You know what my favorite part of summer is? Spending half an hour SPFing three squirmy kids, and then spending another half hour adjusting my swimsuit just-so over the parts of me that never quite returned to their pre-pregnancy state. (It’s all of them. All of the parts.) Know what would make me feel even better about myself while undergoing the latter? Having just scarfed down a Whopper, and then chased it with a bacon sundae. This summer, Burger King will make sure I can do just that.
On Thursday, Burger King will launch the Bacon Sundae — 510 calories of vanilla soft-serve swirled with 18 fat grams of fudge, caramel, and bacon crumbles, garnished with 61 grams of sugar and a piece of bacon.
It won’t look at all like this when you get it.
Burger King’s latest impending marketing flop is an attempt to revive their menu and market shares and win back customers. Customers who have more than likely strayed in search of healthier food options. With ice cream and bacon combined into one heart-palpitating treat is how they’re trying to win those customers back, just so that’s clear.
This isn’t Burger King’s first attempt at reviving their menu to step out of McDonalds’ shadow woo customers. Anybody remember the Enormous Omelet Sandwich, and if not, can you give me some pointers on banishing this atrocity from my memory? Introduced in 2005, it boasted (it had the audacity to BOAST) “two slices of melted, American cheese, two fluffy eggs stuffed with three crispy strips of bacon, and a sizzling sausage patty, piled high on a toasted bun.” The sandwich was $3.29, but you can’t put a price tag on the 45 fat grams and 1940 mg of sodium. Oh wait, yes you can. Your life.
“Wake up to a mouthful of breakfast” and arteries full of plaque.
This monstrosity actually did boost sales by 20% before consumers ultimately chose life and it was discontinued. If we learned anything from Burger Bundles, there’s a good chance it’ll be back.
You… you remember Burger Bundles, right? Before Burger King — and America — took the Bigger is Better approach, there were Burger Bundles, whose existence was worth having this commercial forever memorialized on YouTube:
Sold in packs of three or six, this time contending with White Castle, the miniature burgers were discontinued shortly after they were introduced in 1987, when their wee patties wouldn’t stop slipping through the production broiler. A shame, because this was right around the time portion sizes started to spiral out of control, and these normal-sized burgers would have been a good alternative. Unless, of course, anybody bought and consumed them as an individual serving. Which I’m guessing was about … let’s see, carry the one… 99.9% of its consumers, because you know those girls with the feathered hair shared them, and each took one bite before declaring herself too full to finish and then went home to feather her hair some more. But that’s just a rough estimate. They were later reintroduced as Burger Buddies, a figure-8-shaped patty nestled between conjoined buns, intended to be torn apart and shared, as if anyone ever did. Those were also eventually discontinued, and another iteration introduced in 2009 as Burger Shots. Gotta give them points for tenacity, you know?
I will give Burger King some credit. Not all their ideas have been marketing and/or diet flops.
With the exception of this guy, known as The King to many, The Subject Of My Nightmares Forevermore to me.
There’s one instance in which I have to admit Burger King got it right all around. Earlier this year, they introduced their Fruit Smoothie. A mostly-natural and relatively healthy choice as fast food choices go, a smoothie isn’t a bad pick, provided the consumer considers that a medium or large smoothie qualifies as a small meal rather than consuming it in addition to a meal, which we know they totally will. Where they really hit the nail on the head, though, was having David Beckham promote it.
Unembeddable link to the ad, for your swooning pleasure.
Grrrrrowl. David Beckham can put his bacon in my soft-serve any time. Wait, what were we talking about?
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