“Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!” said the American actress Mae West. She wasn’t talking about the slew of Kappa jacket releases, I’m sure, but she could have been.

Before the Sky Sports broadcast Sunderland game on Sunday, the Tigers starting XI emerged from the tunnel in yet another sweet anthem jacket bearing the ‘Omini’ logo of a man and woman sat back to back.

Essentially a different colourway of the black and gold 120th Anniversary jacket but sans ‘120 years’ text, this jacket ramps up the contrast with amber panels on the shoulders and under the arms, and uses red piping for that 80s retro feel.

We really are in a golden era of club merch, compared to past years where Tiger Leisure was stocked with, replica shirts aside, largely unimpressive fare, especially when it came to leisurewear.

Now the club shop is a perpetually moving conveyor of desirable garb featuring the marks of world renowned brands. There is genuine hype created when a Kappa jacket drops, as the club fully exploits the fine back catalogue of the Italian sportswear firm.

There’ll be some who criticise the decision to make some items limited edition, but that’s what makes these items so desirable. Nobody queued for two hours or more to get a City track jacket when they were made by Super League or Avec.

While some sanctimonious types think they’re putting the boot in by saying the club’s marketing team is useless on social media, they’re unwittingly proving their argument wrong by PUBLICLY TALKING ABOUT ITEMS THEY KNOW ABOUT ONLY BECAUSE THE MARKETING WAS SO SPECTACULARLY SUCCESSFUL.

Ahem.

These jackets haven’t been given the ‘limited edition’ tag (though when you think about it no item is infinitely available, so everything Tiger Leisure stock is ‘limited’ to some degree) so there hasn’t been the usual faux outrage hours after they went on sale, but the buzz around them seems to be there.

No wonder, the tiger-head (sans-crest shield) and ‘Omini’ on the chest embroidered in amber works just as well as it did in gold on the anniversary jackets. I’m not a fan of what was done to the tiger-head in 2019, it needed to simplified for digital use so making the stripes busier and fuzzier while chopping off part of the tiger’s chin seemed counter-intuitive, but somehow rendering the tiger-head in gold or amber embroidery makes those unwise changes far less obvious.

Multi-‘Omini’ branding across the shoulders, oh yes, gimme that, and the red piping allows for some interchangeability with items from the 2023 retro range as well as the recently released Fresh Ego Kid cap that has a red stripe on the peak. Can you remember another time that items from differing brands were designed to work together sympathetically?

Do we have too many Kappa jackets competing for your pounds and reducing allure? Not for me, I’m pro-choice, and you can choose to let this one pass you by if you’ve had your fill, but I’m looking forward to slipping into some bang up to date Kappa loveliness. Mae West, no doubt, would approve.

The walkout jackets (and accompanying trackie bottoms) are available to buy HERE