Boyz II Men—the R&B group whose songs underscored so many teenage longings and untimely deaths—will lend some of that romance and emotional heft to the moving reunion of Wendy’s hamburgers with buns made out of pretzel bread. Ad Age reports that the fast-food chain is mounting a campaign to announce the return of its popular Pretzel Bun, which adds the salty heft of a pretzel to its burgers, using hit balladeers of the early ’90s, when music had its own greasy sheen. The first of these is the below spot starring Wendy’s chipper spokesperson “Red,” as she takes a break from being strangely aggressive about other people’s lunches to sing a pretzel bun-themed take on Mr. Big’s 1991 hit “To Be With You.”
The new, pretzel bun-related lyrics are sourced from the Wendy’s hashtag #PretzelLoveSongs, where people who voluntarily follow a fast-food corporation so they can chat with its social media team submitted tweets about how much they like the pretzel bun. Those tweets were then adapted into a music video ad that was released online in an attempt to go viral, in a sentence that you could go ahead and put into a box labeled “2014,” then bury in the woods.
Some of those #PretzelLoveSongs will also be sung by Boyz II Men on bended, branded knee at a Times Square concert on July 9, followed by their doing so in a Wendy’s commercial. In discussing why they’d turned to the group, the company’s chief marketing officer said the idea was to “capitalize on some ’80s and early ’90s nostalgia”—wistfully evoking a time when Boyz II Men soundtracked the similarly knotty twists of your blushing youth, like that time you tried to fuck a pretzel. It’ll also remind you of your cousin’s funeral, and how sad it is he went before Wendy’s could bring back the pretzel bun. #PretzelAtTheCrossroads
The Boyz II Men II Pretzels campaign will also be accompanied by a “Hispanic portion” that makes use of singer Jon Secada, because Selena is dead.