Burger King might be the, excuse the pun, king of fun in the fast food burger world. While McD’s has added spicy BBQ sauce to tenders and Wendy’s seems to just add more bacon to things, BK is out with another Halloween-themed entry.

Continuing with its tradition of wacky colored buns after green and black, the burger chain is giving white the spotlight for its new Ghost Whopper. Unfortunately, there are no other differences other than the bun to the regular Whopper. They both have a 1/4 pound flame-grilled beef patty topped with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, ketchup, sliced onions, and mayonnaise. Those last ingredients are white, like a ghost. Oooooh, spooky!!! But the bun isn’t just white, it’s also white cheddar-flavored.

Hopefully, if you’re reading this, you’ve experienced a Whopper before and know it’s a damn good fast food burger. The tomatoes, lettuce, pickles, and onions give the burger a nice crunch while the ketchup and mayo give some creaminess that seems to bring all the components together without overshadowing each other. The standout, though, is the beef patty with a nice chargrilled flavor and those grill lines that seem to trick your mind into thinking it’s even better than what you’re tasting. With all that being said, how is the special bun?

Well, I wish I had something more exciting to say, but it’s merely ok. Is it super cheesy? No, but I can tell it’s not a regular sesame seed bun. The flavor comes through at the very end of chewing, and it’s a nice capper to all the other ingredients. But you do have to really think about it to taste the cheesy nuances of the bread. It’s kind of like if you think you saw a ghost and you wanted to see it again. To do that, you would have to squint and work hard to try to get a glimpse of it again.

Meanwhile, the color is just satisfactory as well. The photos I took are a little misleading, because it’s definitely white. However, is it scarily white like a ghost? Not at all. Also, the fact that coming after a jarring black bun and glorious neon green one, it’s frankly lackluster. A steamed Chinese bun is even whiter than this.

I appreciate Burger King’s constant innovation and doing fun promotional things. However, for some reason, this iteration screams (like what I did there?) of desperation of a phoned-in effort (remember the opening scene of Scream? Ha!). Between the extremely limited release at only 10 locations across the country to the single special component that didn’t even make an impression, it was a ghastly (ok, that’s the last one, I promise) disappointment for me.

As I was finishing my burger, I was thinking back to the billboard at the restaurant where it slyly said at the bottom that it was, “APPROVED BY 11 OUT OF 10 PEOPLE.” I got a glorious chuckle out of that tidbit, but then it was followed by immediate sadness as I realized the actual product was nowhere near as clever or as exciting as the marketing on that window cling.

Purchased Price: $3.00
Size: N/A
Rating: 5 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (Not available on BK’s website, but here’s the nutrition facts for a regular Whopper) 660 calories, 40 grams of fat, 12 grams of saturated fat, 1.5 grams of trans fat, 90 milligrams of cholesterol, 980 milligrams of sodium, 49 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 1 grams of sugar, and 28 grams of protein.

Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Two rights don’t quite make a left.
Two birds don’t make a handy bush. Or something like that.

But what do two impossibles make? ?Possible? Implausible? Divide by zero error?

Well, in my experience with Burger King’s Impossible King, I’d say it’d be more aptly named the Gastrointestinally Impassable King. For this sandwich, this absurdly unasked for and apparently regionally available unit of a double-pattied organism is heavy. Heavier than the internal conflict that arises when eating it:

Me: “It seems contradictory to put so much cheese on a meatless sandwich.”

Also me: “Dan, you’re just a vegetarian. And by default, they grill these with the beef burgers, wallowing in all the same moo juices.”

“I’m trying to get better! And besides, you can request for it to be non-broiled.”

“Did you?”

“…look, you’ve seen our stomach. We get bloated to the point of bleating off just one Impossible Whopper.”

“You haven’t had a real honkin’ heifer burger in years. Perhaps this isn’t for you.”

“Are you challenging me?”

“I’ll see you in the fetal position later.”

Alright, enough. Let’s enter the belly of the beast that is the beast in my belly.

I love the Impossible Whopper. It’s the perfect sacrifice to the phantom meat memories that haunt me not with “BOOs” but “lack of B12s,” and it’s my go-to vegetarian road trip indulgence. Yet by doubling down on impossibilities, the Impossible King manages to halve the original’s appeal. And for a good reason: balance.

The Impossible Whopper works because the scales of divine burger equity deemed it harmonious. Though the patties are imperfect meat clones that lack a certain hearty juiciness, the other toppings and trappings of a Whopper mask the blemishes with gushing pickles and the playful nip of white onions. But when said patty’s in-‘wich real estate becomes a duplex, the arid cracks in Impossible’s freest-range façade become glaring fissures.

The patties are dry. There, I said it. And by consequence, the entire Impossible King feels too dry.

Yes, the familiar smokiness and testosterone-associated texture of a burger still shine through to the point of inspiring me to call up my son for a game of catch. I don’t have a son. But the nuances. There’s still a palpable burst of much-needed tomato pulp, but the onion’d accents and pickled particulars are all smothered in dehydrated beefishness and a borderline seminal soup of mayo and melted cheese.

While I bet Burger King added so much cheese to try and restore blind burger justice, its dearth of flavor only makes the whole sandwich blander, mushier, and filler-heavy. Add in the sheer girth of this King-thing, and it’s unlikely to attract many seeking a wholesome lunch. I could only eat half of it at noontide, and after disgracing myself twelve hours later—as the Impossible King’s refrigerated remnants dimly reflected in the kitchen sink I devoured it over—I knew there would be an intestinal reckoning.

I slept the sleep of a freakshow cannonball-stomacher, and in my dream of getting gut-punched by the Burger King himself behind a heinously vandalized McDonald’s, I saw a prophecy of the abdominal agony that would come the following morning.

As I write this that very same morning, I can feel the Indigestible King exerting its influence over my writing, one fetal kick at a time. But I must tell you all the truth: even if you can find an Impossible King in your area, don’t bother. At $7.69, you’re paying two dollars too much for a manipulative sandwich that won’t respect you, nor your scant hopes of clean eating.

I’ll stick with the Impossible Whopper, thank you very much. It may not be healthy either, but at least it doesn’t force me into an unhealthy parasitic relationship with my distressed gut flora.

Purchased Price: $7.69
Size: N/A
Rating: 3 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: Nutritional info unavailable: seriously, this thing’s a ghost online.