I’ve been a fan of Johnny Cupcakes since the beginning. The designs and spoofs of popular brands are always a pleasure to look at. The unique designs could not go unnoticed or not be not in danger of being copied. The corporate giant Billabong apparently also noticed this.
Above you can see the original golden tooth Johnny Cupcakes design, which was created and released in 2005. It was featured in many magazines, blogs, and even seen on television. Next to it you’ll see something very similar it is a new t-shirt that Billabong just released only in Europe called “Billabong Bling Bling”. If you compare the two designs there has been no change except for the fact that Billabong added their logo instead of the cupcake. This is so sad if a company the size of Billabong bites designs what’s next? Can’t their design team come up with their own ideas!?

This isn’t the first time that this has happened to Johnny. In 2006 Urban Outfitters also had a t-shirt with a similar design to one of Johnny Cupcakes designs of a jet dropping cupcakes (with a different color scheme) and the cupcakes were more detailed.

(on the right: Johnny Cupcakes’ jet shirt from early summer 2004. left: Urban Outfitters’ shirt from January 2006.) Johnny sent a few shirt samples to Urban outfitters. The jet dropping cupcakes was one of them. Two years later Urban outfitters release their version and to this day never sent the samples back.