Friday, January 25, 2013

Happy 45th Big Mac

This year McDonald’s is celebrating the 45th anniversary of the nationwide rollout of the Big Mac©.   

Just before the rollout I ate my first.  My dad worked for Field Container Company, which was located across town from McDonald’s Hamburger University in Elk Grove Village, Illinois.  Field printed the first packaging. One day in early 1968, several weeks before the rollout, Dad brought home a Big Mac wrapped in a sleeve plus a folded sheet (the boxes came later).  He told me I would like it; this new cheeseburger would go really big.  Dad was half right. 

The Big Mac’s popularity has risen to the point where The Economist Magazine prepares a Big Mac Index which gauges purchasing power parity across currencies by comparing the purchase prices of a Big Mac among countries.  Bottom line, if you are traipsing off to the Ukraine, South Africa or Egypt, then chow down and enjoy cheap eats. But if the fjords of Norway, the rain forests of Brazil or the Australian Outback are beckoning, you had best go vegan if you want to protect your pocketbook.

Dad was wrong about my liking the “(t)wo all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions – all on a sesame seed bun.”  It seems I learned a lesson that day.  Never, ever eat a cold Big Mac.

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