Real men hate lettuce!

The abject horror of the Bacon Double Homestyle Melt from yesterday reminded me of another Burger King ad and product, rolled out in 2006, that made my hair stand on end.



It's hard to know where to begin with this one, isn't it? Personally, I'm pretty repulsed by the product itself - just look at the BK Quad Stacker, the burger on the right at the end of the ad. First of all, how do you even get your mouth around that thing? And my God, just look at it. Sauce, bacon, cheese, beef, cheese, beef, cheese, beef, cheese, beef. No one needs a burger this size. Burger King claims it's 1000 calories - and frankly I'm a little doubtful of that math since included in that is the claim that eight strips of bacon are a mere 110 calories - which is already getting up near the halfway mark for recommended calorie intake, and that's before you tack on fries (let's say large, another 500 calories) and a large soda. You're at 1800 calories and it's not even 1 pm. This is definitely the kind of eating behavior we want to encourage in this country.

Of course, the sandwich is bad enough. But it's the attitude behind the sandwich - No Vegetables Allowed, like it's some sort of hamburger clubhouse - that really irks me. It's a fucking tomato, which, to get pedantic for a second, isn't even a damn vegetable. But never mind. It's a tomato. Oh, a tomato? You mean, something that's like 95% water? Hey, how about a few strands of iceberg lettuce? It's not like you're holding the broccoli here. The American use of vegetables in children's diets is so minimal it led the USDA to classify ketchup as a vegetable in the early 1980s, and now you're actively promoting removing all vegetables from adult-oriented food as well? Brilliant. And not just removing them. Vegetables are for wimps. Huge stacks of beef are for "tough guys."

As for why the ad itself is bad, well, how about the casual sexism of "early bun delivery," though at least we didn't get a gratuitous BK employee ass shot. The foreman does get his comeuppance for having said that, but if you're not endorsing the sexism, then you've just made your main pitchman a cretin. Sometimes I wonder if any of the people at whatever agency foists these things upon us even took a marketing class in college.