No stranger to a summer promotion, a few weeks ago McDonalds Australia brought back one of its most infamous offerings (besides that weird pasta they used to put in happy meals) – the McRib!
To give you a crash course on the sandwich’s sordid history, it was introduced to the USA back in the mid-’80s as an alternative to the recent flash fried smash the McNugget.
After proving a flop as a permanent menu item, those golden arches geniuses had the idea to give it the Farnsey treatment, trotting it out every four or five years as a promotional item for a ‘farewell tour’.
This tactic proved extremely successful with the chain shilling 30 million burgs during the 2007 re-release alone. That’s a lot of pre-formed pork product.
The last time Australia scored a limited time release was back in 2012 when it was called the ‘Atlanta Pork McRib’ and tied in with the London Olympics.
Despite no Australian really clamouring for the return of the BBQ sauce drenched, pickle-and-onion-topped offering, back in October Maccas announced that the McRib was, indeed, making a comeback.
A quick glance at the McDonalds Australia Facebook page reveals that the return wasn’t ahhh…super well received.
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Yet despite the almost universal opinion that the McRib varies from ‘just alright’ to ‘unholy product from hell’, I found myself being dragged by several groups of friends and fellow Gen Y/Gen Z kids to procure one of these monsters.
Without fail each person’s hopes were horribly dashed by the reality of the burger. So why are millennials clamouring to get one in their gob?
From my extensive research (read: anecdotal evidence) it all has something to do with this:
A rare bright episode in the mid-teens season glut, I’m Spelling As Fast As I Can is the twelfth episode from The Simpsons’ fourteenth season and contains a scene-stealing B-story concerning Homer’s Ribwich (a clear knockoff of the McRib) addiction.
Every person I spoke to cited the mouth-watering clips from the episode as the sole inspiration for their McRib pilgrimage. Despite the fact that, canonically, the Ribwich “Will cause early death” and is made from an animal that’s got more legs than a cow or a pig (and, thanks to the burger, is now extinct).
So hats off to the big M for inadvertently capitalising off a 15-year-old episode of The Simpsons and millennial’s undying devotion to nostalgia.
Now, let us all bask in the warm, glowing, warming glow of the original Ribwich commercial.
