Start from what the brand itself publishes
You catch counterfeits most easily when you already know what the real thing says about itself. Fixed price levels, a catalogue of 154 named products, fabric weights on its core styles, a signature yellow woven label and Los Angeles production: that is the narrow set of specifics That’s A Awful Lot Of Cough Syrup publishes. Copies hardly ever match all five, because matching them costs money. The brand is well aware of the problem, and Desto Dubb has posted publicly about fakes in a shop alocs collection video on his verified Facebook page. You do not need special equipment or a paid authentication service for any of it. A reading exercise, done calmly, before you pay, is all it is.
Six checks, in the order that settles it fastest
Most questions answer themselves in under a minute if you work through these in sequence. The first two checks work from a listing alone, without touching the garment. The piece in hand, or a clear set of photographs, is what the next three need. The last one is about where the piece is coming from, which is often the most telling signal of all. One failed check does not settle it; it is a reason to slow down. Two or more, and you are almost certainly not looking at the real garment.
1. The price-level test
At the brand’s own store, core prices as of September 2026 are about $150 for a tee and about $200 for a hoodie or sweatpants, and these change over time. Copycat listings for the same styles cluster far lower, commonly between $45 and $95. A gap like that is no sale: it is a different product. What tells you something is a whole catalogue of cough syrup shirts and hoodies priced at a third of retail. A single discounted item proves nothing on its own, because the brand does run genuine markdowns. A $45 tee wearing this wordmark did not come from the brand.
2. The product-name check
Every genuine piece carries a name that appears in the brand’s own 154-product catalogue. Real names run to recognisable patterns: the Classic Cough Syrup T-Shirt and Hoodie, the Double Cup Cargo Shorts, the Awful Lot Of Stincs capsule, and medical or horror references such as Big Pharma, Drankenstein and King Of The Kill. A Breakfast Of Champions Tee and a Skeleton Hoodie Black are among the names seen on copycat listings, and they appear nowhere in that catalogue. If a particular awful lot of cough syrup hoodie is what you are chasing, search the exact product name against the live catalogue before paying. Nothing is cleaner as evidence than a name that does not exist. About thirty seconds is all it takes to check.
3. The fabric-weight check
Weights are published on the core styles, and those numbers are expensive to replicate. Classic tees are listed at 6.5 oz 100% organic cotton, the Classic Hoodie at 16 oz 100% organic cotton, the Classic Sweatpants at 14 oz fleece of 80% cotton and 20% recycled polyester, and the Double Cup Cargo Shorts at 14 oz denim. Dickies pieces are 65% cotton and 35% polyester, and the boxers are 95% cotton and 5% elastane. A listing offering only vague words such as premium heavyweight, or a figure that contradicts these, is worth pausing on. Note that many accessories carry no published weight at all, so silence on a pair of socks means nothing. A 16 oz hoodie in the hand is unmistakably dense and stiff when new.
4. The woven-label test
Right across the line, the most consistent marker is the yellow woven label, named in product copy garment after garment. On tees it sits at the hem; on the Classic Hoodie it sits at the wearer’s bottom left. A woven label has visible threads and a dense, even weave, and it is stitched flat and square to the seam. A serious warning sign is a printed or heat-pressed tag where a woven label belongs, and so is a label in the wrong shade of yellow or in the wrong position. Their own hardware sits on other pieces: a custom leather patch on the denim shorts, a logo woven waistband on the boxers. The stitching around the label is worth as close a look as the label itself.
5. The graphics test
The one detail most copies get wrong is the spelling. Most pieces lead with the wordmark, usually as a jumbo screen print across front and back. The brand’s spelling is with “A”, not “An”, and that is deliberate and is how the trademark is registered. Typing thats a awful lot of cough syrup into a search box without the apostrophe is fine, but a garment printed with “An” is not carrying the brand’s wordmark. Black and yellow are the brand’s signature colours, and some lighter tees use water-based prints that sit soft in the fabric by design. Print registration, edge crispness and whether the ink has cracked before the garment has been worn are the next things to look at.
6. The test on the seller
Safest is the brand’s own online store, or one of its confirmed physical shops: 7669 Melrose Ave and 312 W 5th St in Los Angeles, and 5410 Almeda Rd in Houston. Since opening hours and trading status change, confirm before travelling. On any other storefront, a few patterns recur among the copies. Elaborate authentication procedures, advertised loudly is a habit of theirs, and the brand’s own store never claims them. They rarely connect to the brand’s social accounts, and their contact addresses often match no location the brand has ever used. Because the real store regularly sells through a large share of its size variants, a full catalogue of alocs clothing showing every size in stock is itself unusual.
The six checks side by side
The table below compresses everything above into a form you can scan on a phone. The middle column describes what the brand itself has published as of September 2026, and the right column describes what the copies tend to do instead. Since prices, stock and product names all change, the figures are a snapshot rather than a permanent standard. Taken singly, none of these signals is conclusive. A convincing forgery would have to match all six at once, which is what makes them reliable together. That is the part counterfeiters do not bother with.
| The check | What the genuine piece shows | The warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Tees at about $150, hoodies and sweatpants at about $200 | A full catalogue at $45 to $95 |
| The product name | A name that sits in the brand’s 154-product catalogue | Invented names that appear nowhere in it |
| Fabric weight | 6.5 oz tees, 16 oz hoodie, 14 oz fleece and denim | Vague wording, or figures that contradict the published ones |
| Label | Yellow woven label at tee hem or hoodie bottom left | A printed tag, the wrong shade, the wrong placement |
| Graphics | Jumbo screen print; the slogan spelled with “A” | “An” in the slogan, plus soft edges and cracked ink |
| Seller | The brand’s own store, or the Los Angeles and Houston shops | Authentication theatre, no social presence, everything in stock |
Why That’s A Awful Lot Of Cough Syrup gets counterfeited
A brand becomes attractive to counterfeiters for three reasons, and this one has all of them. Having travelled far beyond the clothing, the name leaves demand among people who have never seen a genuine piece. The price band, which runs from about $150 to $350 across the line, leaves a wide margin for a cheap copy to undercut. Then there is the core graphic: a line of text, the easiest thing in the world to screen print onto a blank. Drops sell through, and a large share of size variants sits out of stock at any given time, so scarcity adds pressure. Buyers get pushed toward unfamiliar sellers by that combination, and that is exactly where the copies wait.
If you already own one
This is recoverable, and it is worth handling methodically rather than quickly. Hold on to the listing, the order confirmation and any messages, since disputes are decided on documentation. Run the six checks and write down which ones the piece failed, with photographs of the label, the print and the inside seams. A clear, factual description resolves a fair number of cases without escalation, so contact the seller first with the specific discrepancy. Should that go nowhere, the next step is the platform’s buyer protection or your payment provider’s dispute process, and both run on deadlines, so start early. The brand’s own published policy accepts refund requests within a month of purchase with return shipping paid by the customer, but that applies to its own store and not to a third party. Convincing copies are designed to pass at a glance, so do not resell the piece as genuine and do not take it personally.
