After writing on Tuesday about an unlicensed Monty Python/Beatles t-shirt that amused me, yesterday saw a package stuffed in my mailbox — an unlicensed Washington Nationals World Series t-shirt.
After the Nationals won the World Series, my Facebook feed was filled with ads for unofficial Nats World Series merchandise. Especially unofficial t-shirts. I bought an unofficial t-shirt at the World Series parade, and nothing Facebook showed me was appealing.
Then, one day, the unofficial World Series t-shirts started to include Peanuts characters. Some didn’t make any sense, like one of Snoopy with the World Series trophy, standing by his doghouse, decorated for Christmas, in the snow.
Then I saw this one.
How could I say no to this? Snoopy, driving an old school Volkswagen Beetle convertible, with the World Series trophy?
Unlike the unofficial Nationals/Peanuts shirt I bought last year, I didn’t dither for three days.
And, yesterday, it arrived. After a terrifying trip home from work — snow squalls and icy, untreated roads — it was in my mailbox.
It looks nice. I’ll wear it rarely, if at all. For right now, it’s in a tote with my out-of-circulation t-shirts, like the unofficial shirt from last year. That’s a nice shirt and I like wearing it, but after a few washes the print began to degrade, so I squirreled it away.
If I could have bought an official version of this shirt, or something like it, I would have. There are official MLB/Star Wars shirts and official MLB/Marvel Comics shirts, even though neither Star Wars nor Marvel have a thing to do with baseball. Peanuts, on the other hand, is chock full of baseball, and there’s no official MLB/Peanuts merchandise. That’s a merchandising lapse, and one I hope to see rectified some day.