Chubby Checker Sues Over Penis Measuring App For Hilarious Amount Of Money

More than fifty years ago, South Carolina born singer Chubby Checker covered Hank Ballard’s song “The Twist” and turned it into one of the biggest radio singles in history. He had a nice run for a few years after that in the early 1960s, but since then, he’s largely disappeared from the public consciousness save the occasional bit of radio airplay, television appearance or in this case, hysterical lawsuit.

According to The Guardian, Magic Apps, a now defunct software company, created an app for Hewlett-Packard’s Palm OS platform entitled “The Chubby Checker”. It allowed users to punch in a man’s shoe size and receive an estimation of his penis size. The makers likely thought it would be a huge hit with women and gay guys, but unfortunately, it didn’t work out quite so well. Only eighty-four units were sold before sales were discontinued in September, and now, Checker’s lawyers have filed a lawsuit claiming the app infringed on Checker’s copyright name, used it to make money and caused irreparable harm to the singer’s reputation.

Altogether, Checker and his lawyers think HP should pay them five hundred million dollars, which would equal all of the profits and more than $499,999,916 in damages for infringing upon his name. I can’t imagine any court will award Checker anywhere close to that figure, but he could potentially get a settlement if HP executives feel like they have better things to do with their time.

Editor In Chief

Mack Rawden is the Editor-In-Chief of CinemaBlend. He first started working at the publication as a writer back in 2007 and has held various jobs at the site in the time since including Managing Editor, Pop Culture Editor and Staff Writer. He now splits his time between working on CinemaBlend’s user experience, helping to plan the site’s editorial direction and writing passionate articles about niche entertainment topics he’s into. He graduated from Indiana University with a degree in English (go Hoosiers!) and has been interviewed and quoted in a variety of publications including Digiday. Enthusiastic about Clue, case-of-the-week mysteries, a great wrestling promo and cookies at Disney World. Less enthusiastic about the pricing structure of cable, loud noises and Tuesdays.