“Nearly everyone is getting used to seeing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s official message on TV. But some people are seeing him on unofficial wares. Obama’s face is emblazoned on thousands of graphic T-shirts sold online, on street corners and in chain stores. For some, the icon is all about Obama’s message, for others it’s simply a hip fashion statement.”

The excerpt above is from a Chicago Public Radio story about Obama’s transition from political candidate to pop culture icon, with his likeness appearing on everything from t-shirts to trinkets.

The wildfire spread of unofficial goods can partly be attributed to the popularity of Obama’s message, but not entirely; we’ve had popular candidates before.

What we haven’t had before, though, is a candidate with such a strong brand right out of the gate. Obama’s camp is also the first to completely grasp the potential of the internet as a vehicle for campaigning and have done a better job harnessing it’s viral and social natures than any of it’s competitors.

The result? Well, enough shirts for us to do a round-up of awesome Obama tees (in no particular order, of course):

1. Obey Obama Progress Tee

From the OBEY Giant folks, this tee is imprinted with Shepard Fairey’s “Progress” design. $28.00 BUY NOW Also available for women.

2. Barak Obama is my Homeboy

These guys are the self-proclaimed “largest online grassroots campaign supporting Barack Obama”. They certainly have one of the most popular tees out there. You can buy it, and others, from their site, as well as setup your own blog to talk about the presidential race. $18.45 BUY NOW

3. The Obama-Bama Tee

Originally just for kids (because really, what’s cuter than kids with a political opinion?), lowercase tee now offers these for grown-ups too. $17.00 BUY NOW

4. Audacity To Hope

Looks like shirts from apb have been selling out… they’re the most urban designs we’ve found and clearly popular. This design, and the other designs they have available, are still available in a few sizes. $24.99 BUY NOW

5. Captain Obama

This is probably our favorite of the all the tees we found while doing research for this article. Designed by AJ Dimarucot for Thriving Ink, it’s just one of the different shirts created for their Hope is Dope line of shirts. Part of the proceeds for sales of the shirts will go to charity. $21.95 BUY NOW

So there you have it, our wrap-up of our favorite obama shirts out there right now.

And if you need to pimp your politics even more check out our buddies over at badge review, because this week they’re featuring Obama buttons.

Teefury is a brand spankin’ new site built on a familiar concept, but with a twist. Something like a mix between shirt.woot and tinyshowcase (except for tees), the site offers a limited number of a single design each day at an awesome price of just nine bucks each.

What makes it different than woot is that the designs printed come from already established artists that have been hand-picked from the folks at Teefury.

It looks like day 1 was a huge success, with the premier design selling out sometime in the early evening.

And our favorite thing? It’s a little morbid, but the dead bird (from their logo) that shows up when a design sells out:

We’ll be keeping our eye on this one!

We’ve taken a few days to move PopCultureTees over to mediatemple.com (because seriously, anybody who’s anybody uses them) and we’re really looking forward to the site running smoother and faster.

At the same time, we made a few minor changes to the site that we’re really excited about:

1. Advertising - Yes, now you too can gain worldwide exposure for your screen printing company or t-shirt store on PopCultureTees! Our ad rates are really reasonable, and help support this site. Check out all the details here.
2. New Features Articles - They’re coming! Look out for our first installment of “Friday Five: Designer Series” soon. This weekly feature will showcase one t-shirt artist and their answers to five deeply controversial, soul-searching questions.

   Well. Not really… but there are five questions, and you will get to learn more about some of the hottest t-shirt designers out there.

3. Follow us on Twitter! Yes, we’ve given into the dark side of ADD posting. Find out what’s going on behind the scenes of PopCultureTees, plus we’ll be posting t-shirt links that didn’t make the site. PopCultureTees on Twitter.

We hope you enjoy the new stuff!

Please excuse this brief interruption in your daily dose of cool Pop Culture Tees… but we’re moving servers!

We’ll be back in a blink.

After the move, look for new tees, new features, and fresh content!

Fantastic! Threadless is now offering actual prints of some of their popular t-shirts designs. ALA tinyshowcase.com, they will offer a limited run of 3 new prints every Monday. Naturally, each design is screen-printed.

The first three designs are some of my favorites from their lineup:

• Infinity MPG
• Permafrost Pollution
• Tree Town

Personally? I’m getting Tree Town.