Papa John's Jack-O'-Lantern Pizza

Submission 5,097

Part of a series on Papa John's. [View Related Entries]

Overview

Papa John's Jack-O'-Lantern Pizza is a promotional pumpkin-shaped pizza made by the Papa John's chain of pizza restaurants.

Background

In October 2018, Papa John's announced that they would selling a promotional pizza that is designed to resemble a jack-o'-lantern (promotion below).^[1]

THIN CRUST $1PEPPERONI JACK-O-LANTERN PIZZA

Developments

Online Reaction

On October 14th, 2018, Redditor ^[2] Robotshavenohearts shared a side-by-side photograph of the promotional photo and a real pizza in the /r/ExpectationvsReality subreddit. The post received 4,900 points (96% upvoted) and 150 comments in a little over one year (shown below).

On October 16th, 2019, ReviewBrah reviewed the pizza on his YouTube channel. The post received more than 200,000 views in less than one month (shown below).

In 2019, people began responding to Papa John's tweets about the pizza, complaining that these pizzas do not resemble the advertisements (examples below, left and center).

Papa John's responded to the criticism in some cases. On October 27th, they wrote to Twitter user @Sasha_Christenx, "Well, the pumpkin is in the eye of the beholder. But the pizza is delicious" (shown below, right).^[3]