Terry Rozier’s play last year earned him a few nicknames, but “Scary Terry” is one that stuck, and one that fueled a lot of online merchandise. Unfortunately for the people responsible for the shirts, they never got permission to use that “Scream” mask… which has led to a lawsuit.
The makers of the infamous “Scream” mask are trying to kill Boston Celtics guard Terry Rozier’s use of the copyrighted image, according to a lawsuit.
Rozier, who has coined the nickname “Scary Terry,” has been supplementing his $3.1 million salary by hawking merchandise printed with a cartoon image of himself wearing the mask from the 1996 slasher flick. The sweatshirt and T-shirt line has been a hit, according to his management company.
The nickname itself is a bit ironic now because it comes from a Rick and Morty character named Scary Terry. Scary Terry is obviously based on the hat-and-sweater-wearing, facially-deformed Freddy Krueger but who is a “legally safe knockoff of an 80’s horror character with miniature swords for fingers instead of knives.”
The merch was also sold by the sports blog, Barstool, and Rozier bragged about the marketing ploy in a GQ article.
“ . . . One of the guys in my agency who does marketing sent me shirts. It had the Jason mask on there. And I was like, ‘We need to get the Scream mask on there,’” the complaint says.
When I started writing this post, I could get to Scary Terry merchandise on Barstool, but they appear to have taken all Scary Terry Scream mask links down. Other versions of the shirt have popped up on other sites, so if you’re desperate for one a simple google search will get you to one. I’m sure those will eventually go away too. You can still get the Scary Terry Jason-mask version
Rozier used an image of himself in the scream mask as recently as Halloween:
Usually the way this goes is the merchandise goes away or they reach a deal to legally license it. If anyone got money off this, they might have to pay some or all of it back. Rozier will obviously be fine if he gets dinged but there are others who profited off this that might be scrambling.
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