You Better Don't

You Better Don't is a lost McDonald's commercial from 2004. The commercial was produced as part of the "Defend Your Chicken" campaign promoting the new Chicken Selects, and the launch of the campaign coincided with the 2004 Summer Olympics. Many of the commercials associated with the campaign have been archived, but one, the "You Better Don't" commercial, remains lost.

Plot

The commercial features a Black woman on an airplane. The woman is eating Chicken Selects when a flight attendant comes down the aisle with a trash can and throws away the box. The woman then says, "You better don't!"

Airings

The earliest known airing of a "Defend Your Chicken" commercial was August 13, 2004. By November, the "Defend Your Chicken" theme had been phased out in Chicken Selects commercials. One user on the Straight Dope message board made a thread about the commercial on September 16, 2004.

Later recollections seem to imply that McDonald's specifically aired the commercial on networks oriented to Black people, like BET.

Non-"YBD" Variant

On September 18, 2004, a Straight Dope user commented that "you won't see the commercial. [McDonald's] changed it now," implying that the commercial had been edited to remove the potentially racist line. However, it is possible that two variants of the commercial had been airing simultaneously, as was the case with another ad, known as "Mama." In fact, both variants aired on the same day (September 22); one with lines mentioning "mama" and one without.

On November 26, 2024, the potential variant was uploaded on YouTube. It was discovered by the Lost Commercials Foundation on March 6, 2025. The commercial features a Black woman with Chicken Selects on an airplane. However, the flight attendant takes the chicken and eats it himself rather than throwing it away, and the woman looks disapprovingly rather than saying "you better don't."

Resources and Links

* A Reddit thread about the commercial
* A Lost Media Wiki Forums thread about the commercial
* A video compiling the other "Defend Your Chicken" commercials
* A document of all known airings of all "Defend Your Chicken" commercials

How Can I Help?

* Watching commercial breaks from the timeframe on YouTube
* Finding blank VHS tapes from the timeframe