Bootleg merchandise isn’t unique in the pantheon of sports memorabilia. Go within a two-block radius of most stadiums on game day and you’ll find someone selling an off-brand jersey where the colors aren’t quite right, and the Nike swoosh looks like it was painted with white out.
Current bootleg merch is mostly uninspired recreations of expensive products, but in the early 1990s the sports world was taken over by the phenomenon of The Simpsons. What we got was a bevy of shirts featuring Bart Simpson designed to let fans show the world they had attitude. For years the folks over at “Bootleg Bart” have dedicated themselves to chronicling knockoff Simpsons gear, now we can appreciate the best sports offerings.
It’s honestly scary how many variants of the Air Bart shirt there are, and it’s deeply unsettling to see Bart with such toned legs. During this era the NBA was rife with Bart shirts — the majority of which had him playing the game.
The weirdest, though, are the mashups. Like the Air Bart shirt, these were made for a few different teams and basically took their biggest star and replaced their head with Bart’s.
This Hornets hat needs to be appreciated as the only example of Bart taking over a mascot’s head.
The Pistons, along with the Bulls, had the biggest influx of bootleg Bart merchandise in the NBA. Chicago’s tended to focus on Bart as MJ, but the Detroit versions tended to create their own character “Bad Boy Bart.”
There was even one shirt where Air Bart and Bad Boy Bart ran head to head.
The NBA’s offerings were fairly standard mashups and team pride, but MLB is where they got really weird.
MLB is also the unquestioned champion of bootleg shirts courtesy of this Chicago White Sox shirt, which is so bad it needs to be seen to be believed.
At least the NBA variants pictured Bart as having attitude and some sort of athletic prowess. This is a fat Bart, having an aneurysm at the plate, while spouting a lame rhyme as the crowd mocks him for striking out? Who is this even for? If you own this shirt, I really want it.
Naturally, the NFL had Bart gear too, but evidence of it is really interesting. The only two parts of the country that seemed really into bootleg Bart were California and the now-AFC North.
The best shirts are the ones with a message, and no message was louder than this anti-alcohol Raiders shirt featuring Bart.
There were examples for overseas too, particularly in the English Premier League.
And of course hockey had their shirts too ...
Bootleg Bart shirts were so prolific in the early ’90s they even made it to Mount Everest — kind of. If you were one of the few brave people who try to climb it every year then there’s no doubt you saw “Mr. Nepal,” a wholly unique ripoff designed which turned Bart into a Sherpa.
The phenomenon was short-lived, and the majority of Bart merchandise disappeared in 1992. But we’ll always have the memories of times where knockoff merchandise wasn’t just jerseys and footwear, but popular characters put in weird settings for our ultimate enjoyment.