Today in movie tie-in food: Deadpool cocktails and grotesque Angry Birds sandwiches
Everyone knows that food and drinks are more delicious when they’re associated with a popular movie, whether that means they’re served in a promotional cup or alongside a toy of some kind, so sometimes it’s a good idea to check in on the restaurant world and see which eateries are serving the latest and greatest in weird-looking, movie-sponsored food.
First up is TGI Fridays, which has announced a trio of Deadpool-inspired cocktails to coincide with the movie’s blu-ray release. As superhero fans may recall, Ryan Reynolds’ foul-mouthed, fourth wall-breaking mercenary mentioned the restaurant (specifically one in Jacksonville, Florida) multiple times during the movie, and apparently somebody at TGI Fridays got enough of a kick out of it to line up some good old-fashioned cross-promotion. In fact, the Deadpool cocktails even retain a little bit of the meta-humor that the “Merc with a mouth” is known for:
Granted, only the third one justifies the Deadpool tie-in, but it’s not like TGI Fridays is the first restaurant to give arbitrary names to its drinks. The entire mixology industry is built on putting stupid labels on stuff, so a goofy chain like Fridays should be free to call a drink a Deadpool reference simply because it’s red. Also, it’s not like Deadpool’s TGI Fridays joke was especially clever in the first place, so this seems surprisingly tolerable in a “the bar is already set pretty low” way.
Moving outside of the United States, McDonald’s has taken the concept of movie tie-in food in a powerfully gross direction with China’s “Naughty Green Pork Burger.” The sandwich is a promotional food thing for the Angry Birds movie, and it’s meant to be a representation of the film’s green pig villains. Visually, they seem to have nailed it:
According to That’s Magazine (via Kotaku), the sandwich has a pork-based patty, an egg, lettuce, “a mysterious sauce with a hint of jalapeños,” and—of course—a green bun that looks like the most uniquely unappetizing thing in fast food history. Plus, the whole thing is pretty disturbing on a conceptual level: It’s green like the pigs from Angry Birds, it has an egg on it (which connects to the birds in the games trying to save their eggs from the pigs), and it’s even made of pork, so it’s like you’re literally chomping into one of the evil pigs after it stole and devoured some angry bird’s eggs. Frankly, the whole thing is pretty shocking, but that’s probably because American McDonald’s has spent decades coddling patrons with food that actually looks like food (for the most part).
Hopefully, someone will be able to smuggle one of these Naughty Green Pork Burgers into an American TGI Fridays so we can find out how it pairs with the Deadpool cocktails.