ENTERTAINMENT
Creepiest
1 2 3 4 5
Burger King’s King
Quiznos’ Spongmonkeys
Jack of Jack in the Box
It took Burger King seven years to realize people found its creepy, plastic-faced King mascot unappetizing. The royal representative has starred in the fast-food company’s commercials since 2004, doing things like stalking people outside their homes and scaring young women. But sluggish sales and customer aversion have finally led Burger King to send him off to join McDonald’s Hamburglar, Taco Bell’s Chihuahua and other long-forgotten mascots in the great, big greasy restaurant in the sky.
They look like deformed rats. But, in fact, they’re called spongmonkeys. (We don’t know what that means either.) Spongmonkeys are so abnormal and freaky that, as Quiznos’ shortlived mascot, they were more likely to make people lose their appetite for a sandwich rather than gain it. In 2003, the sandwich chain discovered the bizarre levitating creations, which were created by a guy named Joel Veitch, and thought they’d be perfect for their new ad campaign. In the ads, their eyes bulge and shrink as they screech about the subs being toasty. The weirdo ads did a fine job of creeping everyone out and, at the least, got people talking about Quiznos.
While he’s admittedly not nearly as creepy as the other mascots on this list, a man with a PingPong ball for a head does leave something to be desired. Jack I. Box, mascot of Jack in the Box, stars in advertisements as the supposed founder, CEO and spokesman for the chain restaurant. Truth be told, the commercials are pretty funny. But still, modeling your mascot out of one of the most terrifying childhood toys — you know, the one that features a menacing clown popping out of a box at an unexpected time — is not a good idea.
32 | June 2014
The Hamburglar Domino’s Noid McDonald’s villain, the Hamburglar, who appeared mostly in the ‘70s and ‘80s, was a young redheaded child wearing a cape, a Zorro-like mask and a widebrimmed hat. His mission was simply to steal hamburgers. Why? No one really knows. Let’s just be glad that the company decided to revise the character after his first appearance in 1971. The first incarnation of the mascot was a creepy old, pointy-nosed man, who also wore a widebrimmed hat, mask and cape — and sported a T-shirt that inexplicably read “Lone Jogger.”
Back in the ‘80s, Domino’s Pizza started a bizarre ad campaign that featured an odd little red-costumed gremlin with rabbit-like ears, known as the Noid. It didn’t seem to have much to do with pizza, but in 1989 the campaign went even further when a video game based on the character was released. However, the Noid turned out to be not only strange but also incendiary: in January 1989, a mentally ill man named Kenneth Noid held up a Domino’s in Georgia, claiming that the chain was personally attacking him. Thankfully, no one was hurt, and Domino’s abandoned the creepy pizza-hating Noid shortly thereafter.