Vulcan Strength Lawsuit: Bad Review, Lanham Act, Anti-SLAPP

Vulcan Strength Training Systems is suing YouTube home-gym reviewer Adrian Gluck over a scathing video review of its TALOS All-In-One Gym, and the Vulcan Strength lawsuit is now pending in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina. The company’s parent, Advanced Fitness Concepts, Inc., filed the case on October 31, 2025, bringing claims for defamation, false advertising under the Lanham Act, unfair and deceptive trade practices under North Carolina law, and common-law unfair competition.¹

The Review Behind the Case

Adrian Gluck runs Gluck’s Gym, a home-gym review channel he operates with his wife Wynie. Vulcan sent him a TALOS unit in June 2025 and he spent roughly three months testing it before publishing.²

What he published was harsh. A short “gym tour” clip called the product “a pile of shit.” A Patreon video was titled “I just killed the Vulcan Talos (& maybe Vulcan too).” The public YouTube version, titled “This Is The Worst Product I’ve Ever Reviewed…”, opened with an image of the TALOS in a flaming trash bin.¹²

The substance of the criticism covered the whole machine: cables with too much slack and uneven tension, pulley grooves too small for the cables, minimal and incomplete assembly instructions, a lat pull-down bar that didn’t fit, unusable band pegs, and a low-row attachment that sat dangerously close to the floor. Gluck also called Vulcan’s website “the world’s worst website” and the ordering process “the worst experience I’ve ever had,” telling viewers that at the TALOS’s $4,000-plus price point they would be better off buying a Rep Fitness Aries 2.0.¹²

According to Vulcan’s complaint, the YouTube video had accumulated more than 70,000 views by the time suit was filed.¹

What Vulcan Is Claiming

Vulcan sent a cease-and-desist letter on September 30, 2025, offering to resolve the matter if Gluck took the video down and posted a correction by October 10. Gluck signed for the FedEx delivery but did not respond, and Vulcan filed suit at the end of the month.³

The complaint pleads four causes of action:

False advertising under the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1125(a)(1)(B).
Defamation.
Unfair and deceptive trade practices under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 75-1.1.
Common-law unfair competition.¹

Underneath the four legal theories is a single factual story: that Gluck acted in bad faith. Vulcan alleges he ignored assembly instructions that were provided, failed to tell viewers that free corrective parts were available, and privately told the company the cables were “fine” before publicly claiming they were defective.¹ The company also alleges a financial motive, pointing to Gluck’s affiliate relationships with larger competitors including Rogue Fitness and Rep Fitness and arguing he sank a smaller competitor’s product to protect those revenue streams while burnishing his credibility as a fearless reviewer.²

Publicly, Vulcan has framed the case as a dispute between two commercial actors rather than a manufacturer punishing a consumer for an opinion. The company says it has never in more than a decade of business taken legal action over an opinion and that the suit targets “specific false factual claims.”⁴

How Gluck Is Defending

On November 20, 2025, Gluck posted a 17-minute response video titled “I Got Sued…”, in which he called the lawsuit “a bullying tactic” and “intimidation,” and told viewers that if companies can sue over honest reviews, “nobody’s going to make them because they’ll fear the repercussions.”²

He also answered Vulcan’s factual claims point by point. On assembly, he argued the provided instructions were minimal by industry standards and that Vulcan’s CEO had admitted an employee failed to send promised supplemental materials. On the cables, he maintained that even after using the product’s three-position adjustment system, tension remained loose and uneven, and he said Vulcan’s CEO acknowledged tolerance issues during a phone call. On the affiliate-bias theory, Gluck said Vulcan itself had offered him a 12% affiliate rate, higher than the 5% he earned from Rep Fitness, which he argued undercuts any financial incentive to sabotage the TALOS. He also pointed to past critical reviews of larger brands, including Titan Fitness, and positive reviews of other small manufacturers.²

Gluck launched a GoFundMe with a $90,000 goal for legal defense costs. It has raised more than $83,000 from roughly 1,600 donors.⁵

Where the Case Stands

On December 29, 2025, Gluck and Gluck’s Gym LLC filed a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, arguing that they are Connecticut residents who do not live in, do business in, or direct conduct toward North Carolina.⁶ Vulcan opposed on January 12, 2026; Gluck replied on January 19. As of mid-2026, the court has not ruled.⁷

If the court grants dismissal, the case ends in North Carolina without reaching the merits, though Vulcan could refile elsewhere. If it denies dismissal, the case moves into discovery on the defamation, Lanham Act, and state-law claims.

Vulcan has also asked the court for leave to file a supplemental complaint aimed at Gluck’s November response video, which the company alleges repeated and expanded the same false claims and included new falsehoods about how the review relationship began and about product revisions offered before publication.⁴ Gluck’s lawyers opposed on January 13, 2026, calling the proposed filing “frivolous” and “replete with mischaracterizations of facts,” and arguing that Vulcan had stripped the phrase “in my opinion” from Gluck’s statements to disguise protected opinion as actionable defamation.⁸ That motion also remains pending.

The Legal Questions That Will Decide It

Opinion vs. Fact

Under North Carolina law, statements of opinion are protected from defamation claims. Context controls: if a reasonable viewer would understand a statement as personal opinion rather than a verifiable fact, it generally falls outside defamation’s reach. The state also recognizes the “substantial truth” doctrine, which protects statements with minor inaccuracies so long as the core is true.⁹ The central question is whether Gluck’s specific technical criticisms, such as the claims about cable tension and pulley sizing, are verifiable factual assertions that can be proven false, or the kind of subjective, colorful conclusions reviewers routinely voice.

Can a Reviewer Be Sued Under the Lanham Act?

The Lanham Act’s false-advertising provision is most often used between direct competitors. Whether it reaches a product reviewer who does not sell a competing product but earns affiliate income is not fully settled. Some courts have recognized a limited exception for consumer reports and reviews; others have held that when a supposedly neutral review is really a paid promotion, the statute can apply.¹⁰ Vulcan’s theory depends on recasting Gluck as a commercially motivated actor whose affiliate ties to competing manufacturers make him functionally a competitor.

Anti-SLAPP

North Carolina has an anti-SLAPP statute allowing defendants to seek early dismissal of suits targeting protected speech on matters of public concern.¹¹ The filings reviewed do not show Gluck filing a standalone anti-SLAPP motion. His First Amendment arguments have been folded into his opposition to the supplemental complaint and his jurisdictional challenge.

A Familiar Risk for Plaintiffs

A closely comparable case moved faster and ended badly for the plaintiff. In May 2025, lock manufacturer Proven Industries sued YouTuber Trevor McNally over videos demonstrating how to bypass its products. A federal judge in Florida denied a preliminary injunction, ruling that McNally’s use of video clips was “transformative, artistic, and a critique” and that dissuading a customer through product criticism is not the kind of interference the law is meant to prevent. Proven dismissed its own lawsuit in July 2025.¹² That outcome does not bind the court hearing Vulcan’s case, but it marks the pattern: suing a reviewer tends to draw far more attention to the review than the review drew on its own, and courts have not been eager to treat sharp product criticism as unlawful interference.

1
Justia. Advanced Fitness Concepts, Inc. v. Gluck et Al, Complaint
2
PPC Land. Fitness YouTuber Fights Back Against Equipment Maker’s Defamation Lawsuit
3
Vulcan Strength Blog. Vulcan Strength v. Gluck’s Gym Public Court Filing
4
Vulcan Strength Blog. Legal Statement
5
GoFundMe. Help Gluck’s Gym Defend Against the Vulcan Strength Lawsuit
6
Justia. Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Personal Jurisdiction
7
CourtListener. Advanced Fitness Concepts, Inc. v. Gluck
8
Justia. Defendants’ Response to Plaintiff’s Motion for Leave to File Supplemental Complaint
9
Dement Askew. Defamation Guide for Libel and Slander in North Carolina – Part 3: Defenses
10
Bona Law. Bona Law Tells Ninth Circuit That Bogus Product Reviews Are Not Exempt From Lanham Act False Advertising Laws
11
Institute for Free Speech. Anti-SLAPP Statutes: 2025 Report Card
12
Ars Technica. Suing a Popular YouTuber Who Shimmed a $130 Lock: What Could Possibly Go Wrong