Force 18′s Funny T-shirt Blog

Do you like using one word answers?  If the answer is Yes, perhaps you could use one of our Yes or No T-shirts (or even both!).  With a simple design on each, you can choose between the No T-shirt and the Yes T-shirt.  If you don’t like being asked questions, then the No T-shirt is going to make you really unapproachable!

After a couple of rather dismal performances, England actually made it through the Group stage of the World Cup to the Knockout stage.  Who knows where this could go now?

Depending on your point of view on how England will perform, you might like to check out our England – Believe T-shirt or the somewhat pessemistic Not penalties again T-shirt.

Every so often we would like to talk about one of our classic T-shirt designs.  This month’s featured design is our exclusive Spot the Ninja T-shirt.

Sometime in 2008 the boss came in, looking all angry, and yelled at the design team “Give me a T-shirt with a damn Ninja on it!”  Then he went to the pub for the rest of the afternoon, probably.  Soon afterwards, the majority of the designers had fallen asleep again, but one trainee, still in his probationary period, stayed awake and began to formulate what would eventually become our Spot the Ninja design.

Spot the Ninja

The poor trainee spent much of the afternoon on Google and other search engines (although not Bing, because that didn’t exist back then), meticulously researching the rich history of the Ninja, the covert mercenaries from Japan.  He came to realise that if you were to spot a Ninja, then you would most likely be very nearly dead.  Taking out his standard-issue Force 18 crayons and safety scissors, the trainee set to work, creating rough stickmen figures and aligning them on a grid.  Across the top of the design he scrawled “Spot the Ninja”.  He sat back and admired his work, knowing that any one of the stickmen could be the Ninja and slowly realised that he had created an unsolvable puzzle.

Then the trainee hit upon his masterstroke.  He removed one of the stickmen from the design.  With that one simple move he had created the ultimate trap.  He knew that anyone who looked at the design would instinctively think that the Ninja was in the gap left by the missing figure.

Force 18's Spot the Ninja T-shirt

When the senior designers awoke from their slumber they were truly envious of the deceptively simple design that the trainee had created.  The Spot the Ninja T-shirt was put into production immediately and everyone in the design team was allowed to go home early for the day.  And they all lived happily ever after…

So there it is, the story of how our Spot the Ninja T-shirt was created, and it remains one of our most original and funniest T-shirt designs.

An update to our recent post about the It’s England Time T-shirts.  Despite creating the design and having prior approval to sell these designs for the benefit of the charity,  we’ve been asked to remove the ‘It’s England Time’ T-shirts from sale.  We are sorry to announce that as of today they are no longer available to buy from Force 18.

You can however still buy our England 2010 T-shirt featuring the same flag design which we borrowed for Chico’s T-shirts, to show your support for England in the 2010 World Cup.

Almost everyone in the UK has probably seen some form of Keep Calm and Carry On media in recent years.  The media has reported on it widely and many outlets produce posters, fridge magnets and many other products bearing the slogan.  Being well over 50 years old, the design is widely believed to be free of copyright.

Or so we thought…

One day last week, we were lazing around at the Force 18 offices when we were hit with a letter from Her Majesty’s Government, pointing out that the crown design on all Keep Calm and Carry On products, in fact remains the copyright of the Crown and reproduction of the crown design could result in a holiday, at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, at the Tower.

Being rather attached to our heads, and not wanting to lose them any time soon, we have redesigned the Crown on all of our Keep Calm and Carry On T-shirt designs, including Get Drunk and Fall Over and the STFU variant, to include a new crown, entirely designed by Force 18.  We like it and we’re sure you will too! 

As the new design has been officially approved by a Government office as not infringing on Crown copyright, we can now officially sell Keep Calm and Carry On products again!

A few days ago we had a very special visitor in the Force 18 offices.  Chico (of X-factor fame) came here in person to pick up some specially commissioned T-shirts for his “It’s England Time” campaign for his World Cup 2010 song.  He is overjoyed at the growing support for his single, which is raising money for the Rainbow Child Foundation.

Chico has kindly allowed us to put the T-shirt up for sale on our site and we are donating the profits from the sale of these shirts to the Rainbow Child Foundation, which is raising money to help underprivileged children all over the world.

We’re very proud to have one of our T-shirts featured on the cover of this month’s Sky Movies Magazine.  To promote Sky Movies premiere of Ghost Town, Ricky Gervais is pictured on the cover wearing one of our Skeleton Chest T-shirts.  And very nice he looks in it too.

Ricky Gervais in a Skeleton Chest T-shirt on Sky Movies Magazine

The summer holidays are over, and the evenings are starting to draw in.  Meanwhile, at Force 18, we have a new special offer across our whole range of funny (and rude, retro, geeky, etc.) T-shirts.

If you buy any 3 T-shirts, you’ll get a 4th one, of your choosing, absolutely free.  This offer won’t be available forever, so jump whilst you have the chance.  If you can’t find 4 T-shirts that you want for yourself (and with over 500 designs, we’d be surprised if you couldn’t find 4 you want), why not club together with your mates and share the cost?  Perhaps we should submit that to Viz as a top tip?

As with all these offers, terms and conditions apply – you can see the details over on our special offer page.

Slightly lost amongst the media frenzy surrounding the death of Michael Jackson last week, was the news that Mollie Sugden has died.

In honour of her passing, we have produced a funny T-shirt dedicated to the Queen of the Pussy joke.  The slogan reads “You never forget your first pussy”.

Nearly everyone has to deal with passwords on a daily basis, so why it is so difficult for so many people to remember them?

Our new funny T-shirt gives a dictionary-style definition of Password but adds a little more to it – “usually forgotten between Friday afternoon and Monday morning”.  Stupid users… 

Click through to see our new funny Password t-shirt.

Passwords - are they really so difficult to remember?