Five days after he very publicly dared Buc-ee’s to sue him, John Oliver says the famously litigious gas station chain has yet to respond.
“We didn’t hear from Buc-ee’s at all,” Oliver told The Hollywood Reporter’s Mikey O’Connell in an interview published Friday.
Sunday night’s Last Week Tonight closed with an extended challenge to the Texas-born chain of supersized travel centers, which Oliver accused of repeatedly bullying smaller businesses over cartoon-animal logos that bear little or no resemblance to its smiling beaver mascot.
To test just how far Buc-ee’s is willing to take its trademark claims, Oliver brought back Mr. Nutterbutter, the show’s seven-foot squirrel mascot, and gave him a new “Buc-Off” logo incorporating nearly every characteristic Buc-ee’s has objected to in other cases.
The show then placed that logo on a full line of merchandise, including shirts, hats, mugs, pajamas and underwear, with profits benefiting Hunger Free America.
“If any prominent gas station chain out there has an issue with our new logo and products and wants to get lawyers involved, then you know what? Bring it the f*ck on,” Oliver said Sunday.
So far, Buc-ee’s appears disinclined to accept the invitation.
Oliver said the company had been uncooperative when the show contacted it while preparing the segment, “aggressively” declining to answer any questions—including the seemingly innocuous matter of how many flavors of fudge it sells.
“I hear that they are going to let this go,” Oliver told THR. “So, we’ll see.”
O’Connell suggested that suing the show over an obvious parody benefiting charity would be a “very, very bad look.”
“It would be a bad look for Buc-ee’s,” Oliver agreed. “I was mostly confident that they would not do it, but some companies do feel drawn to a bad look, like a moth to flame.”
Oliver acknowledged that the show operates with a “healthy low-level anxiety” when confronting large, litigious companies. The goal, he said, is to ensure any legal risk is worth taking—and that the joke is worth the potentially substantial cost of defending it.
That occasionally produces a slight difference of opinion between the show and its attorneys.
“They think their job is to stop us getting sued,” Oliver explained. “We think their job is to make sure that when we are sued, we win.”
They’ve got a perfect record so far.
