Off the Shelf

Oregon Partnership, a Portland-based substance-abuse prevention group, has forced Federated Department Stores Inc. (Cincinnati) to pull T-shirts with drinking-related messages off Macy’s shelves.

The items in question, in the teen apparel section, were shirts screenprinted with such messages as “Beer, It’s What’s for Breakfast” and “I’m Working on My Six Pack” (which showed a six-pack of beer, playing on the expression for toned abs). There were also shirts emblazoned with messages referring to “Beer Pong,” a drinking game.

Judy Cushing, who heads Oregon Partnership, raised the protest after seeing back-to-school ads in August for Meier & Frank, the local department store now re-branded as Macy’s. Such shirts are actually banned at Portland schools, where the dress code prohibits clothing that is “alcohol-, tobacco- or drug-related.”

“If they want to sell those T-shirts, fine, but don’t sell them in the back-to-school section,” she said, noting that in Oregon nearly 30 percent of high school juniors report having binged on alcohol in the previous month.

“Clearly they were inappropriate for under-age customers,” said Federated chairman, president and ceo Terry Lundgren.

Last year, J. C. Penney Co. Inc. (Plano, Texas) angered parents when it featured T-shirts with beer and whisky logos in back-to-school circulars. The company did not remove the shirts, but vowed to stop advertising them as back-to-school items and moved them from the young men’s sections into the men’s.