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You-Tubery '85: Food That's Fast!

Next up on our YouTube review, the wonderful world of fast food. If snacks are as American as apple pie, then fast food is apple pie-scented bullets fired from an M16 by Rambo at a three-car garage full of illegal fireworks and liposuctioned fat. Yee-haw!

The bigger a company is, the less your ads feature your actual product. Towering Behemoths like McDonalds have gone past the Advertising Saturation Point; there is no way to raise awareness of your product any higher than it already is. So your ad's real purpose is to emphasize the products' inescapability.

One way of doing this is by making your ads enormous Busby Berkeley-type productions. What does this have to do with selling meat-flavored sandwiches? Absolutely nothing, and that's the point. McDonalds is bigger than mass-produced, frozen discs of cattle by-products. Their commercials are events, to be hotly anticipated as much as summer blockbusters, sophomore albums, and the annual Marlin sell-offs.

In the 1980s, McDonalds ads were so important they each had a title splashed across the bottom of the screen. Seriously. And in the vast majority of these ads, McDonalds' food is a mere prop to be used as an inspiration for some snazzy choreography.

In the example below (entitled DANCIN'), a multiethnic, pan-geographical group of solid American citizens busts moves for the camera--ballet, jazz, and break dancing are represented heavily, as is the ever-popular Flailing Around Like a Spaz. Big Macs and fries make cameo appearances, though you could easily blink and miss them. Perhaps this juxtaposition will make you associate Dancin' and McDonalds. Perhaps not. It doesn't matter. Just shut up and eat a Big Mac.

So remember, folks, when you're getting ready for a big tap-dance recital or a street-dance throwdown, make sure your stomach is weighted down with 1700-calories worth of two all-beef patties.

Alternatively, a Behemoth like McDonalds can emphasize things that don't really need to be emphasized. Witness this ad, which stresses the HOTNESS of their HOT FRIES. As opposed to Burger King's stone cold fries? They might as well have said MCDONALDS HAS FOOD! FOOD YOU CAN EAT!

Of course, McDonalds also realized that any giant corporation is like a shark: it must keep moving to survive. So they occasionally unveiled Grand Fast-Food Innovations which, if examined closely enough, weren't really that grand at all. But if announced loudly and with enough choreography, they looked as impressive as Malibu Stacey's new hat.

Witness the McDLT, as seen in this ad. What was the McDLT? A burger where the hot side stayed hot and cool side stayed cool, thanks to a two-chambered Styrofoam container. And this was important, because...wait, why was this important? In McDonalds' eyes, no explanation was necessary. Why wouldn't you want a burger that came in a hyperbaric chamber?

The McDLT lasted about as long as the Arch Deluxe did, but it did accomplish something impressive: doubling the amount of post-consumer waste a single burger could produce. Bravo!

Of course, McDonalds' attack was two-pronged, with an arm aimed squarely toward the kiddies. This video collects three commercials targeted at children, filled with Ronald McDonald, Grimace, the Hamburglar, the Fry Guys, and the Chicken McNuggets. Not to mention dozens of future cases of juvenile-onset diabetes.

If you were playing second fiddle to McDonalds (or third, or fourth), you could not hope to sway the public with Jerome Robbins show stoppers. You had to convince the audience that your slop was better than McDonalds' slop. Over the years, Burger King has tried to do this by being the "edgy" brand (much in the way Pepsi has tried to position itself relative to Coke).

In marketing-speak, "edgy" means "weird in way we think will be acceptable in Iowa". Fifteen years ago, that meant hiring Dan Cortese as your spokesman. Nowadays, it means using a creepy, emotionless mannequin-king as your spokesman.

But even more than fake-edgy, Burger King's marketing path has been paved by New Items. I mean, a shit-ton of New Items. Can't compete with the Big Mac? Here's 8,000 different chicken sandwiches! That doesn't work? How about chicken fries! They're like chicken nuggets but longer! No dice? We'll drench your burger in barbecue sauce! Chipotle! Wombat! How about we let you punch us in the face? Would you eat a Whopper if we let you punch us in the face? Please?

Here are two commercials showcasing but one example of their endless tinkering: double quarter pounders with cheese, available with three decorative toppings. I have a feeling their "limited engagement" didn't last because all of these burgers look spectacularly unappetizing. Burger parmagiano? "Taco double cheeseburger?" Yikes.

Between the two ads, keep an eye out for a typically frightening 1980s news teaser: "Toys that could hurt your children!"

Of course, if burgers with horrible toppings won't get people into a Burger King, you can always try bribery. By which I mean a $14,000,000 contest. If you read between the lines, it seems that at least $13.5 million of that prize money was given out in the form of free fountain soda.

This commercial features narration by that inescapable 80s voice, Robin Leach. I wonder how many takes it took him to get it right on "A flaky croissanwich!" (My guess: slightly fewer than it took Harry Kalas to say "microwaveable bowls" in the Donovan McNabb Chunky ads.)

Wendy's took a different approach. Rather than try to be radical, or add a new sauce-topped burger every week, they became The Funny Chain. There was, of course, "Where's the Beef," but Wendy's had a plethora of Funny Commercials in the 1980s that were actually pretty funny. (This was before their ads featured Dave Thomas, and they became The Cutesy-Funny Chain.)

Wendy's classic commercials were produced by Sedelmaier, an ad agency that was responsible for tons of memorable ads with stilted acting, goofy tuba music, and that guy who talks really fast. The universe depicted in their ads is strangely Orwellian, a world in which consumers are constantly confronted with bleak landscapes and doublespeak.

In all Sedelmaier ads, repeat viewings reveal strange throwaway details. This commercial shows the workers at an Unnamed Burger Joint wearing cheery little buttons that say HY! This cracks me up, for reasons I can't fully explain.

Wendy's was also to drop the funny and cut right to the chase, as in this commercial, where they pretty much call McDonalds' food inedible crap.

If you're a marginal fast food chain, you can overpay celebrity spokespeople in the hopes that their star power will get you some attention. Pizza Hut decided to go this route, so they hired...the Mackenzie Brothers? Sure, they enjoyed a brief period of pop culture blow-up-itude (see: Strange Brew). But even as someone who loves SCTV, I'd say Bob and Doug's fifteen minutes were just about done by 1985.

So the Mackenzie Brothers seem like an odd choice. They'll seem an even odder choice after you watch this commercial, which was clearly improvised by Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis. You just know the director shot seven hours of footage, miles and miles of off-the-top-of-the-dome gold, and some poor editor had to whittle it all down to 20 seconds. Pity that man.

Finally, here's a Red Lobster ad that actually features fish like flounder and halibut. Yes, there was such a time when Red Lobster served something other than shrimp, shrimp, cheese, shrimp, cheese, and shrimp.

Posted 12.05.07 08:17pm * Permalink

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