Beef or chicken?

In the race between take-away joints to pry you away from your hard-earned cash, various underhanded techniques have been employed. With everything ranging from brightly coloured kid’s meals to the freakishly scary corporate mascot, take-away joints will stop at nothing. Even if it means copying their direct competitors.

As a result of all this in-fighting we’ve seen all three major fast food outlets releasing a kiddies meal. And by major I mean KFC, McDonalds and Steers (read “personal favourites”). Now if it’s not enough that the kiddies meal is simply there to get your kid kicking and screaming because he’s going to score a “free” toy, they package the damn thing in a trippy, trancifying, tantrum-inducing box that make kids go gaga for it. And don’t even think about telling little Wesley he can’t have one. Oh no sir, then you get to meet Wesley’s bad side. And at 5 years old, bad sides are pretty well developed.

Now if depriving your kid of the already nonexistant nutritional value of a kids meal isn’t bad enough, they get to replace at least half of it with plastic in the form of the“mystery toy”. Look here, it isn’t a fucking mystery if your kid as already spotted the giant poster, deliberately placed near the door as you entered, listing all the wonderful chunks of misshapen plastic he can get free with his kiddies meal. At this point your sprog has totally lost interest in eating. And as far as ‘FREE’ goes, the only thing that’s free about it is the fact that they haven’t stipulated the charge for it on your bill!

But beyond all that, there is one place where a few fast food restuarants refuse to go, and they are called fast food restuarants simply to distinguish them from the less classier “take-out joints”, “take-aways”, or “feeding troughs”. That place, is the “corporate mascot”.

Who in their right mind dreams up these wonderful marketing schemes? Lets put a guy in a chicken suit outside our KFC, and he’ll entice people to buy chicken! Hell, the kids will love him too! Two birds with one stone!

So some under-paid sod in a chicken suit is outside waxing lyrical about the benefits of the Colonel’s secret recipe and eleven herbs and spices. I might add that this recipe is so secret, they’re only prepared to part with it if you are able cough up 100k for a francise, then and only then will you be imparted with this secret recipe.

Quite frankly, a better way to sell chicken would to someone outside dress as the Colonel himself, imparting wisdom to the masses in a deeply Southern (American) accent, since a deeply Southern African accent sounds a bit like, “Jy, hoe lyk it?”. I would have the Colonel accosting youngsters on the sidewalk about the protein filled benefits of chicken and that outer layer of sawdust the tack on right before drowning the poor fowls in sunflower oil.

In alot of ways, I suppose that is better than Nando’s current marketing approach of “Our chickens are well hung”. Honestly, I’d just come right out with it, no pansying about it, “We have huge cocks”. We all know that’s what they’re really trying to say. No amount of giggly half-model in read skimpy clothing is going to make up for the sheer lack of effort of trying to sell food. “Our chickens are well hung” certainly doesn’t do it, “We have huge cocks” does. Go into a Nando’s, and order yourself a huge cock today. Ask for it by name.

McDonalds, I have to ask you, what the hell do clowns have to do with anything? Let alone burgers or food of any kind. Clowns are just freaky, man. Leave that shit alone. It’s all great that you’ve gone and taken the mascot thing just one step beyond the ordinary with this happy fun bubblegum wonderland, with all sorts of wonderful creatures and shit that would scare hardened criminals. It’s McSesame street! And what is the deal with Hamburgler? Doesn’t that just sound like a kleptomaniac QuarterPounder with cheese to you? Is this the kind of thing we want to expose our kids to? And what’s with that Birdie anyway? It looks like BigBird’s Mini-me!

And why Happy Meals? Does Hamburglar sneak an “E” into each and every one of them? I certainly wouldn’t be happy with that, all the toys are same anyway! You just rotate them from week to week, you bastards!

Steers on the otherhand, although they’ve gone the sex route with their marketing, they’ve realised that what the average Steers customer wants to see, is saucy burger porn, and shitloads of it. With dripping, hot, saucy, burgers in every shape and size, they appear to have got it right, right? But I have to ask, who the fuck wants beetroot on their burger? Sure it may have been a joke at the stake of the Aussies, but really, you people still had to keep the beet in stock, should anybody have actually wanted one of those things! You know, on a dare or something.

Whatever they’re selling, we’d be here to lap it up without question, or without the ingredients printed on the side. But as competition hots up it is apparent that fast food marketer are prepared to stop at nothing in the hope of increased sales and greater marketshare. The consumer doesn’t really stand a chance.