So, I went to some fast food places (I won’t say “restaurants”, just “places”), and picked up burgers/tacos, so I could compare them with the ads. (I love little projects like this…)
I brought the “food” home (different stuff over 3 nights), tossed it into my photography studio, and did some ad-style shoots (with pictures of the official ads on my computer next to me, so I could match the lighting/angles/etc).
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People around the world know fast food as one of the most reliable distributors of disappointment ever produced by the business world. We know that if we ever feel the need to complain about something, we can just grab a page out of a coupon booklet, adorned in pictures of juicy burgers, then go have a party. Why, the restaurants themselves usually plaster their walls with pictures of juicy burgers – often hanging right over your table – so that you need only open your eyes to find something to compare your food with, while you eat it.
Needless to say, the results of my little project were unsurprising… which shouldn’t be a surprise.

Taco Bell’s “Crunchy Taco”.

The taco on the right is my life experience with Taco Bell. (best of two tacos that I bought)
Once upon a time, occasionally dropping in to Taco Bell was something I did, and I always held this grudge: I said, “If you have a company called TACO Bell… and you have this item on your menu called “Crunchy Taco” – you know, like your flagship item – let us hope that it doesn’t look like THIS.” (seriously… we’ve got 3 ingredients in here: lettuce, “meat”, and cheese)
Since these tacos are pretty dry (and devoid of ingredients), I can only tolerate them with hotsauce, which, for me, is when they become good. Still, they’re no match for Carl’s Jr.’s Nacho Tacos, which I also got to try recently (the chicken ones). They cost a tad more (somewhere around $1.50), but are only sold at the locations with “The Green Burrito” inside (it’s like a little Taco Bell inside the Carl’s Jr).

As much as I like to bash fast food, bear in mind that I’m not going to make the common mistake of saying that just because I’m against something, it can’t have ANY good sides, such as fast food actually tasting good. (I say this because it’s important to understand the difference between extremism and rationality, and many people reading this – those who know that this site is about moving against the failures of man (but don’t know yet my style) – might automatically expect me to be extreme in my judgment of fast food… to the point of thinking I’m going to cross my arms, and say, “What? Fast food tasting good? Puh! Why it’s… it’s disgusting!”)
Since the human mind is a physical, matter-based part of your body, it has fixed tastes that can’t easily be changed. My brain is programmed to accept western-world tastes, which are what I grew up on. This means, yes, I quite like the taste of fast food, and my saying so doesn’t mean that I’m not pressing for fast food’s demise as much as I should. (now, I could easily just leave out all positive mentions of taste, simply to keep from contributing ANYTHING to fast food here, but I think making this point is more worth the effect)
There are many things that the brain can’t pick-and-choose its acceptance of, no matter who you are. Anyone part of a religion, for example, WILL laugh at a funny enough joke that insults their figure-of-worship – maybe even a lot – even if they actually hate the joke so much that their skin starts to burn, and they feel the need to literally go out and kill somebody. You can laugh and hate at the same time. (the decision-making sector of your brain is completely separate from the part that perceives humor… and, unfortunately, there are SEVERAL parts of your brain that act completely on their own, in this way… like fear, to name one; you don’t believe there’s a monster there, but you still fear it actually being there)
So, fast food may be worthless garbage – and buying it may give life to a parasitic institution that sucks away man’s longevity of life, health, motivation to resist the failures of society, and money – but if someone asks me, “But do you like fast food? I mean, does it taste good?” the answer is yeah.
I like how fast food tastes… I resent what it means… and I tell people that if the future of mankind means anything to them, don’t touch this stuff with a 20ft pole.
Think about this. Be rational and balanced, not extreme. To be an extremists often means to be one-sided to the point of self-delusion, and, when the time comes to pitch your points – as extremists always feel the need – the unbending one-sidedness makes you look biased and desperate, reducing how much the other side feels they should consider what you’re saying.
I really do hate Whoppers, though:

Burger King’s “Whopper”

Burger King has had this a long time coming, and the Whopper I got the other night was a sight to behold; probably the ugliest Whopper I’ve ever seen in my life (though exactly the size I remembered them being). I’m certain it was just a collection of all the disappointment Burger King has ever served, manifest into a curse, which is now coming back to haunt them.
I had a childhood of eating these, but, back then, they were a buck… not $3-4, or however much this was.
By the way, check this out:

Before we continue, there’s something everyone should understand: burger-size/presentation can certainly vary from location to location (just usually not that much, as far as I understand things). Example: once, when I was young, I went to a Burger King right next to the beach, and the Whopper I got was huge (comparatively), and had toasted buns! I never forgot that… though I later speculated it was probably because California is known for its great beach-side burger shops (REAL places), so this place had to compete.
Back to price… things always get worse at McDonald$:

McDonalds’ “Big Mac”

$4.something now will get you one of these. The size was actually pretty close to the ad. Presentation was a different story. (and what’s with my lettuce?)
For those who don’t know, Big Macs come in a little box. Looking down into the box, and lifting the top bun, you ask yourself, “What is this dry thing?” Apple fans know of Apple’s famous “unboxing experience” – when you open the gloriously friendly, simple packaging of an iPhone/iPad/iMac/etc – but, well, Big Macs are still working on theirs. (they should come with little pink, polka-dotted bow-ties on top, or little top-hats… and, given the price, they should be made out of real mink fur, or something)
Big Macs taste really good, though, at least to me… even coming out of the fridge, the next day. In comparison, a leftover Whopper (coming out of the fridge like a mushy old sock from a trash bin), is one of the most disgusting foods around.

McDonalds’ “Angus Deluxe Third Pounder”

Another $4.something burger…
Well, I really liked the lettuce I got with this one. You’ll certainly never see a Whopper with that kind of lettuce. BUT WHERE’S THE MEAT?! It seems to be on a diet, whereas the ad meat was only missing a cowbell…
Flavor-wise, for me, this is just a really mediocre burger. When trying to figure out what keeps them on the menu, I think either some people out there really like these, or they sell as one-time-buys, intended for people who drop in late one night, and see the juicy picture… and have a LOT of money.
(Quick observation: see how the ad burger’s top bun slopes back in the rear? I learned, from examining a lot of burgers very carefully (and rotating them around, etc), that a sloping bun like that probably equals one side of the burger being way thin, and having very little showing. Simply put, they must’ve pushed everything up to the front there)

Jack In The Box “Two Tacos” (they come in 2)

I picked these up at a location not half and hour from Jack In The Box’s headquarters. Since I’m showing the largest tacos I could get, I can’t show you how they like to seal themselves shut, exactly like a clam, so that you can’t even see inside. The cheese acts as a perfect glue at the edges… I swear, if you had to use one like a snorkel, to save your life, you would die.
They taste a lot better than they look, but that’s because I don’t actually think they’re tacos; they’re just tragically mishaped and mispresented nacho pockets (or something). Pitching them as tacos is a crime against humanity, because we humans have expectations and ideas of what a taco should look like. And not seal itself shut like.

Don’t ask me how this advertising is legal. It seems that the law – at least in the US – is sometimes designed to please the God of Technicality (who I imagine as a big, super-angry robot, who demands absolute conformity to rules and formulas), while blatantly insulting man’s ability to perceive and judge.
The law for this stuff should take into account things like the “innards-to-bun ratio” (in other words, if the ads show 70% innards, 30% buns, the real thing can’t be 10% innards, 90% buns), or, better yet, whether or not something is false advertising should be determined by an ordinary group of people. They should just come up with a majority consensus on whether or not advertising seems truthful to THEM or not. (this all may be truthful to the God of Technicality – SOMEHOW – but we people don’t subscribe to his technical glory).
I happily pitch the idea that lawmakers are committing a crime against us people by allowing us to be continually insulted by this advertising, and consequently this pursuit of technical correctness, in defiance of human perception. Simply put, we need to kill this God of Technicality.
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Back to the food itself, I don’t know if the real-life tacos even CAN resemble those in the ads (not sure), because, in the case of Taco Bell, it looks like physics wouldn’t allow all the ingredients to stay inside the shell (there’d probably be an avalanche on the sides), unless it was really PACKED in (which would increase the mass beyond what the “chefs” (slop-slingers) are allowed to put) …and don’t ask me what went wrong in the way Jack In The Box’s tacos ended up being made. (I can’t see the ones on the left sealing themselves together)



Studio Setup



I used three wireless flashes (often only firing two), a greenscreen, and a rotating chair…

This is what the original shots looked like…

Behind me was this computer, where I had the ad shots on the screens…

I also shot this Jack In The Box “Jumbo Jack” (their flagship burger – attractive angle on the left), but decided to only give limited attention to US-only fast food chains (in fact, many parts of the US don’t even have Jack In The Box). I wanted to cover Carl’s Jr. as well – the eternal gods of false advertising – but, when thinking globally, they’re just too little of a chain, so it would waste the time of lots of readers.
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In all cases, I gave the items as fair a chance as absolutely possible, though I didn’t take the time to buy multiples of anything except the tacos (whether that would’ve been to choose the BEST stuff I could find, or pick out an average). …though, you know,  that Whopper really is from Hell. I want to leave it, just so that the Burger King people can enjoy a little, what, maybe disappointment?