The Biggest Fast Food Flops From The Year You Were Born

Chowing down on fast food is one of America's most cherished national pastimes. According to NBC News, 80% of Americans indulge in fast food weekly. Honestly, how could we not? Fast food hits the taste trifecta perfectly with equal parts salty, fatty, and cheesy, and that's just the savory items. Sink your spoon into one of Dairy Queen's Blizzards, and you'll enjoy an explosion of creamy soft serve flecked with candy and swirls of caramel or chocolate.

Although there are many fast food items you need to eat before you die, not every fast food delicacy can be an original Popeye's chicken sammie or a fully-loaded Wendy's Baconator. Unfortunately, some fast food flops will live on in infamy as the times our fast food titans of taste really stepped in it, either through tone-deaf promotions, menu over-reaches, or downright bizarre diversions from the fast food we know and love. Let's dig into some of the biggest flops in fast food history. 

Kentucky Roast Beef wasn't KFC's only memorable misstep. In the 1970s, the chain launched a line of ribs, that some lauded as being the sticky, saucy, meaty stuff of childhood nostalgia (via In the 70s) while others found them to be downright nasty. According to LTH Forum, these "ribs" bore little resemblance to their hearty BBQ joint counterparts, instead being "meat-like paste" slathered on some bones that even dogs wouldn't touch.

Although these ribs are long gone, KFC is trying its hand with a new variation in South Korea; chicken-based, not meat paste this time (via Brand Eating).

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. McSpaghetti might have failed because it's too sweet for American tastes, but this long-gone Mcdonald's entree has a new life in the Philippines, where you can pick up your McSpaghetti with a side of fries or nuggets (via AZ Central).

Noting it as a "sweet foray into Filipino flavors," ABS-CBN notes that the sauce that landed as too saccharine on this side of the pond was embraced for its meaty, sweet deliciousness in Southeast Asia.

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 PETA and 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 it ran afoul of outraged animal advocates who called for mass boycotts and resulted in Burger King removing the sandwich from the majority of its franchises. Today, you can't find veal parmigiana at Burger King, and the infamous sandwich is wildly debated on Reddit.

Another McFlop, the McDonald's D.L.T., was canceled not for taste-related reasons or sheer weirdness but for packaging. According to Reader's Digest, the McDLT was a simplistic but satisfying combination of a burger, lettuce, tomato, pickles, and cheese. Introduced in the mid-1980s, the McDLT's charm came from its hot and cold components, kept separate and temperature controlled in two halves of the Styrofoam container that would be its undoing.

Discontinued in 1991 after six glorious years (via BuzzFeed), the McDLT lives on in McLore as one of the most delicious and innovative sandwiches the chain has ever offered.

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. As this vintage 1986 ad illustrates, 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 and seemed downright bizarre on a fast food menu.

To make matters worse, Taco Bell's seafood salad was also allegedly linked to some food poisoning cases, ending its short, gross reign as Taco Bell's foray into fish (via Spoon University).

In 1988, the fantastic and completely impractical Wendy's Superbar was born. The Superbar was over-the-top, a mish-mash of foods from all over the place, including dessert, different kinds of pasta, Mexican-style fare, and regular salad bar fixins. Wendy's Superbar was a true extravaganza that garnered a huge following but hit major trouble regarding logistics.

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 Superbar ran for 10 glorious years, and there's a petition to bring it back, but that's sadly unlikely.

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 boon 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 assumption that they're eating healthy, or to try to cut calories.

Dairy Queen's unsuccessful foray into frozen yogurt has been discussed Reddit, where it's primarily regarded as one of the chain's biggest flops, for totally understandable reasons.

In 1992, Burger King launched a tableside service initiative featuring Burger King Dinner Baskets, but dipping a toe into upscale dining proved to be not very successful for the fast food chain (via Retroist). The epic failure of Burger King dinner service in general, and Burger King Dinner Baskets to be specific, might be the ultimate warning that it's best to stay in your lane. During BK's classy sit-down experiment, dinners could get tableside service between 4 and 8 p.m.

The Burger King Dinner Baskets featured classic BK fare like Whoppers but also included baked potatoes, steak sandwiches, and shrimp. It was an innovative but ultimately unsuccessful way to reach the Applebee's and Outback Steakhouse crowd.

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 "Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's," founder Ray 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 (via The Sun). In addition to Kroc's personal hotdog-related qualms, the item suffered from muddled branding, and ultimately the chain went back to slinging burgers (via Business Insider).

Like McDonald's before it, Taco Bell floundered and fell when it decided to leave its cheap, cheerful, and tasty roots behind and step into the world of haute cuisine. Border Bell was supposed to be Taco Bell's chic and sophisticated sister, a version of classic Bell fare with an uptown twist. Border Bell flirted with fresher components and tried to get more authentic with its fare as a way to compete with the casual Mexican restaurants of the day (via MeTV).

If there's one thing we've learned, it's that you don't mess with perfection, and Border Bell was a predictable flop, shuttering its doors about eight seconds after opening.

In theory, McDonald's Big N Tasty should have been the most idyllic burger of the bunch; a messy celebration of mayo, ketchup, pickles, veg, and beef patties. Instead, although it had everything that you could want from a burger, the Big N Tasty might have been the victim of its own delicious success. According to The Impulsive Buy, the Big N Tasty as a Dollar Menu item worth buying began to dwindle as the burger started shrinking as time passed.

Whether the Big N Tasty became small and less satisfying, or there was some other reason it never caught on fully, is certainly up for debate.

The McAfrika will go down in McLore as being one of the most tone-deaf promotions ever. However, while the silly name wasn't doing the sandwich any favors, there was also the greater and ghastly issue of a famine that occurred in conjunction with the McAfrika's release. 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.

Not to mention, the McAfrika launched in Norway, not the African continent, adding more confusion and outrage to the already offensive sandwich.

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. As The Baltimore Sun notes, the McCrab was an optimistic attempt to get East Coast United States customers hooked on McDonald's crab, but getting hungry diners to swap out burgers for overly processed crab cakes proved a bridge too far for most.

Like Taco Bell's seafood salad before it, the McCrab failed in the freshness department and ultimately flopped, leaving McDonald's to go back to its burger basics.

In 2005, Burger King launched its own supersized sandwich, seemingly fulfilling the chain's quest to fill American bellies with as much fat and calories as humanly possible. According to NBC News, the enormous omelet sandwich was a towering fatberg crowned with an omelet, cheese, bacon, and sausage, all on a hearty hoagie. It was a massive 730 calories, unseating the chain's Whopper as more caloric of them all.

As pointed out by Reddit, the mega-sandwich was popular with truckers, but people who didn't need tons of calories to fuel their long-haul drives had a different view. After a brief bump in revenue, Americans soured on the giant omelet sandwich, with some commentators noting that Americans didn't need it in their lives (via CNN Money).