Picture worth a thousand milkshakes.

March 13, 2006 9:25 AM

Where can I get fast food art?

I want the art that is used in fast food restaurants.

Pictures of burgers, hotdogs, nachos, salads, fries, steaks, milkshakes, pizzas, etcetera. Framed photographs are good. Transparent pieces used in the big light-up menus are good. Window decals are ok.

I would prefer used/vintage pieces. Where can I find this stuff?

posted by zonkout to food & drink (6 answers total)

eBay.
posted by fire&wings at 9:56 AM on March 13, 2006

I looked on ebay to no avail.
posted by zonkout at 10:02 AM on March 13, 2006

Check out allposters.com. I did a search for Hamburger and there were all kinds of vintage looking posters. You could have them framed and voila!
posted by blue_beetle at 10:17 AM on March 13, 2006

Try talking to the manager of a fast food restaurant. If you can find one going out of business you may be able to get that stuff for free.

Also try istock or Getty Images. I checked istock and they have some images that might work for you. It's cheap too!

www.istockphoto.com
posted by spakto at 10:20 AM on March 13, 2006

I know that a lot of this stuff comes from distribution companies. I once had the opportunity to go inside one of these places, and ended up writing a story about it for McSweeneys. From my story:

A woman named Mary greeted me and told me to follow her. She led me into the warehouse while I joked with her about the company name [Fulfillment America]. I had always thought it was amusing getting packages from them, and it was even more amusing once I saw that most of the items they were using to fulfill people, so to speak, were large posters of hamburgers to be hung on wall at Arby's and phone books. I asked her, "What do you do with all the huge posters of donuts and stuff once the promotions are over?"

"We destroy them," she replied. Destroy seemed like such a strong word.

Perhaps you could somehow intercept them before the destruction.

I have a spanish-language burger assembly poster that was being thrown away at a Burger King until I convinced someone to let me keep it.
posted by nekton at 11:37 AM on March 13, 2006

While checking out blue_beetle's suggestion (I like hamburgers too!) I clicked on the poster of the "Deluxe Hamburger" by Catherine Jones, and on the resulting page there was a link for a whole category entitled "Decorate Your Diner". There's all SORTS of good stuff in that category!!!
posted by NewGear at 8:13 AM on March 14, 2006