The Big! Big! Cheese was a limited-time pizza product sold by Little Caesars in 1993. It was a collective pair of Detroit-style pan pizzas, each measuring 11¼ by 11¼ inches, totaling 11¼ by 22½ inches in length when put together side-by-side. Their total net weight is 4.5 pounds. Each pizza in the pair is cut into 12 whopping square slices, totaling 24.
The pizza was successful that sales went up for Little Caesars by 54%, leading Pizza Hut to introduce the Bigfoot in response, and later on, Domino's introducing the Dominator.
In response to the Bigfoot, Little Caesars brought out a TV commercial for the Big! Big! Cheese, which shows two old women with their dog marveling at a monster truck, until they witness an even bigger monster truck crushing it flat. As a way to favorably compare themselves against Pizza Hut, the larger monster truck represented Little Caesars with their Big! Big! Cheese while the smaller one represented Pizza Hut with the Bigfoot. Intentionally or not, the smaller monster truck representing Pizza Hut's Bigfoot might also be a reference to the famous monster truck named Bigfoot.
Despite Little Caesars' best efforts, Pizza Hut's Bigfoot gave it a run for its money, as its aggressive advertisement campaign, plus the July 4th incident in Manhattan with the Bigfoot blimp, helped Pizza Hut make $5.7 billion in sales.[1]
TV ads[]
Trivia[]
- Jackson Beck was the announcer for the Big! Big! Cheese TV commercial.
- Despite the claim in the commercial that it's "bigger than Bigfoot", the Big! Big! Cheese's physical measurements (when both pizzas in the pair are placed together side-by-side) are slightly smaller than the Bigfoot pizza. But, the claim could refer to the pizzas' mass and number of slices when compared to the Bigfoot.
- 1993 was also the year that Little Caesars introduced their spaghetti bucket.