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The YouTube sensation known as MrBeast has used some of the massive amount of money he’s made online to build a burgeoning culinary empire, but he’s being forced to rebrand his “Deez Nuts” chocolate bars after they ended up at the center of a legal battle.
MrBeast (a.k.a. Jimmy Donaldson) is currently far and away the most popular personality on YouTube, as he uses the platform to rake in more than $50 million on an annual basis with the help of videos that routinely rack up hundreds of millions of views.
He reinvests a lot of that money into stunts that regularly involve him making over-the-top purchases for the sake of Content, including houses, luxury cars, and entire businesses in addition to some acts of philanthropy that have generated some blowback on the internet.
He’s also leveraged the MrBeast brand into some ventures of his own, including a chain of ghost kitchens specializing in burgers as well as “Feastables,” a line of chocolate bars he originally promoted by channeling his Willy Wonka and giving fans to compete in a contest that took place inside a chocolate factory.
Feastables come in a variety of fairly traditional flavors, including a peanut butter-filled version that was given an incredibly highbrow name in the form of “Deez Nuts.” However, it doesn’t sound like they’ll be called that for much longer.
According to Business Insider, MrBeast found himself on the receiving end of a cease-and-desist issued by a Florida company called “Dee’s Nuts,” which trademarked that name back in 2012.
Over the summer, the owner argued the YouTuber infringed upon that trademark with a moniker that was “confusingly similar and phonetically equivalent,” and the court that heard the case recently agreed with that argument by forcing the upstart brand to stop using the “Deez Nuts” name.
The chocolate bars are still for sale in their original form on the Feastables website as of this writing, but it’s safe to assume that won’t be the case for much longer pending an appeal.