Burger King’s at it again, courting controversy and grabbing up buzz by the handful.

The chain that brought you the “Whopper Virgin” campaign (loud outcry from the one-worlders who accused it of patronizing colonialism) and the “Whopper Sacrifice” (loud outcry from Facebook, which pulled the app down for violating its un-friending terms and conditions) is backing raising a ruckus. And this time the king and his agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky are dragging SpongeBob SquarePants into the fray.

This issue is a TV spot promoting the Kid’s Meal tie-in with Nickelodeon’s cubic celebrity, who’s celebrating his tenth anniversary this year. It’s an update of something that’s even older than the yellow fellow: Sir Mix-A-Lot’s 1992 ode to the rear view, “Baby Got Back”, with the Burger King working out with his fly girls to Sir’s adapted vocals.

Sample lyric:

“I like square butts and I cannot lie,

Squid and SeaStar can’t deny

When a sponge walks in, four corners in his pants like he got phone book implants, the crowd shouts…”

Oh, forget it. Just watch the TV spot, which aired during the NCAA finals on Monday night:



And for you connoisseurs of the classics, here’s the full-length club version.

Now the knee-jerk reaction is to claim that this video is totally inappropriate for the intended targets of Kid’s Meal promotions, that it’s another brick in the wall of the commercialization of childhood and degrades women.

And in fact, that’s exactly the point of view taken by the Boston-based Committee for Commercial-Free Childhood, which yesterday launched a letter-writing campaign to condemn Burger King and Nickelodeon for “sexualizing” SpongeBob.

“It’s bad enough when companies use a beloved media character like SpongeBob to promote junk food to children, but it’s utterly reprehensible when that character simultaneously promotes objectified, sexualized images of women,” CCFC director Dr. Susan Linn fumed in a statement.

Except here’s the thing: All the dancers have perfectly square rear ends housed in not-very-revealing shorts and full-length dresses. It’s hilarious to see a squad of fly girls energetically shaking perfectly flat, perfectly rectangular groove things. At one point the King even whips out a large level to make sure their Home Depot hinders are properly aligned.

It’s also light years less sexualized than anything kids of about this same target age will see in concert sequences on “Hannah Montana,” “The Jonas Brothers” or any other Disney Channel tween fare.

Honestly, the major appeal this video will have for kids is that it gives them permission to say “butt” a lot and to dance around shaking their rumps with a magazine down the back of their Tuffskins.

Which, face it, some of them would be doing anyway, without the King’s incitement.

I don’t know if this will still be true once the CFCC letter-writing gains momentum—if it does—but at this posting the Twitter traffic is at least evenly divided between those deploring the commercial and those enjoying it. (Oh yes, one tweeter chides Sir Mix-A-Lot for selling out. As if we all thought he should be working on that concerto right about now.)

As for the supposed contradiction between a beloved kid’s entertainment property and the grown-up tone of the ad, first of all, it was aired at a grown-up hour. There are those of us in this world who like to laugh, thank you. By 9 p.m. the four-year-olds should be in bed, not watching TV. The rest of us shouldn’t be penalized for your bad parenting.

Second, anyone who has watched more than three episodes of SpongeBob—and I proudly count myself among those—has seen him do the butt-dance. Heck, one running joke in the series is that his tidy whiteys are as square as his dress pants.

But most of all, this skirting the edge of good taste is part of a very effective promotional strategy worked out by Burger King and its agency: garner lots of buzz with a very short-term promotion, then move on to something else right away.

While not all of the campaigns have been good—does anyone remember, or care, how that “Whopper Virgin” flight ended?—they’ve all been pretty successful at stirring up conversation online and off. That makes Burger King look hip, experimental and a lot less stodgy than most of its national quick-service rivals.

Except maybe this one: Jack and his gun show.



In fast food these days, the gloves are off.