0:00 One area where Burger King always has an edge over McDonald's is its uniquely weird commercials. In particular, a series of ads in the mid as featuring a perpetually smiling king that briefly pushed the fast food chain into the spotlight despite an initial explosion in sales and the king becoming so popular he starred in a trio of Xbox games. Burger King couldn't deliver a dining experience that matched the fun of the character. In fact, they seem to have always had this problem. So, what gives? Well, today we're answering the question, why are Burger King's commercials better than their food? But before we get into all things royal, be sure to subscribe to the Weird History Food channel. After that, leave us a comment and let us know which other fast food mascots you would like to hear
0:46 about next. Okay, heavy is the head that wears the crown. No, seriously, his head is [Music] huge. It all began with a simple idea. Keith J. Kramer and Matthew Burns launched Insta Burger King in 1953. Thanks to their patented Insta broiler and a little inspiration from their chief competitor McDonald's, they were cooking burgers faster than you could say. Would you like fries with that? But it was about to get bigger. Way bigger. Enter Jim McLemore and David Edgton. Two guys who were ready to take the burger world by storm. In 1957, Metlemore had a game-changing idea while eating a burger from a competing fast food joint. Specifically, the burger was gigantic.
1:32 He was inspired to offer a similarly huge sandwich to his own customers, which became the Whopper. More beef, more toppings, more everything. And just like that, Burger King's flagship sandwich was born. Today, the Whopper is an icon of fast food culture alongside the Big Mac and the Quarter Pounder. But while Insta Burger King started out hot, the company quickly started to falter. In 1959, it was purchased by its Miami, Florida franchises, James McLemore and David R. Edggerton. The first thing they did was shorten the chain's name to Burger King, eventually expanding to over 250 locations in the United States before selling it to the Pillsbury Company in 1967. The Pillsbury Company tried its darnest to bring Burger King to the top, even bringing in McDonald's executive Donald N. Smith to help revamp
2:19 the company. Smith left shortly after making a lot of grand changes. But right before Burger King experienced a systemwide decline in sales, huh, good timing. Things were looking grim, but some uniquely bizarre help was on the way. Burger King's first big marketing swing came in 1973 when they introduced a jingle called Have it your way with the lyrics orders up. All we ask is that you let us serve it your way. That's pretty standard for a jingle, but it would be the last normal commercial anyone could accuse Burger King of producing. In a world where McDonald's was handily winning the fast food race, BK needed to get magical. Debuting in 1975, the
3:06 marvelous magical Burger King was a tutor inspired monarch with a red beard who performed magic tricks. The ads featured this bizarre king along with a sidekick, Sir Shake Lot, not to be mistaken with Sir Mixalot, although the two could swap names and still be on brand. Sir Shake Aalot was a knight who really liked milkshakes, although we imagine most of them do. Rounding out the trio was the Burger Thing, a giant puppet designed to look like a painting of a burger. This was an ad campaign so over-the-top that you could almost forget it was for fast food. And with that, the unusual marketing customers associate with Burger King was born. In late 1985, Burger King truly doubled down on the weird with the
3:52 Where's Herb campaign. A series of mysterious ads began airing in November, teasing a fictional character named Herb, portrayed by actor John Menick, who had never eaten a Whopper before. Customers were encouraged to keep an eye out for Herb when they visited Burger King. It was essentially a contest. Menic as Herb would randomly pop up at BK locations across America, and the lucky person who spotted him would instantly win $5,000. Adjusted for inflation, that's a $14,000 prize. As if that weren't incentive enough, customers could say, "I'm not Herb." when placing their order to get a Whopper for just .99. And if your name happened to be Herb, you could say, "I'm not the Herb you're looking for." The idea behind the discount was that Burger King was punishing Herb for
4:37 his Whopperless existence by selling cheap Whoppers to literally everyone but him. Sounds fun, right? Well, the problem was when the commercials began airing in November of that year, none of them actually featured Herb. Manik didn't make his debut as the character until January of 1986 during a Super Bowl ad. In other words, for the first few months of the Where's Herb promotion, nobody had any idea what Herb looked like. Burger King had hoped that teasing Herb for a little bit before revealing him to the public would generate even more buzz around a promotion that seemed guaranteed to succeed. Who wouldn't go to Burger King for 99 cent Whoppers every day of the week if $5,000 were on the line? Unfortunately, the choice to tease the promotion for so long just wound up confusing customers who didn't
5:23 understand how they were supposed to participate if no one knew what the hell Herb looked like. By the time the Super Bowl rolled around and Herb had his big reveal, most people had lost interest. Some did eventually spot Herb and win the prize, as well as a nice cash prize for everyone else who happened to be in the same restaurant. But where's Herb went down in history as an infamous advertising flop. All told, Burger King sunk $40 million into Herb. But rather than reviving the brand, BK's profits dropped 40% in 1986. Burger King struggled to recover from the herb debacle into the 1990s. Reaching back for a little bit of that magic they'd found with the marvelous king and his buddy Sir Shakealot, they reintroduced the king with an updated look that seemed designed to outdo the
6:09 previous design in pure stranges. The new character sported a shiny plastic mascot head and an off-putting smile, sort of like a 6-foot bobblehead doll sprung to life. The redesign was definitely weird, but not in a good way. At least not at first. Then in 2004, Burger King unveiled the Feed Your King campaign, featuring the King interacting with people in all kinds of weird, surreal situations, like appearing out of nowhere in a customer's bed to offer him a crust sandwich. The King would appear in increasingly absurd situations, popping into the scene unexpectedly with some hot food at the ready. The ads were an early viral hit with teens and young men, which pushed the avantgard mascot into a direction those two fellas who patented the insta broiler could have never predicted. After becoming a reliable company pitch
6:56 man, Burger King decided to make the king a video game star. To further encratate him to his youthful fan base, Burger King released a trilogy of games for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console in 2006. Sneak King, Big Bumpin, and Pocket Bike Racer. In Sneak King, players took on the role of the king and had to ambush unsuspecting pedestrians with delicious Whopper sandwiches without getting spotted. Sort of like Metal Gear Solid, starring a silent mascot with an unsettling plastic grin. Big Bumpin was a bumper car game not dissimilar from Mario Kart, although the comparison is extremely generous. And Pocket Bike Racer lets you zip around on tiny pocket bikes under the watchful unblinking eye of the king. The games were sold as part of a value meal bundle for
7:42 $3.99 each, and they were not great. They were exactly as fun as a trio of $4 games that came with a hamburger. Even so, the game sold surprisingly well, particularly Sneak King, which successfully incorporated the bizarre sense of humor that had made the ads a success in the first place. Think of it like an early goat simulator or untitled Goose Game. Irony was a big part of the experience, as well as the thrill of sneaking up on strangers and shoving burgers in their faces. The campaign, dubbed the King Games, was a gorilla marketing masterpiece, turning the fast food giant into an internet sensation. In fact, Burger King saw a 40% increase in sales after the release of their games. It seemed the sky was the limit for the king, which is usually when
8:29 everything goes [Music] wrong. Burger King tried to lean into the strangeness of their ads with menu offerings meant to elicit a similar response. Items like chicken fries were released accompanied by ads featuring a band called Coke, a spoof on new metal band Slipnot. With each member sporting a rooster mask, it was apparently too accurate of a parody because Slipnot actually sued. And while the King was certainly effective in grabbing attention, people began to get tired of him. Even fans had to admit that after a while, the joke gets old. At one point, the ad campaign surrounding the king even led to a backlash. In 2012, he was voted the most disliked mascot in America, which is a serious problem for a character designed to settle hamburgers. BK seemed to realize that
9:15 the king had overstayed his welcome, and they decided to scale back on his appearances, and he's been mostly absent from commercials ever since, though he occasionally makes appearances in certain promotions. So, what happened? Well, as offbeat and fun as Burger King was in their marketing, an actual trip to one of their restaurants left many customers feeling like peasants. One of the complaints customers have is the lack of consistency. Sure, you could find a Burger King in almost every corner of the world, but while competitors like McDonald's pride themselves on strict uniformity and quality control, it can be a crapshoot on what you'll find in a given BK lounge. Complaints of uneven food quality to completely different versions of menu items depending on the whims of the franchisee were common. Moreover, some customers feel that Burger King's messaging and marketing have been inconsistent over the years, which can
10:02 affect the way people perceive the food. For example, their tagline, "Have it your way," implied customization and control. But some found that Burger King's menu wasn't as flexible as the slogan suggested with mistakes often made in food preparation. Think about it. When you go to the drive-thru, who usually gets the order wrong, and why is it always Burger King? Additionally, many felt that the marketing often didn't match the actual food experience. Although, in BK's defense, that's a common complaint at fast food. Nobody has ever eaten a Big Mac that looked like the one in the picture. In other words, going to Burger King was nowhere near as fun as playing the Sneak King video game, which led to declining sales and the quiet dethroning of a once proud
10:48 monarch. In 2020, Burger King revamped their approach with You Rule, boasting a wide variety of inexpensive menu options that could be combined and customized to your heart's content. The idea was to truly empower customers to create the Burger King meal of their dreams, which is something its competitors don't readily offer. U Rule even brought back the have it your way jingle, but updated it to reflect all the new options at your disposal every time you roll up to a Burger King drive-thru, and it seems to be working. As of 2024, Burger King operates over 19,300 locations across more than 100 countries and territories. The fast food chain has a significant presence globally with restaurants in North America, Latin America, Europe,
11:33 Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. The King has a pretty massive realm, and while chicken fries didn't exactly tear up the charts with its debut, regardless of how many Rockstar chickens were involved, the item became a surprise hit with millennials and was eventually resurrected after enough fans pestered the brand on social media. But our old pal, the king, the mascot who brought BK out of a slump to capture Lightning in a bottle, probably isn't coming back anytime soon, although he could be behind you right now. So, what do you think? Were you a fan of the king, or did he just creep you out? Let us know in the comments below. And while you're at it, check out some of these other weird history food videos. [Music]
