The King
Friend of the site herzogzwei—who regularly shares their entertaining thrifting discoveries—posted something of a puzzler last night that I’ve been unable to stop thinking about. The object in question is this printed hooded sweatshirt, which is just… a masterpiece, really, is the only word that adequately describes this thing:
A detail that is not particularly easy to notice here (on account of the huge-ass lion’s head that demands your attention) is that the text on the right simply reads “The”. This is because, as they go on to demonstrate, the pocket on the front of the sweatshirt has been sewn on over the rest of the text:
I spent a good portion of my evening tossing theories around in my head about how such a thing could possibly happen. Because it’s not like they just haphazardly slapped a pocket on over the print. After all, the lion is printed on the pocket just fine. It reached the point where I was analyzing the design of thing, wondering if a bunch of shirts were manufactured with just “The King” half of the print before some executive had the brilliant idea to add the lion photo to the other side. I justified this on the grounds that—above the “The King” text—is a logo-like image of a lion, unreasonably positioned less than an inch away from the photo lion’s nose.
“No competent designer would create this,” I told myself, foolishly clinging to the hope that any amount of skill went into the production of this item. Then I realized the bottom hem was sewn on backwards, with the lion print on the opposite side. I really put too much faith into our species sometimes.
After digging deeper, I may have found the answer.
Which, of course—and really, this is kind of my fault for entirely forgetting why I’ve withdrawn from the internet into the safety of Skep’s Place—is online marketplaces like Amazon and Temu hosting all these shapeless, ethically dubious foreign sellers who can cheaply turn out the tackiest, low-quality shit for Americans, who love to buy tacky, low-quality shit. We can’t help ourselves. This isn’t even a phenomenon borne of the internet era; the moment we figured out how to print ink onto a t-shirt at the cost of pennies, this kind of lowbrow, oftentimes copyright-infringing junk has been sold to the masses via flea markets and county fairs.
(You know, the sorts of places where you would buy the stickers of Calvin mischievously peeing on your choice of automobile logo, which I have definitely complained about before. Not only were these not licensed, but some knockoff artist had to have drawn the illustration because Calvin is never depicted urinating in the strips, gleefully or otherwise. And, in fact, this is a complete mischaracterization—he’s not malicious, but simply self-serving. But I digress.)
The interesting thing about these sorts of wares (as sold in aforementioned flea markets and county fairs) is that memes would spread in product form. I recall one year, the stalls at my local fairgrounds were all peddling their own WWJD bracelets and lanyards and other low-effort items; the next, it was graphic tees with dark humor and implicit threats themed around Osama bin Laden (our attention spans back then were much longer than they are now so they were able to keep this one going for years).
I mention all this because this playbook is clearly still in use. A rudimentary search will turn up a number of designs of varying quality from different sites and sellers that are all far too similar to be mere happenstance:
I’ve seen the text read “Love Lion” on multiple designs, which is the best version because it makes no sense and is therefore the funniest of the bunch.
Oh, but in case you’re worried this shirt is a little too subtle on its own, you can also get it in a tracksuit:
Digging a little deeper—and factoring in the exact version of the pattern, as well as its having been printed on a non-zip hoodie—I was only able to find two sources that might have sold the exact garment that herzogzwei shared: a third-party shop on Temu called BloomD ThreadsKKM, and a website that may or may not be named VikingX.
BloomD ThreadsKKM, for the purposes of this essay, is not particularly interesting, but if you’re in need of a fun way to spend an afternoon, I would recommend scrolling through the offerings of any of these companies offering shirts with outrageously bad prints poorly superimposed onto unsuspecting models. Here’s a couple that got some laughs out of me:
The second shop is a standalone website, which can be viewed at shirts.woocodex.com. No, this URL does not match the “VikingX” branding, nor does it match the “Email Us” domain (salesgen.io), nor does it match the section on the home page that addresses the question, “IS amastyle.net LEGIT?” (remember kids, if you ask if it’s a scam they’re legally required to tell you). Don’t worry about any of that though, because this site is GREAT. Let me tell you about some of the fun things it has!
- A Trending Collections section that shows three images of their viking-head logo (complete with on-hover animations) instead of any actual collections
- A blog containing a single “Welcome to Wordpress” post from 2021 (current date of writing: Spring 2026)
- Placeholder lorem ipsum text in a product’s Shipping & Manufacturing section
- 24/7 customer service between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m Monday through Friday, time zone unspecified
- An About page that starts “Here at” and then forgets to finish the sentence, presumably because they haven’t decided what name to use
- “MADE WITH 3000% PASSION”
I wholely recommend you take a poke around just for the experience.
Now, if forced to purchase one of the products offered by this website, I can honestly say I would pick the lion hoodie. This is because every single other item for sale is absolutely plastered in some of the cringiest Christian iconography I’ve ever seen.
Although the most bizarre of these is a shirt that blends these themes with American imagery and a tribute to… arborists. You do see these kinds of things on the internet—items that encourage you to rep your profession—but if these products aren’t completely interchangeable then there’s at least a few different options to pick from. Not here. Arborists are the only one. Did they just sell out of all the others, or what?
I’m under no delusions here; I realize this is the sort of site that more or less exists on the back of Facebook ads, needing only to provide a means for impulse purchasers to enter their credit card details, knowing that it doesn’t have to hold up under customer scrutiny because there won’t be any. And once you shell out $50 plus shipping, all they have to do is send you a product that maybe comes close to what you actually ordered—damn any sort of quality control, because even if the hem is backwards and the pocket is obscuring some text, sending it back will likely be so much of a hassle that you won’t bother. You’ll just chuck it in the thrift shop bin and make it somebody else’s problem.
Although… not always. In my deep-dive, I came across an Amazon review for one of these designs, written by somebody who was so delighted with his purchase and received so many compliments he felt compelled to show off his threads:
…Oh. Oh, damn. Okay, I actually kinda like this look.
The lion’s head pendant 100% makes this outfit. The shirt has transcended its tackiness and I’m here for it now.
Giovanni, if you happen to be out there reading this: I am glad you’re enjoying your hoodie, because you deserve it. It’s working for you, and if anybody could possibly deserve the title of “The King”, I’m hard-pressed to think of someone more fitting. Long may you reign, and thank you for proving me completely and utterly wrong about this damn shirt.