State of the Trout: THE TROUTMART COMETH

If you follow me on Twitter, you may already know that I’m planning to launch some merch. Why? Because why the hell not? That’s why next week, on Saturday, May 8th, Troutmart will have its grand opening! And today, I’m gonna give you all the information I have for you right now.

Show us pics of the merch! Certainly, friend! I’ve got something for everyone (who reads this blog and gets the inside jokes)!

Thirsty? How about this official Jealous Haters Book Club tumbler?

It’s steel, with text in multiple shades of…monochrome.

Are you cold? You could cozy up in an awesome hoodie:

 

Or maybe you’re not a Jealous Hater? Maybe you’re more the cum-burping gutter-slut type? Again, I’ve got you covered with leggings and t-shirts in so many awesome colors so you can really clash if you want to. Here are just two of the aforementioned colors:

Now, brace yourselves, because the all-over print logo is only available in the United States. But don’t fret! Though I don’t have a photo of it, the same logo will be available on t-shirts and hoodies (you’ll see those on Saturday).

There are other products and colors (or shades of…monochrome) that I just didn’t photograph because there are gonna be photos on the store itself and it just seemed like overkill to post pictures of everything.

But that’s only two designs. That’s not really a store, Jenny. Well, hold your horses, lil’ reader, because I’ve spent a lot of time on a lot of different designs getting ready to launch this thing. As a result, there will be one or two merch drops per month that will stay in the store forever, and occasionally there will be limited edition exclusives. This gives me a chance to not only plug my merch everywhere, every month, like some kind of manic salesperson of intensely strange wares but also to have time to get samples of the product so I know I’m only passing on quality stuff to you. The schedule for the rest of this year looks like:

JUNE:

• “Jealous Disaster,” commemorating the book that defeated me (pigeon included)
• “Scamlympics,” to celebrate the time a real Vegas performer/Olympic athlete left an anonymous comment here 
• Limited Edition: “C.B.G.S. Pride” which does what it says on the tin. It’s pride flag for pride month.

 

JULY:

• “Not my beaver, not my business”
• Limited Edition: “Trout Day” (because it’s my birthday, y’all!)

AUGUST:

• “Scambook for Haters,” celebrating five beautiful years since Lanizade published whatever the hell that was
• an original drawing off a neat animal I like that will remain a surprise for a while

SEPTEMBER:

• TBA spooky thing
• TBA spooky thing
• Limited Edition: “Trout-o-ween” and “Trick-or-Trout” and all of these are Halloween designs so you can get your spoopywear in advance of skeleton season

 

OCTOBER:

• “Nightmare Born” and “Queen of Hell” shirts to mercilessly promote my series

 

NOVEMBER:

• “With God as my witness…” I’ve been posting the same WKRP in Cincinnati fan art on my private FB every year for my family and friends and somebody said, “You should make that into a t-shirt” so I looked up the legal protections of fan art as transformative works and we’re good to go.
• “Beautiful Penis in the Moonlight,” an original work by moi (will probably be poster/canvas only but let’s see how this shakes out)

 

DECEMBER:

• “Mister Jealous” for those of you longing for the stereotypically backasswards imaginary Albania Erika made up in her head
• Limited Edition holiday design I haven’t decided to go with yet but it will probably be a dragon because dragons are neat

 

Wow! That’s a lot of work. And you already do a lot of work and you fall behind all the time. Aren’t you taking too much on? Why no, dear reader! Though the first two designs are text-based, the rest of them incorporate art, a thing I already like to do. And I don’t feel like this is “monetizing a hobby” so much as it’s having fun and drawing and being visually creative, which is a great outlet for me.

These prices seem steep (you say on Saturday). Print on demand. I don’t know what to tell ya. At least they’re not concert tee prices?

What about sizing? Because it’s print-on-demand, my options for finding inclusive sizing were…not so great. For example, the leggings? Those are for straight sizes only. Some styles of the shirts only go up to XXL. Some products do go up to 5X, and I’ll be sure to always include those. And if you’re just not down with clothes, I’ll always have some non-clothing items available, as well.

I hope this answered most of the questions I thought you would have.

Sincerely,
Trout
XOXOXO

P.S.: There will be another State of the Trout announcement next week that’s also gonna be pretty important and a Crave recap.