himself. By 1959, Burger King already had five restaurants in metropolitan Miami, and its early success prompted McLamore and Edgerton to expand throughout the United States by using a franchise system that allowed them to grow the business at a relatively low cost. They formed Burger King Corporation as a parent company to the franchises they were selling throughout the United States. The Burger King Corporation was acquired by the Pillsbury Company in 1967, and during the 1970s, it began to expand outside the United States, principally in South America and Europe. Burger King's core product has long been the Whopper, which was created in 1957 by founder James McLamore and initially sold for 37 cents. Wendy's was founded by Dave Thomas and John T. Schuessler on November 15, 1969, in Columbus, Ohio. By the late 1970s, it had become the third largest hamburger company in the United States. Wendy's has consistently tried to differentiate itself from other hamburger restaurants by its claim that it makes its burgers using fresh, not frozen, beef. Wendy's sparked a controversy and entered into American pop culture in the 1980s with its "Where's the beef?" advertising slogan and an accompanying campaign stressing the primacy of the beef patty over the hamburger's other ingredients. Culinary history The hamburger was very popular among Americans during the postwar period following World War I, even in popular culture. An example of this was the prominent appearance of hamburgers in E. C. Segar's Thimble Theatre comic strip, which prominently featured a cartoon character named Popeye the Sailor who ate spinach to sustain his superhuman strength. Popeye's first appearance was as a supporting character on January 17, 1929, alongside many other characters. One of these characters was J. Wellington Wimpy (often shortened to just "Wimpy"), a lover of hamburgers who was both polite and gluttonous. His signature phrase, "I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today", became popular and widely known. During the height of his popularity in the 1930s, Wimpy introduced the hamburger to the youth of the time as a healthy food. It also resulted in the creation of a chain of fast food restaurants called Wimpy's in his honor, which sold hamburgers for ten cents. In a similar fashion, the fictional character Jughead Jones, who first appeared in Archie Comics in 1941, was passionate about food generally, and hamburgers specifically. Fictional characters related to the