Hey! Are you tired of being cold and bored, sitting naked on the floor of a bleak empty room, desperately wishing for some manner of woven fabrics to cover your skin and some little engaging object with which to amuse yourself? Sure you have! Well, I’m delighted to say that, as usual, your pals at The Autopian are here to turn on your headlights instead of cursing your darkness. We’re gonna solve your problems, the best way we know how: with merch.
That’s right! Once again, we have merch! For those unfamiliar, “merch” is short for “mercantile dry goods” and we have some of the dryest dry goods around, in the form of T-shirts, stickers, and, yes, toy cars, including one collectible Autopian-exclusive edition!
So this means no more sitting around, cold and naked! You have two official Autopian t-shirts to choose from, each as soft as a newborn lamb’s perineum, and there are also two fantastic Autopian stickers, each featuring one of our logos, that you can apply to pretty much any smooth, dry surface that you encounter! Yes, that includes both the marble of the ancient Parthenon and the aluminum skin of a passenger aircraft!
One moment, I’ve just been informed that I am not to encourage anyone to put stickers on UNESCO World Heritage sites or commercial airliners. Ugh, fine.
First off, I’d like to note that our Autopian merch is being sold through our partners at Galpin Auto Sports (GAS), and they seem to have selected a picture of me in an Autopian logo shirt to be the header for our store, but complaints from customers and concerns for the well-being of children have led them to obscure my face with that THE AUTOPIAN text.
“Your face drives away customers,” they told me, via email.
Whatever. Here’s our merch page, and on there you can purchase a countless number of items, provided you’re only capable of counting to three, as there are four things for sale.
First, there are shirts! Lovely soft, comfortable unisex shirts, one with the Autopian-A “wheel” logo, and the other with the Autopian wordmark logo, fading out – or fading in – gradually on your chest. Each is suitable for any situation you may find yourself in, from gala to garage and everywhere in between.
Dress them up with a tie! Make them sexier by belting it in the middle and wearing it without pants, like a skirt! Wrap one around your head! Get a whole bunch and make a quilt! The possibilities are limitless!
Then there are the Autopian stickers, available in subtle blue wordmark style, or the A-wheel style! The adhesive is made, I believe, from the saliva of a mildly-aroused manatee, and should adhere to nearly any surface with the tenacity of someone who thinks you’re wrong on the internet.
I’m also happy to say these stickers are now 72% cruelty free, and I think we can get that even lower if Matt decides to stop treating me like garbage all the damn time. [Ed note: Eat garbage, get treated like garbage. Also, shipping is set at a flat rate of $10 for anyone in the United States. I’m working to see if we can get shipping outside the USA soon, as well as a price for people who just buy, like, a single sticker. – MH]
One note about the shirts: we should probably establish a sort of etiquette for when you see a fellow Autopian wearing a shirt with the logo on it. If you’re both wearing shirts, then I think the only dignified thing to do is to fling whatever you’re holding to the ground, drop whatever you’re doing, and run headlong at one another, ending in a forceful collision-embrace.
If only one of you is in an Autopian shirt, then the un-branded Autopian has the responsibility of making eye contact, pointing to their chest and making eyebrow/winky eye motions repeatedly. This seems reasonable.
But it’s not just shirts and stickers! We have toys, too, thanks to a collaboration with our friends at Candylab Toys, who make fantastic, minimalistic and charming wooden toy cars that I’ve admired for years. In fact, about seven years ago, I collaborated with them to design a Volkswagen bus toy:
Unfortunately, this aroused the notice of the automaker, but they worked out a deal, and you can still buy this bus, just now with official VW branding.
But that’s the past! Now, here in yesterday’s future, the present, Candylab and Autopian have teamed up to bring you a limited-edition collectible, the diesel Vanagon Autopian Land Low-Speed Record car, ready to take out onto the salt flats at speeds approaching 37 mph, depending on wind.
In addition to the limited-edition Autopian toy – and this is just the first of more to come, some of which will be even more customized and bonkers – there is also a whole section of Autopian-editor-selected Candylab cars, with picks from me, David, Matt, and Mercedes. See if you can figure out who picked what!
Shirts! Stickers! Toys! What a glorious world we live in now, right? Get as much as you can to show your intense Autopianitude to the world! Give them as gifts! Give them as warnings! Give them to yourself! Because you’re worth it! Every bit!
[Ed note: If you buy anything from CandyLab using those links, we will likely get a small commission, so please make sure to use that link! Also, the van is a custom-printed collectible, which means supplies are extremely limited. Act now if you’re interested! – MH]
The post Everything Is Good Again: Autopian Merch Is Back, And Now There’s Toys, Too appeared first on The Autopian.
