Hot sauce maker avoids Nike SB’s pickle

A company called Wheelhouse Pickles, which makes sauces and so on — in addition to selling “award-winning” pickles — decided to add a hot sauce to its lineup. They wanted to call it Minor Threat Hot Sauce, and came up with a graphic that riffs off Minor Threat, the famous band.

A year or two ago, Nike SB was heavily criticized, in some quarters at least, for biting a Minor Threat graphic as part of a “Major Threat” skate-tour promotion — an incident that’s discussed and examined in some detail in Anne Elizabeth Moore’s recent book, Unmarketable. (Murketing’s Q&A with Moore is here.)

Unlike Nike SB, Wheelhouse Pickles asked for permission from frontman Ian MacKaye to use their graphic riff.

But the answer was no. According to Epicurious (via The Grinder):

MacKaye and the band members tried the sauce, looked at the proposed art and decided that though they had no problem with Wheelhouse using the entirely appropriate name Minor Threat, they definitely didn’t want anyone thinking that Minor Threat, the sauce, was a product officially endorsed by Minor Threat, the band.

Thus the design below. However, MacKaye is quoted saying that Wheelhouse “makes good pickle.”

I’m sure the Wheelhouse people were bummed not to get use their graphic riff. But all in all, they came out of this pretty well, with an okay on the name, and a kind word from MacKaye. All of which suggests that Nike SB had less understanding of Minor Threat than a small pickle company did.