Chris Morran at The Consumerist:
Last August, we wrote about the “Double Down,” a mysteriously tempting (and potentialy lethal) new food item being tested by KFC. For those coming late to the story, it’s bacon and cheese sandwiched between two pieces of fried chicken. And now, many months later, I’ll finally be able to get my hands on one.
KFC announced the decision to go live with the Double Down yesterday, but we weren’t sure they weren’t playing a April Fools gag. But no, they truly are going nationwide with the delicacy on April 12.
They tested it last year in Nebraska and Rhode Island, just on the exceedingly remote chance that it wouldn’t be received well. As it is, they’re lucky other states didn’t see black markets spring up (content warning). Now that we’ve reached this point, with breadless lard bombs freely available to American adults, there’s really only one frontier left to cross. And that day is coming soon too, my friends.
Exit question: Is this the final, irrefutable reason not to buy an iPad? (Exit answer: Not if you’re already a beta male.)
Robert Quigley at Geekosystem:
Today, KFC announced that the Double Down Sandwich — which consists of bacon and cheese sandwiched between two pieces of fried chicken — is going to be available nationwide starting on April 12th. Below, our thoughts on what the KFC Double Down Sandwich means to us — and why it infantilizes the sandwich as we know it. Read this article for further context.
Danny O’Brien does a very good job of explaining why I’m completely uninterested in buying a KFC Double Down Sandwich — it really feels like the second coming of the Famous Bowl “revolution” in which “nutrition” people proclaimed that they were going to remake food by producing expensive (to make and to buy) products.
The model of interaction with the KFC Double Down Sandwich is to be a “consumer,” what William Gibson memorably described as “something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It’s covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth… no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote.”
I think that the press has been all over the Double Down Sandwich because KFC puts on a good show, and because everyone in journalism-land is looking for a daddy figure who’ll promise them it’s OK to eat a sandwich which consists of bacon and cheese sandwiched between two pieces of fried chicken.
Sandwiches come and sandwiches go. The KFC Double Down Sandwich you buy today will be human waste in a day or two. But buying a KFC Double Down Sandwich for your kids isn’t a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it’s a way of telling your offspring that it’s OK to eat a sandwich which consists of bacon and cheese sandwiched between two pieces of fried chicken.
With apologies to Cory Doctorow, who we kid and who made us think, and inspiration from TechCrunch.
Rebecca Marx at The Village Voice:
Hey, America! Why pay one angel’s hair of attention to what Michelle Obama, Jamie Oliver, and those killjoys at the American Heart Association are telling you when KFC keeps giving us moist, crunchy ways to kill ourselves, one bite at a time? There are now a little more than nine days left until the world’s most loyal consumer of factory-farmed chickens rolls out its already fabled new Double-Down Sandwich, which, by encasing bacon, cheese, and “Colonel’s sauce” between two slabs of deep-fried poultry, promises to double up your daily fat, calorie, and sodium consumption. KFC’s site helpfully posted both a countdown clock and nutritional content on its website, which is a little like being given the chance to see exactly when and how you’ll die. With any luck, the primary ingredient in the Colonel’s sauce is Lipitor.
This is excellent news for… cardiologists.
UPDATE: Emily Bryson York at AdAge
UPDATE #2: Ezra Klein
UPDATE #3: James Joyner
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