Providing a big, big start to the day

FOR 10 years, Jack in the Box has run ads featuring Jack, a chatty clown with a fiberglass head. More recently, Burger King began ads featuring the King, a mute monarch who also has a fiberglass head. Currently the two are locked in a battle for best new oversized breakfast sandwich.

Jack’s entry is the Ciabatta Breakfast Sandwich -- ham, bacon, egg, cheese and hollandaise sauce, squeezed inside his popular ciabatta roll, for $2.99. The King has responded with the Meat’Normous Omelet Sandwich -- ham, bacon, egg, cheese and sausage, stuffed inside a long sesame seed bun, for $3.49.

Who wins this head-to-head competition?

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Breakfast battle

Taste

Ciabatta Breakfast Sandwich ***

The crusty roll and creamy hollandaise make this sandwich distinctive and tasty.

Meat’Normous Omelet Sandwich**

It’s not bad, but its main selling point seems to be its sheer enormousness.

Portability

Ciabatta Breakfast Sandwich **

The sturdy bun is easy to hold, but the sauce makes this thing

a little gooey.

Meat’Normous Omelet Sandwich**

Meat, meat and more meat can make for a greasy in-the-car dining experience.

Diet Watch

Ciabatta Breakfast Sandwich **

Not for the dainty, the Ciabatta weighs in at 740 calories and 38 grams’ fat, making it only slightly better than ...

Meat’Normous Omelet Sandwich**

... this puppy, with 770 calories and 47 grams’ fat. (Both are slim compared with the 830-calorie Carl’s Jr. breakfast burger.)

Hype-o-meter

Ciabatta Breakfast Sandwich **

Jack’s breakfast ad, in which he rolls a sleeping man through a drive-through, is not one of his best. But you expect some clunkers after a decade on TV.

Meat’Normous Omelet Sandwich***

The King is too creepy to have the longevity of Jack. But he wins this category because his ad, in which he log-rolls with a lumberjack, is so dang strange.

Winner: It’s a photo finish, but Jack -- fueled by his better tasting, less fatty sandwich -- edges out the King by the tip of his cone-shaped nose.

* Ratings are on a scale of zero (lowest) to four (best).