Odds are you’ve heard of it.
Ronald McDonald certainly has.
Taco Bell’s newest advertising blitz has nearly a dozen men named Ronald McDonald throwing their name behind the nation’s newest breakfast offering – a launch that saw as much media coverage when it appeared on Taco Bell menus Thursday morning as anything else going on in the world.
But is it any good?
Can you take something like a waffle, a piece of sausage and quickly prepared eggs and call it a “taco” – something revered in California and something that most Americans take very, very seriously.
On Saturday The Bulletin put Taco Bell’s breakfast menu offerings to the test with the one demographic that’s most likely going to appreciate it more than others: Teenagers.
Out of a Facebook invitation to thousands of people, it was only a trio of Lathrop High School sophomores that were willing to come down and put the Waffle Taco to the test.
Here’s what they had to say about each of the items.
WHO:
• Cesar Sanchez, Lathrop High School sophomore
• Johanna Natoza, Lathrop High School sophomore
• Emiliano Lopez, Lathrop High School sophomore
FIRST ITEM: Bacon A.M. Crunchwrap
• LOPEZ – It tastes like any other breakfast food, but the crunch wrap for a fast-food breakfast wrap. The cheese was strong, but the rest of the ingredients made up for it. 3 out of 5.
• SANCHEZ – It is, in my opinion, pretty good. My mother makes these same kind of crunchwraps every Sunday morning. 2 out of 5.
• NATOZA – It was pretty good for Taco Bell, I just didn’t like the cheese and the bacon. 4 out of 5.
SECOND ITEM: Bacon Waffle Taco
• LOPEZ – The appearance doesn’t look so good, but it seems to get a lot of publicity so it must be good. Okay, so you put a lot of breakfast foods in one so you’d expect it to be like heaven, but even though you’d expect it to be great it actually tasted kind of bland. The only thing I was able to taste was the bacon, which was the only thing that made the bacon waffle taco better than it looked. 2 out of 5.
• SANCHEZ – To the naked eye it seems pretty gross. It appears something that my eight-year-old little brother would make while my mother was asleep. But I’ll have to say you eat through your eyes. Now that I’ve tried the Waffle Taco from Taco Bell, I now understand that they tried to preserve the taco “idea” that the chain was founded on. The waffle idea is pretty outstanding and spontaneous and it did throw me off but overall the taste was pretty basic. 3 out of 5.
• NATOZA – It’s pretty bland but I’d eat it again if I were hungry. 3 out of 5.
THIRD ITEM: Sausage A.M. Crunchwrap
• LOPEZ – Like the bacon crunchwrap, the cheese is too strong but the blend of other ingredients made the wrap taste pretty okay. 3.5 out of 5.
• SANCHEZ – Although the legend of bacon didn’t live up to its legacy, the sausage crunchwrap, in my opinion, is the superior breakfast sandwich on the entire menu. 4.5 out of 5.
• NATOZA – It’s much better than the bacon one. I really liked it. 4 out of 5.
FOURTH ITEM: Sausage Waffle Taco
• LOPEZ – This one is pretty bland also. The sausage is the only thing that you can taste. 2 out of 5.
• SANCHEZ – To be honest, you can’t even taste the waffle. The only thing that you can taste in this is the sausage, and it tastes just like the sausage from an Egg McMuffin. 3 out of 5.
• NATOZA – It didn’t look or taste appealing. I wouldn’t eat it again. 2 out of 5.
So there it is. According to our testers, the Sausage A.M. Crunchwrap is the way to go if you’re heading down to Taco Bell for breakfast, and if you have a piece of sausage you might as well just wrap it between the corner of an old pillow and slather it with hot sauce – it’ll probably the same as the Waffle Taco. Unfortunately.
