I have always thought it would be fun if Willy Wonka’s golden ticket was legit.

Good news, it is … kind of. It is called the “Golden Tag,” and it is just one of the many gimmicks and fun opportunities from the Web site Threadless.com.

This Web site is an ongoing open call for T-shirt design submissions.

The Golden Tag contest is available if you buy a T-shirt from Threadless. If you receive your T-shirt, and it has a golden tag, then you get a plethora of prizes, including a free shirt.

The basic description of this Web site is an online community where users can submit their creative design ideas, score other users’ designs, offer comments and critiques and post about whatever is on their minds.

Anyone can sign up, download a tee template and submit ideas which are evaluated by the Threadless community for seven days. Once the scoring period ends, you will receive a score from zero to five, gauged by Threadless, which decides what gets made into a shirt or print.

Threadless was created by a man in London who won a T-shirt design competition, and decided to create a Web site as an open call for T-shirt design submissions. It was his way to “give back” to the community by actually creating goods featuring the work created by participating artists.

So what happens if you actually come up with a design good enough to win? Well, designers who are printed earn $2,000 and a $500 gift certificate (the $500 gift certificate can actually be exchanged for an additional $200 cash).

You will also become a member of the Threadless Alumni club, which gives you access to a members-only section of the blog and a package of goodies.

Any printed design will also be eligible for up to $20,000 in the annual Bestees Awards.

The Bestees are Threadless’ annual design awards, which include Design of the Year, Designer of the Year, Blogger of the Year and many others. There are also awards for printed and unprinted designers, critiques, gallery photos, sloganeers and bloggers. The awards typically come with a trophy or medal and cash, giving designs the chance to win up to $20,000.

They come out with new tees and prints to buy every Monday. To keep up to date with their Web site, you can find them on other social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr and their RSS feed.