Billboard with Grim Reaper wearing cheesehead has hat-maker cheesed off

The company that makes the iconic hat is threatening to sue a physicians' group after it put up an ad blasting the food right near Lambeau Field in the heart of Dairyland.

Author:: BMTN Staff
Publish date:: Sep 27, 2011

The company that makes the iconic Wisconsin cheesehead hat is threatening to sue a physicians' group that put the hat atop the Grim Reaper on a billboard blasting cheese.

An attorney for Foamation tells the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that the company would rather not be associated with an anti-cheese message.

"We by no means would condone that. We're a dairy state, for gosh sakes," one employee told the newspaper.

The nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine rented the billboard to call attention to what it says is a very dangerous product, packed with sodium, cholesterol and saturated fat. "It ought to come with a warning label," the group's education directory said in a press release.

WBAY-TV in Wisconsin has more:

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The threat of a lawsuit prompted a physician's group to scrap plans for an anti-cheese billboard featuring a popular Wisconsin icon. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine planned to erect a billboard near Green Bay depicting the Grim Reaper with a foam cheesehead hat. The company that makes the cheese hats threatened to sue, so the billboard group decided to remove the icon from the billboard.

The Assembly will vote Tuesday to honor Ralph Bruno, the man who invented the state's iconic cheesehead hat. The Associated Press says Bruno made the first hat in 1987 using stuffing from his couch.

Bennett Olson says he has taken a sales and marketing associate position at Laser Design & GKS Services in Bloomington. The 22-year-old paid $300 last month to advertise his online resume on the electronic billboard along 35W near downtown Minneapolis.

Minnesota's reputation as a squeaky-clean state is under attack. The Minnesota Majority, a conservative group that has campaigned for a strict photo ID requirement, put up a billboard near Elk River that says Minnesota is "number one" in voting fraud. Meanwhile, groups on both sides of the issue are plotting strategy in the run-up to the vote.

A man from Rosemount is putting himself out there on 35W in hopes of finding employment, the Town Pages reports.

The fast-food restaurant plans to correct a pair of billboards in St. Paul written in the Hmong language next week. The McDonald breakfast signs read, "Yuavtxhawbpabraukojsawv yuavntxivzograukoj mus," which loosely translates to say, "Coffee gets you up, breakfast gets you going." However, members of the Hmong community tell the Pioneer Press the text "doesn't make sense" and "there should definitely be spaces in between those words."

A group called Howling for Wolves is paying for billboards around the Twin Cities to oppose the new wolf hunting and trapping seasons this fall, WCCO reports. The wolf was removed from the endangered species list last January and the state legislature told the DNR to go ahead with the hunt.

Cheesehead