What was the deal with McDLT? I’ve never been much of a “chain” fast food consumer, so what made it so special. I know “the hot stayed hot, and the cold stayed cold,” but what was so special about that if they were all put together?
And whatever happened to it?
It was a gimmick, trying to sell the fact that the lettuce and tomato didn’t get wilted due to the steam.
No one cared. It didn’t sell all that well.
I also required roughly 2.5 times the styrofoam packaging that the regular hamburgers used up, so even a U.S. populace largely unconcerned with workaday environmental issues was repulsed. Public relations cyanide, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer megacorporation.
The cheese was on the cool side! (At least in the commercials.) If you want a cheeseburger, ya want that stuff melted into the patty!
McDonald’s did an even worse job of promoting the Arch Deluxe.
The entire idea behind the burger was to create something that appealed to adult (they didn’t want to be just considered a “kid’s place”). So they came up with the burger and made two obvious mistakes:
Their ads always showed kids eating it. The message was intended to mean it’s a burger for adults (not sure what that means, unless the patty was in some interesting shapes 
). What it said was that kids can feel grown up eating it.
They never bothered mentioning was was in an “Arch Deluxe.” Mustard sauce? Splinters of wood from the golden arches? Ground up Betty and Veronica?
So the thing tanked.
McDTL and ArchDeluxe both basicly sucked. A weak attempt to push the Whopper and the Wendy’s Single off the market. Didn’t come even close to working.
I don’t recall ever having heard of a McDLT. Someone care to enlighten me?
Remember that McDonald’s used to make everything ahead of time and leave it sitting on a rack until someone ordered it. So the lettuce would get wilted and nasty. I think that they’ve revamped their kitchens so they make things to order (or at least a rough approximation), so it’s not as big a problem anymore.
Ya know, I’m thinking of sending a lot of bubble wrap to you, Ike, so you don’t have to require so much styrofoam for yourself!
Back around 1986, they produced a two-part stryofoam container that had a cold bun half with mayonnaise, a pale cottony tomato slice, a rectangle of waxy industrial American cheesefood, and a sheaf of iceberg lettuce in one side, and a warmish gray burger on a cold bun half on the other.
You were supposed to take the two halves out (as Mjollnir said, “The hot half stays HOT! The cold half stays COLD!”) and slap 'em together to eat.
How could one resist such an artfully-crafted cuilinary delight?
If I remember corrrectly, the McDLT burger was also low fat, and tasted kind of mealy.
I liked the Arch Deluxe. It was damn tasty.
Now the latest thing is the Big and Tasty burger right? I really think this is the dumbest name yet. Rather implies everything else they serve is crap, doesn’t it?
I think they had to discontinue the brilliant two chamber McDLT package when they found out that they were causing ozone damage.
Where I live, some McDonalds serve the “Big And Tasty”, others have the same damn thing and call it “The Big Extra”. Its a basic burger with lettuce, tomato, and a 1,200 calorie glob of mayonaise. As a side note I live in El Paso, the only city where (according to another food thread in the SD) Hellmanns and Best Foods Mayonaise are sold concurrently. Am I sitting on yet another mayonaise-related fault line?
I actually liked the McDLT in comparison to McDonald’s other food, and so did my father-in-law. It’s the only thing we’ve ever agreed on.
The best part was the musical commercial they had, starring a youthful, svelte Jason Alexander (years before he became George on Seinfeld), dancing a little dance and singing “the McD! tap tap L!T!”
Methinks you’re confusing it with the “McLean Deluxe”. Totally different beast.
What do you want them to call it, the Small-n-Stinky?
Might as well!
Anyway, the Big ‘n’ Tasty is a Quarter Pounder with different dressings. Get a B ‘n’ T for 99 cents instead of a 1/4 lb. for 2.50, with whatever dressing configuration you like. Legally, they can’t deny you that.
I liked the ad where they showed Ronald McDonald grooving in a nightclub. Kind of surreal.
Anyone who remembers this commercial with JA will confirm that the McDLT must have had something in it besides the ingredients already mentioned in this thread. Nobody gets that excited about a hamburger.
Conan O’Brien had an equally surreal riff on the “McDonald’s has grown up” slogan, showing Our Man assembling an automatic weapon in a men’s room. Still disturbs me. Like I wasn’t already afraid of clowns.
As did I (with bacon).
Tried the plain B’n’T, blech! Tried again with BBQ sauce instead, that wasn’t too bad. Better than the BBQ Whopper!