We’ve been selling Hot Topic Dinosaur Shirts since the fall of 2005, you can see a picture of the first design that we shipped to them here (http://ripplejunction.com/MCJS002.jpg) .

The phrase is not original, and people make dinosaur t shirts. There are literally thousands upon thousands of people who design things every day. Ask yourself, is it possible that 2 people in different places used a pop culture phrase and paired it with a dinosaur?

I also want to point out the irony of the fact that the person who posted this, Taddict, has on his blog a bootleg Gremlins tshirt. http://www.taddict.com/blog/2008/06/17/gremlin-t-shirt-design/. We have a license with Warner Bros to produce Gremlins merchandise. We pay a lot of money to secure rights, is it ok to use WBros intellectual property without paying them? Apparently that doesn’t bother anyone.

We work hard to create original, creative artwork and have been doing so for over 15 years. We license artwork from major Studios and individual designers, and have a stellar reputation in our industry. I don’t know if this will change anyone’s mind, but I’m not going to sit back and watch our name get dragged through the mud.

Neil

This is Neil, one of the owners of Ripple Junction. I want to explain a few things about what happened in the creation of this design.

When I first saw this blog posting, I was pissed. Pissed at the designer that did this and I demanded an explanation. We don’t roll like that, and I want to point out to astra that this has not happened before; it was a Goodie Two Sleeves design that was posted previously.
http://youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com/blog3/?p=805

When I questioned the artist, this is his exact response, I’ve included links to the images he’s referring to:

“Dude, I have never seen that.

I came across the attached (http://ripplejunction.com/friends.jpg) image in a list of the top 50 funniest album covers. I jotted down the title cuz I thought it might work with a zombie design, or even something for Resident Evil. I later heard the verbiage again in a song by the band Turbonegro, so I realized it was pretty much a pop culture phrase. I even saw an art print a guy did using batteries that had this verbiage as the title. (http://www.ripplejunction.com/allmyfriendsaredead.gif) The idea I had sat in my notebook for while, though.

One day hot topic was asking for some quick dino tee ideas, and I thought it could work for that, too. And if you remember, after they saw the original design I made (which had a bloody t rex I think) they are the ones that suggested to change it to a stegasarus. How do we know he didn’t use the idea after he saw it at hot topic? The youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com website is notorious for not having editors or fact checkers. Its an open blog.”

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