I think I would get fed up explaining “there’s this website, where some bloke I’ve never met once out a bike together backwards, then two years later this bike company sold more t-shirts than bikes…”
That’s the beauty of #3 for me. Yes, it’s a bit of an in-joke, but it also just works as a quirky design. At Christmas I got a Howies t-shirt with a whale being carried in some kind of sling by a load of bikes. I have no idea what it means, nor does aybody I know, but I still like it.