Always Hot. Always Fresh.
The 50-Foot Whatever is rampaging across town, bringing death and destruction. Suddenly, it sees a billboard, an advertisement, or a plastic decoration that depicts some kind of food. Without a second thought, the monster picks it up and proceeds to eat it, thinking it is actual food. For an added bonus, the sign will effectively be actual food. Too many cartoons to mention have had coffee shops with a giant mug and donut on the top, only to have a nearby giant dunk the donut in the mug with a brown splash.
A shop that is Shaped Like What It Sells is liable to fall victim to this trope. Same for any vehicle that's shaped like food.
Has nothing to do with Chewing the Scenery, though the two can overlap.
Examples:
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Advertising
- Dr. Pepper Briefly did an ad campaign tying into The Return of Godzilla, in which Godzilla's rampage is brought to an end after he drinks the contents of a giant soda can on a billboard (which Monster Island Buddies Pointed out should actually be full of rain water).
- It also had a sequel, with Godzilla romance a female kaiju with a giant can of Diet Dr. Pepper.
- An old Lunchables commercial
featured a kid doing this to a big hot dog in an Imagine Spot for their Mega Pack.
- A Coca-Cola commercial set during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade had giant balloons of Underdog and Stewie fight each other in pursuit of a balloon shaped like a Coca-Cola bottle, only for the bottle to be claimed by a Charlie Brown balloon.
- The commercial for the McDonald's Happy Meals based on Monsters vs. Aliens had Insectosaurus prepare to eat the Golden Arches sign.
Comic Books
- A Fantastic Four/Iron Man crossover comic Big in Japan had a 50-Foot Whatever make Iron Man a sandwich, thinking he was actually an ally from way back when. The sandwich he made? It was two walls, a tanker truck, and a radio tower needle thing.
- In The Simpsons/Futurama crossover, a giant version of Homer is rampaging around New New York City. The heroes manage to distract it with an image of Marge holding a steak broadcasted on that giant TV screen.
Lisa: That screen sure is realistic.
- In the first issue of the Bongo Simpsons comic, Homer grows to giant size due to Mr. Burns' experiment; he eventually eats a donut store's giant donut sign.
- Garfield
- In this strip, he leaped at a sign on a fish stand that was shaped like a fish, and somehow reduced it to a large fishbone.
- In another, he mistakes a hot dog truck for a giant hot dog. He feels rather silly when it proves inedible but then decides to have "dessert" by doing the same thing to an ice cream truck.
- In this strip
Films — Animated
- At the end of Fun and Fancy Free, Wille the Giant wanders about Hollywood looking for Mickey Mouse. After lifting the roof of the famous Brown Derby restaurant to look inside, he takes to wearing the Derby!
- In Shrek 2, the giant gingerbread man stops to drink coffee from the cup at the top of a Farbucks coffee shop. The customers inside the shop run away screaming in terror... across the street, into another Farbucks. But, to Mongo's irritation, there is no coffee in the giant cup.
Films — Live-Action
- In Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, they attempt to distract the giant Adam with an ice cream truck topped with a huge ice cream prop. He yanks it off and takes a bite out of it. Later, he yanks the guitar off the Hard Rock Cafe and tries to play it.
- The Muppet Movie had a gag with a custard pie billboard containing an actual giant pie. When the heroes' car accidentally crashes into it, the pie goes flying into the windshield of pursuing villain Doc Hopper's car. As he rants over the failure of his latest attempt to catch Kermit, his driver and Minion with an F in Evil Max enjoys a taste of pie.
Live-Action TV
- Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger / Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers features the Green Ranger/Dragon Ranger's DragonZord/DragonCeaser picking up a smokestack (which looks like a candy-cane) and biting into it. Every single time it's summoned for evil (though one time it was an impostor).
- A famous episode of Leave It to Beaver has Whitey dare Beaver to climb up into a 3-D soup billboard to see if there was actual soup in the bowl. (The scene was later duplicated in The Film of the Series.)
Western Animation
- Parodied in the Johnny Bravo episode "Jumbo Johnny", where the giant-sized Johnny comes across a billboard depicting a hot, sexy lady and proceeds to flirt with it.
- Futurama
- In an episode where Zoidberg's people invade and conquer Earth, the invaders end up building a gigantic walking crab-shaped robot/palace. To demonstrate its power, the robot first goes and destroys the hat-shaped billboard for Acme Collapsible Hats, by collapsing it. Then it destroys the Acme Accordion sign by squeezing it together. Then it tries to break the Acme Unbreakable Comb billboard. It tries again. It tries a third time. Then it finally just pushes the sign over and moves on.
- Also played with in the first "Anthology of Interest" episode. When Bender is rampaging through the city, he finds a Kentucky Slims factory, yanking one of the large smokestacks off and smoking it as if it were an actual giant cigarette.
- Just how many times has that giant donut outside the Lard Lad been used for this gag on The Simpsons?
- In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Sleepy Time", Plankton, dreaming he's a rampaging giant, picks up the Krusty Krab sign and licks it like a lollipop.
- The VeggieTales episode "Larry-Boy and the Fib from Outer Space" has a couple instances of the giant-sized Fib playing with restaurant signs, including an odd one that features a cow on a hamster wheel that goes rolling down the street.
- In a Garfield and Friends episode where Garfield gets giant, he eats a hot dog-shaped hot dog stand.
- In the DuckTales (1987) episode "Scrooge's Pet," the main characters end up in Scandinavia right at the time when a giant wave of lemmings stampede through the town, eating everything on their way. They attack not only food and hay but a billboard depicting farmers with cheese, gnawing all the cheese part away.
- The giant in the Classic Disney Short "Brave Little Tailor" pulls an entire well out of the ground and drinks from it, then rolls up a haystack and smokes it like a cigarette, lighting it with a stove.
- While it didn't involve a 50-foot Whatever, the ALF animated episode "Phantom Pilot" did feature a giant donut sign that was mechanically dunked into a giant coffee cup — Gordon tricked Larson Petty into flying his ship into it and getting stuck in the hole. And yes, the cup that the donut (and ship with Petty in it) was dunked into was full of coffee.
- A Jimmy Two-Shoes episode had several missiles being fired. One of them hit a billboard with a pig, turning it into a ham.
- In the Kim Possible episode "Partners", Dr. Drakken and DNAmy have teamed up to create a giant lizard that attacks Middleton. In short order, the lizard chomps down on the giant taco sign at Bueno Nacho, knocks a donut store's oversized donut into the giant coffee cup at a coffee shop, and bites on a giant neon pizza slice. Drakken and Amy are soon caged by a gigantic box of french fries from a burger stand.
- Another episode, "Grand Size Me", has a hulking, hungry-for-junk-food Ron take a bite out a giant donut sign, knock it over in a fit of rage when he discovers it's fake and then chase it down when it rolls away.
- The Phineas and Ferb episode "The Lizard Whisperer" has Steve, a giant chameleon with a penchant for mushrooms, rampaging through town. Steve notices Doofenshmirtz's Amplifinator that the latter uses to broadcast his music to aliens, which conveniently is shaped like a giant mushroom, so he walks up to it, rips it off the Doofenshmirtz building, and eats it, much to Doofenshmirtz's chagrin.
- In one episode of Rugrats, Tommy imagines himself as Reptar. After knocking over a cookie factory and finding "nothing but crumbs," he looks up and sees a giant, Reptar-sized cookie: the moon.
- The Pink Panther: The short "Pink Outs" a series of 12 PP blackout sketches, has a hungry Pink folding in the background several times until it is bite size. He sprinkles salt on it and eats it. It suddenly springs back open within him until the scene is nothing but a solid pink.
- Total Drama: In the season 2 premiere, Owen eats the prop food because he mistook it for real food. The challenge was actually about finding the key to the trailers, but Owen swallows it and coughs it out, making him win the challenge.
- In the Transformers: Rescue Bots episode "All Spark Day", CeCe Greene becomes gigantic and causes havoc in Griffin Rock. At one point, she attempts to eat a giant donut sign, only to spit out the bite she's taken and exclaim "Naughty donut!"
- Towards the end of the What A Cartoon! Show Dino short "The Great Egg-scape", the now-giant baby Thunderbuttosaurus that Dino found himself the unwitting caretaker of climbs a building and chows down on a billboard for Bronto-Burgers. Making it all the more impressive is, since this is the world of The Flintstones, the billboard is a slab of solid rock.
