KFC’s “Absolutely Revolting” New Marketing Gimmick Just Gave Me Nightmares: Sunscreen that Smells Like Fried Chicken

Sorry about your gag reflex and/or murdered appetite in advance. If you are reading this, it is because you know that headline is a trainwreck… and while you don’t want to gawk because you know deep down it’s going to be a horrifying sight you’ll never be able to unsee… well, call it human nature, but you just can’t seem to look away.

Yes, you read that right, by the way: extra crispy fried chicken-scented sunscreen… Puts a gross, uncomfortable new twist on the adjective “tasty” now, doesn’t it?

I mean, who willingly would want to smear a sunscreen lotion on themselves that smells like KFC’s cheap fried chicken and then “bake” themselves in the sun? Sounds like the plot of a low-budget torture movie where the person is tied up first in a plan that ends with them getting left in the wild to be eaten by starving bears.

When you have to pay someone to try and make something utterly gross seem “cool,” it looks like…

In an effort to generate buzz around its extra crispy fried chicken, and under the completely ill-informed belief that any press is good press (hint: actually it’s not), KFC thought it wouldn’t be vomit-inducing at all to hand out a product for people to smear on themselves that supposedly smells like KFC extra crispy fried chicken, apparently in a psychologically traumatic plot to make their customers want to eat… themselves?

Some 3,000 bottles were sent out to people who are probably walking around under one of those perpetual rain clouds now wondering what they could have possible done in a past life to deserve the level of sadistic punishment they are receiving in this one.

KFC claims “Harmful ultraviolet rays bounce off your skin while the lovely fragrance rays penetrate it to give you a healthy chicken aroma,” while it confidently warns, “Do not eat this product. Even though this product smells delicious, it is not delicious.”

“Lovely fragrance rays penetrate”…?

Ew. No. That’s just all kinds of wrong, and that’s before we even consider what kind of dangerous chemicals that bottle is likely filled with.

“Don’t eat this product?”

Ew. Ew. Ew ew ew. Just no.

Are those fried chicken skin chunks in the lotion smeared on the skin surface there or…?
This illustration actually makes it so much worse than just a written description.

Assuming the sunscreen really does “smell delicious” (which it reportedly doesn’t, but more on that in a second), why would they want their customers to essentially cannibalize themselves? It just sends all kinds of the wrong message in every possible direction to confuse these two things together. If some marketing group contracted by KFC sat around somewhere getting high eating chicken and came up with this idea, they were obviously smoking the wrong stuff…

Or zombies.

In fact, reviewers of the product claim it doesn’t smell “delicious” or even like fried chicken at all.

Ready for this? Instead, the extra crispy fried chicken-scented sunscreen has been likened by reviewers to “urine” or “a baby’s diaper”… thus making no one want to eat KFC extra crispy fried chicken pretty much ever again.

They should’ve realized what a bad idea this was when the Crispy Chicken Yankee Candle bombed…

Again, this is the absolute opposite of delicious and nothing about it should give anyone a reason to want to buy fried chicken, although it might make people invest in a few rounds of therapy. For the PTSD.

In fact, People magazine declared it was “absolutely revolting” and managed to offer “the worst parts of fried chicken smell”.

Wow. Somehow, this magically did manage to get worse. I really didn’t think that was even physically possible a few sentences in.

The sad part is, I assumed it would be “absolutely revolting” immediately just from the headline alone. I can’t imagine having to actually smell this or put it anywhere near by skin or the sun even just to review it.

The reactions are what you would expect, including “Why is this a thing?”

@kfc WHY IS THIS A THING ?????

— Ryan (@RyanBS98) August 22, 2016

and “Go Away, Satan”.

@kfc pic.twitter.com/8DaStTrjC1

— Madison (@BaddieLambily) August 22, 2016

And who could forget finding out about this sunscreen, then immediately just wishing 2016 would end already:

@kfc I can't…2016 just hurry up and be gone.

— Rhi (@RhiannFrancis) August 23, 2016

One time I saw a plate of half-eaten fried chicken someone tenderly left laying around on the ground in a gas station parking lot for several hours in the summer sun. This is kind of like that, except if someone were to pick up the road chicken and smear it all over themselves.

So, in summation, it appears to be the kind of thing that smells truly horrible, everyone knows it smells truly horrible, but once you’ve smelled it, like the Bog of Eternal Stench you still pass it around to try and make someone else smell it too, just so you aren’t the only one walking around scarred by the nose-raping knowledge of just how bad this stuff truly is.

As if we all needed another reason to never eat at KFC ever again.