Neal Whitman has been gracious enough to notice my obssession with fast food lately ([lately:forever::SC:gross understatement -- ed.]), so here's one more.
In conjunction with the release of the latest Spider-Man movie, Burger King has been running an "instant win" game called Spidey Sense. Among the attractions of the game are that your odds of winning a marginal prize (like another one of the orders of fries you just bought) increase with larger purchases. Thus, your odds are twice as good if you buy a large drink instead of a medium drink, and three times as good if you buy a "King size" drink.
At the train station frequented by SC on his way to work, where he has had cause to write about Burger King before, many of the signs appear in both Spanish and English, or Spanish only. This is a necessary concession to the neighborhood, and generally makes for some amusing reading, because the translations can be painfully literal. Among the more literal examples is the advertising for the aforementioned game, which boasts that you can triple your chances to win with a "Value Meal Tamaño King".
SC being a relatively fluent Spanish speaker, this struck him as an awkward translation. The phrase "Tamaño King" appears to occur just about exclusively in reference to mattresses, at least when searching with Google. In fact, judging by the fact that this BK El Salvador page is about all that comes up when you search for tamaño and "value meal", it's clear that unlike the Army's recruiters, Burger King's marketers don't try too hard to preserve their less-important trademarks which don't mean anything in foreign languages. Thus, "Whopper" stays, but not "Value Meal". Perhaps someone should have communicated that lesson to Burger King's American marketers.
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