The following image, snapped and stored in my phone, has haunted me for almost two years.
Some well-meaning designer of signage at the take-out breakfast and lunch chain known as Au Bon Pain, contrary to the restaurant’s intentions, has seriously dampened my craving for chicken salad. And I love chicken salad.
There is so much wrong with this sandwich board.
First, it violates my personal objections to restaurant logos that cheesily anthropomorphize the food they serve. For example, if you specialize in seafood, don’t have a cartoon of a grinning, waving crab on your signage. The crabs aren’t happy about being eaten; pretending otherwise doesn’t make me more likely to eat at your restaurant.
Second, for unknown reasons I’ve always been bothered by the artistic license that turns birds’ wing-feathers into hands.
But worst of all, I’m assuming that the marketers of Au Bon Pain want me to purchase their chicken salad based on the endorsement of a giant molting chicken who, with evident relish, is about to eat a sandwich made of its own flesh.
Who’s hungry?
Alaina Mabaso's Blog 
Love this, and couldn’t,t agree more! Rib places featuring smiling pigs? Ugh!
Yeah, the barbecue places are the worst. There’s an otherwise great diner in Philly’s famous Reading Terminal Market whose logo features a farmer and a pig on its hind legs, arms around each other, giving ecstatic thumbs up. I’m not on board.
Funny as usual. I love your way of looking at things.
Thanks as always for reading! Glad you enjoyed.
Maybe that chicken was just going through a phase, or he hung out with wolves and they were pressuring him to fit in.
If so, that’s too much back-story for one sandwich board. I’m still crying fowl.
Touche
I tend to agree. I think it’s odd showing animals eating themselves. Now, showing a happy human consuming crab legs or hamburger…
Now IMO Chik-Fil-A’s campaign is a GOOD way to anthropomorphize (sp?) animals. Hey, don’t eat us, eat them.
Thanks for weighing in. Yes, I think the key issue in the objectionable anthropomorphism is the implication that the animal would enjoy eating itself – pigs at a grill, lobsters wielding seafood crackers, etc.
I agree with you – is this chickenabolism (sp?)