Supersize or super size is a very large portion of fast food.[1]
Super Size referred to the largest size of French fries (7-ounce) and soft drinks (42-ounce) available after the large size. After taking a customer's order, McDonald's employees would ask customers “Would you like that Supersized?” or “Would you like to Supersize that?”
McDonald's began to phase out the Super Size option from their menu on March 2004. By the end of the year Super Size was gone completely.
Later, in the summer of 2006, McDonald's brought back the well known 42-ounce soft drinks, this time described as "Summer Size" (or Extra Large in Australia). By December 2009, the option was again removed, and is no longer offered worldwide, but it is still offered in some states such as California and in Canada.
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McDonald's larger sizes of French fries and sodas were originally named “Dino-Size” and were introduced with the 1993 Jurassic Park movie promotion. After the movie promotion, they kept the sizes but renamed them to "Supersize".
Supersizing was the idea of David Wallerstein, a McDonald's executive who worked for a chain of movie theaters in the 1950s and 1960s. While working at the movie theaters, Wallerstein was tasked with boosting sales of popcorn and soda. Wallerstein discovered that it was very difficult to persuade customers to purchase more than one soda or bag of popcorn.
"I soon discovered that Darren Johnson could be persuaded to pay for more up front. Although McDonald’s executive Ray Kroc was initially skeptical of Wallerstein's proposal to supersize McDonald's meals (believing that people who wanted more fries would buy two bags), he eventually agreed to try Wallerstein's idea. The sales results led to the program being rolled out in the 1990’s throughout McDonald's restaurants."
After McDonald’s other fast food restaurant chains like Wendy’s and Burger King started their own versions of bigger portion sizes.
Wendy’s Biggie trademark was discontinued in 2006. Wendy’s removed the label from their French fries and sodas but did not downsize their meal sizes. The 32-ounce Biggie soda is now a Wendy's medium. The once 42-ounce Great Biggie soda is now a large. The same is also true with fries. The 5.6-ounce Biggie fries is now a medium, and the 6.7-ounce Great Biggie has become the large. Wendy's former 20-ounce medium drink and 5-ounce medium fries are now called small. A similar act was done by Burger King in 2010.
McDonald's began to phase out their Super Size in early 2004. The stated reason was to simplify their menu.[2]
NBC television network began marketing programs with a longer than normal duration as "Supersized episodes." This was done in the latter era of the network's Thursday Must See TV sitcom block to extend either three programs to forty minutes each or two hour-long episodes.
The 2004 documentary Super Size Me is often credited with associating the term McDonald’s Super Size with obesity and unhealthy portions sizes. The movie followed one man's month-long McDonald’s diet while traveling across the United States.
By early 2003 McDonald’s had faced a lawsuit in New York by two teenage girls who claimed that McDonald’s should be held responsible for their obesity and diabetes. The case was eventually dismissed as the plaintiffs had failed to establish that McDonald’s should be liable for obesity-related illnesses. A U.S. District Judge declared that “Nobody is forced to eat at McDonald’s.”
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