McDonald's Canada Flips U.S. The Bird With 3 Progressively Spicier McChicken Sandwiches

If you, a resident of the United States of America, are still mourning the loss of the almost entirely discontinued Hot 'N Spicy McChicken and have no plans to travel and/or relocate to Canada, you may not wish to continue reading this article. It can cause you nothing but pain. Retreat, friend, to a world in which no spicy sandwich taunts you from the Great White North. Go back, and read about cookies in pockets instead.

If you're still here, I assume you're capable of handling the emotional heat.

For a limited time, McDonald's Canada is offering three different Spicy McChicken sandwiches, each apparently an escalation, heat-wise, from the last. Brand Eating reports that the first, the Spicy Jalapeno McChicken, hit the heat-lamps in late January, and that it "adds two layers of creamy jalapeno sauce to the regular McChicken's formula of a breaded chicken patty and lettuce on a sesame seed bun." The Spicier Habanero McChicken, pictured above, features a creamy Habanero sauce and launched February 12. Today, the chain added the Spiciest Ghost Pepper McChicken with, you guessed it, a creamy Ghost Pepper sauce.

The ghost pepper, or the bhut jolokia, is one of the spiciest peppers on planet Earth. It's been measured at over 1,000,000 Scoville units, which by some measures is roughly 100 times spicier than the jalapeno. Then again, it's about how much ghost peppers McDonald's Canada actually uses in the sauce—probably not enough to cause bodily harm. Trader Joe's sells a ghost pepper lattice-cut potato chip, and it's not even remotely piquant.

The sandwiches are only available through March 11, but that's still many days more than the total number of days you can get them in the U.S., which is zero. It's not likely that these sandwiches will supplant BK Sweden's halloumi cheese sandwich as our most-coveted international fast food, but still, we're just down here to the south! Throw us a bone....less patty.

I'm not sorry.

As a sidenote, Brand Eating also notes that "the Canada McChicken remains largely unchanged from when the sandwich first launched compared to the one in the US, which shrunk to fit the Dollar menu." I'd call it adding insult to injury, but Canadians are just so polite.