2018 is an interesting time to be alive. For the sake of conversation, let’s call the world we’re living in right now The Future. Because, after all, a lot of movies that were based in the “future” take place around now.
In those movies and TV shows, the world is typically a chromed-out amusement park of technological advancements and flying cars and society-wide dress codes.
In reality, the Future is a time when IHOP changes its name to IHOb and a bunch of other fast food and fast casual restaurants use humankind’s ability to send information to each other at eye-blink speeds to troll on Twitter.
The best one came from Burger King, which rebranded itself on Twitter as Pancake King, complete with a new logo, background photo featuring pancakes, and a bio that reads “Official Tweets of Pancake King USA.”
🧡
— Burger King (@BurgerKing) June 1, 2018
While others didn’t rebrand for the sake of humor, they threw plenty of shade at the artist formerly known as IHOP.
As much as we love our pancakes, we'd never change our name to Whatapancake
— Whataburger® (@Whataburger) June 11, 2018
👦: Grandpa, do you remember the Great Burger Wars?
👴: lol no I was chillin drinkin milkshakes and trying to make sense of Westworld— Denny’s Denny's (@DennysDiner) June 11, 2018
Even model/actress/cookbook author Chrissy Teigen got in on the fun.
IHOb is the guy who gets a face tattoo of the girl’s name after 1 date
— chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen) June 11, 2018
We’re still questioning whether IHOb’s rebrand is serious or a publicity stunt. If this is really the identity it’s going with for the foreseeable future, then it backfired spectacularly, and is a cautionary tale of how not to rebrand. No one is taking this seriously, and it might be in IHOb’s best interest to flip that last letter back over. If it was a goof from the start, then it makes us wonder whether its fast food colleagues are all in on it, drawing attention to it to further the publicity. In that case, it might be kind of genius, wouldn’t it?
Speaking of genius, here’s our favorite tweet from the home team:
We have a big announcement. 👀 pic.twitter.com/zDIiBag48r
— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) June 11, 2018
