This Is The Single Most Embarrassing Item In the 'Fly on the Wall' Fan Store

The gift-giving holidays are right around the corner, so it’s time to show the Saturday Night Live nostalgia podcast-enjoyer in your life some love with a present that screams, “I missed the official merch drop.”

Now that podcasts have become the dominant form of comedy media, it’s not surprising that industry leaders such as David Spade and Dana Carvey are getting into the branded merchandising racket – after all, a tacky hoodie is better than all those supposed testosterone boosters that Joe Rogan hawks on his show. Show business is, after all, a business, and, last month, the Fly on the Wall podcast had a pop-up merch sale for the superfans who need something to drape over their bodies that tells the world that they’ve heard Cheri Oteri’s impression of Lorne Michaels.

The limited-time Fly on the Wall merchandise cash grab only lasted one week, but, thankfully, in this age of drop-shipping (and, very possibly, wanton disregard for other people’s intellectual property), there is an alternative available for holiday shoppers whose loved ones want to look just like Dana Carvey: flyonthewall.shop, a year-round online retailer that claims to be the “OFFICIAL Merchandise Store for Fly On The Wall fans.”

So, if your spouse, sibling or grandchild is a massive fan of meandering anecdotes from SNL in the 1990s, why not put a smile on their face this Christmas by buying them the single dumbest item for sale at flyonthewall.shop, which is this pillow cover featuring the thumbnail from the Fly on the Wall reaction video to the Jimmy Kimme Live! suspension:

Throughout the entertainment industry, unlicensed online merch stores showing stock photos of consumer goods with terrible graphics slapped on them capitalize on the popularity of shows like Fly on the Wall. Now, I can't say for certain whether or not flyonthewall.shop earned Spade and Carvey's blessing to open this slop shop, but I would like to believe that the actual podcast hosts would call for more quality control so that they don't accidentally sell hoodies advertising a completely different, real-estate-focused Fly on the Wall podcast:

And, if flyonthewall.shop is somehow as “official” as it advertises, Spade and Carvey are going to have a lot of explaining to do when Atlantic Records finds out they're selling hoodies for the 1985 AC/DC album Fly on the Wall:

It sure seems like some incredibly lazy drop-shipper ran a program to set up a barebones Fly on the Wall shop using JPEGs scraped from Google images and a connection to an overseas sweatshop. But, really, is flyonthewall.shop that much more embarrassing than a couple of retirement-age comedy stars trotting out a clothing line to advertise their YouTube channel about reliving the glory days?

Look, it's an inescapable fact of our modern times that every famous comedian will, at some point, start a podcast. And, in all fairness, Carvey and Spade's show is better than most. But, really, we shouldn't encourage these podcasters to further diversify their business portfolios and milk our nostalgia for every last penny by slapping their logo on some plastic t-shirt sewn by foreign children making 25 cents a day.

Comedy podcast merch sets a bad precedent, and it could have cascading effects throughout the industry – don't be surprised when we eventually live in a world where the Comedy Mothership refuses to admit audience members if the club's CIA-level surveillance tech detects that they're wearing less than three items of officially branded Joe Rogan Experience tactical gear.