The Burger King Kids Club
Great food. Cool stuff. Kids only.
written by Mike originally for Poprocks & Coke on April 18, 2003

When I think about all the fast food I ate when I was a kid, it amazes me that I didn't grow up to be some big fatty. Especially since there's a certain intersection near my house that has access to 4... count 'em, FOUR different fast food restaurants. Check out this aerial photo from Map Quest...

Blackwood-Clementon & Little Gloucester Roads, Blackwood, New Jersey
Also, Gloucester rhymes with Foster, which is the maiden name of Suzanne Somers in Step By Step.
Suzanne Somers made a cameo in the movie Say It Isn't So, with John Rothman.
John Rothman was in the movie Picture Perfect, with Kevin Bacon.
YES I DID IT!

You know, it's kind of creepy that I managed to easily find an overhead photo of my city on the internet... hmm, wait. Let me try something...

Yup, that is definitely my house. I bet that if you wear really thick glasses, you can probably see me waving.

Right, so it's probably because those 4 fast food joints are all on the same corner that I really don't prefer one restaurant over another. Besides, you & I both know that when we were kids, we cared less about the food & more about the toys that came with your kid-sized value meal. It's no surprise McDonald's is the undisputed heavyweight champion of kid's meal toys, & this is mostly because there really wasn't any notable competition in this area during the first half of the 1980s. All a kid could get at Burger King was a stupid paper hat, & that's assuming that college kids with the munchies hadn't swiped the whole pile first. Then sometime during the middle of the decade, BK

this one...

not this one...

finally decided that they'd better get in on this kid's meal thing, & thus, the Burger King Kids Club was born. Now it was time to decide who or what should be created to promote it to the kids of the world. Well, it was a club for kids, so they probably wouldn't let clowns or giant purple monsters or fugitives convicted of hamburger theft be a part of it anyway. So they gathered a bunch of kids off the streets to become the Burger King Kids Club gang!

Here they are, the members & mascots of the Kids Club gang. While it was obvious that each of the kids were very different from each other, they all had their own unique talents & interests that made you forget all about their physical differences. Apparently they disbanded a while ago, because I couldn't find any trace of these guys on Burger King's website. The website I found this picture on was for BK's El Salvador branch, & thus was entirely in Spanish. It also appeared to have been sitting on the internet untouched since 1997.

Alright, enough jibber jabber. It's time to meet the gang...

Kid Vid

When you think of the Burger King Kids Club, you immediately think of Kid Vid first. While he'd like to think that it's because he was the official spokesperson & leader of the Club, he knows deep down inside that the real reason people remember him is because of his wardrobe. You have to be one seriously awesome dude to pull off an outfit like that. You can tell that those are some killer threads because they have lightning bolts on them. It makes me want to be Kid Vid for every Halloween ever from now on.

Just look at those shades. I like how I just said "Just look at those shades," as if your eyes aren't magically drawn to them like a magnet. I'm sure it's very difficult to read this when you keep getting distracted by Kid Vid's ridiculous eyewear. It's hard to tell whether they're supposed to be hip looking, single lens shades like the headgear LeVar Burton wore on Star Trek & should have worn on Reading Rainbow, or if they're those giant prescription sunglasses that elderly people wear on sunny days.

Oh, wait a second. Here's the other side of Kid Vid's face...

That is totally an antenna coming out of Kid Vid's glasses! Maybe they're the same kind of headgear that Marty McFly Jr. was wearing to watch TV & answer the phone in Back to the Future Part 2. It all makes sense now... the lightning bolts on his clothes, the red belt thing that wraps around his shoulder, the magic remote control he uses to instantly transport himself to the nearest Burger King... Kid Vid must be a messenger from the future!

So what's the message? Doyyy. "Great Food! Cool Stuff! Kids Only!" Don't even think about cramping Kid Vid's style if you're over 18. He's got a magic remote, & he's not afraid to use it.

Snaps

You probably don't even remember Snaps, but she was definitely in the Burger King Kids Club. Maybe the reason you don't remember her is because she spent most of her time with her face behind a camera, taking pictures of everything like she's the frigging paparazzi.

Snaps was supposedly this peppy young journalist with a knack for current events, but it seems to me like she may be a little on the ditzy side. I mean, she's not even looking into the focus lens of her camera. One might argue that it could be one of those new fangled cameras with the digital monitor on the back, but I'm pretty sure that those things didn't exist in the 1990s, & if they did, they were in limited quantities & totally unavailable to dumb blondes. Unless, of course, her rich dad got it for her.

Wait, no. Those cameras couldn't have possibly come in yellow back then. Actually, it looks like it was made by Fisher Price. I'm sticking with my original theory. Snaps is a ditz who just liked pressing the button on her camera to make the flash go off again & again. That Salvadorian website I pulled these pictures from supports this by stating that "Snaps is full of energy and curiosity!"

Jaws

The token black guy with a Kid 'n Play haircut to match, Jaws was never seen without his trusty compass & binoculars, but that doesn't help explain why he was named after a freaking shark. You could make the really obscure connection to his fondness of nature & the environment, but I'm pretty sure that sharks aren't an endangered species.

Hang on a second... token black guy? Kid 'n Play haircut? Fondness of nature & the environment? There's something very familiar about all that. Now where have I seen someone fitting that description before?

Why, it's Kwame of the Planeteers! Holy crap, look at that. Kwame & Jaws even dress similarly. They're both wearing shirts with the planet Earth on them, & matching green tube socks! GREEN FREAKING TUBE SOCKS!

They're also both wearing red watches on their left wrist. This is incredible. Were Jaws & Kwame separated at birth? We may never know the answer.

Wheels

If you can't figure out how Wheels got his nickname, you probably took the same bus to school as he did. According to the Salvadorian BK website, "Wheels is the most movable member of the Kids Club." That's awful! What kind of sick joke do they think they're playing?

Despite his inability to walk, Wheels is a mechanics expert. Actually, his being a mechanics expert isn't at all related to his inability to walk. I have no idea why I said that... hold the phone! Are those EXHAUST PIPES coming out of that wheelchair?! And he's even got spoilers on the back, too! I wouldn't be surprised if he was sitting on either a diesel engine or a nuclear reactor. I take it all back. Wheels is a mechanical genius, & his wheelchair is officially the most awesome mode of transportation since Pee Wee Herman's Bike. It almost makes me wish I was crippled. Almost.

Boomer

The only other girl besides Snaps in the Kids Club, Boomer made up for it by being a tomboy. She was the star athlete of the group & could easily keep up with Jaws in a grueling game of one-on-one... with her rollerblades on. The girl never took them off, ever.

Actually, Boomer was a very good role model for the young ladies of the world. Not only was she active in sports, but she also kept herself in the best physical shape. She taught girls everywhere how to maintain a well balanced diet without starving themselves. I mean, she did work for Burger King, but she wouldn't tolerate that super large deluxe order with a diet soda crap. Every time someone made an order like that, Boomer would hit them in the face with her hockey stick. If you're going to stuff your face with fast food, you'd better be up to the workout that goes along with it. Seriously, people.

I./Q.

I./Q. holds the most club records: he's the youngest, shortest, smartest, most nearsighted, & has the most punctuation in his name. He probably would have also been voted the best dressed if it hadn't been for Kid Vid & his totally awesome lightning wear.

Observe I./Q.'s incredible genius. Notice how he knows the proper way of holding a piping hot cheeseburger without burning his hand. The little twerp's about to eat it, too. Is I./Q. more of a man than we give him credit for? Not at all! It's all in the physics of it, my friends. He's even got an ice cold soft drink ready in his abnormally large right hand, just in case he happened to make any miscalculations. A good scientist is always prepared for the worst.

Aside from his remarkable intelligence & photographic memory, I./Q.'s greatest asset to the Burger King Kids Club is his ability to spy on the competition. With a haircut like that, he could easily pass for Ronald McDonald, or at least a distant relative of his.

Lingo

The last addition to the Kids Club gang, everyone was terrified when Lingo first joined the club. Not because he was Hispanic... that'd just be racist. No, it was because they heard he was "the fastest draw in town." I'm not even trying to be funny. That's how the commercial went down when Lingo was introduced as the new kid. Then Lingo showed them that he was just really good at drawing, & then everyone laughed at how stupid they were for being such xenophobic bigots.

I liked Lingo the best, because we had a few things in common. We both liked drawing & were seldom caught without a sketchbook handy, & we both struck fear in the hearts of many. I even owned a similar pair of red Chucks for a long time. But we also had our differences. I, for one, have the pleasure of not looking like a Hispanic ripoff of Archie. I'd love to be able to compare those two, but let's not forget what happened the last time a website put Archie's likeness on their website.

Lingo, however, had a one-up on me in that he was fluent in a second language. So fluent, in fact, that he would often switch back & forth between English & Spanish mid-sentence. Sort of like how the entire population of Montreal can do that with French Freedom.

J.D.

No one really knows where J.D. came from. He doesn't belong to any of the other Kids Club members. In fact, the kids were initially scared of J.D., until Lingo got a new pair of shoes & bravely hopped over the fence to get that autographed baseball back. No, wait... that was the Sandlot. My bad.

What really happened is that J.D. just kind of showed up one day, disguised as a pro skater in hopes that no one would notice that he was really a dog. Though it didn't seem to bother anybody once he came clean & told them the truth... the truth, of course, being "Woof! Arf! R-r-ruff!"

J.D. is almost always seen with his customized skateboard. Wheels added a motor to it so that he & J.D. could have races together. Sometimes, when he's in a particularly good mood, J.D. will even let Wheels win every once in a while.

So what has become of the Burger King Kids Club Gang? No one knows, for sure. I think they all ended up going to different colleges, but I'm pretty certain that I./Q. & J.D. both went to Princeton together. As for Burger King, they have since replaced the old Kids Club with a new Big Kids Club, an attempt to attract not only the grade school kids, but also the junior high preteens who are too cool for just about everything. You know, the kind that refuse to walk within 20 feet of their moms when shopping for clothes at the mall. God forbid someone should see you there & discover that you actually have parents.