Founded in 1940 as a hamburger stand, McDonald’s became a shining example of America’s fast
food industry as it invaded strip malls and cities.
Today, McDonald’s can now be found in 120 countries.
Despite this success, it has not stopped them from being the butt of all jokes on Wendy’s
Twitter account (like a petty little sister, she’s relentless).
As not everything always goes as planned let’s discuss the top 10 McDonald’s fails.
McSoup
McSoup is not only the least appealing McDonald’s item in a long, long time, it’s also just
Campbell’s Soup poured into a red cup with Golden Arches to justify the prefix.
The McSoup is sold in Campbell’s Broccoli & Cheese and Chicken Noodle variants, available
only in the winter in select locations.
While the item may have been a bid to imitate its more domestic rivals, it was pulled from
the menu because it was also, well, pretty terrible.
Its thick consistency and moldy taste just made it a very unprofitable venture, and for
America’s own good, Campbell’s Soup cans shall, fortunately, continue to be confined
to only cans.
McDonald’s In Vietnam
Yes, McDonald’s can’t fit a country between two buns as hard as it might try, but its
debacle in Vietnam definitely qualifies to be a part of this list.
As a fast food chain with over 36,000 locations across the world, McDonald’s could manage
only a meagre 17 in the Southeast Asian country.
Why?
Because the Vietnamese are spoilt for choice.
When McDonald’s entered the market in 2014, natives of the country thronged its locations
because of its novelty amongst the usually indigenous cuisine, but over the years, the
popularity of the restaurant chain has waned, largely owing to its local competition.
Street vendors in Vietnam sell rivaling, faster, and cheaper fast food like pho or banh mi
sandwiches.
But this hasn’t held the restaurant back.
In the past 4 years, McDonald’s has introduced a number of items into its Vietnamese menu
to appeal to the locals, including a Grilled Pork Rice with Egg item, but mimicry of available
and cheaper options a stone’s throw away from their locations has ensured that raking
in customers is still difficult.
To make its mark in Vietnam, not only does McDonald’s need to up its game, but it also
has to factor in the political disenfranchisement between USA and Vietnam (Westernization is
seen with a contempt that is nearly 50 years old).
While franchises like KFC and Pizza Hut prosper in the country (They feature shareable food
and many chicken items, which Vietnamese families value), the burger giant pales in the country’s
international cuisine market.
McD’s Big N’Tasty
If you’re going to copy another fast-food giant, well, the dish better be big and tasty.
Forever at loggerheads with its competition, McDonald’s attempts to replicate the success
of Burger King’s Whopper are a long-winding story of love, revenge, and pain.
Both fast food giants have taken every chance to throw very public and very amusing airs
at each other (The Whopper Detour, Burger King’s McWhopper invitation to end bad blood,
and so on), but their best and most successful jabs are just good ol’ imitation burgers.
The Big N’ Tasty attempts to mimic the Whopper in every sense, complete with the dill pickles
and sesame seed bun.
And while the product itself was not exactly a failure, the adaptation doesn’t remotely
live up to the real thing.
This isn’t even McDonald’s first attempt at copying Burger King – earlier failures
such as McDLT and BigXtra did little to deter them.
During its 14-year run (it may have been a failure, but it was an enduring one), the
burger jumped between different menus (Displacing the BigXtra first, then featuring on the Dollar
Menu, and then eventually ending up being wiped off the menu in 2011) and just like
its previous brothers, was a result of McDonald’s true desire to be a good, dedicated, and plagiaristic
rival.
Available in over 10 variants (the most significant variation being a different sauce), the Big
N’ Tasty was sold in all continents when first introduced, but today it’s still only
available in a few select Scandinavian countries.
McDonald’s Hula Burger
Because everything how-did-that-pineapple-get-in-here in a dish is Hawaiian, the Hula Burger’s
etymology speaks for itself.
But it was meant to be competition for the way more popular Filet-o-Fish, and the burger
collapsed shortly upon its release.
Created to draw in the Catholic crowd on Fridays who abstain from meat, the Hula burger was
just pineapple and cheese in a bun.
The burger, introduced in the 1960s, failed to attract even its target consumers, and
gradually fizzled out of the McDonald’s menu.
Its newer meatless counterparts, such as the Egg McMuffin, prove that the Hula burger was
just a lack of an understanding of the customer’s tastes, and not necessarily a bad concept
to begin with.
McDonald’s Radio Silence
Let’s face it, when you’re a giant corporation with a worldwide presence, you’re going
to collect a lot of haters, especially local competition.
Although fast food chains like Wendy’s trolling McDonald’s practically look like jealous
younger siblings, the popcorn-demanding frolic is just too funny to ignore.
Especially when McDonald’s chooses the radio-silence-way-out.
In the past, Wendy’s has aired a number of insults at McDonald’s (Frozen food jokes?
Check.
Typos?
Check.
Broken Ice Cream machines?
Check.), very much aware of the clichés that McDonald’s has unintentionally carved for
itself in pop culture.
Wendy’s even threw shade on the Golden Arches in a tweet by HBO about Sopranos, saying ‘nasty
patties’ are only available under the big yellow sign).
But while throwing dirt at other companies is incredibly easy with social media platforms
as perfect battlegrounds, McDonald’s radio silence in response to these digs is rather…
boring.
Even its response to Burger King’s McWhopper invitation is just so utterly dull.
When McDonald’s faces backlash (Such as the limited Mulan sauce that sold for a day
and failed a majority of its customers) it frequently chooses the silent, or better,
one-sentence way out.
With so many corporations throwing obvious shade at the company, does McDonald’s need
a PR revamp, or is it simply the uncaring Godfather quietly chuckling into its knuckles?
McLobster
Yes, I’d like lobster stuffed in a poorly toasted hot dog bun with lettuce, celery,
mayonnaise, and lemon flavoring.
Remember when you were hankering for a McLobster at 12 AM?
Neither do we.
Introduced as a novelty item during its Great Canadian Taste Adventure, the McLobster is
a testament to just how far McDonald’s will go to ensure customer satisfaction.
Or not.
With dollops of mayonnaise that made the claw meat seem like sides, the dish was a failure.
While lobster is considered the Great North’s most valuable seafood export, it’ll take
McD much more than a hot-dog bun roll to envelop the wide palette of tastes the seafood provides
(when done well).
A seasonal item made of 100% Atlantic lobster, the roll was also plagued with supply issues
and was not profitable overall.
The dish is a perfect example of McDonald’s unrelenting attempts to ‘fit in’ to the
cuisine of different nations.
But much like the McSpicy Paneer of India or Bulgogi burger of South Korea, the McLobster
falls Mcflat.
But that hasn’t stopped McDonald’s from serving Atlantic Canadians with the McLobster
roll for a staggering 26 years since 1993.
The item today adorns posters across the Great North throughout the summer, and even the
more uninterested customers cannot help but feel a certain pull to the picture-perfect
seeming delicacy (But misleading McDonald’s pictures are for another story altogether.)
The McLobster is on the menu for as long as “supplies last”, so you might want to
hurry if you want to give it a shot – or take your time.
A long, long time.
McD’s Constant Media Flak
No one goes to McDonald’s for the health benefits.
There is empirical data (that you can experience for yourself if you’re persistent enough)
that clearly shows that the long-term McDonald’s dining experience badly affects your cholesterol
levels, liver, heart, and overall wellness.
Regardless of the truthfulness of the claims, documentaries that highlight these facts in
painstaking detail have harangued the fast-food giant for decades.
Media outlets are constantly attacking the restaurant for its unhealthy food, poorly
treated employees, and failed menu items, and other restaurants have no qualms about
trolling the organization.
But it isn’t unasked for.
With McNuggets that melt, salads with poop, fries with natural beef flavorings, extra-sugary
ice-creams and parfaits, and salads fattier than burgers, its unending health failures
invite scrutiny and the disdain of the health-conscious.
But apart from its obviously unhealthy menu items, many of McDonald’s widely known publicity
gaffes can be attributed to its scale.
It is inevitable that a single mistake taints the entire corporation’s value in the international
market.
But the flak isn’t always bad for McDonald’s.
In fact, even though a majority of its coverage is regarding its health risks and occasional
tactlessness, any publicity that an unbreakable corporation with annual revenue of $22.8 billion
receives is good publicity.
Foreign Objects (McDonald’s Real Secret Menu)
Food scandals are a regular Tuesday for McDonald’s, but foreign objects are a rarer entity in
this list of debacles.
Bits of plastic, metal, and even a human tooth have adorned its menu in its 80-year tenure
in the fast food business.
Japan seems to have been the hardest hit by McDonald’s foreign objects menu, and the
Senior Executive for McDonald’s in Japan, along the same vein of his Western contemporaries,
dismissed them as an outsider’s job or as isolated cases that don’t reflect the quality
of McDonald’s itself.
But Japan’s stray cases are not a stray case.
Evil super-geniuses with top-secret access to McDonald’s food production management
have been stuffing food with nails, vinyl, metal, plastic, and human enamel for decades.
A Big Mac in Melbourne was once infested with maggots.
Plastic in Chicken McNuggets in Thailand and a spear in orange juice that went down an
unsuspecting patron’s throat in New York are a few of the many lawsuits in inedible-object
form that have troubled the fast-food chain and its patrons alike.
McAfrika
Ah, good old tone-deafness and bad timing.
Released in 2002, this item on our list deserves a special status because it didn’t fail
in taste (we’ll get to that later) as much as it did in theme.
That’s right, released during a major famine in the African countries Malawi, Zimbabwe,
Mozambique, Zambia, Lesotho and Swaziland (now known as Eswatini), the McAfrika was
either a tongue-in-cheek naming gag or just cringeworthy innocence.
To top it off, the item was released only in Norway, one of the richest countries in
the world.
But the weirdness doesn’t end just there.
The item was also used as a tradeable and limited edition Olympic Games Burger and was
made available again in 2008 during the Beijing Olympics, only to be met, once again, with
extreme criticism.
The backlash in 2002 actually made McDonald’s set up donation boxes in select locations
across the country.
Acknowledged by the spokesperson as a gaffe on the company’s part, the product was nonetheless
sold until September 2002, as had been planned, and was sold in 2008 along with an ‘exotic
African sauce’ this time.
Needless to say, no one was impressed.
McDonald’s Viral Disasters
The infamous pink slime, also affectionately called poultry paste, or mechanically separated
meat, is a phenomenon on its own, a perfect combination of myth, social media inflation,
and quite possibly the truth.
But what is impossible to ignore is the fact that no matter McDonald’s stubborn refusal
that its chicken nuggets first look like giant strawberry ice cream gel, chemical additives,
and obviously unhealthy practices are recurrent themes in its behind-the-scenes recipes.
Although McDonald’s dispelled the viral image by releasing a video that details how
McNuggets are actually made, the damage had been done, and McDonald’s finally had to
admit that it stopped using mechanically separated meat only in 2011.
Another few viral examples are the ‘moldy burger’, for which the poor patron was offered
15 pounds in refunds, and unclean ice cream trays, floors, and bathrooms that each led
McDonald’s into spiralling PR disaster.
But as always, McDonald’s emerges to be the resilient tardigrade of fast food restaurants.
With hundreds of millions of charity donations, employment of 1.5 million people, and a global
presence strong enough to sway widespread opinion with a click of its fingers, McDonald’s
is a living and breathing concept more than it is a restaurant.
The truth is, McDonald’s had us at ‘Hello, what can I get for you?’.
We’ll never stop loving it.
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