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Credit: Warner Bros.Margot Robbie’s Barbie is getting the weirdest cross-promotion item imaginable (weirder than Doctor Who, even): the Barbie Burger and people are disgusted by it.
The Greta Gerwig-directed Mattel film is being released around the world on July 21, and as part of its extensive marketing campaign, Burger King has released a special Barbie-edition burger. The only problem is that… well, it looks pretty horrifying.
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See for yourself:
Combo BK Barbie™️, já disponível em todo Brasil 💅 pic.twitter.com/qjD9ONB8P8
— Burger King BR 💅💖🎀 (@BurgerKingBR) July 12, 2023
The Barbie Burger is available only in Brazil (for now) and is being heavily promoted by the official Burger King BR Twitter and Instagram accounts. According to the latter, “Barbies from all over Brazil, check out this news that arrived straight from Barbie Land™️ to our kingdom! 👑💖 It’s real, NOW you can come running to BK to try the BK Barbie™️ Combo… The Pink Burger with delicious smoky pink sauce, Ken’s Potato – which comes in this special shell-shaped packaging – and the Barbie™️ Donut Shake. No they are not plastic… they are real food and AWESOME! ✨Check out that the BK Barbie™️ Combo and dessert, sold separately, are available from July 12th in all BKs and BK Drives throughout Brazil, and also through BK Delivery. Don’t waste time because it’s limited edition.”
While the above text is translated from Portuguese and might have lost something in translation, it is rarely a good sign when you have to explicitly say that a (presumably) edible foodstuff is not made out of plastic.
Of course, it is also understandable why Burger King BR felt the need to say that the Barbie Burger is not a wholly artificial creation of pure science; as many people online are pointing out, the “delicious smoky pink sauce” has a striking resemblance to Pepto-Bismol, which is not often associated with deliciousness.
The marketing campaign for Barbie has heavily relied on pink imagery and previews of the movie have clearly shown the deliberate artificiality of Barbie Land, so presumably, the minds at Burger King in charge of this sort of thing decided to lean into it. At the very least, it’s making people talk about the upcoming Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling movie.
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However, it is much more debatable whether denizens of Twitter have anything good to say about the Barbie Burger and Burger King BR. Early critical reviews of the movie have been glowing, so maybe Warner Bros should focus more on that and less on the disgustingly pink burgers.
Would you eat the Barbie Burger? Let us know in the comments below!