6/4/2007 - 80s Commercials - McDLT

Before he became George Costanza on Seinfeld, Jason Alexander starred in this 1985 commercial featuring McDonald's newest sandwich, the McDLT. Even though it's well known that Jason Alexander is a song-and-dance man, his performance here is still...unmanly...not that there's anything wrong with that! Chalk it up to those lively 80s fashion statements! Also, is it just me, or does he look like he did in that episode in Seinfeld where he had a toupee?

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the McDLT, it was quite a brilliant concept at a time when fast food restaurants did not have the quick-automation techniques they have now, relying on heat lamps to keep the production line moving. Before the McDLT, burgers with lettuce and tomato were unappetizing because by the time you got the burger, the lettuce and tomato would have cooked and wilted due to the heat from the meat patty and from the heat lamps. The McDLT attempted to solve that problem with a special styrofoam container that separated the part of the hamburger with the lettuce and tomato from the other part of the burger with the meat patty. The styrofoam would act as an insulator, thus keeping "the hot side hot, and the cold side cold".

There were a couple of problems with the McDLT that ultimately lead McDonalds to discontinue it, though. First, the styrofoam packaging became out of fashion when environmentalists raised a ruckus about how it would fill landfills and not biodegrade. Second, and this was my biggest problem with it, was that they put the cheese on the COLD side! Who wants to eat cold cheese in a hot burger? Why didn't they put the cheese on the hot side where it would melt as cheese should in a cheeseburger? I can only deduce that they wanted to give you one last chance to remove the cheese because back then they did not take custom orders. I still think it was a brilliant concept and I wish they would have continued it with perhaps a cardboard box and, more importantly, with the cheese on the HOT side. Instead, they sort of repackaged it into the Big N' Tasty... ugh.