Oddball Eater

I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.

Burger King insulted me personally with its new commercial. Touting the chain's new french fries, the commercial shows consumers as "dippers" (gently inserting fries into ketchup), "smearers" (swiping deeply into that rich red pool), "nibblers" (taking sweet short bites) and "oddball eaters" (removing the top of a burger bun, placing fries in a cross-hatch pattern, applying ketchup, reassembling the bun, and gobbling away).

Excuse me, Burger King, but this is the very way that I've been eating burgers for years. It is by no means "oddball"! It is a method born of necessity. The original "15 cent hamburgers" of my youth were tasteless consisting of all bun and very little meat. Those "Where's the Beef?" commercials were not far from reality at the time. Consumers inserted french fries atop the meat for a bit of crunch, saltiness, and bulk.

When the Quarter-Pounder, Big Mac, and Whopper came along with more meat, lettuce, tomato, onion, and "secret sauce", we old-timers continued to add fries though they were not, strictly speaking, needed to make the burger palatable. We may be creatures of habit, but we are not "oddball eaters". That is an insult worthy of an abject apology and I will foreswear Whoppers until said apology is forthcoming.

By the way, those 15 cent burgers, 10 cent fries, and 20 cent milkshakes from fifty years ago may have been tasteless, but they sure came in handy. We would get all of $1 "meal money" for swim meets over an hour travel time away. We would stop at a McDonald's or at the late and lamented Gino's or Stop and Go after the meet and purchase thre burgers, three fries, and a shake and get change. Try doing that today.