People have probably been giving stuff away to win others over, attract new business, or express appreciation for loyalty since back in the caveman days. Offer something small and fun to many, or something significant to a few and it can have more or less the same effect. The key is to understand what people want. You can’t just give away anything. Or you shouldn’t, at least.

10. McDonald’s Gave Away Razors with Breakfast

McDonald’s has famously had promotions and giveaways for decades now that have included everything from their famous Monopoly game to an endless supply of Happy Meal Toys. The ones they have these days were refined over the years, however, and built on learning from ideas like when they gave away razors.

In the ’70s and ’80s, McDonald’s thought customers would be stoked to have pancakes, sausage, and a disposable Gillette razor for breakfast. You can almost see where they were going – you eat breakfast in the morning, and you’ll need to shave in the morning. But on the other hand, it’s not really a thing that’s going to strike a chord with women, the idea of shaving stubble over your eggs is vaguely gross, and supplying people with a small, incredibly sharp tool because they bought a McMuffin seems odd, too.

There’s no evidence anyone misused a McDonald’s razor, but they did give them to kids if they were accompanied by an adult for some reason. And in the years since, finding a razor in the eggs has allegedly happened more than once at Mcdonald’s.

9. Oprah Gave Away Cars That Came With a Huge Tax Bill

One of the most famous giveaway mess-ups in history shows why an idea looks good on paper far more often than it does when it plays out in real life. Oprah Winfrey once gave everyone in her audience the most expensive free car in history.

This problem is uniquely American and it may not be something that would have happened, or at least not as bad, in any other country. The US government loves to tax people for pretty much anything, including luck. An American who wins the lottery can be taxed literally three different ways, including nearly 25% taken right off the top, then state and federal taxes later. Win the lottery in Canada, for instance, and you just get the money.

When Oprah gave everyone a car, those people became subject to taxes on the value of the car. So that free car cost everyone up to  $7,000 a piece if they wanted to keep it. Imagine just showing up for a free taping of a talk show, you get a car, then a bill for $7,000.

276 people got that not-quite-free car. The total value was nearly $30,000, so no one is saying this wasn’t a good deal – $7,000 for a brand-new car is great. But the audience was specifically chosen to be people who needed a car. Meaning they hadn’t been able to afford one. Meaning they didn’t have a spare $7,000. It’s unclear how many audience members kept the car, but they were advised to sell it to cover the taxes and make a profit or turn the car down altogether to avoid the tax issue.

8. A Car Dealership in Missouri Gave AK-47 Vouchers with Truck Purchases

Speaking of cars, what’s a good way to get people to come down to a car lot to spend their hard-earned money? Having good prices is one way but, let’s be honest, most new car prices have very little wiggle room and the dealer on one side of town will charge about the same as the dealer on the other. So some come up with promotions to entice you. Like a free gun!

In Kansas City, Missouri, Max Motors came up with a summer promotion to sell their pickup trucks back in 2009. Anyone who came in to buy one got a voucher for an AK-47. You know, the incredibly well-known Soviet-era assault rifle? That’s the one.

Make no mistake, the owner of the dealership knew exactly what he was doing. He said the promotion had been a great success and had also angered liberals, which seemed to be the goal. On the upside, they were only giving out vouchers, so no one drove off firing a gun into the sky. They were responsible enough that any potential owner had to go to a gun shop, fill out paperwork, and get the weapon legally.

7. Cap’n Crunch Once Gave Away A Whistle That Could Hack Phone Lines

The ramifications of the Cap’n Crunch whistle giveaway with something no one in the world could have predicted because it’s really quite bizarre. The promotion dates back to the 1960s and was incredibly innocuous. Cap’n Crunch has a vaguely nautical theme with the Captain so they included a bosun’s whistle in boxes as a prize. It was a toy replica of the whistle a boatswain might use and, you know, it was just a whistle.

In what had to be a movie-level moment of inspiration, a former Air Force electronics technician named John Draper got one of the whistles and became a pioneer of early hacking.

Back in the day, different tones could unlock features over phone lines. The whistle played at a perfect 2600 hz which, when played into a payphone, gave access to long-distance service with no charge. Draper would go on to invent devices called “blue boxes” that played multiple tones for multiple effects and these would become some of the first products made by Apple after Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs met Draper when Wozniak was still in college.

6. Throwing Live Turkeys at a Crowd Was Once a Thanksgiving Promotion

If you’re not a fan of classic TV, you may never have seen the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. The show was about the crew of an AM radio station and one of the most famous episodes featured an extended joke about a Thanksgiving turkey drop. The event on the show only exists as reported by a staff member and it involves a helicopter dropping turkeys into a parking lot which becomes a scene of total horror and chaos. 

It turns out the turkey drop was inspired by a real promotion from the 1950s in which a radio manager did a live turkey giveaway from the back of a pickup truck in a parking lot. Apparently, a crowd of people gathered and fought over the turkeys in such a chaotic manner that the event was never repeated. 

Show creator Hugh Wilson has said that, when he heard of the story from the manager, there was an actual helicopter involved and the event took place in Texas. Regardless of the vehicle, someone who thought turkeys could fly was throwing them at a crowd and the results were ugly. 

5. Coca-Cola’s MagiCan Promo Gave Away Cash But Also Rotten Smelling Water

Once upon a time, Coca-Cola had an idea. What if they could hide a prize right inside a can of Coke? You’d open it and cash came out? To do this, they had to make it convincing. The can had to feel like a normal can and that meant it needed to have liquid in it. But it also had to be something no one would drink.

Coca-Cola filled their cans with rancid-smelling chlorinated water so no one would drink it by accident, except for the kid who did. The MagiCan promotion quickly derailed. Some cans malfunctioned, so that winners got prizes soaked in rotten egg water. Others didn’t pop up so the prize never came out. And people who weren’t aware of the promo, because Coca-Cola literally never mentioned it on the can, drank what they assumed was the worst-tasting Coke of their lives.

4. Healthy Choice Pudding Had to Give a Man Over 1 Million Air Miles

Offering something of real value to customers who send in labels or UPCs is always a potential danger because, while most people may buy one or two of a product, there’s always someone who will try to get thousands out of you.

David Phillips got over a million Air Miles from Healthy Choice pudding by gaming their promotion. For every 10 barcodes a customer sent to Healthy Choice, a customer got 500 Air Miles. But if you did it in the first month that doubled to 1,000.

Healthy Choice is mostly known for frozen entrees and those probably cost around $5. But Phillips found Healthy Choice pudding for sale at a discount store for 25 cents per cup. He ended up hitting every store he could find in the chain and spent $3,000 on pudding. But that got him $150,000 worth of Air Miles.

Phillips got the Salvation Army to provide volunteers to peel the bar codes in exchange for a ton of free pudding. It also got him an $815 tax write-off as a charitable donation. Healthy Choice then sent him 1,280,000 Air Miles.

3. Acclaim Offered to Pay Speeding Tickets for Burnout 2 Customers

How do you promote a video game about driving really fast cars? If you’re Acclaim, you encourage people to drive really fast in their actual cars. To celebrate the release of their game Burnout 2 in the UK, Acclaim offered to pay the ticket of anyone caught speeding on the date of the game’s release. As you can imagine, the government was not amused.

The promo was called irresponsible and dangerous, while Acclaim said they were only encouraging people to get home quickly and speed less dangerously by playing the game in a safe environment.

2. Cleveland Gave Away 10 Cent Beer and Caused a Riot

Baseball and promos go hand in hand and there have been many nights where attendees get free hats, shirts, hot dogs, balls, whatever. In 1974, Cleveland offered fans something a little different – beers for 10 cents. What could go wrong?

Beer was normally 65 cents and while you could only buy six at a time, there was no limit to how many times you could go back. The crowd was soon full of very drunk people. Like, super drunk. The game had been interrupted by half-naked fans a couple of times before it ended and things got worse from there. 

Metal chairs were thrown. People shot fireworks into the dugout and threw hot dogs at Texas players or spit on them. As the game neared its end, things got worse. Someone tried to steal the hat from a Texas outfielder and, thinking he was assaulted, the manager rushed to his aid with other bat-wielding team members. Fans rushed the field and Texas was ready for them with bats in hand. A melee broke out with thousands of drunken Cleveland fans rioting and fighting. Police had to be called in as stadium security, consisting of only 50 people, could do nothing. Eventually, tear gas was used, and the game was forfeited.

1. Hoover Destroyed Their Own Company with Free Flights

It’s hard to imagine a promotion bungled worse than Hoover’s free flight idea from the 1990s. Sales were slumping in the UK and a travel agency approached the nearly century-old vacuum company with an idea. Customers who spent £100 on Hoover products could get two round-trip tickets to anywhere in Europe. 

To make the deal workable for their bottom line, Hoover put in a bunch of red tape to limit people from taking them up on the offer. Customers had to send in a receipt within 14 days. Then they’d get a form to register and send it back within another 14 days. Then they’d get a form to select potential departure dates, places, and destinations. And then, Hoover could reject those and propose others. Finally, the customer had to agree or get nothing. 

The promo worked, however, and sales spiked. Then they decided to add flights to America for no good reason. US flights would cost Hoover £600, so the £100 purchase was not covering anything. Risk managers told them it was a terrible idea and not to do it. They did it anyway.

Hoover thought few people would take them up on the offer but many would buy more Hoover products than the £100—neither of those turned out to be true. There was a mad rush for cheap Hoover products and the company had to put manufacturing into overtime to keep up. But then people started claiming their free flights.

They faced potential losses of £100 million so the company scrambled to avoid fulfilling their promise. It denied applications, offered flights from airports that were hundreds of miles away, and tried to make people miss the deadlines. News broke that not a single free flight had been granted, and the backlash was brutal. 

One customer blocked in a Hoover truck and held it captive for 13 days. Hoover scrambled, fired their UK president, blamed everyone and their uncle, and invested a fraction of what was owed in a “free flight fund.” It was too little, too late. 

The parent company paid out $72 million and the European division was so broken it was sold to a competitor.

Selling you stuff—it’s what mega-corporations are best at. Every year, they find new ways to get consumers interested in their products: eye-catching marketing schemes, big-budget promotional events, and, most common of all, sales promotions. Sales promotions are like advertisements, except that they also target the buyer with a promise of reward; coupons, contests, and vouchers are all examples of sales promotions. Some, like the long-running McDonald’s Monopoly campaign, drive up company profits enormously and become staples of consumer culture. On the other side of the spectrum, however, a poorly-received promotion can all but destroy a brand, as shown by these ten laughably ill-conceived examples.

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10 Sunny Co Clothing: “Pamela” Bathing Suits

Back in summer of 2017, California-based startup Sunny Co Clothing offered Instagram users a free swimsuit, styled after the iconic one-piece worn by Pamela Anderson on the TV show “Baywatch” and valued at $64.99. All you had to do to receive it was repost the accompanying image, tag Sunny Co, and pay shipping fees—they’d handle the rest.

Unfortunately, the company massively underestimated just how many swimsuits they would have to give away. More than 330,000 people liked the original post, and despite a scourge of technical issues, the company did end up taking the L and delivering on their promise. You can’t say the error destroyed SunnyCo, as the stunt thrust them into the limelight and no doubt grew their consumer base (surely the intent of the promotion), but dishing out thousands of freebies still might not have been worth it in the long run.^[1]

9 Chevy: Do-It-Yourself Ads

Rule number one of using the Internet: be prepared for anything you post to be received by a network of trolls, critics, and “memelords”—this applies double if you’re a big company like Chevy. In 2006, they partnered with the hit TV show “The Apprentice” to offer fans the chance to create their own ad for the Chevy Tahoe, through a website where anyone with a fast connection and a little bit of time on their hands could splice together clips of the SUV with custom text and their pick of pre-provided soundtrack to create—presumably—a creative piece of user-generated advertising.

Predictably, critics of the brand (especially environmentalists) saw the contest as an opportunity to create disparaging “ads” pointing out perceived flaws with the Tahoe or just Chevy in particular. Many of these submissions stayed on the contest website for indefinite periods of time, as GM (Chevy’s parent company) specifically stated they wouldn’t be removing “negative” ads, only “offensive” ones. In the end, it seems that, like many tech-illiterate corporations both before and after them, GM definitely overestimated the Internet’s innocence.^[2]

8 American Airlines: The AAirpass

American Airlines has had a bumpy history, to say the least, but their lowest point may have come in the early 1980s—a time when they were losing money fast and needed to make a quick buck to stay afloat. Their solution to the dilemma? An exclusive membership program called the AAirpass.

The idea was simple: for just $250,000, you could purchase a pass that entitled you to free first-class flights for life. Seems pretty simple, right? The trouble started when, in 2007, AA (again in the midst of financial trouble) realized some people were using their passes too much, and it was costing the company millions. While they tried to simply remove the offending passholders from the system (citing “fraudulent activity”), the matter was only settled after years of litigation. Nowadays, the program is mostly remembered as a high-profile example of a colossal business mistake.^[3]

7 Red Lobster: Endless Crab

Plenty of companies have misjudged consumer demand when giving out freebies (for instance, Sunny Co Clothing), but none did it as catastrophically as Red Lobster. An “Endless Crab” promotion in 2003 cost them millions during its short-lived run and led to the resignation of company president Edna Morris, all because too many customers went back for more. Apparently, the team behind the stunt didn’t realize that, despite being quite the costly appetizer, crab just isn’t that filling.^[4]

6 Build-A-Bear: Pay Your Age

Obviously, the Red Lobster mistake isn’t replicated that often. That’s because most companies are able to weigh the risks of heavily discounting items against the advantages of gaining new customers and make a balanced decision based on the data they have. However, even when the monetary side of things is accounted for, poor planning can completely ruin a potentially profitable promotion.

For instance, in 2018, Build-A-Bear announced “Pay Your Age Day”, an event during which parents could buy the company’s trademark stuffed animals for the low, low price of their child’s age. It seemed like a smart marketing tactic, until Build-A-Bear employees realized the stores were unable to handle the influx of crowds the promotion had created. Those who had to wait in line for hours—with kids in tow, no less—were less than happy, and the fiasco led to a surge in negative PR for the company.^[5]

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5 Coca-Cola: MagiCans

Coca-Cola’s “MagiCans” contest idea seemed decent, at least in theory—among the millions of regularly-labeled Coke cans distributed across the United States, there would also be a select number of disguised “MagiCans”, special “golden ticket” cans that hid prizes inside which would pop up once the can was opened. To keep the MagiCans from being discovered too easily, they were designed with a compartment inside that contained a replacement for the usual soda; a (non-toxic) mix of chlorinated water and an unknown, foul-tasting liquid clearly meant to keep the contents from being drunk.

The promotion was nixed after just a few weeks, however, after numerous reports came in of problems with the cans: the liquid ruined the prize, or the prize didn’t pop up at all, or—in one extreme case—a child drank the Coke-replacement liquid. At first, Coke did try their best to dispel concerns, but the campaign led to so much negative publicity that they finally decided to pull the plug.^[6]

4 McDonald’s: When The U.S. Wins, You Win

To keep the patriotic spirit going during the 1984 Summer Games, McDonald’s created a promotional contest called “When The U.S. Wins, You Win.” The premise: buy an item, you get a game piece with the name of an Olympic event on it. If the U.S. gets a medal in that event, you get free food (a Big Mac for gold, fries for silver, and a Coke for bronze).

However, what seemed like a smart way to capitalize on the biggest sporting event of the year became a marketing nightmare for McDonald’s after the Soviet Union boycotted the games, leading to the United States performing far above expectations. So many prizes had to be given out as a result of this that some McDonald’s locations even reported a shortage of Big Macs, the chain’s signature burger.^[7]

3 Malaysia Airlines: My Ultimate Bucket List

After 2014 saw Malaysia Airlines take a huge hit from two unconnected incidents that resulted in the combined loss of more than 500 passengers and crew members, the company was no doubt looking for a way to restore its image. However, a “bucket list” themed contest (which asked entrants to describe, in 500 words or less, “what and where [they’d] like to tick off on [their] bucket list”) might not have been the best option. At least the gruesome association was caught quickly, giving the airline time to rebrand the contest as a “to-do” list—albeit not before international news media had picked up the story.^[8]

2 Hoover: Two Free Flights

One of the most well-known examples of a truly terrible marketing campaign was Hoover’s ill-fated “two free flights” promotion. In 1992, desperate to overcome the ongoing financial crisis, Hoover’s British division partnered with little-known airline JSI Travel to offer two free round-trip flights to anyone who bought a Hoover product worth £100 or more (about $123 USD).

Despite the fact that Hoover purposefully made it as hard as possible to redeem the flights (a controversial fact in and of itself), they just couldn’t keep up with the high levels of demand, and the ensuing scandal caused the company irreparable damage. In 1995, Hoover Europe was sold to Candy, an Italian unit that was formerly one of their primary competitors. In 2004, a BBC documentary was made about the incident, the release of which led to Hoover’s failures being brought back into the public eye; the company subsequently lost their Royal Warrant as a result.^[9]

1 Pepsi: Number Fever

It’s quite possibly the only marketing snafu to date in which a simple error quite literally meant the difference between life and death: that’s right, I’m talking about Pepsi Philippines’ infamous number blunder. In 1992 (quite a year for disastrous promotions), the company introduced a contest called “Pepsi Number Fever”. Pepsi bottle caps would be marked on the inside with one three-digit number, and certain “winning numbers” would be eligible for prizes of up to one million pesos (or about $40,000 USD).

The promotion enjoyed moderate success for a couple of weeks until the night of May 25th, 1992, when the next winning number—349—was announced. Almost everybody was a winner that night—but only because Pepsi had goofed and printed winning number 349 on more than 800,000 different bottle caps, only 2 of which were “supposed” to be winners. With thousands of people trying to redeem the contest’s million-peso grand prize, Pepsi announced their mistake and offered a 500-peso consolation prize to the now-angry “prizewinners”, a move that cost them more than four times the contest’s original budget in and of itself.

The trouble didn’t end there, however, as the country continued to rally against Pepsi. Not only were thousands of lawsuits filed, but dozens of Pepsi trucks were vandalized, several Pepsi executives were issued death threats, and five people (including three Pepsi employees) were killed by grenades thrown by anti-Pepsi rioters. While things eventually went back to normal, the “349 Incident” went down in history as a projection of the worldwide economic unrest prevalent during the early 1990s, as well as a tragic example of how a tiny mistake can have big consequences for a brand.^[10]

10 Deathbed Confessions And Conversions That Went Horribly Wrong

About The Author: Izak Bulten is a pop culture enthusiast and connoisseur of all things bizarre. He’s written for ScreenRant, CBR, and The Art of Puzzles.

Quick service restaurant (QSR) is an industry term for chain restaurants that prioritize speed and low cost as their selling points. We in the real world know them as something else: fast food. Not only that, but we also associate them with other, less flattering characteristics like low quality, unhealthy options, and a last resort. Comedian Bill Burr once said that these restaurants are for two people: kids and drunk people.

Much like the term QSR, these restaurants are constantly looking for ways to rebrand themselves and distance themselves from the stigma that comes with the term “fast food.” This list will detail some of the ways these fast food restaurants have attempted to break the mold (or fully embrace it) in order to reach a wider consumer base.

10 McDonald’s Art Posters

This promotion has a bit of lore to it. Back in 1998, McDonald’s released a Szechuan dipping sauce for their chicken nuggets as a promotion for the Disney film Mulan. The promotion came and went, and then nearly two decades later, in April 2017, an episode of the animated show Rick and Morty aired that prominently featured the long-forgotten dipping sauce. The popularity of the show with people on the internet caused the old promotion to go viral, with people physically going to their local McDonald’s to demand the sauce. Eventually, McDonald’s bought in and released the sauce for a limited time.

Seeing how people were “obsauced” (their words, not mine) with the Szechuan dipping sauce, McDonald’s created a promotion for their new Buttermilk Crispy Tenders that utilized the dipping sauces as the highlight. The popular chain partnered with Delicious Design League to create a series of posters that “captured the essence” of nine available sauces: Honey, Honey Mustard, Creamy Ranch, Signature, Buffalo, Hot Mustard, Sriracha Mac Sauce, Sweet and Sour, and Tangy Barbeque. The designs were actually a lot more interesting than I thought they would be and included one for the Szechuan sauce. While they are no longer available for purchase, you can still find them on eBay for some ridiculously high prices.^[1]

9 Einstein Bros. Bagels Wake-Up Tones

If you’re like me, waking up in the morning can be a struggle. But if you’re also like me, food is a big motivator. Einstein Bros. Bagels recognized that a lot of people fit into the center of that Venn diagram and devised a promotion around it. To help all of us get up on the right side of the bed, Einstein Bros. created wake-up tones that are downloadable as an mp3 to get you up and ready for the most important meal of the day. The wake-up tones included bacon sizzling, coffee brewing, eggs frying, and a rooster crowing. Furthermore, upon downloading these delicious tones, you would receive a voucher for a free egg sandwich!

I’m going to be honest here: This sounds like a way for a megacorporation to subliminally control the masses or create sleeper cells. Download these tones and get a free egg sandwich. What could be the harm in that? Now, use those tones as an alarm clock to motivate you to get up and eat our delicious food every day. Sure, nothing suspicious there. Unfortunately, the site to download the tones is no longer up, so it cannot be confirmed whether or not the tones contained mind-controlling material. Convenient.^[2]

8 Taco Bell Fashion Show with Forever 21

Call me crazy, but Taco Bell and fashion aren’t two things I often associate with each other. Instead, my mind goes to late nights, guilty pleasures, and regret the following day. So it is a bit of a surprise to find out that in 2017, Taco Bell teamed up with Forever 21 to create a unique fashion line. It was then debuted at a late-night fashion show featuring a DJ, fan-submitted modeling, and two models who went viral for taking their senior photos at Taco Bell.

Apparently, this clothing line was a huge success, with a lot of the products selling out quite quickly. While the concepts and designs are pretty cool, these outfits are definitely for fit, young people (i.e., not me) and not for the guy pulling up at midnight in stained sweatpants ready to dig into some crunchwraps (i.e., me).^[3]

7 Burger King Whopper Severance

Fair warning: you’re going to see Burger King pop up in this list a few times. They are one of those examples of a QSR fully embracing their fast food identity and just weirding it up with some really bizarre campaigns (does anyone remember the video game they made?).

The first promotion we’re looking at is the Whopper Severance Package. Burger King was offering a free Whopper to anyone who admitted to being fired from their job. “Getting fired might not be fun, but at Burger King restaurants, getting fired like the flame-grilled Whopper sandwich is always a good thing,” their PR statement proclaims. Okay, that pun was a bit of a stretch, but it is an interesting way to bring in new workers. Sure, you got fired, but now you get a free Whopper, and you might as well fill out this job application while you’re here.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Why not just lie and get the free Whopper? Well, the way this works is that you have to announce that you’ve been fired over Linkedin with the proper hashtags, and then Burger King will send you a link to a voucher that you can then bring to your local Burger King. The best part is that even their press release states that Linkedin isn’t a part of the promotion. I’m sure they were pleased.^[4]

6 Paving for Pizza

This might be the most wholesome campaign on this list. After receiving numerous complaints from customers that their pizzas had been delivered severely damaged, Domino’s conducted some research. After placing cameras in their pizza boxes while drivers were out on the road, they got to see exactly what happened to the pizzas and found that damaged roads led to damaged pizzas. This led to Domino’s creating its Paving for Pizzas campaign with the slogan “bad roads shouldn’t happen to good pizza.”

With Paving for Pizzas, Domino’s planned to provide grants to municipalities to fix their roads so that their customers would receive the pristine pies they deserved. Customers simply had to submit their zip code, and whichever zip codes received the most submissions would be chosen for the campaign. Domino’s would then approach the representatives of the municipalities with a $5,000 grant along with Domino’s brand road signs and stencils. The campaign quickly reached its goal of 50 towns in 50 states, and the Paving for Pizza site has plenty of photos and stories detailing the success.

This campaign is actually really smart, and it helped a lot of communities. Also, what a great way to get some marketing research on where your largest customer bases are located from the submitted zip codes. Now, if only I liked their pizzas…^[5]

5 Burger King’s Nightmare King

While the previous campaign might have been wholesome, this one is diabolical. This burger was released just in time for Halloween of 2018 and was comprised of a 1/4 beef patty, crispy chicken fillet, melted American cheese, thick-cut bacon, mayonnaise, and onions topped with a green glazed bun. While the sandwich certainly looks like a nightmare, there is actually a more nefarious purpose to this concoction. Burger King claims that this burger will give you nightmares.

Burger King actually partnered with sleep specialists to gather scientific evidence to prove their claim. The study was conducted on 100 individuals over a span of 10 nights. The somnologists concluded that a person was 3.5 times more likely to experience nightmares after eating the Nightmare King, with participants describing nightmares like morphing into a snake or being attacked by aliens while on a boat. The scientists hypothesize that the unique mixture of proteins and cheese led to an interruption in the REM cycle, resulting in the nightmares.

It seems that Burger King was so caught up in figuring out if they could do something that they never thought about if they should actually do it. As far as I’m concerned, Burger King is up there with Einstein Bros. regarding questionable intentions. I mean, Domino’s is over here fixing potholes while Burger King is trying to give people nightmares. Unfortunately, I could not find anyone including their dreams in their review of the sandwich, which seems like a real missed opportunity on Burger King’s part. Could you imagine them creating a curated blog on their site with customer-submitted nightmares?^[6]

4 The Arby’s Marrot

Arby’s is often seen as the bottom of the barrel, even by fast food standards. What you see is what you get with Arby’s, which is even reflected in their slogan, “we have the meats.” Arby’s clearly takes that slogan very seriously with this gimmick. A growing trend in the QSR industry is developing plant-based options for vegans and vegetarians. When asked about this, an Arby’s rep stated that it is impossible that Arby’s will follow that trend.

In fact, to further prove they have the meats, Arby’s has decided to combat the plant-based trend by creating the megetable. Pronounced like “vegetable” but with an “m,” the megetable is a pseudo-vegetable created from meat. Their first and only entry is the marrot, which, if you haven’t caught on to the pattern, is a meat carrot. Made from turkey breast, the marrot looks and surprisingly tastes a lot like an actual carrot. It even contains 30 grams of protein and 70% of your recommended daily dose of vitamin A, making it as healthy as a vegetable. Ironically, the one way the marrot fails is in the texture compared to a carrot—which is actually a common criticism of most plant-based imitation meat.

While the marrot is not available at Arby’s yet, they have created a recipe video so you can make your very own marrots at home! Furthermore, they indicate that they look forward to creating more megetables and may even include them on menus in the future. PETA might think Arby’s is stuck in the Stone Age, but Arby’s knows its reputation and has decided to play to that perception. Soon you may be able to find your healthy meat-based alternatives at your local Arby’s!^[7]

3 Carl’s Jr. Rocky Mountain High Burger

Jumping on the trends at the right time is key to the success of QSR franchises, and Carl’s Jr. definitely chose the right time and place with this burger. Released in Denver and named after a song by John Denver, Carl’s junior revealed that on 4/20/2019, they would release their CBD-infused burger.

The burger featured two patties: Santa Fe sauce infused with locally sourced CBD, pickled jalapenos, pepper jack cheese, and Crisscut fries. The CBD burgers sold very well, and Carl’s Jr. is considering making it a more regular menu item. “It’s one day, one location; I’m here, might as well,” stated a customer, and honestly, that is the type of reaction I’d expect from someone interested in this burger. Much like Arby’s, Carl’s Jr. is playing up to the stereotype that fast food and Colorado bring.^[8]

2 KFC’s Recipe for Seduction

It’s not a stretch to say that Kentucky Fried Chicken’s reputation rivals that of Arby’s. I mean, they created a menu item that is just a bowl with all their offerings mixed together for people who have just given up. Yet, despite all that, they hold a special place on many people’s palates under the guise of “comfort food.” In the digital age, comfort food has expanded beyond just describing what we eat; it also includes the media we consume.

In this way, KFC teaming up with Lifetime to make a holiday romance film makes so much sense. Recipe for Seduction is a Lifetime original short film starring the hunky Mario Lopez as Colonel Harland Sanders of KFC fame. In the short film, the Colonel becomes a live-in chef for a financially struggling influential family and strikes up a romance with the daughter. Naturally, the mother does not approve and schemes to tear them apart while also stealing the Colonel’s secret fried chicken recipe that he dreams will change the world.

The film premiered on Lifetime on December 13, 2020. To increase the experience of viewing the short film, KFC also provided six free crispy tenders on Uber Eats orders of $20 or more. While tongue-in-cheek, reviews of the film were mostly favorable, except for one reviewer who accurately stated: “Simply another example of how corporate advertising continues to overtly commandeer everyday spaces like film and social media.”

That being said, the film ended on a cliffhanger, and I’m waiting for the sequel.^[9]

1 GarfieldEATS

“In 40 years, no one has ever come to me with such a crazy idea like GarfieldEATS, the world’s 1st entergaging Garfield’s quick mobile restaurant app,” says Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield. I couldn’t agree more. GarfieldEATS is a QMR (quick mobile restaurant), meaning that the restaurant is actually a delivery service app that you download on your mobile device. When you download the app, you can order items like a Garfield-shaped pizza, lasagna (duh), garfuccinos (Garfield cappuccino), and smoothies to have delivered to you.

Jim Davis’s quote included the word “entergaging,” and you might be wondering what that means. Well, it’s a portmanteau of entertaining and engaging. He uses this term because while waiting for your order, you can use the GarfieldEATS app to watch clips of the Garfield and Friends TV show, play games, and talk to other Garfield fans. In doing so, you can earn “paws,” which can then be turned into goupons (not Groupons!).

GarfieldEATS has opened in a few cities around the world, including Dubai and Toronto. While Garfield is known for his orange fur, GarfieldEATS prides itself on being green, with food delivered on electric scooters and in reusable packaging. The meme-ification of the famous cat has added a lot to the allure of this business venture. Still, you have to admit that this is a very ambitious project, and the founder, Nathan Mazri, has the full confidence of the Garfield licensers.

Unfortunately, steep prices, inconsistent quality, bugs in the app, and the pandemic all played a role in the downfall of the company, and it is with a heavy heart that I must say that as of 2021, the GarfieldEATS website has been taken down. Nathan Mazri often used the famous Garfield quote, “Love me, feed me, never leave me,” and I can’t help but feel like we have failed him.^[10]