BOSTON (AP) – Aside from the rare Yankees fan living undercover in Boston, perhaps the only local residents wary of the implications of the Red Sox’s World Series victory are the entrepreneurs who have been cashing in on the legend of the “Curse of the Bambino.”

When the Sox swept the St. Louis Cardinals this week to end an 86-year championship drought, the wheels threatened to come off a marketing bandwagon that sellers of “Reverse the Curse” T-shirts, books, ice cream and cookies have been riding for years.

But the retailers aren’t surrendering to history; they’re just modifying their marketing messages. An ice cream company is staging a contest to rename its “Reverse the Curse” flavor, and apparel makers are trying gimmicks like printing the word “curse” backward to signify the purported curse’s reversal.

“This is a challenge for creative thinking,” said Stephen A. Greyser, a Harvard Business School professor and marketing expert.

No matter what new slogans emerge, retailers admit the curse marketing bonanza may have a short shelf life.

“I think it’s naive to think it won’t tail off some,” said Chuck Green, president and chief executive of Brigham’s Ice Cream, the company behind the flavor renaming contest. “But a lot of people said, Just because we won, don’t stop making this stuff.’ We think it has a little more legs to it than what I would call hula hoops’ items.”

The Red Sox put a stake through the curse Wednesday with their first World Series victory since 1918. Bostonians trace the curse to 1920, when the team’s owner sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in what was arguably the worst move in sports history.

Brigham’s, which sells its ice cream at its 26 Boston-area shops and at supermarkets, introduced Reverse the Curse in May. A pair of spiritualists blessed the first batch produced at the Arlington factory as a hired Babe Ruth-lookalike burst out of a Yankees jersey to display a Red Sox shirt underneath.

The flavor – vanilla with chocolate, fudge, caramel and peanuts – became the fastest-selling new flavor in the chain’s 90-year history.

At franchise owner Vinnie Jankord’s downtown Boston store on Thursday, the line of customers extended out onto the street, and Jankord placed special orders to keep the flavor in stock.

Green credits the flavor for a nearly 10 percent sales increase in his company’s 16-flavor line over the baseball season.

Brigham’s plans to name a winner of its renaming contest on Sunday. The company is making good on the promise it made in the spring, when Brigham’s counted itself among the Sox optimists expecting 2004 to be The Year.

Hundreds of suggestions from customers – including some unprintable references to the hated Yankees – have been narrowed down to four finalists: Curse Reversed, Believe It, Sox Rock and Fenway Faithfuls.

Harvard’s Greyser says getting customers hooked on the flavor, rather than its name, is the key to its survival. Non-edible curse-themed products like shirts, hats and posters may be doomed, however.

That hasn’t stopped retailers from rushing out gear this week carrying phrases such as “From cursed to first,” “Now I can die in peace” and “It happened in my lifetime.”

Moments after Wednesday night’s game ended at 11:40 p.m., LogoSportswear.com began offering T-shirts and caps bearing the word “curse” in reverse text. The shirts feature an image of a gravestone reading “RIP 1918-2004.”

Dozens of orders were coming in every hour on Thursday, and the shirt was outselling more conventional “Boston Red Sox 2004 World Series Champions” shirts 10-to-1, said Frank Nevins, owner and president of the Cheshire, Conn.-based business.

“I think there’s a certain kind of spiritual effect that this Red Sox victory has had for the fans,” he said.

The curse legend has been chronicled in books, including Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy’s “The Curse of the Bambino,” which has seen more than 20 printings since 1990 and been updated three times with 41 pages added to the original.

But Shaughnessy suspects the book’s popularity is past.

“I would think it would be time for that book to hit the road,” Shaughnessy said. “It now stands as ancient history.”

In February, Shaughnessy began writing a new Red Sox book scheduled to be published in March. The working title: “Reversing the Curse.”

“I think it’s just a stupid, fun way to explain the dark history of the Red Sox,” he said.