YMMV / Mr. Delicious

• Cult Classic: Thanks to the Vlogbrothers, Mr. Delicious has found a small following composed of Gen Xers and Millennials that found his nihilistic humor charming and in-tune with the early-2020s social climate they were experiencing.
• Misblamed: Bill Underhill, the Rax CEO who oversaw the Mr. Delicious campaign, says that, outside of a few franchisees, he didn't hear a whole lot of objections to Mr. Delicious at the time. It was just that the company was in such horrible shape all around, so its bankruptcy can't be solely pinned on Mr. D.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: In the minidoc, the president of Rax says this:
  "Mr. Delicious is a controversial character, but controversy attracts attention. And for every bad reaction we get for Mr. Delicious, we get hundreds of positive ones."
• The Scrappy: The Mr. Delicious commercials were something Rax hoped would save their failing restaurants. However, their nihilistic brand of humor, meant to appeal to Gen X, ended up falling flat to their primarily baby boomer customer base (perhaps it hit too close to home), and the chain went bankrupt three months after Mr. D's introduction.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Mr. Delicious was so apathetic from his failing marriage, miserable job, and unhappy personal life that he didn't even seem to care if people ate at Rax or not, which goes a long way toward explaining why the campaign failed.
• Values Resonance: See the Cult Classic entry above. Some Gen Xers, Millennials, and older Zoomers actually thought Mr. D's nihilistic humor was pretty funny and similar to the Black Comedy jokes and memes that were popular in the late 2010s to early 2020s with some arguing that the advertising campaign was ahead of its time and if it ran three decades later, it would have probably been more successful than it was in the early 90s.

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