Begin with what the brand itself publishes
Counterfeits get caught 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, Desto Dubb’s Awful Lot of Cough Syrup because matching them costs money. Desto Dubb has posted publicly about fakes in a video on his verified Facebook page, so the brand is aware of the problem. 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, ordered so they settle it fastest
Work through these in sequence and most questions answer themselves in under a minute. Without touching the garment, the first two checks are done from a listing alone. What the next three need is the piece in hand or a clear set of photographs. Where the piece is coming from is what the last one is about, and it is often the most telling signal of all. Treat one failed check as a reason to slow down rather than a verdict. Two failures or more and you are almost certainly not looking at the real garment.
1. The price-level test
Core prices as of September 2026 at the brand’s own store come to about $150 for a tee and about $200 for a hoodie or sweatpants, and these change over time. Copycat listings for those same styles sit far lower, commonly between $45 and $95. That gap is not a sale at all; it is a different product. Genuine markdowns do happen at the brand, so a single discounted item proves nothing on its own. A whole catalogue of cough syrup shirts and hoodies priced at a third of retail is the part that tells you something. This wordmark on a $45 tee means the tee did not come from the brand.
2. The product-name check
Genuine pieces all have a name that appears in the brand’s own 154-product catalogue. There are recognisable patterns to the real names: 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 spotted on copycat listings, including a Breakfast Of Champions Tee and a Skeleton Hoodie Black, appear nowhere in that catalogue. Search the exact product name against the live catalogue before paying, whenever you are chasing a particular awful lot of cough syrup hoodie. Nothing is cleaner as evidence than a name that does not exist. It takes about thirty seconds to check.
3. The fabric-weight test
The brand publishes weights on its core styles, and those numbers are expensive to replicate. Dickies pieces are 65% cotton and 35% polyester, and the boxers are 95% cotton and 5% elastane. 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. Vague words such as premium heavyweight and nothing more, or a figure that contradicts these, are worth pausing on. Silence on a pair of socks tells you nothing, because many accessories carry no published weight at all. In the hand, a 16 oz hoodie is unmistakably dense and stiff when new.
4. The woven-label test
Named in product copy garment after garment, the yellow woven label is the most consistent marker across the line. On tees the label sits at the hem; on the Classic Hoodie it sits at the wearer’s bottom left. Expect visible threads and a dense, even weave on a woven label, stitched flat and square to the seam. Where a woven label belongs, a printed or heat-pressed tag is a serious warning sign, as 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. Give the stitching around the label the same attention as the label itself.
5. The graphics check
Most pieces carry the wordmark as their primary graphic, usually as a jumbo screen print across front and back. Most copies get the spelling wrong, and that is the detail to watch. It is written with “A”, not “An”, by the brand, 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 signature palette is black and yellow, and some lighter tees use water-based prints that sit soft in the fabric by design.
6. The test on the seller
The safest route 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. On other storefronts, a few patterns keep recurring among the copies. A full catalogue of alocs clothing with everything in stock is unusual in itself, since the real store regularly sells through a large share of its size variants. Elaborate authentication procedures, advertised loudly is a habit of theirs, and the brand’s own store never claims them. Connections to the brand’s social accounts are rare, and their contact addresses often match no location the brand has ever used.
The six checks, side by side
The table below compresses everything above 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 settles it on its own. Treat the figures as a snapshot rather than a permanent standard, because prices, stock and product names all change. Taken together they are reliable, because a convincing forgery would have to match all six at once. Counterfeiters do not go to that trouble.
| Test | What a genuine piece gives you | The warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| The price | Tees at about $150, hoodies and sweatpants at about $200 | A whole catalogue priced $45 to $95 |
| Product name | A name that sits in the brand’s 154-product catalogue | Invented names appearing 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 | A yellow woven label at tee hem or hoodie bottom left | A printed tag, the wrong shade, the wrong placement |
| The graphics | Jumbo screen print; the slogan spelled with “A” | “An” in the slogan, soft edges, cracked ink |
| The seller | The brand’s own store, or the Los Angeles and Houston shops | Authentication theatre, no social presence, and everything in stock |
Why That’s A Awful Lot Of Cough Syrup gets counterfeited
This one has all three of the things that make a brand attractive to counterfeiters. The name travelled far beyond the clothing, which means demand exists among people who have never seen a genuine piece. A wide margin for a cheap copy to undercut comes from the price band, running from about $150 to $350 across the line. And the core graphic is simply a line of text, which is the easiest thing in the world to screen print onto a blank. Scarcity piles on pressure, because drops sell through and a large share of size variants sits out of stock at any given time. Buyers get pushed toward unfamiliar sellers by that combination, and that is exactly where the copies wait.
If you have already bought one
This is recoverable, and worth handling methodically rather than quickly. With photographs of the label, the print and the inside seams, run the six checks and write down which ones the piece failed. Disputes are decided on documentation, so keep the listing, the order confirmation and any messages. The first move is the seller, with the specific discrepancy, because a clear, factual description resolves a fair number of cases without escalation. Under the brand’s own published policy, refund requests are accepted 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. The next step, if that goes nowhere, is the platform’s buyer protection or your payment provider’s dispute process, and both run on deadlines, so start early. Convincing copies are designed to pass at a glance, so do not resell the piece as genuine and do not take it personally.