The Adventure-Style Scavenger Hunt McDonald's Once Held For Golden McRibs

It's fall, which means it's the greatest time of year: McRib season. McDonald's has many classic products, but there's probably not one that inspires more adamant debate on both sides of the aisle. Some people may pooh-pooh it, claiming it looks like middle school cafeteria food, but those of us in the know realize the McRib is, in fact, a gift sent to us from pork heaven. This irregular menu item appears and disappears from McDonald's menus seemingly at a whim (though the real reason likely has to do with the fluctuating cost of pork trimmings), always creating a social media stir when it does so.

Part of the reason it does is because of how McDonald's promotes it. Each time it appears, McDonald's claims it's the last time we'll see it. Since no one is buying that after the restaurant has cried wolf so many times, the company sometimes has to get a little more creative. Over a decade ago, it had one of its more unusual ideas: A contest involving Golden McRibs. That's right, McDonald's went full pork Willy Wonka.

2011's "Quest for the Golden McRib" contest was inspired by the Golden Tickets that form the basis of Roald Dahl's novel "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," and the subsequent movie based on it titled "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." In the film, kids who find a special golden ticket in their chocolate bars get a free tour of the reclusive candy maker Willy Wonka's factory. McDonald's Golden McRib promotion didn't quite work like that — there weren't McRibs wrapped in edible gold foil or anything — but it was clearly intended to provide some of the interactivity of that idea, even going so far as to take the movie's same whimsical tone (describing it as "your weirdly wonderful journey" in ads).

The promotion was essentially a Facebook game that utilized Google Maps integration to allow customers to locate virtual "Golden McRibs" at nearby McDonald's locations. Most rewards for participating involved badges and achievements on a customer's user profile, but there was also the chance of winning an Arch Card worth $500 worth of McRibs, which is a lot of McRibs, especially before the inflation of the past 12 years.

The McRib is a fascinatingly odd product because there's no other fast food menu item quite like it. Various other fast food spots have canceled and brought back menu items in response to fan outcry ( like Taco Bell's Mexican pizza), but it's hard to find one that comes and goes with the frequency and fanfare of the McRib (other than perhaps McDonald's own Shamrock Shake). In part, this is because there's nothing quite like the McRib on any fast food menu; it has a very specific flavor and texture profile thanks to a dizzying number of ingredients. Maybe we should expect that, though, since the McRib (much like chicken McNuggets) originally came about as a result of U.S. military meat experiments.

One thing is for sure, though: no matter how many times McDonald's may say this is the last we've seen of the McRib, they'll always bring it back. Thank goodness, too; a world without the McRib is not a world we ever want to see.