Have you heard about the Yumbo? Everyone’s talking about the Yumbo. It’s back. The Yumbo is back. It had gone away, allegedly, and now it’s back. The punters are going absolutely wild for the Yumbo. The Yumbo, which is back.
In celebrating its 50th birthday, Hungry Jack’s has resurrected a menu item that people who were alive in the 1970s swear is real and true, but I am wholesale convinced is an elaborate prank: The Yumbo. A real thing that is sold under that specific name.
Per all promotional material, the item consists of one slice of standard burger cheese, five slices of ham – served hot – all sandwiched between a standard sesame seed burger bun.
There is no sauce to lubricate each bite. It simply exists as a ham delivery system upon which bread and cheese are but mere passengers on a deeply confusing ride.
The Yumbo is a dish that raises far more questions than it answers. Chiefly: What the fuck?
What is it? How does one classify or define the Yumbo?
The ham is served hot, yet it lacks the necessary contact heat to qualify as a toastie.
It contains no centralised burger structure, and thus cannot be defined as such.
But the clearly defined top and bottom halves of its bready vessel preclude it from venturing into sandwich territory.
At best it can be argued that it orbits the vague vicinity of being a standard roll, but the breading falls largely on the “bun” side of the ledger, far removed from its crusty roll brethren.
the yumbo beckons pic.twitter.com/7dunqPygtJ
— jake (@piss_river_fc) April 21, 2021
It is a genre of food unto itself. Hungry Jack’s, doing the seemingly impossible, has created an entirely new culinary category with just three ingredients.
It is proportionately unproportionate: There is no world in which any one dish should carry with it five entire slices of ham. And yet why shouldn’t the Yumbo? What more perfect ham number is there, other than five?
There are two absolute, hard truths to the Yumbo. The first is that it does not exist. It cannot possibly exist.
Though Hungry Jack’s, and HJ aficionados, swear to its past existence, I refuse to believe it. It is a prank. A long con. A large scale project of Mandela Effecting a mass population into believing such a thing could’ve possibly existed in the 1970s. It can’t have. There is no world in which that is true. The Yumbo drips with such blinding shitposting vigour that it could only have been invented about three weeks ago.
The second absolute truth, is that it contains a very powerful dark energy. It thrums with it. It is a deeply powerful allure that I cannot shake.
I cannot stop thinking about the Yumbo. I have been lying awake at night with circles of limp, hot ham dancing around my brain. It consumes me, as I wish to consume it.
No part of the Yumbo should be good. And yet I cannot stop thinking about eating one.
And if that’s how Hungry Jack’s wishes to celebrate its 50th birthday, then mission accomplished.
I am but a mere quivering wreck, prostrating myself at the feet of Jack, begging him to give me his hot ham.
I am nothing, without the Yumbo.
The Burger King has won.
