Though I've been eating a whole lot less fast food as of late, I still can't help but wish that there was a Hardee's in NYC now that reports of their new Monster Thickburger have reached me. My real curiousity concerns the comparisons and contrasts between this shocking new monstrosity that has media outlets across the country up in arms about the 'new' level of unhealthy hugeness it has supposedly breached and the almost identical Colossus Burger that Jack-In-The-Box was marketing over 10 years ago. As I recall from a near-death encounter that I once had with this sandwich when I was working at a litigation photocopying establishment only a few blocks away from a Jack-In-The-Box, it also sported two 1/3 lb. burger patties, 3 layers of cheese, and, I believe, 6 strips of bacon rather than the measly four that Hardee's offering offers us. Why then was it only 1,100 calories compared to 1,417 for the Monster Thickburger? The only thing that I can figure is that the bun, in addition to being mayoed, is also buttered and appears to be fairly thick and hearty it's own self. Jack-In-The-Box, on the other hand, has a fairly bun-phobic clientele (based on their ads from a few years back where they had a focus group focusing on their new Ultimate Cheeseburger whose only complaint was that it had a bun: "Bun's neither meat nor cheese") and so this element of the Colossus was probably the bare minimum of bread needed to differentiate a sandwich from a greasy mound of cow-based products. In any case, one thing I can be sure of is that this new customer-killing strategy that Hardee's seems to have adopted is clearly the handiwork of Happy Star, the longtime Carl's Jr. mascot that is now pulling double duty as the Hardee's mascot (I assume there was a takeover at some point since I moved away from lands colonized by the Hardee's empire in the early 90's). Carl's had a string of advertising campaigns that never really made sense while I was living in California, and a long-running one showed us the behind the scenes power struggle that existed at the time between Carl and the Star (the equally incomprehensible campaign which finally replaced it was "If it doesn't get all over the place, it doesn't belong in your face", an ill-conceived attempt to transform the fact that their food had an alarming tendency to fall apart and ruin your clothing into a selling point). Carl was always trying to provide good, affordable food in a clean and friendly setting to his customers, while the Star was revealed as not at all the very happy individual he appeared to be, but rather a scheming troublemaker who despised the customers and was always looking for a quick and easy way to rip them off, and I think that perhaps without the steadying influence of Carl in his life since his move to the midwest these antisocial tendencies and delusions of grandeur have been given free rein to blossom into their full horrifying potential. Be very afraid indeed.