We have all probably heard of some odd sounding menu item from our favourite fast food chains
- sometimes it turns out to be delicious, but other times it turns out to be something
the world never, ever needed. There’s no telling what weird things fast food restaurants
might come up with. So here are just a few of those times when fast food restaurants
went too far when trying to come up with unique menu items.
Carl’s JR Most American Thickburger
The Most American Thickburger from Carl’s JR seems like it was created by someone who
threw whatever they could find in their cupboard onto a hamburger and gave it a name. For those
who may not have tried this burger, and for those who haven’t heard of it before, let
me break it down for you. The Most American Thickburger is a hamburger with the usual
lettuce, ketchup, pickles and other burger toppings, but with a few added items that
you probably wouldn’t have thought to put on a hamburger. The Most American Thickburger
also comes with a hot dog split in two on top of the rest of the items inside the burger,
along with Lay’s kettle cooked potato chips. You heard that right, it’s a hamburger that
has a hot dog and potato chips on it. This combination is strange, and very unnecessary
all around. The old saying of less is more seems to apply to this situation, with many
customers commenting that the three different tastes of the hot dog, chips and hamburger
all in one prove to be too much for one sandwich, and who can blame them? While hot dogs, hamburgers
and chips can all be very tasty on their own, mixing all three together seems a tad ridiculous. All
in all, this hamburger went too far, and should never have been made an actual menu item available
to the public.
KFC Double Down Dog
Sometimes fast food restaurants make some menu items that are more about trying to come
up with a craze and make more money than they are about providing their customers with something
reasonable to eat, KFC is no different. It all started with the original KFC Double
Down sandwich, which was a sandwich that skipped the bread and replaced it with chicken instead.
The original Double Down is two pieces of KFC’s fried chicken with bacon, cheese and
sauce in between them. This item alone sounds over the top as is, but KFC didn’t share
that view, for them it wasn’t quite far enough. For those who aren’t satisfied with
chicken as the vehicle to get bacon and cheese in your mouth, you can step it up a notch
with the Double Down Dog. This KFC menu item takes the regular version of the KFC Double
Down and adds a hot dog in between the two pieces of fried chicken. As if eating nothing
but fried chicken around cheese, sauce and bacon wasn’t enough, adding a hot dog to
the combination really tips this KFC menu item over the edge to just completely unnecessary.
Some customers even reported feeling sick shortly after eating the Double Down Dog,
probably from the pure amount of grease and fat that the food item contains.
Starbucks Unicorn Frappucino
The Unicorn Frappucino from Starbucks really blew up on social media in the spring of 2017,
the colors made for a really cool picture, and social media influencers definitely took
advantage of that fact during the heydays of this drink. In reality, a lot of consumers
reported that it really didn’t taste that great, some saying it tasted like birthday
cake with a sour flavor to it, and the Starbucks baristas hated making it. It was also criticized
by health organizations because of the absolutely ridiculous amount of sugar that this drink
contained. One 24-OZ Unicorn Frappucino contained 76 grams of sugar, which is at least 40 grams
more than the recommended daily sugar intake for the average person. The multi-coloured drink
looked cool for pictures, but this particular Starbucks creation pushed it way too far with
the number of empty calories and sugar in even one of these beverages. Despite the obvious
general health reasons to avoid this drink, it was super popular and even major news outlets
reported on this multi-colored craze, even if its popularity was mostly based on the
way it looked rather than the way it tasted.
The Arby’s Arbynator
Arby’s has found a way to combine your sandwich with your side, and it is called the Arbynator.
The Arbynator is a simple concept, you take a regular Arby’s roast beef sandwich and
you add all of their most popular sauces to it: Cheddar sauce, Arby’s sauce and Horsey
sauce, but it doesn’t just end in a pile of roast beef with three sauces. This over
the top sandwich also includes a pile of their signature curly fries in between the buns,
so now you can eat both your sandwich and your fries all in one go. This roast beef
monstrosity also comes in half-pound and double sizes just in case a regular sized roast beef
sandwich with curly fries on it wasn’t enough for you. This item is unnecessary probably
for a multitude of reasons, but the most glaringly obvious reason is, you could easily just make
the combination yourself if you really wanted to by simply ordering your choice of Arby’s
sandwich, making it a combo with curly fries and sticking your fries on the sandwich. If
you really want fries on your sandwich, doing it yourself makes it so you can create your
own fry and sandwich combinations with any available Arby’s sandwich. In the end, there
really was no real reason for Arby’s to ever make this a menu item.
Burger King Stuffed Steakhouse Burger
This was a limited time menu item offered by Burger King, and it’s exactly what the
name suggests, a hamburger made with a patty that has been stuffed with other ingredients.
The patty was stuffed with cheese and jalapenos and promised a whole lot of flavor to consumers.
From various customer reviews, the burger itself was actually pretty delicious, and
they seemed to have delivered on their promise for a tasty new hamburger, but the fact that
this is a hamburger patty that is literally stuffed with a whole bunch of cheese makes
it a bit over-indulgent. Cheese has been used in sandwiches for a very long time, and it
has always worked well as a topping in the traditional sense, but there really is no
reason to stuff it into the hamburger instead of just putting it on top with the rest of
the ingredients. Despite the fact that the traditional way of having cheese on a hamburger
seemed to be working well, Burger King still decided to go that extra distance and stuff
it into the hamburger patty. Though it doesn’t seem like a necessary thing to do, it seemed
to work out for the fast food chain, with many customers really enjoying the pepper
and cheese stuffed patty. Sometimes things that were taken too far, such as the Stuffed
Steakhouse Burger, can end up going well for the fast food restaurants despite the item
being something super extra.
Taco Bell Naked Chicken Chalupa
Taco Bell is known for some of their more inventive menu options, including everything
from french toast in place of taco shells to taco shells that are flavored like Doritos,
but one of their more out of the box menu options was the Naked Chicken Chalupa. This
limited time menu option swapped out the classic taco shell for a taco shell shaped piece of
fried chicken instead. This meant that you could order a piece of fried chicken shaped
like a taco shell with taco fillings piled inside. Not only has Taco Bell offered this
menu option on more than one occasion, they've also offered more than one version of it,
including a spicy option for those who might like a bit of kick to their Naked Chicken
Chalupa. I think it’s plain to see why this fast food item went just a little too far,
having a piece of fried chicken surrounding the already unhealthy taco fillings offered
by Taco Bell just makes it that much worse for the consumer. Despite how over the top
this menu item is, it has proven to be fairly popular considering Taco Bell has brought
the limited time item back on more than one occasion. Some people just seem to love their
taco fillings being stuffed into a fried chicken taco shell, and though for a lot of us these
may seem unnecessary, it’s proven at least popular enough for Taco Bell to bother releasing
it more than once.
Lucky Charms Shake
As if the sugar content in Lucky Charms cereal wasn’t high enough, Burger King decided
to add the popular breakfast cereal into a milkshake. In early 2017, the fast food chain
added the limited time Lucky Charms milkshake to their menu, and it’s exactly what it
sounds like: a milkshake made with soft serve vanilla ice cream and bits of Lucky Charms
cereal blended in it, along with a sweet syrup being added to increase the sugary taste of
the drink. With this Burger King menu item, not only do you get the large amounts of sugar
found in the cereal, but you get a bunch of extra sugar from the ice cream and syrup that
are added. This milkshake is absolutely ridiculous, and though the cereal is much loved by all
sorts of people, and Burger King claimed it did well in their consumer tests, this milkshake
didn’t prove to be as popular as they had hoped. Consumers gave the limited-edition
milkshake some bad reviews, meaning that not only was this a completely over the top menu
addition, it didn’t even go over well with Burger King’s customers.
Firecracker Burrito from Taco Bell
This limited time offer from Taco Bell doesn’t sound like anything crazy when you first start
listing off the ingredients: ground beef, rice, cheese, sour cream and spicy sauce.
Those ingredients sound like a normal burrito, definitely something that appeals to those
with a taste for the spicier things in life, but when you hear the special ingredient in
this burrito, you’ll realize just how over the top it really is. Taco Bell decided the
missing ingredient in this dish was cayenne pepper flavored Pop Rocks. That’s right,
cayenne flavored Pop Rocks, someone down at Taco Bell decided that spicy Pop Rocks
in a burrito was a necessary item to be added to the menu, even if just temporarily and
only in a few select locations. Dubbed “Cayenne popping crystals” by Taco Bell, they were
a spicy spin on Pop Rocks, which came in a little package on the side of your meal. The
expectation was you were supposed to sprinkle the Pop Rock knockoffs onto your burrito to
add an extra little crunch and that cayenne pepper flavor to what is basically an otherwise
regular burrito. It wasn’t a very popular menu item, because honestly it just sounds
weird, so understandably it didn’t sell as well as Taco Bell probably hoped.
Tim Hortons Buffalo flavored latte
Tim Hortons is a huge coffee chain that is mostly known in Canada, but has made its way
into other countries slowly as well. Typically, their menu items aren’t super strange, some
of them aren’t for everyone but for the most part they are just normal coffee and
doughnut additives. Every once in a while, they get a little more adventurous with their
new food and drinks, and it doesn’t always work out well for them. You would think that
they would know better than releasing some of the menu items that they have tried out,
but sometimes companies just don’t seem to understand their consumer base, and they
miss the mark completely when it comes to some of their ideas. One example is their
Buffalo flavored latte. This limited time drink was just way too far out of the box
for most, comprised of steamed milk, fresh poured espresso and buffalo sauce flavoring,
it wasn’t exactly most people's idea of a delicious morning drink. It didn’t go
over well with consumers, and for a good reason, I don’t think anyone has ever wished for
a buffalo sauce flavored latte.
McDonald's McLobster
When people think lobster, especially when they don’t live on the coast, they tend
to thing higher priced, fancier restaurants - not many people think McDonald's. The fast
food giant tried to change the way that consumers thought about lobster, introducing their version
of the seafood with the McLobster, which was a lobster roll served on a bun similar
to a hot dog bun and what they called lobster sauce. As you can probably guess, this menu
item didn’t go well for the company, the cost of obtaining the lobster proved to be
a bigger challenge than they thought, and along with general supply issues, the Mclobster did
not go as planned. This menu item did not prove profitable in most places, so McDonald's
made a decision to stop offering it everywhere at any time, and instead decided to only offer
it in coastal areas during the summer where lobster would be abundant and cheaper to source.
The Mclobster was very unnecessary, as most people don’t tend to go into their local
McDonald's looking for lobster. McDonald's really didn’t think things through very
thoroughly when they attempted to offer this menu item, meaning that instead of creating
a new popular fast food craze, they ended up losing money and having to remove it from
their menus except in very select places at very specific times.
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