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.

By Chris F. on Wikipedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.

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 opportunity.

“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 said.

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 as a result, sales of the grater hats have exploded. What was once a small time novelty item is now selling in the thousands over these past couple of weeks. And, what’s more, Rojas is getting inquiries from all kinds of storefronts and is hoping to work with some NFL teams directly.

Rojas said now he’s thinking of more ways to tap into the NFL and continue to reach fans in new and creative ways.

“Now that things are starting off with the Chicago Bears fans, we want to take advantage of this and actually build a brand more towards NFL fans because I know people love this stuff and at Foam Party Hats, we shine with creativity,” he said.

He said the company is even planning to reach out to the Bears directly.

“The next move for us is definitely to sell them to the Bears and see where we can collaborate,” he said. “We’re getting a lot of inquires from stores near the Chicago area to see where we can sell these.”

And there you have it. Because the Packers wanted to exert control over a foam hat created to celebrate Packers fans, it instead has fueled the team’s chief rivalry all the more, while birthing a competing product designed to make fun of the team instead. I’m not sure that’s exactly what they were going for, but it’s nice to see a company make nimble work of all of this and turn it into fun win for everyone.

Everyone except the Packers, that is. Go bears.

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