7 Discontinued McDonald's Items We Still Miss

McDonald's has been around since 1940, and while it may be most widely known for its Big Macs, McNuggets, and french fries, the chain has experimented with its evolving menu over the years, testing various food items with its customer base. Not all of these were winners, but despite some menu flops, there are quite a few discontinued menu items that we would like to see make a return.

McDonald's may choose to discontinue items due to a lack of popularity, unprofitability, or inefficiency issues in the kitchen. To the great relief of its fans, the fast food giant will occasionally bring back fan favorites in response to consumer outcry online. The popular snack wraps, for example, will be making a long-awaited return in 2025 after customers bombarded the McDonald's president with email requests to see the wraps on the menu again. Here are seven other discontinued items that customers online would be thrilled to see back on the menu under the golden arches.

McDonald's broke into the breakfast scene in 1975 with the creation of the Egg McMuffin. Since then, the breakfast menu has been a revolving door of different breakfast experiments. When the cinnamon melts graced the breakfast menu in 2007, it was a great time to be a McDonald's fan. The melts were essentially a deconstructed version of a cinnamon roll served in gooey, doughy bite-sized pieces, smothered in cream cheese icing and infused with cinnamon and brown sugar sweetness. As more of a dessert than a breakfast item, they quickly became a fan favorite and were known fondly as "Cinnamelts."

Despite the wild popularity, Cinnamelts were mysteriously taken off the menu 10 years after they were introduced, to the confusion and surprise of much of the customer base. McDonald's addressed consumer disappointment on X but never gave a definitive explanation for the disappearance of the melts. Fans even put together an online petition with thousands of signatures to bring back the beloved Cinnamelts, but to no avail. Unfortunately, this is a discontinued McDonald's dessert we're probably not getting back.

In 1996, the restaurant added chicken tenders to the menu to attempt to recreate the success of the McNuggets and replace the McChicken, which was discontinued that same year. These chicken strips came and went from the menu multiple times throughout the 2000s. They were brought back between 2004 and 2005 as "Chicken Selects". These were the chicken strips used in the popular snack wraps, which are expected to return to the menu in 2025.

Chicken Selects were then discontinued in 2013, but the tenders returned as "Buttermilk Crispy Chicken Tenders" in 2017. The tenders were finally discontinued in 2020 in an effort to simplify the menu during the 2019 COVID Pandemic. During this time, McDonald's removed several items from its menu to simplify production in response to the lull in customer demand. Mickey D's continues to experiment with tenders in different forms as they added McCrispy Strips to the menu, but according to users like @narratedblack on TikTok, they don't hold a candle to the Buttermilk Crispy Chicken Tenders.

McDonald's isn't the only fast food giant fighting for customer loyalty. Since their inception, McDonald's and Burger King have competed for customers in the "Burger Wars". When Burger King introduced the Whopper in 1957, it grew to be wildly popular very quickly. To compete with the Whopper's success, McDonald's released the Big N' Tasty burger in 1997. This quarter-pounder featured ketchup, mayonnaise, onions, pickles, lettuce, and onions on a sesame bun, making it a more dressed-up version of the Big Mac.

What really made this menu item rise in popularity was that it was released on the Dollar Menu, making it an incredibly affordable meal. Unfortunately, the hamburger was too expensive to make while charging so little, so it was discontinued in the U.S. in 2011. However, it remains one of the more popular discontinued items that fans still miss to this day. Nostalgia for the affordable price seems to be just as strong as nostalgia for the food itself!

As you might have guessed, Onion Nuggets were a cross between onion rings and chicken nuggets. They were released as a vegetarian option in 1975, eight whole years before the inception of the famed McNugget. However, almost immediately after the introduction of the McNugget, the onion nuggets were wiped from the menu, unable to compete with the success of their chicken counterpart.

Some customers have wondered why McDonald's never brought the onion nuggets back, or why they don't at least sell onion rings as a side dish. A former McDonald's chef explained that if the company were to add onion rings to the menu, it would likely only be a limited-time offering. He stated in a video on TikTok, "McDonald's is the most profitable when it is most efficient". Onion rings are less efficient to make than the tried and true French Fries, which the chain makes daily across thousands of locations. So, while we are unlikely to see onion rings as a permanent menu item, we do hope they make some sort of appearance in a limited-time offer.

McDonald's has participated in several celebrity collaborations over the years, including with Travis Scott, BTS, and J Balvin, but the one we miss the most is the McJordan Special. This meal was a collaboration with the esteemed Michael Jordan in 1992 during the peak of his basketball career with the Chicago Bulls. The burger featured some of Jordan's favorite toppings. The quarter-pounder included bacon, onions, pickles, cheese, mustard, and barbecue sauce. The meal was topped off with a side of fries and a fountain drink. Unsurprisingly, the meal was largely popular in the Chicago area but was offered across various McDonald's locations in the U.S.

Although the meal was ultimately discontinued (which is not uncommon for celebrity collaborations) the BBQ sauce remained extremely popular. So much so that a gallon jug of the McJordan sauce from 1992 was sold on eBay for almost $10,000! Now, whether the sauce was truly that delicious or someone just really loved Michael Jordan's game is up for debate. The McJordan Special sauce differed from McDonald's regular BBQ sauce in that it had brown sugar and molasses in the ingredients, giving it a sweeter flavor that was wildly popular. Fortunately, for those craving a taste of this burger and special sauce, you can mostly recreate the Michael Jordan burger by hacking your order at McDonald's.

McDonald's Szechuan Dipping Sauce has a fairly complicated history as far as sauces go. It was originally released to promote Disney's "Mulan" in 1998. The sweet and savory sauce featured garlic, soy, and ginger. After the promotion of the film, however, it was removed from the menu. That is, until the insanely popular show "Rick and Morty" made a comment about the sauce in Season 3, Episode 1 on April 1st, 2017.

That one simple comment triggered a cultural phenomenon in which fans of both "Rick and Morty" and McDonald's demanded they see the return of the dipping sauce. After a petition garnered 50,000 signatures from fans, McDonald's was obliged to bring back the Szechuan Sauce in a limited capacity. They announced the sauce would be available at participating stores for one day only on October 17, 2017. However, the company sorely underestimated the number of fans that wanted to try the sauce and couldn't keep up with demand, leaving customers heated. To appease angry customers, they re-released the sauce for a limited time in 2018, but it has not been back on the menu since.

The Arch Deluxe burger was released in the U.S. in 1996 and was marketed as a burger for adults. The Happy Meal had gained such notoriety and popularity among kids, but McDonald's wanted to create a meal that would reach its adult audience as well. It featured a quarter-pound beef patty on a potato bun with pepper mayonnaise, American cheese, lettuce, tomato, onions, and ketchup. Sounds delicious, but the Arch Deluxe Burger was not the hit that it was expected to be, becoming known as one of the biggest marketing failures in the company's history. It was taken off the menu after four short years.

McDonald's spent an estimated $200,000,000 on the marketing campaign for the burger that inevitably flopped, likely because the audience was uninterested in an expensive "high-class" burger from the fast food chain. It cost between $2.09 and $2.49, which might sound like a steal now, but was a spendy meal at McDonald's in the '90s. Despite the marketing fail, some communities on social media remember the Arch Deluxe and its unique peppery sauce fondly and hope for its return one day.