Worst as either “Worst Quality” or “Dumbest Concept”, and I say Gimmick just so people don’t flood it with “Any McDonalds burger” or chains they don’t like in general.
I think the “Loaded Taco” from Taco Bell just from the outset is a very dumb idea, mainly because it’s a smaller version of an already existing item from them, their regular ground beef burrito except for this they added those crunchy tortilla strips. By calling it loaded taco you make it seem like it’s a hard shelled taco with a lot of stuff added on it, instead of simply being a normal ground beef burrito with tomatoes, lettuce, cheese and sour cream (plus those strips). I was incredibly underwhelmed trying it especially considering Taco Bell’s gimmick items tend to be very crazy and unique.
If McDonalds new Frork idea is actually a real thing, as in a small injection molded plastic piece of crap that is included with a new burger, then I predict a successful campaign. I think lots of people are going to want one of those things for the laughs.
Disclaimer: I am a McDonald’s veteran, serving during McD.L.T., and the introduction of salads and buttermilk biscuits.
Here in Germany they did a ski hut promo with the so-called “Rösti Sticks”. Sort of a puffed potato thing.
It’s greasy to the point of being barely edible. Like, I can get behind some grease, but this is just an entirely different level of dripping oils and fats over a core that really isn’t that tasty to begin with. Just downright bad.
While they’re not inedible, I never understood the appeal of the Doritos taco at Taco Bell. The few times I’ve had one, I don’t get any additional flavor but just a ton of salt.
Is it required to have tried the item in question? I wasn’t brave (or stupid) enough to try what KFC offered here in the Philippines - the KFC Double Down Dog, which is a hot dog wrapped in a bun made out of fried chicken fillet. Pass.
Not a gimmick, since I’m pretty sure it became permanent, but when Burger King changed their fries years ago they lost me as a customer. I think they’re supposed to be less greasy, or lower in sodium or some quasi healthy thing but they taste like lightly salted packing peanuts. I don’t recall exactly how they tasted before but I know they were at least edible.
I like McDonalds, but the McRib is awful. There was something like five or six years in a row where I fell prey to “scarcity marketing”/“limited time only!” and every year I thought to myself, “why did I think this was going to be any good this year?” Sometime in the mid 2000s, I finally broke the cycle. No more McRib for me.
All of Taco Bell’s breakfast menu is garbage. Dry waffle tacos, “crunchwraps” with greasy hash browns inside, even the coffee was terrible. Of course, I didn’t go in expecting much, but I did expect to fill my stomach for cheap and not feel queasy afterwards. Taco Bell breakfast failed at even that meager task.
On the other hand, White Castle breakfast is surprisingly good. For fast food breakfast, that is.
Mentioned above, but the first thing that came to mind was the Mc D.L.T.
It was basically a quarter pounder with cheese, but they put it in a special “two sided” container, with a tag line, “so the hot side stays hot and the cool side stays cool.”
They even had Aretha Franklin doing the commercials. :smack:
The Arch Deluxe sandwich from McDonald’s. They promoted it by insinuating that their customer base i.e. children would hate it. Turns out, we were all young at heart.
A few years ago “Jack in the Box” tried their hand at deli sandwiches. Yes, a burger place thought ham and cheese sandwiches on bread was going to be the new hit thing. They were your basic sandwiches you could literally make at home with no gimmicks but they cost $5 by themselves. I think very shortly afterwards they tried to get people hooked on them so they had an in-store promotion where if you bought any sandwich you got another free so that’s how I tired it. Very basic sandwich with about three layers of ham and cheese and grilled bread, even at basically half-price it was still a rip-off.
The point of a Arch Deluxe was that they wanted something that appealed to adults. The ads showed kids. Not only a bad campaign, but one that contradicted the entire reason the product existed.
I had them and they were quite good, but any sane ad campaign would have shown a parent looking for something more than a basic burger.
Those ads were aimed exclusively at children. Nobody but children care if a food has a “grown-up taste”, but many children do care very much about being oh-so-“grown-up”. In fact, that might have actually been the problem with those ads, because nobody’s customer base actually consists of children: The actual customers that you need to convince with your advertisements are the parents, because they have the money.