Threadless Technocraft contest

This could be interpreted as shameless self-promotion, seeing as I have a design in the running, but I thought this would probably be of interest to some people.
Threadless, surely the world’s best (crowdsourced) t-shirt site, recently ran a competition to come up with a t-shirt with an:
“incomplete design: one that stands alone but may also be modified, finished, or repurposed by the purchaser” in association with Yves Behar’s Technocraft exhibition. Details at: http://www.threadless.com/loves/technocraft

Wondering if anyone has any thoughts on the entries that have been submitted. Sifting through them all would take ages, so here’s some I like, to give you a taster:

http://www.threadless.com/submission/288202/next_dye_mension
http://www.threadless.com/submission/287155/Stains_Are_the_New_Black

…and mine, of course:
http://www.threadless.com/submission/288655/The_Big_Cover_Up

I personally feel that most entries don’t really showcase the wild creativity I would have expected (and normally see on that website), maybe this was a contest which would have been more suited to product designers than Threadless’s more illustration and graphic design centred community? Unfortunately it didn’t cross my mind to post up here while the contest was still open, I feel like there could have been some good entries from these parts.

Also, if you were to see this sort of thing in an I.D. portfolio (e.g. as a small part at the end to show some breadth of experience, not the bulk of the presentation), would you be impressed, or feel that it had no relevance and was a waste of important folio space?
Do graphics, illustration, or a product like these which have a definite focus on the user’s interaction with the product, have a place in a well-rounded I.D. folio?