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Vintage Iowa / Iowa State T-Shirts with Mascots Holding Beers


ForwardProgress

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Back in 2003 or 2004 I found a t-shirt with the Iowa Hawkeyes mascot holding a mug of beer:

57c6bd761b78cbd1c77b61137cce4903.jpg

In 2006 I sold it on eBay for $40 which was a lot for a t-shirt back then.

The other day while browsing around on Pinterest I found an extremely similar t-shirt, and here is the cropped and zoomed-in graphic:

f41b5129ebe28e4ed05406b003791153.jpg

Obviously the same artist or t-shirt company made both of these, due to the same font used, the same reclining pose of the mascots, and almost the identical foam on the mugs of beer.

My theory about these shirts is a local t-shirt company in Iowa decided to make some easy cash by selling them outside the football stadiums of these two teams, because obviously a university would never approve of and then officially license an image of its mascot holding a beer.

HOWEVER, the late 70's and early 80's, the era these shirts are from, were different times. The legal drinking age back then was 18, and drinking was considered an essential part of college life, so much so that the college I went to rented a Coors truck for the day back in 1979 and handed out free beers to students on the green! Something like that would NEVER happen now a days, so if a college would sanction and pay for free beer being handed out to students, who says they couldn't license an image of their mascot holding a beer? It's totally possible. Unlikely, but possible.

I just thought it was cool how these two shirts, albeit representing two different schools, obviously used the same template. It makes me very curious if the artist or company that made these also made them for other schools, or possibly pro teams. Has anyone else ever seen these shirts or ones like them before?

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Is anyone else a huge fan of human-like mascot logos? Not really if that is the correct term to describe them, but when the logo is somewhat realistic, has a body, hands, etc. These Iowa and Iowa State hoodies are prefect examples. I think its such an awesome and unique logo style for college.

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Is anyone else a huge fan of human-like mascot logos? Not really if that is the correct term to describe them, but when the logo is somewhat realistic, has a body, hands, etc. These Iowa and Iowa State hoodies are prefect examples. I think its such an awesome and unique logo style for college.

Anthropomorphic.

Funny t-shirts. They could easily be licensed, but I'm leaning towards unlicensed. Just a hunch.

BigStuffChamps3_zps00980734.png

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yeah, i like them too.. mascots should be as much "fun" as they are "intimidating".. as people have mentioned before, nobody is afraid of a team's nickname - no matter how fierce.. i dont think they're going to be afraid of a fuzzy suit and foam head either, so they should be as much fun and kid-friendly as they are stoic and tough... i've always like them, especially Herky, the Duck (Puddles), and Big Al

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Is anyone else a huge fan of human-like mascot logos? Not really if that is the correct term to describe them, but when the logo is somewhat realistic, has a body, hands, etc. These Iowa and Iowa State hoodies are prefect examples. I think its such an awesome and unique logo style for college.

Even better when it's not even an animal, but an inanimate object like a bail of hay

2700_wichita_state_shockers-alternate-20

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Is anyone else a huge fan of human-like mascot logos? Not really if that is the correct term to describe them, but when the logo is somewhat realistic, has a body, hands, etc. These Iowa and Iowa State hoodies are prefect examples. I think its such an awesome and unique logo style for college.

Even better when it's not even an animal, but an inanimate object like a bail of hay

2700_wichita_state_shockers-alternate-20

Yup. Brutus the Buckeye is another good one.

Not only that, I even like when human mascots have bodies... Like Michigan State or Oklahoma State.

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yeah, i like them too.. mascots should be as much "fun" as they are "intimidating".. as people have mentioned before, nobody is afraid of a team's nickname - no matter how fierce.. i dont think they're going to be afraid of a fuzzy suit and foam head either, so they should be as much fun and kid-friendly as they are stoic and tough... i've always like them, especially Herky, the Duck (Puddles), and Big Al

Is there a separate thread in this forum dedicated to friendly looking mascots in logos and on merchandise?

I think it would be cool to gather images of them together in one place. I would guess most of them would be vintage, because most newer logos tend to have an angry or aggressive looking image of their mascot in them, and yet the mascot suit itself tends to be goofy and friendly looking. That's a major juxtaposition right there. On one hand you want your team to look tough, but on the other hand you want to market to kids and make money off their parents.

I never realized there was such a dual aspect to sports team marketing before.

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Funny t-shirts. They could easily be licensed, but I'm leaning towards unlicensed. Just a hunch.

Yeah I'm leaning towards unlicensed too, mainly because they are holding beers and even in the late 70's and early 80's a school wouldn't want to promote drinking on officially licensed products, but also because no "TM" or "circle R" icon appears anywhere near the designs, meaning the images are not being used as a trademark and aren't registered as a trademark. As we all know colleges protect the hell out of their logos and intellectual property; whenever you buy licensed gear from an NCAA school you will always find a little "TM" or "circle R" icon right next to the logo and team name, usually in the bottom right corner or wherever the designer thought it looked best next to the logo or wordmark.

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Is anyone else a huge fan of human-like mascot logos? Not really if that is the correct term to describe them, but when the logo is somewhat realistic, has a body, hands, etc. These Iowa and Iowa State hoodies are prefect examples. I think its such an awesome and unique logo style for college.

Even better when it's not even an animal, but an inanimate object like a bail of hay

The best example of this is probably the Stanford Tree. I mean, it's a tree with googly eyes, a mouth, and human legs. I'm assuming they got the idea from the school seal which has a big tree right smack dab in the middle of it, but why not use a cardinal bird when your nickname is "Cardinal" and your primary color is red? Is it just too obvious of an idea?

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I even like when human mascots have bodies... Like Michigan State or Oklahoma State.

I don't want to sound like a jerk and I mean absolutely no offense by this, but why wouldn't human mascots have bodies? Do you mean you like it when teams use human *heads* as logos but the only representation of them having bodies is the mascot costume?

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I even like when human mascots have bodies... Like Michigan State or Oklahoma State.

I don't want to sound like a jerk and I mean absolutely no offense by this, but why wouldn't human mascots have bodies? Do you mean you like it when teams use human *heads* as logos but the only representation of them having bodies is the mascot costume?

I mean... when it comes to Michigan State... they have the spartan helmet logo that everyone associated with Michigan State, but then they also have the mascot logo:

sparty.png

Ohio State has Brutus:

Brutus-1755j8p.jpg

But then Oklahoma State, even though their mascot is a cowboy, and a cowboy is technically a person, they still have a mascot logo:

621px-Pistol_Pete.svg.png

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