Nerf declares war, sics lawyers on Nerf blogger Martyn Yang
  • 12 years ago
http://www.nma.tv/

Hasbro lawyered up on a fanboy blogger after he posted widely available
images of a Nerf gun on his website.

Australian Nerf fan boy Martyn Yang reviews Nerf guns on his blog and was contacted by Hasbro, who said they wanted to give him Nerf products as freebies for his readers.

In a classic case of bait-and-switch, Hasbro asked the Australian civil servant and webmaster for the blog Urban Taggers to give them his address so they could send him the Nerf products. Once Yang sent them his Canberra address, Hasbro sent its Baker & McKenzie lawyers to serve him papers. Baker & McKenzie investigators later turned up and spooked Yang's neighbors.

Hasbro demanded that Yang remove images of the Nerf gun from his website.

They also wanted to know the source of his information. Yang told them the info was freely available online and advised Hasbro that it was wasting its money on lawyers if Baker & McKenzie didn't know how to do an image search on Google.

The internet scandal then exploded in Hasbro's face with a popular anti-Hasbro meme and a boycott Hasbro campaign on Facebook.