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They delivered pizza by reindeer, and we did not blink. They offered us pizza-ordering tattoos and we said, “Sign me up.”
But now, pizza technology has gone too far.
With the launch of the Pie Tops, Pizza Hut’s Bluetooth-enabled food-ordering sneakers, the restaurant chain has become the modern day Icarus of fast food, shooting hoops too close to the sun.
The concept is simple. You’re chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool, when the urge for a slice of pepperoni hits you.
But why use one of Pizza Hut’s phone- or desktop-optimised interfaces to order? Why not do it the way your grandparents did: By pressing a Bluetooth button in your geo-located, high-top sneakers?
Frankly, we should have seen this coming.
Fast food companies have been selling us these kinds of marketing gimmicks for so long now, we feel stupid for just wanting to get a humble slice of pie the old fashioned way.
Instead, we’re so deep in the cheese dreams of caffeinated ad executives selling us nostalgic cola-driven fantasies of ’80s takeout, nothing means anything any more.
If you’re not ordering a pizza via a tattoo on your arm, then you’re turning your pizza box into a DJ turntable. Fresh! Then came pizza via emoji and pizza delivery via robot or drone.
But in virtually all these cases, you’re getting nothing more than a gimmick.
Want a drone pizza? Well, that trial delivered a handful of pizzas in a carefully curated marketing “activation” in one town in New Zealand.
Want a pizza DJ deck? Only five were ever made.
More ridiculous food tech
And if you want your pizza to be delivered by a rolling robot, it’ll probably be cold by the time it arrives — that prototype hasn’t even left the lab after a flashy unveiling in Australia last year.
The Pie Tops are the same. Created by custom sneaker brand the Shoe Surgeon, just 64 pairs of these high tops have been made ahead of Pizza Christmas (also known as March Madness).
So will you buy a pair of pizza shoes? Probably not. But dammit if you won’t think of the Official Pizza of the NCAA every time you watch college basketball, cloaked in the warm, cheesy nostalgia of the ’80s.
That’s some excellent marketing right there. And all Pizza Hut had to do was make 64 pairs of sneakers.
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