Start from what the brand itself publishes
Counterfeits get caught most easily when you already know what the real thing says about itself. That’s A Awful Lot Of Cough Syrup publishes a narrow set of specifics: fixed price levels, a catalogue of 154 named products, fabric weights on its core styles, a signature yellow woven label and Los Angeles production. Copies almost never hit all five, because matching them costs money. Desto Dubb has posted publicly about fakes in a video on his verified Facebook page, so the problem is known to the Desto Dubb’s Awful Lot of Cough Syrup brand. Special equipment and a paid authentication service is needed for none of this. Read calmly, before you pay: that is the whole exercise.
Six checks, in the order that settles things fastest
Take these in sequence and most questions answer themselves in under a minute. Without touching the garment, you can run the first two checks from a listing alone. The next three want the piece in hand or a clear set of photographs. Where the piece is coming from is the subject of the last one, and it is often the most telling signal of all. One failed check is not a verdict; it is a reason to slow down. At two or more, you are almost certainly not looking at the real garment.
1. The price check
Core prices at the brand’s own store 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. That gap is no sale; it is a different product. Genuine markdowns do happen at the brand, so a single discounted item proves nothing on its own. What tells you something is a whole catalogue of cough syrup shirts and hoodies priced at a third of retail. A $45 tee carrying this wordmark did not come from the brand.
2. The name test
A name from the brand’s own 154-product catalogue belongs to every genuine piece. 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. Names seen on copycat listings, including a Breakfast Of Champions Tee and a Skeleton Hoodie Black, 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. No evidence is cleaner than a name that does not exist. Checking takes about thirty seconds.
3. The weight test
Those numbers are expensive to replicate, and the brand publishes weights on its core styles. The listings run: Classic tees 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. Slow down on a listing that offers only vague words such as premium heavyweight, or a figure that contradicts these. A 16 oz hoodie in the hand is unmistakably dense and stiff when new. Note that plenty of accessories carry no published weight at all, so silence on a pair of socks means nothing.
4. The label test
Named in product copy garment after garment, the yellow woven label is the most consistent marker in the whole line. On tees, the hem; on the Classic Hoodie, the wearer’s bottom left. A custom leather patch on the denim shorts and a logo woven waistband on the boxers are the own-hardware details on other pieces. A woven label has visible threads and a dense, even weave, and it is stitched flat and square to the seam. A printed or heat-pressed tag in place of a woven label is a serious warning sign, as is a label in the wrong shade of yellow or in the wrong position. Give the stitching around the label the same attention as the label itself.
5. The graphics check
The one detail most copies get wrong is the spelling. On most pieces the primary graphic is the wordmark, usually as a jumbo screen print across front and back. With “A”, not “An”, is how the brand writes it, and that is deliberate and is how the trademark is registered. Searchers type thats a awful lot of cough syrup into a search box without the apostrophe, which is fine, but a garment printed with “An” is not carrying the brand’s wordmark. Past the spelling, look at print registration, edge crispness and whether the ink has cracked before the garment has been worn. The brand’s signature colours are black and yellow, and some lighter tees use water-based prints that sit soft in the fabric by design.
6. The seller check
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. Confirm before travelling, because opening hours and trading status change. Elsewhere, a few patterns recur among the copies. Links to the brand’s social accounts are rare, and their contact addresses often match no location the brand has ever used. They tend to advertise elaborate authentication procedures that the brand’s own store never claims. 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
In the table below, everything above is compressed into a form you can scan on a phone. The middle column holds what the brand itself has published as of September 2026, and the right column holds what the copies tend to do instead. No single signal here is conclusive on its own. Treat the figures as a snapshot rather than a permanent standard, because prices, stock and product names all change. Reliability comes from taking them together, because a convincing forgery would have to match all six at once. That is the part counterfeiters never bother with.
| Check | What a genuine piece shows | Warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Tees about $150, hoodies and sweatpants about $200 | A whole catalogue at $45 to $95 |
| Product name | A name from the brand’s 154-product catalogue | Invented names that appear nowhere in it |
| The fabric weight | 6.5 oz tees, 16 oz hoodie, 14 oz fleece and denim | Vague wording, or figures contradicting the published ones |
| The label | A 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, soft edges, cracked ink |
| Seller | The brand’s own store, or its Los Angeles and Houston shops | Authentication theatre, no social presence, and everything in stock |
Why the copies target That’s A Awful Lot Of Cough Syrup
Three factors make a brand attractive to counterfeiters, and this one has all of them. The price band, running from about $150 to $350 across the line, leaves a wide margin for a cheap copy to undercut. Travelling far beyond the clothing, the name creates demand among people who have never seen a genuine piece. The core graphic is nothing but a line of text, and that is 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. That combination drives buyers toward unfamiliar sellers, which is exactly where the copies wait.
If you already bought one
This is recoverable, and worth handling methodically rather than quickly. Disputes are decided on documentation, so keep the listing, the order confirmation and any messages. With photographs of the label, the print and the inside seams, run the six checks and write down which ones the piece failed. Contact the seller first with the specific discrepancy, because a clear, factual description resolves a fair number of cases without escalation. Refund requests within a month of purchase, with return shipping paid by the customer, are accepted under the brand’s own published policy, but that applies to its own store and not to a third party. 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. Never resell the piece as genuine, and do not take it personally, because convincing copies are designed to pass at a glance.