Whether its a Big Mac, a Whopper or whatever Arby’s calls its main sandwich, it appears twice its normal size in TV commercials.
I can’t think of any other imarket that can get away with that and can’t understand how they can pull it off!
Are government officials getting paid off in winning Monopoly pieces?
Your television must be tiny!
Daniel
There are actually people who make a living at making those hamburgers look as good as possible in the ads. They don’t exactly lie, they just show what the hamburger would look like if it was prepared and presented perfectly.
It’s easy - use half-size people!
Twice its size? Hope you haven’t looked at any billboards lately.
Not exactly perfectly – in fact, if you received a burger that was prepared the way they are for advertising purposes, you’d probably send it back, or at least assume that the person who fixed it for you was either drunk or half-witted.
Advertising standards require the photographed food products to contain the same amount of ingredients that are presented to the consumer.
Food photographers obey the letter of the law by using the right amount of goodies, but arranging the food so that more goodies are actually visible. So a burger in a fast food ad has the meat and fixings all pushed toward the camera. Lots of lettuce, tomato, pickles, cheese, and other good stuff, bursting outta the bun.
Naturally, we imagine that the burger is symmetrical – but the far side of the burger is liable to have bun-to-bun contact. 
They say the camera adds 10 lbs.
The only thing I don’t like about fast food commercials is when the actors pretend to eat (to avoid spitbuckets I guess, or maybe the food is cold and clammy by then) and it just looks so FAKE!
Winning Monopoly pieces? Dear god, has McDonald’s figured out a way to rig up the game so that the little dog always wins?
(No, seriously: I can’t begin to imagine what you’re referencing.)
It’s a reference to the Monopoly game that McDonald’s been running every year or so for about a decade.
Discussions like this always make me think of that great scene in the movie *Falling Down, where Michael Douglas’s character makes a similar observation to the manager of a fast food restaurant while holding the staff and customers up with a machine gun.
Ages ago, Zillions magazine (a kid-oriented spinoff of Consumer Reports) did a feature on how food in commercials is “dressed up” for the camera. For example, your typical TV-commercial hamburger is actually raw–it’s just been given a coat of brown dye so it looks cooked–and slit in the back so it can be spread out in order to look bigger than it actually is.
It gets worse… did you know that in most cereal commercials, the “milk” they pour on the cereal is actually Elmer’s Glue (or a generic equivalent thereof)?
Isn’t most food in commercials all pinned together, and some of it’s actually plastic and rubber? I would imagine some foods wouldn’t hold up very well under all those hot lights.
I saw a show on this once - sorry no cite - but yeah, the lettuce was pinned on, the ketchup put on with syringes (to make the drips right). Even the sesame seeds are carefully arranged on the bun.
Worse was a turkey. It’s painted brown (raw inside) one slit is cut (that piece that folds over) and that part is steam cooked.
Yuck!
Anyone else think of that scene from “Falling Down”?
[William “D-FENS” Foster picks up the flat hamburger he just ordered, comparing it to the picture behind the counter]
Bill Foster: Can anybody tell me what’s wrong with this picture?
I’m going to take a wild guess and say that the thought may have passed through mhendo’s mind.
Really??
Source: http://pbskids.org/dontbuyit/teachersguide/foodadvertising.html
Source: http://www.shutterbug.com/features/1204insider/
Source: http://www.saucecafe.com/article/1/5
So while the food product being advertised must be the real McCoy, everything else often is not.
Wait, wait… you’re saying that businesses exagerate things to help sell their products in advertisements?
I’m shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you!
Here all this time I thought every advertising claim was 100% verifiably true. Alas, how shall I ever know what to believe now!?
I find it rather amusing that people are so scandalized by this. “They made my hot fudge sundae out of mashed potatoes and shoe polish! And they expect me to eat it?!?” No Einstein, they photographed mashed potatoes and shoe polish, because the real food they’d serve you is essentially unphotographical. I challenge you to whip up a delicious gourmet meal and photograph it in a way that even remotely looks appetizing.
I remember an anecdote from some actor, who had an early gig in a fast food commercial (I’m thinking Fred Savage in a McD’s commercial, but I could be wrong).
He said the shot called for him to take a bite out the burger. The burger itself was put together such that one side was edible, but the other was glued together to prevent any fillins from falling out during the bite.
Anyway, the poor boy had the burger turned the wrong way during the shoot & got a big ole mouthful of glue.
[bit-of-a-hijack]
Also, if you listen to the commentary on the Spider-Man movie, during the thanksgiving scene they talk about how absolutely vile the turkey was. It had been sitting around for a long time…
[/boah]