u/AxlCobainVedder via Reddit.com
Fast-food ads today are all over the map. Whether it’s Chick-fil-A trying to convince you that their employees offer the world’s greatest customer service, Taco Bell aiming for people on their way home from the bar, or McDonald’s collaborating with rappers, things are certainly different.
Remember the ads of yore? Take a look at these 15 vintage fast-food ads to see just how much advertising has changed.
While at first this 1952 Kentucky Fried Chicken menu might seem like a steal by today’s standards, this also feels kind of expensive for the 50s. The Colonel is a luxury, I suppose.
99 cents for any five items? That’s what I’m talking about, Taco Bell. This ad is so old that it dates back to a time before area codes were needed for local calls.
I am loving the willy-nilly use of quotation marks in this ad. For me, the quotes imply that this thing is not really a Whopper, and the beverage it’s served with isn’t really a Coke. This all reads a lot like when you get some vegan “chicken,” you know?
The Big Mac originally dropped in 1967, so this ad has to be pretty close to that date. It’s a good looking burger in its debut, I will admit, but what’s this about a disguise? A what? Disguised as what? This is a hamburger. Is that not a meal? Since when is a hamburger not a meal? And why are you calling it a sandwich? Of course a burger is a sandwich, but unless you are from Mars, you do not call it that.
Originally introduced in 1967, Shammy shakes have a huge cult following behind them. The leprechauns are here, my friends, and they’re driving their Shamrock Shake train through the forest, complete with a drunken leprechaun playing a harp in the kaboose. A keen eye will also notice that the shake itself is a… trash can?
What happened to the Sea Bag? Crazy McDonald’s has been putting the cheese on the bottom of the sandwich for that long. You better believe I’m trying to get my hands on those McDonaldland cookies.
Anybody who is ever planning on giving me a present, please take note: Do not sit me down at a table and act like I’m about to eat something delicious and then surprise me with Burger King. This is not a good surprise. This is a bad surprise, like coming back to your car and finding a parking ticket.
These sound legitimately excellent. Fast-food onion rings always do that thing where the onion slides out of the batter, but if the whole thing is a nugget, that problem is solved. McDonald's served Onion Nuggets to select U.S. locations in 1978 and 1979. And while they were sadly discontinued (like many other McDonald's favorites), they reportedly paved the way for Chicken McNuggets. We need these back, right this instant.
I wonder what the age control was like on this promotion where McDonald’s was giving out razors with their meals. McDonald's rolled this bizarre combo out in 1978, and again in 1986 as a cross-promotion with Gilette. Hopefully, no airport McDonald’s were doing this one. Apparently, Wendy's offered a Bic razor with breakfast in 1985.
(Of course, in recent years, we've seen even stranger fast-food promotions with brands you'd never expect.)
Here’s some more “healthy” insanity. The text on this nutritional ad is admittedly too small to make out, but we can see all we need to: “McDonald’s nutritious food.” Maybe this is the ad that set Morgan Spurlock off.
It’s awesome how much time these fast-food chains spent trying to convince people that their food was healthy. Did you know in order to be healthy, all you had to do was grab a few roast beef sandwiches from Arby’s? Bingo. Easy.
Folks, we need to get into the story of what’s happening here, because McDonald’s is spinning us a real yarn on this one. I don’t even have time to talk about the disgusting ham and turkey sticks or wonder why they’re shaped like that. Here’s what we know: Two women love McDonald’s salads and are eating them while talking about them to each other on the phone.
Because they’re on the phone, forkfuls of salad cocked and loaded to eat between sentences, it seems like these two women got salads from McDonald’s independently, at the exact same time. Then they both went home, or to their separate places of business. Then one of them called the other. Because this is 1987, they had no way of knowing if they were both getting salads at the same time, so this must have come up naturally in conversation, unless of course the woman on the top of the ad called simply to contemplate what McDonald’s salads so good.
Maybe the girl on the bottom was also wondering about it but she didn’t even mention that she was eating a McDonald’s salad, and they sat there talking about McDonald’s salad without actually knowing that they were each eating one.
Yes, I am fun at parties, why do you ask?
Everybody gets a little too big for their britches at some point, and that’s exactly what was happening with Wendy’s when they debuted the SuperBar in the late 80s. Chill, Wendy’s. You don’t need all this. And I shouldn’t need to tell you this, but please do not put toppings on the outside of your burrito.
The King tried his hand at table service for a while, but as I’m sure he quickly learned: Nobody wants that. That’s not what this restaurant is for.
I was hugely into the Burger King Kids Club, which existed in the 90s, and definitely stretches the definition of retro. But you’re a forgiving reader; I know this, you know this, so I think we can all just move on.
I had no memory of them being this much like the X-Men. We’ve got Wheels over here as Professor X, which if I’m being honest, is a better name by about 100 percent. Then we’ve got Kid Vid who’s obviously supposed to be Cyclops (and maybe also Max when he’s dressed up like Powerline), and then I will admit, that’s where my X-Men analogy falls apart. I would love to know what Jaws was up to and how he got that name, and I also need to point out that I/Q is even shorter than Wheels, who is seated in a wheelchair.
