Looney Tunes shirts

NEW Looney Tunes T-Shirts


ended - Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Auction grade: D-

Starting bid: $3.99

Final sale price: $26.55


Up for sale in this auction is a small collection of six t-shirts with various cartoon characters. The seller claims that in addition to being brand new, they are also exclusive and cannot be purchased in stores.

Supposedly some (or all) of the shirts still have their tags attached. It stands to reason that A) they may have initially been given away as promotional items, or B) they were discontinued and most likely sold for very low prices at bargain stores. If they do have tags attached, then my guess is that option B is closer to being correct.

Let's start at the top of the auction and see why it received such a low score.

The title definitely needs more work. It's way too vague and doesn't have nearly enough key words to draw in the bidders. In this case I would mention something like "LOT of 6" or "x6" to give the people a general idea of how many shirts are up for auction. I would also throw out a few character names or even some of the shirt sizes.

In the main body of text, it's good that the seller mentioned that the shirts are from a pet- and smoke-free home. Lots of people have allergies to one thing or another (myself included), and articles of clothing can potentially contain a lot of the allergic particles and cause a nasty reaction.

It's also good the the seller made a listing of the different shirts and their sizes. The seller does not mention whether or not these shirts are in children or adult sizes. It's safe to assume that they're for children, but back in the early 1990's, Warner Brothers did a big push with adult clothing featuring some of their more famous characters. Even if it's something that appears to be obvious (like here), you still need to mention whether or not it's a child or adult size (can also be mentioned in the title).

A big problem with this auction is that the picture sucks. You can clearly see one of the shirts, but that's it. The others are either wrinkled or covered by other shirts. Three of the listed shirts are hard to tell apart in the picture. An above shot looking straight down at the shirts would have been a much better picture.

Here's another problem:
"1 shirt. XXL. Has a print of Joe Cool. This shirt has three minor spots that you can barely see. I don't think these spots are permanent and they can be easily washed out."

First, this Joe Cool character is also known as Snoopy. One of those names will have a lot more searches than the other. It scares me that somebody advertising cartoon character t-shirts couldn't recognize this one.

Second, when mentioning flaws in an item, you need to take a good picture of those flaws if you expect to sell it online. People are very hesitant in buying anything damaged, especially when they have to take somebody else's word for it.

Third, the seller downplays the damage. Permanent is a strong word to throw out when talking about something that is damaged. If you honestly don't think that the damage is that bad, don't ever use that word. Just mention that a quick run through the washer will take care of the spots.

By not having a picture and trying to downplay the damage, that tells me that, in-fact, the opposite is true. This has the impression that the spots may come out if you use some serious scrubbing or a really powerful detergent. In other words, this is the seller saying "I warned you" when you write back and complain that the spots won't come out of the shirt.


Overall, this advertisement needs to be completely modified if the seller wants to try to sell these shirts online. Between a new title, more elaborate text, and better pictures, this one needs help. The only reasons I didn't give it a failing score was that the seller had the right ideas with listing the shirt designs & sizes, and by having a group picture with the shirts. The ideas were half-heartedly executed along with everything else.