Whopper

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## Whopper

How the Whopper looks like in real life.

* Wordmark (2021-present)
* Wordmark (2014-2021)
* Wordmark (2004-2014)

## Whopper

How the Whopper looks like in real life.

* Wordmark (2021-present)
* Wordmark (2014-2021)
* Wordmark (2004-2014)

The **Whopper** is the signature hamburger and an associated product line sold by the international fast food restaurant chain Burger King and its Australian franchise Hungry Jack's. Introduced in 1957, the hamburger has undergone several reformulations, including changes to portion size and bread used. The hamburger is well known in the fast food industry, with Burger King advertising itself as "the Home of the Whopper" and naming its kiosk stores the BK Whopper Bar. In response to the Whopper, Burger King's competitors have developed similar products designed to compete against it.

Burger King sells several variants that are either seasonal or tailored to local tastes or customs. To promote the product, the restaurant occasionally releases limited-time variants. It is often at the center of advertising promotions, product tie-ins, and corporate practical jokes and hoaxes.

## History

The Whopper was created in 1957 by Burger King co-founder James McLamore and originally sold for 37 US cents (equivalent to US$3.57 in 2021). McLamore created the burger after he noticed that a rival restaurant in Gainesville, Florida was succeeding by selling a larger burger. Believing that the success of the rival product was its size, he devised the Whopper, naming it so because he thought it conveyed *"imagery of something big"*. Major fast food chains did not release a similar product, until the McDonald's Quarter Pounder and the Burger Chef Big Shef in the early 1970s.

Initially, the sandwich was made with a plain bun; however, that changed when the company switched to a sesame-seeded bun around 1970. In 1985, the weight of the Whopper was increased to 4.2 oz (120 g), while the bun was replaced by a Kaiser roll. This was part of a program to improve the product and was accompanied by a US$30 million (US$76 million in 2021) advertising campaign featuring various celebrities such as Mr. T and Loretta Swit. The goal of the program was to help differentiate the company and its products from those of its competitors. The Whopper reverted to its previous size in 1987 when a new management team took over the company and reverted many of the changes initiated prior to 1985. In 1994, the Whopper sandwich's Kaiser roll reverted to a sesame seed bun, eliminating the last trace of the sandwich's 1985 reconfiguration.

The packaging has undergone many changes since its inception. Unlike McDonald's, the company never used the clamshell style box made of Styrofoam, so when the environmental concerns over Styrofoam came to a head in the late-1980s, the company was able to tout its use of paperboard boxes for its sandwiches. To cut back on the amount of paper that the company used, the paperboard box was fully eliminated in 1991 and was replaced with waxed paper. For a short time in 2002, the company used a gold-toned, aluminum foil wrapping for the sandwich as part of the 45th anniversary of the sandwich. The packaging was changed again in 2012 when the company moved to half wrapped sandwich packaged in a paperboard box, marking a return to the paperboard box for its packaging since 1991.

The **Whopper Jr.** was created, by accident, in 1963 by Luis Arenas-Pérez (a.k.a. Luis Arenas), the only Latino in the Burger King Hall of Fame and president and CEO of Burger King in Puerto Rico. Upon the opening of the first Burger King restaurant in Carolina, Puerto Rico, the molds for the (standard) Whopper buns had not yet arrived to Puerto Rico from the United States mainland and thus there were no buns to make and sell the company's flagship Whopper offering. Arenas opted for honoring the advertised opening date but using the much smaller regular hamburger buns locally available. The result was such a success that Burger King adopted it worldwide and called it the Whopper Jr.

In 2020, as part of a global advertising campaign showing the company's commitment to dropping all artificial preservatives, Burger King ran the "Moldy Whopper" ad showing a Whopper decomposing and rotting over a period of 34 days. The Moldy Whopper campaign reached a level of awareness 50 percent higher than Burger King's ad in the 2019 Super Bowl.

## Variants

### Variants

#### Impossible Whopper

The **Impossible Whopper** is a 100% vegetarian burger with a patty manufactured by Impossible Foods of Oakland, California. Burger King began test marketing the Impossible Whopper in April 2019 at locations in and around St. Louis, Missouri. It was accompanied with an April Fools-themed promotional video on April 1, 2019. Later that month, the company announced plans to roll out Impossible Whoppers nationwide before the end of the year. In August, it was temporarily made available nationwide.

### Discontinued variants

*See also: Burger King grilled chicken sandwiches*
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1. ↑ Smith, A.F. (2012). *Fast Food and Junk Food: An Encyclopedia of What We Love to Eat*. Fast Food and Junk Food: An Encyclopedia of what We Love to Eat. ABC-CLIO. p. 66. ISBN 978-0-313-39393-8. Retrieved November 7, 2017.
2. ↑ BKC (8 February 2002). "Burger King Celebrates As The WHOPPER Turns 45" (Press release). BizJournals on Bison.com. Archived from the original on 19 October 2006. Retrieved 22 October 2007.
3. ↑ Kent, Cindy (17 December 2013). "Monday Morning Quick Take". *Orlando Sun Sentinel*. Archived from the original on 12 November 2013. Retrieved 12 November 2013.
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "CPI Inflation Calculator". United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Archived from the original on 2019-09-17. Retrieved 2014-05-16.
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 1634–1699: McCusker, J. J. (1997). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States: Addenda et Corrigenda (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1700–1799: McCusker, J. J. (1992). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1800–present: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. "Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–". Retrieved April 16, 2022.
6. ↑ Bradford, Levi (17 May 2017). "Gainesville, it turns out, is the actual 'home of the Whopper'". Gainesville Sun on Gainesville.com. Archived from the original on 19 May 2017. Retrieved 5 December 2018.

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