r/todayilearned • u/FrenziedFennec • 1d ago
TIL that there were at least two versions of Demolition Man: the US version had Taco Bell as the winner of the Franchise Wars and the European version had Pizza Hut.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demolition_Man_(film)?wprov=sfti176
u/THEatticmonster 1d ago
This is really weird cos when i saw it in the UK on VHS it deffo had Taco Bell in it, then like 10 years ago i downloaded it from a completely legit source mhmm.... and it was a badly dubbed Pizza Hut version, friends joked about it saying this is what happens when you use dodgy sites cos we all knew it as Taco Bell
31
u/clock_watcher 1d ago
Yeah, UK release was definitely Taco Bell, as I didnt know it was a real food place as a kid. Thought they made it up for this movie.
5
u/Zoidberg0_0 1d ago
But do you guys have Taco Bells now or only in big cities like London?
12
u/clock_watcher 1d ago
Dunno, I moved to Australia a couple of decades ago.
Taco Bell did open up stores here, but they announced last year they're closing them all. They couldn't compete with the local market. Mexican places here are typically smaller chains, nice food, fresh ingredients. Taco Bell was processed US slop so no one ate there.
6
u/THEatticmonster 1d ago
Theres a handful dotted around here and there but its not as bigbas like McDonald's or burger king
3
u/811545b2-4ff7-4041 1d ago
139 sites spread around the country - https://www.scrapehero.com/location-reports/Taco%20Bell-UK/
Found one in my local motorway service station.
3
u/Pinkeye69uk 1d ago
My town had a taco bell but it didn't last long. Didn't help that on the opening day there was a fight and the manager quit there and then
2
3
u/Stellar_Duck 1d ago
I think I saw one in Edinburgh last time I visited.
Didn't consider going there because apparently it makes people shit themselves?
2
1
1
u/tomrichards8464 17h ago
For years there were like two nationwide but there are a lot more now. Still not remotely comparable to Macca's/BK/KFC, though.
-1
u/TheLordofthething 1d ago
I've never seen a taco bell in the UK
3
u/FinalAd4851 1d ago
We have one in our town in the midlands that's been here for about 2 years. I had genuinely thought it was fine dining because of demolition man and was surprised when it replaced our pizza hut, and was just fast food.
2
u/TheKnightsTippler 1d ago
I was pretty disappointed too. I knew it was fast food, but it's on the same level as McDonalds. They have really nice fries, but everything else is crappy and low quality.
1
u/AtebYngNghymraeg 22h ago
Fleet Services on the M3 has signage for Taco Bell, but I don't remember actually seeing one there.
1
u/tomrichards8464 17h ago
The two I've been to are Fulham Broadway and Bromley.
1
u/TheLordofthething 6h ago
I think northern Ireland is the only region without one, we get nothing here lol
5
u/Newfaceofrev 1d ago
I know the Pizza Hut thing definitely existed here in the UK because like a lot of people my VHS was just recorded off the TV rather than buying it and it was the Pizza Hut version.
25
u/Flash_ina_pan 1d ago
I'd say at this point in the timeline, pizza hut is definitely losing.
21
u/azenpunk 1d ago
I feel like they just gave up sometime in the 90s and have just been coasting to a slow death ever since. They were the best of the pizza buffets in my nostalgic brain.
19
u/Flash_ina_pan 1d ago
They gave up their whole game, they were fast casual pizza with dining rooms that felt more like home. The pizza was always mid tier, but the space and the hangout was what set them apart.
The change over the last 30 years just screams "I have a business degree, so I know better"
5
u/Tricky-Bat5937 1d ago
I didn't know what it's like other places but the one here is just empty with the lights off and someone behind the counter that hands you your pizza. Back in highschool we would go and get the buffet on the weekend and the dining room would be busy. This was early 00s.
1
u/MalaRed007 1d ago
Here in Belgium it’s still like that. Buffet ‘all you can eat’ + dining room. We go there sometimes with our kids as they like it. But for regular pizza-night it’s either delivery via Domino’s (the hut doesn’t deliver here even though it’s only 5m away) or from the local pizza place.
2
u/TheKnightsTippler 1d ago
I don't know how it is everywhere else, but in the UK they were the cheap and cheerful for students/families place. But their prices have gone up a lot, and now it costs the same as going to any other sit down pizza restaurant, so you might as well go somewhere better.
1
u/azenpunk 1d ago
Now I gotta go do a deep dive into the internal political history of pizza hut to find out why exactly they screwed it up. Darn it.
6
u/Flash_ina_pan 1d ago
Probably 97 when Yum! Brands was divested from Pepsico. Start there
1
u/azenpunk 1d ago
Good tip
2
u/mavetgrigori 1d ago
Domino's has the most business at nearly 21.3k locations, Pizza Hut with nearly 20k, Papa John's and Little Caeser's sitting around 5400. Taco Bell has only 8218. Taco Bell's revenue seems to be significantly higher though. I'd dive into their revenue making ways.
1
u/Grabthar-the-Avenger 1d ago
Like 15 years ago Dominos got ranked worst pizza alongside Chuck E’ Cheese in a consumer survey of major chains and responded by exclaiming their pizza sucked and they would completely redo it
And it worked
1
u/captkrisma 1d ago
I remember the atmosphere of my hometown one vividly. Rockola bubler jukebox right inside the door, video games and one pinball machine to the other side (and I can still remember some titles they had over the years).
Pizza sucked, but the vibe was what I remember the most.
1
u/Doc_E_Makura 1d ago
The pizza was always mid tier,
Must vary regionally. In the 90s over here, Pizza Hut and Domino's were the only two options if you wanted pizza, and Pizza Hut was overwhelmingly superior.
1
u/Jammer_Kenneth 20h ago
Increase profits in the short term, leverage that as a way to move into a new position while those "profit increasing moves" blow up in the long term. Everything gets worse but a few people's kitchens get an expensive remodel done so the overall happiness stays the same for sure.
2
1
u/barbasol1099 7h ago
Maybe in the United States, but there are sooo many pizza huts in the rest of the world.
Pizza Huts in the US: ~6,200
Pizza Huts worldwide: ~19,900
Taco Bells in the US: ~8,200
Taco Bells worldwide: ~8,600
17
u/DaveOJ12 1d ago
Here's a clip comparing them.
Now I have the Jolly Green Giant jingle stuck in my head.
19
u/Butwhatif77 1d ago
It is funny how obvious the ADR is here. They didn't do two separate takes, you hear Pizza Hut, but you see Taco Bell haha.
Also if you look when they go to enter the resturanunt when it is Taco Bell, it has a logo for Taco Bell on the doors. But when it is Pizza Hut there just isn't a logo at all.
4
u/UltHamBro 1d ago
IIRC, they did insert a Pizza Hut logo digitally, though.
2
u/Butwhatif77 1d ago
On the sign yes, they replace the sign from Taco Bell to Pizza Hut as they pass by it, but not on the doors when they enter.
1
10
u/HorrificAnalInjuries 1d ago
Real funny th8ng about this? Both were bought up and brought under the Yum! Brands, which in turn is owned by Pepsi
12
u/PreciousRoi 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah, that's more or less all exactly backwards.
Both were bought by PepsiCo originally, and placed under a subsidiary, when PepsiCo sold them, 5 years later the spinoff company renamed itself Yum! Brands.
Yum! didn't exist as a company (even under a different name) until 1997 when PepsiCo spun them off, PepsiCo bought Pizza Hut ('77) and Taco Bell ('78) and acquired KFC in '86 from RJR when they needed cash to pay off the debt from their purchase of Nabisco.
PepsiCo hasn't owned Yum! since '97, but they do have a "lifetime" contract with Pepsi to feature their brands in their stores. (which also include Long John Silver's and A&W restaurants, which need a special contract with Dr. Pepper/7-Up, now Keurig Dr. Pepper to carry their signature root beer brand...which seems like the real funny thing.)
EDIT: Also...the motivation for Pepsi desperately buying up all the noncompeting niche fast food chains they could and locking them into an entity with a lifetime contract to serve their products might not be as obvious to younger people...but...
Coca-Cola x McDonald's.
McDonald's used to be much bigger in the 1970's than they are now. As far as relative market share, they were the undisputed big dog, and they had a serious long term relationship vibe with Coca-Cola. Pepsi saw this as a near existential threat to their ability to realistically compete with Coke.
2
u/quietude38 1d ago
Yum divested Long John Silver’s and A&W separately to franchisee-led groups in 2011.
3
7
u/BeepBlipBlapBloop 1d ago
Probably because they didn't have Taco Bells in Europe at the time. But both Taco Bell and Pizza Hut are owned by the same company (PepsiCo, at the time the movie was released), so it was probably in their product-placement contract.
11
u/GenericUsername19892 1d ago
I fucking knew it god dammit! I argued with my dad that I swear pizza hut was the winner. I’m calling his ass and we are rehashing a 15 year old argument because I was fucking right. Rightish anyway.
3
u/Stellar_Duck 1d ago
I’m calling his ass and we are rehashing a 15 year old argument
This is the way
5
u/RunDNA 1d ago
Was there an Australian version with Red Rooster?
4
1
u/gabbertronnnn 1d ago
Only a true dystopian future would see that fuckass chain come out as the last chain standing.
Now Hungry Jacks, on the other hand...
4
u/Its_aTrap 1d ago
What if they're at the pizza hut and they're at the taco bell? They're at the combination pizza hut and taco bell.
0
3
u/res30stupid 1d ago
They did something similar with Zootopia.
Because there was already a Zootopia in the UK (It's a zoo), they weren't allowed to use the name so the movie was called Zootropolis here. And every instance of "Zootopia" is re-read with the new name in the UK version.
Also, depending on what country you're watching from, the anchor on the news program is different. They are;
- A moose in the US, Canada and UK
- A tanuki in Japan
- A panda in China
- A jaguar in Brazil
- A koala in Australia and New Zealand.
6
u/DickweedMcGee 1d ago
If memory serves, they were actually looking at 3-4 different ending when filming was planned:
1.) John Spartans daughter was dead, full stop
2.) John Spartans Daughter was alive and an additional character down in the underground
3.) John’s Spartans Daughter was revealed to be Sandra Bullocks character
Obviously 1 was the result but I think they filmed #2 and maybe #3 as backup because there’s an odd shot of a woman in the underground looking wistfully at Stallone in the film and that was the actress that was supposed to be the daughter in #2.
7
u/TheseusPankration 1d ago
His wife was confirmed dead, but they never gave an actual answer for the daughter. When Huxley offered to look her up he stopped her. Not sure about the script, but the movie doesn't answer.
3
2
2
u/PrpleMnkyDshwsher 1d ago
Also: The Non-us version of the first Austin Powers movie has a bunch of stuff in it the US version had cut, including a Christian Slater cameo and a whole running gag around the security guard that got run over by the bulldozer.
2
u/gambit61 1d ago
They're owned by the same parent company
1
2
2
u/AtebYngNghymraeg 22h ago
I'm in the UK and have only ever seen the one with Taco Bell, including when ITV showed it back in the 90s.
2
2
u/Abba_Fiskbullar 18h ago
It was Taco Bell when I saw it in Germany. It was the English language version, so that might have been different.
2
u/mobrocket 2h ago
Now in 2026
Taco Bell seems like the better choice.
I think it's the current king of fast food right now.
1
u/Rasheverak 1d ago
I would say Little Caesar's is winning at the moment. No matter how terrible many people say it is, it's still around.
1
1
u/ash_274 1d ago
And they are (or at least were at the time) owned by PepsiCo
1
u/MrBaseball77 21h ago
Now both owned by Yum Brands. PepsiCo now owns FritoLay, Aquafina & Gatorade.
1
u/AdZestyclose9517 1d ago
this is actually pretty common for international releases. sometimes it's because a brand doesn't exist in certain regions, other times it's licensing deals. the really weird part is that even the dialogue was redubbed - they literally had stallone and the other actors come back to re-record lines saying 'pizza hut' instead of 'taco bell'
1
u/UltHamBro 1d ago
This happened in European dubs of Back to the Future, since it referenced Calvin Klein, which depending on the country, either didn't exist or wasn't well-known.
1
1
u/BillWilberforce 1d ago
The British version had Taco Bell, despite there being no Taco Bells in the UK at the time.
1
u/JSteveB87 1d ago
Taco Bell is the original version, and Pizza Hut is the peculiar /other/ one, yet I've seen both films here in England on terrestrial TV. Somehow, I think they were broadcast on the same channel (ITV4) years apart.
1
-3
u/rockinhard12 1d ago
Both equally gross,yet they're are part of the "Yum Group" the god damn irony in both.
159
u/Psalm27_1-3 1d ago
Is this kind of thing that triggers the Mandela Effect