If you were born in 1998, congratulations! You share a birth year with McDonald's most
convoluted promotion ever. But even that's nothing compared to their 2002 McAfrika snafu.
Onion Nuggets were a brief offering from McDonald's in the late 1970s. According to Mental
Floss, these deep-fried onion cubes were the original frontrunners to the chain's McNuggets,
which hit the market in 1980. Onion Nuggets only hit four test markets before vanishing.
Maybe with a larger rollout McDonald's Onion Nuggets would have found some fans. Either way,
since the concept of squishing something into a small lump and deep frying it later evolved
into the beloved McNugget, we guess they weren't a total waste of time.
"Introducing, chicken McNuggets."
According to Christian Science Monitor,
McSpaghetti emerged in the late 1970s as part of McDonald's bid to break into the casual,
middle-of-the-road dinner biz. McSpaghetti, fettuccine Alfredo,
and lasagna all graced the McMenu, but none stuck, at least not in the United States.
It may have flopped stateside, but the CEO of McDonald's Philippines picked up on the idea
and launched a version in 1986. In fact, this long-gone Mcdonald's entree has enjoyed a long
life in the Philippines, where you can pick up your McSpaghetti with a side of fries or nuggets.
Jack in the Box's inspired combo of two fried favorites, onion rings, and fries,
was a short-lived phenomenon that's still legendary on Reddit. Anyone who's ever
gotten a stray onion ring in their French fries can certainly relate to why Jack in
the Box thought a mixture of the two would be a great idea. According to Jack in the Box Fandom,
Frings burst onto the scene in 1979 and fizzled out right at
the beginning of the 1980s, although plenty of people mourn the fried duo.
"My Saturday nights were dull and dreary…until I had my first Frings."
Love them or hate them; you have to admire Jack in the Box's ingenuity.
Although Burger King's veal parmigiana actually launched in 1980,
the controversy surrounding this specialty sammie came to a fever pitch in 1982,
when Burger King found itself in the crosshairs of animal rights advocates over its meat choice.
According to Christian Science Monitor, Burger King's veal parmigiana sandwich did pretty well
for the first bit of its short-lived fast food run, until animal advocates called for mass
boycotts, resulting in Burger King removing the sandwich from the majority of its franchises.
Behold, the sandwich that Reddit calls "glorious and terrible," a fast food
flop in its time but a fan favorite years later, the weird, wonderful, and wildly
over-processed McRib. The McRib is a plethora of different flavors, many of them over-the-top,
making this sandwich one of the most polarizing offerings that McDonald's had on the menu.
In 1983, the original McRib was in the middle of its downward spiral. McRib's
initial run might have been a flop, but it keeps coming back thanks to McRib devotees.
Introduced in the mid-1980s, the McDLT's charm came from its hot and cold components, kept
separate in two halves of the package. Actually, we'll just let Jason Alexander explain this one.
"The beef stays hot. The cool stays crisp. Put it together, you can't resist."
Pretty simple, and actually pretty good by all accounts. But the Achilles heel of
the McDLT turned out to be the very same thing that made it unique: the package.
It didn't actually fail until the 1990s,
when people started getting concerned about the environmental impact of
all the styrofoam that went into the packaging and McDonald's discontinued it.
The Priazzo was Pizza Hut's spin on deep-dish pizza, an over-stuffed, weighty chunk of pie
loosely based on Italian recipes, yet barely authentic by any objective measurements.
Unfortunately for the Priazzo, people didn't have the patience to wait the
better part of an hour for their pie. So the Priazzo slowly faded away from menus,
and had disappeared from locations by the early '90s.
Taco Bell's mid-80s seafood salad was intended as a way to one-up fast food giants like McDonald's,
whose Filet-o-Fish was flying out of franchise drive-thrus,
but wound up being a huge flop. Taco Bell took direct aim at McDonald's but quickly
found themselves in unfamiliar seas with a salad that didn't live up to the hype.
To make matters worse, Taco Bell's seafood salad was also allegedly linked to some
food poisoning cases, ending its short reign as Taco Bell's foray into fish.
Burger King's 1987 Burger Bundles might have emerged as a clap back to White Castle's success
both in the fast food and pop culture arenas. Even The Beastie Boys were name-dropping White
Castle in several songs, possibly prompting the king of burgers to make a move. Granted,
Burger Bundles were always billed as a limited time offer, and for a while
they looked like the hot new thing. But they suffered from fatal problems in execution.
Unfortunately, Burger Bundles reportedly had a habit of falling into the grill,
which was never designed for such petite patties. Still, they reappeared several times
over the years under different disguises, including Burger Packs and Burger Shots.
In 1988, the fantastic and completely impractical Wendy's Superbar was born.
The Superbar was a mish-mash of foods from all over the place, including dessert,
different kinds of pasta, Mexican-style fare, and regular salad bar fixings.
"Try the fettucini. It's fabulous."
According to Fun 107, the Superbar required a ton of attention from the
staff, and the behemoth bar just wasn't sustainable in the end.
The '80s were the golden age of pizza, and McDonald's hit on the trend at the end of
the decade, rolling out McPizza. According to Business Insider,
McPizza came right on the heels of McDonald's push for a bigger dinner menu,
but the McPizza was short-lived and quickly pulled from most franchises.
Surprisingly, this fast food pie did linger in three locations in the US all the way up to the
mid 2010s. These days, you can still grab one if you're up for a road trip to Orlando, Florida.
In the mid-80s, Dairy Queen hit on massive success with its Blizzards, so it stands to
reason that they'd try to duplicate the storm with a healthier spin on the classic treat.
Enter the Breeze, a fro-yo concoction that hit DQs all over the country in 1990. But,
unfortunately, the Breeze didn't have the Blizzard's allure, possibly because nobody
goes to Dairy Queen with the intention of eating healthy. It ain't salad in those cups.
Like Dairy Queen, Mcdonald's fell straight into the '90s health food trap with its
rendition of a low-fat, good-for-you burger. The McLean Deluxe was a low-fat burger that
was essentially flavorless, thanks to the lack of fat. They also tended to fall apart quickly.
As Medium notes, the public appetite for healthy food from Mcdonald's is just pretty non-existent,
and the McLean Deluxe flopped as customers flocked to fattier fare.
In 1992, Burger King launched a tableside service initiative featuring Burger King Dinner Baskets.
The Burger King Dinner Baskets featured classic BK
fare like Whoppers but also included baked potatoes, steak sandwiches, and shrimp.
During BK's classy sit-down experiment, diners could get tableside service between
4 and 8 p.m. For a while they even offered a meatloaf sandwich and, in maybe the most
inexplicable move of the entire experiment, they offered popcorn while you waited for your food.
"I love this place."
It was an innovative but ultimately unsuccessful
way to reach the Applebee's and Outback Steakhouse crowd.
For a brief time in the early to mid-90s,
McDonald's made the leap into Taco Bell turf. According to Business Insider,
McDonald's menus featured breakfast burritos and chicken fajitas, complete with an ad
campaign featuring the ultra-cringe tagline "a taste of Mexico without the sunburn."
As with most flops, McDonald's rendition of the chicken fajita has a few strong
supporters online. A now-closed petition to bring back the fajitas has 57 signatures,
possibly indicative of the original sample size that enjoyed this faux Mexican treat.
Although hot dogs are undeniably one big part of the fast food pyramid,
they never really took off in American McDonald's for a very interesting and
unconventional reason. According to Ray Kroc's "Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's,"
Kroc had an ethical issue with serving hot dogs at his restaurants, claiming that the
sodium-charged tubes of mystery meat couldn't possibly be checked for quality control.
As such, McHotdogs didn't take off in the United States but still pop
up from time to time in overseas locales.
One of the most notable and epic failures in all of Mcdonald's history, the Arch Deluxe
hit the fast food stage in 1996 and almost immediately exited it. According to Eater,
the Arch Deluxe's $150 million rollout campaign yielded disappointing results
as the public said a collective "meh" to the upgraded McDonald's burger with peppered bacon,
Dijonnaise sauce, and a potato bun, marketed as a mature fast food choice.
"If it were any more grown up, we'd need to check your ID. It's McDonald's with a grown-up taste."
The Arch Deluxe's colossal failure is one of fast food's biggest mysteries, but it might be due to
the fact that people just don't frequent fast food joints to get high-end burgers.
If you've never heard of this one, you're not alone. In 1997, Taco Bell opened a single upscale
location in Mountain View, California, in an attempt to get more authentic with its fare
as a way to compete with the casual Mexican restaurants of the day. Dubbed Border Bell,
it was meant to be a companion chain to Taco Bell, but never gained any traction. This
is also the year the super-popular Taco Bell chihuahua made his debut,
so clearly the franchise had plenty going for it without needing to resort to upscale gimmicks.
"Yo quiero Taco Bell."
McDonald's Szechuan Sauce is one of the most interesting items on this list because it failed
twice for two different reasons. According to Salon, the sauce was a "just fine" condiment,
rolled out to coincide with Disney's "Mulan." It lasted briefly, then vanished off the menu,
only to roar back into our pop culture imagination thanks to "Rick and Morty."
"And then they got rid of it, and now it's gone.
This is the only place we're going to be able to try it, is in my memory."
"Rick, you're doing this bit while your brain is melting."
"Alright, alright."
In 2017, McDonald's Szechuan sauce had a fast food resurgence, prompting
McDonald's to reintroduce the sauce in 2017. Unfortunately, that didn't go very well either.
"It's chaos at a McDonald's over, of all things, Szechuan sauce."
McDonald's didn't make enough sauce, prompting fan fury and some unruly crowds.
Let's be clear: The Big N Tasty didn't exactly flop. Instead,
it might have been the victim of its own success. It gave you a whole lot for a dollar,
and it's possible that franchise owners didn't appreciate that as much as the masses.
“A big n tasty for just a dollar? How do you do it? What’s your secret?”
As the Chicago Tribune reported in 2003, 2,400 franchisees voted to replace the Big
N Tasty with the smaller, less expensive double cheeseburger
on the dollar menu. As the company further streamlined its menu in the years to come,
the Big N Tasty got the boot. 2011 was the last time anybody said:
"I just ordered a Big N Tasty."
According to QSR Magazine, McSalad Shakers were convenient, reasonably-priced salads
that came in a cup. At less than three dollars apiece, they appeared downright appealing.
Unfortunately, McSalad Shakers lasted less than three years before Mcdonald's
abandoned them. Next time you want a salad at McDonald's, try this hack:
order an extra cup, scoop your salad and dressing in, and give it a good
jiggle. Instant McSalad Shaker. Nothing is discontinued with the proper willpower.
The McAfrika will go down in history as being one of the most tone-deaf promotions ever.
According to The Guardian, McDonald's got lambasted for its insensitive launch of the
McAfrika right in the middle of a vast African famine with roughly 12 million people suffering
in the southern part of the continent. In a twist nobody saw coming, McDonald's created
the same promotion in 2008. It went over just as well then as it did the first time.
According to Yahoo, McDonald's short-lived McCrab suffered from too many processed ingredients
and too few fresh ones, yielding a sandwich that had very little in common with the tasty
Chesapeake crab cake it sought to emulate. It never had much of a chance: Reportedly,
the sandwich was only rolled out to 37 locations on the east coast before crawling into memory.
McDonald's supersize option had been around for quite a while when Morgan Spurlock's
2004 film "Super Size Me" took a massive swipe at the gluttonous upgrade option,
prompting an enormous backlash. According to ABC News, Mcdonald's claimed that the hit
flick didn't prompt it to cancel supersize options, claiming "simplification" as the
reason behind the decision. Either way, super sizes were out the door in 2004.
In 2005, Burger King launched its own supersized sandwich. According to NBC News,
the enormous omelet sandwich had an omelet, cheese, bacon, and sausage,
all on a hearty hoagie. It was a massive 730 calories.
As pointed out by Reddit, the mega-sandwich was popular with truckers, but people who
didn't need tons of calories to fuel a long-haul drive had a different view.
After a brief bump in revenue, Americans soured on the giant omelet sandwich.