I'm a millennial who tried Burger King's Whopper for the first time, and I would never order it again

• I tried Burger King's famous Whopper for the first time after hearing about it and seeing it in commercials for years.
• The sandwich was heavy and was nearly the size of my face.
• The lack of flavor and gray-green meat was a massive turn-off for me.

I've been hearing about the Burger King Whopper for years. From television commercials to billboards on the side of the road, I'd venture a guess that it's impossible to live in a city and not know about the Whopper.

It's such a core part of Burger King's identity that the chain's most recent rebrand was even centered around it.

I recently tried the new lineup of Burger King's Ch'King fried chicken sandwiches and as part of a promotion, my delivery came with a free Whopper. Considering I had never actually tried one before, I thought, "Well, it's now or never."

When I first lifted the sandwich out of the bag, I felt that it was extremely heavy. The weight was probably due to the 1/4-pound patty and combination of two sauces that were sitting between the seeded bun.

Unwrapping the paper I saw that all ingredients were pretty well-stacked - nothing was hanging off the edges or looked out of place. It didn't look super messy from the outside, but when I opened it up I saw that it was extremely saucy.

To my surprise, though, the sauce was only on the top bun, the bottom was completely bare.

Lifting the bottom bun off, I was able to see the part that turned me off the most: the patty.

The gray-green meat laden with fatty bubbles brought me back to cafeteria lunches and summer camp barbecues. Sure, it does the job when you've been running around a sports field all day, but as a paying customer looking for a workday or weekend lunch, I would want brown meat, free of goopy bits. (Others on Reddit have discussed this meat juice residue at length and offer some possible explanations as to how they form.)

For this reason alone, I would prefer to seek out a Shake Shack or Five Guys, which offers more fresh-looking - and fresh-tasting, in my opinion - patties.

The only salvation I found in this fast-food classic were the pickles, which offered a briny distraction from the otherwise bland sandwich.

There was no flavor in the meat, and the sauces muddled any freshness that may have come from the tomato, onion, and lettuce.

After being blown away by the chain's lineup of Ch'King sandwiches, I couldn't believe this burger came out of the same kitchen.

Biting into the flavorless sandwich felt like a loss-of-innocence moment - I was finding out that the fairy tale that is the Whopper is nothing more than a well-marketed dream. Ultimately, I expected more from the legendary fast-food burger.

This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author(s).