Every cinematic universe needs a lead who keeps getting rebooted. Burger King has the King.
His origin story is humble. He started as part of the sign at the very first restaurant back in 1955.
Along the way the King went cartoon-like voiced by the same actor who did voices for Howdy Doody and Underdog, Allen Swift. But the King was swimming upstream to tell kids that Burger King was the place where kids were king.
They also went on a side-quest to advertise that you could have it your way, and that came with an incredible jingle. Honestly, sitting through a 6 minute compilation will transport you back to a different world.
So in 1976 Burger King rebooted the King.
In walked a red-bearded Tudor-style monarch who ruled a whole Burger King Kingdom as the Marvelous Magical Burger King. The best part: the King did magic tricks with a ring that could summon food.
But the Marvelous Magical Burger King was not a solo player. He had a blood feud with his arch nemesis, Ronald McDonald. Ronald, you see, wasn’t clowning around. He had a whole universe of his own.
Burger King needed its own team to fight back. This war raged for over 13 years. Then the Marvelous Magical Burger King was unceremoniously taken out in a bloodless coup by some snot nosed pre-teen named Kid Vid in 1990.
In 2003 the King came back as a horror movie. But we need to talk about Saturday mornings first.
THE SUPER FRIENDS WERE NEVER ABOUT THE SUPER FRIENDS
If I were shooting Crimson Tide in 1995 in the galley of a submarine. I might tell you this story like Quentin Tarantino would, even if it’s a very overdone and implausible way to introduce the Super Friends.
INT. SUBMARINE GALLEY – NIGHT
Two sailors pulled apart. COMMANDER HUNTER walks in.
HUNTER: Delgado. What the hell is going on?
PETTY OFFICER FIRST CLASS DANNY RIVETTI: A disagreement, sir. It’s dumb.
HUNTER: I’ll decide what’s dumb. What about?
RIVETTI: Super Friends, sir. I said the All-New Super Friends Hour was the real one. Wonder Twins. Gleek. Kowalski said the only real Super Friends is the Challenge of the Super Friends. I said Challenge doesn’t even have the Wonder Twins. He said “exactly.” I shoved him.
HUNTER: You shoved a man over Gleek.
RIVETTI: Over the principle of Gleek, sir.
HUNTER: I see this again, you’re written up. Understood?
RIVETTI: Understood, sir.
HUNTER: Good. For the record, everybody who watched Saturday morning cartoons in the 70s and 80s knows that the All-New Super Friends Hour is the only true Super Friends. Challenge is the one where somebody figured out the heroes were the boring part. Thirteen supervillains in a swamp, in a building shaped like Darth Vader’s head. They lose every week. Every week they come back and hold a meeting about it. Am I wrong?
RIVETTI: No, sir.
Regardless of how much time I spent playing around with this scene, the Legion of Doom really was just 13 villains running their schemes out of a dome-shaped headquarters hidden in the depths of a swamp.
The show’s intro claimed they’d banded together from remote galaxies. Most of them were from Earth. Black Manta was from the ocean. It really wasn’t as fun as the All-New Super Friends Hour. They had a space monkey named Gleek for God’s sake.
And at this point, you’re asking yourself, what happened to the Burger King and all the ads? Well to set up this needlessly elaborate comparison of McDonaldland and the Burger King Kingdom we had to check in on a 1995 Submarine and channel Quentin Tarantino. It really was the only way.
MCDONALDLAND WAS THE HALL OF JUSTICE. BURGER KING BUILT THE HALL OF DOOM.
It’s so clear that McDonaldland was the Super Friends. Big roster. First to market. Won every episode.
Ronald was Superman — everywhere, invulnerable and a little boring if you think about it too long.
McDonaldland was created by advertising agency Needham, Harper & Steers. McDonald’s was famously sued by Sid & Marty Krofft for similarities to H.R. Pufnstuf. It all makes sense now. Remember when they tried to pull over Pufnstuf on Chips?
Burger King showed up with its own headquarters. A Kingdom. All created by legendary advertising agency J. Walter Thompson (JWT). In a way, this story has three layers. Super Friends vs. Legion of Doom. Needham, Harper & Steers vs. JWT. McDonaldland vs. Burger Kingdom.
To take on McDonaldland, JWT built a fiefdom of characters as only a scheming monarch in a cape assembling a team to beat the good guys could. That’s major Lex Luthor energy if you ever saw it.
The lineup was built to match the other side position by position.
Grimace vs Sir Shake-A-Lot is the same scouting report. Sir Shake-A-Lot was a knight with a craving for milkshakes.
Mayor McCheese vs the Burger Thing is two burgers holding public office.
The Fry Kids vs the Wizard of Fries is a fair fight only if you’ve never seen the Wizard of Fries.
Then there’s the Duke of Doubt. The Hamburglar stole burgers. The Duke of Doubt’s whole job was doubting the King’s abilities. His superpower was skepticism. He’s the Toyman of fast food.
The Super Friends had a space monkey who carried a bucket. Burger King had the Burger Thing, a W.C. Fields-esque hamburger portrait. A painting. Of a burger. My favourite part is that Burger Thing supposedly talks like a drunk in the 1930s. He even had a theme song. But there doesn’t seem to be any versions of this that I could find.
The 1979 glass with him on it carries the line “I’m the funniest Burger. I’m the Burger Thing.”
The Wizard of Fries was a robot named wizard, which is what happens when two people in the room both win the argument.
McDonaldland had its own set of duds. The Professor. Captain Crook. Officer Big Mac, a cop with a burger for a head who never once caught the Hamburglar. They had their own glasses too. But it’s just not the same.
THE KINGDOM LIVES ON EBAY
In 1979 BK released a set of five collector glasses featuring the Burger Thing, the Wizard of Fries, the Duke of Doubt, Sir Shake-A-Lot and the King. A full set, if you can find one, goes for around $35 on eBay. You can even find some amazing yet ultra-rare puffy stickers. And you should count your blessings that I didn’t make this about those, or the whole Burger King merch roll out that landed in this incredible ad.
The King glasses are ubiquitous. One seller is sitting on a Burger Kingdom goldmine. A Sir Shake-A-Lot glass is going for $10.
The Duke of Doubt glass was listed at $10.00, which is about what you’d expect for a guy whose entire personality was “I don’t buy it.”
What’s our power ranking here? McDonaldland wins the war. But the King appeared in over 200 commercials before he was dethroned in 1989. Not a bad run at all.
THE VILLAIN CAME BACK WEARING HIS OWN FACE
In 2003, about the time I was just starting to move from writing sports betting newsletters to making the first of thousands of banner ads Crispin Porter + Bogusky took over the Burger King account.
They found one of the old plastic King heads that used to sit on the helium tanks at restaurant events. As you do, they put it on a guy. In a blink, that was the new King. He didn’t talk, didn’t blink and showed up in your bed holding a breakfast sandwich.
Even BK executives admitted he scared off women and kids. But they ran with it anyway. So desperate to fight the power of McDonalds.
A year later CP+B launched the Subservient Chicken, a website where a guy in a chicken suit acted out whatever command you typed into a box. It was pre-recorded footage made to look live, with over 300 responses and a few things he’d refuse to do. People didn’t call it that yet, but it worked a lot like a chatbot does now.
The creepy King is 22 now. The Subservient Chicken is old enough to drink in every state. The edgy reboot has became the nostalgia.
The Duke of Doubt would have had something to say about it.
COCKTAIL OF THE WEEK: WITCH’S COFFEE BREW
This week’s cocktail calls for a Halloween flex that adds “Pumpkin Witchery to Grownup Halloween Party.” This is really a café brûlot in a costume.
Antoine’s in New Orleans claims it. Jules Alciatore, son of the founder, is believed to have introduced it in the 1890s. Fun fact, he also invented Oysters Rockefeller, so the man had range.
The idea reportedly came from French drinkers who’d soak a sugar cube in Cognac, light it and drop it in hot coffee. It got a second wind during Prohibition, when coffee made a handy disguise for illegal booze.
Everything tableside is magical. The waiter lights the brandy and ladles flaming liquid into your cup. The Marvelous Magical Burger King would most certainly approve.
Witch’s Coffee Brew (serves 8-10)
1 hollowed-out pumpkin (optional but come on)
8 sugar cubes
1 cinnamon stick, 6-8 cloves
Peel of 1 orange and 1 lemon
8 oz brandy, warmed
4 oz Grand Marnier, warmed
32 oz strong hot coffee
Set a heatproof bowl inside a carved-out pumpkin (preferably as the Burger King), add 6 sugar cubes, the cinnamon and cloves, the peels, 6 oz of brandy and the Grand Marnier and stir until the sugar starts to dissolve, then stir in the coffee. Light the remaining 2 sugar cubes and 2 oz of brandy in a heated ladle, lower it into the bowl and stir until the flames go out, then serve.