Pop Will Eat Itself (also known as PWEI or the Poppies) were an English band formed in Stourbridge, with band members from Birmingham, Coventry and the Black Country. An early permutation of the band formed in 1981 under the name From Eden; members included Clint Mansell, Adam Mole, Chris Fradgley, Malcolm Treece and Miles Hunt (Treece and Hunt famously went on to form The Wonder Stuff). After changing their name to Wild and Wandering (named after a Wasted Youth album) for a while and recruiting Richard March and Graham Crabb (Graham being the only respondent to replace Miles Hunt on drums), they eventually became Pop Will Eat Itself in 1986, taking the name from a quotation in an NME article about band Jamie Wednesday (later to become better known as Carter USM).

The band produced approximately 100 T-shirt designs, including a design which subverts the familiar "PEPSI" cola logo by replacing the legend "PEPSI" with "PWEI" and the phrase "Sample It, Loop It, Fuck It, Eat It" encircling the design. Other T-shirts feature the outlandish (often space-themed) cartoon characters that appear on the band's album artwork, from the round headed alien with toy ray gun known as 'Craig' (thought to be named after the band's manager, Craig Jennings), to the jagged toothed, sinister robotic head (complete with futuristic earpiece) that serves as the official logo for all "PWEI Product". At one stage in the 1990s, it was, possibly apocryphally, observed that PWEI had sold more T-shirts than actual records.

Almost all artwork and corporate identity for the band's record sleeves and merchandising was designed by the now hugely successful Sheffield-based The Designers Republic. Much of what would become the design company's metatextual and self-referencing motifs were first carved out on the sleeve of PWEI records. The Designers Republic's work with PWEI can be found in the Design Museum, London.

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