Discount! Discount!

For a time in the late 80's and early 90's there was a war being fought. No, I'm not talking about the Gulf War, I'm talking about the discount pizza war. It seemed like for a time the airwaves were awash with increasingly cheap pizza from a variety of vendors. Dominoes, Pizza Hut, Papa John's, Papa Gino's; they all got in on the wild price slashing that went on to attempt to undercut competitors.

However I will go as far as to say no pizza chain ever took it as far as the master of cheap pizza, Little Caesars. I know, I know, Little Caesars is still a functioning chain of pizza shops so technically they shouldn't be here, and that is true but there is a gimmick aspect to their pizza sales that does belong here. The double pizza box.

However, before I get into that, let's set some groundwork for those who might already be confused. Little Caesars is apparently the 4th largest pizza chain in the US. They've been going for 50 years or so and have spread around the world (thought I take the existence of them in Japan as heresay). They also are well known for their slogan "Pizza! Pizza!" spouted by an animated, bespeered Caesar. Something like this:



This one is probably one of the more famous commercials.

They expanded it beyond "pizza pizza" of course. Soon you had this:



This one is specifically awesome because of the living stereotypes that make up the vegetarian group shown. The guy with the acoustic guitar makes this.

Then it gets out of hand:



We start to get "Pan! Pan!" and who knows how many other variants until the Little Caesars in my area was washed away by urban blight, or maybe it was a laundromat, I'm not sure. I'm not even sure there is a difference between those two things.

Anyway, back to the main topic, the boxes. As you can see from these commercials, Little Caesars was the unrivaled king of cheap pizza. While Papa John's got as cheap as $5.99 with a coupon for one pizza, nobody ever matched the sheer cheapness of 2 for $9.99 at a constant rate. You will probably not be surprised to hear that the pizza was not incredibly delicious. And nobody ever matched ridiculous boxes that the pizza came in.

The boxes, which I couldn't find pictures of where double length boxes which fit two pizzas side by side. They also, if I am remembering correctly, didn't have covers so much as a paper covering taped over the cardboard frame of a pizza box. It was very distinctive in a "cheap pizza purchased for a school event or for a pizza party" type way.

Unfortunately, the current Little Caesars restaurants use normal boxes which means the old boxes have completely disappeared from the minds of everyone. And the pizza has literally disappeared from anywhere within a 50 mile radius of my home town after many of the shops were shuttered.