Threadless have teamed up with Japanese t-shirt giant Graniph to produce alternate versions of the famous Control Bear. Trust me. It’s famous. In Japan anyway.

Design Tshirts Store Graniph, or Graniph for short, have been selling Control Bear t-shirts for as long as I remember and there have already been tons of versions and collaborations. Last year (I think) Control Bear got its own website and became an art project.

Link: ControlBear.com

Those designs might look a bit familiar and that’s because they are all reworkings of popular Threadless t-shirts. Scroll down to see their transformations.

Links: Original | Control Bear | Graniph

Links: Original | Control Bear | Graniph

Links: Original | Control Bear | Graniph

Links: Original | Control Bear | Graniph

As you may have gathered from the links I have so kindly provided, the t-shirts are available at both Threadless and Graniph. Although I don’t think they are the same shirt and there might be a few more differences too.

One reason I don’t think they are the same shirt is that both Threadless and Graniph have their own t-shirts and another is that on the Threadless site you can see that there is a blue band on the inside of the collar but not on the Graniph t-shirt. I wonder if this is the new Threadless t-shirt that I have been hearing about.

The packaging is also pretty cool. Check out these images. (Click for closeups) They would make nice gifts.

It’s an interesting collaboration and I hope we see more Control Bears over at Threadless! I know we’ll see more at Graniph.

Links: Threadless | Graniph