Duo poke fun at carmaker's mounting troubles on T-shirts

Toyota wants do-overs on 8.5 million cars worldwide. The mess continues to spread, and it'll ultimately mean billions of dollars out of pocket for the home office in Japan along with heaven knows what problems for the people who build and sell Toyotas here.

Clearly, the situation calls for T-shirts.

Matt Maul of St. Clair Shores and George Peter of Sterling Heights also do coffee mugs, buttons and bumper stickers and, in fact, it's those last two that are faring the best in their selection of Toyota goods. With sales in the dozens since last week, chances are they're moving better than Camrys.

"Toyota," the new line says: "Brakes/Steering Sold Separately." Or, if you prefer, "Safety Sold Separately."

"I'm never sure how people will react. We're making light of serious stuff," says Maul, 48. But so far, no one has punched them in the grille, and Toyota was both too tempting and too newsworthy a target to ignore.

Maul and Peter, 44, started Tabloid T-shirts two years ago and have hundreds of products for sale at http://www.tabloidtshirts.com">www.tabloidtshirts.com. Pick a topic or a team, and they've probably made fun of it, at prices as low as $3.50 for one of the handsome 2 1/4 -inch badges your grandchildren will be proud to own as long as someone reminds them who Charlie Sheen and Rod Blagojevich were.

Their best-seller so far features a certain former Detroit mayor and the message, "I did not have text with that woman." They've also moved lots of merchandise with a picture of a well-known racehorse named Rachel Alexandra against a pink background with the slogan "Girl Power."

The filly sells particularly well in England, Maul says, "and for the life of us, we can't understand why." As equal-opportunity opportunists, they've also done nicely with items both praising and ridiculing Sarah Palin.

Maul and Peter both work full-time in computers. Tabloid T-shirts is a sideline conducted largely online, Maul explains, "because we can't stand to be around each other more than an hour at a time."

He tends to handle politics and Peter leans toward sports, though that's not an absolute. If one of them comes up with verbiage and the other can figure out the issue it's referring to without being told, they'll probably put it on the market.

A California company called Zazzle makes it all possible by producing goods to order, doing away with that messy old business model of stacking cartons of unsold T-shirts in the basement.

Zazzle also keeps most of the money, so Maul and Peter continue to ponder buying some expensive equipment and sallying forth on their own. Unfortunately, that would also mean accepting responsibility for the raw materials.

"We have this mental image of our T-shirts catching fire," Maul says -- and the last thing they want is for Toyota to print T-shirts making fun of them.

Not your average fundraiser

An invitation showed up the other day for a "European pheasant hunt to support Mike Bouchard," and I'm sure you're thinking the same thing I did: What's wrong with American pheasants?

Actually, "European" refers to the style of hunt that will take place March 5 in Metamora, though the result is pretty much the same for the pheasant. To reserve your spot, e-mail melissa@bouchardforgovernor.com">melissa@bouchardforgovernor.com.

I called the very same Melissa to ask how Bouchard's friends decided on a pheasant hunt instead of, say, bowling, and a spokeswoman responded with a prepared statement about the Oakland County sheriff's love for the outdoors and his vision for fixing Lansing and getting Michigan back to work. It seemed like they missed an opportunity for some birds-of-a-feather jokes, but that's modern politics.

As for the event, a $500 donation gets you coffee, doughnuts and hunting, followed by hors d'oeuvres. It's not the most man-of-the-people fundraiser a Republican gubernatorial candidate ever had, but at least it's not another one of those events with rubber chicken.

nrubin@detnews.com">nrubin@detnews.com (313) 222-1874