Food Theory: KFC and the Curse of Colonel Sanders

hey colonel sanders i've always wondered why do people call you the colonel i actually don't like to talk about it but it's cause my body is the size of a corn kernel see people think it's my tie but it's actually my body try to unsee that one uh okay how did i never notice this before ah head tipped over again a little help here [Music] hello internet welcome to food theory the only show online with 11 secret curses and spices today we're talking about whether a fast food mascot can put a hex on you no joke it is a legitimate thing that real sensible people actually believe and i don't care who you are fast food voodoo magic is 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 whenever we travel abroad is to visit at least one american fast food franchise just to see how it's different through another cultural lens pizza hut in egypt practically fine dining the mickey row in greece do not recommend and in japan it was all about the kfc but we also tried krispy kreme which word of warning the creamy white donut is not what you'd expect it is not cream-filled and delightful but rather filled with mayonnaise and mushrooms with a dusting of onion powder on the outside so just be aware of that one before you take a big old bite out of it like i did anyway kfc we were shocked to see it on pretty much every street corner i mean i love their mashed potatoes as much as the next guy don't get me wrong but like does it really need to appear with a frequency to rival starbucks well you see kentucky fried chicken in japan have this incredible and long-standing relationship japan is the third biggest kfc market in the world behind only china and the us with over 1100 restaurants so why is kentucky fried chicken so big in such a small country in one word christmas see the most prevalent religions in japan are shintoism and buddhism which means that christmas traditions as we understand them have been slower to catch on in japan than a lot of other countries but in 1970 takeshi okawara the manager of the first kfc in japan sought to change all that he started promoting fried chicken party barrels as a fun substitute for the traditional american turkey christmas dinner which apparently they think is a thing i don't know about you but i've never had a traditional christmas turkey i think most of our christmas meals at this point entail like soggy pierogies that have been left in a reheating tin for a bit too long and uh maybe if we're lucky like half honey baked ham provided we found the 10 off coupon that they put in like the paper anyway it started to catch on so in 1974 kfc came out with a long-running japanese ad campaign to encourage people to quote eat kentucky for christmas [Music] today roughly five percent of kfc japan's annual sales occur on or immediately around christmas eve and in the wake of the wildly successful kentucky christmas campaign life-sized statues of colonel sanders became fixtures in front of kfc's across the country often getting dressed up in santa suits for the holidays they also happen to get dressed up for all sorts of other reasons because japan is awesome but when they're not wearing fun outfits are peddling the cheetah which was literally pizza on a crust of fried chicken that we tried when we were over there again would not recommend apparently these statues are also placing curses on japan's national athletes you heard that right today we're playing ghostbusters as we look into the mysterious curse of colonel sanders to see if the colonel lives on to haunt the people of japan according to numerous english language sources i found the story goes a little something like this japan's nippon professional baseball organization consists of 12 teams six in the central league and six in the pacific league since 1950 the japan series has pitted the central league winner against the pacific league winner in a best of seven game series to determine the overall npb champion so basically their equivalent of the world series from 1950 through 1984 the central league's hunch in tigers failed to win the japan series once so when 1985 rolled around and the tigers started to put in a really really good season their long-deprived fans were understandably excited on october 16th 1985 the tigers finally managed to win their first central league title in 21 years and the fans go berserk and when the tigers then proceeded to win the japan series for the first time ever a couple weeks later on november 2nd the fans really go berserk following the tigers japan series victory fans take to the streets in celebration a crowd gathers at the ebisu bridge and they start singing cheer songs for each player in the tiger starting lineup by the way during that japan trip steph and i went to a baseball game and it was straight up the best sporting event i've been to in my life everyone just eats hot octopus udon and cheers the entire time japanese fans are incredible and they are nuts about their cheer songs [Applause] so anyway back on this bridge at the culmination of every player's cheer song a fan in the crowd who looked similar to that player jumps off the bridge into the water below so dive after dive into the water goes off without a hitch until they hit a certain player on the team randy bass an american player in japan who looks a little something like this go figure the crowd didn't exactly have an abundance of bearded caucasian dudes to choose from so they had to get creative it didn't take long to find their randy bass doppelganger standing in front of a nearby kentucky fried chicken restaurant people who look like the members of the team had to jump off the bridge they couldn't find anyone who looked like a gaijin randy bass the bearded american batsman so they nicked the colonel from outside of kfc and they chucked him off a bridge that's right one of the colonel sanders statues got tossed off the bridge as part of the fan's revelry and that's when an interesting thing happened the defending champion tigers immediately returned to their losing streak in fact they proceeded to place dead last in the central league 10 of the next 16 seasons today 35 years later the tigers still haven't won a second title and it's not looking like they'll pull it off this season either now if you're familiar with baseball you know that notorious losing streaks and supernatural curses go together like peanuts and cracker jack or like cheer songs in udon if you're watching in japan the boston red sox who went nearly a century without a world series title had the curse of the bambino the chicago cubs who also had a ridiculously long title drought had the curse of the billy goat and after the hanchin tigers fell shy of the japan series title decade after decade the legend of the colonel sanders statue grew into a full-blown baseball curse in its 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 it didn't break the curse the tigers are still losing some 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 made whole yet again so that is the story friends but what i really want to figure out today is whether there's any validity to it remember unlike a lot of other fast food mascots colonel sanders was a real life human being with an actual biography it's not like ronald mcdonald would somehow be able to put a curse upon you from beyond the grave because he never lived but colonel sanders did so was he the type of person who would actually hold a grudge or retaliate over 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 get started let's look at the man behind the linen suit shall we harlan sanders was born in 1890 in henryville indiana he learned to cook at an early age because his dad passed away and his mom needed the help his mother eventually remarried but harland wasn't a fan of his new step-dad so he ran away at the age of 13 and entered the workforce the list of unglamorous jobs that harland had over the next three decades is long and fascinating including railroad worker country lawyer steamboat ferry operator tire salesman and service station manager he had a habit of getting into fist fights which forced him to find new employment more than once at the age of 40 harland was broke so he had to start over in corbin kentucky where he was running a gas station in order to boost his sales he also started to sell fried chicken to the motorists who stopped by the chicken was a huge hit so harlan started a restaurant and figured out that he could fry chickens far more efficiently by using a pressure cooker shortly thereafter harland was bestowed the honorary title of kentucky colonel by the governor for his contributions to the community both culinary and otherwise but life wasn't through being hard on the newly deemed colonel sanders a fire burned his old restaurant to the ground and then a new interstate was built which bypassed his rebuilt one and as any parent who's been forced to watch the movie cars 974 times can tell you being bypassed by an interstate is bad for business and to make matters even worse sanders lost the honorary title of colonel though it would eventually be reinstated at the age of 62 colonel sanders found himself broke again but he kept on trying going around restaurant to restaurant to sell the one thing he had left his recipe asking that if restaurants used it they give a portion of the proceeds back to him and thus the first kentucky fried chicken franchise was established in salt lake city utah and the rest is history at an age when many people would have retired colonel sanders at long last had finally found his success so was colonel sanders the type of guy to cast a curse from beyond the grave heck yes this was a man who didn't back down from confrontation and settled scores on the spot when a cook at a diner refused to get his order right the nearly 70 year old colonel sanders threw his eggs at the cook's face and fended him off with a stool and if undercooked eggs are enough to bring colonel sanders to blows it's not hard to imagine how vandalism to his statue might set him off besides being tossed off a bridge could have simply been the straw that broke the camel's back success didn't come easily or quickly to colonel sanders we shouldn't overlook the fact that he was a painstakingly self-made man who carefully crafted his trademark white linen suit and string thai outfit while he was alive not sure he would have been entirely pleased to see his statues getting dressed up as maids and pantsless santas and everything in between and watching his statue get tossed off a bridge might have been especially painful given the fact that he himself nearly died when falling off a bridge as a young man so yeah i'd say the curse of the colonel story is certainly plausible but now let's look at the facts is there any other way to explain the hanchin tiger's remarkable title drought maybe things that aren't so supernatural for one thing there's the fact that the tigers have only gone 35 years without a title certainly it's a long time and yes the streak is still active so it's bound to grow longer but the thing is the han shin tigers don't even have the longest streak in their own league the hiroshima toyo carp who haven't been japan series champion since 1984 have an even longer active title drought than the tigers do and they didn't launch a beloved fast food mascot into a river at least as far as i know so if any japanese baseball teams have the right to blame their woes on supernatural interference it's the carp which incidentally was the team that stephanie and i saw play in japan like i said their fans were absolutely incredible and super supportive so yeah maybe a curse is to blame when it comes to the carp the tigers also have the misfortune of sharing the central league with the giants who are basically the new york yankees of japanese baseball meaning that they're a powerhouse team that's just so easy to root against quote it has also long been alleged that the giants rely on underhanded tactics to recruit the best players involving bribes to players and amateur coaches or using their influence on the governing 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 league play end quote and that abundance of success in league play is a major reason why the tigers have only advanced out of their league and into the japan series three times since 1985. so maybe we don't really need to turn to the supernatural in order to explain the tigers losing streak after all but to be as thorough as possible i looked into some japanese language sources to see if i could find any more nuggets of info and what i found wasn't a nugget it was a whole 13-piece finger-licking good bucket of information the first japanese language source i looked at basically told the story i was familiar with hanshin tiger fans celebrate the victory toss colonel sanders statue into the canal and their team promptly goes down the tube but the difference in the japanese story was the date that this all happened to this point all of the english language sources on this topic had either suggested or outright stated that the statue was thrown into the canal on november 2nd the day that the tigers won the series but this japanese language source explicitly placed the event on october 16th and this led me to more and more sources that referenced that october date why is that important because it would mean that the statue wasn't thrown off ivasu bridge during the japan series celebration it was thrown off the bridge prior to it when fans were celebrating clinching the central league pennant which means that the hanchin tigers won their one and only japan series championship immediately after the colonel sanders statue was hurled from the bridge here's an interview with a reporter from the hanshin tigers english news that explains how a false version of the story has been circulating english language sources for decades i think most of the english stories that are out there either in video or written form are taken from each other i mean they're all taken from english versions that were previously written and as i look back in japanese kind of accounts of the story i noticed that the english version has a fatal flaw in it so a single detail in the story got lost in translation and the curse of the colonel spun out into a fully blown urban legend as a result theorists this totally wrecks the curse of the kernel as we know it if the colonel indeed cursed the tigers from beyond the grave it didn't work because the 1985 tigers went ahead and won a title anyway just a couple of weeks after he was tossed into the river but this also gets my theory wheels a turn and friends cause think of it this way for 35 years the honchen tigers never won the japan series then in 1985 their fans threw a colonel sanders statue off a bridge and the tigers promptly win the series for the first time in history the fans then stopped throwing colonel sanders statues off of bridges and the haunting tigers returned to their losing ways for another 35 plus years here's what i'm getting at friends what if gleefully hurling that colonel sanders statue off the bridge actually boosted the tiger's performance for a short period of time what if colonel sanders a symbol of persevering after decades and decades of struggle before hitting it big actually has a soft spot for underdogs like the honshin tigers what if the so-called curse of the colonel was actually the lucky of kentucky all along i can hear you calling me and saying in the comments and yeah maybe i am a baseball curse is crazy territory to be theorizing about i'll give you that but i'm just following the facts here people so here's my pitch to the haunch and tiger fans out there if you're the type of fan who subscribes to nutty baseball curses and superstitions you have nothing to lose by testing this one out as we speak the 2020 honshin tigers are wasting away in the middle of the central division standings now i'm not supporting vandalism maybe you should just make your own colonel sanders effigy as opposed to stealing one and i'm not supporting littering either maybe make an effigy that floats and can be retrieved easily and safely from the water but we need to see what happens to the tigers when fans toss another colonel sanders statue off 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 also and i cannot stress this enough we need it done in a very cool and very legal way because your internet friend matpat doesn't need a lawsuit on his hands all matpat needs is some solid data that helps prove or disprove that the curse of the colonel or should i say the lucky kentucky is not only legit but it's the most wholesome positive curse in all of baseball but hey that's just a theory a food theory you can't see me but i'm actually doing the hand motions the really sweet japanese fans next to us taught us that cheer because it's the one that they do in between every bat oh so much fun so much fun i'm telling you if you ever have the chance to go to a japanese baseball game absolutely do it it is unlike anything you will ever see before it is the best

Channel: The Food Theorists

Views: 2,662,456

Rating: 4.9254322 out of 5

Keywords: kfc, colonel sanders, fast food, kentucky fried chicken, curse of the colonel, kfc curse, kfc commercial, kfc donut sandwich, kfc dating sim, kfc chicken, kfc mukban, kfc song, kfc chicken recipe, chicken, fried chicken, fried chicken recipe, chicken recipe, kfc chicken sandwich, kfc baseball, colonel sanders baseball, recipe, food theory, food theorists, matpat, game theory, game theorists, film theory, film theorists, eat the menu, rosanna pansino, binging with babish

Id: pkzQvXYa1ec

Length: 16min 30sec (990 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 10 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/toadeightyfive]

As a big fan of both baseball and MatPat, I just wanna thank him for not only making this episode, but for finally getting permission to use the real names and uniform colors of MLB and NPB teams.

Hearing about the purple-colored "Oakland Athletic Individuals" during the Moneyball/Team Fight Tactics episode was vexing lmao.