McDonald's Resorts to Chicken Wing Clearance to Offload Mighty Wings

Hey, remember Mighty Wings, McDonald’s ill-fated attempt to branch out into the bone-in chicken market? The fast food giant really wishes you would remember them. Please? We’ll give them to you for half-off? 70% off? Will you give us a quarter? PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SOMEONE TAKE OUR CHICKEN WINGS.

Ahem. So, it turns out that Mighty Wings failure was even bigger than we had thought, and now McDonald’s is trying to sell Mighty Wings on clearance. The wings, which originally sold at roughly $1/wing (a sound business model if you’ve just snorted enough cocaine to incapacitate Tony Montana), are now selling for about 60 cents per piece.

The funniest part? The listed reasons for the failure of the Mighty Wings:

Price: In McDonald’s terms, Mighty Wings are a premium product. The wings come in packs of three for $3.69, five for $5.59, and 10 for $9.69. Thompson said the prices, which are similar to Buffalo Wild Wings, were “not the most competitive.”

Spice: Thompson said the wings were too spicy for many customers’ tastes.

Appearance: The Mighty Wings looked too much like “McNuggets with bones,” writes Susan Berfield at Bloomberg Businessweek.

So, you’re telling me 1) they were ludicrously expensive, 2) they tasted like it would if a bottle of Sriracha took a dump, and 3) they looked like an inferior version of something that, prior to 2003, at one point during its life cycle went through a pink chicken pudding stage. I really have no idea why this product didn’t sell like gangbusters.

I just want to note here that there are literally no words for me to express how much I love the fact that “chicken wing clearance” is an actual thing. None whatsoever.