Burger King x Dragon Ball Super: Certain collaborations can make a fully grown adult stare at their phone and whisper “I need that” to themself. Burger King has entered its anime era.
The fast-food giant has paired up with Toei Animation for a limited-time Dragon Ball Super Power Up Pack, officially launching September 1 at participating Burger King restaurants across the US until supplies last.
Burger King x Dragon Ball Super: The Nostalgia Therapy
The most intriguing part about nostalgia is that it does not really leave; it just waits. You can grow up, get a job, have bills to pay, pretend you understand taxes, be the person who orders a sensible healthy meal, but then Burger King puts Goku there and you travel back to your childhood.
The new “Dragon Ball Super Power Up Pack” comes with 10-piece chicken nuggets with new “Super Saiyan Sauce”, medium fries, Dragon Ball Burst Lemonade, and most importantly, a Dragon Ball Super Figurine out of the six collectibles including Goku, Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan Goku, Vegeta, Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan Vegeta, Piccolo, and Beerus. The lemonade is a mango peach lemonade with mango-flavoured popping boba. The sauce is a sweet, savoury and tangy teriyaki-style sauce.
There Are Collectibles
Food collaborators would come and go. You would drink a themed beverage, eat themed nuggets while putting an aesthetic shot on your Instagram story and move on, but collectables do not let you “move on”.
The lineup includes six figurines: Goku, Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan Goku, Vegeta, Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan Vegeta, Piccolo, and Beerus. Suddenly the meal is not “just a meal” anymore.
It is a mission to collect all of them, especially your favourite one, and somehow you are three meals into a fast-food restaurant because capitalism has discovered the art of making adults collect tiny versions of characters they loved as children and as adults we fall for it.
Burger King is also giving the thing themed packaging and a Dragon Ball Super crown.
This Is Nostalgia Marketing Made Personal
There is something particularly clever about the timing of the collaboration because Dragon Ball is not simply something people watch, but for millions it is attached to a particular version of themselves.
The kids who watched Goku since the beginning; the teenagers who argued defending their favourites are perhaps now adults who see a tiny figurine of Goku at a Burger King counter and suddenly remember their entire childhood.
X Reactions Have Entered the Chat
X (formerly Twitter) have already entered to decide whether Burger King can unlock the Super Saiyan powers.
X user @markie_devo kicked things off with the question that if the sauce would give the Super Saiyan powers, because perhaps why simply eat a teriyaki-style dipping sauce when you can believe that it might alter your personality.
Another user, @snackolator, was already “about to go Super Saiyan for this one,” breaking down the Power Up Pack more importantly, asking the internet which of the six toys everyone is going after.
User @DbsHype kept it beautifully simple with “Dragon Ball Super x Burger King Collab Menu!” and still pulled in thousands of views. There is something almost funny about how quickly everyone collectively reverted to childhood over a fast-food collaboration.
But it also gives people Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo, and Beerus in a tiny plastic collectible, and suddenly adulthood is cancelled. We do have quests and priorities, but we have to catch them all.
Here Is Why It Actually Works
Anime collaborations are everywhere now; it is not unusual now. What makes this collaboration interesting is the collision of two extremely recognisable pieces of nostalgia: fast food toys and Dragon Ball, and that is what makes Dragon Ball Super Power Up Pack uniquely different.
Burger King is essentially reviving an old-school promotional formula for a generation that remembers when getting a toy with your meal felt like the biggest event of the week, but just that the generation has disposable income.
This is the marketing sweet spot: you are not necessarily selling to children; you are selling to adults who used to be children, but now they have wallets and incomes.
Is the new series available in stores near you? Would you get your Dragon Ball Super Power Up Pack?
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