#GreenPoop: Burger King’s Halloween Whopper comes with an unexpected side effect

Burger King’s new Halloween-themed Whopper is giving people a spooky side effect: Green poop.

Ever since the fast food giant rolled out the “A.1. Halloween Whopper,” which is just a cheeseburger sandwiched between two black buns infused with the steak sauce, social media has been giving it a collective stink eye.

On top of the already unappetizing charcoal-colored buns, those adventurous enough to try it are reporting that what goes in black comes out green.“Yesterday I had the Halloween Whopper… Today my poop is green,” tweeted an unhappy customer. “Yesterday was the last time I’ll have the Halloween Whopper.”

More like Crappy Halloween. That person’s story was corroborated on Twitter, as spotted by BuzzFeed:

Burger King hasn’t publicly released the ingredients list, the Washington Post guesses the green poop is caused by the purple or food coloring in the buns, which causes green stools: “Ask not why the purple dye turns poop green, just go drink a bunch of grape Kool-Aid and see for yourself.”

Nah, we’re good.

While this social media outcry doesn’t rival, say, Volkswagen’s recent woes, the Burger King brand is still getting dinged. Brandwatch data provided to Digiday says the burger has collected 29,000 tweets since its debut last week, with 89 percent of them being negative.

At no point did customer sentiment ever tilt into the positive range, with the largest negative sentiment occurring on Tuesday with a 98 percent negative rate.

“The reason for this dominatingly negative conversation is the effect the black-bunned burger has had on people’s feces,” notes Brandwatch analyst Kellan Terry. “There has been a large outcry of people talking about how the Halloween Whopper has turned their poop green.”

The discussion even sparked the hashtag #GreenPoop to trend, with people making memes and sharing experiences:  

For the curious, there are pictures of the actual green feces but that’s not safe for work — or anything.

Oddly, the chatty Burger King account on Twitter isn’t acknowledging the #GreenPoop tweets or hasn’t tweeted about the controversy. But the ever-scatalogical Charmin account has!

Burger King also hasn’t immediately responded to Digiday’s request for comment.

Still, Burger King is likely reveling in all of the publicity and perhaps even purchases from curious customers.

https://staging.digiday.com/?p=139497

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