BIG MAC TURNS 50

BIG MAC TURNS 50

Today marks the day that McDonalds gave birth to a copy cat burger and now it's celebrating a half century mark of one upping it's originator that has constantly been overshadowed. The Bob's Big Boy Classic. Look The Big Boy is a signature burger Big Boy Restaurants have had since the chain was founded in 1936. You do the math and see which one is older.

What's the main difference? They both have two beef patties and three pieces of bun. One in the middle. Both have just about every bit of the same topping except one difference. Bob's red relish vs the Big Mac secret sauce.  Both are very much different. The red relish isn't as sweet as the big mac sauce. Mainly because the Big Mac sauce is full of goddamn sugar and shipped around the country. It's like cocaine for your body. The red relish ketchup based sauce is no match to the Big Mac secret sauce which is basically thousand island sauce with a little more sugar added.

Aside from the sugar factor, the biggest issue that brought down the Big Boy's power was that there was a lot of infighting between the largest franchisees and the parent company of Bob's Big Boy that slowed their growth and allowed McDonalds to take over even though at the time they didn't have a signature burger like the Big Boy. This led to now everyone thinking that McDonalds created this burger with an odd middle bread piece.

Add in that the price and excessive expansion in a non healthy way crushed the Bob's.  For example, in 1967, the Big Mac went for 50 cents. The Big Boy was 75 cents. The California minimum wage was around $1.65 an hour. In the 70's, Bob's Jr. chain invested in opening way too many locations all at once and they failed and this development almost killed the company for good. They ended up closing down all of the to-go locations and most of their sit down restaurants. Only a few exist today. But it was because of the over-investment in the failed ventures.

And much like in life, history is told by the victors. Thus, today is the day that  Big Mac's creation happened in McDonalds. In honor of such tradition of getting Americans fatter, they're running a promo in which when you buy a Big Mac, you get a gold coin to redeem for another Big Mac in the future. A Big Mac will run you about $5. So you're getting two Big Macs, one of which to get picked up at a later date for the price of one. Strange that no more than a few months ago they kept on doing a 2 for $5 promotion deal for Big Macs anyway. 

This is like those times when you're on Amazon and you say "Fuck that!" to the item that is $10 with $2.50 shipping and click to purchase the $12.50 item with free shipping. Yes, it's exactly that. You think you get a better value, but you're simply getting the same deal that has happened a lot of times before it. Not only that, but they're hoping that with the shiny gold coin with a burger on it, that you will most likely NOT want to redeem it and then you'll have a collectible item for the rest of your life. The whole Gym membership situation all over again. Got to admit, they sure know how to get one over on folks. 

I'll still enjoy my Big Boy Combo like I have always. Preferably at the Burbank location with some nice vintage cars in the parking lot.