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Recent Fast Food ads that are hilariously AWESOME

Posted in advertising, Burger King, commercials, fast food, Jack in the Box, TV with tags advertising, Burger King, fast food, Hardee's, Jack in the Box, Taco Bell, TV commercials on July 16, 2009 by Paxton

Dude, I love fast food. I especially love fast food advertising. Fast food joints are right up there with beer/alcohol ads as being the most entertaining advertising in print or television. Here are some ads from the past few months that I have been LOVING.

Hardee’s French Dip Thickburger with French Maids – This has been a print campaign mostly for the Hardee’s French Dip Thickburger. It’s a third pound burger topped with roast beef and swiss with a cup of au jus for dipping. Sounds pretty awesome. I love that Hardees has the French maids as the mascots. That is clever and hilarious. See an intro video featuring the French maids here.

Hardee’s Biscuit Holes – I love the name of this product. Biscuit Holes. That is funny. However, Hardee’s currently has a campaign to rename them and the above video is the awesomely funny commercial that goes with it. I love seeing people trying to come up with something better than Biscuit Holes and everything they say is almost worse. See another biscuit holes commercial here (it’s just as funny).

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More AWESOME McDonald’s commercials

Posted in advertising, fast food, food, McDonald's, nostalgia, pop culture with tags Hamburglar, McDonald's, nostalgia, pop culture, TV commercials on May 4, 2009 by Paxton

(Via SA_Steve)

Well, it’s ri-donk-ulous how popular my last McDonald’s commercial article became. It’s now constantly at the top of my blog traffic. So, I thought, why not write a sequel? I still search YouTube for old McD’s commercials, so it shouldn’t be hard to find some worthy of a look back. And, I was right, there are many that I can still talk about.

McDonald’s has always had really, really good commercials. Especially during the whole McDonaldLand era. All of those characters were awesome and almost every single one of the characters had their own commercial. So today, I thought I’d look at my favorite character and a few of his commercials.

I love the Hamburglar. He was always my favorite character. He had an awesomely kick ass name and he was a bit of a rebel. Also, check out the striped suit, the dude obviously did some time in prison. How cool is that? A children’s fast food mascot that did hard time. Awesome, indeed. So, in honor of our felon friend, here are a bunch of commercials that feature the Hamburglar. Click the title of the commercial or the image to see the commercial on YouTube.

hamburglar_touch1 hamburglar_touch2
The Hamburglar Touch – This was back in the ’80s/’90s when the McD commercials had title cards like a Looney Tunes cartoon. This commercial featured the Hamburglar dreaming about what it would be like to have everything he touched turn into a juicy hamburger. You can see the Hamburglar in this commercial looks different than the big picture above. The Hamburglar used to look more like a goblin, but they softened him up in the late ’80s to look more like a Cabbage Patch Kid. It’s tough to find commercials with the goblin face.

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The Grocery Aisle of long forgotten breakfast cereals Pt II

Posted in advertising, Batman, breakfast cereal, movies, pop culture, Star Wars with tags advertising, Batman, breakfast cereal, commercials, movies, pop culture, Star Wars on April 3, 2009 by Paxton

Allrighty, here’s Part II of the discontinued cereals article. If you missed Part I, click here, my friends, otherwise, let’s walk back down Aisle 7c (Nostalgia) and take a look at some more forgotten cereals from our childhood.

Burgen, flurgen, murgen…BORK BORK BORK!! The cereal with the nonsense name. Swedish Chef was one of the more popular Muppets, so it’s not surprising he got his own cereal. This was released in the late ’80s and the commercials for it were produced by Jim Henson, right before he died. Here is one of the commercials.

What if you want a breakfast food that looks like other food? I mean, why eat donuts for breakfast when you can have cereal…shaped like donuts? Or waffles? Or ice cream? These cereals remind me of that Jim Belushi skit on SNL where he’s an Olympic athlete that eats “Little Chocolate Donuts” for breakfast. See that skit here. Here are cereals based on donuts, including a Dunkin Donuts branded cereal. I actually remember each of these.

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What our favorite fast food joints looked like back in the day Part II

Posted in advertising, Americana, Burger King, fast food, food, Pizza Hut, pop culture with tags advertising, Burger King, Dairy Queen, fast food, Pizza Hut, pop culture on February 4, 2009 by Paxton

Last week I introduced you to the early incarnations of some of our favorite fast food restaurants. You got to see McDonald’s, Arby’s and KFC the way they looked when they were opened in the ’50s and ’60s. If you missed this trip down vintage fast food lane just click here to be transported back to a simpler time. Back to a time when people knew that a bacon double cheeseburger and a side of chili-cheese waffle fries was a gift handed down by God himself unto the people of Earth. That a triple thick strawberry milkshake was made from happiness and love, mixed together by a benevolent soda jerk who only wanted to stop the pain of the real world…if only for a little while. But I digress…

If you’ve already read Part I of this article, and you are ready to see a few more vintage fast food eateries, then continue on, intrepid reader, for looks at yesteryear Pizza Hut, Dairy Queen and Burger King.

Burger King

The founders of BK visited one of the original McDonalds Brothers burger stands in California and thought they had a good system going. So they returned to Miami, devised their own production line burger system and opened up the first restaurant in 1954. The restaurant was named InstaBurger King (yes, that is a horrible name). When deciding to franchise, they changed the name to Burger King and the rest is history. Above you can see a magazine ad for one of the original Burger Kings in the ’50s – ’60s. On the right is a picture of that same building architecture as it stands in Naperville, IL. Amazing that this building is still intact. Until this picture I had no idea that a Burger King ever looked like this. Very similar to the original McDonald’s architecture, don’t you think?

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What our favorite fast food joints looked like back in the day Part I

Posted in advertising, Americana, fast food, food, Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald's, pop culture with tags advertising, fast food, Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald's, pop culture, Taco Bell on January 27, 2009 by Paxton

Vintage Burger Chef Fast food franchises have been around for years. Some of the first ones were started back in the ’50s as malt shops or diners. Since then, there have been many different variations of the fast food franchise; burgers, chicken, ice cream, seafood, family-style, etc. As the type and menu changed, so have the styles, image and logo of the establishment. Many of the most popular fast food franchises of today have been around since the ’60s and if you were to travel back in time to see your favorite restaurant as it stood back in the day, you may not even recognize it.

I was perusing some of the photostreams in Flickr as well as some of my favorite fast food groups and you can see plenty of awesome pictures of fast food franchises and how they used to look back in the day. I even remember some of them! So let’s take a look at a few of the more popular franchises and how their “look and feel” has changed from ’60s until now.

You can click any of the below pictures to see them BIGGER.

McDonald’s

McDonald’s began in 1940 with a restaurant in San Bernandino, CA opened by (surprise, surprise) the McDonald brothers. They developed their “SpeeDee” delivery system in this restaurant that has become the basis for all modern fast food franchises. Ray Kroc, a salesman providing milkshake machines to the brothers, convinced them to let him franchise their operation in 1955. Kroc bought out the brothers and took McDonald’s to the lofty heights you see today. Due to its long history, McD’s architecture has had more face lifts than Joan Rivers. There are so many different styles of McDonald’s restaurants that it’s almost impossible to nail down different eras of buildings. Don’t even get me started on the different styles for the “golden arches” signs as there are too many to even begin a listing here. I could probably do an entire article on McDonald’s architecture and store design (*note to self). Moving along, the picture above is one of the earliest building incarnations from a McDonald’s in the ’50s – ’60s. Many McDonald’s restaurants today are being built in this “retro” styling. Check out the huge, modern, 2-floor McDonald’s in Chicago that was built in this style.

This is probably one of the more familiar versions of the McDonald’s restaurant. It’s brown roof with white striping has become iconic for McDonald’s lovers as it’s visage was used throughout the ’80s in commercials. This style started, I believe, in the ’70s or ’80s. There was also a version of this building with yellow striping on the roof.