America – the land of the free and the land of the free to eat whatever you want. Fast food marketers have been fairly successful thus far in convincing Americans that it’s their birthright to eat the rankest food (and the largest portions) out, and they’ll be damned if someone tries to take that away from them. While Bloomberg managed to ban large sodas in New York, one of the most liberal cities in the US, it didn’t happen without a backlash and cries of infringements of rights.

Since they’ve conditioned most of the public into thinking that anything goes, over the years fast food chains have attempted to one-up each other in order to attract consumer attention. As a result, menu items have become grosser and yet more fascinating. While this post was originally in ‘celebration’ of the nation-wide release of Burger King’s bacon sundae (see below for more info), we’ve also just gotten wind that KFC’s Double Down (for those of you who don’t know what this is, good for you – but we explain it in further detail below as well) will be revived for two days.

Burger King’s bacon sundae

Americans have a long-standing obsession with bacon, so it’s not entirely surprising that Burger King added a bacon sundae to this season’s extended summer menu. The dessert was initially trialled in Nashville back in April, and must have done OK seeing as though they’ve made it a thing, alongside the Memphis Pulled Pork BBQ sandwich and Carolina and Texas BBQ sandwiches. The bacon sundae also comes with bacon crumbles, 18 grams of fat and 61 grams of sugar.

White Castle’s chicken rings

Don’t you think that chicken is way creepier when it comes in ring form, as opposed to a nugget? Maybe it’s just because we’ve been conditioned to know and love the chicken nugget since childhood, but since someone on the internet pointed out that a chicken ring is akin to a chicken sphincter, we’ve been grossed out even more.

Candwich

Food manufacturers love a good pun, and a Candwich is exactly what it suggests – a sandwich in a can. Mark One Foods, the creator of the Candwich, hilariously touts the “extended shelf-life” as one of its advantages, saying, “Candwich™ is ideal for emergency food storage needs in the event of a natural disaster”. Thankfully, the specially formulated recipe allows the bread to stay “as soft and sweet after one-year in storage as it did the day it was made”.

Jimmy Dean’s pancakes and sausage on a stick

The cousin of the humble corndog, yet more superior due to its winning taste combinations. Jimmy Dean’s Pancakes and Sausage on a Stick doesn’t go for a hard pun, instead letting its not-very-catchy name do the explaining. As they reveal via their product description, “We wrapped a delicious sausage inside a sweet pancake, and put it on a stick to make it portable”.

Domino’s breadbowl pasta

Just as there’s no such thing as too much cheese, apparently Domino’s says there’s no such thing as too many carbs, either. This carb-on-carb sensation features pasta baked into a piping hot bowl of bread, which you can of course devour once you’ve eaten the chicken alfredo, primavera, mac and cheese, Italian sausage marinara and/or chicken carbonara pasta inside it.

Taco Bell’s Doritos locos tacos

Some products make you think that being a fast food marketer would be an insanely out-of-control-but-in-a-fun-way profession. Such is the simple magic of the Doritos Locos Taco. The marriage of the humble Taco Bell taco and Doritos’ nacho cheese flavour was a gigantic winner with the American public, who had already purchased 100 million of these things at the ten-week mark. Whoever came up with the idea of turning a taco shell into a giant Doritos chip definitely got a promotion.

KFC’s double down

This product is so awfully legendary that it has earned its own Wikipedia page. In place of bread lies two chicken fillets on either side of bacon, two different types of cheese and the Colonel’s secret sauce.

Luther burger

This item is housed in the fast food canon under the umbrella term ‘Luther Burger’. According to its Wiki page, the burger whose ‘bun’ comprises of doughnuts instead of bread was named as such because it is famously supposed to have been Luther Vandross’s burger of choice. The Luther burger has largely been popular at state fairs, with variations of the theme going by names including Craz-E Burger, Krispy Kreme Doughnut Burger, Krispy Kreme Cheeseburger, etc.

Pizza Hut’s cheeseburger crown crust pizza

And now for one that should have been sold in the US, but wasn’t: the Cheese Burger Crown Crust Pizza. This was sold at Pizza Hut’s around the Middle East, featuring a big daddy pizza that includes all the trimmings of a cheeseburger with little mini satellite burger pizzas acting as a crust that surrounds it. Surely an American original, no?

Via LifeLounge