A Guide to American Fast Food Restaurants, Part Two:

Arby's: Used to be really popular a few years back with kids who were borrowing their dad's video camera so they could make a zombie movie with their friends, on account of the complimentary barbecue sauce packets they offer totally look like blood and the horseradish looks like pus. Trust me, I know this for a fact.

It’s hard to say what Arby’s advertising campaign actually is, or to remember where they’re located, or if they even exist. They could afford to be a little more high-profile, is what I’m saying. Arby’s once used a taking oven mitt as a mascot, until it was savagely beaten by the Hamburger Helper glove. That oven mitt was so cloyingly annoying that I assume it only looked suitable for mascot duty because the advertising agency in question originally pitched a spokes-cow who got off on cutting itself.


Sonic: Promotes itself on the premise that the quality of their food and the convenience of their drive-in service will allow you to tolerate the most interminable moron with whom you’ve chosen to share your car and/or life. Matches food and drink combinations with a woman’s obvious regret over her life choices, i.e. “Jalapeño Cheddar Burger” coupled with “I hate that I am not allowed to express myself without being subject to criticism,” or “Strawberry Banana Sonic Slushie” with “Why am I always in the passenger seat? Would it kill him to let me drive for once?” At the very least, the fact that the meals are always consumed inside a car spares fellow diners from having to endure the uncomfortable atmosphere of suppressed regret, and also from that rat-eyed guy being a huge moron all the time.


Wendy’s: Gallingly, Wendy’s advertising seems to work, seeing as how they were able to launch septuagenarian Clara Peller into overnight fame, and also one of the other ladies into late series Night Court. So, effectively, Wendy’s created a sliding scale of relative fame wherein “Night Court” resides somewhere behind “Clara Peller,” which I’m sure is a case for sociologists to ponder.

Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas was their official spokesperson until he snuffed it by way of a massive coronary. Wendy’s PR department assured the public that it had nothing to do with their hamburgers, blaming it instead on Thomas’ massive daily cocaine habit. Okay, I’m just making up that last part.

You ever look at the mascots for major corporations and wonder what the dirtiest sex act they’d ever committed might have been? Okay, followup question, have you ever looked at the pink-cheeked Wendy’s mascot and NOT wondered what the dirtiest sex act she’d ever committed might have been? No, of course you haven’t. PS – piss play.


Wienerschnitzel: For something like the last seven or eight years, Wienerschnitzel’s been getting by with a murder-based advertising campaign. Ad after ad of a screaming, bipedal hot dog running for its life from hungry humans attempting to eat him whole. If you don’t have a Wienerschnitzel in your area, boy have you been missing out.

I support this. As a matter of fact, it’s a dream of mine to live long enough to see – or even found – a restaurant centered exclusively around a murder-based theme; in the commercials, even the salads and shakes are holding clandestine underground encounters to navigate some sort of liberation railroad to the North and … freedom! Inside the restaurant, I’d include sound chips in the ketchup and mustard packs so that when you tore them open they’d scream “God, no, please! I HAVE CHILDREN!” The sandwiches would be served with plastic eyes inserted into the top of the bun, like a Mister Potato-Head, molded so as to seem tear-filled and pleading …


KFC: Some years back, the rumor had begun to circulate that the venerable Kentucky Fried Chicken chain had changed its corporate brand to “KFC” because they were using - rather than actual natural chickens - some sort of mutated bird-lizard crossbreed with five legs and a unicorn horn. Seriously, Snopes will back me up on this. Anyway, the company went into spin mode and made a series of ads specifically to re-engineer its image and put the matter of a mythical but conceivably delicious five-legged birdguanacorn bucket dinner behind them, which is insane because if I were running a restaurant which exclusively served genetic abominations from the pits of science, my preferred advertising strategy would be “YOU GUYS LIKE MUTANT, RIGHT??”

The campaign in question, meant to distract us from KFC’s now-Godzooky-intensive menu, involved a cartoon Colonel Sanders cabbage patching to corporate hip-hop. I’m not sure who are the winners here.

KFC is also the only fast food chain I know of which can get its feelings hurt. They nixed the ad campaign for their Twister Bowls when well-shaved Teddy Ruxpin doll Patton Oswalt began making fun of it on his television appearances, and put the kibosh on another admittedly ill-advised campaign wherein they were trying to suggest that fried chicken was good for you (instead of just focusing on its grilled chicken, for crying out loud). KFC has low self-esteem, which you could probably figure out from the fact that it serves its meals in disposable trashcans.