What’s All the Hype About the ‘Travis Scott Meal’ at McDonald’s? Vulture Investigates.

 Here’s the thing about the Travis Scott Meal, now at participating McDonaldses near you: It’s not just a Quarter Pounder combo with Sprite. Oh no. It’s an “unprecedented collaborative partnership across food, fashion, and community efforts, launching with [Scott’s] signature order on menus across the U.S.,” according to the press release. It just looks, smells, tastes, and costs the same as a Quarter Pounder combo with Sprite. That’s the genius behind the success of both McDonald’s and Travis Scott: They’re masters of branding. Maybe that’s why when I first heard Scott’s latest collab would be with a fast-food chain, my reactions were:

• That makes sense.
• I would like very much to engage with that culture, please.

There’s something very ’90s-nostalgic about McDonald’s releasing a celebrity-themed tie-in meal; it’s the sort of can’t-miss fast-food event the company used to pull with Michael Jordan or Batman. The kind that would come with souvenir collectible glasses, expanding the Happy Meal strategy to target the kinds of adults who … enjoy things like souvenir collectible glasses. It’s the exact right vibe for Scott, who named Astroworld after a defunct Houston theme park, hitting the exact same sugar-crash ’90s-nostalgia dead-mall aesthetic pleasure center that eating McDonald’s does.

The ad for the Travis Scott Meal, which was released today, features Scott as a Happy Meal toy of himself showing off the combo, which he touts as his “same order since back in Houston.” This gesture toward authenticity (eat the very same thing Travis Scott eats!) wrapped within so many layers of artifice (a Happy Meal toy, in itself a miniature of a regular-degular toy, representing a rap artist promoting food from a brand that has become synonymous with processed and fake) is a real chef’s kiss, a super-playful way to drum up excitement for what is essentially the following:

• A Quarter Pounder with lettuce, pickles, onions, ketchup, mustard, cheese, and bacon
• Medium fries with a side of BBQ dipping sauce
• A medium Sprite