Three Wolf Moon

The original Three Wolf Moon T-shirt

Three Wolf Moon is a T-shirt featuring three wolves howling at the moon. The numerous ironic reviews for this on Amazon.com have become an Internet phenomenon. The T-shirt was designed by artist Antonia Neshev.[1]

Origin

Brian Govern, review author
Antonia Neshev, creator of the Three Wolf Moon design
Michael McGloin, art director of The Mountain Corporation

The Three Wolf Moon T-shirt gained popularity after attracting ironic reviews on Amazon.com attributing great power to it such as being irresistible to women, striking fear into other males and having magical healing abilities. These reviews were made mainly by members of the Bodybuilding.com Misc section members.[2] Brian Govern, a law student at Rutgers University,[1] was searching for a school book on Amazon and was led to The Three Wolf Moon T-shirt by an Amazon recommendation which had been targeted at students purchasing college semester books.[3] He decided to write a review of the shirt on a whim as he did not actually own the shirt. His faux-serious review as "Bee-Dot-Govern" in November 2008 concluded:[4]

Pros: Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women

Cons: Only 3 wolves (could probably use a few more on the 'guns'), cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed, wolves would have been better if they glowed in the dark.

Since this original review was posted, more than 2300 similar reviews have been posted.[5] Some reviewers have uploaded images showing famous people wearing the shirt.[6]

The shirt attracted further interest when it became viral on networking sites such as Digg and Facebook and was then lauded in conventional media as an Internet phenomenon.[3] German scholar Melvin Haack considers it to be a notable example of a redneck joke.[7] The reviews have been included in studies of such online irony. Such irony tends to confound analysis of customer reviews and so the texts have been analysed to determine which elements might identify irony. One common example found in n-gram analysis was "alpha male".[8]

Sales

The T-shirt is manufactured by The Mountain Corporation, a wholesale clothing company in Keene, New Hampshire, United States.[9] Their art director, Michael McGloin, said that they were making many more shirts in response to the great demand which had made it the top selling item in Amazon's clothing store.[2] Due to the success of the shirt, the New Hampshire Division of Economic Development made it their "official New Hampshire T-shirt of economic development" and award it as a prize for innovation.[10]

Parodies and attributions

A similar shirt featuring Keyboard Cats instead of wolves has been produced at the T-shirt design site Threadless. In July 2009, this was the most highly rated design there.[11]

The official Star Wars online store created a "Moon Over My Ewok" shirt that parodies Three Wolf Moon with Ewoks and the Death Star in place of wolves and a moon.[12]

Capcom prepared a limited run through iam8bit of a "Three Wolf God Sun" shirt for the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con International, featuring images of the wolf gods Amaterasu and Chibiterasu from their video games Ōkami and Ōkamiden.[13][14]

Minecraft has parodied the design in its own T-shirt merchandise, replacing the wolves with Creepers, an iconic enemy featured in the game.

Joel Watson, author of the webcomic Hijinks Ensue, created a "Three Wheaton Moon" shirt featuring Wil Wheaton.

There is a tattoo and a poster of the design in The Sims 3. Also, there is a T-shirt with the design, but with llamas instead of wolves, in The Sims 3: University Life Expansion Pack.

On an episode of the U.S. version of The Office entitled "Niagara", Dwight wears the shirt to go out on the town, believing that it will attract women because the howling wolves are "suggestive".

The Valve online store once sold a shirt with three Sentry Turrets from Portal looking at a moon.[15]

Grumpy Cat has a version called "3 Grumpy Cat Moon", Doge a version called "3 Doge Moon".

There is a dog tag in the game Battlefield 3 called "6 Wolf Moon" which is obtained from a Dr. Pepper promotion. The dog tag has this design scratched onto it with six wolves instead of three.

In Episode 1 of Season 9 of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Mac is wearing the Three Wolf Moon shirt.

In Skullgirls, Beowulf's level 3 super is based on the Three Wolf Moon shirt, the Three Wulf Moonsault. The first three hits cause wolf silouethes to appear and ends with Beowulf delivering a body slam while briefly shown in front of a full moon.

In Guild Wars 2, if three rangers use the Call of the Wild skill simultaneously, a 'Lunar Wolf' is summoned. The animation of each skill depicts a wolf howling at the moon similar to one shown in the t-shirt.[16]

In Episode 4 of Season 1 of Mr. Robot, Mobley is wearing the Three Wolf Moon shirt.

References

  1. 1 2 Peter Applebome (May 24, 2009). "Think a T-Shirt Can’t Change Your Life? A Skeptic Thinks Again". The New York Times.
  2. 1 2 Daniel Emery (21 May 2009), Joke review boosts T-shirt sales, BBC
  3. 1 2 Rajiv Sabherwal, Irma Becerra-Fernandez (2009), Business Intelligence, John Wiley and Sons, ISBN 978-0-470-46170-9
  4. ↑ "B. Govern "Bee-Dot-Govern"'s review of The Mountain Youth Three Wolf Moon Short S". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2013-02-04.
  5. ↑ "Customer Reviews: The Mountain Three Wolf Moon Short Sleeve Tee". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2013-02-04.
  6. ↑ Joseph Jaffe (2010), Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones, John Wiley and Sons, ISBN 978-0-470-48785-3
  7. ↑ Melvin Haack (2009-08-20), Redneck Jokes as a Subcultural Phenomenon (PDF), Technische Universität Carolo-Wilhelmina zu Braunschweig line feed character in |publisher= at position 23 (help)
  8. ↑ Antonio Reyes, Paolo Rosso (2011), Mining Subjective Knowledge from Customer Reviews: A Specific Case of Irony Detection (PDF)
  9. ↑ Steve Johnson (May 20, 2009), Three Wolf Moon T-shirt inspires wave of snarkiness on Amazon product reviews -- and sales skyrocket, Chicago Tribune
  10. ↑ "State Hopes To Harness Power Of 'Three Wolf' Shirts". WMUR. 27 Jan 2010.
  11. ↑ Tom Phillips (23 July 2009), Three Keyboard Cat Moon: and the internet did rejoice, Metro
  12. ↑ "Star Wars Merchandise - Star Wars Toys, LEGO & Clothing | StarWars.com". Shop.starwars.com. Retrieved 2013-02-04.
  13. ↑ Warmouth, Brian (2010-07-15). "Awesome Three Wolf Moon Shirt Gets 'Okami'-fied". MTV. Retrieved 2010-07-15.
  14. ↑ "SDCC Update: Triple Function Design". Capcom. 2010-07-14. Retrieved 2010-07-14.
  15. ↑ "Portal 2 Three Turret Moon T-Shirt". Retrieved 2013-03-18.
  16. ↑ "Guild Wars 2 - Lunar Wolf".

External links

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