It almost reminds me of those Asian clothes with putatively English phrases on them that have actually been put together by someone who speaks no English. “DRY ROCKNROLL LIFESTYLE for PARADE LOVE” that sort of thing. Like whoever designed this was equally out of touch… but not with the language.
(Side note: You’re right about the dynamic, but it’s all mediated through the ass-kissing salesmen — buyers never even meet the designers. I used to work designing licensed Looney Tunes t-shirts and such; we in the art dept. were all big fans and would irritate the WB brand managers by aping Chuck Jones instead of xeroxing bits of the stylebook, but our salespeople somehow were not even remotely familiar with the characters, so made us do things like Tweety as a gangsta badass who was for some reason the same size as Taz. When we were tasked with brainstorming/prototyping a line of Valentine’s Day boxer shorts, they shot down the obvious Pepe Le Pew one because “he doesn’t sell.” Never mind that they hadn’t ever tried to.)
