Want to know why Tony Stark calls Spider-Man “Underoos” in Captain America: Civil War?
We’ve got the answer for you… Its as mundane an activity as mundane gets in life.
Undeterred, Weiss found a silver lining amidst the ashes of his Archie project.
We want to make a pitch to Hanes Underwear.
I said, Well, I wouldnt put a picture of Archie on it like a polo shirt.
Let me think about that.
I went home and I sketched out Underoos.
I didnt know they were Underoos at the time.
I looked at that and said, Hmm, thats good, thats nice.
Im a cartoon lover.
When I was a kid that was my escape in the 40s.
These werent novelty items, but practical everyday wear meant to survive the daily grind of being a kid.
Its a way of participating in an ancient folklore.
Its like fairy tales.
Grimms fairy tales were the same thing.
They were all done long before the Grimm Brothers did them.
That was the eighteenth century execution of those characters.
Because I remembered when I was growing up, there was the Davy Crocket cap.
I had to have one, everybody had to have one, and it just made you feel good.
Davy Crockett was, in a way, a cartoon character with a mythology about him.
Thats who Davy Crockett was, and the Deer Slayer [too].
These are Odysseus, these are the travelers.
Those were the good Underoos, and thats why kids loved them.
They loved them because they recognized the authenticity of them.
And they could, for a brief time, become that character.
I was building these for my kids.
But I asked him one day, What are these things, Billy?
because the agency working on it were having trouble naming them.
I said, Billy, what are these?
And he said, Theyre Underoos, Dad.
And I said, Billy, youre right.
It was like, You are absolutely right, Billy.
And thats how they got named.
Weiss says:
I sold Underoos to Fruit of the Loom.
It would never do a thing like this on [its] own.
Well put the logo on and package it.
Scott decided not to do it.
They chickened out also.
Fruit of the Loom said, Well, can we do it?
They said, Okay, we want to do it.
In 1977 Weiss sold the Underoos concept to the Union Underwear Company.
The company immediately went into production and released the brand the very next year.
from DC and Marvel Comics.
Made in various combinations of cotton and polyester, even parents approved of them for their durability and practicality.
It was introduced, actually, in three test markets.
Even Sears, Sears Roebuck at the time, they put it in their catalog.
It was their only product that was not a Sears product in the Sears stores and the Sears catalog.
It was very, very hot.
I lost control of the product when I sold it to Fruit of the Loom.
And what I urged them to do was not put any contemporary characters in it.
Keep the old ones.
Many newer releases featured shirts that sported no-frills stock images.
All of this is proof that a great idea lives forever.
The appeal of comics and animation is not lost upon Larry Weiss.
He was able to discover the fountain of youth that Juan Ponce de Leon never did.
Its those cartoon characters, thinking about them will keep you fresh.
Theyre going to ruin his mind.
But what it did, of course, is it just makes your imagination very fertile and work.
I said, Hey, Mom!
Remember what you said about the comic books?
She said, Oh, yeah.
