Three Wolf Moon

Brian Govern, review author

Antonia Neshev, creator of the Three Wolf Moon design

Michael McGloin, art director of The Mountain Corporation

The Three Wolf Moon T-shirt, created by The Mountain Corporation, gained popularity after attracting sarcastic reviews on Amazon.com attributing great power to it, such as making the wearer irresistible to women, striking fear into other males, and having magical healing abilities. These reviews were made mainly by members of the Bodybuilding.com Misc section.[2] Brian Govern, a law student at Rutgers University,[1] was searching for a school book on Amazon and was led to the Three Wolf Moon T-shirt by an Amazon recommendation which had been targeted at students purchasing college semester books.[3] He decided to write a review of the shirt on a whim as he did not actually own the shirt. His faux-serious review as "Bee-Dot-Govern" in November 2008 concluded:[4]

Pros: Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women Cons: Only 3 wolves (could probably use a few more on the 'guns'), cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed, wolves would have been better if they glowed in the dark.

Since this original review was posted, more than 2,300 similar reviews have been posted.[5] Some reviewers have uploaded images showing famous people wearing the shirt.[6]

The shirt attracted further interest when it became popular on networking sites such as Digg and Facebook and was then lauded in conventional media as an Internet phenomenon.[3] German scholar Melvin Haack considers it to be a notable example of a redneck joke.[7] The reviews have been included in studies of such online sarcasm. Such sarcasm tends to confound analysis of customer reviews and so the texts have been analysed to determine which elements might identify sarcasm. One common example found in n-gram analysis was "alpha male".[8]

The T-shirt is manufactured by The Mountain Corporation,[9] a wholesale clothing company in Keene, New Hampshire, United States.[10] Their art director, Michael McGloin, said that they were making many more shirts in response to the great demand which had made it the top-selling item in Amazon's clothing store.[2] Due to the success of the shirt, the New Hampshire Division of Economic Development made it their "official New Hampshire T-shirt of economic development" and awarded it as a prize for innovation.[11]

A similar shirt featuring Keyboard Cats instead of wolves has been produced at the T-shirt design site Threadless. In July 2009, this was the most highly rated design there.[12]

The official Star Wars online store created a "Moon Over My Ewok" shirt that parodies Three Wolf Moon with Ewoks and the Death Star in place of wolves and a moon.[13]

Capcom prepared a limited run through iam8bit of a "Three Wolf God Sun" shirt for the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con International, featuring images of the wolf gods Shiranui, Amaterasu and Chibiterasu from their video games Ōkami and Ōkamiden.[14][15]

Minecraft has parodied the design in its own T-shirt merchandise, replacing the wolves with Creepers, an iconic enemy featured in the game.

Rooster Teeth have also created a variant of the shirt featuring enemies from the web series RWBY called Three Beowolf Moon.[16]

There is a tattoo and a poster of the design in The Sims 3. Also, there is a T-shirt with the design, but with llamas instead of wolves, in The Sims 3: University Life Expansion Pack.

On an episode of the U.S. version of The Office entitled "Niagara", Dwight wears the shirt to go out on the town, believing that it will attract women because the howling wolves are "suggestive".

The Valve online store once sold a shirt with three Sentry Turrets from Portal looking at a moon.[17]

Grumpy Cat has a version called "3 Grumpy Cat Moon", Doge a version called "3 Doge Moon".

There is a dog tag in the game Battlefield 3 called "6 Wolf Moon" which is obtained from a Dr. Pepper promotion. The dog tag has this design scratched onto it with six wolves instead of three.

In Episode 1 of Season 9 of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Mac is wearing the Three Wolf Moon shirt.

In Skullgirls, Beowulf's level 3 super is based on the Three Wolf Moon shirt, the Three Wulf Moonsault. The first three hits cause wolf sihoullettes to appear and ends with Beowulf delivering a body slam while briefly shown in front of a full moon.

In Guild Wars 2, if three rangers use the Call of the Wild skill simultaneously, a 'Lunar Wolf' is summoned. The animation of each skill depicts a wolf howling at the moon similar to one shown in the T-shirt.[18] The Wolf Rank Finisher also features an animation resembling the design.

In Episode 4 of Season 1 of Mr. Robot, Mobley is wearing the Three Wolf Moon shirt.

In the video game NEO Scavenger the player can find a "Three Dog Moon" shirt which will make Dogmen less likely to attack them.

In the video game The Wolf Among Us, if you get all of the trophies in the game on PlayStation consoles, the platinum image has a version of the image with Bigby Wolf as the wolves.

Georgetown University created a parody of the "Three Wolf Moon" shirt using images of their mascot Jack the Bulldog as a promotion for students attending a 2015 basketball game.[19]

• Artist's website