Earlier this year, in anticipation of the upcoming World Cup, Adidas released a t-shirt featuring a buxom cartoon woman, a soccer ball, and the slogan: “Lookin’ to Score.” The shirt raised hackles in the tournament’s host country of Brazil, where locals, seeing a dehumanizing, oversexed stereotype imposed on Brazilian women once again, did not appreciate the joke. Even Dilma Rousseff, the current (and first female) president of Brazil, felt the need to weigh in, taking to Twitter to condemn the extant culture of sexual exploitation. Adidas recalled the shirt.
But this shirt, crude as it may be, is part of a long, rich history of tone-deaf work in the t-shirt game. Dumb ideas somehow regularly make it through the corporate meat grinder, down the product development garbage chute, past a team of marketing monkeys, and on to you, the consumer. Just making it past so many eyes makes these shirts incredible artifacts of bureaucratic malfunction, a point reflected in the booming secondary market for these offensive rarities.
So here are some of the best, worst t-shirts—seven of the most egregious lightweight cotton failures ever to be yanked from the shelves of your local mall.
Illustrations by Alexis Markavage

















Two people study a mapCanva
Foggy Chinese villageCanva

Older woman drinking coffee and looking out the window.Photo credit:
An older woman meditates in a park.Photo credit:
Father and Daughter pose for a family picture.Photo credit:
Woman receives a vaccine shot.Photo credit: 
A young lion playing with an older animal
A colorful bird appears to be yelling at it a friend
An otter appears like it's holding its face in shock
Two young foxes playing in the wild
Two otters appear to be laughing together in the water
A fish looks like it's afraid of the shark behind it
A bird appears to be ignoring their partner
A squirrel looks like it's trapped in a tree
A bear holds hand over face, making it appear like it's exhausted
A penguin looks like its trying to appear inconspicuous
A young squirrel smells a flower
An insect appears to be smiling and waving at the camera
An otter lies on its side apparently cracking up laughing
Two monkeys caught procreating
A young chimp relaxes with its hands behind its head
A snowy owl appears to be smiling
A monkey holds finger to face as if it's lost in thought
A turtle crossing the road under a 'slow' sign
A polar bear lies on its back like it's trying to hide
A rodent strikes human-like pose
An excerpt of the faxCanva

Robert Redford advocating against the demolition of Santa Monica Pier while filming "The Sting" 1973