“You wanna make dildos in the image of the Queen, Count Dracula, a genie, and a rabbi? And you don’t think it’ll land you in hot water?”
Despite the protestations I’m sure he suffered through, entrepreneur Shed Simove embarked on his latest and arguably most controversial business endeavor, Masturpieces. Modeled after Her Royal Highness, the immortal blood sucker portrayed by Bela Lugosi, the bottled-up granter of three wishes, and a teacher of the Torah, Masturpieces are dildos produced in limited runs and commanding fairly steep prices.
Now, you might assume it’d be the general Jewish community (as no doubt represented by some self-appointed leading body) that has complained about Masturpiece’s Rampant Rabbi, but fellow adult retailer Ann Summers. Usually associated with the staple of its business, women’s undergarments, Ann Summers also produces the “world’s most popular sex toy,” the Rampant Rabbit vibrator. After Simove’s application for trademark on his Rampant Rabbi was thwarted by a challenge from the retail giant, the self-styled “Ideas Man” simply decided to forgo trademarking his creation. “I can’t trademark it but I’m still using the name. I don’t think there is any confusion between the products,” he told the Daily Star.
What do you think? Should this comedian, “serial entrepreneur,” author, and motivational speaker relent and choose a different name for his culturally irreverent work of phallic devotion or is he cutting it a little too close to a well-known brand and protected trademark? Could you or your ladyfriend possibly mistake one for the other? (Perhaps a side-by-side visual comparison is required. If not, it’s at least an amusing image.)
