"Four Smash!"
"Fantastic Four: Taco Bell Exclusive Collector Edition" is a comic from around 2009 that was distributed with "kid's meals" at Taco Bell, apparently one of four editions featuring Marvel Super-Heroes and distributed by Taco Bell. A small notice on the lower right of the cover proclaims "Not For Resale", and yet I bought this for fifty cents out of the bins at a local comic store. Hopefully I am not getting into trouble for the crime of trading money for a promotional comic.
Anyway, what goes on in here? This is not a full sized comic, with the main story measuring in at 11 pages. It is a bog standard Fantastic Four story, and is set in an indeterminate time in the Fantastic Four's long continuity. Reed and Susan are eating an anniversary dinner, when a feuding and rough-housing Thing and Human Torch interrupt them. Just as recriminations are about to abound from their ruined dinner, the Hulk attacks, and after futile attempts to fight him, they finally use a combination of force field and flame to suffocate him to the point of passing out. Then, Reed and Sue go out for a night on the town while Ben and Johnny clean up.
Sadly, except for a single shot that shows a Taco Bell restaurant, there is no product placement in this. There must have been so many kitsch lovers or giggly stoners that would have loved for some absurdly stupid Taco Bell product placement. Maybe The Human Torch swallowing packets of Diablo Sauce to make his flame hotter? Maybe a comparison of The Thing's rocky facade to the crunchiness of a Taco Bell product? When Reed and Sue's dinner is ruined, it would have been a funny plot point if they had decided to go out on a late night Bell run. So anyway, this is actually technically well done as far as the art and writing. But it misses the opportunity to be hilariously kitschy. Maybe, much like in the famed Hostess Fruit Pie ads, they were actually blocked by policy from having the Fantastic Four eat Taco Bell food. Just as there is no violence or enmity in the Lego Universe, there are no 3 AM Bell Runs with couch cash in the Marvel Universe, even if we are assuming this is not Earth-616.
As a bonus, there is a one page humor comic at the end of the issue, in a "comic strip" visual style. In it, Reed buys Sue a dress that can change form, which makes her mad because he is suggesting that women are obsessed with clothing! But then she admits that she still wants the dress! Haha, we can look back to 2010, or whenever this came out, and remember when a one page comic strip at the end of a Taco Bell promotional comic could make a joke like that, without having taken a position and then a metaposition in the shifting culture wars. Good times, that.
Anyway, I wish I had more irony and salty starches to consume.