After two long years, the world’s largest hot dog has made its triumphant return to New York City. Hot Dog: The Second Serving is now on display in Duffy Square, a plaza within Times Square, and aligns with the United States’ 250th anniversary. 

Conceptual artists Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw first unveiled the 65-foot-long wiener sculpture in 2024. It spent its brat summer parked in Times Square as part of its appropriately titled Hot Dog in the City exhibition. Multiple events in front of the giant frankfurter including themed wrestling matches, Q&A interviews with food historians and local food vendors, and daily confetti cannon firings from inside the hot dog itself. According to its makers, they hoped to use the “iconic symbol of New York City and American culture to examine class, consumption, capitalism, and the myths of the American Dream.”

Of course, the comeback begs a very important question—how many actual hot dogs could fit inside the humongous American staple? Catron and Outlaw confirmed to Popular Science that the interior of their 65-foot-long sculpture is approximately 6,000 cubic feet, or 10,368,000 inches. The average Oscar Mayer is about six inches long with a one-inch diameter, making its volume around 4.7 cubic inches. Divide 10,368,000 by 4.7, and you get about 2.2 million hot dogs.

The math isn’t that easy, of course. In this hypothetical, the hot dogs are packed into the sculpture so that there is zero empty space—a physical impossibility. To be generous, assume the packing efficiency of Oscar Meyer franks to be about 80 percent, meaning the tiny spaces between the mountains of hot dogs wastes around one-fifth of the room. After taking this into consideration, a more “realistic” estimation would be around 1.75 million wieners.

Taking it a step further, the average American eats approximately 70 hot dogs per year. Should Oscar Meyer—or any other hot dog purveyor—feel generous, filling up Catron and Outlaw’s sculpture could supply 25,000 people in the United States with their annual quota. Just a suggestion.