T-Shirts in Distress

In the realm of Pokémon merchandise, there is currently a hot topic. UNIQLO had announced the winners of its 2019 T-shirt design contest, for which the theme this year is plainly obvious. It's a great contest with great submitted designs. And yet, it's a contest that has been marred with controversy, which explains the "distress" part of the title of this post. It becomes something that I have to address in a post on this blog.

For this contest, many designs were submitted by many aspiring and creative Pokémon fans from around the world, but only 24 of those designs were selected for their excellence, and three in particular were chosen as top prize winners. The grand prize winner, in fact, would have had the opportunity for the shirt to be featured in the upcoming Sword and Shield games for the Switch. The key point here is "would have had", since that's what exactly happened.

Two of the selected designs were found to have violated the rules for the competition, one of which is, quite unfortunately, the grand prize winner. The design was found to be present on things other than T-shirts and certainly not for the competition. The creator of the design also effectively and perhaps inadvertently divulged that the design had been first distributed elsewhere before being submitted, a clear violation. The result was that the design and one other were disqualified and the privileges were revoked. It is, in a word, a cause for "distress".

Looking at all the selected designs, it seems hard to believe that this has occurred. The problem does seem to solely rest on the participating creator, who should know that a contest like this means a lot to anyone and everyone involved with Pokémon, especially if the grand prize is something as important as the above. It's a huge disappointment for many - people in my raid group, figure group, and main series group had been eyeing the grand prize t-shirt as well, to name a few - and it may not sit well with them too.

This contest had appeared great initially, even to myself as a huge fan. But then what happened happened, and now everyone has to deal with the fallout. Even so, despite the controversy it has generated, the contest is still appreciable for being appealing to many people, because Pokémon does. It's just that the burn from the embers of this hot topic will likely be felt for quite some time, a "distress" to be sure.

One year ago: Trading Items?
Two years ago: Retro Rendezvous