Outbox: KFC

Dear KFC Product Development Team:

It is with great interest that I viewed the advertisements for your most recent edible innovation, the awe-inspiring Double Down. The food business hasn’t seen such a great leap forward since that first sad bastard long ago realized car windows and restaurant windows could fit together and form a magical food portal. I applaud your bold, innovative spirit. You are true iconoclasts, smashing society’s tired, rigid notions about how a meal should behave. Eating this “sandwich” is like eating freedom. Its greasy residue is the sweet nectar of independence.

Your business acumen is apparent in the clever design of this product. A breadless sandwich that doesn’t alienate the wheat lobby? Genius! By encasing each slab of steroidal chicken flesh in a crunchy flour coffin, you’ve managed to produce a product that is both entirely different and completely the same as everything else you’ve ever produced. Interesting that you have chosen “UNthink” as your marketing slogan—indeed, I felt less capable of thinking merely watching the commercial for this concoction.

But perhaps the most compelling aspect of the Double Down phenomenon is its astute encapsulation of a certain cultural cachet: Ingesting one is an act of casual renegade, a bucking of society’s rules about what to eat and how to define sandwich. My meal can’t be placed inside anyone’s narrow definitions. My meal is a reflection of who I am: creative, unusual, mildly shocking in its excesses, mass-produced just for me. I may not be able to have it exactly my way, but thank goodness I don’t have to get out of my car to order one.

But, I have a confession to make: I’ve only known of the existence of this fantastic beast of a sandwich for a few weeks now, but already I’ve grown tired of it. You raised the bar, and now I want to go higher. I want more crazy in a wrapper, more drive-thru stupefaction. I’m thinking straight lard, double-battered, and crusted in highway salt—for that extra special artery-bludgeoning kick. Your quaint little bunless wonder has had its fifteen minutes. If your next surprise doesn’t induce a coronary before I leave the parking lot, I will be sincerely disappointed.

Hypernatremically yours,
js

PS
Dab a little of the “Colonel’s Sauce” behind each ear. Trust me. Your day will be brighter for it.