In the new Mcdonald’s commercial, promoting the new Disney movie, Atlantis, a guy goes through the drive-thru and pulls up to window #2. He is greeted by the cashier in Atlantian: “Toke.”, which is meant to mean “hello”.
For all of you who don’t see a problem, “toke” means to smoke marijuana.
What the hell were they thinking?! Why didn’t they just say “bong”? Did the commercial producers think this is some funny joke, like putting “4:20” on a clock in the background?
Or perhaps the writers just weren’t up on the drug slang and didn’t mean anything at all by it.
Or maybe that’s just how Atlanteans said hello…
Aaaaaaaa! Head for the hills! A large corporation may have mentioned marijuana!
4:20?
Guess I’m not up on my not-so-subtle drug references.
Or maybe you’re seeing way too much into what was said.
And if he did say Toke, and it was an intentional drug reference… so what?
OK, for the second time in a week, I’m tempted as hell to post an article from The Onion. I don’t want to push my luck with the mods, so I’ll just post the title this time:
“Area Stoner Convinced Everyone On TV Also Stoned.”
4:20 PM is “tea time.”
Around here, it’s popular to smoke it up on 4/20 too.
Isn’t 420 the San Francisco PD code for marijuana use?
Most of the time, they just say “Howdy, y’all. Welcome to Atlanta!”
We can’t post links to Onion articles? When did that start? Hell, those make up half my posts here. Ha ha.
Anyway, I’m much more alarmed by the idiotic (aren’t they all?) McDonald’s commercial where the girl behind the counter pronounces the word “sandwich” as “samwich.” I can’t tell you how annoying I find that in real life, and to see it more or less encouraged by TV is appalling.
For the sake of duriosity I went to my favorite website:www.m-w.com/dictionary.htm
I typed in the word “toke” and here was the definition they gave me:
Main Entry: toke
Pronunciation: 'tOk
Function: noun
Etymology: American Spanish toque, from Spanish, touch, test, from tocar to touch, from Vulgar Latin toccare – more at TOUCH
Date: 1968
**slang : a puff on a marijuana cigarette or pipe
There are hundreds of people that work on the production of such a commercial. I find it very hard to belive that none of them knew exactly what they were doing. Sure, the stoners from the production company will get a good chuckle when they’re sitting at home watching it on their tv, baked. Why would they intentionally choose to place themselves in a potentially comprimising situation?
Or maybe they were trying to subliminally appeal to the stoner masses, who have in years past, been inticed by Taco Bell, with cheap tacos and a talking chihuahuah.
Stoner business is big business nationwide, billions of dollars every year. If it was intentional, it was probably a highly calculated risk approved by top officials. Good thinking, Mac.
Huh? I’m afraid I don’t see exactly what the problem is here. Could someone explain it to me?
ultrafilter, you don’t see a problem cause your STONED. 
ultrafilter, I don’t see a problem either, but I do see an anomoly. It is atypical for a multi-billion dollar corporation to be promoting drug use, intentionally or not, by using commonly known drug terminology as dialouge in their commercials.
At this point, all I want to know is if McDonald’s has received vocal opposition to the commercial and whether they have issued a press release, apology, etc.
It’s no big deal to me, but I would like to know whether it was intentional or not. Fat chance that’ll ever happen.
What it could be is a growing trend among large corporations to subliminally introduce the leaglization of marijuana to the mass media. Ok that may have been a little too paranoid, I can’t help it, I get this way when I’m stoned. 
Disney spent a lot of time and effort constructing an alphabet and language for a mythical race in an animated movie. You have any idea how much trouble that is?
I have the font downloaded on my computer, the kids have played the Disney games based on the alphabet already, we have seen the movie and heard the language.
What I’m saying is by the time that commercial was made, Atlantean was a ‘real’ language. The fact that ‘hello’ is pronounced ‘toke’ is just a freakin’ coincidence!
Arden Ranger, are you saying that nobody at Disney picked up on the word “toke” during all the thousands of hours of production? Wow, what are the chances?
No, I meant I didn’t want to risk posting the actual text of the article. I’m not even sure if that article is available online. I couldn’t find the “Ask A Bee” column I went looking for last weekend, so I kind of lost hope.
I’m saying that something as trivial as that is not a good reason to redo a language they have invested time and money in developing.