Golden Corral apparently has bought a 2012-GOP-presidential-candidate-sized block of television airtime to advertise its new Chocolate Wonderfall, a provocatively unsanitary bubbling cascade of gooey brown bacteria. The idea: Patrons submerge berries, cookies and other confections on sticks in the flowing chocolate, and then, apparently, consume them. (Fondon’t! Fondon’t!)
The commercials seem to run incessantly now, especially on the cable news channels:
There exists no doubt that this chocolate waterfall will trigger a much more violent chocolate waterfall later. Can you conceive of a more disgusting buffet line concept than this geyser of gastrointestinal distress? A churning wellspring of warm, sticky dessert syrup continuously attracting and recycling torrents of sneeze juice, dust and child germs?
And maybe a half of a second will pass from when a five-year old lays her eyes on this until she sticks her doll’s head into the chocolate sugar lava. Don’t just take our word for it; here’s the top comment on the YouTube post of the first commercial, which made us laugh until we cried when reading it aloud:
“So I went to a golden corral today, and I tried this out. Right as I dipped my marshmallow into it, some little kid reached over the little metal railing and just stuck his whole hand into it…”
And the Golden Corral reply to the comment offers scant solace:
“We strive to provide the best possible customer experience for all of our guest [sic]. However, with something as popular as this it is difficult to catch everything.”
Gaaahh! I just took a shower after reading that. This from a restaurant with a history of serving up the all-you-can-e coli buffet. And don’t forget the salmonella special right here in Georgia a few years back.
You’d think that such a track record would inspire tremendous caution with food safety and public health. Or maybe Golden Corral just realizes that the American buffet-going public has a short collective memory and an unrelenting lust for novelty, chocolate sauce and type-2 diabetes. Bacteria be damned! These patrons in a follow-up commercial certainly seem excited:
I hope that guy’s cowboy hat can catch some barf.
Finally, in an important aside, our good friend Tim O’Shea of Talking With Tim pointed out on Facebook that there is an inevitable advertising tie-in for the band Oasis. What better reason for them to reunite than to promote the Golden Corral Chocolate Wonderfall? After all, both the band and the Chocolate Wonderfall recycle things that were once good (Beatles songs, chocolate) and turn them into horrible abominations that send us running for the toilet. We close with some lyrics from the Oasis hit “Wonderwall,” reworked for Golden Corral:
Today is gonna be a day that you’re probably gonna spew
By now, you surely feel foul
From the chunks you inevitably blew
I can’t conceive how anybody
Eats that chocolate goo that’s trickling down
Yet maybe, after eating steak and gravy
You’ll heed the call, of Chocolate Wonderfall
containseggs 
Thank you for blogging exactly what I’ve been thinking since I first saw this commercial. As a registered nurse, the health ramifications of this fountain of goo are particularly apparent to me.
We appreciate your professional clinical endorsement of our position on the Chocolate Wonderfall. One out of one registered nurses agree!
I wouldnt wash my dick in that nasty wonderfall.
Thanks for the visual!
brb
I thought the “wonderfall” was gross from commercials. We went to GC and upon entering the restaurant immediately witnessed a child sticking his finger in the fountain, licking it, then sticking the same finger back in! Surprised the health department allows it.
I saw this today at the Golden Corral on Rossville Blvd in Baltimore. I told the waitress I sat and watched as 2 little girls kept sticking their fingers into the chocolate, licking their fingers and then repeating this several times. The employees behind the desert bar did not see it, no one is watching and no one is enforcing the rules about kids being at the desert bar by themselves.
I reported what I witnessed and the waitress immediately went over to the wonderfall and had the employees shut It down and kept people from going near it. I watched them completely tear it down and sanitized it. The parents were told and the kids denied it, naturally. I believe the parents should be held responsible when their kids do this and be made to pay for replacing the chocolate.
A camera should be placed in this area and a employee should be made to watch what is going on and be responsible for making kids go back and get an adult to accompany them to the wonderfall, or accompany assist the child themselves. Either that or they need to remove the wonderfall.
Also think it should be emptied and cleaned every couple of hours and the chocolate replaced.
Hi Bob, thanks for the comment. There’s also the easier answer of it should not exist at all.
Boo hoo hoo. Geez I remember drinking out of the stream alongside the road when I was a kid and never getting sick. People are so overprotective these days. If you’re too much of a pu$$y to eat from the wonderfall… then hey… here’s an idea… eat something else! For that matter, what would you be doing at a buffet anyway. People got their hands in everything else anyway. Grow a pair, live a little.