Nadine DeNinno
International Business Times
July 8, 2013
Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) may sue a fried chicken restaurant in Thailand called “Hitler” for using a similar logo featuring an image of Adolf Hitler in place of the iconic Colonel Sanders.
“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 spokesperson for Yum!, KFC’s parent company, told the Huffington Post. The “Hitler” restaurant, which opened in Bangkok last month, has a storefront logo very similar to KFC’s but with an image of the anti-Semitic dictator responsible for the mass murder of 6 million Jews and millions of others in the Holocaust during World War II.
The fried chicken restaurant was originally publicized in May when British author Andrew Spooner tweeted a photo of its façade. “Very bizarre Hitler Fried Chicken shop in Thailand. I kid you not. Complete with pic of Hitler in bow tie,” he wrote on Twitter.
The restaurant sells fried chicken as well as chips, burgers and kebabs, according to the UK’s Daily Mail. Bangkok resident Alan Robertson told the Mail: “The place opened last month and nobody quite knows what to make of it. I went in for a bite last week and got some fried chicken, which was pretty good, and asked the guy behind the counter why it was called Hitler. He just shrugged his shoulders and said the owners thought it was a good image.”
The Daily Mail even went so far as to say Thailand has an obsession with Hitler, calling the phenomenon “Nazi-chic.” The newspaper said schoolchildren as well as teens and adults frequently dress up as Nazis or pose with Hitler-influenced items making the Nazi sign. Many T-shirt designs there feature Hitler transformed into cartoonish images resembling Ronald McDonald and cute animals.