The War in Corporate Heaven

For a successful invasion to take place, the Burger King would have to rely on the wisdom of his closest advisor, the Burger Thing.

If you can imagine a hamburger the size of a large pizza, with a talking face on the top of the bun, mounted on the wall, then you’ll know pretty much all you need to about the Burger Thing.

The Burger Thing

With the advice of such a wise oracle (think of the Wicked Queen’s magic mirror in Snow White, but it’s a talking hamburger instead of a mirror) the Burger King would put his army under the care of Sir Shakes-a-Lot.

The army would be composed entirely of robot Wizards of Fries, or as I like to call them Frybots.

Again, the Frybot was a singular creation of the Burger King pantheon, but if you could build one French fry powered robot, why not a dozen, why not a hundred? Besides, the Frybot was an machine that did the impossible. It had the power to “multiFry,” that is, it could take any French Fry and duplicate it. Given that the Frybot was powered by French fries, it makes Frybot a kind of perpetual motion machine. Imagine if your automobile not only ran on gas, but could double the gas you put into it.

With an army of Frybots the invasion could proceed apace.

As McDonaldland mounted a defense, I see Grimace as the first casualty. Originally the big purple blob was a four-armed villain that continually craved shakes (making him a natural enemy of Sir Shakes-a-Lot) but eventually Grimace lost two arms and became a lovable goof. I can see Grimace evading the Frybots and taking the battle to Shakes-a-Lot himself, but it would be easy to mistake the knight’s quivering for fear and cowardice, and nothing could be farther from the truth. Shakes-a-Lot would easily vanquish the large, monstrous but gentle Grimace. Uncle O’Grimacy, who loved Shamrock Shakes, would long mourn the death of his nephew.

Sorely pressed, Ronald would beseech Big Mac to release the Hamburglar (and perhaps even his non-canonical brother the Hammurderer) from prison, and in exchange for a full pardon for all burger related crimes, the Hamburglar agrees to go behind enemy lines, ninja-style, and steal the Burger Thing from the Burger King’s wall. Perhaps the Burger King could hear the screams of his friend and closest advisor as the Hamburglar greedily consumed the giant hamburger like a zombie ripping apart a hapless human victim.

The Hammurderer

With the Burger Thing out of the way, the primary strategist for the Burger King’s invasion would be vanquished, leaving the army of Frybots under Sir Shakes-a-Lot in disarray. The army could be harassed by sea by Captain Crook, a man obsessed with Filet-o-Fish sandwiches and on land by all manner of minor characters, such as the Gobblins, later known as the Fry Kids, who had an endless appetite for fries.

Besieged by the Gobblins, the Frybots would be slowly deprived of their primary power source. Soon the trashed remains of hundreds of Frybots would litter the battlefield, even as fat, cholesterol clogged Frykids suffered massive coronaries and fell beside them. Really, can there be any winners in war?

His army defeated, Sir Shakes-a-Lot would ultimately do the honorable thing, and commit seppuku on the field of battle. His shaky, zig-zag cut across his abdomen would be so painful to watch that Big Mac would be compelled to do the merciful thing and smash the knight’s head in with his billy club, the same billy-club he had so often used on the Hamburglar and Captain Crook.

Finally, of course, Ronald McDonald and the Burger King would confront one another. They were evenly matched in magic and power. In terms of the tarot this could be seen as the Fool confronting the Emperor, or chaos confronting order. It would be a battle of universal importance, and the victor would become God of Hamburgers, the loser vanquished to the flame-broiled underworld.

The outcome would of course be decided by the side with the greatest amount of Faith. Ronald, protector of McDonaldland, had the complete and total support of his corporate brand, and all the characters under him. Even the villains, like Hamburglar and Captain Crook believed in Ronald. The Burger King, though, had a crack in his corporate facade, The Duke of Doubt.

The Burger King Kingdom’s other famous resident was the Duke of Doubt, a man who constantly doubted the Burger King’s power, and when he contested with the King, he was always confounded by magic. As the two corporate giants battled on the field, literally twisting reality itself in a magical battle that would test our sanity and surpass my ability to describe it, the Duke of Doubt’s doubt would be the Burger King’s undoing.

And this should be a lesson to all advertisers. McDonald’s had no concept of doubt in their commercials. Their food was so good they invented characters who simply wanted to steal it, like the Hamburglar and Captain Crook. Burger King had magic characters too, but their villain was a character that doubted the ability of Burger King to deliver on his promises of good food. With this kind of deep seated self-doubt in their own product, was the outcome ever in doubt?

Defeated, his mind destroyed, the Burger King slunk away for fifteen years, only to reemerge in the last decade as a creepy stalker, haunting our dreams and our nightmares with visions of Whoppers.

There is an ancient magical mantra that says “As above, so below.” Those who walk the left hand path of corporate magic know that the opposite is also true, “As below, so above.”