Apple Picasso Logo T-Shirts

[bobabrett]

I'm looking for someone that has experience or knows something about the Apple Picasso logo T-shirts.

I recently came into possession of one via an estate sale. It was in a pile of shirts for $2! But upon further research, I'm confused by some of the variants. There are several on ebay, but each have different tags and some have "Apple" on the back and others have "Macintosh" on the back.

I came across the Apple Yearbook T-Shirt book and it is in there listed as a shirt that was given to specific units of the design part of the company. However, I also found a website post that they sold these for a time in the Apple Campus gift shop.

Photos of the version that I have below. There is "Apple" on the back, and there is a plain tag with no t-shirt brand or copyright.

If anyone has any information about these shirts, I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[dmccloud]

It would be hard to track any of the Picasso era shirts to a specific time/place/department. Those were also handed out at conferences such as MacWorld in the early days of the Mac platform, or otherwise used as promotional goods by retailers.

 

[bobabrett]

It would be hard to track any of the Picasso era shirts to a specific time/place/department. Those were also handed out at conferences such as MacWorld in the early days of the Mac platform, or otherwise used as promotional goods by retailers.

Thanks for the info @dmccloud. Do you know why some would have "Apple" on the back, and others "Macintosh" ?

 

[dmccloud]

Thanks for the info @dmccloud. Do you know why some would have "Apple" on the back, and others "Macintosh" ?

I can see one major reason that would address both internal and external concerns. For example, one would not expect teams at Apple who were still working on the Lisa or Apple II at the time the Mac launched to be wearing Macintosh shirts, especially given how Jobs effectively ran the Mac team as a separate entity at that time. Second, Apple was still selling Apple IIs in mass quantities at the time, so having Apple-branded shirts as promotional gifts/swag would make sense in those situations where the Mac was either being downplayed or not even part of the conversation.