Clever advertising...

Part of my job at Kathmandu is to draw up the white board sign that sits out by the front doors to attract the attention of those walking by. It's my favourite part of the job... My newest creation is Mr. K, or rather Mr. Konstipated. He's the new Kathmandu mascot (according to Dee). He first appeared as a snowman (typo: snotman, heh heh...) in the sign shown below. I quite like this one: And then Mr. K reappeared last week as a professional boxer:

Speaking of advertising.... I'm not condoning eating fast food, especially that of Burger King, however, it was about an hour after lunch the other day, and I was at work, still rather hungry and eager to get some grease. So, I walked in the rain two doors down to the newest restaurant in Nelson: the Burger King. The original plan was to get some fries, but when I saw the whole menu my stomach started to get all excited, so I ended up getting a Whopper Junior with cheese, a fries, and a Coke. It's probably been three years since I'd been to a Burger King, so I figured it would be okay to just test it out again to make sure it's still just as unhealthy as ever. -- No wait! I lied! I think I remember going to Burger King in New Plymouth with Beth last year... and, I believe I had Burger King twice when I was in Tokoroa with Hans and Elaine. Crap. So, I guess I am not as angelic when it comes to fast food as I had hoped. Oh well. Anyway, back to my story. So, I got my meal deal and returned to work to share the fries with my coworkers. With my vast experience with fast food (this is making me look worse and worse), I realized the true brilliance of the fry container design at Burger King. Normally, the pitiful amount fries in a small order fall over and come out of the envelope-like packaging (e.g., McDonald's) as soon as the cashier places them on the tray. The design of the bigger sizes of fry containers have that concave shape in the bottom of the thin cardboard packaging, which is great for maintaining an erect fry container on the tray while inhaling the rest of your dinner (and if you fold down that concave bit of an empty container, stick a crunchy, hard fry end-bit at the bottom and then squeeze the container back to its normal shape, the fry bit will fly across the restaurant - it's great fun; give it a go someday). However, when it comes to the laziest form of fast food (the drive through), the average fry containers become as useless as the small paper envelopes mentioned above, fries end up on the floor of your car, and then your car stinks like greasy fries for about three weeks (which can be good for some people, but I'm not a fan). Burger King here in New Zealand have struck it big! They made the fry container with the same concave shape at the bottom, but the rest of the container has a similar shape as the disposable drink cups, so the fry container will fit quite nicely in the cup holder of your car (most cars have at least eight cup holders nowadays, right?). There's even a little caution note at the base of the back of the fry container stating that "If you can read this then the container isn't in the cup holder properly." I'm trying to guess if that was put there to truly assist those who can't place cups in cup holders, or if it's there to get people to figure out that indeed this fry container will fit into your cup holder..... Regardless, I'm excited at the ergonomics of it all and secretly wish that I had a cup holder on my bicycle so I could go through the drive through too.