Burger King
Can I get a large fry?
Burger King is a North American-based fast food restaurant chain. They have offered many Transformers promotions over the years, most often in conjunction with their Kids Meal program.
While their competitor McDonald's mostly made simplified transforming figures for their pack-in products, Burger King's selection was comparatively more eclectic, featuring a wide array of small toys with all sorts of different gimmicks... Until, as with McDonald's since the 2010s, they eventually gave up on all that nonsense and mostly just started producing plain non-transforming figurines instead. Aw well.
Fiction
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Transformers movie
[edit]Mikaela Banes was eating at a Burger King when she saw Sam Witwicky eat pavement while riding a bike, babbling that his car was chasing him. Transformers
Revenge of the Fallen continuity
[edit]The King arrived on Earth in 1954 and chose a broiler as his alternate mode. He began sharing his Culinary Engineering expertise with Burger King scientists, becoming the chain's Flame-Broiling Culinary Engineer. He would remain hidden in Earth throughout the next decades, waiting for his fellow Cybertronians to arrive.
The fact that the restaurant franchise itself was established the same year may not be coincidental.
Promotions
[edit]2005 Cybertron promotion
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For Cybertron, Burger King churned out four toys, marking the first year where Hasbro would pick them to represent the brand in the fast food market over McDonald's.
Similar to McDonald's offerings in previous years, the Burger King Cybertron figures were traditional fully-transforming toys, featuring heavily simplified engineering to rebate the cheap manufacturing costs and withstand rough play from kids of all ages. This would be the first and last time that Burger King would take this direction, with all their future Transformers promotions featuring more gimmicky, mostly non-transforming figures instead.
Autobots |
Decepticons |
2007 Transformers promotion
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In 2007, Burger King produced another wave of Transformers merchandise to tie into the live-action film. This series mostly consisted of an assorted set of figurines and vehicles adorned with different play features: so, for instance; Ironhide's toy would be a pickup truck with pop-out weapons, Scorponok's toy would be his scorpion mode with rotating arm claws, and so on. A vague degree of robot-to-vehicle transformation was present in the Ratchet and Optimus Prime toys, both of which would feature robot figurines stored inside vehicle shells that'd pop out during play.
Autobots
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Decepticons Semi-poseable figurine with collector card Viewmaster gimmick and pop-off rotor blade Wind-up rotating claw arms Movable battle damage |
2009 Revenge of the Fallen promotion
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2009 saw another wave of eight Burger King toys released to coincide with the sequel. Similar to the previous year, these mostly consisted of assorted toys designed around a given set of play features, with some involving a degree of traditional transformations - for instance; Megatron would feature a Cyber Slammers-like transformation scheme and Devastator would allow its four individual vehicles to merge with a torso to form the character's combined mode - whereas others would just be non-transforming toys with different gimmicks, like Arcee's toy being a bike with a springloaded base and Soundwave's toy being the satellite he hacks during the film with the addition of a periscope.
Autobots
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Decepticons Pull-back motor and simple transformation to tank mode Transforms from Decepticon symbol to a very simple robot Satellite with simple periscope gimmick Interchangeable arms and legs Beast mode figurine flips out of meteor mode |
This line-up was tied with the BBQ Double Stackticon sandwich promotion, and the Transform Your Way contest.
2011 Dark of the Moon promotion
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2011 saw another movie tie-in, this time with 8 Super deformed figures whose bodies flip-out from their heads. Each toy features some sort of gimmick, such as glowing in the dark, or a light or sound feature.
Autobots
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Decepticons Plays the classic transformation sound effect when button is pushed Button-activated autotransformation Glows in the dark Projects a Decepticon symbol |
2019 Cyberverse promotion
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Releasing a good eight years after the 2011 promotion, Burger King's 2019 Transformers: Cyberverse series featured four non-transforming figures based on the upgraded Spark Armor versions of the show's characters, with limited articulation and a unique action feature for each toy.
Curiously, McDonald's would also get a Cyberverse promotion based around Spark Armor characters in this same year, making this—at least beyond the small Japanese-only 2011 Dark of the Moon McDonald's promotion—the first year where both McDonald's and Burger King would simultaneously have a worldwide-distributed promotion based around the same Transformers series (and the same subline imprint to boot!). Unlike the McDonald's Cyberverse spark armor promotion, however, these toys had their Spark Armor permanently molded onto their bodies.
Autobots
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Decepticons Spinning propeller Arm-smashing gimmick |
2024 Transformers One promotion
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A new promotion tying into Transformers One was launched in 2024, centered around Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and Elita-1 in their "post-cog" modes. Each character would get two toys, one in robot mode (with each having a different action gimmick) and the other in vehicle mode (with each being propelled by a different mechanism).
Robot modes
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Vehicle modes Friction motor Ripcord launcher Key-activated motor |
2026 Transformers promotion
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One of Burger King's 2026 promotions featured a set of toys based on different Hasbro toylines. These include My Little Pony, Nerf, Furby, and, of course, Transformers. The two Transformers figures are based on evergreen designs and feature a loose joint on the torso that allows them to spin... And that's it, that's all these toys do. They also have shiny vacuum metallized torsos, for whatever reason.
An Optimus Prime-themed Burger King paperboard crown was also available alongside the promotion.
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Notes
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With honey mustard on the side
- While Burger King has seen significantly less Transformers promotions over the years compared to McDonald's, it is notable that they've featured multiple tie-ins to the Transformers movies, while McDonald's has only earned this privilege with a small Japanese-exclusive promotion for Dark of the Moon (another 2010 McDonald's promotion also featured movieverse characters, but it was simply released under the generic "Transformers" toyline label of the same year instead of tying into the promotional cycle of a specific movie). Beyond Japan, it is possible that Burger King might have exclusive rights to restaurant promotions for the Paramount movies in most territories.
- Switching around some internal files of the Mission City level in Transformers The Game reveals an earlier development version of the map featuring an in-game Burger King restaurant. This was replaced by Chip Chase's in the final game, a fictitious restaurant referencing the eponymous G1 character.
- This appears similar to how some unused assets also have Pepsi branding, suggesting that the game was perhaps meant to feature a greater amount of product placement at one point.
- Burger King formerly ran a virtual world game named Club BK. It had Transformers-centric events tying into their Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon toys, before shutting down in 2011.
External links
[edit]- Official corporate website
- [[wikipedia:{{#if:|:}}Burger King|{{#if:Wikipedia entry|Wikipedia entry|Burger King}}]]