I've never watched Criss Angel's "Mindfreak" except to do some research for this post. (Specifically, this clip.) Nick Jackson's "Merch Freak" persona doesn't act much like Angel apart from doing magic tricks, but Mindfreak still has to have been the inspiration for it.

But for the origin of Merch Freak, we have to go back all the way to the opening segment of episode 171, where Nick revealed that he had personally designed some new Young Bucks shirts.

According to Nick, they were the best shirts ever! One is the main image above. The other is this:

For some strange reason, Matt was less than impressed. Also very strangely, he was dismayed that Nick had already had lots of shirts produced and put up for sale without consulting him. And perhaps most strangely, when Nick insisted that Matt wear one of the shirts to make them sell better, it seemed like he didn't want to!

But that's crazy talk, right? I mean, they're really great shirts! And Matt would NEVER only claim to like them to spare his brother's feelings and/or to keep his brother from getting angry. (It looked like Nick was about to flip his shit when it seemed like Matt didn't like the shirts, but thankfully that tense situation was defused by Matt reassuring Nick that he DID like the shirts. Whew!)

Okay, seriously, Matt didn't like the shirts at all, but he wasn't willing to tell Nick that at first. So he agreed to wear the shirt that one week.

Fast forward a week, and it turned out that the shirts were best-sellers! To keep them selling well, Nick reasoned, Matt needed to keep on wearing them. Which Matt again reluctantly agreed to do.

Things kept building up week after week, with Nick designing more merch for Matt to wear* and Matt getting more and more frustrated. Claims by Matt that he spilled coffee on his shirt or that the airline lost the bag with the shirt in it did no good; Nick always had another one that he insisted Matt put on right away. Finally, unable to take any more, Matt refused to wear any more of Nick's terrible merch! He threw the t-shirt in a nearby blue box...only to turn around and see Nick holding the shirt for him and telling him to put it on. He turned around to look in the blue box...and it was empty!

Later on in the same episode, after Matt said there was no way he would ever be caught dead in a pair of Young Bucks flip flops, Nick snapped his fingers and told his brother to look down. Sure enough, Matt's feet were now shod in the flip flops.

In the opening segment of the episode right after that, the Merch Freak was born. Since then, Nick Jackson has used his amazing merchandise-associated magic powers on a weekly basis.





Episode 2: Arthur & Trevor

Episode 1: DO YA?!

*MJF also contributed, as did Matt's wife.