A Tale Of Two Hugos

How ’bout it; do you have a Hugo thirst?

That is McDonald’s new 42-ounce marketing masterpiece the “Hugo”.

Do you remember the Morgan Spurlock documentary, “Super Size Me”? You know, the one where the guy eats nothing but McDonalds for a month and gets deathly ill. Well, after that movie and the negative public opinion it generated, McDonald’s made an effort to offer healthy choices. They even eliminated the Super Size menu. Since then, McDonalds stock has quadrupled.

That move would lead you to believe that the decision makers at McDonalds are pretty smart people. The new Hugo idea seems pretty goofy to me.

I have nothing against really big drinks or the people that drink them. I don’t buy them because they don’t fit in the cup holder and they get warm before I’m finished drinking. Nor, do I have anything against the name Hugo. It isn’t a name that people choose to give their kids anymore. I think that I have only known one person named Hugo in my life. He was an old man when I was a kid.

Maybe, McDonalds named the drink Hugo because, they think it sounds funny or, edgy. Or, maybe they like the play on words because the drink is HUGE; insanely clever.

But for me, and I may be the only one that thinks this way, when I hear the name Hugo; I think of this guy.

The parrot, by the way, is just one of the reasons that Hugo Chavez makes me think of the Latin American dictator in the Alan Arkin-Peter Falk movie “The In Laws”.

Don’t call Hugo Chavez a dictator though, at least while you are on vacation in Venezuela. Chavez has ordered his henchmen to deport any foreigners that are critical of his government.

According to the AP, Chavez made this hilariously ironic statement.

“How long are we going to allow a person _ from any country in the world _ to come to our own house to say there’s a dictatorship here, that the president is a tyrant, and nobody does anything about it?” Chavez asked during his weekly television and radio program.

How does a guy like that get his own T.V. show? Oh yeah, he forcibly took control of all the T.V. stations (I suppose the parrot couldn’t hurt either).

So, next time you are in the mood for BIG REFRESHMENT or BIG TYRANNY, go out and get yourself a HUGO.