Sometimes when you’re looking at a Zombie bashing product for a review, the prevailing thought isn’t just why anyone would be so bigoted and hateful toward the Undead minority, but some smaller, less consequential detail that completely unravels the internal ‘logic’ of said product, leaving you hard-pressed to focus on the important issues.

TV Tropes famously calls this sort of phenomenon ‘Fridge Logic’:

Half an hour after the show is over, A. Random Viewer is staring into his refrigerator, vaguely bemused by the fact that his six-pack of beer has somehow become a two-pack of beer. Rather than work out how this might have happened, it occurs to him to wonder how in the hell Sydney Bristow went from Hungary to Melbourne, Australia, then to LA, all within 24 hours.

It didn’t bother him during the show. It wasn’t until he discovered he was running short of beer that it became an issue.

Fridge Logic has been the writer’s-room term for these little Internal Consistency issues for a good while, as in “Don’t sweat the fridge logic, we’ve got bigger fish to fry. We’ve only got 20 minutes left to work in three costume changes, a foreign language, and a weird wig.” It refers to some illogical or implausible plot point that the audience doesn’t realize during the show, but only long afterwards.

I bring this up because a few days ago I saw a page on a shirt spoofing Smokey the Bear and his famous campaign against forest fires, this time warning of, that’s right, the Zombie Apocalypse:

We live in dangerous times. There are all sorts of dangers – biological, chemical, social. If one stupid human makes one stupid mistake, we could have the apocalypse on our hands in mere days. If you miss the signs, if you have your head in the sand, if you just can’t bring yourself to shoot Grandma when she’s clearly infected with the virus, then YOU have caused the modern day forest fire that is the zombie apocalypse. Be prepared, zombie watchers. The time will come and you will be responsible for saving or damning the world.

Zombey the bear admonishes “Only you can prevent the zombie apocalypse” on a 100% cotton, cedar t-shirt.

Bonus points for the fact that this shirt is being sold by the Anti-Zombie bigots at Think Geek.

Take a look at that shirt. Yes, it shows a Zombified Smokey the Bear, in the context of a campaign to oppress the Differently Animated, and that automatically makes it suspect, but take a closer look.

Look at his hat.

That’s right, the bear has a hat that says ‘Zombey’ on it! So here we have supposedly an example of your classic Zombie Apocalypse, where the shambling, unintelligent, ravenous Undead stalk the Earth in search of delicious flesh, and yet our alleged example of this mindless, world ending scourge has taken the time to go get custom apparel printed with his new Zombie name on it?

Seriously?

Here’s a new ground rule: if you can afford to take the time to have custom apparel printed, it’s not an Apocalypse.

(Corollary: if your Zombies are having custom headgear made they’re probably not mindless automatons. Just saying.)

Perhaps we’re to believe his name was ‘Zombey’ before?

Which, considering the circumstances, might be the cosmic order of the universe showing itself. Name a kid Jeeves, they end up a butler, name an anthropomorphic bear ‘Zombey’ and sooner or later he’ll be Undead.

Like I said, the Fridge Logic here has thrown this review completely off the rail. Let’s get it back on track:

The shirt is sold by known Anti-Zombie bigots at Think Geek and explicitly advocates preemptive action against the fearmongering and completely fanciful notion of a ‘Zombie Apocalypse’.

Therefore, it is Anti-Zombie.

Tags: Anti-Zombie Products, Clothing

This entry was posted by John Sears on Sunday, May 1st, 2011 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.