palin shirts you show above. They are, in fact, selling well (although the more benign "I Love Sarah" shirt is our best seller by a long shot). However, we're finding that aspects of the designs are being ripped off and there's nothing we can do about it.

For example - this is the best seller mentioned above...
http://www.zazzle.com/i_love_sarah_womens_destroyed_shirt-235337151469073441

Now go to this guy's store and notice how he's basically cut and pasted the image of Sarah into a bunch of other slogans.
http://www.zazzle.com/mccainpalin08

It's obvious when you zoom in on any of his designs. They're jaggy, as you'd expect from an image that comes from a screen shot online. So whoever buys one of those is in for a nice surprise when it arrives - the image will look like crap.

We reported him to Zazzle days ago and they've done nothing. He's ripping other folks off, too. So lame.

[McCain Palin Shirts]

These sites have much better items than that of Zazzle ...
Check out ...
http://www.mccainpalinstickers.com
http://www.mccainpalinshirt.com
http://www.mccainshirt.com
even ...
http://www.antiobamatshirts.com

[Jimmy Hendricks]

fine shirts, but we have got some killer designs from our community from a contest we launched last week. Obama vs McCain t-shirt competition http://www.collarfree.com/ContestProfile.aspx?id=4 on sale next week

[Carlo]

I found the BEST "that one" shirt! There is a store online with a more variety and quality “That One” merchandise here:

http://www.thatonesie.com

Check out the one they have that puts a new “that one” spin on Obama’s Yes We Can slogan, brilliant!

http://www.thatonesie.com

[Joe Plumber]

top designs: http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/top10-obama-shirts