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The Whopper is the signature hamburger product sold by the international fast-food restaurant chain Burger King and its Australian franchise Hungry Jack's. Introduced in 1957, it has undergone several reformulations including resizing and bread changes. The burger is one of the best known products in the fast food industry; it is so well known that Burger King bills itself as ''the Home of the Whopper'' in its advertising and signage. Additionally, the company uses the name in its high-end concept, the BK Whopper Bar. Due to its place in the marketplace, the Whopper has prompted Burger King's competitors, mainly McDonald's and Wendy's, to try to develop similar products designed to compete with it. The company markets several variants of the burger as well as other variants that are specifically tailored to meet local taste preferences or customs of the various regions and countries in which it does business. To promote continuing interest in the product, Burger King occasionally releases limited-time variants on the Whopper. As the signature product of the company, it is often at the center of advertising promotions, product tie-ins, and even corporate practical jokes and hoaxes. Some of the early twenty-first century advertising programs, particularly in Europe, have drawn criticism for cultural insensitivity or misogyny. Additionally, as the signature product in the company's portfolio, Burger King has registered many global trademarks to protect its investment in the product. ==History== The Whopper was created in 1957 by Burger King co-founder James McLamore and originally sold for 37¢ (US$3.27 in 2014).〔 McLamore created the burger after he noticed that a rival restaurant was having success selling a larger burger. Believing that the success of the rival product was its size, he devised the Whopper. The name was chosen because he felt that it conveyed ''"imagery of something big"''. Major fast food chains did not release a similar product until the McDonald's Big Mac was introduced in 1967, followed by the Burger Chef Big Shef in the early 1970s.〔 Initially the sandwich was made with a plain bun, however, that changed when the company switched to a sesame-seeded bun around 1970. In 1985, the weight of the Whopper was increased to , while the bun was replaced by a Kaiser roll. This was part of a program to improve the product and featured a US$30 million (approx US$66 million in 2014) advertising campaign featuring various celebrities such as Mr. T and Loretta Swit. The goal of the program was to help differentiate the company and its products from those of its competitors. The Whopper reverted to its previous size in 1987 when a new management team took over the company and reverted many of the changes initiated prior to 1985. The Whopper sandwich's Kaiser roll was changed back into a sesame seed bun in 1994, eliminating the last trace of the sandwich's 1985 reconfiguration. The packaging has undergone many changes since its inception. Unlike McDonald's, the company never used the clamshell style box made of Styrofoam, so when the environmental concerns over Styrofoam came to a head in the late 1980s, the company was able to tout its use of paperboard boxes for its sandwiches. To cut back on the amount of paper that the company used, the paperboard box was fully eliminated in 1991 and was replaced with waxed paper. For a short time in 2002, the company used a gold-toned, aluminum foil wrapping for the sandwich as part of the 45th anniversary of the sandwich. The packaging was changed again in 2012 when the company moved to half wrapped sandwich packaged in a paper board box. The Whopper Jr was created, by accident, in 1963 by Luis Arenas-Pérez (aka Luis Arenas), the only Latino in the Burger King Hall of Fame and president and CEO of Burger King in Puerto Rico. Upon the opening of the first Burger King restaurant in Carolina, Puerto Rico, the molds for the (standard) Whopper buns had not yet arrived to Puerto Rico from the United States mainland and thus there were no buns to make and sell the company's flagship Whopper offering. Arenas opted for honoring the advertised opening date but using the much smaller regular hamburger buns locally available. The result was such a success that Burger King adopted it worldwide and called it the Whopper Jr.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Whopper」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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