hello everyone this is running on empty food review well hello ladies gentlemen
and everyone watching welcome on and all to this newest edition of the running on
empty food review series i'm your host the report of the week thanks for checking in
the amount of requests that have came in for this meal is insane
and for those of you who are regular i think you'd say regular viewers
even if you've just watched you know a couple reviews or if you've been here for years
it's one of those things that you could obviously tell either way that you know that
in my free time obviously when i'm not right here on camera doing the reviews what do i do
i listen to shortwave radio and broadcasts from around the world and i watch rick and morty i am
a hardcore rick and morty viewer and i mean you know me i am all rick and morty all the time
so when i saw that wendy's for a limited time only is releasing a new rick and morty meal
i about exploded out of my seat as a matter of fact
here's what i did i was sitting in this chair and when i heard the news about it i stood up
so there are two possible rick and morty meals that wendy's is releasing and the one that a lot
of people are talking about because obviously a lot of folks these days i mean they still do
they like their chicken sandwiches so this is called the hot honey not bird person combo
and all right you know i'm just going to get this right out of the way that
was a sarcastic i'll tell you this i don't it doesn't bother me if you like rick and morty or
i've never actually watched it before i don't do much uh television or streaming service viewing i
know i'm kind of old school but in the end you know people like what they like obviously it's
been a successful series very popular i remember hearing about it even back in 2016 or so and i
guess continues to this day but i'm not even going to pretend like i'm a hardcore viewer of it it's
it is what it is like i said i don't have a problem with it and you see these sorts of
releases every now and then so for those of you who like rick and morty though
i want to show you what the meal is what it's all about and of course what it tastes like if
it's a good deal etc so like i said the name of this meal again it's called the hot honey
not bird person combo that's the name that's what they call it and what it includes is a
hot honey chicken sandwich so the components of it here's what they are uh comes with a chicken filet
pepper jack cheese applewood smoked bacon fried pickle chips a habanero
hot honey sauce on the sandwich itself and then it also comes with fries and a drink and you can
choose to get this as a small a medium or a large and i decided to go with a small in terms of the
combo here so i got a small fries i got a small drink and the price for it was around 11 50 cents
for the small i believe the medium is around 13 and the large you essentially add a dollar
to that so again the small for this is around 11. and 50 cents the hot honey not bird person combo
one question that some people had is this sandwich new uh you know to the extent that they make the
sandwich just for the rick and morty meal and the answer to that from what i can discern
anyway is no they didn't i believe this sand which is the same one that i even wound up reviewing a
few months back so it's the same sandwich that's on the menu the fries are the same and in this
case they did mention that they might have had some special drinks to go along with these but
in my instance they did not have those drinks so i wanted to just get a regular coca-cola they
let me know that they didn't have any coca-cola here so i got some sprite instead you may also
wonder was there any sort of branding for this because you might be saying all right obviously
maybe it's it is what it is that there aren't any brand new special items for this meal but what
about the branding is there something that makes this special right is there something that says oh
yeah this is rick and morty uh in my case there isn't these are the fries with the wendy's being
looking at you there so standard fries are small fries with standard packaging
and here's the sandwich with standard sandwich packaging
and the drink with the standard packaging you know here's an interesting observation some
people were saying this in the last one and now i see it i didn't i didn't see it see the collar
there i thought that was interesting but um drink is the same and actually what i'll do
because i i wanted to look before i turn the camera on if there was any branding i was
personally curious and obviously there isn't i put the bag right
over there i'll just show you what it looks like real quick
standard wendy's bag
so price again 11.50 we'll take a look at the sandwich and i'll just try a little bit
of everything and go from there there was a time where i would i think be more of um
looking for the right word i guess i'd be more open to criticizing the concept
but it's not just wendy's that does this you know every place at this point that releases
a special meal at this point odds are there's nothing really special about it they just kind
of add a name to it and they just repackage items that have already been on the on the
menu for a while you can see the bacon you can see some of the pickle chips right there the
chicken fillet and i don't see a ton of the sauce on it but i'd assume it to be
there there's some more of those pickle chips but all these places do it mcdonald's does it
uh i believe what's the other place that does it i think it's well kfc did it and popeyes does it
so all these establishments take the exact same approach to these sorts of meals which is what it
is limited branding they repackage existing items and i guess they try to do this to say oh
this isn't just a chicken sandwich meal anymore it's the hot honey not bird person combo when
really it's just a chicken sandwich meal but that's what they uh that's what they say and
it's just advertising 101 pretty much all right you know what's in it i know what's in it we all
know it's in it i'm going to try it out i'll let you know if it's any good if it's worth the 11.50
the hot honey not bird person combo aka the rick and morty meal from wendy's it's going in
you
wash it down with some sprite
i decided to leave the eating or the consumption sequence in for rick and morty
because we want to make rick and morty proud that's what we all strive to do right
well by and large i don't really have a problem with the quality of the food that i received
there's one thing that i do want to mention i i think this is merely specific
uh to my instincts so it's not one of those things that would be across the board
i am just i want to point this out because you might see these sorts of things happening more and
more i don't really know but i just say it kind of as a warning number one in comparison to that slop
that i had in the last review from papa john's this just blows it out of the water and i know
it's two different things but it's nice to it's nice to sit here and eat something that's
actually edible and that you're not looking down at and thinking god this is disgusting
so it's that's nice that's nice to uh to see and the sandwich in and of itself is is pretty
good i'll say that to you right off the bat that the sandwich for the most part is fine
i will mention the one criticism that i have immediately because everything else is pretty good
and that's the bun uh what i have noticed is that some of the bun is a bit stale
that's the one everything else on it is fresh but if you look at the bun right here
i don't know if you could really tell but these buns when they're
when they're rather fresh they're very soft they're kind of squishy maybe they're
a little spongy but this on the other hand again i don't know if you could really tell
and i don't know if you could actually see the force exerted but it's very hard um
it's not it's not fresh it's not soft and the bread is very dry so that's the one thing that
i i notice with that sandwich and obviously when the top bun is dry like that and stale that will
have an effect on the rest of the sandwich but here's the good thing everything else on the
sandwich is not of that same quality that the bun is because if the rest of the sandwich matched
the bun we wouldn't be looking at a good item here but i remember when i had this a while back
because i know i reviewed this item before and i enjoyed it and i still enjoy it
so it's pretty good i like that and i think i showed you in the cross section there's a good
amount of chicken on the sandwich that the chicken is well breaded that it has a nice
crispy crunch to it but at the same time i always like these these sorts of chicken fillets where
you still have that breading on it but you could also see there's a good amount of the meat itself
there as well and that's what you hope for and the chicken quality is good it's flavorful it's juicy
and it's fresh it is like everything that that bun isn't so that's what we want to see chicken
is good the bacon as well is good uh you're getting some nice thick strips of bacon
you could taste it yeah it's very fatty but it's good nice crisp to it as well
and again you have those pickle chips like i said fried fatty has that that crisp to it as
well but here's the interesting thing you might say all right there is a lot of crispness to this
sandwich is that overwhelming at all and i can tell you that it isn't so that's good it's like
they struck the perfect balance in that regard the cheese is totally fine uh it doesn't contribute
too much in the way of flavor but what i do notice is that sauce i think i mentioned this
the last time i reviewed the sandwich but i will reiterate that that sauce the hot honey sauce
you couldn't tell that there's a ton of it on the sandwich it's one of those things
at first you look you might think well where is it that they forget the sauce did they omit the sauce
because sometimes you're used to seeing these things just doused in the sauce and a lot of the
time it either has almost too much sauce or too little sauce so when you look and you don't really
see a lot you'll think at first oh gosh this this this might not be good but in this case this sauce
a little goes a long way and when you bite in the sweetness is immediate you could really taste that
honey sweetness and then the spiciness kicks in a little bit afterward so you're gonna you're gonna
take that bite you're gonna notice the sweetness right off the bat and then that spice comes in
and the spice lingers more as an aftertaste i would say nothing unbearable sometimes you'll
hear habanero and you'll think oh this is going to be really hot but in this case it's more of
what i would describe as a flavorful spiciness it complements everything and the sweetness as
well ties everything together and it makes us a good sandwich so personally the bun is a problem
i'm not a fan of the stale bun like i said this is probably i would hope anyway just specific to my
instance but i don't know the way things are going you might start noticing more and more stale food
at your establishments too that's just something just be on the uh just be ready for that but
so that'll subtract a point but at least the sandwich itself is still quite good so that's
good the fries are average nice uh saltiness to them a little bit of a crisp nothing that i
could really remark upon too much but they're just flavorful fries i don't really mind them
certainly you could definitely yeah there's better flies but there's certainly worse fries
and the sprite totally fine standard soft drink has that nice citrusy refreshing kick to it
so certainly not bad so in terms of the meal itself all right there's that one
issue with the sandwich otherwise the sandwich is good the fries are good the drink is fine
it's 11.50 so there certainly was a time where it would be cheaper
it is what it is at that point mind you that's just for a small meal so i would say that it is
a little bit overpriced at this point likewise of course what makes this special what even
makes this about rick and morty there's really absolutely nothing about this that you could say
has anything to do with rick and morty so there's no branding there's nothing it's just a repackaged
item that's already been on the menu for months so that's something else to take note of
so execution execution-wise it's overpriced there's nothing really special about this so just
bear that in mind take these things into account if you decide to get this therefore out of 10
as a meal in and of itself i'm going to be giving the wendy's rick and morty meal a six out of ten
generally speaking the items are all right but conceptually i just think they missed the mark in
that regard the quality of that bun on the chicken sandwich and with it being slightly overpriced
that's white has the rating that it has and that's all that i have for you today
thank you for watching until next time i'm your host the report of the week