Hulk (Hogan) Smash Cocoa Pebbles... With Cease and Desist

Given that the two things Terry "Hulk Hogan" Bollea's most famous for— 1) prancing around a wrestlng ring in yellow spandex underpants in the 80s and 2) his trainwreck of a family reality show on VH1 in the mid-2000s—are both kind of ridiculous, it's pretty amazing that he's suing Cocoa Pebbles over their "Cocoa Smashdown" commercial, which features a wrestler with a blond mullet, handlebar mustache and huge championship belt.

The ad in question:

Bollea claims his likeness has been used without permission and that "Hulk Boulder is shown humiliated and cracked into pieces with broken teeth" by Pebbles and Bam-Bam from The Flintstones. He knows about using intellectual property without permission: he was billed as "The Incredible Hulk" Hogan when he debuted for the WWF in 1979, which made Marvel Comics pretty mad and the WWF worried—they ended up agreeing to license the name "Hulk" for him. The name had to be relicensed by his employers his entire career until he finally just bought the rights to use "Hulk Hogan" from Marvel and now owns it outright himself. Interestingly, he apparently did use the name "Hulk Boulder" very briefly in the 1970s; presumably he didn't bother purchasing rights to that name from Marvel.

· Cocoa Smashdown [YouTube via Ad Freak]
· Flintstones Cereal Maker Rocked by Lawsuit [NYT]