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She relaunched her Zyn-shaped campaign tin — 'hopefully fewer lawyers,' she says

A month after Philip Morris International hit Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez with a cease-and-desist over a Zyn-branded campaign tin, she's selling a redesigned version that keeps the shape but drops the brand's name.

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ZYNPMISwedish MatchUnited Statestrademark

The $50 "GLUE-ZYN-KAMP" tin is gone from Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez's campaign store. Its replacement went up Thursday — same puck shape that mimics a ZYN can, but now reading "Marie for Congress" instead of borrowing the nicotine pouch brand's name.

"Yes, we made more. Now with our limited-edition grille logo and hopefully fewer lawyers," the Washington Democrat wrote on social media, alongside photos of the new tins.

What happened

The original merch was a marketing bet: Perez, one of the most vulnerable House incumbents, is running in a district President Trump carried, and ZYN is enormously popular with exactly the young, rural-leaning men her campaign is chasing. In early September she added a $50 metal storage tin styled like a ZYN can and labeled "GLUE-ZYN-KAMP" to her storefront, alongside mugs, tote bags and T-shirts.

Philip Morris International's US arm — which owns ZYN through its Swedish Match subsidiary — killed it within about a day. "While we appreciate enthusiasm for our brands from legal-age (21+) adults, the product violates our ZYN trademark and the campaign must cease and desist using it," a PMI spokesperson said in a statement to Oregon Public Broadcasting. The tin disappeared from the shop on September 9.

The redesign announced October 2 keeps the shape — it still reads instantly as a ZYN can — but drops the brand name, comes in green and black, carries a "Teamster Made" logo, and costs the same $50.

Why a pouch trademark fight matters to pouch readers

It's a small story with a big signal underneath it. ZYN has become one of the most recognizable consumer product designs in the US, to the point that a swing-district campaign treated a lookalike tin as politically valuable merchandise — and PMI polices it hard enough to make a sitting member of Congress back down. The brand's cultural pull among young men is measurable: a Tobacco Epidemic Evaluation Network study found pouch use among teens and young adults nearly quadrupled between 2022 and 2025, with ZYN the most common brand and 73% of young users male.

The merch gambit also cuts both ways politically. Members of the Trump administration, including HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have promoted pouches, but the category still carries youth-use scrutiny. Perez's campaign is betting the association wins her more voters than it costs her.

For readers tracking the brand everyone is borrowing, PouchFinder compares prices across retailers.

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