Call of Duty.....Really???

Can we talk for a sec......

Serious, what's with Call of Duty?  I get that it is a shoot 'em up, action game, that aparently is highly addictive....I get it, but seriously?  What's all the roucous?

How is it possible that a little, unassuming, last minute cake I made last year has become this totally snowballing theme for me?  I get emails....random emails....phone calls from people and cake designers located all over the country.  Really?  "Can you ship it to me?  I live in New York City(or Massachusets, or Canada, etc, you get the picture)".  Cake designers calling "Can you let me know how much you charged for this cake?  I gave a quote and the client was outraged at the price!"

I received a request not long after I created that first cake to use the image of my cake on a blog with credit to me, no link, just credit.  Other than that, I never really thought much of it.

At the time, I really didn't have many ideas for this theme.  I did a bit of research on Flickr and Google Images for some inspiration from other cakes for this and similar themes like military, army, etc.  There was not too much out there to draw from besides scene type themes...ya know like battle scenes or like a tank  or Humvee.  Things along those lines. 

So, this is what I came up with having limited time, and limited knowledge of the game...at least first hand knowledge being that I have never seen it in person.

This is that cake that started it all (horrible photo, everything about this cake was last minute!):

Yeah, I thought the best part of this design was the tag at the bottom with Call of Duty with the age of the recipient and the "Birthday Ops" to tie it all together with my corny, cheeky idea.  Also the name of the birthday boy in the scope was the other bit of my original design.  I try to be clever, sometimes it pans out others....well, you know how that goes.

Then several months later the Black Ops edition of Call of Duty was released and I created another Call of Duty cake for a Call of Duty fanatic who waited outside Best Buy for the release at midnight.  Wow, Don't know if I like anything enough to do that.  This cake included an XBox and controller in the concept.  That one was an even smaller cake, and still I really didn't think much of it.  Here is that one(again...horrible picture, I know...):

And finally, I did a larger Black Ops cake for a 10th birthday that was a two tier all buttercream cake which was this:

I have to say, I think this one was my favorite.

So, with all of this interest in my Call of Duty cakes which seemed altogether random; I was curious to see what other designs were out there since I had last checked nearly one year ago.  I wanted to know how and why I was getting all of these calls and emails. 

So, I did a Google Images search for "Call of Duty Cake" just to see what popped up.  Sure enough, not only were two of my photos on the first and third page of images, I also saw many copycat designs...like exact replicas.  I was wow'd...awe'd...I could not believe it!  I clicked on the images to find the sources because I was curious who these cake designers were.  Of course, no sourcing back to me, no design credit, nada.....

Oh well.  I know I personally always give credit where credit is due.  ALWAYS.  The best I got in these circumstances was "This design was brought to me by a client by some other cake designer online."  and "I saw a similar design from somewhere online".

WHATEV....I know who.....I know where....and now so do you!

Thanks for checking in!

Flour Girl