Burger King’s Halloween Whopper IS HERE.
It’s here. It’s real. It’s on.
Burger King’s Halloween Whopper — also cumbersomely known as the “HA.1.LOWEEN WHOPPER” — has finally arrived. Of course, if you follow Dino Drac on Facebook, you knew about this back on September 9th, when I broke the story with the help of some anonymous tipsters. Yeah, I’m bragging over cheeseburger gossip. I have so little.
No matter what you think of Burger King, the Halloween Whopper is unquestionably 2015’s “big one.” At the start of the Halloween season, I noted that while this was shaping up to be a great year as far as the pure volume of spooky foodstuffs went, we hadn’t yet found that one special thing to lead the pack. Guys, this is IT.
2013 had Frute Brute, 2014 had those Ghostbusters Donuts, and now 2015 has CHEESEBURGERS WITH BLACK BUNS. The cycle continues. The Ancient Ones have been appeased.
Burger King stayed quiet through most of September, but now they’re pushing the Whoppers big time, with TV commercials, all sorts of promoted mentions on social media, and really cool posters hanging on the windows of most BK restaurants. Could this really be worth so much fuss? Oh, hell yes.
Each Whopper arrives in a special edition mummy-themed wrapper, which even on its own is worth the price of admission. The wrappers strike me as being made from thicker-than-usual paper, and the design is absolutely suitable for framing. You can trust me on that last part.
I’d never held a Whopper before yesterday, so without knowing how these compare to the regular ones, the Halloween Whopper seems pretty enormous. The presentation felt a step ahead of everyday fast food, too. (Though I’ll admit that the image Burger King uses in its advertising is misleading. Sorry, your Halloween Whopper actually won’t arrive as an 8” Dagwood.)
To make sense of the bun color, Burger King is said to have baked A.1. steak sauce right into the bread. I can confirm that the bun is flavored… maybe not heavily so, but it’s definitely more than “bread with food coloring.”
I made the mistake of accepting my Halloween Whopper with its standard condiments, which, as it turned out, included mayonnaise. My mortal enemy. I don’t like any sauce on my burger, but seeing mayonnaise merge with ketchup is a real life horror movie.
Carefully assembling an adorable “mini burger” from the parts that weren’t drenched in sauce — in a public restaurant, I should add — I finally took my first bite. It was… good! I’d imagine that it’s neither dramatically worse nor better than any of Burger King’s cheeseburgers, so if you like those, you’ll like this.
Home of the Whapper?
To me, the taste was irrelevant. I’d hoped it wouldn’t be bad, but I certainly didn’t need it to be stellar. The point of the Halloween Whopper is that it’s a Halloween Whopper. Period. That’s the kind of thing that makes people like me — and I hope, people like you — dance like the skeletons from that old Disney short.
Between its direct name, the crazy black bread and the fact that this wasn’t just some scheme to get us to see another kiddy movie about anthropomorphic gophers who find friendship in a haunted castle, the Halloween Whopper is a beautiful throwback to a time when Halloween itself was the promotional draw. This is some pure ass shit, right here. It’s as sincere as the original trick-or-treat pails from McDonald’s.
Like I alluded to earlier, it’s also the thing that’s gonna give this season its identity. Ten years from now, we’ll still remember the 2015 Halloween season as the one with the Whopper.
Oh, and if you’re lucky, your nearest Burger King will have the new Halloween crowns, too. How badass is that? I left the restaurant feeling like the coolest guy ever, and kept feeling that way until someone half my age pointed and laughed.
Thank you, Burger King. You didn’t just do it — you did it perfectly.
