32 min
Numlock Sunday: Justin McElroy, Chicken Sandwich War correspondent The Numlock Podcast
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Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition.
This week, I spoke to Justin McElroy, who you might know from his work on the podcast My Brother, My Brother and Me or The Adventure Zone.
Wednesday will mark a shocking milestone: As of September 13, the Chicken Sandwich Wars will have gone on longer than the armed conflict of the American Civil War. Yes, the conflict between quick-service restaurants over who has produced a desirable chicken sandwich offering began in August 2019, what feels like a lifetime ago, and nobody has covered this more persistently than McElroy on his Munch Squad podcast within a podcast.
I’m a big fan of his work, and in addition to this devastating conflict we also chatted about increasingly unhinged limited time offerings, his multiple bestselling comic books, and the current “Steeplechase” season of The Adventure Zone.
All this can be found at TheMcElroy.family.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Justin McElroy, thank you so much for coming on.
Thank you for having me in this important journalistic endeavor.
This is a critical moment. We find ourselves at the week the Chicken Sandwich Wars will have gone on longer than the American Civil War. You have been on the ground covering this day by day, hour after hour.
At what point do we just recognize that this is the second American Civil War? I mean it's all the bad blood, brother versus brother versus colonel. It's got everything.
Why don't you take us back to the beginning? Munch Squad, a podcast within a podcast on My Brother, My Brother and Me, has been dedicated to covering the latest and greatest in food offerings, as you'll go on to explain. Chicken Sandwich Wars have been dominating this for years now at this point. How did this start?
I have always been, and I think I got this from my dad, I've always been sort of a sucker for— I mean, I don't know how to say it other than just marketing. I'm like an absolute sucker. A lot of that is me being willing to just sort of go with it, and finding that I'm happier if I'm not fighting the thousands of advertising messages that are being sent to me on a daily basis. I just kind of go with it. I love to try new consumer products, and I know that's goofy, but whenever you would go to Columbus, Ohio, it's a popular test market for new products so you'll see drinks you hadn't heard of before, whatever. Dad would always do that when we were kids. Any new drink, he would come home with a 12-pack like, "All right, guys, this is the new Crystal Pepsi, they're calling it, so you guys have got to try this."
Yeah, anytime I see new stuff like this, it comes from a genuine place. I genuinely think it's fascinating. What I love, though, is when I find out that these companies have to put out press releases for these dumb products. No matter how dumb the thing is, they’ve got to let people know about it and someone is tasked with the job of writing the press release for something that is a sentence.
I mean it's always a sentence, right? "We now have a chicken sandwich." "We are Dunkin' and we put beer in coffee, and you can buy it at the store. Please go buy it." I did one a few weeks ago that was like, "Extra gum has a new pink lemonade flavor. Here's the press release." It's like, how would anybody know that's even a new product? If I saw that, I’d assume they’ve sold it for 20 years. It's just wild and I think that that's really funny.
The first one I did was Taco Bell doing the naked chicken taco, which is when they made a taco shell out of a chicken breast, and it's so vulgar.
Everything about it is vulgar! It makes me want to be a vegetarian. It's a vulgar exercise, and I was like, "This is too great. I’ve got to share this with people." That was back, I don't know, 2016, around there or something like that, and we just kept going with it because the press releases just kept getting wilder.
It slows down sometimes. But there's always new stuff to make fun of, and I just think that it's gr
Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition.
This week, I spoke to Justin McElroy, who you might know from his work on the podcast My Brother, My Brother and Me or The Adventure Zone.
Wednesday will mark a shocking milestone: As of September 13, the Chicken Sandwich Wars will have gone on longer than the armed conflict of the American Civil War. Yes, the conflict between quick-service restaurants over who has produced a desirable chicken sandwich offering began in August 2019, what feels like a lifetime ago, and nobody has covered this more persistently than McElroy on his Munch Squad podcast within a podcast.
I’m a big fan of his work, and in addition to this devastating conflict we also chatted about increasingly unhinged limited time offerings, his multiple bestselling comic books, and the current “Steeplechase” season of The Adventure Zone.
All this can be found at TheMcElroy.family.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Justin McElroy, thank you so much for coming on.
Thank you for having me in this important journalistic endeavor.
This is a critical moment. We find ourselves at the week the Chicken Sandwich Wars will have gone on longer than the American Civil War. You have been on the ground covering this day by day, hour after hour.
At what point do we just recognize that this is the second American Civil War? I mean it's all the bad blood, brother versus brother versus colonel. It's got everything.
Why don't you take us back to the beginning? Munch Squad, a podcast within a podcast on My Brother, My Brother and Me, has been dedicated to covering the latest and greatest in food offerings, as you'll go on to explain. Chicken Sandwich Wars have been dominating this for years now at this point. How did this start?
I have always been, and I think I got this from my dad, I've always been sort of a sucker for— I mean, I don't know how to say it other than just marketing. I'm like an absolute sucker. A lot of that is me being willing to just sort of go with it, and finding that I'm happier if I'm not fighting the thousands of advertising messages that are being sent to me on a daily basis. I just kind of go with it. I love to try new consumer products, and I know that's goofy, but whenever you would go to Columbus, Ohio, it's a popular test market for new products so you'll see drinks you hadn't heard of before, whatever. Dad would always do that when we were kids. Any new drink, he would come home with a 12-pack like, "All right, guys, this is the new Crystal Pepsi, they're calling it, so you guys have got to try this."
Yeah, anytime I see new stuff like this, it comes from a genuine place. I genuinely think it's fascinating. What I love, though, is when I find out that these companies have to put out press releases for these dumb products. No matter how dumb the thing is, they’ve got to let people know about it and someone is tasked with the job of writing the press release for something that is a sentence.
I mean it's always a sentence, right? "We now have a chicken sandwich." "We are Dunkin' and we put beer in coffee, and you can buy it at the store. Please go buy it." I did one a few weeks ago that was like, "Extra gum has a new pink lemonade flavor. Here's the press release." It's like, how would anybody know that's even a new product? If I saw that, I’d assume they’ve sold it for 20 years. It's just wild and I think that that's really funny.
The first one I did was Taco Bell doing the naked chicken taco, which is when they made a taco shell out of a chicken breast, and it's so vulgar.
Everything about it is vulgar! It makes me want to be a vegetarian. It's a vulgar exercise, and I was like, "This is too great. I’ve got to share this with people." That was back, I don't know, 2016, around there or something like that, and we just kept going with it because the press releases just kept getting wilder.
It slows down sometimes. But there's always new stuff to make fun of, and I just think that it's gr
32 min