Now available, at your local Walmart: Chicago Sun-Times T-shirts
Wednesday, I ducked into Walmart — to buy garbage bags, Speed Stick and a copy of Newsweek, since you asked; but they didn’t have the Newsweek.
I came to a full stop, though, when I spotted this:
I’ve seen front-page T-shirts for sale before in gift shops and whatnot. But never in a Walmart. And I certainly didn’t expect to find Chicago Sun-Times front page apparel here in Virginia Beach, 800 miles from the Windy City.
I asked Sun-Times design director Eric White if he could explain. And he did:
Our Retail and Licensing Manager Sharon Dennis made a deal with a vendor to distribute our front page Obama T-shirts at Walmarts around the country.
According to Sharon, we’ve made over $50,000 on the shirts, which feature two of the covers celebrated by Oprah on her show — James Smith’s Nov. 5 “Mr. President” cover and the Jan. 21 “So Help Me God” cover which I designed.
We’re honored that thousands of Americans would want to celebrate Obama’s election by wearing pages from the Sun-Times. It’s a validation of what we do as journalists. And it’s another reminder that newspapers still hold a special place in people’s hearts. I haven’t seen anyone wearing snapshots of a web site.
We reported back in January that we found this little guy in our favorite Barnes & Noble:
That’s a 550-piece jigsaw puzzle featuring the post-Election Day front of the Boston Globe. All legit. Globe design chief Dan Zedek told us he hadn’t seen them. Which is good to hear; we think the page itself is nice but the design of the puzzle is rather ugly.
I failed to check the price of the Sun-Times apparel. I was too intent on taking my photo and texting to my e-mail account without incurring the wrath of the store’s security force.
Keep an eye out for them, though, the next time you run into Walmart for trash bags and Speed Stick.
May 1st, 2009 at 2:58 pm
If your Walmart is anything like the Walmart up here, the “security force” probably only works two days of the week. I believe ours is a Tuesday and Thursday operation.