Last week, Walt Disney World officially opened their newest restaurant: The Regal Eagle Smokehouse. To the delight and surprise of Muppet fans everywhere, the eatery is themed to the Muppets’ resident bald patriot Sam the Eagle.
Sure, it’s exciting that there’s a new Muppet presence at the Disney theme parks, especially at a time when we thought there was a conspiracy to slowly erase them from Orlando and Anaheim. But that doesn’t mean it’s not an… interesting choice to pick Sam as the posterbird for a smokehouse.
What’s strangest about it was pointed out to me by Muppet fan Corwin on the ToughPigs forum: Does the restaurant serve chicken?
The Regal Eagle does have chicken on the menu. The Kansas City Smoked Half-Chicken is slow smoked and smothered with a Sweet BBQ Sauce, and it comes with garlic toast and your choice of side. It sounds way better than eating eagle (not that I’d know… it’s very illegal to find out).
Yeah, I know that Sam’s an eagle and not a chicken. But the two birds are similar enough that even in his greatest delusions, Sam would probably never suggest that anyone eat his distant relative.
This moral quandary led me to wonder about other times the Muppets have promoted cannibalism. There are a few brands in the world that feature mascots who encourage consumers to consume their own kind (i.e. Mr. Peanut, most of the McDonaldland characters, and the Kool-Aid Man’s innards), but there aren’t many that hire an external band of established characters to shill for the ingestion of their own species.
Looking way, way back to Jim Henson’s earliest commercials, I expected a few good examples of this. But most of those old ads star humanoid or abstract characters, thus avoiding the awkwardness of cannibalism. The Sam and Friends character Chicken Liver never sold chicken or liver to my knowledge, and unless Wilkins or Wontkins are supposed to be giant coffee beans, the Muppets played it safe for a pretty long time.
It wasn’t until the 1990s when the Muppets started showing up in commercials on a regular basis. For example, Miss Piggy appeared in an ad for Lay’s potato chips. No, I’m not insinuating that Miss Piggy is secretly a potato, but “Smokey Bacon” is among Lay’s many varieties. Perhaps Piggy would’ve thought twice about shilling for chips if she knew that she might’ve become an ingredient.
A few years later, Pepe was hired by fast food chain Long John Silver’s as their official spokesprawn. It’s not quite so surprising to see Pepe taking a job that likely paid him in copious amounts of cash, but I doubt he would’ve agreed if he saw a menu full of shrimp. Not that he identifies as a shrimp (he’s a King Prawn, okay), but let’s face it: Pepe was pretty much feeding himself to you for a quick payday.
That same year, Kermit and Miss Piggy appeared in an ad for Denny’s, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the restaurant’s Grand Slam breakfast. Piggy gleefully requests three orders of the Grand Slam, which happens to include both bacon and sausage. Not only is she promoting the sale of pork products, but she’s likely planning to eat it herself. That’s disturbing on many levels, but not gonna lie – I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.
Not content to leave her pork-eating days behind her, Miss Piggy and the Muppet gang later appeared in a commercial for Pizza Hut. And once again, Piggy decides to partake in a little pigflesh. There are various pizza toppings seen in the ad, but Piggy is seen choosing one with pepperoni. And a quick Google search for Pizza Hut’s pepperoni ingredients shows that the first ingredient is, in fact, pork. It seems that Miss Piggy has dipped a toe into the world of cannibalism and now she’s got a taste for it.
Finally, Piggy proves herself to be the Muppet most likely to be eaten after appearing in a few ads for Subway. Among the many sandwich toppings to be found at Subway are ham, bacon, salami, and meatballs – all of which contain pork. But by this point, who can say they’re surprised? Besides, this is no longer the worst part about those commercials, since they also feature former Subway spokesperson Jared Fogle. Yikes.
Of course, all of these examples hearken back to The Muppet Movie when Kermit the Frog refused to appear in commercials for Doc Hopper’s French Fried Frog Legs. He knew how awful it would look for a frog to promote the sale and ingestion of his own kind. There’s certainly a limit to what sort of projects Kermit, the Muppets, or Jim Henson should attach their names. A sense of pride and inner reflection is required before accepting any proposal, and no amount of money is worth selling your soul.
Unfortunately, Kermit didn’t quite get that message to Miss Piggy before she agreed to that Denny’s ad, but nobody’s perfect.
Click here to be grateful that PizzeRizzo doesn’t serve rat (…or does it???) on the ToughPigs forum!
by Joe Hennes – Joe@ToughPigs.com
