Burger King usually only has one promotional item each Halloween, and it is almost always meant for adults. This year is no exception… sort of. Despite it’s jack-o’-lantern orange bun, the Ghost Pepper Whopper is definitely not for kids. The Burger King app, however, features a special Halloween subroutine that turns your phone into the best toy ever: a ghost hunting PKE meter! Click the pic to check it out!
Ghost Pepper Whoppers were on sale before the 17th. So what are these mysterious phantom hamburger hands trying to tell us? I must know!
I love spicy food. I’m used to being told something is going to be spicy, then experiencing serious disappointment. It’s not because the food isn’t spicy. I’m sure it is… to them. But when you’ve spent thirty-something years building a tolerance to capsaicin and piperine, the world can sometimes taste a bit bland.
So what does this thing have on it? Well, according to my Burger King app, all that stuff. And everything was present in abundance except for the queso. I thought they’d forgotten it entirely, but there was a single glob of it in the very center of my burger. Certainly not enough to drip, and not even enough to be seen on the outside of the bun. Why so stingy with the fake cheese dip, your majesty? This is an expensive sandwich. Make with the goddamned queso, you cheap son of a bitch.
In preparation for my inevitable spiciness disillusionment, I ordered the Ghost Pepper Whopper with extra crispy jalapeños. I didn’t expect the bun to be as pumpkin orange as advertised, but, I’ll be damned if this thing wasn’t a color I can only accurately call “Fucking Orange.” I was impressed. This is a cool looking burger.
Pictured: center; the smallest amount of queso detectible without measuring devices.
Is it hot? Yeah, but not exceptionally. And it’s a fast burn. Five minutes after I ate it, there was no residual heat in my mouth at all. Arby’s Diablo Chicken was FAR hotter than this, and tastier. Not that the Ghost Pepper Whopper was bad, but if you’re serious about eating something super hot, this isn’t the burger for you. I ate this with extra crispy jalapeños on it, and an eight piece order of jalapeño bites on the side, and I sniffled ONCE. That’s all. A proper spicy sandwich should have made me sweat. Sweat ’til you can’t sweat no more. This was a tasty burger, but it was not my huckleberry.
If you sign into the Burger King app, you WILL see this screen. They make it impossible to miss. Since I’ve got articles to write and an internet waiting to be filled with words about Halloween, I was fully prepared to have to install another app and deal with some bullshit account creation on a platform I would never use again. That’s fine. If that’s what it takes to get my article written, fine. I’ll do it. I mean, I just spent hours on my feet, buying, eating, and writing about an orange hamburger, all for you. I do it all for you, reader. You know I haven’t eaten since six o’clock this evening, and that was half a “spicy” hamburger with a tiny blob of queso? And it wasn’t even real queso, it was “queso sauce.” Now you want me to run off and install another app? What the hell happened to you?
Ah, but the good people at Burger King have impressed me! The ghost detector “game” is a feature they built into the Burger King app. As of October 17th the ghost detector was free to enjoy by anyone who has the app; no installations, no new logins, no hassles whatsoever. It’s all there at your fingertips and ready to go. VERY nice touch, my friends. This is as impressive as the orange bun. I like this a LOT.
They make a big deal of this being “their” magnetometer and finding electromagnetic fields, which is kinda true, but also kinda bullshit. You can install all the apps you want, but your phone’s magnetometer is going to continue working exactly as it always has, despite the flashy interface. Magnetometers are hardware, and they act as a compass in your phone. All this app does is provide a Ghostbustery looking display for the magnetometer you already own.
“Egie, she’s twitching…”
I assumed, since cell phone magnetometers are used to detect changes in orientation, that this app would make you wander around scanning things like Egon in the Sedgewick Hotel, until you’ve jumped through whatever digital hoops make this app do whatever it’s gonna do. Well, I don’t have time for that. Instead, I started up the app and ran one of my headphone’s speakers over my phone until I found the magnetometer. I wagered the neodymium magnet in a speaker would be plenty strong enough to activate this thing.
“He took PKE valences, went right off the top of the scale. Buried the needle.”
BOOM! That worked even better than I imagined! The needle ticked over well past 100 of whatever units this thing was supposed to be measuring, earning me what is actually a very good bargain on specialty Whoppers.
“Well, that wasn’t such a chore, now was it?”
As soon as you “detect a ghost,” the reward coupon is automatically saved in your app for later use. Not too much later, though, because these coupons and the ghost detector itself will go away shortly after Halloween.
Thank you, Burger King! That’s a lot of food for $10, especially if it’s food I don’t have to cook. I think I’ll take you up on your generous offer. The Ghost Pepper Whopper isn’t perfect, but then again, what is? I think I’ll enjoy two more of these before Halloween ends. This whole experience has been an excellent spooky season treat!
