Rob McElhenney's Moms Inspired It's Always Sunny's Most Bizarrely Profitable Joke
The gang on "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" are always coming up with schemes to try and make money without really doing any work, but one of those ridiculous ventures actually paid off behind the scenes. In the season 5 episode "Paddy's Pub: Home of the Original Kitten Mittens," the gang all try to come up with different promotional items they can try to sell at a merchandising convention, and the results are as wacky as you might imagine. Charlie (Charlie Day) comes up with the titular kitten mittens, which are little socks a person can put on their cat to muffle the sound of their footsteps, and that gets the whole gang started on ideas ranging from a shotgun that blasts people in the face with liquor to official Paddy's Pub, uh, eggs. It's a jumping-off point, okay?
Mac (Rob McElhenney) comes up with an idea that ends up actually being profitable for the guys — profitable enough that they later use the money made to buy a P. Diddy shrimping vessel in "The Gang Buys a Boat." That idea? Dick towel, a towel that folded over to reveal different-sized male genitalia. It's a crude joke that seems perfectly in line with the gang's sophomoric sense of humor, but the inspiration for it is decidedly more wholesome: McElhenney came up with the idea for the towel when he went on vacation with his moms!
Inspired by a beach classic
On the "Always Sunny Podcast" discussing the Kitten Mittens episode, McElhenney revealed that the idea for the ridiculous towel came to him when his mothers came to visit and they went to Venice Beach. While walking along the boardwalk, they spotted several stores with silly t-shirts outside:
"...I just always remember seeing those ridiculous ones with the bikinis. And I'd always be like, 'Who thinks that's funny?' Like, who would ever buy that? And so both my mothers come out and I'm back at the house and they come back from the beach and they're both wearing them, and they're like, 'Look at these! This is hilarious!' It's the funniest thing."
McElhenney's moms were delighted by the massive cartoon breasts on their new T-shirts, and it made Rob think about how to do something similar but with a towel instead. The very first version was drawn by none other than David Hornsby, who fans might know better as Rickety Cricket. They showed the towels to FX, who passed on the idea but told them that they could go ahead and do it on their own if they wanted. They teamed up with the folks at Suburban Riot, who made a few of Mac's shirts and Charlie's horse on a flaming field shirt, and dicktowel.com was born.
More popular than green eggs
Right after the episode aired, the website crashed on the East Coast, which was an indication of the desire for Dick Towel but "a bummer" because they probably lost out on some orders. They ended up selling a lot of towels in the first few weeks; according to McElhenney, they sold 50,0000. They made a pretty fat stack of cash from the whole deal, which is more than anyone could say for the gang in the episode. Sure, according to their standards, they made a lot on the venture in the series, but since they are "$2,500 flush" in "The Gang Buys a Boat" and that's including Charlie's life savings, they clearly didn't sell 50,000 towels in the fictional world.
The gang's other ideas aren't likely to translate well into the real world, as cat paws don't really make a sound, a gun that shoots liquor is dangerous, and no one really wants a green egg with "Paddy's Pub" written on it in black marker unless DeVito wrote it himself. It's probably for the best anyway since Glenn Howerton, McElhenney, and Day are all currently pretty busy promoting their Four Walls whiskey. What is it with celebrities promoting their own brands of booze these days?