Toronto artist gets takedown notice for anti-Loblaw parody merch: 'I’m ready to go to the Supreme Court'

A Toronto-based artist whose parody T-shirts target large corporations is catching the ire of Loblaw after he featured an edgy take on the grocery giant's logo and slogan.

Christopher Lambe hit his boiling point with Loblaw after it announced it would scale back day-of 50-per-cent discounts to just 30, a decision the company rescinded after a flood of angry feedback.

“That really got to me because I was once homeless…I know a lot of people who’d take advantage of those specials, first thing in the morning,” he tells Yahoo Canada. “It just felt like something really unnecessary to do.”

As a way to channel his rage, Lambe decided to design products that articulated how he felt about the corporation. So he made a batch of T-shirts, buttons and magnets that feature a pun on Loblaws, "Roblaw$," with the S as a dollar sign, and a play on the store's tagline — "Live Life Well" — was featured as "Live Life Hungry." The parodic logo was changed to an image of a gun and a basket.

The grocery giant is now working to get some of his products taken down from online retailer Etsy, a move that the artist is vowing to challenge.

After uploading the inventory to his Etsy account, Lambe was hit by an Intellectual Properties infringement case filed to the online retailer by the Loblaw corporation, and the merch was taken down. Lambe is disputing the case, and according to Etsy's guidelines, the corporation has 10 business days to seek court action against him. If they don't, he will put his merchandise back on the site.

In an email to Yahoo Canada, a representative for Loblaw said they were protecting their brand from unauthorized products.

“Like any other business, we protect our brand and trademarks from unofficial merchandise or products, particularly if the intent behind them is misleading to customers or malicious,” they wrote.

Lambe reached out directly to the lawyer who filed the case, hoping to get more information on the specifics of the copyright infringement they were concerned about.

“I said what’s the copyright and trademark number you say I’m violating because I’m pretty sure you don’t own the rights to a gun and a basket, because if you do, that would be a pretty interesting conversation to have,” he says. “They haven’t gotten back to me.”

Lambe plans to keep challenging the case as he feels it’s important to set a precedent for “anti-SLAPP” — strategic lawsuits against public participation — legislation, a legal tactic employed to censor or intimidate.

“I’m not going to back down, I’m ready to go to the Supreme Court, let’s go,” he says.

In the meantime, Lambe, who has a background in activism, has featured his items at a local arts fair, where they sold out, and continues to sell them on his website, where he also sells merch mocking telecom giant Rogers, with a punny "Robbers" logo.

Not Lambe's first rodeo: 'Metrostinx' merch

This isn't the first time Lambe has been flagged by a corporation for his satirical tees. He recently had to stop selling some of his Metrolinx-inspired shirts, after they reached out to him directly. That merch featured a font similar to the one used by the Ontario-owned transit agency, except it read “Metrostinx”. Lambe says they had a softer approach than Loblaw.

“They came directly to me and said ‘This is the trademark you’re violating, we need you to stop but we love your interest in public transit,’” he says. “It was a nicer way to do it.”

He still has "Metrostinx" merchandise, though it's slightly altered to not include the trademark sign that was part of his original design.

Lambe admits he's engaged with the popular Reddit forum "Loblaws is out of control," which is meant for people to vent about prices at Loblaw-related retailers. His work has proven to be popular, especially a "no shame" graphic that plays on the "no frills" logo. In the future, he intends to release work that takes aim on Bell Media and Doug Ford.

As a new dad, Lambe says that he is even more acutely aware of the problems weighing down on society, and thinks his designs hit on that.

“There is a breaking point coming and I think the veracity for which people want to buy these shirts speaks to that,” he says.