Burger King's Barbie Burger Is Bright Pink - And Tearing Twitter Apart
The marketing for Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" is heating up — literally — as Burger King Brazil has announced the Barbie Dreamburger: a cheeseburger topped with pink sauce that comes with Ken-themed fries and a pink strawberry milkshake topped with a pink-frosted donut. Though the pink fast food combo is only available in Brazil, people around the world have taken notice.
On Twitter, the Barbie Dreamburger has divided public opinion, with some craving the burger that drips neon pink all over your chin and others who consider it nothing short of a crime against nature. "The Pepto Bismol burger," remarked @mofromyt, echoing the sentiments of many others who thought the pink burger sauce shown in images of the product resembles nothing so much as the ubiquitous heartburn medication.
On the opposite side of the spectrum was @tomalwayswright, who posted a picture of a man vomiting pink liquid along with the caption, "me after eating the barbie burger and drinking the barbie drink from my barbie cup with a side of barbie fries dipped in barbie sauce followed by the barbie donut because im [sic] grossly susceptible to any and all of their marketing efforts."
For its part, Burger King probably doesn't care whether you find the Barbie Dreamburger mouth-watering or nauseating. People are talking about it, and that's what really matters.
The Barbie Burger follows the Grimace Shake in bizarre social media marketing
The likely aim of the Burger King Barbie burger is to incite a social media trend, much like McDonalds did with its Grimace-themed purple milkshake earlier in the summer. And so far, it's working. With the cast of "Barbie" now on strike and unable to promote the movie as part of the ongoing SAG-AFTRA work stoppage, it and other upcoming films are likely to rely ever more on corporate tie-ins like the Barbie Dreamburger.
But even prior to the strike, fast food tie-ins have been especially popular in recent years. First, there was the Travis Scott meal at McDonald's, quickly followed by other celebrity meals like the Saweetie branded one. Fast food tie-ins are nothing new, as anyone who remembers getting Disney toys in their Happy Meals as a kid can attest, but they've taken on new life as social media users turn them into viral trends. The recent Grimace birthday shake at McDonald's appears to have been massively successful, mostly because influencers on TikTok created a bizarre trend in which they drank the shake before waking up in strange places or being murdered by Grimace. Then, of course, there was the infamous "Rick and Morty" Szechuan sauce debacle.
Some folks found the Barbie burger a perfect opportunity for humor. Imagining how other fast food tie-ins for this summer's hottest movies would look, @Brandon_0402 quipped, "Taco Bell sponsored Oppenheimer because it will give you nuclear diarrhea."