They might not actually utter the words ‘Star Wars‘, but Burger King in Germany are surely skirting the outer rim of Disney’s patience with this competition, which rewards customers with a free Whopper if they say certain spoilers out loud.
Bear in mind, these spoilers have been collated from Making Star Wars, a site that’s usually right on the money but isn’t officially affiliated with Lucasfilm or Disney, so a strange decision by the Hamburg-based ad agency Grabarz & Partner to make.
The promotion goes like this: Burger King has launched a voice-activated coupon that purports to contain spoilers for The Rise of Skywalker, and if you record yourself reading these spoilers (warning: clicking that link will take you to an alleged screenshot of one of the spoilers) out loud, you can get a free Whopper. Burger King has also released a commercial featuring the alleged spoilers embedded in the restaurant’s menu and showing customers freaking out over said spoilers.
To be clear, there’s absolutely no proof the so-called spoilers in Burger King’s ad are accurate.
It certainly doesn’t seem within the realm of possibility that Disney and Lucasfilm would ever give the fast-food chain their approval to spoil the biggest movie of the year in a German Burger King commercial and app. Nor does it seem like Burger King would run an explicitly Star Wars-centric marketing campaign without considering how it might anger Disney, an extremely powerful company.
But according to Ad Age, Burger King seems to be getting away with the campaign because the words “Star Wars” aren’t actually uttered in the commercial. It’s simply aping the franchise’s iconic yellow typography and referring to a “space saga” movie.
