Meatbun is a fairly new video game inspired tee brand out of Cali that takes ideas from classic games and transforms them into something that still looks fashionable as a graphic tee. Besides the clever twists on classic games what I dig about them is that if someone doesn’t know the game reference their designs don’t end up looking like geeky gamer tees which allows their product to work on multiple fronts.

I picked up their 1942/Street Fighter inspired design which is a great take on the old school top down shooter and mixing it with Cammy from SF and turning her into a bombshell pin-up like a war plane would have painted on the side. That’s where Meatbun is doing something better than say slapping a drawing of Mario on a shirt or just printing a games’ logo on a shirt like you would find in a Hot Topic or the like.

I’m not entirely sure what kind of tees they’re printing on since they’re (nicely) relabeled, but it looks and feels pretty much exactly like American Apparel. I’d wager they are relabeled AA tees, but all the same it’s a nice slim fitting 100% ring spun cotton tee. When I picked this up they were sold out of the super appropriate olive colorway which is what I really wanted, but the gold looks pretty sweet too. The graphic on the tee seems to be 4C process print which leads to some pretty serious ‘hand’, but generally this is how these prints always end up so I can’t fault them too much for it. I do think the graphic is printed a bit too small or if they had printed the same size graphic a bit higher on the chest it would’ve looked nicer. Check out this pic from their site and you can decide for yourself:

While it’s pretty normal to get freebies in your order, and Meatbun is no different with some buttons and stickers thrown in, they went that little extra bit and made some super nice die cut stickers in the shape of their logo and a button pack instead of the normal loose buttons. Customers remember special additions like this!

Moleskine not included

Apart from my review of this tee I should mention they just recently put up their newest set of tees and I really really like what they’re are doing with the brand and doing flips on well known gaming icons/elements and incorporating their name/brand. The 1942 tee was a part of their first ever set of tees and i’m guessing internally they wanted to push the brand a bit now that they’re gaining some attention, it’s easy when you’re starting out to get caught up in putting out cool ideas and forget (or feel unsure) about pushing the brand name. It’s great to see young brands form in front of you and be there at the beginning of it.

VERDICT: 4 out of 5
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