Burger King Debuted This Sandwich 69 Years Ago - a Decade Before the Big Mac

Baseball fans were speechless as Ronald McDonald stepped up to sing the National Anthem during a recent Minor League baseball game.

McDonald's clearly remains ever popular in modern society amid rising costs, and it's hard to believe the Big Mac debuted nearly 60 years ago. Ten years earlier, however, came a rival corporation's signature burger.

Burger King debuted the world-famous Whopper 69 years ago, and it's still going strong today. Check out an original Burger King commercial for the launch below.

The Big Mac came 10 years later, and it was actually just last month that McDonald's famed double-decked burger celebrated 59 years since it was introduced to customers. On April 22, 1967, a McDonald's franchisee in Pennsylvania unveiled the now-iconic sandwich - for a whopping 45 cents, HISTORY.com reports.

According to former McDonald's CEO and driving force Ray Kroc, the Big Mac was created in response to the Whopper. In his autobiography, Kroc shared that the sandwich was in fact created because the company feared the Whopper. However, the creator of the Big Mac, Jim Delligatti, is said to have been alternatively inspired by a double-decker burger from a different competing chain: Big Boy, according to Tasting Table. What's the real story? We may never know...

Before the Big Mac, however, came the Whopper Jr. - which was created, by accident, in 1963 by Luis Arenas-Pérez, The Daily Meal reports. Upon the opening of the first Burger King restaurant in Carolina, Puerto Rico, the molds for the (standard) Whopper buns had not yet arrived to Puerto Rico from mainland U.S., so there were no buns to make and sell the company's flagship Whopper offering. Arenas opted for honoring the advertised opening date but using the much smaller regular hamburger buns locally available. The result was such a success that Burger King adopted it worldwide and called it the Whopper Jr.

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This story was originally published May 8, 2026 at 9:14 AM.