Ah, the fine print. Destroying good sounding deals for years.

This ad features a customer entrant to the “Top This” contest that Pizza Hut has been running on BookFace.

Here, Pizza Hut offers, “… any pizza, for $10, it’s for real.”

Then comes the snazzy chorus, “any pizza, any toppings, any crust… there’s no stoppin’, you decide – for $10 you can buy…” which repeats a few times to make sure you’re properly earwormed. I am. Though not as bad as with this song from Drive.

If you eat what Pizza Hut is selling, it seems like the best deal since the, “Regular Price, Four Bucks” deal from 1990.



While you’re distracted by the moving text lyrics, there is some mouse type across the bottom. It turns out the deal is not, “for real.”

The text reads: ADDITIONAL CHARGE FOR STUFFED CRUST PIZZA AND EXTRA CHEESE. So, any stuffed crust pizza costs more, as does any pizza (♫ any crust ♪) with extra cheese as a topping. As they encourage, “you decide.” It’s clearly not ANY pizza, ANY topping or ANY crust for just $10.

Just how much would they lose by including a little bit more cheese in the deal when weighed against the volume of extra business they might pick up? Conveniently, we’ve got a transcript of their last brain trust retreat junket in Plano, TX:

“Pizza margins are very low – we can’t include the Stuffie.” “OR Extra Cheese, Roger, It’s Too Much!” “Guys, guys, is $10 a price point threshold customers will not cross?” “What if we make it $12, throw in no delivery fee and include all pizzas, no fine print?” “That’s crazy talk!” “Blasphamy!” “Whoa, fellas. Let’s not think on it. We’re far better off making people cranky about a B.S. ad promise.” “Besides, our stores get that delivery fee anyway – we don’t give it to the delivery drivers!”

I suppose the exception would be hard to work into the song. How ’bout, “Many pizzas, Many toppings, Many crusts…?”