I’m Lovin’ It: Retro Fast-Food Celeb Commercials
By Michael Jones | December 19, 2020
Forget about asking “Where’s the beef?” It’s time to ask “Where’s the ham?” in a stroll through the archives of quirky fast-food commercials that have starred some of pop culture’s most beloved celebrities. From Oscar winners to TV Land honorees to beloved cartoon voices, check out some of the best celeb fast-food spots from yesteryear.
Burger King
Are you Sleepless in Seattle? Why not head down memory lane and check out this 1982 Burger King ad starring iconic actress Meg Ryan. If you think she’s only capable of making a scene in Katz’s Deli (“Yes, Yes, Yesss!!!”), check out a 21-year-old Meg convince us all to play the “Aren’t You Hungry for A Whopper?” game in this banger of a 80s commercial. You could have won a Whopper, a Coke, or $1,000,000, which definitely wins the award for contest with the widest gap between prizes.
Burger King is actually a treasure trove of retro commercials starring some beloved celebrities. Perhaps the most iconic and strangest is a Christmas 1982 spot where teenagers Lea Thompson and Elisabeth Shue (years before Back to the Future and The Karate Kid would make them household names) are joined by toddler Sarah Michelle Gellar (over a decade before Buffy and Cruel Intentions would rocket her to fame), to sing a rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” that I believe ends with Gellar wishing McDonald’s “a Merry Christmas.” And if you’re really feeling the Burger King nostalgia, there’s also this 1989 spot voiced by The Wonder Years’ narrator Daniel Stern where a very young Ben Affleck somehow has a car phone and delivers a Burger King chef salad to a high school girl who sounds like she runs a 1-900 phone sex line.
Burger Boy
Oscar nominee Salma Hayek has a bunch of commercials under her belt, from Campari to Avon to even a “Got Milk?” spot. But the 80s vibes she delivers in this commercial for burger chain Burger Boy are just *chef’s kiss*. (Or perhaps we should say, *grill station’s kiss*?) Could anyone be more stylish than Salma Hayek putting on a cape, getting into a convertible, and driving to a Burger Boy for a milkshake and hamburger? Of course, given the volume of ketchup they put on the burger in this commercial, it’s a good thing Salma’s cape is red because she’s 100% going to be dodging ketchup squirts when she bites into this burger.
Taco Bell
Step by step and day by day, we get ever more appreciative of the pop culture impact of Patrick Duffy. Long before he was causing trouble on Dallas or married to Suzanne Sommers in a house full of a gaggle of 90s kids, Duffy was starring in this 1976 spot for an up-and-coming fast-food restaurant called Taco Bell. Somehow Duffy manages to look both 18-years-old and 47-years-old in this spot, where he describes for an indecisive customer what a Burrito Supreme is, then a Tostada, then an “Enchirito”—which, side note, might be the best portmanteau in fast-food history. But while Duffy is the star of the show, perhaps the best thing about this ad is the catchy jingle at the end: Come to taca-taca-taca-taca-taca-taca-taca-taca-taca-taca-taca Taco Bell.
Rax Restaurants
Ah, Rax Restaurants. In the late 70s and especially the 1980s, the restaurant known for its Arby’s-like roast beef sandwich and “endless salad bar” ballooned across the country to hundreds of locations, where diners could sit in a solarium while filling up on copious amounts of calories. Rax actually has a glorious place in advertising history for rolling out one of the most bonkers campaigns, “Mr. Delicious,” that introduced a cartoon character who was a miserable middle-aged man who would complain about things like his vasectomy while shilling for Rax. But if you think that’s wild, check out this amazing 1989 spot starring Patti Mayonnaise herself, Constance Schulman. The Orange is the New Black alum is seen here as a Rax employee who gets a call from a customer who wants to talk to a Rax roast beef sandwich. She puts the phone next to the sandwich, and voila, classic 80s swing music and saxophone take over. That is, until the phone sucks the roast beef sandwich into the receiver end and leaves a very confused Yoga Jones wondering who will pay for the sandwich.
McDonald’s
When it comes to McDonald’s commercials starring pop culture gems, Jason Alexander usually gets all the attention. And perhaps rightly so, since the Seinfeld star (or for us theater queens, the Merrily We Roll Along star) goes full-on song and dance in an epic number for 1984’s the McDLT (the McDonald’s ‘lettuce and tomato’). Gladys Knight and the Pips also give a strong turn as spokespeople for the McDLT in this rainy night tour bus spot that turns from love song to peppy R&B dance number in a blink of an eye.
But if you want hot, fresh, meaty camp, look no further than this wild 1970s spot for McDonald’s featuring Jodie Foster as a child. The video quality on this one is rough, but the experience is very worth it. The premise? Jodie Foster is in a freak show of a place called McDonald Land, where all the hamburgers have giant eyeballs. Lovable purple monster Grimace is actually a criminal and has at least four hands. Grimace—who’s referred to as “Evil Grimace”—steals all the cups so that kids can’t enjoy milkshakes and Coca-Cola at McDonald’s. Jodie Foster delivers the saddest line in all of fast-food commercial history: “No shakes.”
So Ronald McDonald schemes with Jodie Foster to get the cups back by pretending to be a mailman and delivering a letter to Evil Grimace, wherein Evil Grimace believes he’s being asked to compete in a beauty contest. He descends into his cave to get ready for the contest, and Ronald and Jodie scoop up all the cups and bring them back to McDonald’s. Now sure, this sounds messed up. But if you look closely enough, you can see elements of Stephen King’s Carrie in this masterpiece of 70s commercial cheese.
Arby’s
It might be a while until Lori Loughlin is able to star in commercials again. Or, pardon the Arby’s pun: Lori Loughlin might have to turnover a new leaf before Arby’s would bring her back into a commercial. But this 1982 ad has all the earthtones one expects from the early 1980s, complete with Loughlin urging customers to “do the deluxe,” a cheeky little move to celebrate the brand new Roast Beef Deluxe sandwich. Loughlin wasn’t quite the household name yet that she’d become as Aunt Becky on the blockbuster hit Full House, but this commercial is just one of a portfolio—nay, dare we say Trapper-Keeper—that Loughlin appeared in during the 1980s. You can also find her with a busted leg in a TaB! commercial, in the shower talking about the power of Shower Shaver razors, and busting her brother’s chops in this commercial for “Adam,” the giant word processing beast released by Coleco in 1984.
Pizza Hut
Can you imagine if you called your local Pizza Hut and ALLY SHEEDY picked up the phone? Well, live your dreams in this 1982 spot. Even the way she says, “HELLOOOOO, Pizza Hut?” is iconic. Also iconic is how this commercial teaches you how to play music using any standard touch-tone phone. This is such a good throwback to the era of Pizza Hut when you could dine inside one, eat from their salad bar with the bucket of pudding and all the decorative kale, drink Pepsi from frosted red plastic cups, and sit at a booth with a tripped out Tiffany lamp above you. And if you think The Brat Pack’s Ally Sheedy is the only celebrity to star in a Pizza Hut commercial, grab a slice and check out this very weird spot starring former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev.
Got a favorite star who ate up some screen time in a fast-food commercial? Sound off in the comments and let us know! Hungry for more? Well, she doesn’t have a speaking part, but you can see Rita Wilson smile her face off and chomping down on one of Dave’s hamburgers in this bubbly 80s spot from Wendy’s.
An unabashed 80s & 90s pop culture junkie, Michael Jones is a Brooklyn-based writer and co-host of the Pop Trash Podcast.