I ate the Burger King Spider Man Whopper so you don’t have to

The red Spider-Verse Whopper from Burger King. (Nick O'Malley, MassLive)

The new Burger King Spider-Man-inspired Whopper is just a normal Whopper burger with red food coloring in the bun and black-colored sesame seeds. It's honestly pretty lame.

It's the "Halloween Oreo" of Whoppers.

This burger really drops the ball in what should have been a golden opportunity to do something fun when you considered the movie it's promoting, "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse." We’re talking about a movie that centers around a multi-verse of colorful variations of superheroes who all got their powers from radioactive spiders.

With great promotional power comes great burger responsibility. Burger King would know this if they watched the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies. Or the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man movies. Or the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies. Or if they listened to actual Massachusetts Congressman Richard Neal speaking to the House of Representatives about Donald Trump's tax returns.

Uncle Ben didn't get killed off in 50 different ways in 50 different origin stories just to see lame, boring corporate shills phone it in with what could have been a cool burger concept.

I’ve been personally burned in the past by Burger King with their crazy-colored whoppers. The famous black Halloween Whopper from back in 2015 continues to haunt me and my intestines. The red Angriest Whopper from 2016 was less of a food coloring-based abomination, and actually had some personality.

With that in mind, I came at this burger with some trepidation. Burger King made no effort to promote any special flavors or ingredients. They just put some cool Spider-Man colors on it and started giving away spider crowns.

Still, there must have been something I’d missed, some wrinkle in the game plan. What if it was an elaborate ruse? What if this was some elaborate promotional scheme where the chain's creepy mascot slipped actual spiders into the burger and took on the villainous role of the Burger Kingpin? (Played by Vincent D’Onofrio, of course.)

Nope. It's just a normal Whopper.

Burger King, you’re a criminal! A public menace! I want flavors — flavors of Spider-Man. I need it for today's front page. You’re fired, Burger King. Wait, I need to write this article. You’re unfired.

Great, this burger is turning me into J. Jonah Jameson.

What does it taste like?

Well, it's a Whopper, which means that you’ve got a single patty that carries a good amount of flavor. Whatever Burger King does to their burger patties, it works. Unlike some other fast food burgers, the Whopper has this potent smoky, savory flavor that stands strong through all the toppings. It's probably some diabolical seasoning nonsense. But this is the macro-produced flavor alchemy I signed up for when I purchased food from a fast food restaurant.

The toppings are nothing new. You’ve got the serviceable lettuce, tomato and onion providing fresh flavor notes and some crunch. There's the pickle providing some acid and sweetness. You’ve got the ketchup, which is ketchup. You know what it tastes like. There's cheese in there somewhere. I’m sure it was fine. It's like all the Marvel movies coming out. You can't keep track of everything.

Then there's the red bun, which just tastes like normal bread with plain old sesame seeds on top.

I knew this after the first bite. However, that didn't stop my brain from doing all sorts of confounding inner flavor calculus to try and decode the mystery of the red bun.

Was it spicy? Was it sweet? Was there extra ketchup flavor? Does it change the texture? Is it like red velvet cake somehow?

Nope. It's just bread. It's just sort of weird looking. But so is Willem Dafoe, and he's awesome.

So is it any good?

Sure, it's a Whopper. If you like fast food burgers, you’ll like this.

The final word

I was really hoping that Burger King would do something fun with this burger. The first Spider-Verse movie was awesome. There was a wild black-and-white "crime-noir" Spider-Man voiced by Nicolas Cage. There was an anime Spider-Girl with a big mech. There was a cartoon Spider-Pig voiced by John Mulaney.

What I’m saying here was that there were plenty of opportunities to have fun with the multi-verse concept to make an alternate-reality Whopper. They could have had a big cheese patty and only a little slice of beef. They could have made a reverse whopper with patties for buns and bread on the inside. They could have put fries on the burger and called it "Spider legs" or something.

You beefed it, Burger King.

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"I ate it so you don't have to" is a regular food column looking at off-beat eats, both good and bad. It runs every other Thursday-ish at noon-ish.

You can send any praise/food suggestions to [email protected]. Please send all criticisms and questions about J.K. Simmons’ portrayal of J. Jonah Jameson to [email protected] You can check out the rest of the series here.

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