‘Suckerpunched’? Lexington company licensed ‘Cocaine Bear’ naming rights to Universal.
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The true story of cocaine bear
The “Cocaine Bear” movie that’s set to premiere in February 2023 seems a lot different than the true story of the bear that ate cocaine dumped out of a plane by a former Lexington cop. Here’s the real story of what happened.
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A Lexington small business owns trademarks for “Cocaine Bear,” and it says it is going “Apex Predator Mode” now that Universal Pictures is releasing a movie about its mascot.
Kentucky for Kentucky holds entertainment services and merchandising trademarks for “Cocaine Bear” and said it licensed the naming rights to the movie studio.
The company, which for years has displayed a taxidermy bear and sold merchandise associated with it, said that before it published a blog post about the bear in 2015, “Cocaine Bear didn’t exist.”
“He was just an unidentified bear that ate a Kentucky drug smuggler’s lost payload,” the company said. “We gave him the intoxicating name Cocaine Bear and an equally captivating personality. We nicknamed him Pablo Escobear. We researched and mythologized him. His popularity exploded because the KY for KY faithful fell in love with him first, and they shared his saga with the rest of the world.”
Kentucky for Kentucky garnered national attention for a quirky ad featuring Cocaine Bear in 2016.
The company said in a news release that it filed the entertainment trademark in February 2019 and “entered into a shopping agreement with an animation studio” in October 2020.
“People were understandably stoked about the very obvious potential of a series based on a character that had already proven himself to have mass appeal and earnings power,” Kentucky for Kentucky said.
Those plans were dropped after Universal Pictures announced plans for the “Cocaine Bear” movie in March 2021 in what Kentucky for Kentucky described in its news release as being “suckerpunched.”
“Because of our longstanding history as the originators of the Cocaine Bear character, everybody assumed that we were involved, but we hadn’t been consulted,” the release stated.
The company said it licensed the naming rights to the studio “for less than we feel they’re worth considering that Cocaine Bear went from that 2015 article on our website to one of 2023’s most anticipated movies. Clearly a good title goes a long way.”
Kentucky for Kentucky did not say how much it received from Universal, though it did say “the words ‘Cocaine Bear’ have proven their worth. As marketers ourselves, we always knew they were gold.”
Now, Kentucky for Kentucky says it’s focusing on finding “brands, licensees, and other partners that want to get in on the action, too.”
“With this powerful and valuable intellectual property in place and Cocaine Bear hotter than ever, we’re going Apex Predator Mode and looking to expand the Cocaine Bear universe in a BIG way,” the company said in the release.
“We’re currently exploring video games, animated series, cannabis strains, celebrity meals, luxury collabs, action figures, roller coasters, alcoholic beverages and maybe even sex toys as possible areas for Cocaine Bear to sink his claws into. We think the possibilities are endless.”
This story was originally published February 20, 2023 at 7:00 AM.
