Well, that, as they say, escalated quickly. Social media exploded recently in the 2A community when Heckler & Koch, taking a page straight out of Wendy’s Twitter, delivered a savage roast aimed at Hi-Point. Not that common among gun companies, thousands of fans immediately weighed in to fan the flames.
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It all started with what should have been a easy PR win for Hi-Point. While promoting a new 9mm pistol, Hi-Point launched a “Name the Nine” campaign, giving fans an opportunity to vote on the name of the company’s new pistol. However, it all went sideways when “Yeet Cannon” caught on as a popular choice.
At first, Hi-Point played along, at one point updating fans via Twitter that YC-9: Yeet Cannon lead all online voting at 556 submissions. At that time, it topped other would-be candidates such as “PS-9: Problem Solver” and “SOTG,” for Student of the Gun.
Hi-Point ‘Name the Nine’ Campaign
NAME THE NINE.
.
Out of the 7,880 entries here are the most submitted in alphabetical order:PS-9:Problem Solver – 306
SOTG: @studentofthegun – 121
WLS-9: @welikeshooting – 360
YC-9: Yeet Cannon – 556
Did you… https://t.co/cII0CLphDA
— Hi-Point Firearms (@HiPointFirearms) June 14, 2019
However, yesterday Hi-Point updated fans on its Facebook page that voting had entered Phase 2, with several alpha-numeric name choices as the only candidates. The Yeet Cannon, along with other unique names, was gone. Fans immediately took up pitchforks, slamming the company for removing Yeet, the most popular choice.
https://www.facebook.com/HiPointFirearms/photos/a.377153682339610/2192300134158280/?type=3
HK Delivers Savage Roast
And that’s where the story turns even more weird, as HK suddenly appeared out of the ether to pounce on the opportunity to poke fun. It posted the following:
In the tradition of the immortal Wendy’s Twitter page, pure savagery. But HK didn’t stop there. It backed its play with a landing page, yeetkanone.com, which re-directs to a page for the Mark 23. The company’s Facebook page continued on with numerous Yeet references.
Hi-Point responded on Facebook with the following: “Wow.”
Hi-Point stated several times that it never intended to completely give over the naming convention to fans, that it would merely listen and enable them to engage.
As for the “Yeet,” we had to look it up ourselves. Guess we’re out of touch with pop culture. Urban Dictionary defines “Yeet” as “to discard an item at a high velocity.” Or, in another meaning, “a versatile word that can be used as an exclamation, a verb, or even a noun.” In those terms, it would be akin to naming a gun an “Ooh-Rah” or “Yut,” which we’re quite sure most folks would be onboard with. However, there are some other supposed profane uses of the word, so its not surprising Hi-Point wants no part of it.
Undeterred, Hi-Point fans, or possibly enemies, setup a Change.org page to petition the company to give them the Yeet Cannon. At press time, the petition boasted 1,087 signatures, well on it way to the stated goal of 1,500.
Meanwhile, the Hi-Point “Name the Nine” promotion continues, with online voting scheduled to wrap up June 24.
