What do the following have in common? A Florida orange juice
commercial, a talking ham sandwich and an Internet news site called
Tabloid.net?
All three are joined in a lawsuit filed by Tabloid over the use of
the talking ham sandwich character in a commercial for Florida orange
juice. Tabloid accuses the industry of swiping its original character
from a 1997 detective series called “Vodka City,” for the spots.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in the Ninth District Federal Court in San
Francisco, charges the Florida Orange Growers Association as well as the
Florida Department of Citrus and its advertising agency, the
Dallas-based Richards Group, with copyright infringement and unfair
competition.
The orange juice commercials first aired Sept. 17, 1998, and featured
a talking ham sandwich complete with ham, lettuce and tomato between
sliced bread as well as green olives on toothpicks that functioned as
eyes. In the commercial, wary people opening their refrigerator would
find the sandwich cracking jokes and promoting the benefits one gets
from drinking orange juice.
“This bizarre character was lifted straight from Tabloid.net — from
a serial our Internet magazine published a year earlier,” said Charles
Hornberger, an editor at Tabloid.
In the magazine’s first installment of the serial known as “Vodka
City,” which began Aug. 18, 1997, the detective and narrator of the
series describes a ham sandwich that enters his life and refuses to go
away.
“I flicked my lighter over the sandwich. It had olive eyes and they
twisted towards me,” the narrator in the story said.
The story of “Vodka City” later came to a close Sept. 29, 1997,
almost a year before the orange juice television commercials.
After the Florida Department of Citrus had used a number of
controversial celebrities such as Anita Bryant and Rush Limbaugh in its
national ad campaigns, it decided to look for a campaign that wouldn’t
cause trouble, according to Tabloid.
Before several hundred citrus industry representatives who had seen a
version of the talking sandwich cartoon, Daniel Santangelo, the Citrus
Department executive director, said, “That talking sandwich may be
around for years, (for) at least it won’t get us in trouble. We have
control of the sandwich.”
Ken Layne, however, doesn’t approve of Santangelo’s assessment of
their talking ham sandwich campaign. He was angry when he first heard
about the commercials.
“People started telling me in September (of 1998) that Tabloid’s
talking ham sandwich was on the TV,” Layne said. “I finally saw the
commercial and was outraged. The thing is exactly the same. Exactly. The
personality, the appearance, the voice, the way humans deal with it.
Ever seen a ham sandwich with toothpick-mounted, pimento-olive eyes? Me
neither. That thing was made to be purposefully weird, and it sure as
hell wasn’t made to sell orange juice.”
According to Tabloid, their website had been accessed by computers at
the Richards Group headquarters in Dallas at least 37 times in early
1998, much before the orange juice commercials began running. Records on
Tabloid’s servers reportedly recorded these visits.
According to Tabloid, the Richards Group also had plenty of chances
to hear about Tabloid and their talking ham sandwich on PBS broadcasts
in the Dallas area when Tabloid editors were featured on the PBS show,
“Internet Cafe.” They were also heard on a number of eastern Texas AM
talk radio stations in Tabloid’s weekly segment of the “World Wide Web
Radio Show” which was syndicated by Premiere networks between September
1997 and May 1998.
Because of the alleged copyright infringement and due to the alleged
unfair competition, Tabloid is suing for actual damages done by
unauthorized usage of its character and restitution of all money and
property that the Florida Department of Citrus and the Richards Group
obtained through unfair competition.
WorldNetDaily contacted members of the defense, but all questions
were directed to their legal teams. Since the papers for the lawsuit
haven’t been served yet, the legal teams for the defense are still
waiting for the lawsuit’s details.
