In the late 80′s and early 90′s, Salem Sports put out hundreds of these “big head” caricature tee shirts. They made them for athletes of all the major sports and also produced special versions for all divisional and world champions in their respective sports.
There was a place in Jersey called the Union Market. This was a huge indoor retail space that was more of a mall than a flea market. For an ten year old kid, this place had everything you could’ve ever wanted. During my early years I bought everything there. A venus fly trap, baseball cards, fart spray, fake poop, crystal necklace, 2 Live Crew cassettes, sick motherfuckin’ UNLV Runnin’ Rebels Starter parka, a Metallica “Metal Up Your Ass” tee shirt, Brian Bosworth Oklahoma #44 jersey, bootleg Motley Crue video, rainbow Astros replica jersey, and a few posters of girls washing cars in daisy dukes. The best place in the market though was called “Marcus Stadium”. They had everything….all the Salem caricature shirts, Starter jackets and caps, SI posters, The Game “bar” caps, and all the official on-field game jerseys you could need. If that place was frozen in time and opened back up today, it would be insane…. big up to my pops for spoiling me back in the day. I had both the official Carl Banks and LT jerseys as a 9 year old in 1986. Forever Fresh…
Anyway…..back to the subject at hand. These Salem tees were (and still are), amazing. Every player had a caricature and you can still find several today on eBay and places like Coat of Arms, For All To Envy and Fruition. Some people ask ridiculous prices, but i’ve found several in the $20-40 range in the past couple years. Just be careful when ordering. Apparently people were a lot skinnier 23 years ago….there were also other brands who got into the game and we have a couple of those pictured here as well. You can also check out some updated parody parody versions from Undrcrwn. Over the past few years at CK we carried shirts with images of Biggie, Tupac, Tyson, The Fab Five, Michael Jackson and Muhammad Ali.
click for the gallery
*update: added a lot more images on 9/18 thanks to my favorite site this past week For All To Envy / And Still LaBrea
