Food Theory: KFC and the Curse of Colonel Sanders

Hello Colonel Sanders, I've always wondered why people call you Colonel. I don't really like to talk about it, but that's because my body is the size of a grain of corn. People think it's my tie, but it's actually my body. I don't see that, okay, how did I never notice this before my head turned again? A little help here, hello internet, welcome to

food

theory

, the only online program with 11 secret

curse

s and spices. Today we're talking about whether a fast

food

mascot can put a hex on you no joke it's a legit thing that really sensible people actually believe and I don't care who you are fast food voodoo magic it's just finger licking good

theory

fodder you see A few years ago Steph and I had the good fortune to go on vacation to Japan and one of our traditions every time we travel abroad is to visit at least one American fast food franchise just to see how different it is through another cultural lens Pizza Hut in Egypt, practically good food, Mickey Row in Greece, I don't recommend it. and in Japan it was all about KFC, but we also tried Krispy Kreme, which is a warning: the creamy white donut is not what you would expect, it is not filled with cream and is delicious, but instead it is filled with mayonnaise and mushrooms with a little onion Dusty on the outside, so be careful with that before you take a big bite like I did anyway.

Kfc surprised us to see it on almost every corner, I mean I love their mashed potatoes as much as the next guy. Boy, don't get me wrong, but does it really need to appear with a frequency that rivals Starbucks? Well, you see, Kentucky fried chicken in Japan has this incredible, long-standing relationship. Japan is KFC's third largest market in the world, behind only China. and the United States with over 1,100 restaurants, so why is Kentucky fried chicken so big in such a small country? In a word, Christmas. The most predominant religions in Japan are Shintoism and Buddhism, which means that Christmas traditions, as we understand them, have taken longer to catch on. in Japan than in many other countries, but in 1970, Takeshi Okawara, the manager of the first KFC in Japan, sought to change all that and began promoting fried chicken party kegs as a fun substitute for the traditional American Christmas turkey dinner. , which they apparently think is a What I don't know about you, but I've never had a traditional Christmas turkey.

I think most of our Christmas meals right now involve soggy pierogies that have been left in a reheated tin for too long and maybe if we're lucky I eat half a honey baked ham, as long as we find the 10 off coupon they put on the newspaper. Anyway, it started to catch on, so in 1974, KFC launched a long-running Japanese advertising campaign to encourage people to quote "eat kentucky" for Today, about five percent of annual sales of KFC Japan are produced on or immediately around Christmas Eve, and in the wake of Kentucky's successful Christmas campaign, life-size statues of Colonel Sanders became fixtures in front of KFCs across the country and are often dressed up as Santa Claus. suits for parties, they also dress up for all kinds of reasons because Japan is amazing, but when they're not wearing funny suits, they sell the cheetah, which was literally pizza on a fried chicken base that we tried when we were. again I wouldn't recommend it apparently these statues are also cursing Japan's national athletes, did you hear we're playing ghostbusters today as we investigate the mysterious

curse

of Colonel Sanders to see if the Colonel is still alive to torment the people of Japan.

According to numerous English sources, I discovered that the story is something like Japan's Japanese professional baseball organization consists of 12 teams, six in the Central League and six in the Pacific League. Since 1950, the Japanese series has faced the winner of the central league against the Pacific. league winner in a best-of-seven series of games to determine the overall npb champion, so basically their equivalent of the world series from 1950 to 1984, central league's hunch about the tigers failing to win the Japan series not once, so when 1985 came around and the Tigers started to put together a really good season, their long-deprived fans were understandably excited.

On October 16, 1985, the Tigers finally managed to win their first title of the central league in 21 years and the fans went crazy and when the tigers proceeded to win the Japanese series for the first time, a couple of weeks later on November 2, the fans really go crazy after the victory of the Japanese Tigers series. Fans take to the streets to celebrate. A crowd gathers at the Ebisu Bridge and begins singing songs of joy for each player in the Tigers' starting lineup. by the way, during that trip to Japan, Steph and I went to a baseball game and it was hands down the best sporting event I have ever been to in my life, everyone is eating hot octopus udon and applauding the entire time.

Japanese fans are amazing and I'm crazy about their cheer songs, so anyway, on this bridge, at the culmination of each player's cheer song, a fan in the crowd who looked like that player jumps out of the crowd. bridge to the water below, so dive after dive into the water goes smoothly. until they beat up a certain player on the team, Randy Bass, an American player in Japan who looks a bit like this. Go figure, the crowd didn't exactly have a ton of bearded Caucasian guys to choose from, so they had to get creative. It didn't take long to find his Randy Bass lookalike standing in front of a nearby Kentucky fried chicken restaurant.

People who look like the team members had to jump off the bridge. They couldn't find anyone who looked like a gaijin. Randy Bass the bearded American. batter, so they robbed the

colonel

from outside the KFC and threw him off a bridge, that's right, one of the statues of Colonel Sanders was thrown off the bridge as part of the fan revelry and that's when something interesting happened: the tigers defending champions immediately returned to their losing streak, in fact, finishing last in the central league 10 of the next 16 seasons today, 35 years later, the tigers still have not won a second title and it does not look like they will achieve it this season either .

If you're familiar with baseball, you know that notorious losing streaks and supernatural curses go together like peanuts and cookies or like songs of joy in udon if you're watching the Boston Red Sox in Japan who went almost a century without a title. world series. they had the curse of the bambino the chicago cubs who also had a ridiculously long title drought they had the curse of the billy goat and after the hanchin tigers were left without the title of the japanese series decade after decade the legend of the

colonel

statue

sanders

grew to become a complete - ruined baseball curse in his own right over the years, superstitious fans have made multiple attempts to recover the statue from the bottom of the canal and finally in 2009 the statue was successfully recovered, but He didn't break the curse.

The tigers are still losing something. Let's say it's because the Colonel's left hand and glasses were never found and the prevailing theory is that the Tigers won't win another championship until Colonel Sanders is healthy once again, so that's the story folks, but what really What I want to find out today is If it has any validity, remember that unlike many other fast food mascots, Colonel Sanders was a real-life human being with a real biography, it's not like Ronald McDonald was somehow able to cast a curse on him from beyond the grave because he never lived. But Colonel Sanders did.

Was he the kind of person who would really hold a grudge or retaliate for something like this? Is it possible that Colonel Sanders is punishing this disrespectful baseball team from beyond the grave or are there other factors at play to begin with? Look at the man behind the linen suit. Harlan Sanders was born in 1890 in Henryville, Indiana. He learned to cook at a young age because his father passed away and his mother needed help. His mother eventually remarried, but Harland didn't like it. his new stepfather, so he ran away at the age of 13 and entered the workforce.

The list of unglamorous jobs Harland held over the next three decades is long and fascinating, including a railroad worker, a rural lawyer, a ferry operator, a tire salesman, and a service station manager. He had a habit of getting into fist fights, which forced him to look for new employment more than once at the age of 40. Harland was bankrupt, so he had to start over in Corbin Kentucky, where he ran a gas station to increase sales. He began selling fried chicken to passing motorists. The chicken was a huge success, so Harlan opened a restaurant and discovered that he could fry chickens much more efficiently using a pressure cooker.

Shortly after, Harlan was awarded the honorary title of Kentucky colonel by the governor for his contributions to the community, both culinary and otherwise, but life did not end up being hard for the newly appointed colonel

sanders

, a fire burned his former restaurant to the ground. foundation and then a new interstate was built that bypassed the rebuilt one and as any A parent who has been forced to watch the movie Cars 974 times can tell you that bypassing an interstate is bad for business and, for To make matters even worse, Sanders lost the honorary title of colonel, although it would eventually be reinstated at the age of 62.

Colonel Sanders found it broke again, but he continued trying to go from restaurant to restaurant to sell the only thing he had left of his recipe, asking that if the restaurants used it they would return a portion of the profits and thus the first franchise of Kentucky fried chicken in Salt Lake City Utah and the rest is history in a time when many people would have retired. Colonel Sanders had finally found success with him, so Colonel Sanders was the kind of person who would cast a curse from beyond the grave. Hell yes, this was a man. who did not back down from confrontation and settled scores on the spot when a cook at a restaurant refused to place his order correctly, Colonel Sanders, almost 70 years old, threw his eggs in the cook's face and defended him with a stool and , if the eggs were undercooked they are enough to drive Colonel Sanders to a beating, it is not difficult to imagine how the vandalism of his statue could provoke him, besides being thrown from a bridge, it could have simply been the straw that broke the camel's back, Success was not easy or quick for the colonel.

Sanders we must not overlook the fact that he was a painstakingly self-made man who carefully crafted his trademark white linen suit and Thai linen suit while he was alive, I'm not sure I would have been entirely pleased to see his statues disguised as maids. and pantsless saints and everything else and watching his statue get thrown off a bridge might have been especially painful given the fact that he himself almost died falling off a bridge when he was young, so yeah, I'd say the curse of colonel's story It's certainly plausible, but now let's look at the facts, is there any other way to explain the hanchin tiger's notable title drought? maybe things that are not so supernatural, on the one hand there is the fact that the tigers have only gone 35 years without a title, it certainly has been a long time and yes the streak is still active so it will surely grow more, but the thing is, Han Shin's tigers don't even have the longest streak in their own league, the Hiroshima Toyo carp, which hasn't been champion of the Japanese series since 1984.

They have an even longer active title drought than tigers and they didn't throw a beloved fast food mascot into a river, at least as far as I know, so if any Japanese baseball team has the right to blame their problems on supernatural interference, it's the carp, which by the way was the team that Stephanie and I watched play in Japan, like I said their fans were absolutely amazing and very supportive so yeah maybe a curse is to blame when it comes to carp, the tigers also have the misfortune of sharing the central league With the Giants being basically the New York Yankees of Japanese baseball, meaning they are a powerful team that is so easy to root against, it has also long been alleged that the Giants rely on underhanded tactics to recruit top players involving bribes to amateur players and coaches or using their influence on the ruling council of Japanese professional baseball to pass rules that favor their recruiting efforts.

This may be one explanation for the giants' abundance of success in the league. End of the appointment and that abundanceof success in the league is a major reason why the Tigers have only exited their league and entered the Japanese series three times since 1985. So perhaps we don't need to resort to the supernatural to explain the Tigers' losing streak. , after all, but to be as complete as possible. As far as possible, I searched through some Japanese language sources to see if I could find more information and what I found was not a nugget, but a complete set of 13 scrumptious pieces of information.

The first Japanese source I looked for. I basically told the story I was familiar with. Hanshin Tiger fans celebrate the victory. They throw the statue of Colonel Sanders into the canal and his team quickly goes down the tube, but the difference in Japanese history was the date when all of this happened up to this point. English sources on this topic had suggested or openly stated that the statue was thrown into the canal on November 2, the day the Tigers won the series, but this Japanese source explicitly placed the event on October 16 and this told me led to more and more sources referencing that October date why it is so important because it would mean that the statue was not thrown from the ivasu bridge during the celebration of the Japanese series, but was thrown from the bridge earlier when fans were celebrating becoming with the central league pennant, meaning the hanchin tigers won their only japanese series championship immediately after the colonel sanders statue was thrown from the bridge here is an interview with a reporter from hanshin tigers english news which explains how a false version of the story has been circulating in English sources for decades, I think most of the English stories out there, whether on video or in written form, are taken from each other, I mean, They are all taken from English versions that were previously written and when I look back at the Japanese retellings of the story, I noticed that the English version has a fatal flaw.

In it, a single detail of the story was lost in translation and the Colonel's curse became a full-blown urban legend, as a result, for theorists, this totally ruins the core curse as we know it if the Colonel He really cursed the tigers. from beyond the grave didn't work because the 1985 tigers went on and won a title anyway just a couple weeks after they threw it in the river, but this also turns my theory on its head and friends, because it they think this way for 35 years the honchen tigers never won the japan series then in 1985 their fans threw a statue of colonel sanders off a bridge and the tigers quickly won the series for the first time in history the fans stopped throwing statues of colonel sanders off bridges and the disturbing tigers went back to their lost path for over 35 years this is what i'm telling my friends, what would happen if you gleefully threw that statue of colonel sanders off the bridge actually Will the tiger's performance improve over a short period of time?

What if Colonel Sanders was a symbol of perseverance later? Decades and decades of struggling before achieving great success actually have a soft spot for underdogs like the Honshin Tigers. What if the so-called Colonel's Curse was actually Kentucky's lot all along? I can hear you calling me out and saying in the comments and yes, maybe I'm a baseball curse, it's crazy territory to theorize, I'll give you that, but I'm just going with the facts here, so here's my rant to the baseball fans. and tigers, if you're the fanatic type. who subscribes to crazy baseball superstitions and curses, you have nothing to lose by trying this as we speak, honshin tigers 2020 are burning away in the middle of the central division standings now i'm not supporting hooliganism maybe you should make your own own Colonel Sanders Effigy instead of stealing one and I don't support littering either, maybe make an effigy that floats and can be retrieved from the water easily and safely, but we have to see what happens to the tigers when the fanatics dump another statue of Colonel Sanders. a bridge nothing against colonel sanders or kfc here this is strictly for science we only have one data point here and we need more too and I can't stress this enough we need it to be done in a very interesting and very legal way because your friend from the Internet matpat no You don't need a lawsuit on your hands, all matpat needs is solid data that helps prove or disprove that the curse of the colonel or should I say the lucky kentucky is not only legitimate but is the healthiest positive curse of all baseball, but oh well.

That's just a theory, a food theory, you can't see me, but I'm actually doing the hand movements. The very sweet Japanese fans who are next to us taught us that joy because it is what they do between each bat. What fun! I tell you, very funny, if you ever get the chance to go to a Japanese baseball game, do it, it's like nothing you've ever seen before, it's the best.