"ColonelSanders" news and stories

Kentucky Fried Chicken is offering $500 worth of grilled chicken in exchange for information leading to the safe return of a missing Colonel Sanders bust.

The 24-inch bronze bust vanished from a Berea, Ky., KFC just before closing time on Jan. 31.

"There were three men in the restaurant, and the employee went to the kitchen," spokesman Rick Maynard recounted. "When she returned, the three men and the Colonel had flown the coop."

The bust has graced the restaurant's dining room since the 1970s, making the outlet one of the few to house expensive KFC-related art. According to Maynard, the bust – depicting a jolly Sanders in his "trademark glasses and string tie" – is worth $1,500.

"Folks who frequent the restaurant kind of miss it," Maynard says. "I think it's been replaced with a potted plant."

There are statues of Colonel Harland Sanders standing sentry at KFC outlets across Asia, but the town where the legendary restaurateur opened his first café has long resisted memorializing the man many locals consider a fast-talking, two-timing scoundrel.

"There are a lot of people here who knew him from way back," sighs Suzie Razmus, newly appointed chair of the Corbin (Ky.) Tourism Commission. "How can I say this? He wasn't exactly ..."

Universally beloved?

"Yes, exactly," Razmus says, with the obvious relief of a publicity pro saved from uttering something more damning. "You hear stories about women and his colorful language that didn't sit well with a small conservative town. There are still people here that say he owes their great-aunt money, or he fired their grandfather."

A KFC Colonel Sanders lookalike has caused a minor international incident.

Last week, KFC sent an actor dressed as chain founder Colonel Harland Sanders to the United Nations in New York to publicize its Oct. 26 UNFry Day for Kentucky Grilled Chicken. But it seems the actor and his entourage were a little too good as they were able to bypass United Nations security to pose for photos with Libya's Dr. Ali A. Treki, the current president of the UN Assembly.

"It should not have happened -- that I will stress, and very strongly," Michele Montas, spokeswoman for U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, told Canada's National Post. She added there was "some lapse in security," with a guard ushering the Sanders lookalike "into the U.N."

A KFC official told Slashfood on Thursday that they never planned to send the Colonel into the U.N.

"The KFC Colonel was in New York City for a Kentucky Grilled Chicken sampling event outside the United Nations," Laurie Schalow, a KFC spokeswoman told Slashfood. "While serving free chicken on First Avenue, he was invited inside by a U.N. staff member, along with a photographer who was documenting the event."

The chicken chain did send "a tongue-in-cheek letter to the U.N. requesting that they allow their employees to "unthink" their usual lunch routine and sample Kentucky Grilled Chicken outside the U.N.," she said.

"KFC has the utmost respect for the United Nations and this lighthearted event in New York City was in no way meant to undermine the important work that the U.N. does around the world," Schalow said.

What do you think? Should the Colonel have gone to the U.N.? Let us know in the comments below.

[Via the National Post]

In ancient times, food was marketed primarily by "hunger." But in the modern era, it's not enough that we eat our food, we must also emotionally bond with it. This partly explains the enduring appeal of food mascots, those bright, colorful, affable characters who beckon us to consume.

In many cases, we choose a product simply because we have a bizarre attachment to the cartoon that represents it. There is no shame in trusting, say, a paranoid Leprechaun with a powerful marshmallow lust more than one's own family. These 10 icons are the awesomest in the pantheon of cheap food branding.

KFC Chicken Photo: Sikachu!/flickr

A former Wall Street executive has plucked himself a new career trying to unlock Col. Harland Sander's fried-chicken secret.

Ron Douglas, a former finance director at J.P. Morgan, has been experimenting in the kitchen over the last few years in an attempt to crack KFC's world-famous Original Recipe, the New York Post reports. With his sixth attempt, Douglas thinks he's finally done it.

"Nobody knows what those 11 herbs and spices are, Douglas told the paper. "But if you taste my chicken, you would find the flavor very similar to KFC."