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Wednesday, January 28, 2009

TV KFC Still Doesn't Know What the Fuck "Frak" Means.

Posted by Erik Henriksen on Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 5:29 PM

40d6/1233189491-frakplate.jpg

Here's how the creators of Battlestar Galactica got around the limitations of not swearing on television: They invented their own swear word! Time for a crash course in Battlestarese 101: "Frak" is the equivalent of "fuck." So when you hear Edward James Olmos (or, as he asked me to call him once, "Eddie J. O.") say something like "Get the frak off my ship!", he really means "Get the fuck off my ship!", and when you hear President Roslin say something like "I've become a caricature of one of those women in a TV movie on the frakking Lifetime Channel!", what she really means is... well, you get the point.

"Frak" has inspired all sorts of embarrassing t-shirts and even, to an extent, permeated non-geek culture—but as anyone who caught the season premiere of Battlestar a few weeks ago can attest, not everyone knows that "frak" means "fuck." Good ol' Colonel Sanders, for one.

KFC debuted an ad during the Battlestar premiere for the "Frak Pak," some sort of bewildering, unholy combination of fried chicken and Battlestar DVDs, and everyone had a laugh at KFC's expense—despite eagerly jumping on the geek-marketing bandwagon, KFC never bothered to look up what "frak" actually means, and instead named a bucket of their chicken a "fuck pack." Oh, how message boards across the land rang with nasally laughter! "KFC is so frakkin' stupid!" went the refrain. "Who would want to eat a fuck pack of chicken?"

Well, KFC has finally figured out what's what, and they've hastily renamed their promotion from the "Frak Pak Sweepstakes" to the "Can't-Say-That-Word-On-Television Sweepstakes." I guess they get brownie points for trying to be clever about this whole thing, but the new name is actually even worse, because, well, you can say "frak" on television, because that's the whole point, and... well, you just don't want to put the word "frak" next to, say, a bucket of processed chicken, because that's not appetizing, and... and... sigh.

KFC, you will never understand nerds. You will only ever understand how to deep-fry chicken. And also how to give us what Patton Oswalt so accurately describes as "failure piles in sadness bowls."

Via Topless Robot.

 

Comments (7) RSS

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1
Please. KFC was being cheeky, BSG fans were just being dense. Of course they knew what it meant. It wasn't named using the last letters of a Scrabble bag. And it went viral as intended.

I, for one, would like to order a fuck-pack of chicken.
Posted by pdxuser on January 28, 2009 at 5:37 PM · Report
2
I think pdxuser has got you on this one. It's actually very sophisticated marketing, this article itself being a prime example of its success.
Posted by Will Radik on January 28, 2009 at 6:09 PM · Report
3
Yeah. Very possible.
Posted by Erik Henriksen on January 28, 2009 at 6:17 PM · Report
4
[KFC] will only ever understand how to deep-fry chicken.

They understand that? I thought they knew how to coat some combination of toxic waste in another combination of toxic waste, that made it taste vaguely like fried chicken, at least, to someone that has had a pack a day habit for their entire life and had never actually had real chicken. I personally have had better "fried chicken" by lighting a piece of cardboard on fire, and then putting it out by throwing a couple cans of chicken broth on the fire.

So really, the fact that they didn't know what Frak means, what did you expect?
Posted by Matthew D on January 28, 2009 at 6:46 PM · Report
5
People still watch television with commercials. color me amazed.
Posted by NIG GER on January 28, 2009 at 7:50 PM · Report
6
That's my favorite Patton Oswalt bit.

I would looove a lunch gun please.

"We're character actors...who gives a fuck?"

Or frak, I guess.
Posted by kiala on January 28, 2009 at 8:23 PM · Report
7
This makes me hungry for chicken. It works.
Posted by Demondog on January 29, 2009 at 10:29 AM · Report

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