KFC Mulling Legal Action Against Copycat Restaurant Called ‘Hitler’
A fried chicken restaurant called Hitler has incurred the furor of KFC's parent company Yum! Brands over the use of its trademarked logo with the Nazi leader head placed atop the Colonel's body.
The shop, based in Bangkok, Thailand, was first spotted by travel book author Andrew Spooner back in May.
"We find it extremely distasteful and are considering legal action since it is an infringement of our brand trademark and has nothing to do with us," a spokesman for Yum! told The Huffington Post.
The recently opened stall's brand identity may be distasteful, but according to resident Alan Robertson, a British expat, the food there is "pretty good."
Thailand, like other countries in the region, has an odd fascination with superimposing Hitler's face on a variety of pop culture icons and then printing those images on T-shirts, giving rise to the term "Nazi chic."
When Robertson asked an employee why the restaurant's owners named their establishment "Hitler," he was told they "thought it was [a] good image."
UPDATE: According to the Bangkok Post, KFC can call their lawyers off, because the Hitler restaurant no longer exists.
The paper claims the image being associated with a Bangkok establishment actually shows an Ubon Ratchathani shop that has since changed its name to avoid losing business.
However, as one local noted in the comments section, "Whether this particular story is old or not, the fact is that the image of Hitler and Nazi iconography have a strange attraction for Thais and is therefore an on-going story."
