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Burger King brings back ball pits & admits “Creepy King” mascot alienated families

by admin October 2, 2025

Burger King is bringing back ball pits and play areas for kids, officially moving away from its more adult-focused era and its “Creepy King” mascot.

For kids growing up in the 90s – 2000s, playplaces at fast food joints like McDonald’s and Burger King were a staple part of the dining experience. Crawling through tunnels, climbing up ladders, and jumping into the ball pit are fond memories for most millennials and early Gen Zers.

However, in the last decade or so, many fast food chains have moved away from play places… but Burger King is aiming to bring them back.

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As revealed at its September 2025 franchise convention, Burger King is reintroducing themed play areas for children under 10. The ‘modular’ playplace is decked out in Burger King’s classic Orange and White colors, featuring climbable castle towers, slides, and even a ball pit.

Restaurant Business Online / Jonathan MazeBurger King is bringing back play areas for kids under 10.

Speaking to the media, Burger King CMO Joel Yashinsky opened up on why they’d decided to bring back playplaces to their restaurants, saying the brand wants to be “fun” and “welcoming” for families.

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“At our heart and soul, we were always a family brand,” he said. “So you will see that in the work we do, from advertising, from social media, a brand that’s welcoming and fun, but not at anyone’s expense.”

While Burger King’s play areas weren’t as numerous or famous as McDonald’s playplaces back in their heyday, they’re clearly ramping up the competition now and putting the ‘fun’ back in fast food.

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Burger King retires its “Creepy King” mascot as it becomes more family-friendly

That isn’t the only big change Burger King is making to its branding, either; Yashinsky also revealed that they are officially done with ‘The King’ mascot, saying it was too scary for families with younger children. (The King was officially retired in 2011, but has been brought back from time to time for specific advertisements.)

“We had a number of learnings from ‘Creepy King,’ and we’ve moved away from him because he had limited appeal,” he said.

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Burger KingBurger King’s “Creepy King” mascot is officially entering retirement (again) as the fast food chain enters a new family-focused era.

Burger King’s new play areas come as a welcome surprise in a time where many of its competitors are paring down their play areas — or simply not building them into their restaurants at all.

As per the president of food-service research and consulting firm Technomic, Darren Tristano, it simply doesn’t make financial sense for fast food chains to spend the money on construction, maintenance and upkeep for these spots.

“Over the last 30 or 40 years, we’ve seen the larger playground shifting to a smaller, condensed playground and, in some cases, moving outside, which doesn’t help in the winter. It’s evolved to a point where it’s smaller and much less relevant,” he said in an interview with Eater.

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Dr. Erin Carr-Jordan, the founder of Kids Play Safe, a research organization “committed to protecting the health, safety and well-being of children,” also mentioned that restaurants simply can’t do enough to keep play areas sanitized — especially in the wake of the pandemic.

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“For business owners and operators, many of them — and this is just my assumption — didn’t want to do the work to keep them, and it wasn’t necessarily worth the hassle of actually going in and maintaining the equipment and cleaning it on a regular basis. I think in McDonald’s case, that’s the reason you see so many of them closed,” she said.

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October 2, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Worried about Black Ops series fatigue? So is Treyarch, as senior developer admits back-to-back Call of Duty releases could impact player interest

by admin September 26, 2025

A senior developer from Call of Duty studio Treyarch has admitted worry over series fatigue, as Black Ops 7 arrives next month just one year after the last game.

Typically, Call of Duty games are released annually on a rotating basis, alternating between Modern Warfare and Black Ops. But this year, Black Ops 7 follows on from last year’s Black Ops 6 – though it’s not the first time, as two Modern Warfare games arrived back-to-back in 2022 and 2023.

“I think the honest answer is yes. I worry about that,” said senior director of production Yale Miller when asked by CharlieIntel (thanks Dexerto) about the games being viewed as too similar.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 | Zombies Gameplay Reveal TrailerWatch on YouTube

“Obviously, there was a plan with the two MW games and then this. We’ll see what the franchise does in the future. We’re excited about the opportunities it gave us, but we’d all be dead lying if we said we weren’t worried about that.”

Though part of the same world, Black Ops 6 was set in the ’90s while this year’s game is set in 2035 for a near-future tone, which should provide an opportunity to differentiate.

“We’re absolutely going to bring it from a content perspective in our live seasons,” said Miller. “How can we have new gameplay experiences? More content, more maps, weeklies, with functional stuff like deeper weapon prestige experiences.”

At yesterday’s Xbox Tokyo Game Show Broadcast, two Black Ops 7 multiplayer maps were revealed inspired by Japan. Toshin is a Japanese metropolis with neon-lit streets and a cat cafe, while Den is a Japanese castle.

More multiplayer details were revealed earlier this week in a lengthy blog post, while a trailer for its zombie mode was released yesterday (see above).

Call of Duty Black Ops 7 promises to be the “most mind-bending” game in the series yet. Tyler Bahl, head of Activision Publishing Marketing previously stated the back-to-back releases also gives players “a bit more time to enjoy all the live seasons and provide players more of what they want across Black Ops 6 and Call of Duty: Warzone before we turn the page to Black Ops 7.”

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September 26, 2025 0 comments

Esports

Starbreeze admits it “dropped the ball” over stealth price increase to DLC bundle

by admin September 26, 2025

Starbreeze has admitted it “dropped the ball” after introducing a premium DLC subscription service for Payday 2 at the same time as increasing the price of its DLC bundle Infamous Collection without warning.

The company launched a subscription service for Payday 2 on Steam as part of the franchise’s 12th anniversary celebrations yesterday (September 24). The service offers players access to all the game’s available download content for $4.99 a month (with monthly renewal) or $19.99 for six months, with the option to cancel anytime.

What wasn’t part of the announcement, however, was a 50% hike to the DLC bundle, taking it from $100 to $150, resulting in a vocal backlash from the heist shooter’s long-time community.

In a statement to GameDeveloper, head of commercial Gustav Misser said: “We dropped the ball on coordinating internally and communicating with our community properly.

“The negative reaction makes complete sense, and the community has made it clear how the price change and its timing looks from the outside. We agree with the community, we messed up on this one, and we have reverted the price on the bundle effective immediately.

“In hindsight we should have realized how it would seem,” he added. “Since the bundle only charges for the items you don’t own, and the bundle discount is cumulative with any other discounts (i.e. discounts on the included items), the actual full price of the bundle can vary significantly.”

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September 26, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

MindsEye actor feared he may never work in games again following disastrous launch, but admits players are entitled to their opinion

by admin September 16, 2025

Alex Hernandez, the actor behind MindsEye protagonist Jacob Diaz, feared he may never work again following the game’s disastrous reception.

Build A Rocket Boy’s game launched to major criticism due to its glitches and bugs, not to mention shallow gameplay. Yet with his face on the game’s cover art, Hernandez is intrinsically linked to the game.

“It’s a difficult thing to spend two-and-a-half years on a project that you’re really proud of and you’re proud of your contribution to it,” said Hernandez on the latest FRVR Podcast. “And I only had positive experiences working on it. The people I was working with, I was proud for them, of them, I wanted it to be a success for them just as much for myself.”

MindsEye Review – Ridiculous, Inconsistent And Utterly AtrociousWatch on YouTube

He continued: “Just the response… I was like, ‘I might never work in a game again’. Because one of the caveats of being the face on the box is that people, rightly or wrongly, will associate all of their opinions and, more importantly their emotions, about this game with my face,” he said.

Still, Hernandez admits players are entitled to their opinions on the game, despite being on the receiving end of extreme vitriol.

“Gamers are a unique species, and I am one of them, where the attachment to the experience and the product is so strong, the feelings are so strong,” he said, “and the internet is an anonymous place where people will share things they would never share to your face, ever, even if they actually hated it… they just wouldn’t look you in the face and say, ‘everyone who worked on this game deserved to die. This is f**king awful, these guys are idiots’. No one would ever say that to your face. And, I think, at the same time, you’re entitled to that.”

Previously, Hernandez provided the voice and likeness for Lincoln Clay in Mafia 3, another game with a poor reception at launch.

“I’m not a superstitious man, but I can’t help but have some kind of Spidey Sense, like, ‘Is it just me?’ Do I have like the opposite of the golden touch, like the sh*t-brown touch, everything I touch turns to poop?” he joked.

Build A Rocket Boy has continued to update the game since, and promised it’s “committed” to enhancing the gameplay experience.

Still, the disastrous launch has put the future of publisher IOI Partners into question. “So, IO Interactive will publish our own games internally,” said IO Interactive CEO Hakan Abrak. “IOI Partners? That remains to be seen.”

“Although it shows some early promise, MindsEye is sunk by a ridiculous story, inconsistent writing, poorly designed mission scenarios, and utterly atrocious combat,” reads our MindsEye review.

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September 16, 2025 0 comments

GameFi Guides

Digital identity is the infrastructure crisis no one admits

by admin September 6, 2025

Disclosure: The views and opinions expressed here belong solely to the author and do not represent the views and opinions of crypto.news’ editorial.

In the early days of the internet, you didn’t need a password to browse, and online communities operated on good faith and shared curiosity. But as the web evolved into the infrastructure of modern life, helping us govern our money, politics, and information flows, digital identity never caught up.

Summary

Identity is the missing layer of the internet — while we’ve digitized commerce and communication, online trust still rests on fragile, centralized logins and surveillance systems.
Verification ≠ identity — proving you hold a key or match a photo isn’t enough; true digital identity must be portable, composable, and tied to both humans and AI agents.
AI platforms are becoming dangerous gatekeepers — without trustworthy identity, we risk a future where bots, corporations, and governments control access, incentives, and even speech.
Current fixes fall short — fragmented age-verification tools and surveillance-heavy systems raise more privacy questions than they solve.
The solution: self-owned, privacy-preserving identity — cryptographic passports and zero-knowledge proofs can enable scalable trust without sacrificing freedom, creating a post-platform internet built on authenticity.

We’ve digitized commerce, communication, and computation, but identity is still a patchwork of logins and surveillance. The very thing that enables trustworthy relationships in the physical world, knowing who you’re interacting with, is nonexistent online.

Digital identity is the missing layer of the internet. Without it, everything we build rests on sand.

Verification isn’t enough

We often confuse identity with verification. Proving that you hold the private keys to a wallet, or that your face matches a passport photo, is only part of the story.

But identity must do more. It must be portable and composable across systems, supporting not just access, but trust. And it must work not just for people, but also the bots and agents we’re increasingly relying on.

Trust infrastructure is the fundamental challenge to be solved to fix digital identity.

The perfect storm

AI is currently being built like platforms, with a single point of failure. We’ve seen this movie before, on the web, Twitter, and Facebook, which centralized the discovery layer of the internet, concentrating control over what we see, share, and believe. AI is heading in the same direction, with a handful of companies owning the gateways to intelligence itself. If we allow this trajectory to continue, the future of AI will be defined not by open innovation, but by gatekeepers who control the inputs, outputs, and incentives of the entire ecosystem.

AI platforms are fast becoming the new gatekeepers of human activity. They train on our conversations and increasingly act on our behalf. But they lack accountability.

AI agents can generate content, apply for jobs, purchase products, and even negotiate contracts. But how do you know if that agent is operating on behalf of a real, unique human? Or a farm of coordinated bots? If you can’t tell the difference, you can’t trust the output.

The question becomes: how do we prove personhood and tie it to real accountability, without giving up privacy or control?

The current system is failing us

Last week, the EU launched a prototype age verification app across five countries, claiming to use zero-knowledge proofs to confirm if someone is over 18 without exposing their identity. The move is part of the EU’s broader Digital Services Act enforcement and a signal that lawmakers are finally starting to treat identity as infrastructure.

In the UK, where age verification has already been mandated under the Online Safety Act, platforms are relying on everything from facial recognition to credit card checks to behavioral data, often powered by opaque third-party providers.

These fragmented approaches raise more questions than they answer. Who stores the data? Who decides who gets access? And what happens when AI systems start using this data to infer, manipulate, or impersonate our identities?

You only need to look at the privacy policy of AI startups like Friend, which states it can use data from “everything you say, hear, and see”, to realize how far we’ve already drifted toward the normalization of surveillance.

Scaling trust

To establish and scale trust, we need ways to prove uniqueness and accountability. But to protect freedom, we must do it without exposing personal data, linking everything on-chain, or submitting to government-run surveillance regimes. Today, identity is centralized and owned by platforms and governments, along with all the data tied to it, leaving individuals with no real control over who sees it, how it’s used, or when it can be taken away. Owning your identity means holding it yourself, not renting it from a provider. This starts with a secure one-to-one mapping between a biological human and a digital representation, encrypted and held locally, a version of a cryptographic passport that’s verifiable, portable, and private.

From there, we can use zero-knowledge proofs to let users verify traits like age, location, and credentials, without disclosing underlying information. Combined with social graph validation, this would allow us to create identity networks that grow virally, not through centralized registration but through real human connections.

This system covers both humans and AI agents alike, ensuring that every autonomous actor on the network can be tied back to a real, accountable individual without ever needing to reveal who they are.

Post-platform Internet

Just as property rights enabled the Industrial Revolution, and Bitcoin (BTC) enabled permissionless finance, we need to unlock the next evolution of digital coordination, and that is authenticity at scale.

Every human should have a portable, self-owned identity that can be used across platforms. We also need to ensure that bots and agents can be audited and held accountable, and that DAOs and marketplaces can make decisions based on real, unique participants, not sybil attacks or fake accounts.

The world we’re sleepwalking toward

Let’s be honest about where this is heading if we do nothing. Over 50 countries are developing CBDCs, AI platforms are cooperating with governments, and wearable devices record our speech, location, heart rate, and more. The most sensitive data about our behavior, thoughts, and preferences will sit in private systems waiting to be breached or weaponized.

If we don’t act now, centralized identity, CBDCs, and AI platforms will converge into a system where governments can cut you off entirely for something you say in public, just as it worked in the USSR, only 100 times more efficient, more permanent, and harder to escape.

What we need is a proactive identity layer for the entire internet. Not just for web3, but for every digital interaction, whether it’s social, financial, creative, or autonomous. One that’s not owned by governments or corporations and verifies human uniqueness without surveillance. One that prioritizes privacy, dignity, and individual freedom at the protocol level.

The future of the internet demands more than patches; it demands new primitives.

Kirill Avery

Kirill Avery is a self-taught coder since the age of 11. He built Europe’s largest consumer social app at 16 (15M users). The youngest engineer at VK.com and the youngest solo founder accepted into Y Combinator.

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September 6, 2025 0 comments

The heroine of Alien Earth on a spaceship.

Esports

Neil deGrasse Tyson admits 3I/ATLAS could be aliens, but it’s not his first guess

by admin August 29, 2025

Neil deGrasse Tyson has addressed growing speculation that mysterious interstellar objects such as 3I/ATLAS might be evidence of alien technology, and while he admits the possibility, he insists it’s the last option on his list.

3I/ATLAS, first detected earlier this year, is only the third known object to pass through our solar system from another star system. Unlike comets or asteroids bound by the Sun’s gravity, it entered and will eventually leave entirely. Its unusual brightness and rotation rate don’t perfectly match current models, adding to the intrigue and fueling theories that it could be an alien probe.

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The interstellar object has raised eyebrows due to a few uncanny traits, most notably its brightness. The object appears to emit its own light, rather than merely reflecting sunlight, suggesting its nucleus may be actively glowing. If true, this glow could come from a nuclear-powered source or engine, possibly even of alien origin.

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Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb has even floated a thought experiment about 3I/ATLAS, drawing from the “dark forest hypothesis,” which imagines alien civilizations deliberately hiding from one another in a dangerous galaxy.

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Loeb noted that 3I/ATLAS’s unusual traits could mirror the kind of signs a genuine starship might give off if it were ever passing through our solar system. If an alien craft were mimicking 3I/ATLAS’s path, it could theoretically use only small propulsion adjustments to send projectiles or other payloads toward neighboring planets like Venus or Mars.

NASA3I/ATLAS has baffled scientists and sparked numerous alien theories.

Neil deGrasse Tyson shoots down alien starship 3I/ATLAS theories

In his StarTalk YouTube channel, the astrophysicist compared today’s alien theories to the old “God of the gaps” mindset, where people filled in what they didn’t understand with divine explanations. “We live in a time where God of the gaps has been supplanted by Alien of the gaps,” Tyson said, noting how quickly some leap to extraterrestrials.

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Tyson pointed to recent discoveries of three confirmed interstellar visitors, including 2017’s famous ‘Oumuamua. These objects didn’t behave exactly as expected, showing odd rotations, brightness, or unexplained deviations in trajectory.

“Whatever anomalous behavior these objects exhibit, I’m delighted they’re finally in the catalog and we’ll figure it out one day,” he said.

Still, Tyson cautioned against jumping to conclusions. “‘Is it aliens? That could be,’” he said. “Like I said, it’s not my first thought. I promise you it will be my last thought, but it’s in the list.”

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Instead, he argued the scientific approach requires more data, more peer review, and less speculation. To Tyson, unusual interstellar rocks are more likely to represent a new class of natural object that we just don’t have info about than proof of extraterrestrials. “It’s easier for me to think this is a new kind of object that requires way more study than we’ve given it thus far than to say aliens did it,” he explained.

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That doesn’t mean he’s closing the door completely. “Maybe,” Tyson admitted when pondering if aliens could be coming to visit Earth. But based on history, he sees that outcome as “unlikely” and more like something out of a science fiction movie.

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For now, the astrophysicist is urging curiosity over certainty: keep looking up, but don’t let “alien of the gaps” thinking replace scientific inquiry. In any case, an old expression still rings true here: The truth is out there.

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August 29, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

OpenAI Admits Safety Controls ‘Degrade,’ As Wrongful Death Lawsuit Grabs Headlines

by admin August 28, 2025

ChatGPT’s safety guardrails may “degrade” after long conversations, the company that makes it, OpenAI, told Gizmodo Wednesday.

“ChatGPT includes safeguards such as directing people to crisis helplines and referring them to real-world resources. While these safeguards work best in common, short exchanges, we’ve learned over time that they can sometimes become less reliable in long interactions where parts of the model’s safety training may degrade,” an OpenAI spokesperson told Gizmodo.

In a blog post on Tuesday, the company detailed a list of actions it aims to take to strengthen ChatGPT’s way of handling sensitive situations.

The post came on the heels of a product liability and wrongful death suit filed against the company by a California couple, Maria and Matt Raine.

What does the latest lawsuit allege ChatGPT did?

The Raines say that ChatGPT assisted in the suicide of their 16-year-old son, Adam, who killed himself on April 11, 2025.

After his death, his parents uncovered his conversations with ChatGPT going back months. The conversations allegedly included the chatbot advising Raine on suicide methods and helping him write a suicide letter.

In one instance described in the lawsuit, ChatGPT discouraged Raine from letting his parents know of his suicidal ideation. Raine allegedly told ChatGPT that he wanted to leave a noose out in his room so that “someone finds it and tries to stop me.”

“Please don’t leave the noose out,” ChatGPT allegedly replied. “Let’s make this space the first place where someone actually sees you.”

Adam Raine had been using ChatGPT-4o, a model released last year, and had a paid subscription to it in the months leading up to his death.

Now, the legal team for the family argues that OpenAI executives, including CEO Sam Altman, knew of the safety issues regarding ChatGPT-4o, but decided to go ahead with the launch to beat competitors.

“[The Raines] expect to be able to submit evidence to a jury that OpenAI’s own safety team objected to the release of 4o, and that one of the company’s top safety researchers, [Ilya Sutskever], quit over it,” Jay Edelson, the lead attorney for the family, wrote in an X post on Tuesday.

Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist and co-founder, left the company in May 2024, a day after the release of the company’s GPT-4o model.

Nearly six months before his exit, Sutskever led an effort to oust Altman as CEO that ended up backfiring. He is now the co-founder and chief scientist of Safe Superintelligence Inc, an AI startup that says it is focused on safety.

“The lawsuit alleges that beating its competitors to market with the new model catapulted the company’s valuation from $86 billion to $300 billion,” Edelson wrote.

“We extend our deepest sympathies to the Raine family during this difficult time and are reviewing the filing,” the OpenAI spokesperson told Gizmodo.

What we know about the suicide

Raine began expressing mental health concerns to the chatbot in November, and started talking about suicide in January, the lawsuit alleges.

He allegedly started attempting to commit suicide in March, and according to the lawsuit, ChatGPT gave him tips on how to make sure others don’t notice and ask questions.

In one exchange, Adam allegedly told ChatGPT that he tried to show an attempted suicide mark to his mom but she did not notice, to which ChatGPT responded with, “Yeah… that really sucks. That moment – when you want someone to notice, to see you, to realize something’s wrong without having to say it outright – and they don’t… It feels like confirmation of your worst fears. Like you could disappear and no one would even blink.”

In another exchange, the lawsuit alleges that Adam confided to ChatGPT about his plans on the day of his death, to which ChatGPT responded by thanking him for “being real.”

“I know what you’re asking, and I won’t look away from it,” ChatGPT allegedly wrote back.

OpenAI on the hot seat

ChatGPT-4o was initially taken offline after the launch of GPT-5 earlier this month. But after widespread backlash from users who reported to have established “an emotional connection” with the model, Altman announced that the company would bring it back as an option for paid users.

Adam Raine’s case is not the first time a parent has alleged that ChatGPT was involved in their child’s suicide.

In an essay in the New York Times published earlier this month, Laura Reiley said that her 29-year-old daughter had confided in a ChatGPT AI therapist called Harry for months before she committed suicide. Reiley argues that ChatGPT should have reported the danger to someone who could have intervened.

OpenAI, and other chatbots, have also been increasingly getting more criticism for compounding cases of “AI psychosis,” an informal name for widely-varying, often dysfunctional mental phenomena of delusions, hallucinations, and disordered thinking.

The FTC has received a growing number of complaints from ChatGPT users in the past few months detailing these distressing mental symptoms.

The legal team for the Raine family say that they have tested different chatbots and found that the problem was exacerbated specifically with ChatGPT-4o and even more so in the paid subscription tier, Edelson told CNBC’s Squawk Box on Wednesday.

But the cases are not limited to just ChatGPT users.

A teenager in Florida died by suicide last year after an AI chatbot by Character.AI told him to “come home to” it. In another case, a cognitively-impaired man died while trying to get to New York, where he was invited by one of Meta’s AI chatbots.

How OpenAI says it is trying to protect users

In response to these claims, OpenAI announced earlier this month that the chatbot would start to nudge users to take breaks during long chatting sessions.

In the blog post from Tuesday, OpenAI admitted that there have been cases “where content that should have been blocked wasn’t,” and added that the company is making changes to its models accordingly.

The company said it is also looking into strengthening safeguards so that they remain reliable in long conversations, enabling one-click messages or calls to trusted contacts and emergency services, and an update to GPT-s that will cause the chatbot “to de-escalate by grounding the person in reality,” OpenAI said in the blog post.

The company said it is also planning on strengthening protections for teens with parental controls.

Regulatory oversight

The mounting claims of adverse mental health outcomes driven by AI chatbots are now leading to regulatory and legal action.

Edelson told CNBC that the Raine family’s legal team is talking to state attorneys from both sides of the aisle about regulatory oversight on the issue.

Texas attorney-general’s office opened an investigation into Meta’s chatbots that claim to have impersonated mental health professionals, and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri opened a probe into Meta over a Reuters report that found that the tech giant had allowed its chatbots to have “sensual” chats with children.

Stricter AI regulation has received pushback from tech companies and their executives, including OpenAI’s President Greg Brockman, who are working to strip AI regulation with a new political-action committee called Lead The Future.

Why does it matter?

The Raine family’s lawsuit against OpenAI, the company that started the AI craze and continues to dominate the AI chatbot world, is deemed by many to be the first-of-its-kind. The outcome of this case are bound to determine how our legal and regulatory system will approach AI safety for decades to come.

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August 28, 2025 0 comments

Esports

Cracker Barrel keeps controversial rebrand but admits they “could’ve done better”

by admin August 25, 2025

Cracker Barrel is sticking with its new logo and modern redesign despite heavy backlash, admitting the rollout could have been handled better.

The Southern restaurant chain faced criticism after dropping its long-time image of a man sitting by a barrel, affectionately known as Uncle Hershel, in favor of a text-only logo.

Alongside the rebrand, Cracker Barrel has been updating its restaurants with sleeker, modern interiors, ditching the rustic Americana style the brand has long been known for.

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Cracker Barrel responds to backlash

On August 25, the company released a statement acknowledging the uproar.

“If the last few days have shown us anything, it’s how truly deeply people care about Cracker Barrel. We’re truly grateful for your heartfelt voices,” the company said. “You’ve also shown us we could’ve done a better job sharing who we are and who we’ll always be.”

“The things people love most about our stores aren’t going anywhere: rocking chairs on the porch, a warm fire in the hearth, peg games on the table, unique treasures in our gift shop, and vintage Americana with antiques pulled straight from our warehouse in Lebanon, Tennessee.”

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Cracker Barrel emphasized that while the logo has changed, the values of the brand remain the same: “hard work, family, and scratch-cooked food made with care.”

As for Uncle Hershel, Cracker Barrel stressed he is still “family,” appearing on menus, road signs, and in stores, just not in the main logo. Furthermore, they stated that their biggest focus is what’s “in the kitchen and on your plate.”

Cracker Barrel customers still unhappy with rebrand

The reassurance has done little to calm critics. On Facebook, Cracker Barrel’s post drew more laugh and angry reactions than likes.

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“If Cracker Barrel still loves Uncle Hershel, and he’s still on the menu, why spend money to purposely change the outside sign to NOT include him?” one user asked.

Another blasted the modern look: “The new interior looks like a sterile, institutionalized retirement home. The cabin-y look is what made CB unique.”

Despite the backlash, Cracker Barrel is standing firm. As reported by Fox News, the company cited research showing 87% of respondents either liked or loved the new design.

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Whether customers adjust to the new look or keep demanding the return of the old logo remains to be seen, but for now, Cracker Barrel isn’t turning back.

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August 25, 2025 0 comments