The Summer Of George

KFC.com Homepage

Kentucky Fried Chicken (2002)
Tomorrow is the first day of summer, so be sure to live it up and have your own Summer Of George like renowned "chicken fanatic" Jason Alexander.  (Screenshot archived by the Web Design Museum)

Krispy Kreme Power Pellets

Pac Man Donuts
Krispy Kreme (2025)
Today is the 45th anniversary of the release of Pac-Man to arcades across Japan.  In honor of this, Krispy Kreme has decided that they're going to put me in a sugar coma.

I'm trying to change my eating habits and lose some weight, but these look pretty tempting.

A Sub Above A Reasonable Price

Big Kahuna Cheesesteak
Jersey Mike's Subs - Hazleton, PA

When I was growing up, my grandfather used to tell me how candy bars cost a nickel when he was my age, except for the Chunky which cost a dime.  It was pretty hard for me to imagine.  They were around 35 to 50 cents each throughout much of my childhood, with the king size bars ranging from 79 to 99 cents.  Good luck finding one that cheap in 2025.

I fully recognize that I'm about to sound like my grandfather right now, but you could get a hoagie for about three bucks when I was a kid; maybe even less.  The price didn't go up too much in my adult life either.  I worked at a Subway restaurant in Wilkes-Barre when I was in college and all footlong hoagies cost five dollars... even the cheesesteak.  I'm not sure what Subway charges these days, but the Big Kahuna Cheesesteak from the Jersey Mike's shop next to the Starbucks and Ethos in my hometown costs $18.75.

Now I know inflation has gotten out of control and the braying jackass in the White House is only going to make things worse for all of us for the foreseeable future, but $18.75 for a hoagie from a fast food chain is absurd.  You can get a ribeye cheesesteak at Campo's on Ashburn Alley in Citizen's Bank Park for $15.  They also sell The Heater, which is a ribeye cheesesteak made with buffalo wing hot sauce and topped with jalapeno peppers and jalapeno cheddar cheese, for $16.25.  These aren't old prices that I remember paying at my last ballgame either... they're the prices for the 2025 season.

In fairness, it was a tasty cheesesteak, but come on.  Jersey Mike himself could sit on my lap and feed this thing to me one bite a time while whispering in my ear that I'm a sexy boy and it still wouldn't be worth damn near twenty bucks after tax.

We had a buy one, get one free coupon which brought the price down to something a little more reasonable, but unless I hit Powerball or get another of those coupons in the mail, this is going to be my first and last visit to Jersey Mike's.  It's a good hoagie, but dude... it's a sandwich from a fast food chain next door to the weed shop off I-81.

A Cup Of Doodles

McCafe Doodles Cup
McDonald's (2024)
We stopped for breakfast at McDonald's on the way to the Slatington Marketplace on Saturday and my coffee was given to me in this aggressively adorable cup.

The artwork is by Scott Martin who goes by the alias Burnt Toast.  Its based on Doodles, which is described as "a next-generation entertainment company focused on immersive storytelling through the creation and distribution of live and digital experiences, original content, and lifestyle products".  His partnership with McDonald's was announced in November 2024, so I'm guessing that this was intended for the Christmas season and they're just using up their remaining stock of cups.

Neon McDonald's Evangelion

Neon Genesis Evangelion Chanegables
McDonald's Japan (2025)
The latest collaboration by McDonald's in Japan has managed to capture several of my nerdiest interests in a single promotion.  Earlier this month, the fast food chain began a partnership with Khara to create toys and limited edition menu items based on 90's anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion.

The toys are very similar to the McDonald's Changeable series that were available in the United States during the late 80's and early 90's.  Changeables were a Transformers-like toy which looked like different food items and packaging from the fast food chain, but each one could be transformed into a robot (in the 1987 and 1989 sets) or a dinosaur (in the 1990 set).  The Evangelion Changeables transform into the giant mechs that are piloted by Rei, Shinji, and Asuka in the animated series.

Eva Unit-00 is a soft drink cup

Eva Unit-01 is a Big Mac

Eva Unit-02 is a carton of McDonald's fries

These toys won't be available until January 26th, but they're only available in Japan and only to consumers who enter and win a lottery for the chance to purchase them for ¥3,900 (about $24.72 American).  Pre-orders for the set of three have already popped up on eBay with prices hovering around $200.  If you're like me and would rather keep that money in your pocket and look at images of these toys for free, there are lots of high quality photos of the box and each of the figures at Tformers.com.

The toys are very cool, but if I lived in Japan, I'd be even more excited to try each of the three limited edition McEvangelion burgers.

 

Representing Unit-00 at a cost of ¥540 (about $3.42) is the Zakugiri Potato & Thick Beef Garlic Mayo burger, which is described as follows on the McDonald's Japan website:

This hearty dish consists of a thick 100% beef patty layered with garlic mayonnaise sauce, steak sauce and chopped potato patty. 

The Unit-01 sandwich is the Cheese Double Teriyaki costs ¥530 (about $3.36).  Its description is:

This hearty dish consists of two pork patties tossed in teriyaki-flavored sauce, combined with rich cheese and crunchy lettuce.

Finally, the Unit-02 sandwich is the Mexican Cheese Chicken.  It has a price of ¥490 (about $3.11) and is described as:

A spicy Mexican dish made with a chicken patty, taco meat filling, cheddar cheese, and pickles.   

*Please be careful if you don't like spicy food.

All three of these look very tasty, but trying them would be even more cost prohibitive than buying the toys on eBay since it would involve a round trip flight to Japan.

I might try to recreate these here in Pennsylvania, but it's going to involve more than a few creative liberties that I'm sure would taste quite a bit different than the ones currently available in Japan.  I'm thinking a McDonald's hashbrown on one of their cheeseburgers with some A-1 steak sauce and garlic mayo for the first burger, a couple of McDonald's breakfast sausages with lettuce, cheese, and teriyaki sauce for the second, and a McChicken with pickles and cheese, and some beef from the Taco Bell that's next to the McDonald's in front of the Laurel Mall in Hazleton for the third.  If I actually do this, I'll share the results on here.

Life Is But The Shipwreck Of Our Plans

The Shape Of Water
Searchlight Pictures (2017)
Last week, I mentioned that our friend Cary gave me a 52 Week Movie Challenge book as a Christmas present.  The idea here is to choose a different movie to watch each week according to the prompts given in the book and then to answer a few questions about the film.  

The first challenge in the book is to watch a film that has won Best Picture, so I did a little research and put together a short list of movies that fit the category that I've always wanted to see, but haven't gotten around to it yet.  This list included Coda, Parasite, Birdman, The Departed, A Beautiful Mind, and Gladiator, but I settled on the movie that won Best Picture for 2017 at the 90th Academy Awards: The Shape Of Water.

This movie premiered a few years before joined Regal Unlimited.  Since that time, and since discovering the Mahoning Drive-In Theater, I've become a much bigger fan of movies.  I wouldn't presume to be an expert on films or even claim to knowledgeable about film history, but I'd like to think I've developed an appreciation for cinematography, visual effects, and for some things that filmmakers do to pull you out of your own world and draw you into theirs.  The Shape Of Water does this as well as any movie I've ever seen.

The story is set in 1963 and it follows a woman in her mid 30's named Elisa Esposito, who was portrayed in an incredible performance by Sally Hawkins.  She has been mute since she was found next to a river with scars on her neck as an infant.  She lives in a small apartment above a cinema and works on the janitorial staff at a top secret government research facility in Baltimore.  While working, Elisa discovers that her employers have captured an aquatic life form similar to The Creature From The Black Lagoon, and the movie is about the connection she builds to this creature.  Anything else that I could say about the story would stray into spoiler territory, but it's a beautiful film that is deserving of all of the praise and awards that it has received.

One last thing I wanted to mention is the fact that The Creature in the film is played by actor Doug Jones.  He has a remarkable filmography including roles in movies such as Batman Returns, Hocus Pocus, Men In Black II, Pan's Labyrinth, and Hellboy 1 and 2, but my favorite of them all was one of his earliest acting gigs when he was hired by McDonald's to portray my all-time favorite mascot in their Mac Tonight advertising campaign.

Back In Season

McRib
McDonald's (2024)
At the end of 2022, McDonald's announced that the McRib was on its farewell tour with the implication being that the sandwich was going to be taken off of the menu for good.  Pretty much everybody who wrote about it at the time recognized that the fast food chain was probably full of crap, and they were right.  The limited edition barbecue rib sandwich is back for a limited time two years later.

I wasn't overly excited to run out and get one when they once again became available, but we were both getting pretty hungry on the drive home from the American Music Theater a couple of weeks ago, so I picked one up.

The McRib is as tasty as it ever was, but I've kind of lost my taste for them.  A big part of this is the ridiculous price hike that has taken place at fast food restaurants since the pandemic.  These were a nice treat when they were two or three bucks, but it's an easy thing to pass up for six dollars.  Unless that changes, this is going to probably be my last time trying it whether they bring it back or not.

Gather Round The Fishmas Tree

Long John Silver's / A&W
Cressona Mall Road - Pottsville, PA
I've written about how getting food from Long John Silver's has been a Christmas Eve tradition in my family, but it has been more challenging to keep it going in recent years.  The restaurant in Hazleton that we've gotten our food from for most of my life closed in early 2022, and the building is in the process of being converted to a tobacco and vape store.

Thankfully, there's another Long John's about a half hour away in Edwardsville where we were able to get our food for the past two years.  That location is still in business to the best of my knowledge, but their website was showing that it would be closed on Christmas Eve.  The only one that we could find within a reasonable driving distance that was open on December 24th this year was a LJS and A&W combination restaurant in Pottsville.

I've never been inside of a hybrid LJS / A&W restaurant before now.  It looked pretty much like any other Long John Silver's that I've been to over the past few years, but with a few instances of Rooty the Great Root Bear and A&W Root Beet mugs here and there.  The thing that caught my attention was the music.

We ordered our food online, but we got there a bit earlier than expected so my dad and I got a couple of drinks and settled into a booth to wait for our food to be ready to pick up.  The restaurant was playing a mix of modern Christmas music.  Some were songs that I didn't recognize, while others were familiar tunes sung by newer artists.  This included a Backstreet Boys cover of Dan Fogelberg's holiday classic Same Old Lang Syne which did not impress my dad one bit.

After about fifteen or twenty minutes, I heard a hip hop holiday song that I didn't recognize.  The vocals were pretty low from where we were sitting, but I could have sworn I heard the man singing about "Fishmas Eve".  I thought that I couldn't possibly have heard it right and that my mind must be playing tricks on me while I sat there smelling all of the delicious deep fried fish waiting for ours to be read to bring home... but I kept hearing it.  Eventually, I stood up and moved closer to one of the restaurant's overhead speakers.  Sure enough, it was a Long John Silver's seafood hip hop Christmas carol.

The morning after Christmas was spent doing what any sensible middle-aged man would do; I opened my laptop to see what I could learn about this festive fishy tune.  It turns out that the song is called Oh Fishmas Sea.  It was released in 2020 with vocals by South Carolina lo-fi hip hop artist Rashun Fortune.

It's also not the only Long John Silver's Christmas carol.  They put out a whole album of these in 2020 called The Fishmas Album on Fish Yeah Records.  There are seven songs, including We Wish You A Merry Fishmas by Donnell Isaac, Jingle Shells by Nolä, I Smelled The Smells On Fishmas Day by Medium Heat, and Shark! Harold The Angler Sings by Mr. Chenier, and your life will not be complete until you have listened to each and every one of them and saved them for your future holiday playlist.

Fish Yeah! Records · Merry Fishmas

As if this isn't enough, The Fishmas Album is the second release from Fish Yeah Records.  Their first album was released earlier in 2020 with music by the Washington DC band Coral Benders.  It's called The Ballad Of Long John Silver's.

Fish Yeah! Records · Fish Yeah!

I don't think I could possibly love this more!

The Royal Conjoined Twins

Burger Buddies Translite
Burger King (1990)
I used to love these little burgers when I was growing up.  They went by a few different names over the years, including Burger Bundles in the mid 80's and BK Burger Shots in the early 2000's, but I remember them best under the Burger Buddies name, with conjoined mini-burgers that the consumer was meant to split in two (image source: Consumer Time Capsule).

The Million Dollar Whopper

Million Dollar Whopper Contest
Burger King (2024)
My favorite fast food chain from the time that I was a child to today has been Burger King.  This weekend, they kicked off the second phase in one of the coolest promotions that I've seen in a long time.

In February, the fast food chain announced a contest in which you could submit your idea to win a million dollars by submitting your idea for a specialty Whopper sandwich.  Submissions were collected throughout the year, and three finalists have been selected.  All three are available to purchase at Burger King now, and the winning Whopper will be determined by customers who vote for their favorite.

The first of the three finalists is the Fried Pickle Ranch Whopper, which is topped with lettuce, fried pickles, bacon, Swiss cheese, and a creamy pickle ranch sauce.  They've also made the fried pickles available as a Pickle Fries side dish separate from the burger.

 

The second suitor (because "Suitor #2" sounds like a bathroom code) is the Mexican Street Corn Whopper.  This is made with lettuce, tomato, tortilla strips, spicy queso, and a creamy street corn spread.

The final contestant is the Maple Bourbon BBQ Whopper, which has crispy onions and jalapenos, smoky maple candied bacon, and American cheese topped with a maple bourbon barbecue sauce.

I had to try all three of them, and I wanted to try them at the same time so that I could have a fair comparison and choose my favorite.  Now I can eat three Whoppers in a sitting, which should come as no surprise to anyone who's seen how much weight I've put on since college, but I'm trying to be a little more sensible with my food choices to drop a few pounds.  With that in mind, my wife and I hit up the Burger King in Lehighton on the way home from the Slatington Marketplace, and we ordered one of each of the new burgers and split them.  Eating one and a half Whoppers has got to be healthier than eating three, right?

All three Whoppers were very tasty and worth trying.  The fried pickles gave the Fried Pickle Ranch Whopper an interesting flavor, but as someone who loves pickles, I was a little disappointed that it didn't have a stronger dill flavor.  The spicy queso and crunchy tortilla strips made for a surprisingly excellent combined flavor on the Mexican Street Corn Whopper.  Even if it doesn't win, Burger King should consider keeping that spicy queso sauce in their kitchens because it'd be an excellent way to upsell customers who want to add a little cheese and spice to anything on their menu.

Having said that, the whole idea of this promotion is to pick a winner, and my wife and I were both in agreement on which one of the three was the best:

The Maple Bourbon BBQ Whopper is one of the best fast food burgers I've ever had.  It's a perfect combination of sweet and savory, and the crispy onions and jalapenos give it a little zing that was just right.  All three burgers are good enough to go back and get again, but this one is the only one of the three that I'd go out of my way to find if it wasn't right down the street.

If I were handing out Olympic medals to all three contestants, the Mexican Street Corn Whopper would get the silver, and the Fried Pickle Ranch Whopper would get the bronze.  If you had your eye on Fried Pickle Ranch as the one you wanted to try, take my ranking of it last with a grain of salt because I'm not a big fan of ranch dressing in general.

I'm not sure how long they're going to have all three of these burgers available to purchase in stores, but the ability to vote for your favorite one ends on December 5th.  I believe that the winner is going to remain on their menu for a bit longer, but I'd imagine the other two aren't going to stick around too much longer after the first week of December.  If you want to try them, I'd recommend going sooner than later.

Kudos to Burger King for coming up with a hell of a fun promotion.  This would make an excellent annual tradition to get customers to keep coming back during the Christmas shopping season.

Time Travel With Taco Bell

Decades Menu
Taco Bell (2024)
Since the days of dial-up internet, consumers have been sharing lists of discontinued foods and beverages that they want to become available again.  There have been quite things from the Taco Bell menu that have been discontinued over the years that are frequently mentioned in these lists.  The fast food chain has finally responded to these pleas by bringing back four products from the past for a limited time.

The promotion is called the Taco Bell Decades Menu, which includes the following items representing the decade that they were introduced.

• Tostada: a flat and crispy tostada shell topped with beans, red sauce, lettuce, and cheese.
• Green Sauce Burrito: a soft tortilla wrap with beans, onions, cheese, and Salsa Verde sauce
• Meximelt: a soft taco filled with seasoned beef and topped with pico de gallo and melted cheese
• Gordita Supreme: a thick soft flatbread folded like a taco, filled seasoned beef, and topped with sour cream, lettuce, and cheese

The Patriot News - Harrisburg, PA  (May 6, 1998)

We didn't have a Taco Bell in my hometown until the 90's, so the only one of these that I've had during their original run was the Gordita.  When the product line was first introduced, you could get them either with beef for 99 cents, or you could get either chicken or steak for $1.49.  There were also three choices of how they were prepared: Supreme (lettuce, tomato, cheese, and sour cream), Fiesta (lettuce, cheese, and pico sauce), or Santa Fe (corn and black bean salsa, cheese, and chipotle sauce).

My favorite Gordita from the late 90's was the Santa Fe with either chicken or steak.  In fact, I think those are my all-time favorite food from Taco Bell.  Unfortunately, the only one that was brought back as a part of the Decades Menu is the Supreme Gordita with Beef.  You could always customize your order for an upcharge and swap out the seasoned beef for chicken or steak, but I don't think they have the chipotle sauce or the corn and black bean salsa.  It seems like it'd be an easy enough thing to replicate at home if you want to try it.

I wanted to try everything from the Decades Menu as intended without any customization.  This meant getting my Gordita with sour cream, which I am not at all a fan of.  Seriously, I don't think I've ever eaten anything that had sour cream that wouldn't have tasted better if the sour cream was left out of the recipe, whether you replace it with something else or not.

My favorite out of the four was the Green Sauce Burrito because the Salsa Verde is especially tasty.  The good news is that they have the sauce on the menu all the time, so I'll have to remember to customize my order to include it in the future.  I don't usually get crunchy tacos, but the Tostada was surprisingly great.  The Meximelt wasn't bad at all, but it didn't strike me as anything more special than their regular soft tacos, and the Gordita was good, but it would have been a whole lot better if it was the Santa Fe style.

Finally, there are four different retro style soda cups available at Taco Bell during this promotion.  The one that I got is from the 60's.  I'm not sure who had the bright idea of slapping a large QR code on something that was meant to evoke the restaurant's aesthetic from sixty years ago.  Seriously, when's the last time you've ever actually scanned one of these things?  Oh well... the cup gets an A for the idea, but a D+ for its execution.

Two All Chicken Patties...

Chicken Big Mac
McDonald's (2024)
The classic Big Mac may be my least favorite fast food burger.  Honestly, I don't even know how it got to be so popular in the first place.  It's just too damn much bread.  Seriously, would you ever request an extra bun in between the meat patties on your double cheeseburger?  The "special sauce" really doesn't do anything for me either.  Still, I'm a sucker for limited edition fast food burgers, so I had to see what the Chicken Big Mac was all about.

This is much tastier than a traditional Big Mac burger.  I could do without the extra bun in the middle, but the lettuce and special sauce go better with chicken than with beef.  The website says that it's made with two tempura chicken patties that are different from the ones that they use on the McChicken.  It does taste different.  In fact, it kind of tasted like two jumbo-sized Chicken McNuggets on a bun.  I'm not sure what the benefit is to keeping this as a limited edition item.  Hopefully, they make these available as a permanent menu item, but if I order it again, I'm removing the extra bun.

A Frosty Halloween

Frosty Frights
Wendy's (2024)

A few weeks ago, Wendy's introduced a new line of spooky themed Kids Meal toys that remind me of the McDonald's Halloween McNugget Buddies from the 90's.

Frosty Frights are little Frosty toys that are dressed up for trick-or-treating.  There are six different characters: Frosty Bite (vampire), Franken Frosty (Frankenstein), Cold Spell (witch), Coolie Ghoulie (ghost), Brrr Beast (wolf man), and Junior, who I think is just supposed to be a kid, but I'm not sure.  

Each of the toys come in a standard color and a limited edition color variant that are going for ridiculous prices on the secondary market.  I'm not into chasing down a complete set, but I did pick up these four little guys from an eBay seller to put out as Halloween decorations.