tshaped - t-shirt reviews

Surely by now you’ve all seen the sensor-embedded t-shirt Wearable Instrument Shirt (video) that allows its wearer to play air guitar when hooked up to a computer. WIS is an interesting technology that has limitless uses in the real world. Below I’ve listed what should be the first five real world applications. Some are for fun, some promote the arts, some will make money and be sold on TV and one will one day save the world.

1. Personal Train-ah

Wouldn’t you like to have Arnold Schwarzenegger as your personal trainer? You can with this version of the WIP t-shirt. As soon as your repetitions start slowing down, Arnold pipes up with garbled words of encouragement. With “Pump it…now!” and “You can doooit” ringing in your ears, vein twisted biceps and bouncing pectoral party tricks are just a few months away!

2. Lose xTra w!eght now!

Another way to help you get in shape, this t-shirt lectures the wearer on the benefits of eating less. As soon as the fork-to-mouth motion exceeds preset limits, Richard Simmons whines his way to your health! This same technique could also help alcoholics start on their road to recovery by blasting a vomiting sound into their ears. This could be the new ‘Step 1.’ Dudley Moore’s horrible drunk from “Aurthur” would naturally augment the audio.

3. Dog t-shirt fun

Does your dog have a barking problem? Give Fido a taste of his own foul-breathed outbursts with a t-shirt that barks back. Either your dog will tire from barking at itself for hours or submit to the dominant and relentless ‘will-always-get-the-last-bark-in’ t-shirt. All this barking will surely drive your neighbors batty, but what the heck - they stole the bucket of Halloween candy from your doorstep!

4. Pee-Wee Performance-Art Theater

Oh the soundtrack Pee-Wee could create watching one of his favorite porns while wearing a sensor-embedded t-shirt. The standard “Boom chica-boom” would of course be re-composed by the movements from the t-shirt. The t-shirts could be handed out to all audience members so everyone could participate in the most perverted way they choose. Bong chick-a-bong chick-a-bong chick-a-bong chick-a-bong Chick-A-Bong Chick-A-Bong Chick-a-Bong CHICKABONG CHICKABONG CHICKA CHICAAH CHCHCHCHCICHCHICHIC…A-BONG!!!!

5. Defend Us!

The Department of Homeland Security could be tasked with spotting new and obnoxious dance trends by hiding sensors in all shirts worn by the population of the world. As soon as a horrible trend begins, a few guided ’smart missiles’ would blow the next Macarena to smithereens before it taints every baseball event and SportsCenter highlight in the following months.

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Wal-mart, as nicely outed by Bent Corner, was caught hawking a t-shirt with Nazi imagery stamped across it’s chest. While the commentary at Bent Corner has taken a unpleasant tone thanks to a single-minded hate-huckster, I’d like to look at this from another angle. Where did the design come from and how did it make it all the way to Wal-mart’s racks? Perhaps it was simply an over-worked, understaffed, and underpaid design department needing something “edgy” so they raided history not realizing the significance. Or maybe it was decidedly more dastardly and Wal-mart is in fact still the reigning evil on the planet. I’ll stick with the later…

See this Adfreak post for more information on Wal-mart’s blunders.

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In my travels seeking out quality t-shirts, designers and vendors, I often stumble across websites that have no reason existing. Recently I found two that were beyond comparison.

Animal Captain is a ridiculous example of what can happen when hard-working entrepreneurs are clueless about their target audience and are missing a vast chunk of the necessary skills. Those behind Animal Captain posses the ambition to build an online store, but they simply don’t have the talent to make desirable product. I could sit here and rip them mercilessly if I wanted but that would be too easy. I mean, really, Pain Guinn? All I can say is, hire a designer!

Hard Guy Tees. The name sounds like it should be a purveyor of pornography made deep within eastern Europe. It isn’t. The site is piteously awful however. The shirts are witless and just plain ugly but the true hidden value of the website is in the “What’s New” section. It is filled with “Hard Guy” stories that are equally as repulsive as they are telling. “Hard Guys” are nothing more than assholes.

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