The internets are a buzz with recent chatter that Newbreed Girl – notorious rip off suppliers to the “mallternative” chain Hot Topic – had once again stolen someone else’s work and called it their own.

Apparently Shawn, creator of Shawnimals, is the latest artist to see his work being stolen right out from under his nose. For you see Moustachio has turned up - completely intact – on girls tees all over America. Newbreed Girl is selling it as their own original product, in Hot Topic’s around the country.

According to this post Shawn is rightly pissed:

I can tell we’re not happy about it, and are definitely dealing with it. It’s hard enough out there striving for some level of originality – a moustache character with a moustache is pretty specific at least – so to have our Moustachio character ripped off so blatantly is really frustrating and annoying. Independent artists and designers like us are constantly striving for and succeeding in coming up with interesting, compelling concepts and visuals, and while most celebrate and enjoy them, some opportunistic, unoriginal hacks can’t help but try to cash in.

The thing is, Newbreed Girl has a history of this. In fact this is the third time. They were originally busted for totally biting off illustrator Nina Matsumoto, and then they were caught lifting a Threadless design by Jeff Fink.

Being influenced is one thing, but ripping people off is bad medicine. There seems to be a tinge of guilt in Newbreed Girl’s response:

“It is my poiicy (sic) to encourage freelancers to use the free Getty photo images as reference points & we also use sketches from the Japanese free clip art books, which have inanimate objects with cute faces & legs etc. which are also very similar to the soap.”

If you are a designer, it may be wise to review Newbreed Girl’s catalog - just to see if you’d need to join Nina, Jeff, and Shawn in a lawsuit. And if you are in a Hot Topic, don’t buy Newbreed Girl merch.