9 Weird Fast Food Menu Items That Felt Completely Off-Brand

Do you ever get the urge to do something totally random? Maybe restyle your hair, or try out a new makeup look, or buy an item of clothing that's so not you, for example. Well, it turns out that, sometimes, fast food chains get that itch too.

If you're wondering what on earth we're talking about, all is about to become clear. Here, we're looking at some of the weirdest fast food menu items in recent history — specifically, the ones that felt totally off-brand for the chain in question.

We won't give you too many spoilers, but we will say this: McDonald's once thought that a fruit burger would sell well. Yes, really. But that's not even the oddest story on this list. Taco Bell also thought that slapping a candy bar in bread would reel in more customers through the door, and Pizza Hut decided to reinvent the wheel with a strange processed meat concoction.

When the first McDonald's opened in the 1940s, the menu was incredibly simple. In fact, there were just three food items: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, and fries. Over the decades, of course, things changed dramatically. Now, you can head to your local McDonald's and order everything from a Big Mac to a McChicken to a Quarter Pounder With Cheese, as well as the classic Filet-O-Fish.

McDonald's beloved fish burger was first created back in 1962, when one of the chain's franchisees, Lou Groen, decided he wanted to offer a meatless option to his Catholic customers (who didn't eat meat on Fridays or during Lent). In Groen's view, fish made perfect sense. But McDonald's founder Ray Kroc wasn't so sure. Instead, he suggested a pineapple-and-cheese burger, called the Hula Burger. Yes, you read that right: a slice of grilled pineapple topped with cheese and slapped in a bun. Pineapple pizza fans, are you frothing at the mouth?

To solve the dilemma of fish or pineapple, Groen and Kroc decided to battle it out. Groen's franchises would sell both, and the winner would get a spot on the menu. You already know how this story ends. Today, around 300 million Filet-O-Fish sandwiches are sold every year around the world. It's hard to imagine an alternative reality with Hula Burgers flying out the door instead, but that's because they never flew out the door. These burgers were so wrong for McDonald's that Groen's franchises only managed to sell six.

Six years before the world got the Filet-O-Fish (and before McDonald's launched its iconic Big Mac), Burger King created the Whopper. The chain's signature burger is, of course, a simple combination of a flame-grilled burger, tomatoes, lettuce, mayonnaise, pickles, ketchup, and onions. Simple, sure, but also incredibly successful. Every year, Burger King sells more than 1 billion Whoppers worldwide.

You might think that with stats like that, there's no need to experiment with the Whopper. But Burger King has done exactly that, many, many times — sometimes, with huge success (hello, Impossible Whopper), and other times, ahem, with far less success. In 2016, for example, Burger King decided it would be a fun idea to swap out the Whopper's classic bun and change it for a tortilla, and swap out the mayonnaise for queso. The classic Whopper stayed on the menu, of course, but customers also had the option of ordering this new Whopper burrito, or, as it was officially known, a Whopperito. Reader: It was a flop. The Whopperito was discontinued shortly after it was introduced. It turns out, people don't go to Burger King for Tex-Mex or burritos; they go there for burgers. Go figure?

For some, the Whopperito put them off Burger King completely. "My boyfriend legitimately would not eat Whoppers for years cause they reminded him of the Whopperito and he'd feel sick any time he tried," said one Reddit user in the subreddit r/StupidFood. "It was a scarring experience."

If you thought the Hula Burgers sounded like an odd choice for McDonald's, wait until you hear what we've got lined up next: McSpaghetti. Yes, in the 1970s, and then again in the 1990s, McDonald's really did try to make pasta happen. And not just spaghetti, either; in the 1990s, there was also fettuccine Alfredo and lasagna, served with a garlic dinner roll.

Pasta is off-brand for a fast food chain that specializes in slinging burgers and French fries; there's no getting away from it. But, that said, off-brand doesn't always mean failure. McSpaghetti didn't take off nationwide, but it found its people in Florida. Just outside Disney World in Orlando, the world's largest McDonald's serves up the fast-food chain's classic menu items alongside less-conventional options like pasta and pizza.

And that's not all, McSpaghetti is also on the menu at McDonald's restaurants in the Philippines and Indonesia. It's proof that, sometimes, going off-piste works out in the end. In fact, some people think that McDonald's should bring McSpaghetti back everywhere, and have even started petitions in a bid to make it happen.

We're not done with weird McDonald's menu items just yet. In the 1990s, McDonald's launched the McLobster for the very first time in New England and Atlantic Canada. The menu item consisted of chunks of Atlantic lobster, a seafood sauce, and shredded lettuce, all stuffed into a hot dog roll. On the surface, lobster sounds like an odd choice for McDonald's. Let's be honest: This particular sea creature is expensive, and is often associated with high-end seafood restaurants rather than cheap fast food. The meat for the lobster wasn't fried either, a departure from the norm for the fast food giant.

But despite being off-brand, the McLobster worked, and it managed to stay on the menu in some format or another well into the 2010s. It's worth noting, though, that the McLobster was discontinued in 2014, before being replaced by the almost identical Lobster Roll.

If you love the idea of lobster at McDonald's, the moment to try one hasn't passed. Keep an eye out if you're in Canada or New England, as sometimes it makes a seasonal reappearance on the menu every now and again, according to fans.

Look, we have to be honest, there are several discontinued Taco Bell items that we don't miss at all. It might be controversial to some, but we're firm believers that the Enchirito, the Volcano Taco, and Bell Beefer should all stay in the past, for example. The Waffle Taco is also in that club.

The Waffle Taco appeared in 2014 on Taco Bell's breakfast menu. And to be clear, despite the name, it wasn't a taco at all. By definition, a taco is made with a tortilla. And sure, there's some flexibility. The taco can be made with wheat or corn, or it can be crispy or soft — but it cannot be a waffle. Still, Taco Bell decided to try to make the Waffle Taco a thing anyway. But for all intents and purposes, it was a waffle folded around ingredients like sausage, bacon, eggs, cheese, and syrup.

Not only was the Waffle Taco off-brand for Taco Bell, but it also failed to attract many fans based on the taste and texture. "The AM crunchwraps were good, but the waffle tacos were nasty," said one Reddit user in the r/forgottenfoods subreddit. Another added: "When TB first dropped the breakfast menu nationwide, I went and bought everything. Surprisingly, the waffle taco was by far the weakest of the bunch." Based on this, it's probably not shocking to you that the Waffle Taco didn't last.

If we're going to bring up the definition of a taco, we've got to do the same for pizza. According to most definitions, a pizza is round, it's made with dough, it's baked with cheese or just tomato, and it's topped with meat, vegetables, or both. It doesn't usually have hot dogs for a crust. But Pizza Hut doesn't care about technicalities.

In 2012, the fast food chain decided to try something new by stuffing a hot dog into the crust. Unusual? Sure. Unpopular? Absolutely not. In fact, the hot dog crust evolved. Instead of one long hot dog circling the pizza, Pizza Hut turned the hot dogs into small dough-wrapped bites around the edge. Three years later, it would launch Hot Dog Crust pizza in the U.S. for the first time (the pizza was on the menu in Asia, the U.K., Australia, and Canada before it made it to the U.S.).

The Hot Dog Crust might have been popular at first (probably because of the novelty), but it wasn't strong enough to last very long. "It was just meh ...," declared one Redditor after trying it for the first time. They added: "The hot dogs were more like Vienna [sausages] wrapped in [pizza] dough." Another chimed in with: "The hot dogs make the pizza look like it's infested with botfly larvae." That said, Pizza Hut didn't give up and brought the pizza back again in 2026 for a limited run.

In 2016, Burger King was clearly in the mood to try new things. As well as the Whopperito, this was also the year that the chain decided to branch out with Mac n' Cheetos. They were definitely a new avenue for Burger King, but they initially sounded like they could work: a mix of Cheetos and macaroni and cheese, what's not to love? It turns out, a lot.

Critics at the time claimed that the new side was nothing short of a gimmick. But worse than that, it just didn't taste good. The outside wasn't crispy or crunchy enough, while the inside just didn't deliver on that creamy gooeyness or strong cheesy flavor you want from mac and cheese. Many customers didn't rate them either. In fact, one person noted in the r/BurgerKing subreddit that they "tasted like Play-Doh."

Unsurprisingly, the Mac n' Cheetos were short-lived. Burger King did bring them back again in 2017 for a brief period, but they haven't been seen since.

Pizza Hut isn't the only chain that has attempted to reinvent pizza. In 2014, Subway decided it was going to go down a completely different track from its usual sandwich offering and launch a new flatbread pizza. Sorry, we mean Flatizza. That's "flah-tee-zah," in case you were wondering.

The Flatizza wasn't terrible (after all, it was just flatbread, cheese, and toppings), but it did fail to get people excited. After just one year, Subway decided to pull it from the menu; it turns out, the chain realized that people went to Subway for subs and not pizza-like options. Sometimes, you have to learn the hard way.

But if you're one of the few people who prefer to get pizza over sandwiches at Subway, there is still a way. According to some workers, if you make a special request to your sandwich artist, you might be lucky. "My store took it off the menu back in like 2015 or 2016, but the ingredients are all Subway standard items so they should be able to make them," revealed one Subway worker in the r/subway subreddit.

Sorry, we don't like to get caught up in semantics, but sometimes it really does matter. A quesadilla is, by definition, a tortilla filled with cheese. In fact, the word queso literally means melted cheese with chopped chiles. This might be why, when Taco Bell decided to go off script with a chocolate quesadilla in 2017, it decided to give the item a made-up name: Chocoladilla. Get it? Chocolate + quesadilla = Chocoladilla. Actually no, not really. In Spanish, ladilla means pests or crabs. Yum.

The Chocoladilla wasn't off to a great start with the name choice, but Taco Bell persevered. In the end, though, the Chocoladilla just wasn't meant to be. After a trial run, it never appeared on the menu again — at least not in the U.S., anyway (rumor has it you can still order one in Spain). Some have speculated that the item wasn't a hit because it just wasn't that exciting. Let's be honest, melted chocolate in bread isn't what most people go to Taco Bell for. "I had one of these in Spain last year and it was a Kit Kat in a flour tortilla, no more, no less," said one person in the r/tacobell subreddit. "Not bad but nothing to write home about and very easy to replicate."