McDonald’s Is Finally Bringing the Chicken Big Mac to US Menus

https://www.brandeating.com/2024/10/new-chicken-big-mac-october-10-2024.html#google_vignette

So after offering it in other countries around the world, McDonald’s is finally bringing the chicken Big Mac to the US. On October 10, the wait is finally over if you’ve been wanting to try it.

Personally, I’m intrigued by it and plan on trying it at least once. Even though McDonald’s chicken patties are probably my least favorite in all of the fast-food world, the thought of a new twist on the classic Big Mac is enough to pique my interest.

The classic Big Mac may very well be my favorite fast-food menu item in the land, so even if it turns out I’m not crazy about the chicken version, I can always console myself with the iconic beef version.

The Chicken Big Mac drops on October 10 for a limited time or while supplies last, so if it intrigues you as well, I wouldn’t hesitate in picking one up. It’s going to be a busy fast-food week for me as two days earlier on the 8th, Wendy’s drops it’s Spongebob SquarePants collab meal featuring the Krabby Patty with secret sauce and a new pineapple Frosty that I’m excited to try.

While we’re on the subject, let me share with you a couple of links to check out. The first is to a post I did for Geekster a year or so ago looking at Five Fun Facts About McDonald’s Big Mac.

The other is to a new piece from Retroist where he explores the possibilies of Remaking and Simplifying the McDonald’s Menu. The idea is interesting, and the conversations in the comments section are great too.

There’s Never Been a More Perfect Christmas Decoration

The other morning while looking for a quick breakfast on my way out the door for work, I saw a box of Little Debbie snack cakes on the table and decided that would make for a fine and nutritious breakfast. While getting the cake from the box, I noticed an ad on the back for Little Debbie’s online store. I made a mental note and headed off to work.

While taking a break, I pulled the site up on my phone, and was greeted by what I consider to possibly be the perfect Christmas decoration…a Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cake inflatable!

I’m shocked that I didn’t even know this existed until now. Here’s the description from their site:

Deck the Lawns with Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cake Inflatables!

Elevate the festive spirit of your outdoor décor with the iconic Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cake Inflatables. A delightful twist to the holiday classics, these inflatables capture the joy and nostalgia of the season, offering an enchanting glow to your Yuletide celebrations.

Flavorful Choices: Dive into our flavor options and choose between the Original Vanilla and the mouth-watering Chocolate Christmas Tree Cake Inflatables. Why not grab both and make your yard the ultimate Little Debbie wonderland?

 Features:

  • Whimsical Design: Standing proudly at 7 ft tall, each inflatable mirrors the deliciously delightful details of Little Debbie’s iconic treats.
  • Limited Edition: Exclusively available for the holiday season, and only while stocks last. These inflatables are the collector’s item every Little Debbie enthusiast should own.
  • Neighbor’s Envy: A perfect centerpiece for your holiday light display, it’s bound to have the neighborhood buzzing with admiration and festive cheer.

Whether you’re a die-hard Little Debbie fan or simply looking to add some unique charm to your holiday decorations, these inflatables are a must-have. Don’t wait, flavors may run out faster than the cakes do during the holidays!

Light up your festive nights with the taste of joy, your own Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cake Inflatable.

And all of this joy can be yours for the low, low price of just $99.99! I’m placing my order tomorrow, and I’m sure it’s going to make me the envy of every one of those families who drive around during the Christmas season to look at decorations.

MeTV Toons Announces it’s Daily Schedule

Last month MeTV announced they were launching MeTV Toons, a new 24/7 cartoon network full of classic cartoons. MeTV Toons has now announced its full schedule for when it launches on June 25, 2024, as the only TV network destination dedicated exclusively to classic animation.

The best part is unlike many classic TV channels that run long blocks of the same show over and over, MeTV Toons will launch with a diverse lineup of programs.

During weekday primetime it will offer classics like “The Flintstones,” “Bugs Bunny & Friends,” and “Cartoon All-Stars” with “Mr. Magoo” and “Tom and Jerry.” And during the day you will find programs like “The Flintstones,” “The Jetsons,” and “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!” You can view the full schedule below.

Introducing This Nostalgic Life Newsletter

Hey ramblers, I wanted to take a minute to let you all know about an exciting new project I’m working on. It’s a new newsletter/magazine called This Nostalgic Life that I’ve started alongside my good friend Eric Vardeman. A lot of you longtime visitors will remember Eric from his time posting content here at Retro Ramblings.

This Nostalgic Life is a weekly multi-media publication where we’re going back in time to tell the stories of our lives. Through personal stories and memories, we hope to entertain you and stir fond memories of your own.

Each issue of This Nostalgic Life will be overflowing with retro and nostalgic goodness and will contain special features such as Eric and/or I sharing tales from our youth. There will also be rotating sections such as Nostalgia Nuggets…short stories that aren’t quite feature length, Do You Remember articles looking back at the best of all things pop culture, short series, and more. And if you enjoy my Weekend Reading posts where I share a list of curated links every week, you’ll certainly want to check it out as that will now be the exclusive home of those Recommended Reading links every week. There are also plans to release a new podcast series, as well as audio versions of the features we present every week so you can listen to them on the go instead of reading them!

If you’re a subscriber here (and a lot of you are) or just a regular visitor and you like the things I post, then this newsletter is for you. There will be less “articles” about things, as the focus is more on the storytelling of events of our lives. There will still be plenty of things discussed like toys, junk food, comic books, video games, music, and movies…but with a lot more personal memories attached.

Eric and I both have a lot of stories to tell, and we feel that this is the medium best suited for doing so. The best part of all is that it is completely free for you the reader. And the second best part is that you can have it delivered directly to your inbox every time a new issue drops! All you have to do is click on the subscribe button below to be taken to the sign-up page.

Even if you somehow miss an issue in your inbox, you can go to the site and read them at your leisure. As a matter of fact, you should go check out the first two issues. For a sampling of what we’re doing, check out what’s appeared in the first two issues:

This Nostalgic Life Issue 1

  • It is May 4th and This is My Star Wars Story – by Eric
  • Do You Remember? Star Wars: Droids cartoon
  • Wax Pack Flashback featuring openings of Star Wars Galaxy trading cards from 1993
  • Recommended Reading with numerous links to other Star Wars fun

This Nostalgic Life Issue 2

  • How I Almost Died at a Holiday Inn Holidome – by Mickey
  • Do You Remember? Stuckey’s
  • An acknowledgement of The Retro Network’s 5th Anniversary
  • Recommended Reading with a lot of summer nostalgia links

So if all of this sounds good to you…personal stories, special features, recommended reading, podcasts, audio posts, being free, and being delivered straight to your inbox, then please consider subscribing. We promise to try and make it worth your ten minutes to consume every week.

– Mickey

Wrestlemania 2 VHS Tape Advertisement

With Wrestlemania 40 about to kick off this weekend, I’ve been thinking back on some of my favorite memories of the yearly event that launched way back in 1985. And my earliest memory of Wrestlemania is watching the Wrestlemania 2 VHS tape with my cousin Tim.

I wasn’t into wrestling yet when the first Wrestlemania took place in 1985. And I was just starting to get into the WWF when Wrestlemania 2 rolled around a year later. I became aware of their existence during the buildup to the event. But when the VHS hit our local video store, Tim and I couldn’t wait to watch it and we weren’t disappointed.

The cage match main event between WWF Champion Hulk Hogan and King Kong Bundy was a big draw for us, as was the 20-Man Over the Top Battle Royal that featured stars of the NFL mixing it up with WWF grapplers. A third match was of particular interest to me as one of my favorites of the time, Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat would be in action.

Tim and I watched that tape twice when we rented it and loved every second of it. Even today I go back and watch the whole event about once every two years. Wrestlemania 2 usually isn’t high on fans lists of best Wrestlemanias, but the nostalgia I have for the event has kept it solidly in my top ten.

But that $39.95 price tag in 1986 though, holy cow, how did people afford these things back then?!?

Campbell’s Has Revealed a Limited Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup

I came across this news release today from Cambell’s announcing they are releasing a new Grilled Cheese and Tomato soup for a limited time this spring. For all of my life, my favorite way to enjoy tomato soup is paired with a delicious grilled cheese sandwich.

A grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup was a regular dinner for me growing up. My dad traveled a lot, and my brother was older than me and working, so it was just my mom and I for dinner a lot of the time, and this combination was a go-to.

I’m intrigued by this soup idea and really want to try it. My wonder though is whether will it pair well with a grilled cheese sandwich, or will that be overkill. If it’s designed to incorporate both flavors, it might be just fine on its own.

Here is the news announcement straight from Campbells:

Introducing Campbell’s® Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup. This first-ever limited-edition Campbell’s® soup flavor celebrates the brand’s iconic Tomato Soup infused with the comforting flavors of a grilled cheese sandwich. It’s the ultimate bowl of comfort bursting with satisfying flavor.

You’ll enjoy the toasty, cheesy notes of a grilled cheese combined with Campbell’s Tomato Soup in each and every spoonful.​

Whether you prefer to prepare with water (for a more robust tomato taste) or milk (for a delightfully cheesier taste), each spoonful will remind you that these flavors are just better together.​

This limited-edition soup is set to hit shelves at select grocery stores soon, but we’re giving you the chance to win a free 2-pack before it disappears. Enter today and you and a friend could celebrate National Grilled Cheese Day (April 12) in the coziest of ways.

That last line there references winning a free 2-pack of this new soup, and you can enter at https://campbellsgrilledcheeseandtomatosoup.com/

Welcome to Retro Ramblings

I’ve spent most of my adult life looking backward. Hell, I spent a lot of my teenage years looking backward. The difference is that while in my teens, I was looking back fondly on my childhood days a few years prior, and as an adult (allegedly) I spend my time looking back at both my teenage years AND my childhood.

I knew I was never really alone in doing this, but I spent a lot of years wandering around in the dark without many folks to talk about old stuff with. I first got online in 1996, but it took me until the year 2000 to discover nostalgia-based websites. Then blogs came along and I stumbled across a few of those whose primary focus was talking about stuff I liked from the ’80s and early ’90s. A couple of years after that, I discovered Retro-Daze and found out that I could actually share my own memories with a group of like-minded people.

So I started writing articles about things I enjoyed while growing up. I was a pretty fortunate kid who had a good childhood, and I found that I had plenty of inspiration for writing articles. My parents weren’t rich, or even well-off. But my dad’s business provided what I would call a comfortable lifestyle for the family. There was always food on the table, and new clothes when we needed them. When I was into something, like a toy line, I usually ended up with a decent amount of it to play with. So I was able to make a lot of positive memories from those days.

Fast forward a couple of years, and I had found several other bloggers and webmasters whose writing styles I started to emulate. I enjoyed that for a while, but I found that just writing about a “thing” for the sake of writing about it wasn’t fulfilling. I wasn’t sharing my own experiences with that “thing”. I was just writing for attention. And I grew to really dislike that. And after a while, I decided to end that phase of my nostalgia writing and focus instead on writing memories. Writing about stuff that I was actually passionate about instead of writing about something just because I think other people enjoyed it years ago.

Fast forward a couple of more years, and I ended up co-founding The Retro Network with Jason from Rediscover the ’80s. Jason and I clicked right away, and before long we were joined by a handful of other creators and now have a blossoming community of writers who share memories, along with writing features about “things”. It’s a nice blend. We also have several podcasts as part of the network, and even a dedicated YouTube channel that presents nostalgia-themed original videos. I’ve been so blessed to be able to be a part of that community and to help nurture it.

With The Retro Network being a place where I can just write about “things” when I want to, it frees me up to just share memories here at Retro Ramblings. And that’s what I intend to do. You shouldn’t really find random posts about “things” here. What you should find, I hope, are essays and articles from my heart, with plenty of memories to fill the space with.

I’ll be sharing memories of toys I had and some I didn’t but really wanted. Stories about Nintendo, G.I. Joe, Masters of the Universe, ’90s comic books, trading cards, and one of my favorite subjects of all…extinct junk food. There’ll be other stuff thrown in along the way too, I promise.

A lot of my nostalgia has to deal with my mom, who is now in a nursing home suffering from dementia. It’s a cruel disease, and I’ve watched it wipe away most of her memories. It saddens me tremendously that she can no longer remember all of the fun times she and I enjoyed together through the years. That is a big reason for doing Retro Ramblings. It’s kind of a tribute to her as I reminisce about the fun she helped make possible by buying me those toys, Nintendo games, and candies that can no longer be found.

So I hope you enjoy this winding trip down memory lane that I’m going to take you on. It’s going to be a fun ride.

– Mickey