Monkey Monday: Burger King is weird 5 January 2009 2:13 pm
Posted by Tracy in : consumerism,food snobbery,news,random,restaurants,silly,weird , trackbackFull disclosure: I have never been a fan of Burger King. Even when I ate fast food burgers, theirs were my least favorite, and not just because BK, like McDonalds, does not offer mayonnaise as a condiment — a deadly insult to my taste in fries, which once caused Moon Monkey housemate Penny to tell me “Sometimes you’re so Dutch it hurts.” (Need mayo with your fast food fries? Wendy’s and Roy Rogers both provide. I’m just sayin’.) But: back to burgers, and my dislike of Burger King’s in particular (in case you were wondering, there’s a point to this diatribe: I want to write about a few weird BK advertising campaigns, so I thought I should make my prejudices clear ahead of time).
Here is the reason for my beef with Burger King burgers (ha, ha, pun intended), above and beyond similar-ish offerings at other places: in pursuit of the dubious goal of making fast food crappiness taste “flame broiled,” BK does something to their mystery meat patties that makes them taste like smoke, which I hate. To me, smoke tastes like failure. Smoke tastes like I fucked up. I do not like the taste of smoke. My distaste extends to chipotle peppers (with one notable exception whose praises I will sing later this week) and many smoked meats, including many sausages, and some ham and bacon. For some reason, smoked fish often gets a pass. I’m 100% down with smoked salmon when it’s thinly sliced, called lox and served on a bagel with cream cheese and the Sunday New York Times. Big chunks of smoked salmon are a little iffier. But I digress. Today’s post is about a few weird Burger King-related news items that were all over my food blog and email listserv readings at the end of last year.
The first Burger King weirdness I want to write about today is smoke-related: apparently they expanded their business from making food smell bad to getting that smell on people, too — by creating a flame-broiled beef scent called “Flame” body spray (warning: that link goes to a truly bizarre website, and I’m saying that having only looked at it with my computer’s sound off). I guess calling it “perfume” would be too girly or something? They do know about the phrase “flamingly gay,” right? Speaking of which, Meghan Daum of the Los Angeles Times wrote a column about the “Flame” phenomenon suggesting that BK’s King mascot might be using his perfume — ahem, I mean “body spray” — to seduce Ronald McDonald. Daum also reported that, as of her article’s deadline, “Flame” was only available on eBay — it had sold out at the one New York store with an exclusive deal to sell it, and on BK’s promotional website. I could not make this stuff up, but I sure can be grossed out by it.
But speaking of grossness, I think “Flame” pales in the “you can’t make this up” department compared to the Whopper Virgins ad campaign (warning: that link goes to a page that makes noise, and not the kind you get by licking your finger and rubbing it on the computer screen). Marion Nestle reluctantly wrote about the commercial on December 7, with an update on December 9. PunkAss Blog was a little more forthright in their response, as was Ann at Feministing, who quoted PAB in her response. I first found out about the “Whopper Virgins” through a friend’s del.icio.us bookmarks, where it was simply tagged “good grief.” The anthropologically-minded members of the Association for the Study of Food and Society listserv had a field day with this stuff, I tell you what.
So. I think even if you factor out my personal anti-Burger King preferences, these stories combine to justify the title of today’s post. Because seriously, what?
Coming up later this week: tea and pancakes, not burgers of death and weird advertising.
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Marcy
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cj
