You are probably right. By the time Topps won that lawsuit, Original Series Wackys were already on the decline. I was really referring to the fact that with the modern era Wackys, as someone else mentioned, most products seem to be fair game.
Ex-
act-ly! You are absolutely
right, sir! (as Ed McMahon would say)
In fact, I noticed long ago that, as far as both Wackys and their cookie and cracker products were concerned, Nabisco seems to gained both a sense of humor
and a funny bone after all these years - and has
still kept both of them!
The only cease-and-desist orders in the early years of the ANS run that
I've heard of (at least) in recent years were only in ANS1 (2004), ANS2 (2005) and ANS3 (2005/2006). In both cases, M&M/Mars complained about five of their candy products being in the first two of them (which, btw, didn't last very long, as not only were two out of the five M&M/Mars-based Wackys that
were actually cease-and-desisted released
anyway years later (they were 3 Racketeers in ANS10 as one of its 14 bonus stickers (B1) and Twits in 2014 S1 as one of the three stickers in its Lost Wackys subset (L2)), but a lot of those aforementioned candy products and several others from the same company were - and still are - being parodied to this day (
repeatedly and
ad nauseum)). Three more M&M/Mars-based Wackys - Scarburst, Sneakers and Spittles - were allowed to be kept in ANS1, but as part of the cease-and desist order, they could never be re-released outside of that series ever again. AFAIK,
that part of the order still holds to this day (if I'm wrong, however, please tell me).
Then there were two more Wackys also from the early years of the ANS run and from about the same time as
that incident (they were Fright Castle Ghoulburgers and Slacker Jack) that were also allowed to be kept in their respective series (ANS1 for the first one and ANS3 for the second one (the second one was originally intended for ANS2, btw)), but
only if their original artwork was
slightly altered in order to appease their respective companies, namely White Castle and Frito-Lay (the second of which had an agreement with Topps to publish Cracker Jack baseball cards at the time). In
both of these cases, it was only a few
minor details that most people probably wouldn't have heard of or even
noticed unless they knew about them in advance or someone mentioned them and then showed them to them.
After all of that was said and done Topps, again AFAIK, has had
no more trouble with cease-and-desist orders after
that (at least,
I haven't heard of any - has anyone else out there?).
