Burger King Tray liners feature vegetable porn?

I came across this post "Burger King has a bad taste ...." on Digital Frog, a dutch photographer's blog. It's a photo he says of a tray liner his son got in an Amersterdam Burger King.
The trayliner depicts the airport-style high security Burger King uses to ensure that only the top ingredients are used. Images include a scared Onion with his trousers down around his ankles while a fierce-looking Pickle guard with a latex glove, prepares to digitally examine him! Scattered about him from his open luggage are veggie porn mags!

I left a comment for the blogger asking for more details and suggesting it was a spoof or a prank and he linked to an advertising site which appears to validate his claim that the tray liner is real:

Hi Bill !
Sadly, this was not a joke. Burger King really served my son with that paper on his tray. This was early may 2008 near Amsterdam (NL).

I found another reference of this here.

Link

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

MORE: Funny

More at Boing Boing

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Hackers prepare for first "national holiday" in their honor

geo the moose

uhm does anyone watch tv here? first, it IS burger king… not the most tasteful of advertisers; have yall seen any of the recent burger king commercials where the king is a floating robot and pours the guy’s coffee, and the female sig other comes into room saying how ‘good he is with his fingers’…? that is way worse than a cartoon onion sans pants and some cartoon girley mags
JulianR

Again, I don’t see any problems whatsoever for kids or anyone else in these. First, they depict how the world in which we all live in actually is (yes, there are hookers, pimps and customers! People get assassinated by the government and strip-searched at the airport! Booh!), second, all this airport security is American-made in the first place (no liquids and zip-locking your sunblocker? Not letting people fly because of a t-shirt? Come on, this is ridiculous!) and third, America is not the “normal” society by default, and the rest of th eplanet is “exotic” or even “backward”, it’s actually quite different from our (European) point of view. And we must know, since we’re the “old Europe”, aren’t we?

There’s much bigotry going on these days, and demanding of a society not to be offending to the easily offended ones is completely impossible. Everything would need to be cut down, bubble-wrapped or censored. And censoring is quite contrary to the belief of absolute freedom, which is central part of the American Dream. So, feel free not to be offended, but don’t demand freedom and censorship at the same time.
Anonymous

The poor onion has a bottle of botox and, more importantly, a bottle of ‘konservierungsmittel’ in his suitcase. Konservierungsmittel = preservative. FWIW botox would be botulin which would make deadly meats…
avar1ce

This ad almost makes me forgive BK for their stupid commercials featuring the “King”. Almost.

Anyone who takes issue with this should take a look at themselves, not Burger King.
NicoleRichieVicodinRave

Bad taste – - – Amsterdam.
Rodney Ascher

Personally, I like it though I’ll leave it to others to debate what’s appropriate for a tray liner in Amsterdam.

Even more eye-opening is this one, in which an unwanted onion is assassinated! I don’t imagine we’ll be seeing it in American burger joints anytime soon.

http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/burger_king_veg_city_sniper?size=_original
gilowyn

Ha, I am going to the Netherlands on Saturday – will have to try and get a couple copies of that one! :)
Bill Dunphy

I did a bit more searching and found that this ad was one of a series of Five prepared by the .start agency in Munich. (Search for “Burger King and “Veg City” ) Some of the others are waaay over the top – including a Hallowe’en poster featuring tomatoes being slaughtered in the street and a Have it Your way poster in a Veg City Redlight district with fairly graphic vegetal sex acts. It’s unclear, however, if the ads ever went beyond concept, although this photographer insists he got it as a tray liner in Amsterdam…
bill
jere7my

Linky dink for the other entries:

http://brutalissimo.blogspot.com/2008/01/burger-king-veg-city.html

I laughed a lot at “Onions taken out on request.”
highjumpman

When I saw those ads at my lokal Burger King in Germany last year, I was quite shocked as well…
The words “bad taste” might come to mind…
Hal

Very civic minded of Burger King to educate kids about the contemporary airport experience.
insomma

What’s with the tomato-baby plant ON the luggage belt??
Dmitri

Am I the only one seeing the onion’s beard? And notice it’s skin color…

I think there is more then just onion profiling depicted there! ;)
Or am I reading too deep into this? heh
Beryllium

Okay, seriously: If you want to raise a kid in Amsterdam, you’ll have to be a *little* more open-minded than that.

The latest statistics* show that Amsterdamian children as young as 10 are hiring (and pimping!) prostitutes, and partaking of the ganja weed.

(* Note: No such statistical sources were consulting in writing this comment.)
Leslie

This one was my fave!
http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/burger_king_veg_city_red_light_district?size=_original

I guess sodomy just makes me lose my appetite.
airship

Probed. By pickles. *shudder*
Boba Fett Diop

I love the onion assassination. Sic Semper Allii!
Lobster

The onion? Figures. That’s profiling!
EtaWat

Must be due to me being European and liberal minded but I think those are all funny and wouldn’t be bothered if my kid wondered about these.

As an onion-hater myself I particularly like the onion assassination one.
brokebutstilldrinking

Isn’t this racial profiling? Why are the pickles only assaulting onions? I always knew the pickles thought they were a better condiment than the rest.
antonmarcelo

Recently I went from Amsterdan and I got this funny “paper towel”. Amsterdan is a city out of this planet with a dimensional gate to our reality. ItÂ´s another kind of humour, light years ahead from the rest of world.
Howard Wen

Oh, noes — think of the children!

C’mon, these tray liners are cool, funny and cute.
brokebutstilldrinking

Damn! Lobster beat me to it.
EricT

Veggie Tales gone Wrong?

Also known as “A Dutch Treat”
Ben

The pickle is my favorite part. Onion just got what he deserved (he’ll just make you cry if you let him)

Any chance this is from a Fark photoshop contest (or similar)?
Aaron

Now that’s some cool advertising. I love it. ^_^
Neon Tooth

“Sadly”

Whut? This is funny stuff, love it!
ws

That airport does look like Schiphol – I recognise those full _plane-size_ windows anywhere.
Tomas

While it may be over-the-top as a tray liner (even in Amsterdam), it DOES leave me with a problem: I want one of the liner pictured to frame it for my kitchen wall!

“Strictly controlled ingredients” indeed. :o)

Tom
Sam

I can’t say I’m very offended – seems like something we’d see an underground artist get praised for doing on this very blog. I like ‘em.
Alex Mingoia

OH NO! This tray liner isn’t politically correct! Start a blog post about it! Tell everyone! OMG OMG OMG! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!
Slowermo

This couldn’t become desktop fast enough.
JulianR

Oh come on, kids are not that easy to influence. It’s Europe! (And *Amsterdam* at that!) Things are not so tight over here.
Bonnie

Nothing makes me hungrier than a depants onion!
desp

Oh my, someone’s got their panties in a bunch…
Todd Sieling

Hey kids, when the state decides to violate your body in its manic quest to control what you put in it, it’s normal and fun. Cartoons say so, so get used to it.
JJR1971

“Even more eye-opening is this one, in which an unwanted onion is assassinated! I don’t imagine we’ll be seeing it in American burger joints anytime soon.”

Just the ones in Langley, VA (near CIA headquarters). The spooks would get a kick out of that one.
WeightedCompanionCube

well, it’s Amsterdam, what DID you expect?

Besides, everyone knows that onion is smuggling Miracle-Gro.
Andreas

Obviously the onion is hiding something. Why would it otherwise wear pants when the pickles and the other veggies aren’t?
aluxeterna

surpised nobody has already posted this, but it appears the .start company put out an entire Veg City website with lots, lots more of this content, games, and even bigger wallpapers. I can’t understand a word of the German, so pretty much depend on babelfish to mutilate the experience for me, but still the graphics speak for themselves.

http://www.vegcity.de
themindfantastic

That image is only ONE of a few different ones, all of them are kind of disturbing, the New Years one has a kid playing with fireworks blowing his hand off, someone sticking a firework in the collar of a policeman. Then there is the Redlight District one which shows pickles purchasing prostitutes, or pimping them out… the halloween one shows tomatoes and onions getting murdered in horror slasher style… No way head office allowed this… even in Amsterdam!
eustace

mmmmmmm… hot pepper…
Enochrewt

This falls under the catagory of “Causes that take up valuable time better spent elsewhere”. Who cares? I think it’s hilarious.

Besides, this is coming from Burger King, the fast food chain that put out it’s very own video game stalker simulator Sneak King.
bex

good quality versions off all 5 mats here

http://www.scaryideas.com/print/5507/
Jorgebob

You know, it’s called humor, something uptight Americans seem to have very little of. A bit of truth-in-advertising as far as the post-911 world goes. Notice that the sign is in English, perhaps a “poke” at the American hysterical state on the “War On Terrah”.
kostia

This just makes me want to go to Amsterdam.
anthropomorphictoast

Not in bad taste, but rather, a sign of the times. :P
Anonymous

I believe it’s because my mother is dutch and I’m pimped at Burger King where I work while I’m sleep and people won’t admit it to me.
McP

Relax, it’s not like he’s going to get sodomized with that night stick or anything.
zeta

I had exactly this tray-liner a couple of weeks ago. Not in Amsterdam though, it was Berlin.
ZippySpincycle

So THAT’S why Vincent Vega didn’t go to Burger King…
SpocksBrain

Not sure I’d call this “bad taste”…I quite like it actually. And far be it from this blog to stifle attempts to call attention to poor security measures (I THINK that’s what it’s doing).

Maybe not the most appropriate of placemats for a family establishment though.