Burger Chef restaurants were the sponsors of Rankin-Bass' syndicated Festival of Family Classics series of animated specials. The irony here, though, is that a rival studio produced the animated commercials featuring Burger Chef & Jeff.
Jeff (sounds like it might be June Foray using her Rocky voice) turns to his boss, the Burger Chef (Paul Winchell) for help whenever he runs into a difficult customer, such as, in this spot, Count Fangburger......
Today, Burger Chef is a distant memory, as it was sold by General Foods to the parent company of Hardees/Carl's Jr. several years ago.
2 comments:
I remember this spot! There was one Burger Chef that I can recall; it was en route to our grandparents' house in Salisbury, MD. We went there once or twice before it closed.
IIRC, the rights to Burger Chef reverted back to General Foods around 2004 or 2005. Several people were hoping that GF would take that opportunity to revive the chain, but that didn't happen. The map's different now; there are so many burger chains out there currently that Burger Chef would have to do something really special to stand out.
This is from Wikipedia. Take it with a grain of salt if necessary:
"In 1982, General Foods sold Burger Chef to the Canadian company Imasco, which also owned Hardee's, for US$44 million (equivalent to $133.43 million in 2022).[11] Imasco converted many locations to Hardee's restaurants and let franchises and locations near existing Hardee's locations convert to other brands.[8] Remaining restaurants that did not convert to Hardee's or new names and branding simply closed.
Hardee's brought back the Big Shef hamburger for a limited time in 2001, 2007, and 2014 at some Midwestern locations.[12][13]"
Nowhere does it say that GF (which by 2005 was part of Kraft) reacquired the rights to Burger Chef.
Trademark suit
In January 2007, River West Brands, LLC, of Chicago, Illinois, sued Hardee's Food Systems in the US Patents and Trademarks Office, claiming abandonment of the Burger Chef trademark.[14] In 2009, River West Brands dropped their petition for cancellation, and both parties agreed to pay their own attorneys' fees.[14]
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