Man Snares Rights to King Kong Name, Hoping to Climb to Top of Food Chains

Nick Triantafillou wants to be the 800-pound gorilla of fast food.

The 50-year-old Greek immigrant is off to a good start--he holds the exclusive trademark rights to the words “King Kong” for use by restaurants.

His small eatery in downtown Omaha is already named after Hollywood’s most famous ape, and he dreams of that single outlet evolving into a monstrous chain.

At King Kong Gyros, diners feast on King Kong burgers, which weigh a pound and a half and measure more than 6 inches across. Things get bigger from there--one or two equally huge patties can be added to your bun for a Double King Kong or Triple King Kong.

“It’s a big hamburger, big portion,” he said in heavily accented English, while recounting why he adopted the name 11 years ago. “I said, ‘Let’s call it a King Kong.’ It’s lots of food.”

Such excesses epitomize the American dream for Triantafillou, a native of Evian, Greece, whose introduction to King Kong came when he was an adult.

He was 22 and living in Athens when he saw the movie upon which he would eventually hang his hopes of fame and fortune. It didn’t leave much of an impression, other than the fact that the ape made a journey that Triantafillou longed to make.

The son of working-class parents knew early in life that America was where he wanted to be. “Everybody interesting [is] in America,” he said.

His path to the United States was almost as perilous as that of the movie ape.

Triantafillou worked his way on a ship to England, where in 1973 he became part of the ship’s mess crew that served officers.

En route to pick up a shipment of sugar in the United States, the ship met a vicious storm that so shook the young Greek that he vowed: “If I make it through this, I never go back to the boats.”

When the ship docked in Galveston, Texas, he made good on that promise.

He jumped ship and eventually made his way to Council Bluffs, Iowa, across the Missouri River from Omaha. Here was another King Kong connection--Council Bluffs also happens to be the hometown of Ernest Schoedsack, the 1933 movie’s co-director. Triantafillou married an American woman and began operating a string of small Greek restaurants in greater Omaha, none of which did that well. When he added burgers and adopted the King Kong theme, his place suddenly became a hit among military types and other customers seeking not-so-exotic fare and lots of it.

Three years later, he moved his business out of the suburbs and into a former Dairy Queen in the middle of Omaha. The building is now painted in a lime-green-and-yellow jungle motif.

With his local success, Triantafillou started looking to branch out, and on an impulse called Omaha lawyer Adam Jacobs to ask if he could obtain the trademark rights to King Kong. To Jacobs’ amazement, no one from the film industry had ever filed for trademark protection for restaurant endeavors.

“Can you believe it?” Jacobs said.

Actually, it’s not that surprising, said Doug Wood, executive partner in the New York law firm of Hall Dickler Kent Goldstein & Wood.

He said movie studios today are more sophisticated when they register their trademarks. They now try to create a “famous mark” status that makes it more difficult for others to use the name in any commercial pursuit.

In the case of King Kong, its meaning has blurred over the years.

“If I say a big, hairy ape, there are a number of movies and characters from literature,” Wood said.

Even 68 years after the movie debuted, there is interest in the name.

Triantafillou was able to obtain the rights only after a New York woman’s intent to use the name had expired, and his application was next in line. The woman wanted to open a King Kong theme restaurant in New York’s Empire State Building, where the ape swatted planes while making his final stand in the movie.

New York is not on Triantafillou’s plate, but he does hope to soon make King Kong Gyros familiar to residents of Kansas City, Mo., Denver and Las Vegas.

From there, though, who knows? He may even send the famous primate to foreign markets.

“I’d like to see King Kong go all over the country and overseas too,” he said. “That’s my dream.”