When Buffy the Vampire Slayer actress Sarah Michelle Gellar was just 5 years old, she starred in a Burger King commercial. In the commercial, she compared Burger King’s hamburgers to those of McDonald’s. Executives under the Golden Arches were so inflamed that they sued Burger King, ad agency J. Walter Thompson, and also named Gellar in the lawsuit. Gellar was, in fact, the first person to say a competitor’s name in a commercial. Instead of using innuendos to shade its competition, Burger King took direct aim at its rival by using its name. McDonald’s lawsuit charged that the commercial was “false, deceptive, disparaging, unfair, and misleading.” The lawsuit was later settled and the ads were subsequently removed. As part of the settlement, Gellar was banned from McDonald’s for life. The now 45-year-old said it doesn’t bother her now, but as a 5-year-old it was devastating. “It was tough because when you’re a little kid, McDonald’s is where all your friends have their birthday parties, so I missed out on a lot of apple pies.” To make matters worse, Gellar couldn’t even eat the food she advertised in the Burger King commercials. “What I learned is that when they make the burgers for commercials, they glue each seed on it to make it look all perfect and beautiful, and then they shellac it, and then they paint it.” As we all know, not everything you see on TV is real.
