KFC, home of the fried chicken, and the world's second largest restaurant chain behind the Golden Arches of McD’s, has just gone where no other fast food chain has – or should. The Kentucky-based, Colonel Sanders-led franchise may be “Finger Licking Good,” but please refrain from sucking on your digits after you apply a generous dollop of fried chicken scented sunscreen to your hairy back.
KFC made what now?
Yes, in the latest example of a marketing gimmick gone askew, KFC gave away 3,000 bottles of sunscreen in an attempt to drum up some interest for its “Extra Crispy” line of deep fried poultry.Per KFC’s website, the product line carries the following description: “The sun gives us life.
But if we're not careful it also gives us painful sunburns. That's why we made KFC's Extra Crispy™ Sunscreen!”
According to KFC, the fried chicken scent “leaves you smelling delicious” via its “lovely fragrance rays” that give you “a healthy chicken aroma.” The site also has a couple of absurd testimonials from two fellows whose overly-orange epidermises resemble rotting butternut squash.
And of course, because of potential legal ramifications – as well as general inanity of our fast-food fare lovers – the site, carries a warning that the sunscreen is not to be eaten, even though the “product smells delicious.” It actually clarifies: “The only skin that should be extra crispy this summer is on your fried chicken.”
Chicken and lotion: A natural fit?
KFC spokeswoman Kasey Mathes said, “We think it smells amazing.
The sunscreen seemed like a natural fit.” For the record, sunscreen and fried chicken scent is not a natural fit, any more so than Whopper deodorant.
The sunscreen was tested at the giveaway by a handful of journalists from The Associated Press. The results were not good. According to Eater, the “early testers report it smells more like urine or a baby's diaper than fried chicken.” People dubbed it “absolutely revolting” and wrote that the lotion “offers the worst parts of fried chicken smell.”
Almost as eyebrow-raising as this restaurant's attempt to sell pasta via their Black Olives matter campaign.
Is this really a surprise? Deep frying dehydrates foods, sucking out moisture and vaporizing pocket bubbles of water and replacing it with a recombined, tundra-like layer of fatty, greasy carbs. But yes, let’s smother that aroma all over our skin so that the only thing we will attract at our beach outing is a determined squadron of picnic wasps.
