President Joe Biden's 2024 re-election campaign has adopted what was initially intended as an insult against the president and transformed it into a reportedly lucrative revenue-generator in support of his bid for a second term.

According to the Biden campaign, a substantial portion of merchandise sales are from what is known as the "Dark Brandon" collection, Axios reported.

The items feature an image of a broadly smiling Biden from the torso and above and include bright red laser eyes, and those products are said to account for around half of all merchandise sales and are responsible for driving approximately three-quarters of all traffic to the online campaign store.

Team Biden embraces "Dark Brandon" meme

Politico reported almost exactly one year ago in 2022 how the Biden White House had essentially appropriated for its own purposes what had come to be known as the "Dark Brandon" meme, which portrayed the elderly president as a sort of malevolent dictator.

The meme actually began shortly after President Biden was first elected by a Chinese illustrator who drew an assortment of pictures of a "dark" Biden who was an evil tyrant with glowing yellow eyes, and they quickly began to spread on social media.

Over time, those images were combined by some with the "Let's Go, Brandon" chant used by critics of the president as a family-friendly euphemism for the more explicit "F--k Joe Biden" chants that increasingly came into vogue among crowds at various sporting events.

More illustrations were created, the glowing yellow eyes were traded for red laser beams, the trend picked up pace on different social media platforms, and the Biden White House -- always in search of ways to increase Biden's popularity and boost the morale of his Democratic supporters -- eventually adopted the meme and ran with it as a sort of inside joke.

"Dark Brandon" merchandise driving campaign sales revenue

According to Axios, even President Biden himself has gotten in on the act -- though it is unclear if he actually understands the "Dark Brandon" meme or knows of its origin -- and posted a video of himself using one of the campaign's items on Twitter at roughly the same time that his chief political rival, former President Donald Trump, was being criminally indicted by Special Counsel Jack Smith for a second time.

In a nine-second video captioned "A cup of Joe never tasted better," Biden took a sip from a "Dark Brandon"-themed coffee mug and declared, "I like my coffee dark."

That coffee mug is but one of several different items of 2024 campaign merchandise in the "Dark" collection that also includes baseball caps, T-shirts, tote bags, and stickers that are all emblazoned with the "Dark Brandon" image -- and more products in that collection are reportedly coming soon.

Per the Biden campaign, "More than 54 percent of the store's total revenue is coming from Brandon-themed products," while the eight "Dark" products account for 44 percent of all orders in the campaign store, which offers 43 different items altogether, and have "driven nearly 76 percent of all clicks onto the website."

TJ Ducklo, a Biden campaign spokesman, said in a statement to Axios: "All we're saying is that if you're MAGA extremists, Vladimir Putin, the post-COVID economic collapse, climate change, a crumbling bridge, or our grassroots fundraising goals: You better watch out, Jack."

Merchandise sales won't make up for paltry fundraising

All of that said, while revenue is being generated by the brisk sales of "Dark Brandon" merchandise -- which range in price from as low as $6 for the stickers to $32 for the hats and T-shirts -- it likely isn't enough to make up for the Biden campaign's reported struggles in terms of traditional fundraising, particularly with small donors who contribute $200 or less, according to Axios.

In fact, the Biden campaign reportedly only raised around $10.2 million from small donors during the previous fiscal quarter, which is less than half of the $21.2 million that former President Barack Obama had raised from small donors during the same period in 2011 -- and also pales in comparison to the $35 million former President Donald Trump raked in, mostly from small donors, during the last quarter, according to the New York Post.