Viral Cheese Grater Foam Hat: Origin Story from GB Packers

from the becoming-grater dept

I certainly don’t expect the wider Techdirt readership to care all that much about NFL football or, more specifically a single local team like the Chicago Bears. So, to that end, here’s a hopefully educational preamble to this post that will provide you with the context you need. if you were to make a list of the single biggest rivalries in the NFL, that list should begin with the rivalry between the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears. the rivalry has existed since 1921 between two charter franchise teams. Packers fans refer to themselves as “Cheese Heads” and even go so far to wear foam caps to games to celebrate the moniker.

While the Packers didn’t event the foam cap, they did buy the rights to it decades ago and those hats are now official Packers products sold on the team’s storefront. Plenty of other companies out there make variants of them as well and the Packers have been known to fire off legal notices and C&D letters as a result.

One of those companies was Foam Party Hats out of Houston, Texas. They briefly produced their own version of the “cheesehead” foam hat, but shut down production of them after the team contacted them and demanded they stop. Here is owner Manuel Rojas:

Foam Party Hats has hundreds of different products and,at one time,used to make a cheese head.

“We end up getting a cease and desist letter from the Green Bay Packers,” Rojas explained.

But that setback turned into a better possibility.

“So as a payback,we came up with this sign of,you know,making our own cheese grater hats. And, well, this is like the best revenge that we could ever have,” Rojas saeid.

Yes, Rojas and the company turned the C&D notice they received into another foam hat product, this time a cheese grater. And those cheese grater hats have been selling fast, having gone viral during the last two Packer losses, one to the Bears, and one to the Baltimore Ravens. In both instances, players from the winning team wore one of the grater hats on television as they celebrated their respective wins.

And consequently, a Houston-based hat company has seen a massive boost in sales.