Given the kind of stuff that gets the fast-food green light, it’s hard to believe that there are even more concepts that end up on the cutting room floor. But there are, and the McDonald’s Corporation’s archives manager Mike Bullington knows about all of them. The most shocking item in his collection of fast-food memorabilia, at least the part of his collection that he shared with the Wall Street Journal? Apparently, before they hit on the idea of chicken nuggets, McDonald’s thought the best nugget candidate was the humble onion.
This isn’t that weird, if you think about onion rings, but thumb-sized chunks of fried onion still seems like a bit much. Perhaps that’s the reason that this product only hit four test markets in the 1970s. Or maybe customers just went “onions? That’s a vegetable! That is NOT what I come to McDonald’s for, folks.”
