I ate the red Spider-Verse Whopper, but did not gain powers
Miles Morales’ hometown may be Brooklyn, New York, but teenage Spider-Man takes temporary residence in the neighborhood of Queens, Peter Parker’s hotpot. Specifically, he’s hanging out at a Burger King near Astoria, where diners can jump into the Spider-Verse and try two new menu items as part of a collaboration with Spider-Man: About the Spider-Verse.
Burger King has adapted its flagship offering to match the color palette of Miles’ spider suit: The “Spider-Verse Whopper” has a red bun with black sesame seeds and Swiss cheese — in something like spider web white, you might say — instead of yellow American. The burger and “Spider-Verse Sundae” debuted Monday at Burger King locations across the country and will be available through June 21, a few weeks after that About the Spider-Verse‘s June 2 release.
Of course, restaurant chains have a long history of promoting media such as movies and video games with themed menu items – think McDonald’s and its Szechuan sauce for 1998’s Mulan (and, two decades later, Rick and Morty). This isn’t even the first time Burger King has done a tie-in to a Spider-Man movie. In 2007, Burger King’s UK branch launched the “Dark Whopper”, which was inspired by the Jekyll-and-Hyde twist of Tobey Maguire’s symbiote-infused hero in spiderman 3. (The burger — with cracked black pepper cheese, black pepper ketchup, and a “darkly delicious” sauce — attracted some attention when the company brought it back a year laterthis time as a tie-in for The dark knighteven reuses its original commercial with a simple movie poster swap.)
With apologies to the late, great Mike Fahey (van Snack taku fame), I now bring you a taste test of the Spider-Verse Whopper and Sundae.
Firstly let me say don’t worry – it’s just food coloring in the bun, not tomato flavoring or anything like that. Second, that’s a microcosm of my thoughts on the Spider-Verse Whopper: It’s like dressing an ordinary person in a visually striking superhero costume. Or something.
While it’s been years since I’ve eaten a standard Whopper, this one didn’t taste substantially different from my memory of the fast food staple. Swiss cheese has a distinctive nutty flavor, but whichever variety Burger King uses, the flavor is overpowered by all the other ingredients in the sandwich — especially the sweetness of the raw onions and the sour taste of the pickle slices. That said, if you like a Whopper with cheese, you won’t mind this remix.
I actually enjoyed the Spider-Verse Sundae more. As with the burger, the recipe is a simple twist: popping chocolate-flavored candy in red and black is sprinkled on top of Burger King’s vanilla ice cream. The regular menu item is a cone or cup with nothing but the ice cream, so the chocolate candy pieces add a lot to the experience, both in texture (a nice crunchy contrast to the soft ice cream) and flavor.
You can find the Spider-Verse Whopper and Sundae at a Burger King near you, but the aforementioned restaurant in New York City’s Astoria neighborhood is the only one in America where you can get your hands on the Spider-Verse. The Burger King in question is one block from the Astoria Boulevard stop on the N/W subway line. It’s equipped with a full Spider-Verse skin for this promo, turning your friendly neighborhood Burger King’s restaurant into, well, your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man’s Burger King.
The front entrance is surrounded by a yellow hexagon – a shape reminiscent of the comic strip flowers of the Spider-Verse movies – and is located below a glowing yellow “Enter the Spider-Verse” sign. The exterior and interior walls of the restaurant are covered in artwork from the movies, as are the tables inside. The windows are also decaled with various Spider-Man logos. And there’s a figure of Miles in a web-swinging action pose, maybe 20 feet in the air, below the Burger King logo on the restaurant’s huge signpost. But perhaps my favorite little detail is the fact that Burger King has put a Spidey spin on its cardboard crowns.
All in all, it’s not a radical transformation, but the thoughtful designers went way beyond what Burger King did with the Spider-Verse food options.