McDonald’s continues to dominate the fast food industry. Almost every country in the world has a McDonald’s location and most have many locations. It is hard to find a place where there’s no McDonald’s in the proximity. There are a few popular foods that stick around on the McD's menu due to their massive success. Classics like the Big Mac, chicken McNuggets and Sausage & Egg McMuffin all do great and have positive reputations. However, not every item on McDonald’s glorified menu will find the same success as some are just too peculiar. McDonald’s is known for having bold additions to the menu all over the world at the international locations.

We will look at some of the items you probably would not want to eat when visiting McDonald’s. These foods range from overrated to unappealing to plain weird. Some of them have found success, but that doesn’t stop them from fitting the criteria. The average person will cringe seeing these foods.

Find out just how many odd items exist out there in different places of the world’s biggest chain. These are fifteen of the most overrated and unappealing foods at McDonald’s locations all over the world along with five that are just weird.

20 Unappealing: Spinach Pie

The apple pie is one of the most popular quick bites from McDonald’s restaurants in North America. It is a fun and delicious pastry available at a cheap cost. Other locations all over the world have tried their hand at expanding on the apple pie with other ingredients.

A unique option available in Malaysia is their spinach fried pie. The popular vegetable is used as the base with the outer crust looking similar to the apple pie most of us know. There’s a chance it’s tasty in a different way, but the familiarity of the apple will make it an odd choice to try the spinach pie at McDonald’s.

19 Unappealing: Big Breakfast

The overrated portion of the list deserves at least a couple of popular items in US McDonald’s locations. One of the most popular dishes at McDonald’s is the Big Breakfast. It has been around for many years now and recent years have seen it become an item offered all day instead of just the breakfast menu.

The Big Breakfast features scrambled eggs, hash browns, sausage and a biscuit along with the pancakes as an option to add on. This is among the unhealthiest dishes on the entire menu. Each food item is also very mediocre when trying it on its own. Aside from the decent value of a lower price, the Big Breakfast is an overall overrated and unappealing choice.

18 Unappealing: Bubblegum Squash McFlurry

The McFlurry has become a staple of McDonald’s menus all over the world. McDonald’s also sells ice creams, but the unique nature of the McFlurry along with the ingredients added in often puts it over the top as the top dessert available.

Over in the US of A, we're used to Oreos, M&Ms and a few other candies being the toppings to include in the McFlurry. Australia has the Bubblegum Squash McFlurry as part of their menu. It features bubble gum and marshmallows as the main toppings. Most customers around these parts don’t like bubble gum additions to ice cream which is why we won’t see it any time soon.

17 Weird: Fish McRice w/ Gravy

The idea of a food platter being sold at McDonald’s is odd to most readers in North America. McDonald’s often markets their menus as fast choices with quick eating like burgers, nuggets and fries. Locations in Sri Lanka offer a Fish McRice dish with gravy on the side.

There’s a fish patty covered in a special gravy sauce served with rice and veggies. The dish doesn’t look terrible or amazing on first glance but seeing something like this served at McDonald’s is weird. Maybe we aren’t too far away from the idea of steak and mashed potatoes or fried chicken and rice being offered at McDonald’s if this one does well in Sri Lanka.

16 Unappealing: Wasabi Ebi Burger

Singapore is home to the Wasabi Ebi Burger that has become popular at McDonald’s locations there. The Ebi Burger was already a hit leading to another creating adding the wasabi spice to it. Shrimp is the main source of food in there with the sashimi and the wasabi.

Most people reading this would struggle taking more than a few bites out of this sandwich. McDonald’s is beloved, but most customers would not trust it with certain items that can lead to an upset stomach. Shrimp and wasabi each are risky bets to get from any McDonald’s location out there, which makes the Wasabi Ebi Burger is a bit too scary to give a try.

15 Unappealing: Taro Pie

We have already touched on the apple pie a little, but there are a few confusing and unappealing versions out there internationally. One that stands out for all the wrong reasons is the taro pie, available mostly in McDonald’s locations in various parts of Asia.

Taro is a purple tuber grown in the Pacific Islands. The texture is similar to mashed potatoes, but the taste is sweeter. It stands out due to the unique look of the purple color scheme. Taro pies are popular in a few markets but failed during a test run in Hawaii. A sweet version of mashed potatoes in a pie crust does not seem appealing on paper.

14 Unappealing: Pico Guacamole Burger

One of the recent examples of McDonald’s trying to expand their menus featured the Pico Guacamole Burger becoming a fixture. McDonald’s wants to improve their overall menu when it comes to fancier burgers and chicken sandwiches as part of the signature collections.

The Pico Guacamole Burger is one they are still hoping catches on. It is a larger beef patty with the selling point of guacamole and pico de gallo on it. Reviews have seen many complaints about the guacamole from McDonald’s being less than ideal. This was clearly an attempt to cash in on the crave for guacamole, but it doesn’t seem to be selling well at all.

13 Weird: Minion Potatoes

The popularity of minions from the Despicable Me movie franchise is seeing huge success with brands using it for marketing purposes. McDonald’s has gotten into the trend internationally in places that love the minions. Multiple dishes have been created in places all over the world to celebrate the minions.

One seasonal item to catch on was the Minion Potatoes. It featured fluffy potato nuggets shaped like the minion characters from the movies. The food became such a success that quite a few international McDonald’s location kept it on the menu longer than expected. Kids love eating the minion potatoes and McDonald’s is banking off it.

12 Unappealing: McChoco Potato

The french fries at McDonald’s have been a huge success over the years. They are perfect to purchase on the side with the burger, chicken sandwich or McNuggets of your choice. Some people even just go to order the fries on their own due to the great taste.

McDonald’s tried to add a new dynamic to the fries in Japan by turning it into a dessert treat. The McChoco Potato dish saw the fries covered in white and fudge chocolate sauce. It sounds like a ridiculous idea given the salty nature of the fries. A combination of such sweet sauces on the salty fries seems like a terrible idea on paper.

11 Unappealing: Sweety Con Nutella

Another international idea of McDonald’s to merge a sweet aspect into a popular meal has hit stores in Italy. The Sweety Con Nutella is an original sandwich meant to appeal towards those that like sweeter treats like Nutella. A unique sandwich has been created with Nutella as the main base.

It features the popular bun typically used in regular burgers. However, the Nutella hazelnut and cocoa spread replaces the meat inside. The idea makes sense in theory, but McDonald’s buns aren’t necessarily a good item to add for such a sweet sandwich. They would have been better off straying away from the usual buns for Nutella.

10 Unappealing: Mashed Potato Burger

Steak and mashed potatoes are among the most popular and beloved meal combinations in countless restaurants. McDonald’s restaurants in China decided to try to merge the two in the form of a bizarre idea. The Mashed Potato Burger puts some of each item between a pair of buns for an unusual sandwich.

It is a tough eat given the difficulties of having mashed potatoes between buns. The taste in general would be less than appealing with mashed potatoes essentially in its own sandwich. A better option would have been just adding mashed potatoes to the menu as a side dish and making it part of the meal with a burger.

9 Weird: Black and White Burgers

The creative nature of McDonald’s sees them experiment with just about every aspect of the menu to see what works. Locations in China found success when it came to the coloring of the buns for the burgers and sandwiches.

McDonald’s started selling black and white burger combinations. It featured two small burgers with one pair of white buns and one pair of black buns. The white bun is sweet and spicy while topped with black sesame seeds. The black bun is topped with white sesame seeds and has a black pepper sauce. McDonald’s customers gave it a shot and liked it enough to continue selling.

8 Unappealing: McCurry Pan

McDonald’s restaurants in India are the next home of the dish here. The McCurry Pan is an ambitious meal offered by McDonald’s as a top vegetarian meal. It is a rectangle dish made of dough similar to a bread bowl.

The inside features a tomato curry sauce with many toppings inside. Items like bell peppers, cheese, broccoli, mushrooms, oregano and thyme can be added to it. Some people even add chicken to it if opting to not go the vegetarian option. The reviews are mixed, and McDonald’s isn’t known for opting to have the best version of foods like curry. There are so many better places to get a curry dish internationally than a cheap McDonald’s version.

7 Unappealing: Filet-O-Fish

We're just gonna say it - the most overrated food sold at most McDonald’s location is the Filet-O-Fish. It somehow found popularity many decades ago when the restaurants experimented with a few vegetarian options. The Filet-O-Fish sandwich was the only one to deliver numbers up the expectations for it.

This sandwich is considered extremely overrated and disappointing today. It is the most basic fish sandwich one can ever find. The Filet-O-Fish features a small breaded piece of fish with a slice of cheese and tartar sauce. McDonald’s is often criticized for not improving on the sandwich despite charging more for it than most burgers of the same size.

Singapore has tried to perfect the McFlurry with a few unique flavors at their McDonald’s locations. One of the least appealing options is the Pineapple Cookie Crumble McFlurry. Pineapples are already polarizing enough as seen with the countless internet arguments about putting it on pizza.

There is less debate about pineapples in a McFlurry since it’s only sold in Singapore. It features pineapple syrup along with small pieces of cookies. The taste is described as like lemon and bubble gum despite being pineapple. This all sounds bad and is not a McFlurry option we want to try any time soon.

5 Weird: Crayfish Soup

McDonald’s has had a negative track record with soup in the United States. The experiment of the McSoup was a huge failure when customers accused the restaurants of selling store-brand cans of soup and charging extra for putting it in a cup with a McDonald’s logo on it.

Hong Kong customers, however, seem to have a real soup option when ordering from McDonald’s locations there. The crayfish soup is a popular item with some folks getting it as part of a meal and others preferring it alone. McDonald’s replaces a burger with it in the value meal that allows customers to enjoy the soup with fries and a drink.

4 Unappealing: Vanilla Flavored Nuggets

Chicken McNuggets are among the most popular items at McDonald’s in North America. Most people love to order as many as they can eat with various dipping sauces. Sometimes it is a terrible idea to mess with something perfect. McDonald’s may be seeing that with the inception of vanilla flavored nuggets.

Taiwan’s McDonald’s locations have nuggets meant to taste like vanilla. The sweet taste for a food that is already salty in nature is an odd idea that makes little sense. It would be better to just make bite-sized dessert snacks rather than messing with the nuggets. Even a vanilla sauce would make more sense rather than investing in the unappealing meal.

3 Unappealing: Macaroni Gratin Croquette Burger

The Gratin Croquette Burger is another odd item located at McDonald’s restaurants in Japan. It features macaroni gratin that is breaded and fried into a croquette as the main base of the burger. There’s a slice of cheese, cabbage, mayo and a special sauce added in between the buns to make it up.

This is a very polarizing burger at McDonald’s with many folks loving it and many strongly disliking it. There are so many unique tastes in play here that it likely won’t go well together. The Macaroni Gratin Croquette Burger is not one the average person will go out of their way to try on first glance.

2 Unappealing: McLobster

The McLobster sandwich stands out as one of the worst decisions in McDonald’s history. It is a common theme that McDonald’s likes to experiment with fancier foods in hopes of dominating another aspect of the fast food market. Lobster was a huge project in hope of success, in the form of the McLobster.

It was a lobster roll in a longer bun with lettuce and a special lobster sauce. Many customers complained that it either tasted horrible or made them sick. McDonald’s gave up on the idea of the McLobster becoming a success in the United States, but it is still sold in various places internationally. A few states in the U.S. bring it back as a seasonal item. The McLobster remains the definition of an unappealing McDonald’s meal to most of us.

1 Weird: Bacon, Macaroni and Cheese Toastie

One weird yet appealing idea offered at McDonald’s locations in Hong Kong places a lot of ideal food items together. The Bacon, Macaroni and Cheese Toastie features grilled sandwiches of the toasted bread with macaroni and cheese and bacon inside of it.

McDonald’s locations in North America have not experimented with such sandwiches, but Hong Kong customers certainly get a more unique menu. The sandwiches look great and all the items in place seem like they’d merge well together. We can only hope the Bacon, Macaroni and Cheese Toastie becomes a fixture at more McDonald’s locations outside of just Hong Kong.

References: Traveling McDonald's