Chances are you've heard of Jack in the Box, even if it's not located in a town or even
a state near you.
Located in just 21 states in the US, Jack in the Box was founded during the great fast
food boom that occurred after World War II and is mostly a southwest United States eatery
but is known far and wide thanks to it's sometimes controversial advertising campaigns and some
not too great for business news stories.
So join us as we delve into the underbelly of one of the United States most well known
fast food joints to find the top ten Untold Truths of Jack in the Box.
The Jack in the Box Name
The history of Jack in the Box starts with its founder, Robert Oscar Peterson, who owned
several successful restaurants before he opened what would eventually become Jack in the Box.
That restaurant was a drive-in named Topsy's and was opened in San Diego in 1941.
Topsy's was also successful and was renamed "Oscars" after the middle name of its founder,
and had a circus-like decor that heavily featured drawings of the circus and a circular headed
clown with starry eyes.
In 1951, thanks to some technological advances (that you'll hear about next), the original
Topsy's was converted into the first Jack in the Box with that creepy, round-headed
clown as its mascot.
Those advancements helped the first Jack in the Box locations to really take off and by
1966 there were over 200 locations around the Southwest of the United States, showing
that competition truly does create great things...
Or at least, great fast food burgers...
In the Southwest of the country.
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Now, back to clowning around.
Jack in the Box’s Technological Advancements
As mentioned, Jack in the Box took off during the great fast food restaurant boom that occurred
after World War II and a large part of that has to do with the drive-thru systems that
these restaurants employed to move away from the drive-in model that had become outdated
thanks to the long wait times and inevitable damage that those heavy trays did to car windows
(especially considering the fact that they weighed as much as the teenagers on roller
skates who were delivering them to your gigantic Buick).
It turns out that Jack in the Box has a lot to do with the growth of technology in the
fast food arena as they were the first restaurant to utilize intercoms at drive-thrus in the
lower 48 states (after obtaining the rights to it from a restaurant named Chatterbox in
Alaska).
The owner of Jack in the Box, Robert Peterson, took the intercom system a step further to
create a two-way intercom system that is still basically what restaurants use today (in some
way, shape or form), minus the plastic clown that people used to have to speak into at
the first few hundred Jack in the Box locations since talking at or into a clown is a nightmare
for most normal people.
The Jack in the Box Founder was a VERY Interesting Person
We've already touched on the founder of Jack in the Box as he was a pioneer and you could
even say founder of the intercom systems that fast food restaurants use, beyond that though
he was a decorated soldier who fought in World War II, as a member of Naval Intelligence.
He was also married four times, most notably to Maureen O'Connor, who was the first female
mayor of San Diego in the mid-to-late 80's to early 90's.
The most interesting footnote about him, though, was the fact that he was listed on former
President Richard Nixon's "Enemies List", something that was odd because he was, in
fact, a registered Republican.
However, it appears that he made some donations to Democrats during the Nixon regime and that's
something that Nixon couldn't tolerate.
Luckily for everyone Nixon was busted for his involvement in Watergate and Peterson
was left alone to continue creating delicious burgers.
That does have to make you wonder how many people were on Nixon's "enemies" list if someone
as innocent as Peterson could make that list, granted his donations were relatively large,
but considering his politics you'd have to think that Peterson was just unhappy with
Nixon, not with the Republican party as a whole.
Sound familiar?
When Jack in the Box Ditched the Clown
As this list (and basically everything, ever, prior to this list in human history) has shown,
clowns are creepy.
Fortunately, the people at Jack in the Box realized this (eventually) by the late 1970's
and decided to not only ditch the clown, "Jack" but also the decor of most if not all of it's
restaurants.
Deciding that its circus decor gave the impression that they were a children’s restaurant (it
took them two decades to figure that out?) they changed everything and started a marketing
campaign that was geared towards the more "Premium Fare" that Jack in the Box was introducing
at its locations.
Their TV commercials were quite literal in that they showed store employees blowing up
"Jack" while drive-thru customers yelled, "Waste him!".
Now, we all think clowns are creepy but even we feel bad for Jack at this point... Luckily…
Jack is Back
After a few missteps, which we'll get into, Jack in the Box's reputation was at an all-time
low in the early 1990's.
That's when, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Jack returned from obscurity to not
only re-brand Jack in the Box but also to seemingly "kill" the former brand of Jack
in the Box (the brand that took over after they "wasted" him in the early 1980's).
While it's a pretty simple strategy, from a marketing standpoint, it worked as it basically
was an admission by the people at Jack in the Box (or the people that were STILL at
Jack in the Box) that they had made mistakes while playfully alluding to that fact while
also implying that they were going to go back to the way things were before the controversies,
a simpler time that a lot of the then adults remember.
That time was the late 1970's (and before) when the adults of the 90's were children
and when everything seemed magical, even a creepy clown.
Luckily for us, they used the "miracle of plastic surgery" to convert Jack into a humanoid
clown, one that was more yuppy than serial killing nightmare fuel.
Jack Didn't Stop with the Board
After Jack returned by basically taking out the entire "board" (or the public perception
of what Jack in the Box was during the whole E. Coli fiasco) he didn't stop there as he
went out, in a time that Twitter didn't exist and most people were using dial-up to get
onto AOL on Friday nights to chat about sports, to the community to basically attack those
who had been calling Jack in the Box "Junk in the Box".
The commercials were supposed to convey that Jack in the Box was working hard to make food
good again, but it does seem a bit aggressive, mainly because it didn't highlight the fact
that it had different or new food, only that it's employees had been working their "buns"
off to make food (which is something all fast food places can say).
It perhaps doesn't make it super surprising that Jack in the Box is in the middle of a
controversy over a new commercial right now in 2018!
The Current Jack in the Box Controversy
While we did feel like the aforementioned commercial took things a bit too far, there
is the other end of the spectrum where they didn't but people think they did.
Jack in the Box released a new commercial highlighting their Teriyaki "Bowls" and decided
that because Bowls sound like the word "Balls" and because "Balls" is a word people use for
testicles, that they'd really run with that concept.
Now, we're not defending the commercial from either a comedy or marketing standpoint (although
the fact that we're talking about it means that it really did its job).
We don't wade into political stuff on this channel, because that stuff is everywhere
and we're sure you're here for a few minutes of respite, however, this stuff always boils
down into the discussion of intent versus actual outcome.
The intention here was comedy and exposure (as in, brand exposure, not the other kind
of exposure).
Regardless, the ad is being called the most "tone deaf" in the #MeToo era and Jack in
the Box hasn't apologized or pulled the ad, but they released a statement explaining their
intention behind the ad (and all of their ads, to boot).
But if you have to explain the joke, then is it actually funny?
Jack has Quite the Backstory
So far we've learned that Jack in the Box has a history that includes being on the "enemies
list" of Richard Nixon back during those dark days of American politics to being on the
enemies list of those on Twitter that spend their free time creating such lists.
However, it turns out that Jack, the brand ambassador for Jack in the Box, has a much
more detailed and complex history than most of us have ever understood.
Over the course of more than 2,000 television commercials across both the English and Spanish
languages, people have learned that Jack has a wife whose name is "Cricket", and together
the two have a son named Jack Junior.
Jack also has a hick cousin that lives in Philadelphia and rocks a mullet, for some
reason (because Jack in the Box is mostly on the West Coast and Philadelphia is most
definitely not on the West Coast).
Jack is said to be, by Jack in the Box's website, 6 foot 8 (without his hat or maybe it’s
a crown).
He also has a birthdate, which is May 16th, and he can speak multiple languages including
the previously mentioned English and Spanish as well as Mandarin (which might mean that
Jack in the Box has plans to expand into China).
Jack also ran for President back in 1996 during the Bill Clinton and Bob Dole campaigns, with
slogans like "Don't Blame me I voted for Jack" being sold on shirts and bumper stickers.
Jack in the Box also wanted to test how popular Jack was back in 2009 so they had him get
hit by a bus in one of their commercials, waiting to see how fans reacted before bringing
him back.
Take that, Dos Equis, it turns out that Jack is the most interesting man in the world.
But who is Jack?
Since 1995 Jack has been voiced by one man, whose name is Richard "Dick" Sittig and unlike
most voice over artists who lend their voices to the face of billion-dollar companies, Sittig
also closely guards and shapes the commercials that Jack appears in, making him the most
hands-on pitchman in the game.
Sittig started during the "Jack is Back" era of Jack in the Box commercials and was largely
responsible for those ads, so he started his own advertising agency, titled the Secret
Weapon Marketing agency, whose main client is, you guessed it, Jack in the Box.
Sittig has been largely responsible for the "irreverent humor" that the ads employ, including
the most recent ad that focused on the size of Jack's "Bowls".
Those ads have lead to explosive growth for Jack in the Box, especially among young men,
something Sittig has discussed.
In an interview with LA Times, Sittig said: "If our target was a 75-year-old woman, we'd
be a Hallmark Card."
Sittig has also compared Jack to the current US President, Donald Trump, saying that the
"intimidating CEO" aspect of his persona is intentional and based on Trump.
The Jack in the Box E. Coli Situation
Outside controversies about their marketing, Jack in the Box has dealt with devastating
controversies over the years including one in the 80's which found that some mislabeled
kangaroo meat was being sent to Jack in the Box instead of to a restaurant in Australia.
The largest controversy in the company’s history happened in 1993 and was responsible
for the "Jack is Back" ads, and that controversy actually ended up taking a few peoples lives.
In 1993 four children died of hemolytic uremic syndrome after contracting E. Coli from undercooked
meat patties that were contaminated with fecal matter at a location in Tacoma, Washington
(and other parts of the Pacific Northwest).
That lead to a bunch of lawsuits that were quickly settled and almost lead to the bankruptcy
of Jack in the Box as they lost a ton of business because of
the bad press they received.
The discrepancy that lead to the E Coli outbreak was actually based on FDA requirements, which
was that hamburger meat was to be cooked to 140 degrees internally (whereas Washington
state law required a temperature of 155 degrees, which is the lowest temperature that kills
E Coli bacteria).
Because of their multi-state operation, the Tacoma locations served burgers cooked to
FDA levels, not Washington State levels, and the rest is sad, sad history.
The positive note is that Jack in the Box changed it's requirements to 155 degrees after
the incident, but Jack in the Box took things a step or two further by working with food
safety experts from manufacturing companies to test every product in their restaurant
for bacteria.
What do you think about that Jack in the Box mascot?
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