Feeling hungry and mischievous, Richard Blakeley and I headed down to McDonald’s for some good old American food. I put on the Optimus Prime helmet and I was transformed into Optimus Prime. Being a transformer isn’t easy, let me tell you. I tried to order a happy meal with a boy toy when they asked me to come to the front window. Upon arriving they called the manager who came out to write down my license plate information on my car! Not only did they call the police on us, but they are now asking that Gizmodo and the Consumerist of Gawker media remove the video from the site. Little to they know I also filmed it on Sarah TV on the Justin.TV network and if you really have the time search my archives for July 2nd, 2007 at 4:15PM.
This is what they said:
“I am the manager at this McDonald’s and I want you to remove this video from your site before I take legal action. They have no right to video tape us. If I still see this posting on July 5,2007. I will forward their names and your website to my corp office and start legal action.
please reply to me asap”
We should protest! This is discrimination against robots!
SARAH AUSTIN 
I produce a morning radio show on 95CRAVE in Vancouver. Maybe you’d be interested in doing a telephone interview with us on your drive-through experience; ridiculous!!
By: tara on July 5, 2007
at 4:44 pm
Lol, that rocks!
By: Alex on July 5, 2007
at 4:59 pm
LOL I know.
Tara- I would like to do that. send me an email and we can work out the details: geekpartycrasher@gmail.com
By: sarahmeyers on July 5, 2007
at 5:25 pm
Will you tell us the name of the manager and the address of the McDonalds?
By: ParatrooperJJ on July 5, 2007
at 5:42 pm
yes. email me and I will get that info to you
geekpartycrasher@gmail.com
By: sarahmeyers on July 5, 2007
at 6:00 pm
Wow, you’re retarded
By: Richard on July 5, 2007
at 7:34 pm
Way to stick it to those minimum wage earners! Good jerb!
By: McFamily on July 5, 2007
at 7:42 pm
Wow, you hassled some poor minimum wage slave for a gag and made a video of it. Impressive.
By: andyinsdca on July 5, 2007
at 7:45 pm
my four year loves this video clip and has memorized the “i want a boy toy for my happy meal” and some other funny dialogue.
You’re a hit! If you have the file i would love to have it for archival reasons purely 🙂
By: foofighter on July 5, 2007
at 10:22 pm
im thinking 20 optimus prime helmets, a few “fair and equal treatment now” signs, and a megaphone.
By: Adrian on July 6, 2007
at 1:33 am
You are my RobotHero!
I
By: theFuzzyWarble on July 6, 2007
at 5:22 am
I came here via Gizmodo.
LOL, what you guys did is funny. the lawsuit part is stupid though. Very stupid. Send some Decepticons over to their corporate office and hammer out a compromise.
By the way, you look cute 🙂
By: Andy on July 6, 2007
at 8:42 am
“Wow, you hassled some poor minimum wage slave for a gag and made a video of it. Impressive.”
Oh please! I’ve worked minimum wage jobs and this hardly qualifies as hassling! This drone had no sense of humor and seriously blew a harmless situation way out of proportion. … a trait found in low-mid level management who relish in what little power they believe they wield within the corporate structure. (I’ve seen this time and time again…)
David Letterman and Conan O’Brian have done drive-thru gags as well, and you don’t see this kind of reaction…. Granted, Letterman has also defused the situation by bringing flowers to the window afterwards…. Maybe Optimus could have defused this guy by bringing him a sense of humor and taking away his sense of self-importance.
By: Kris on July 7, 2007
at 7:23 am
glorious! where can I get one of those masks?
By: andre on July 7, 2007
at 8:22 am
How did you make your picture show up next to your post in the comments? Email me with reply please, sarah
By: Truman on July 7, 2007
at 8:23 am
Damn these humans! They see something different, unusual and they go nuts about it. How hard is it to take an order? Only babies can’t do that.
By: Long N. on July 7, 2007
at 12:00 pm
Oh My God…
By: JackS. on July 7, 2007
at 4:13 pm
[…] Optimus Prime Refused Service At McDonalds [YouTube] Feeling hungry and mischievous, Richard Blakeley and I headed down to McDonald’s for some good old […] […]
By: Top Posts « WordPress.com on July 7, 2007
at 11:59 pm
That is too great! LOL – thank you I needed a good laugh for the day.
By: Angel on July 8, 2007
at 12:28 am
Glorious! What is the world coming to when even an Autobot can’t get a Buger and Boy-toy without being suspected of terrorism… ROFL – thanks for making my morning.
By: Troy on July 8, 2007
at 4:10 am
Perhaps if you’d SuperSized it, he wouldn’t have called the police. And anyway, what are you sullying your mechanical innards for? You eat Energon!
…and if that’s not a valid reason why I’m not getting dates, I don’t know what is.
By: Akela Talamasca on July 8, 2007
at 6:24 am
Your right! I should have super sized it! Thats what I should do at Burger King. I should ask Burger King to super size it.
By: sarahmeyers on July 8, 2007
at 5:29 pm
You can bet they were taping you. If you complained about that I’m sure they would claim you had ‘no reasonable expectation of privacy’ in a public place.
They similarly have no reason to expect they won’t be on camera.
By: Bryan on July 8, 2007
at 11:42 pm
In our town, people rob Burger Kings dressed in things like false Muslim hoods. If it were me as manager, I would be concerned also..
By: Phillybob on July 11, 2007
at 4:00 am
A but late I know, but, have you also taken into account that you ordered a “chalupa” something that McDonalds doesn’t serve? I think that you were there to make a mockery of the experience more then you were just ordering food and that I think is the issue. Had you started by ordered food available on their menu and they refused you service simply for wearing the helmet, then I would be more on your side, but as it stands, you were making a joke at their expense and then blaming themfor not having a sense of humor.
Don’t get me wrong, that was really funny, just not executed properly, imo.
By: Zombiemaster on July 17, 2007
at 11:42 pm
Sundaize Search Engine
Sundaize Search Engine
By: Sundaize Blog on July 27, 2007
at 10:12 pm
Okay. McDonalds now sux even more now than they ever did before! That’s one priceless video! Great work!
By: Ian on July 31, 2007
at 2:41 am
funny thing is i worked at taco bell (LONG LONG ago) and me and a friend had a blast there! we woulda laughed our ass off at something like this, and asked for url’s to the video 😉
By: Zachery on August 14, 2007
at 8:40 pm
[…] I take pride in bringing the leader of the mega-bots, Optimus Prime, to life. When wearing the Optimus Prime helmet (that belongs to Brian Lam and I really need to return it) I often feel a certain character come upon me. It basically feels like Optimus Prime in a females body. She wants to run, fight, kick, fly, transform and eat fast food. The day before the movie launch I got to take this helmet out to order a happy meal at McDonalds. Watch the movie to see what happened. […]
By: YouTube Transformers Meme « Sarah Meyers on December 29, 2007
at 8:06 pm
[…] pulled a stunt where I dressed up as Optimus Prime from Transformers and tried to order from McDonald’s for Gizmodo in San […]
By: Stunts and Pranks | Pop17 on March 6, 2008
at 7:51 pm