Numlock Sunday: Justin McElroy, Chicken Sandwich War correspondent

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 great. It feels like when you're somebody who cares about doing comedy that doesn't specifically target people, especially marginalized groups or just anybody specific, anybody individually; we really try to be upbeat. I feel like making fun of not just corporations, but marketing for specific consumer products is as near to a victimless crime as you can get. Even the people writing these things know like, "Yeah, this isn't going to get me my Pulitzer. It's all in good fun." But yeah, that is the Munch Squad.

Yeah. Limited time offerings, they've always existed, right? There's always been the McRib, there have always been things like that. They are increasingly unhinged and I don't think anybody's been following that quite like you.

Yeah, I do. I have exposed myself to a wide variety. Sometimes, the product will be wild, but there's just nothing. They don't have the press release. I’ve got to have the press release. I’ve got to have the news. I have to have someone reporting it journalistically who is also paid by Pepsi or Taco Bell or whatever, and it was the same company, but you know what I mean. Yeah, I have followed the space very closely.

Yeah, it's been just genuinely a pleasure to listen to. Again, you've developed this form of taste, I think, among these sorts of products. You've been able to clock if they're only in one restaurant for one hour in Anchorage, Alaska.

I'm glad you're bringing that up. Thank you. That does make me very angry and that is something that has happened in later Munch Squad and almost kind of put me off of it, is you start to see these companies that are just doing it for the bit. If they're doing it for the bit, it's a lot harder for me to do jokes about it because they already know that it's dumb. Pepsi did Peeps-flavored Pepsis and you had to get them from a contest or whatever, and it drives me crazy.

Just have the strength of your convictions to make your dumb soda and let the market sort it out.

I don't even think this is on Munch Squad; it's something we talked about on my cereal podcast, the Empty Bowl, but Carvel, the ice cream cake people, they made a "cereal" that was just the crunchy chocolate bits that go in the middle of the ice cream cake with the fudge sauce. You know what I mean? They made a cereal out of that, but they're in little tiny boxes and they only sold them for one day at their stores.

It's like, just make it or don't. You know what I mean? Cowards, everybody. I don't like that stuff. Make a product, put it out there for everybody. Don't do like the CurderBurger where you only do it for one day. I did talk about the CurderBurger because it was a burger with a loaf of cheese curd on it in Wisconsin. That was pretty good. But by and large, wide release or nothing. That's what I say.

You can't not talk about a CurderBurger.

Yeah, and people could go buy that. You could go buy it in the store. It's usually my cutoff. I prefer a wide release, but still.

You've been covering this for a while. Again, I can't imagine the amount of time that you spend on QSR magazine.

A lot.

A lot?

Paper and digital.

Oh, you get the print? You get the dead tree edition?

Some fun-time jokesters signed my P.O. box up for a subscription to that. I get lots of them. Someone signed us up for horse magazines. Thank you. That's great for recycling. Someone signed us up for the gas station mag — they have a publication for new gas station convenience offerings — so I try to track the sources wherever they are.

That's incredible. Again, your history is journalism. You founded Polygon. I've always enjoyed that element of Munch Squad where it's like, "Clearly, this is something that's going on." And I'm glad that you alluded to, again, your father has roots of journalism as well, that this is a trade that you've been applying for quite some time.

Yes, that was my first job outside of retail. It was in my mid-20s. I got hired to be the news editor at a small paper in Ohio, and I was desperately underqualified, but I just sort of kept scamming my way up and pivoted over to video game coverage, mainly. I know enough journalism to know how to pretend I'm doing journalism in the Munch Squad, so that's about where my skillset is at this moment.

Do you have any favorites that come to mind? Any specific limited time offerings or press releases that just really kind of made a dent in you?

Let me think. Taco Bell did a naked egg taco. You know when they did the chicken, but this was a gigantic fried egg that they folded up into a taco shell and made a breakfast offering? That's unacceptable. That's simply not a product that anybody should be consuming.

Burger King, the Nightmare Burger where it was black for Halloween, remember that? It gave everybody black poops. That was a fun time to be in the business. Yeah, Burger King will dye their buns sometimes and it ruins people's bowel movements.

Man, Chris A