I don't know if Hardee's got molested as a child or was, perhaps a chronic bed-wetter, or is just scarred from not losing its virginity until it was thirty, but something deeply disturbing is going on inside its corporate psyche.
A few years ago I began to notice that Hardee's initiated a deeply aggressive ad campaign which was the marketing equivalent of a steroid-saturated redneck screaming that he wasn't gay. Loaded with over-compensation, they showed supposed customers of Hardee's in a bizarre documentary-style confession that "I never thought to eat at Hardee's, I mean, everyone knows their food is laced with botulism..." That's an exaggeration, but it's close.
They slowly morphed into ads dripping with testosterone, routinely featuring a male doing manly things like fixing cars or welding or raping someone up real nice, and finish with harshly-worded demands that imply to not eat their enormous burgers was akin to waving an estrogen flag with your limp wrist.
Just when I thought the strangeness had hit a crescendo the braying psychos heading up the marketing department trot out commercials with midgets playing construction worker elves or something, building "Stackers" burgers with cranes and bulldozers. Watching a cameo by Tattoo
from Fantasy Island shouting "De meat, boss, de meat," was surreal enough, but then they throw all sanity out the window when the foreman screams like a drill sergeant at a subordinate not only for daring to make only a single-patty burger, but having the gall to put veggies on it.
"We only do meat and cheese!" he bellows. "We don't do singles!" I fail to see how leaving the only healthy part (vitamin C? Who needs vitamin C?! And fiber?! bah!) of a pound of cow flesh and death translates into good eatin'. It all just strikes me like the guy with a mullet who beats the crap out of a twink blowing him in the parking lot. They're just odd. Odd and terrified of being un-manly. I hate it.
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