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vid · Aug 22, 2012

Given the number of Fangamer orders I see in the monthly Pick-Up threads, I figure it's a safe assumption that there are quite a few people here who'd be interested in this. They've launched a Kickstarter to get some of their old out of stock shirt designs back into availability, and it's an opportunity to back a fantastic company as well as get some great shirt designs at a pretty good discount!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fangamer/fangamer-retrowear

"But vid," I hear you beginning to ask "I'm not really a fan of Earthbound or the Mother series! Isn't that the only thing Fangamer makes?" - Well, then that's an unfortunate sickness you have, but your concerns are ill-founded! There is an excellent variety of Metal Gear, Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, and Metroid shirts available as a part of this campaign as well!

Check it out! I'll personally be jumping on for quite a few of these shirt designs as soon as I get back from PAX, and I'd encourage you all to do the same! I want to see the November 2012 Pick-Up Thread flooded with Fangamer merchandise!

Stormwatch · Aug 24, 2012

Well, they are fully funded already and we are starting to hit some of their overfunding goals. Once it hits $50,000 they are going to unveil a second hoodie. I'm reallllllllly hoping it is their Starman hoodie. I've been wanting that forever!

Sushigod7 · Aug 24, 2012

Pitched in the other day for two shirts. I have one decided now for the tough decision on #2 but glad to see we can get the Metroid Visor shirt in red now!

Forkball · Aug 24, 2012

Please give us money so we can make money off of other people's intellectual properties.

Sushigod7 · Aug 24, 2012

Forkball said:
Please give us money so we can make money off of other people's intellectual properties.

They aren't being shutdown so I assume they have some kind of authorization? Maybe not because the designs are kind of abstract. Good point though always wondered how people can do this.

Stormwatch · Aug 24, 2012

Forkball said:
Please give us money so we can make money off of other people's intellectual properties.

Most internet shirt site are like that, though. Tee Fury, Shirt Punch, The Yetee, Nowherebad, Ript Apparel, etc. I think that they can do it because it is all parody.

MyEpitomeCliché · Aug 24, 2012

Forkball said:
Please give us money so we can make money off of other people's intellectual properties.

Which is the formula for pretty much every pop-culture/media inspired anything ever. So bitter.

I pitched in for 4 shirts. These folks are awesome.

HoosTrax · Aug 24, 2012

Kind of tempted to kick in some money, even though these are mostly console game related. It's stupidly hard to find gamer shirts in size Women's small (only the Valve and Bioware stores have a decent number of them).

Like the MGS and Metroid ones in particular. $20 is about on par with what the "official" publisher run stores sell shirts for.

Stormwatch · Sep 10, 2012

Wow, they just surpassed $100,000! There are a lot of stretch goals as well. They are bringing back Shirtness and are making a new Lucas shirt as well. Only a couple days remain, so you should get in now while you can.

Raynes · Sep 10, 2012

Nice idea, but I don't like their design style, way too generic looking.

Lotto · Sep 10, 2012

I've always wanted the Shirtness. In for that! I'd like to get the new Lucas one that just got unlocked but I don't think I'd look any good in it or wouldn't even get much use from me.

Daigoro · Sep 10, 2012

Stormwatch said:
Wow, they just surpassed $100,000! There are a lot of stretch goals as well. They are bringing back Shirtness and are making a new Lucas shirt as well. Only a couple days remain, so you should get in now while you can.

sweet. they must be too busy rolling in the dough to send me the order i placed 2 weeks ago!

edit: make that over three weeks since i placed the order. i ordered on Aug 24th and got the shipping notice on Sept 10.

thats customer service for ya!

Rctdaemon · Sep 13, 2012

Last call! Their campaign ends in 90 minutes and they're up to $188K. I just tossed in enough for seven shirts.

idlethreats · Sep 13, 2012

I backed this for way more money than I should, but I have a weakness for Fangamer goods. I had to hold myself back from buying color variants of shirts/hoodies that I already own though.

Sushigod7 said:
They aren't being shutdown so I assume they have some kind of authorization? Maybe not because the designs are kind of abstract. Good point though always wondered how people can do this.

They are not licensed but they're in some sort of weird, gray area it seems:

But what they were doing toed the line of legality. They didn't have a license to produce Nintendo merchandise.

Young tried to reach out to Nintendo by e-mail and phone, but the global business didn't get back to the bootstrap operation out of Arizona. It was months before a Nintendo employee and secret Starmen.net fan made a proper introduction.

"[The Nintendo employee] put us in direct contact with licensing and told them what we wanted to do," says Young, "and, verbatim, they sent me a one line reply and it said, 'We don't license retro games. Good luck.' And so I was like, 'Well, I'm going to take that as tacit approval.'"

Fangamer has internal rules to prevent serious legal trouble: respect IPs, don't use names, logos or stuff pulled directly from a game; be careful. Obeying these rules, and believing they had in some capacity Nintendo's go ahead, Fangamer became the unofficial Earthbound fan shop.

Stormwatch said:
Most internet shirt site are like that, though. Tee Fury, Shirt Punch, The Yetee, Nowherebad, Ript Apparel, etc. I think that they can do it because it is all parody.

I'm in my last year of law school and I've been considering doing some research and writing a paper on the fair use line that these companies are skirting - these don't seem like very good examples of parody, but it's also very hard to imagine Nintendo just turning a blind eye to others profiting off of their IP. Nintendo is usually pretty aggressive about this sort of thing.

Daigoro said:
sweet. they must be too busy rolling in the dough to send me the order i placed 2 weeks ago!

edit: make that over three weeks since i placed the order. i ordered on Aug 24th and got the shipping notice on Sept 10.

thats customer service for ya!

They always close down the mailroom about a week before PAX until a week after and make announcements about it.

Daigoro · Sep 13, 2012

idlethreats said:
They always close down the mailroom about a week before PAX until a week after and make announcements about it.

guess they need several weeks to prepare for PAX too because my last order took them well over 2 weeks to ship. do they announce that too?

also, i never got this announcement when i placed the order.

John Rabbit · Sep 13, 2012

sounds like they're running a successful business. they don't need extra money. just make what your customers want.

idlethreats · Sep 13, 2012

Daigoro said:
guess they need several weeks to prepare for PAX too because my last order took them well over 2 weeks to ship. do they announce that too?

also, i never got this announcement when i placed the order.

It's right there on the front page of the website (posted 8/23) that the mailroom would be closed August 24th - September 7th for PAX. If you look at the shipping policies listed on their website, the very first bullet point says to check the front page of the website for updates on how busy they are. /shrug

ChosenPredator · Sep 13, 2012

damn thats a lot of money for shirts that look like a gaming community version of Affliction gear, fist photo.

ThatsMytrunks · Sep 13, 2012

I don't understand what their Kickstarter was for. They said they were raising money to reprint old designs. I'm wearing the 2300 AD shirt right now, it's one of the ones they're raising money for, and I bought it at PAX Prime two weeks ago, as well as the Chrono Trigger clock one.

I mean, clearly they reprinted them.

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