Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #322 - T-Shirts

Episode Date: April 15, 2016

Mark talks about some of the various Magic T-shirts that he has collected over the years.

I'm pulling up in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today, today's kind of a light topic. I like talking history. And I'm going to talk about an element of history that's a very different one than normal. I'm going to talk today about magic t-shirts. There have been many, many t-shirts.

My closet is filled with them. I did actually hold a column once on my favorite t-shirts. There have been many, many t-shirts. My closet is filled with them. I did actually a whole column once on my favorite t-shirts. And so I want to talk today about sort of magic t-shirts and give a little history on them and talk about different kinds of t-shirts and what was popular and what wasn't popular. And then tell some stories about magic t-shirts and shirts in general. I guess I have some, I'll broaden it. It's mostly t-shirts, but I have a few stories about shirts. So shirt themed magic topic. If you want shirt themed magic content, today's your day because we do not provide a lot of magic themed shirt

content. So you're in luck. Okay. So let's start from the very beginning. What were the very first magic t-shirts? Okay. so this actually goes back from before I started working at Wizards. I loved magic. I loved t-shirts. I was very excited to get a magic t-shirt. But there were none.

And I remember going and investigating and trying to find one and the game was kind of exploding. I was like, oh, okay. It's got me making a t-shirt. But at first, there was no t-shirts

for, um, I'm not quite sure how long. It wasn't until 94. The game came out in the summer of 93. And it wasn't until decently into 94. Actually, is that right? Might have even been, yeah, it was definitely about a year in, my guess. So anyway, the first shirts they made were, they offered four or three black shirts. I guess there was a fourth one that wasn't magic related.

So they had, you could buy t-shirts that said magic on them. And then on the back, they would have a picture, an illustration from a magic card. And then the name of the art of the card would be, we listed along with the illustrator. I'm not sure what they did to choose these three. the name of the art of the card would be, we listed along with the illustrator. Um, I'm not sure what they did to choose these three. Um, my guess was they were popular pieces of art, I guess. Um, okay. So the three they chose was the Suvin Doppelganger, who was by Quentin Hoover. If I know all these, uh, they did Nightmare, which was by Melissa Benson, and they did Armageddon Clock by Amy Weber. Oh, I knew all those. They also did a Only Staff shirt, which was the Herloom Minotaur by Anson Maddox, and they did a shirt for Jihad, which was the second

trading card game that the company had done. We would later rename it from Jihad, which was the second trading card game that the company had done. We would later rename it from Jihad to Vampire the Eternal Struggle. But anyway, that was... So it took long enough for the shirts to be made that the second trading card game had already come out by Wizards

before they had made shirts. And I remember the very first shirt I ever bought was the Doppelganger. I both liked the card and I liked the art. I really liked Quentin Hoover stuff. And the stupid Doppelganger was a fun card. For those who have never, ever played, it's from Alpha. And it was like a clone. It was like, you came into play and you could copy something. And then every turn during your upkeep, you could copy, you could copy and change it. So it always retained the ability to keep changing it. So like you could copy and change it. It always retained the ability to keep changing

it. So you could keep changing at the beginning of every upkeep, you could change what you were copying. It's a pretty cool creature. And the art, in fact, the art of it, of two figures that are very similar to each other,

but one is slightly different. We've reused that gag a bunch of times, but I think Vesuvian Doppelganger was... Well, I guess it and Clone had the same sort of shtick in Alpha, so... So anyway, I bought Vesuvian Doppelganger, and then I eventually bought Nightmare, and I bought Armageddon. I bought all of them.

I would later, when I came to work at Wizards, get a Herlu and Minotaur one. But that is the first t-shirts I ever got that we ever put out. The second t-shirt, if I remember correctly, was I worked at 95 Nationals. Is this right? Am I doing the order correct? I think so. At 95 Nationals, not 95 Nationals, sorry, 95 World Championships, there were people who brought T-shirts.

Wizards didn't make T-shirts, but there were people from other countries who brought T-shirts. Now, one of the T-shirts had a black lotus on the back, but that was only available for competitors. And so I didn't get one. I remember Henry Stern, who was a competitor, he got one. I was jealous. I really wanted the black lotus t-shirt. But they gave out to everybody, on the back was the

card Justice from Ice Age. And people were joking at the time because one of the members of the American team was Mark Justice. And Mark joked that clearly someone had realized this was going to be his tournament because they had handed out a shirt with Justice on the back. Another early shirt I got was, I got sent to the Ice Age pre-release to do coverage for the Duelist. And I played in it.

And anyway, at the Ice Age pre-release, there was an Ice Age pre-release shirt, which was the first of the pre-release shirts. Ice Age was obviously the first pre-release and had the first pre-release shirt. So the pre-release shirts, a lot of my early shirts come from pre-releases. What we used to do is every time there'd be a pre-release, they would make a shirt. Usually there was a staff shirt and there was a consumer shirt. In the early, early days, it was the same piece of art. Later on, sometimes they would alter the art. So I have a lot of early shirts, a lot of the staff versions of the shirts, because I worked at a lot of pre-releases or attended pre-release and such.

And one of the things I try to do in the early day is I, first what I try to do was I try to get a shirt for every Magic expansion we put out. And then eventually I said, okay, okay, let me just get a shirt for the sets that I was on the design team. And then it's like, oh, okay, let me just get shirts for the sets that I led. And then it was like, oh, okay, okay, let me just get shirts for particular sets that I led. And then it was like, oh, okay, okay. Let me just get shirts for particular sets that I just have a special affinity I'd like to have shirts for. I still try to get shirts for as many of the sets as I can.

And especially sets that I led, I go out of my way. And then there's a couple of few special cases. So speaking of special cases, here is a story of my favorite shirt. When I did my article, I listed all my shirts in order. But here's a story of how I got my favorite, not one shirt, but shirts. So when I was, so Unglued came out in 97, 98. And what we decided was, there was no pre-release,

there was no official, there wasn't going to be a pre-release. And they decided, you know, here's what we'll do. We're going to have an event at Gen Con, and that will have, that'll be the home of the Unglued pre-releases. And so we ran a whole bunch of flights. I've talked about this before. This is why I dress up like a chicken. releases. And so we ran a whole bunch of flights. I've talked about this before. This is where I dressed up like a chicken. But one of the things was I basically, I would dress up as a chicken

and then at the end of the day, I would take the chicken suit off and I would do other stuff. And so I wanted to have, we made, so we made these special shirts for the unglued pre-release. They weren't really pre-release shirts as much as they were unglued shirts. I think these were the shirts we made for unglued. But the place that we... I'm not sure if we gave them away or sold them or something, was at Gen Con. And they were these purple shirts, really pretty purple shirt.

They... I think they said Magic the Gathering on the front. They have a... Real common in the early days was the Magic the Common would be on the front and the picture would be on the back. Which is a little, one of the problems I have with a lot of my early magic shirts

was I had, I have a lot of shirts with the magic logo on the front and I wear a flannel so you can't see the back. We started getting to the clue that people had seen the art and started putting the art

on the front of the shirt but that took a while to get to. So anyway, this shirt on the front said, it was a nice purple, it said Magic the Gathering on the front and started putting the art on the front of the shirt, but that took a while to get to. So anyway, this shirt on the front said, it was a nice purple, said match it together on the front. And then on back had gesture sombrero, which was the package, the, the illustration on the packaging with, um, the logo, which was like below unglued had a weird logo. It kind of had this police tape that said unglued on it. Um, so anyway, we made a shirt and I wanted to make sure that I had enough shirts that every day for the event when I took the chicken suit off that I had the shirt. But

the shirt would get pretty sweaty underneath. So I convinced him to give me, I think I got three shirts. And one of the reasons that, see, I didn't realize at the time, but one of the reasons it was awesome to have three shirts, which what ended up being my favorite shirt was it allowed me to wear it, but wear it out at one-third the rate I would wear out a normal shirt. Because I've worn that shirt a lot because I like it. But because I have three of them, the shirts are still in somewhat decent condition because I kind of wear them evenly. One of the things in general about my shirts is I have a lot of t-shirts, so I go through shirts slowly.

So I don't wear the same shirt all that often. But I definitely have shirts that show the wear and tear. And there's a few shirts that are like sort of my popular old shirts. And obviously if they're worn, it means I wore them a lot. Like one of the shirts I love is, I mentioned this recently in a podcast, on the advertising podcast, is we did this thing where we, when Portal first came out,

we were going out and teaching people, and the slogan at the time was, all you need is a brain, a deck, and a friend. And I had a t-shirt that they gave us that has the slogan on it, and I just liked it. It was just a bunch of magic history. It was just kind of, you know,

like one thing that's fun for me is it's fun when I go places to wear sort of old school magic t-shirts just because it's kind of like, if you're in the know, this is an old shirt. This shirt has existed for years. It's talking about something.

It was, you know, wasn't easy to get in the first place. So it's fun for me. I'm a t-shirt connoisseur, obviously, and I love magic. And so I just like that shirt. It was quirky. It was different. Not a lot of people had that shirt.

And I wore it a lot. And so I have started to wear it out. It is now getting to the point where I think I wear it sometimes to work out or something, but it's not really. The thing that will go on t-shirts for those that don't wear their t-shirts long enough to have this happen, is it starts fraying at the collar. And that's a sign that your t-shirt

needs to be put out to pasture. So, okay. So another series of shirts I did, these are not t-shirts, was making shirts with the Invitational. So when I did the Invitational, I was really trying to make the all-star game have a little sort of, a little higher class feeling,

a little, you know, above your normal tournament. And part of it was, because I only had 16 players, I could do some things that just, we can't normally do in a big tournament. Like I would, you know, buy food for the tournament. So, you know, in between rounds, there was just food for the players to eat. Or we'd give them, at night, you know, buy food for the tournament. So, you know, in between rounds, there was just food for the players to eat. Or we'd give them, at night, you know, we would provide all the magic products for them to draft with and play with.

And so, you know, there was always product and stuff for them to play with. And just trying to do little things to make it a special event. So one of the things I wanted to do was I wanted to make sure the shirts, I mean, I knew we needed shirts. And I wanted to make sure the shirts, I mean, I knew we needed shirts, and I wanted to make sure the shirts were a little nicer. So what I decided to do was to make polo shirts. And so I made the polo shirts, and they always would say the Duelist Invitational or the Magic Invitational, depending on what it was called at the time.

And the logo would be stitched on it, because it was a fancy polo shirt. And so instead, there's nothing on the back. It would just be, and what we would do is, the staff would have a different color from the players. Usually they were linked together. Like usually the stitching, so let's say it was, you know, some form of green or some form of red, or it didn't look too Christmassy, trust me, but so one of them would be sort of a greenish color with a red stitching, one would be a red color with a green stitching.

We'd invert them. And then usually the one that looked nicer we'd give to the players, and then the staff would take the other one. And over the years, I have a lot of, Oh, and what happened was we liked the players to wear them, but we knew that obviously they had no time to clean them. So what we did is we would give them enough that they could wear... Usually the way it would work was we would be in conjunction with a pro tour. It's not a pro tour.

We would be in conjunction with a Grand Prix. But Grand Prixs at the time were two days long, and it usually took me three to four days to run an Invitational. Usually three days. I think the early days I would take four just to be super relaxed, but usually it would take three days. So what happened is the first day or two would be in a hotel that was separate from the site

because the Grand Prix was only two days usually at the weekend. And so what would happen is like Thursday and Friday we'd be in the hotel that was separate from the site because the Grand Prix was only two days, usually the weekends. And so what would happen is like Thursday and Friday, we'd be in the hotel. They could wear whatever shirts they wanted. And then on Saturday and Sunday, when we were at the event and there were spectators and stuff like that, we would have the shirts. So we'd give them like two shirts, one to wear Saturday and one to wear Sunday. Usually also, we would go out. Oh, no, right. Usually Saturday or Sunday, when they had the shirts, we would go out oh no right

usually Saturday or Sunday when they had the shirts we would take a photographer and go do the official pose that we'd use in the magazine or whatever showing everybody

wearing the shirts it all looked very pretty and the funny thing for me is I made polo shirts to make them fancy it turned out because I always wear flannels with my t-shirt

I don't wear polos very often. I only wear polos like in the summer if it's really hot and it's too hot to wear a flannel. And so I had these polo shirts that I don't wear very much because it doesn't really match what I wear. Oh, another place we make polo shirts is we do what's called a distributor conference every once in a while where we get people in. So the distributors are the people we sell cards to, and the distributors sell cards to the individual shops. So we will bring the distributors in once or twice a year, and then we'll do a big presentation, sort of talk about what's upcoming. Eventually we're trying to say, hey, this is going to be really cool. You want to, you know, this is a set your players will like.

And so normally they make shirts for those events. And those shirts, just to make them feel nicer, also tend to be polo shirts. And so my two kinds of polo shirts is I have some dual segmentational shirts and I have some shirts. Usually it's the logo. So like if we're, I think I have an Innistrad one or something. It's like, oh, we're pitching Innistrad. We have fancy shirts, polo shirts. And then Innistrad is I think I have an Innistrad one or something. It's like, oh, we're pitching Innistrad. We have fancy shirts, we have polo shirts. And then Innistrad is, you know, woven in the logo to Innistrad.

So, I have a few of those. Okay, another classic shirt that I, or famous shirt, or whatever, a shirt that I enjoy is a shirt made by my mother. So, when I first got to Wizards, or pretty early on, I worked on the set Mirage. And I did a whole podcast on this, but if you haven't heard the story of the Morrow, there was a hole on the development team. We made a hole. We got rid of some rare green card. And I said, oh, I think I have the perfect example for Earth.

Here's a card I made that I think will be really good. And I pitched the idea for Morrow. Morrow is a two green green star star, which are stars equal to the number of cards in your hand. So it could be, you know, if you have four cards in your hand, it's a four four, but if you have seven cards in your hand, it's a seven seven. And Bill, who was taking notes because Bill was leading, he's the lead designer, there was no name for the card. So he just put down M-A-R-O and the reason it was is Bill had figured out on our phone system

or not the phone system, the email system was the least number combination of letters you had to type for it to know who because it would fill in if it knew who it was and so Bill gaming the email figured out the shortest number of letters he had to type so it knew who you were.

So the letters he would type for my name was M-A for Mark, R-O for Rosewater, and the email system would know it's me. There was no other M-A-R-O in the system. So he just wrote Maro on the card, and then later on, the creative team said, oh, that seems like a fine name and didn't change it. I think they knew it was a reference to me,

so I think it was an Easter egg that they thought was fine. Anyway, Marl came out, ended up being sort of my namesake. Well, I didn't illustrate the card as I explained in my podcast. It's one of the few pieces of art where the artist, Sue Ann Harkey at the time, the art director, purchased the rights to a pre-made image. The guy who had made it had actually made it as a piece of art. But anyway, it came out. It's got my name on it.

I designed everything about the card. I mean, I didn't do the art, but it was named after me. I wrote the flavor text. I made the card mechanic. So I had a personal place in my heart. And obviously, it's become my nickname for those that know anything online.

People call me Maro all the time. And so the neat thing about it was it really felt like, okay, this was a more personal connection than I'd ever had in the game. In fact, this was what inspired me making the Dual Subdivisional cards. I like that feeling so much. I'm like, other people should have this feeling. It is neat to be part of the game that you love. But anyway, I ended up through the art director getting in touch with Stuart Griffin, who was the artist that made the card. So the art was originally called The Green Man, and it was a full piece of art.

A lot of magic art, I don't know if you guys have seen it, but a lot of magic art is six inches by four inches. It's pretty small, because you don't need to be that big to fit on a card. So a lot of magic art is small. Sometimes artists will do bigger, depending on their style, how they like to work. One of the things about magic art is as magic became more popular and artists understood that they could make prints of their art, it has changed sort of how they've made their art. So the art's gotten a little bit bigger because there's a good business and people wanting prints

and stuff, and so that's changed over time. But anyway, I had a full-size piece of art. Like, much, much bigger than the vast majority of magic art. And it was a normal piece of art. It wasn't a little thing to be cropped. Like, what you see in the card is actually

a cropped version. There's more to the picture. It's actually long. Like I said, it wasn't made to be a magic card, so it doesn't match magic card dimensions. I have on my blog from time to time posted the full picture. In fact, if you go online, I probably, I did write an article on Morrow, so probably in that article I showed the full picture, I think.

But anyway, it's very pretty. I bought the art. And so my mom, in order to get the art, I had the digital image from Stuart Griffin. I got the art. And so my mom, I don't know, she asked for, somehow she got the digital image. I don't know if it was from me or from a co-worker. And then surprised me with a shirt shirt which had Maro on it. And then on the shirt it said, no two see the same Maro, which is the flavor text obviously from Maro.

And it's a shirt, if you've seen the, what's it called? There's a video series called Question Marks where Yachao has, there's a running series where I'm too busy to answer all my email, which I am. And so they, he goes around and asks people questions that I didn't answer to get kind of answers from other people. It's kind of like a video version of what Question of the Day used to be way back in the day on the site. But it's humorous. But anyway, in it, one of the ongoing jokes is that I am, I am, there's a version of me from the future. And the version of me from the future, that's my hat. That's my hat that I wear, by the way, when it's cold.

In the summer, I wear a baseball cap. In the winter, I wear my hat, which is an inspiration to my Australian hat. I mean, the new one is an Australian hat, but my original was an Australian hat I bought in Sydney at the Invitational in Sydney, and it got lost. In fact, it got lost. I had my luggage one time

got lost. We went on a family trip, and I came back, and I not only lost my hat, I also lost one of my unglued t-shirts. I mean, I had other shirts, luckily, but anyway, it was very sad. Anyway, so my mom made me the shirt. And at first, I was a little bit nervous, because I'm like, mom, you can't just make a shirt out of magic. You can't do that.

that. And then I discovered, I discovered there was a, there's a law that says if you own the original art, you're allowed to have a copy of it. It's called an archival copy. Meaning if I have a piece of art, I'm allowed to have an archival copy of it. Meaning I'm allowed to have a picture of the art to represent the fact that I have the art because the expectation that I'm not supposed to take down the framed piece of art every time I need to demonstrate to somebody that I have the art, that I own the art. So it's called an archival copy. So the running joke was that my T-shirt became my archival copy of my picture because I own the art. So legally speaking, I was okay as my archival copy of the art.

So not that anyone was probably going to arrest my mom, but I found the legal loopholes to make my shirt okay. Like I said, I'm careful how often I wear that shirt just because I don't want to wear the shirt out. I have one, and it is a... So I do wear it from time to time. It is my Morrow shirt. Oh, so the next story is,

one of the things that's interesting for me is, as I got to Magic and started making Magic cards, I really wanted to have my, I wanted to have the art from a card I made. Like, I really wanted to say, you know, because one of the things that we did is, in the early days, is one of the shirts they used to make is,

it would say Magic on the front. It used to say they were black. It'd say on the front and then on the back um it would have a full full art including frame and everything and i really wanted to have one of those um with my art so like obviously then we made a black lotus and we made other things so finally in conjunction with tempest which was my first set um one of the teachers they made was of, what is his name? Not Volrath, the Grevin Ilvec, which was sort of, I always joke about how you have the smart bad guy and the muscly bad guy. Well, the smart bad guy was Volrath. The muscly bad guy was Grevin. And Grevin and Gerard have a big fight, and Grevin is trying to kill Gerard, and Vadi-Ildal,

which is the second command, seeing an opportunity to take out Grevin, and also take down the ship, tries to blow up the weather light and he shoots at it, and he ends up causing Gerard to fall over the side. Anyway, Grevin gets really mad and throws him over the side for doing it. There's three pieces of flavor text to tell a little story if you've never seen it.

Go look at Vario Dao. What's the other two? It's a black kill spell and a white kill spell. Repentance and... Ah, it's a black kill spell. Forget. It's the kind of thing, If you search online, you'll find it. It tells a little story of Grevin coming back and seeing Bonnie. Anyway,

so we made a t-shirt with Grevin Ilvec, and I was so excited because I made the card Grevin Ilvec. That was my card. And so that was the first time that a card I made appeared on the back of a shirt. Then what would happen, obviously, is we start to have, like, sets I made appear on shirts, and then, you know, that became the big thing.

Like, I remember the first Tempest shirt I had was, like, a green shirt, and on the back is one of the angels from Tempest. I'm blanking on which angel. I want to say Avenging Angel, but maybe that might not be from Tempest. But anyway, so, okay, another series of shirts that happened was I used to work the pro tour and the pro tour

in the early days I don't know I think they still do this but I haven't been in a pro tour in ages the way it used to work so maybe it still works but I comment

I'm not sure is we used to always for every pro tour make a t-shirt and one of the things that the players would get is they'd get a t-shirt so the thing that we would do if you worked at the Pro Tour was you always

had to work registration. So the job that I had for much of the time when I used to work registration was I would hand out the t-shirts. And the way it would work is we'd have t-shirts of all the different sizes and then players would come and I'd ask them what size they wanted to give them the shirt um and usually one of my jobs was I would figure out what sizes were going fast and if I felt somebody was sort of go like I mean they could always pick whatever size shirt they wanted if they wanted whatever they could have it um but I one of my jobs is like like, as we were running out of mediums, if I'd see people taking mediums that really felt like they could be larges,

I would try to see if I could get them to take a large. Now, once again, if they wanted a medium, they could have. What I found, by the way, which is very interesting, is the European players tended to like shirts, like, go down a size on shirts, and American players tend like go down a size on shirts

and American players tend to go up a size on shirts. So in general, Americans, I mean, by the way, this is generalization, but I found the American players tended to wear their t-shirts baggy and European players liked to wear their shirts very tight. That's what I discovered from my days of being the t-shirt guy.

The thing I really liked about it was it allowed me to every single person would come through the line I'd always get a shirt this is the point where I really knew a good chunk of the players I didn't know everybody but I knew the regulars and so I gave them a chance to say hi to people

and talk with them I would ask a little bit about the tournament not probing questions that would give information to other people standing around them, but getting a sense of how they felt about it, you know, and things that didn't give away tactical information. And so I used to always get a shirt. So in the early days, there was a staff shirt and there was a player shirt for every event.

And I used to always get the staff shirts. Then eventually we stopped making staff shirts, so then I would get the player shirts. But anyway, I have, I think at some point, every once in a while I have to cull my T-shirts because I have so many T-shirts. So if those of you ever saw the article, I showed a picture of my T-shirts.

My closet, my side of the closet is, it is a decent-sized closet, and it is, I mean, I also have my flannels. But, I mean, it's as many t-shirts as I can physically fit, and they are stuffed in. And they're in color order, sort of in a rainbow order,

so I can find my shirts. But anyway, I, from time to time, have to cull my shirts, and they are a bunch of magic shirts where I just don't, I don't wear as enough. So I put the, I box them up in my garage. I didn't want to get rid of them because they have, they have meaning to me and they are, they, they're historical.

But some of my old, uh, some of my old, uh, Pro Tour shirts are boxed up now. I still, I still have all my magic expansion shirts just because those are the ones that I have more fun wearing. It's just like, oh, look, it's my whatever shirt. You know, pick a set from long ago. Now, T-shirts changed over time. So I've been talking a lot more old school T-shirts. Let me start getting to a little more newer T-shirts. So one of the things, in the early days, we did all our T-shirts.

Like, we would make the T-shirt. And the early day T-shirts were very much magic logo, piece of art. You know, usually magic logo on front, piece of art on back. That's how the early shirts got made. And sometimes if it was a set, you know, it would be set logo or, you know. But eventually, we started working with other people to make shirts. So we didn't make the shirts ourselves we started getting

licensures and stuff and over the years we've started making a lot more different kinds of shirts so let me talk about different kinds of shirts so one thing

we've started doing that's been really popular with the players is what I'll call faction t-shirts which is when we do a world now that we do worlds

where it's very clear that so what was the first step to do this? Ravnica might be the set that really sort of made us realize how powerful factions were. We had done factions before Ravnica, but Ravnica

did it in a very clear way, and so we had ten guilds, and so we made symbols for the guilds. I don't think we even made, the first time around, an original Ravnica, I don't think we made guild shirts, but we made them when we

returned to Ravnica, we made guild shirts. And they were, the way they worked is, they were always, the guild symbol on one color printed in the other color. So like Azorius, we had the choice between being a blue shirt with white printing or a white shirt with blue printing. And so all the guilds were done that way in that the two coloring of the shirt was based on what the colors they were.

Although we gave some latitude to like, you know, if you're red, you have a choice of some levels of what red was. And we made the 10 guild t-shirts, and we sold them, and they were really, really popular. And so we started making sure that our factions always had symbology to it, and we started making shirts for those symbols. So, for example, the clans in Tarkir,

we made shirts for them and we sold those. And those were very popular. Oh, another thing that we had spent a lot of time, whenever we did, what happened is we've had a lot of different people make shirts. And always they would sort of give us ideas for what they wanted and they would make sample versions of them. Oh, here's a good story. So what happened is the t-shirt companies, when they would come trying to sell t-shirts for us,

what they would do is they would make a bunch of samples of the kind of shirts that they wanted to make and they would bring them in. And usually they made them in large because large is the most commonly used size t-shirts.

And so what they would do is they'd bring it into brand and they would just make the shirt. It was just easier to make the shirt. And they weren't going to do anything with the shirt. So they make the shirts and leave them for brand to have. And then when brand was done and figured out what shirts they wanted, they would bring, um, the shirts done to R and D. Um, and this is, this is a point where brand, um, I guess maybe brand played.

I mean, anyway, they knew R&D liked the shirts. I don't know why R&D got these shirts. But they would bring them down and they would put them on a pile on R&D. And the idea was a lot of these were unique, meaning they had made them to try to do them. And some of them would end up getting made. Some of them would be, you know, the early version of a shirt. But even if it got made later on, usually there's some adjustment to be made. And sometimes there will be shirts that never got made.

In fact, this is not a shirt, this is my hat, but I have a baseball cap that has a magic logo on it. And it is a cap that got made in the same time where they were trying to say, ooh, we can make baseball caps. They made a baseball cap. And we decided in that case we didn't make it. But Mark Purvis, who's one of the brand managers, held on to it.

But he just didn't wear baseball caps. And so one day, I forget how it happened, I was asking about baseball caps. And he's like, oh, did Magic ever make baseball caps? I was like, well, we didn't make them. But I do have this one, you know, it wasn't, we never made it. But I have the demo that they made. Oh, so that's the hat I wear now is my Magic hat. It's a one-of-a-kind demo that never, we never made it, but I have the demo that they made. Oh, so that's the hat I wear now is my magic hat. It's a one-of-a-kind demo that never, we never actually made the hat.

And it says magic on the front, and it says Deckmaster on the back, which is something we would never do nowadays. So it entertains me. Oh, and the front is not just a magic logo. It is the back of a magic card, I believe. It's the back of a magic card, which has the magic logo on it. But anyway, so I have a number of t-shirts

that were just like, they had tried, like one of my favorite shirts, I don't know if this one I'm getting made. This is a Memory Lab shirt that uses the art by Mark Tadine. And it is a very clever way. But anyway,

so what I'm saying is, as we started getting more license to do t-shirts, we started broadening out the kind of things we would do. One of the things that has always been very popular, and we keep coming back to them, is symbology. So the mana symbols have been very popular. We've done other symbols. I know they've tried other things like the tap symbol or expansion symbols.

For some reason, those don't do as well. The mana symbols do well. Tap symbol doesn't do particularly well. Oh, one of the shirts I have. Here's another. I have a shirt of the hybrid mana with something that I created. And my favorite colors are blue and red and so

Matt Cavada for my birthday one year made me a hybrid shirt, a blue red hybrid shirt it's a manna symbol for blue and red and you've never seen it, it's like half blue half red, another shirt that I have that's getting pretty faded

that's my hybrid shirt. It is funny because I wore it to something and people thought I was giving a clue that like there was hybrid coming or something. Because they had never seen the shirt before and they felt like it was a big clue and it was just a shirt I liked and it was a magic

shirt. So anyway, so with the advent of doing more licensing, we got fancier shirts, a little more style shirts, shirts in which, I mean, usually somewhere on the shirt there's a magic logo because we want people to know it's magic. Not always though. Sometimes there's sort of imagery that doesn't specifically say it's magic. Oh, another symbol shirt that I've got, that we've made a bunch of that I have, is I've gotten a bunch of shirts with the

with the Planeswalker symbol. So the five prime Planeswalker symbol. I have a bunch of shirts with that symbol. Which is fun to wear because it's the kind of symbol that if you're into magic, you know the symbol and if you're not, you don't. So if somebody recognizes the symbol, I just

know they're a magic player. So it's sort of cool. It's possible to have the mana symbols that I've run into people that don't play magic but recognize the mana symbol for magic. But usually I wear the planeswalker symbol that they know or they don't. Okay, so the latest batch of shirts

that I've started getting is we've started doing more Planeswalker shirts. And I have, for example, I have multiple really cool J shirts. I have, let's see, I have a Chandra shirt. I have a Johnny shirt. I have a Nissa shirt.

I have a Garrick shirt. I don't, I mean, I have Liliana. The Innistrad shirt that was made for pre-releases has her on the front. So I have a shirt with her on the front. But it's not a shirt focused on her. That's an Innistrad shirt that she happens to be

the key art for. But that's a lot of fun. One of my favorite shirts right now is a Jace shirt. And it's the Jace. It's similar to Jace on Jace the Mind Sculptor. Maybe it's exactly Jace the Mind Sculptor. But he's playing with the magic between his hands. And that is made out of a different substance than the Jace in the shirt.

So it kind of shines a little more. Oh, so one of the things about t-shirts that I always do is I do a lot of videos. And I do a lot of presentations. And so I try to make sure whenever I'm doing a presentation or doing a video that I make use of some of the more recent t-shirts so people can see a lot of the cool t-shirts. So, for example, last year at PAX, we were doing the Battle for Zendikar show. It's the thing I did with Will Whedon and Doug Byer. And what's her name? There's another woman that

her name is you can yell at the screen. Maybe you remember her name. I don't remember her name. It was I apologize. I'm blanking on her name. But anyway, the part of the show that I did was with Will Whedon. All my section was with Will Whedon. All my section was with Will Whedon.

And Allie. Allie somebody. I apologize. But anyway, the t-shirt I got was something that was unique for that event. Later, in fact, you could buy the shirt there and then they

adapted, did a slightly different version that was on sale at Grand Prix's. But it was a stylistic Ulamog shirt. And the number one comment I got after doing the... I go on stage, I talk about all these exciting things you'd never heard about Battle for Zendikar. I introduced the idea of expeditions. I showed off cars you'd never seen before. I talked about all the mechanics.

expeditions. I showed off cars you'd never seen before. I talked about all the mechanics. And the number one comment I got on social media was where did you get that t-shirt? So one of the things we watch when I do videos about like inside R&D, I try to wear different shirts that are kind of, you know, themed to the thing at hand

to try to sort of let people see a lot of the cool things. Often like when I do panels and stuff, you also see I'm... One of the things we'll do, I know we do this a lot at San Diego when we do panels, but other panels we do too, is sometimes all the people on the panel will wear related shirts. Like last year, they made a new series of Planeswalker shirts, and I think I was Jace. And everybody wore a different shirt, and so a different Planeswalker shirt. Except, okay, one of our panel members wouldn't wear their shirt.

But everybody else wore their shirt. I absolutely like t-shirts. So, one of the things today I'm trying to sort of say as I walk through is, for those that are unaware, there are in existence thousands of magic shirts that we have made. They're at this point, I mean, I have a lot of t-shirts and I'm nowhere close.

Like, one of the things that's very fun is people know that I like t-shirts so from time to time I will get people, usually from other parts of Wizards,

like other, you know, other sections in other countries and stuff. Like, for example, there was a German

Nationals one year. They used the art for Squirrel Farm on their card, and I love the art for Squirrel Farm. It's one of my favorite cards from Unglued. And so someone knew I liked the piece of art, so they sent me the shirt. One of the people who was running German Nationals sent me the shirt. So I definitely

have a collection of a lot of shirts. I probably own more Magic shirts than most people in the world. Um, having worked for magic for a long, long time and, and people know I like t-shirts. So I, I often will, people will give me t-shirts. Um, Oh, another thing, by the way, that I didn't get to work is I also have a lot of t-shirts that are not directly magic, but are magic affiliated, such as, I have two different t-shirts from, what was it called? The very first magic website.

See, when I'm writing my article, I can just look things up. What was it called? It was, let's see, I don't remember it. I have t-shirts from magic teams, different teams will make t-shirts, and I have t-shirts for different teams. I have t-shirts from Magic Teams.

Different teams will make t-shirts. And I have t-shirts for different teams. I have t-shirts for game stores, which also sometimes doubles as Magic Teams. What is the website? Why can't I remember the website? See, I need to do a podcast one of these days on websites.

Because there's a lot of websites over the years that I should talk about. And this was really important because it was the first one! I feel so bad. Hold on. It was... Okay, I'm going to do something I've never done before because I just parked. Which is... Oh! I can't because I have to

turn off... I can't search the net while I'm recording because I can't have people calling me while I'm doing it. So I have my, okay, one last try. So this was, a guy named Frank founded the website and it did the earliest talk. In fact, I was, for a blip, I did a trivia column on it. I feel so bad. I feel so bad. Well, I'm going to do a podcast one of these days on websites

and I'll have a big section on it because it's one of the most influential websites, magic website. In fact, it's the very first magic website and I feel so bad that I am blinking on the name

of the very first magic website. I'm delaying the sign off because I'm trying to remember the name. Anyway, okay. I had traffic and it was raining so enough time

plus I got a 10 o'clock meeting to get to and it's 9.49 so I got to get going. Anyway, mostly today, I mean, I like to do

podcasts that have really hard, gritty, serious stuff and sometimes I like to do more light, fun-hearted. Everybody who listens to this, hopefully you own at least one magic shirt. There's so many different kinds of shirts out there

and there's so many different places to get shirts and so much different art and all sorts of cool things. I just thought it was fun to share stories. Stories of magic t-shirts and just talk about different magic t-shirts. So anyway, I hope you had fun today, but as we learned

because I've been here for a while, I'm in my friend's space, so we all know what that means. Instead of... This is the end of my drive to work, so instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'm still thinking, trying to get the name. I'm trying to sign off, and it's cold, but I haven't gotten it. Anyway, thanks guys.

Join me next time. Bye-bye.