So the other day I was in Target… (what the heck am I saying?  I’m always in Target!  Sometimes I feel like I should just wear a red shirt when I go there and get it over with.  People already ask me for directions inside so I might as well look the part)

…with my boys (2 and 3 years old) buying diapers (what else, right?) and I strolled through the baby area (where they sell baby clothes, not babies).  Usually I find all kinds of great deals (clothes, not babies), especially in the clearance area.  I once got my oldest these two classic cartoon t-shirts for a $1.48 a piece.  One was a Tom and Jerry and the other a Jack Kirby Captain America.

The other day, I spied these:

These freakin’ amazing t-shirts are for kids 9 to 24 months.  The Save Ferris is for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the Back to the Future, a Stay Puff Marshmallow man for Ghostbusters, and a cool Star Wars one that said May The Force Be With You.  I was totally geeking out.  Not only were they baseball t-shirts but they had all these great 80’s movies on them!  I mean, if you think about it, even the baseball tee itself is kinda throwback to the 80’s.  It was just bloody awesome!

Then it hit me like a bolt of lightning in the middle of Target.  What do I always (without fail) see in the boy’s and baby area: graphic tees with either movies or comic book characters on them.  But not just any movie… but sci/fi movies… primarily from the 80’s.  And they usually had cool retro art like the kind you saw on the movie posters when they first came out.  And the comic books characters?  Always ‘old school’ images from the 60s or 70s.  I once saw an X-Men kid’s tee that was circa Chris Claremont 1980s with Marc Silvestri artwork.  Think Wolverine with his hair shaped like his helmet.

Right then and there, I realized who Target was targeting: geeky dads!

Who else would go crazy for the retro movie and comic book stuff and either buy it right then and there or wear their wives down until they bought it for them.  These clothes were made to elicit nostalgia and get the geeky dad to buy the tee shirts to show how cool their kids are.  Wearing a Barney t-shirt?  Lame.  Wearing a retro Save Ferris tee?  Frickin’ cool!  Does my son like ‘old school’ Tom and Jerry?  No.  Does he know who Captain America is or that Jack Kirby did the artwork?  No.  Does he wear those t-shirts?  No; his brother wears them because they are too small for him.  But he did.

Because I put them on him.

Because I’m a geeky dad (which I already knew – I knew it the moment I bought my oldest son this used Return of the Jedi picture book I had when I was a kid… just because I had it as a kid).

Target knows exactly who they are they are marketing these t-shirts to.

And we, the geeky dads, now know that we are being marketed to.

But we don’t care.  Because the shirts are cool.

You know I’m going back to get the Save Ferris and the Back to the Future shirts!  I’m thinking that my boys are going to go as Boys From The 80’s for Halloween (It’s a work in progress.  Don’t judge!).

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What about you?  Are you a geeky dad?  What stuff have you bought for your kids that they had no idea what it was but loved it just because their dad bought it for them?  Any cool t-shirt stories?  Spill your guts, geek!