The '90s McDonald's Burger That Probably Won't Make A Comeback (But Should)

When it comes to McDonald's, just because a menu item is gone doesn't mean it's gone forever. Sure, there are some that probably won't be coming back anytime soon — pour one out for their ill-fated mozzarella sticks — but hey, the McRib keeps showing up, doesn't it? And all it took was a single "Rick and Morty" episode to get the Szechuan McNuggets sauce to come back, at least for a little while. With that in mind, why not bring back the Beef Wennington? Sure, it only came about due to a tie-in with a now-obscure basketball player in the 1990s, but '90s nostalgia is a powerful lure, right?

In case you're wondering, no, the Beef Wennington is not the McDonald's version of a Beef Wellington, which is never as good if you make it at home. (We're sure Gordon Ramsay would have some choice words for them if they tried it.) It was actually a hamburger introduced in 1998 as a tie-in with Bill Wennington, the backup center for the Chicago Bulls. It was basically just a regular cheeseburger with barbecue sauce, onions, and Canadian bacon, as a reference to Wennington's home country of Canada. Wennington was not an exceptional player by any means — in the 1998-99 season, he averaged just about four points a game — but this was the year after "The Last Dance," where Michael Jordan and the Bulls won their sixth title in Jordan's final year as a Bull, so Bulls fever was still high.

As one can imagine, the Beef Wennington wasn't sold nationwide on the strength of a second-string basketball player. It was localized to Chicago and its surrounding areas, and it didn't really last too long, either. (Nor did Bill Wennington, for that matter; for his final season the next year, he would play for the Sacramento Kings, although he would later return to Chicago as the Bulls' radio color commentator.) Aside from being just the third McDonald's meal to honor a basketball player, after Larry Bird's Big 33 and Michael Jordan's McJordan, it's been mostly forgotten.

Still, it hasn't completely vanished from memory. There's a petition calling for it to return, and a butcher run by a Bulls fan once offered a limited-time Beef Wennington of its own. We're not holding our breath for McDonald's to bring it back, but they absolutely could if they wanted to — last we checked, barbecue sauce and Canadian bacon were both still sold at McDonald's, and even though they don't have all day breakfast anymore, it surely wouldn't be too much trouble to throw a disc of pork meat onto a hamburger, right?