jtherkal:Whopper Virgins, bad. Whopper Sacrifice, good. On Facebook, you have to de-friend ten people and you get a free Whopper. Whether those Whoppers ever show up, that’s anybody’s guess. But it’s a great use of Facebook. You know you have about ten people from high school padding your friend stats that you’d never talk to anyways. Why not have a free burger? A.
sjbooher: Dumb. Meh. Whatever. And I hate the commercialization of Facebook. C-.
jtherkal: Ha. Ha. I like that Burger King is willing to take risks, as this was clearly going to create some controversy. The idea breaks down when you get to the logic. Who cares what someone who has never, ever had a burger prefers? They might think grasshoppers or bamboo taste delicious. In America, we’re burger experts. I know a good burger. If someone from the moon gave me two kinds of moon cake to taste and I picked one, it wouldn’t necessarily mean that is the better moon cake. It would just mean to my unrefined palate, one is more familiar. And I’m sorry, but The Big Mac is in a different class than the Whopper; I don’t even consider The Big Mac a burger. It needs its own classification, like “delicious meatlike substance housed in breadlike objects.” D+.
jtherkal: At first I liked the King, his creepy silence and smiling face. And I still want to like him, but for some reason this just doesn’t do it for me. Part of the charm of the initial King ads was the voiceover selling “eggs and meat and cheese…and meat and cheese.” They made it sound and look good. The problem here could be that the product looks like absolute garbage. Smokey cheese sauce? I imagine that slides right through you and comes out looking eerily the same as it went in. That is NOT the breakfast of tomorrow. Nothing about this brings me joy. D+.
sjbooher: I love that King and his freaky hands. It is a great moment in time when the King gives us that jazz hands type motion after Mrs. Future comments on his hands. So weird it is good. The cheese sauce definitely scares me, but this ain’t irateproducts.com. Maybe they could have just glossed over the sauce a little more, or maybe THAT is the greatest drawing point. This is an overweight country, after all. A.
What would happen if Burger King discontinued the Whopper?
That’s the question posed in this campaign for Burger King. To find out, they stopped selling Whoppers at one BK for one day. The results? Not hilarious. Not outrageous. In fact, there was barely any freaking out. I think what they found for most of the day was that when you tell America the Whopper is discontinued, the reaction is, “oh, well, I guess I’ll have two of that similar smaller shitty burger.”
Then, as if a flawed concept wasn’t enough, they try and turn it into some sort of online viral campaign by asking consumers to go to whopperfreakout.com in order to see people freaking out. This teaser ran all weekend and, in order to write this review, I thought I’d check it out.
So the teaser got me to the site, where I was even more disappointed. The “freakouts” are marginally funny, at best. And it’s seriously a stretch to label any of the reactions a “freakout.” But I guess “Whopper Surprised and Mildly Annoyed” didn’t have the same kind of ring to it. To save you the time and effort required to visit the shit site (where there is only this lame video) I’ve posted it here. You’re welcome.
I’m guessing the producers of this elaborate hoax weren’t exactly thrilled with the mundane responses of real people. It was so unsuccessful, they decided to book a second day with an even less intriguing premise. What happens if people order the Whopper but get something else? Huh? I can tell you what’ll happen, they’ll be annoyed that they didn’t get what they ordered. Not because the Whopper is great, but because people get pissed when some bone-headed register jockey fucks up their order. If they really wanted to surprise people, they should have put a dead bird in their bags.
Now, if the Big Mac went away, I think you’d see some serious freaking out.
