Birthday Cake

Today is a bit of a milestone over at shirt.woot... Sunday and today marked the anniversaries of the two longest-selling shirts on their reckoning charts, each a year old and somehow still kicking ass and taking names, if now in the lower reaches of the charts. This is a big deal for woot: fewer than ten shirts in their year-and-a-quarter lifespan have made it for even half as long as these two. Many shirts have outsold them, gotten more votes in their respective derbies, debuted above them, but nothing has kicked them out. A toast to you, invincible threads!

Above is my favorite of the two, and the one whose birthday it is today, Geekfactor12's "The Cake is a Liar." I have the dubious honor of having been the first purchaser on this little orange number, and I'd like to note why. When I first voted for it, I didn't get the layers (lol cake humor). I saw a unique, underutilized color, a clean and simple design, and a very straightforward, very absurd joke: A piece of cake talking, lying about its nutritional qualities, with a matter-of-fact disclaimer below. I highly enjoyed the humor as it was. If anything, finding out later that it was a joke from the game Portal made me feel awkward about it. I haven't played the game to this day, and didn't love the idea of potentially being seen as a gamer nerd (not that most wooters are concerned with this portrayal). It clearly didn't prevent me from clicking hard and fast for it when it went on sale, though. My rationalization at the time was that the joke was universal. It was funny whether you knew the game or not. Years from now, I posited, kids who never played the game would still laugh at the concept. Adults would chuckle thinking of their own battles against the persuasive pastry. It has appeal far and away past some video game. And a year later, one day behind the title of longest running woot shirt ever, I feel that belief is totally justified. If the shirt was nothing more than a quick homage to a video game, it would never have lasted as long, and as a fan, I wish it many more weeks of hanging on in the fray.

As a bit of a side note, for those of you who may both read my blog and design shirts, today's shirt's designer is also the maven of Compete-Tee-Tion, one of my favorite shirt blogs, and not just because we often agree from week to week. It's a great read for buyers who want to catch up on the week's releases, but it's a stellar resource for you designers, collecting stacks of contest sites to try your designing hand at. I will be sticking a link to the blog in my sidebar for easy reference, as well.