The Forgotten Taco Bell Breakfast Item Meant To Dethrone The Egg McMuffin

As popular as Taco Bell is, its attempts to become a breakfast destination to rival chains like McDonald's have been shaky at best. Today you can get well over a dozen breakfast items including the Grande Toasted Breakfast Burrito, hash browns, Breakfast Quesadilla, and the Breakfast California Crunchwrap, which was our top pick when we ranked Taco Bell breakfast items. Back in the 1990s, when Taco Bell was just trying breakfast on for size, it even tried to take down the Egg McMuffin with the Sun Up Sandwich. It didn't work.

One thing you'll notice about Taco Bell's current crop of breakfast items is that most of them fit the chain's Mexican-inspired menu theme. Crunchwraps, burritos, and quesadillas are all made with tortillas. The Sun Up Sandwich was almost an exact knockoff of the Egg McMuffin. Introduced in 1995, it featured an English muffin topped with a scrambled egg patty, sausage or bacon, and cheese. It's not clear how long the sandwich remained on the Taco Bell menu, but given the lack of information about it online and how few people remember it, it didn't make much of a lasting impact.

As far back as 1988, Taco Bell was promising a breakfast menu. A year later, the company confirmed it would expand into the breakfast market by 1991. That year, it followed through on its plans at around 200 California locations, rolling out 39-cent sausage and potato burritos and what was, at the time, "a 99-cent knockoff of McDonald's Egg McMuffin," according to the Los Angeles Times. It's likely that sandwich went on to become the Sun Up Sandwich widely available in the mid-1990s.

The Sun Up Sandwich was not Taco Bell's only failed breakfast experiment. In 2023, the chain introduced toasted breakfast tacos to the menu, but only for a limited time. As you might expect, this was a toasted tortilla stuffed with eggs, cheese, and either bacon, sausage, or potatoes. In 2014, the Waffle Taco was introduced, which featured a crispy waffle as a taco shell filled again with eggs and cheese, plus bacon or sausage. This one also had syrup. Sadly, the Waffle Taco was discontinued a year later and it looks like it might be a fast food item that we may never get it back.

In 2017, Taco Bell flexed those creative muscles that fans have come to know and love by unleashing the Naked Egg Breakfast Taco. This time, the egg itself was the shell, just a whole fried egg folded in half and stuffed with cheese, potato, and bacon or sausage crumble. Reviews, however, noted the egg was a little greasy and a little overcooked.

In 2022, Taco Bell ran a commercial featuring SNL alum Pete Davidson in which he apologized on behalf of the restaurant for going too far with breakfast in the past. The commercial specifically called out the Waffle Taco and the Naked Egg taco. "We honestly over-innovated in breakfast," Taco Bell's chief brand officer told ABC12 News. The chain scaled back breakfast to simpler offerings at that point, leading to the more familiar menu it offers today.