02 December 2008

In cretaceous color

Billboards along the highways and byways of America are nothing new. Billboards that seek to distract you from your desired destination with an unbelievable, “we must stop and see this,” gimmicks are as old as the highways themselves. Billboards touting larger than life picture shows are also nothing out of the ordinary. But when you combine a billboard with a film near the roadside attractions of Chester and Hester’s Dino-rama, well, that is something to behold.It may be the writer in me, but the wordplay at work on this sign makes me grin. McDonald’s and dinosaur references fill this billboard from corner to corner and top to bottom, sometimes in the same line. One of my favorite bits is the “Over 5 Billion Served (at one time),” a clear suggestion to the repeated changing of the McDonald’s golden arches that for decades informed customers just how many burgers had been served. Though McDonald’s has served well over 100 billion burgers, it has stopped the counting for the sake of counting. For the history buffs among us, McDonald’s began in 1948 and served its 5 billionth burger in 1969. 21 one years of work, and that greedy dino gobbled it all up at one time…

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