A Colorado pop artist who staged a stunt printing out clear “unfaithful” stickers and slapping them on Gatorade bottles in the Denver area is now facing federal charges. The guy could have better avoided being caught if he didn’t stupidly send a email to Gatorade announcing his plans and asking for cash. He also put his e-mail address on the labels, or at least an e-mail address of a “friend.” The “friend,” Jason Kay, granted an off camera interview to a local news station and claims it’s all the work of an “artist from out of town.” Kay is now facing federal product tampering charges, and this also brings up the worrisome issue of whether the drinks were tainted or not.
If all publicity really was good publicity, then Gatorade probably wouldn’t have minded so much about the unsolicited—and, as it turns out, totally illegal—ad campaign a Colorado pop artist launched this week.
But that axiom pretty much bit the dust yesterday, when bottle bootlegger Jason Kay was slapped with a felony charge and two misdemeanor counts after tampering with the labels on the sports beverage by affixing custom-made stickers featuring Tiger Woods and the word “unfaithful.”
The 38-year-old Kay, who apparently fessed up to the FDA investigators just as quickly as he did to the local news crews, could get five years in prison for his backfired experiment in pop art.
Not that he went down without a fight…
According to the police affidavit, obtained by the Smoking Gun, Kay exchanged emails with a rep for PepsiCo, Gatorade’s corporate overlord, on Sunday, asking to work out a closed-doors deal with the drink giant in which they would give him a per diem and pay his travel expenses to cities around the country to facilitate further label hijacking, all while publicly denying any connection to the viral vandal.
As for what would be in it for Gatorade? “Positive press,” of course.
In his email to the company, Kay said the project’s continuation would be “good for Gatorade and good for art.”
But not, it turns out, good for his personal freedom, as the company didn’t exactly bite on his offer.
Instead, he now faces charges of introducing adulterated or misbranded food into interstate commerce, mutilating or destructing a food label, and tainting a consumer product with the intention of causing serious injury to a business.
He faces five years in federal prison if he’s convicted of the offense. Guess you don’t have to be a tiger to sport stripes.
[From E! Online]
In a way it’s really clever to re-make Gatorade bottles mocking Tiger, but the guy and his “friend” should have sold them on eBay or made a parody website. Instead, they got the feds on their case by stupidly forcing them on an unsuspecting public. Maybe this incident will help bring the point home to Gatorade and Tiger’s other sponsors, even the ones who have defected, what an expensive public relationship disaster it is to be associated with him in any way. I see the Tiger Woods scandal as a wake up call to companies not to rely too much on a single spokesperson to define their brand.
This is so stupid don’t the feds have more important stuff to do???
Jeez.
Whole lotta somethin’ outta nothin’.
Shouldn’t the Feds worry more about child molesters/kidnappers, rapists, men killing women on a daily basis, and drug traffickers rather than some guy putting a few altered labels on some Gatorade?
This was stupid.
It’s stupid crap like this that takes away resources from combating legitimate criminal activity.
I understand why the Feds had to get involved due to the possibility of food tampering, but this was really much ado about nothing.
They couldn’t possibly be tainted. Have you tried to get the cap off a bottle of Gatorade lately?
Well it’s the FDA so they do have to worry about that stuff. Part of their jurisdiction I’m afraid.
That being said- I agree with @snowball Have they tried to get a cap off the bottle? It’s crazy hard these days.
Sheesh, the cops in Colorado must be bored to death over there.
@ Snowball, I know right? They made them so only pro athletes can open them and not puny white girls like me.
I thought the bottles were funny.
My boyfriend’s son stole a car, got beaten up in a drug deal, and used his mother’s debit cards at an ATM to buy coke. And he can’t get arrested in TEXAS! This Gatorade sticker artist should only be facing civil “patent infringement” charges, not jail time.
It’s the FDA, sadly, it is their job. Remember, though, the FDA also are the ones who classified Cheerios as an unapproved drugs due to the cholesterol statements on their packages.
While I love art, I can’t appreciate this. There were other ways to go about it rather than tampering with an actual product that is meant for consumers. Not to mention him asking Gatorade for money and travel to continue doing it around the country is beyond stupid.
While it may be may be hard to get into the caps, there is still the perceived tampering with the product if a normal consumer of gatorade were to pick it up and notice something was very wrong with the label, making sure these bottles won’t be sold, and possibly creating a paranoia, wondering if the store(s) in question have allowed other such tampering to go on. I can say I’m one of the people who would probably not shop at a store where this occurred because he wasn’t stopped from handling the products, or got access to them when he shouldn’t have.
@Kayleigh: Funniest post I’ve read all day…
When you need to acquire all of the HardHat on the net that is probably from the actual picture I seemed to be able to get it at Safety Equipment.