Hey now - remember that this was Taco Bell 2.0
The original versions didn’t even have seating inside. For a while before the synthwave redesign, it was all orange, brown, and tan inside.
Edit: Look at what they took from us! Taco Bell used to have toys and do their version of a Happy Meal. Enchiladas. Shrimp. Bangs. Olives. The $0.39 taco should only cost $1.20 with inflation!
We had a synthwave Taco Bell in my town for ages, until it finally got renovated about five years ago and now has the same stupid brown box corporate design as the rest of their current restaurants. In the process they also managed to completely fuck up the design of the cattle chute leading to and from the drive through so it’s a veritable slalom now, and apparently nobody can wedge their giant trucks and SUVs through without routinely hitting the sides. It’s a bad look all around. I can’t prove this conclusively, but it may just have been the last pink and teal Taco Bell left on Earth.
I liked the few remaining tan/brown spaces I was still able to encounter in the 90’s. in some countries they still have them, it’s so refreshing
Why did all commercials have annoying ass jingles back then?
The idea was to force your brain to identify a silly song with a business, which was the style at the time.
Ya know those cringe-ass Arby’s commercials? They’re the reason I won’t eat there.
Arby’s is the reason I won’t eat at Arby’s. Though, this is funny.
To get stuck in your head and be triggered at the slightest provocation. Whereby you think of the product being sold more.
The booths were extra wide to fit women’s shoulder pads.
I’ve been called a boomer quite a few times, and I don’t ever remember a Taco Bell looking like this.
Does this mean it is the internet kids who are wrong?
As a Xenial this taco bell look is peak 90s
Word, I must not have been inside one in ages because I could swear they still look like that lol
Just wait until people start popping out of the woodwork insisting that Wendy’s used to have a salad bar.
They totally did, though.
Sorry it’s been a minute, does it not still look like that?
last fat food joint I stepped into was very new age. I don’t go to a lot though
The typo that wasn’t.
well. looks I won’t be smashing my hands with a hammer today
They went back a little bit, the counters are similar but they all have those scrapes aluminum chairs now afaik
Everything is so fiscally optimized, it’s kind of gross, absolutely no character to just designing things to be part of an experience.
They do this because it offers corporate more flexibility when it comes to selling a place.
horseshoe theory
I miss the time where everything had a distinct identity. Shapes, colors, a bit of imagination…
The motto now seems to be sterile, monochrome, uniform design; nothing must stand out. Subway station? Moved from colorful place with art stuff on the walls to white, squarey area. Fast-food? two-colors, no decoration (except for advertisement collaboration of course). Store? Bland aisles full of items, no billboard, no nothing.
All logo are converging toward a single letter/shape with no feature. All UI must be full of empty space and devoid of lines/distinctive features, with components similar across everything. Gadgets and gizmo? Smooth, uniform, nothing extravagant.
No wonder every time anything with a bit of personality comes out it’s acclaimed to no end.
Yes. Can’t offend any race or creed or culture or dog or bird or alien or language or…
ALL GRAY!
This is all to make resale easier. Future adults will never be able to look at a building and say, “Hey, that bridal boutique used to be a Pizza Hut!”
McDonalds at Budapest’s West railway station before and after recent renovation
…a hospital waiting room?
wtf did they do!?
It’s supposed to make you hungry.
I’m angry at what was lost. Bring back the plants, the hanging lights, and just the normal tables that provided a single modicum of privacy in a train station.
We’re not cattle that need to be herded into a corner FFS
I’m ok with McDonald’s actively making their shops (I refuse to call them restaurants) less appealing. It’s not like eating their shitty, and now overpriced food is ever a good idea anyway.
It depends what McDonalds is to the area. For me it’s the one place open at 2am on a Friday night, where people from all walks of life (posh wedding party coming back from a long drive, pissed students, overworked deliveroo drivers taking a break) can sit down almost next to each other in the same area and order the same thing.
McDonalds has always been this great equalizing public square for me, rich or poor, black or white, local or migrant.
That first photo kind of encapsulates that feeling of it being a public space where people can eat and discuss topics at their leisure. The second one feels like that sense of restful decorum is lost.
I got food poisoning from them last week. Like i shit and puked myself from their chicken sandwich.
The plants looked too much like healthy vegetables.
for change
Maybe a hot take but i like that they removed the mini stairs. Looks like a tripping hazard when carrying your tray of food :/
That’s an American mind thinking, in Europe if you trip you stand back up and continue with your life
Yeah but ur food is gonna be on the floor.
Late to the party but I’ll chip in my anecdotal evidence of the local Hungry Jacks that looked like this up until circa 2021:
It was then fully renovated and my immediate reaction was just, what have they done… I don’t have a picture of that particular HJs post reno but they all literally look the same seldom floorplan, so here’s one with identical design language.
The old one almost felt like an American diner with the red glistening seats, the ceiling neons, the diamond tiled floors.
They also rotated 180* and had a spring return to center so it was fun to swing your legs back and forth in the air
Holy shit, thanks for the memory unlock and nostalgia hit
deleted by creator
Cheeseburgers eat THE ASS of people who sit on their faces and eat their family?
yeah it’s good
Ashes to ashes. Buns to buns.
Cheeseburger DP
For some of us, it’s our kink.
We had clearly defined enemies back then and they weren’t us.
The 80s & 90s had some wild style.
Look at what they took from us.
I understand that they stopped marketing fast food as fun and towards kids for a reason but damn do I miss 90s McDonald’s
Nothing like dragging your junk across those eyes over and over while eating your nuggets.
Barter and trade. I want your nuggets, here’s my nuggets.
No! You guys were always imperialist pigs
A yes, the Reagan era.
