Here we are once again for another edition of fast food failures. Since fast food is a competitive business, there’s always going to be marketing people trying to come up with the newest genius idea that’s going to increase quarterly profits by 0.2%. This list is more Mcdonalds heavy compared to the last list and that’s not a surprise seeing how old Mcdonalds is compared to some of their competitors.

-Pizza chains such as Dominos and Pizza Hut were becoming very popular with American families looking for a quick meal for supper. Mcdonalds began research and development on pizza back in the 1970s but only began to roll their version of pizza out in the early 90s. Even though we call it the McPizza, the official name for the pizzas was simply ‘Pizza’. You could order a pizza pie (which resembled an apple pie), a personal sized pizza or a family pizza that was brought to your table by a server and put on a raised rack. Mcdonalds spent a lot of money on trying to make these pizzas a success. They had to install all new pizza ovens in any restaurant that was serving the pizzas and also needed to modify the size of their drive thru windows in order to accommodate the large size of the pizza boxes. The pizzas were simply too time consuming to make and cost too much money to produce and people who really wanted to eat pizza went to a pizza place and went to Mcdonalds for burgers and not pizza. The pizzas were discontinued but vegetarian pizzas are still sold in certain markets such as Dubai and India.

-Taco Bell had the great idea of convincing burger people to come and eat at Taco Bell by placing a burger inside a tortilla and renaming it the Bell Beefer. The meal was basically anything inside a Taco Bell taco with the addition of chopped onions and a special red sauce that was placed inside a hamburger bun. You could also get a pintos and cheese cup on the side. I suppose that if you were to bring this menu item back; Taco Bell would need to ditch their ‘Outside the Bun’ marketing campaign. This item was discontinued over 15 years ago but if you wish to restore the nostalgia with this food item – simply go to Taco Bell, order a taco and proceed to smear it on a hamburger bun and then nuke it in the microwave.

-A  new popular menu item at one local restaurant in Saudi Arabia is baby camel burgers. Assistant manager, Ali Ahmad Esmail, says that the camel burger are fat free and cholesterol free but declined to specify how the rough meat was tenderized and said that it was a trade secret. The quarter-pounder burger can be eaten with fries and washed down with a soft drink or camel shake. We realize that different cultures have different preferences when it comes to culinary cuisine. But when it comes to camels, the smell is horrendous and the animal spitting is not very enticing for us. If you’re in the Middle East – go for it. Otherwise, we don’t think we’ll be seeing camel on an American menu anytime soon. 

-Ihop business managers were too busy staring at KFC’s Double Down sandwich and got the bright idea of coming out with their own food item shortly after. Pancake stackers are two buttermilk pancakes with a wedge of cheesecake filling in the middle and topped with strawberries ,blueberries or cinnamon apple compote and a whipped topping. This item mixed with eggs ,bacon and hash browns can run up to 1250 calories and the sodium content alone is over the allowable recommended limit per day.  Ihop executives feel that this offers something valuable to their customers and is a nice addition along with several low calorie options that were added to their menu recently. Cheesecakes are tasty but we think that adding them with pancakes might be a bit of an overkill. Personally, two buttermilk pancakes, bacon, hashbrowns and a coffee is more than enough for me but I can see individuals wanting to try this item out to change their daily routine. This item is being served for a limited time only and is only available in select markets in the USA.

-Apparently, grilled cheese sandwiches weren’t giving Denny’s customers their full intake of processed cheese per day. This new sandwich is a typical grilled cheese sandwich with mozzarella sticks jam packed into the inside of the sandwich and served with marinara sauce and fries on the side. The sandwich only costs 4$ but the low price won’t help your heart in the long run with its 850 calories intake.

-The Mcdonalds Lettuce and Tomato was served with mayonnaise, ketchup, pickles, sliced onions, lettuce, cheese and two tomato slices. This sounds like any typical burger but it was the assembly of the burger that made the difference. Mcdonalds came out with a special polystyrene packaging that kept the burger in two separate compartments. The hot side with the bun and the burger patty was kept on one side while the other side would contain all of the cold items. The strategy was for the customer to assemble the burger themselves before eating it and this would keep the hot side ‘hot’ and the cold side ‘cold’ and create a better overall taste and experience for the customer. Mcdonalds thought this concept was a real home run and spent millions of dollars on advertising and even got a pre-Seinfeld Jason Alexander to appear in a television commercial with him dancing through the streets proclaiming his love for the sandwich. Sadly, customers were probably too lazy to assemble the burger themselves and the polystyrene containers were an environmental hazard and Mcdonalds phased them out for more eco-friendly packages. Once the new packaging was released, the McDLT was discontinued in favor of newer burgers such as the McLean, the Arch Deluxe and the Big N’ Tasty burger and we all know what a failure those burgers turned out to be.

-Speaking of failed McDonald’s burgers…it seems that the new diet-friendly heir apparent to the McDLT didn’t fare as well either. McDonald’s was being pressured by nutritionalists who said that the food at Mcdonald’s restaurants was unhealthy for customers (Really? McDonald’s? No way?!). McDonald’s attempt to create a healthier burger was the introduction of the McLean Deluxe. The burger was introduced in 1991 and featured only 10g of fat compared to 26g of fat in their Big Mac sandwiches. Also, the burger was being promoted as 90% fat-free. How is this possible? Well, the folks at McDonald’s added something into the burger called ‘Carrageenan’ which is a seaweed extract. The patty would be 90% beef and the remaining 10% would be a mix of water and the seaweed extract. The beef patty tasted dry and a majority of McDonald’s customers were men who were put off by the new diet sandwich. The burgers were discontinued in 1994.

-We know there’s been a lot of burger and taco failures but  screwing up a pizza can be done as well. It’s hard to mess up a pizza pie. Customers like to have all sorts of stuff shoved on to their pizzas. Pizza Hut executives wanted to try a new deep dish style pizza that had multiple layers and was thicker than the standard pan pizza that was a popular item in the restaurant. They invented the Priazzo pizza which was a thin crust pizza layered inside a deep dish pizza. A layer of sauce and cheese was placed on top of the thin crust pizza and then another layer of thin crust pizza was shoved on top for good measure. Finally, a final mountain of sauce and cheese was added and then it was shoved into the pizza oven. A special pin grid was placed into the center of the pizza to make sure that the heat reached some of the deeper portions of the pizza and to make sure that all sides of the pizza were cooked evenly. The problem wasn’t that these pizzas tasted bad in any way. In fact, they were quite tasty and many pizza fans thought that this was one of Pizza Hut’s best overall pizzas. The problem was that it took way too long to make the pizzas and in an era when pizzas were supposed to be done in 30 minutes or less; it simply took too long to make. Pizza hut employees had operational difficulties when making these pizzas along with Pizza Hut’s more traditional pizzas and soon the cost of making these pizzas became counter productive. Many fans still wish this pizza makes a return but with the downward economy, I wouldn’t count on it anytime soon.

We like doing these articles very much and we hope to try and bring as many of these articles as we can as long as fast food joints keep coming up with these horrible ideas. Our next article will deal with great creations such as the Mac Snack Rap, Cheddar BK Stuffed Steakhouse Burger, Taco Bell Shrimp Taco and many more goodies.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 11th, 2012 at 10:57 pm and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.