A Smorgasbord! 1977 Burger Chef Fun Meal Discs

From the 1970s through the 1990s, it seemed like you could find your favorite baseball stars on food product packaging everywhere you looked: supermarkets, corner stores, restaurants, and beyond. This past year, in an effort to capture a little more nostalgia, I set a goal to expand my own collection of these "food-issue" cards. In this series I'll show the specific examples I've acquired, and share a little bit of history about the food or beverage sponsor as well. 

Previous entries can be found here.

 

  

It's winter holiday time, 1977. School's out. You're feeling pretty good about things. Your most recent report card was impressive, and there's a strong chance you'll receive at least one or two of the gifts you've been hoping for.

 

You'll find out in a few days, but it doesn't even matter right now. Your first gift just came early. . .

 

Mom and Dad are treating you to a Fun Meal at Burger Chef!

 

 

 

Even though it's been ages since they brought you there, you can already taste that flame-grilled burger, french fries, and dessert.

And it gets even better once you enter the restaurant. Instead of the standard toy, check out what you get with your Fun Meal tray:

 

Baseball discs, featuring Major League players!

There's too much text to read right there at the register, so you run over to an open table, blitz through the assembly, and set the game board in front of you:

 

 

There's no time to put your burger, fries, and drink in those designated locations. You've got to learn how to play the game, so you flip the whole thing over:

 

There's more discs on the back!

You waste no time punching them out, and then make a wise move—agreeing with your parents to eat some of your food before it gets cold, and before you can fall out of their good graces. (I mean, come on. Holiday gift list. Don't mess it up now.) Besides, there will be plenty of time to play this Burger Chef baseball game at home.

So you keep your food off the tray altogether and scarf down that delicious, flame-broiled burger and the rest of the meal.

 

As soon as the holidays are over, you'll start bouncing off the walls, just waiting for April to arrive so you can see your favorite baseball pros in action again. At least you have some super-cool Burger Chef discs to play with in the meantime.

 

Now let's talk about Burger Chef a little bit.

Do you know that Frank and Donald Thomas, founders of Burger Chef, patented a flame-broiler machine way back in 1954? They used it in their very first Burger Chef location, which opened a few years later in 1957. The flavor imparted by the broiler became so popular that by 1972, only McDonald's had more hamburger locations around the country.

 

And speaking of McDonald's, guess where they got their "Happy Meal" idea from?

 

Yep, that's right. Just a few years after Burger Chef introduced their Fun Meal for kids, McDonald's launched their Happy Meal. Burger Chef initiated a lawsuit, but lost the case. 

 

They did keep going strong through the late '70s and early '80s. However, in 1982 the entire chain was bought by Hardee's. And sadly, that was the beginning of the end. Over the next decade or so, individual Burger Chef locations were either converted to Hardee's restaurants, other types of restaurants, or just closed down.

But let's get back to Burger Chef's run of greatness, including the awesome cast of characters they featured on the tray up there. There's Burger Chef himself, along with a sort of sidekick youngster named Jeff. Then you have some "likeable villain" types. Crankenburger is a Frankenstein-type monster. Count Fangburger is, as you can guess, a vampire. There's also Mrs. Fangburger and Fangburger's Daughter. Then you have Burgerilla (a gorilla), Where Wolf (a shaggy wolf), and Burgerini the magician.

Someone in the Burger Chef marketing department was quite productive.

 

Here are the discs I have in my collection, front and back.

There's a whopping 216 total discs in the set, and 24 of the 26 MLB teams were represented. Only the two new expansion teams of the time, the Blue Jays and the Mariners, were absent. A different tray was printed for each team, which means there's a perfectly even distribution of 9 players per team. The discs themselves are about 2 3/8 inches in diameter.

I really might have to pick up more of them—both for the players on the front and the Burger Chef mascots on the back. (I still need a disc of Crankenburger, Fangburger, Mrs. Fangburger, Burgerilla, and Jeff).

Regardless of what teams and players you collect, you're likely to find a few discs for your collection.

Do any of you readers have memories of Burger Chef? If there were any locations in my region of New York back in the 1980s, I certainly didn't know about them.

Share in the comment section, and thanks for reading!

PS: How big was Burger Chef back in the 1970s? Check out what franchise they linked up with in this commercial: