The creatively prankish Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF is no stranger to delighting the world with their hijinks. Consequently, the collective is beyond bold, from serving Chick-fil-A on a Sunday and selling branded shopping bags to selling 999 forged Warhol sketches (including one real one) for $250. There’s no limit to their mayhem.
MSCHF’s latest drop, however, is poking fun at the hoops massive brands jump through to protect their sacred logos. So often, big brands like Coca-Cola, Walmart, and Starbucks will send cease-and-desist letters to people or brands that use their trademarks in any way, intentionally or unintentionally. Wasn’t it only yesterday that Walmart filed a complaint with the US Patent and Trademark Office that Kanye stole their logo?
To poke fun at this, MSCHF has created a landing page entitled C&D Grand Prix in which they are selling F1-inspired race jackets that feature the stunning yet sacred logos from Disney, Amazon, Subway, Coca-Cola, Walmart, Tesla, Starbucks, and Microsoft. Each of the jackets cost $60, but the catch is that if you purchase the one with the logo from the brand that sends MSCHF the first cease-and-desist letter, you win a hat with, interestingly, MSCHF’s logo.
On the C&D Grand Prix landing page, there’s a manifesto written directly to the legal department for the brands. “Rest assured, dearest corporate lawyers, we will comply with any C&Ds we get. Independent creators can never fight real legal action with a corporation: they can’t afford it. Thus, copyright falls into that category in which ‘if the penalty for a crime is monetary, that law exists only for the lower class.'”
Like many of MSCHF’s antics, this prank comes from an anti-corporate position, a tactful yet clever way of saying “stick it” to the big dogs and our overlords. Of course, it’s easy to say you dislike corporate brands and what they stand for, but it’s a whole other ball game to tap into the very thing that irks them most. We admire the gumption.
