Given Iggy's fondness for hawking car insurance (from a company that wouldn't insure a self-employed musician friend of mine ) me paraphrasing the Stooges when talking about McDonald's isn't such heresy these days.
So this is the 1955 burger, based on the original recipe for the first ever Maccy D burger. Now I have no problem sucking at the corporate teat like some mindless drone, especially if I get a burger at the end of it, but even this left me pathetically pawing like some drugged Russian circus bear in search of some scraps of dignity, duped into thinking something special was afoot when all I got was a disappointing lunch. Or declawed and shipped around the world to be gawped at by curious humans.
The restaurant's periodic specials are clearly targeted at those poor sap dads (in my limited experience, women are rarely taken in by such elementary smoke and mirrors) trundling through the drive-thru for a clutch of happy toys (ie. me). As if life isn't complicated enough, they distract with continued, seemingly 'limited' burger variations, poking an onion ring or bacon rasher under the hood like some saturated fat-soaked supercharger ready to propel your regular burger 'n' woolly bunage into some culinary interstellar overdrive.
Now, I've been busy this week with learning things and a lovely man pointed out that this is actually called marketing (thanks Matt) and this 'old is the new new' idea might not be the spirited trip down memory lane it might first appear. For me at least, given my lack of being born in 1955.
Biting into the 1955 burger confirms this, it is in fact something of a Frankenstein's burger, a quarter pounder with all the jokes taken out - what has ketchup ever done to you, you brazen condiment exclusionists? We get treated to a parp of their Big Mac sauce instead. The result is a trembling wilt of goop, too much pattie flop and no fun-in-the-bun extras (vegetables weren't invented until the 60s clearly) to distract or even just crunch. Bear in mind this is coming from someone who could happily enjoy the belt-fed wombat treatment on their cheeseburgers on any given Sunday.
I feel duped. I'm vulnerable when I visit you McDonald's. Please don't take my inability to say 'yes, one with nuggets and milk' while driving at 4 mph and pulling wallet out of my back pocket as a sign that I want an inferior greasy lunch. I want a fun greasy lunch and may resist feeling 'special' in future. I still ate it of course, but only so there was less to tidy up later in the back of the car.
If this burger was a form of transport it would be: a rail replacement bus service.
