The Taco Bell food you enjoy today is probably not the same stuff you enjoyed in your younger years. That’s not a huge surprise as menus change through the years. Fast food restaurants are constantly tweaking their menus to figure out the best selections for their customers. Sometimes a place will try new and different things to remain in step with the ever-evolving tastes of the world… and then there’s Taco Bell. The Border has tried to keep up with those trend-setting tastes; some have hit, and others have not. Not all of these misses have been epic fails, however. Some of these are a bit of a mystery as to why they disappeared. In fact, you might take a look at this list and get a craving for an old favorite you forgot even existed. With that said, here’s a look at some Taco Bell items that probably slipped your memory, and your taste buds.
Bell Beefer
Some of you may have heard of this one, but for those of you who haven’t, the Bell Beefer was Taco Bell’s answer to the traditional fast food hamburger. It existed on Taco Bell menus from the 1970s until – depending on the location – the 1990s.
The Bell Beefer featured everything Taco Bell puts on its tacos including seasoned beef, lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese but on a hamburger bun instead of a taco shell. The filling was fine as always, but the problem was the bun. For one thing, it was an extra inventory item that the stores had to keep, but it was more of the second problem that took out this menu item. Since the Bell Beefer didn’t sell as well as the tacos, those hamburger buns tended to sit around longer than other inventory and would have to be thrown away when they expired before being used.
Even though the plug was pulled on the Bell Beefer, it is still mentioned fondly by those who remember it.
Chicken Club Burrito
While classic club sandwiches are normally stacked three stories high, Taco Bell’s attempt fell a little flat. It featured their chicken of the time, along with bacon and a ranch sauce, and the customary lettuce and tomatoes. While it may have sounded good on paper, it didn’t appeal to the masses and when it’s limited time was up, it never returned to the menu.
Seafood Salad
Many food joints have tried their hand at seafood offerings, and outside of a place like Long John Silver’s, which specializes in the genre, or the occasional burger joint hit like McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish, most have flopped. So when Taco Bell, whose offerings were about as far away as you can get from seafood, introduced a seafood salad, it was pretty much doomed to failure. While the world would eventually come to love fish tacos, this seafood salad was pretty far from that. It featured a blend of shrimp, snow crab, and whitefish on a bed of lettuce, with tomatoes and cheese in an edible shell bowl. But its time on the menu was short as the world just wasn’t ready to satisfy its seafood cravings at a taco place.
Texas Taco Sandwich
The Texas Taco Sandwich hit the market in 1995 with a fun commercial starring Jack Palance. Palance was coming off a resurgence thanks to the movies City Slickers and City Slickers II, so he lent credibility to Taco Bell’s latest offering with a Texas flair. The sandwich featured a larger and thicker soft shell than normal and was loaded with seasoned beef, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, and sour cream. The shell was later compared to the Gordita which debuted a year or so after this. And while it was intended as a limited-time release, it’s very possible that it never made an encore appearance due to the debut of the previously mentioned Gordita which became a hit.
Bacon Cheeseburger Burrito
The bacon cheeseburger burrito came along in the mid-90s when adding bacon to everything was all the rage. It featured their classic seasoned beef with lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, bacon, and a smoky bacon sauce. It was quite the hit actually but was dragged down by its limited-time menu partners, the BLT soft taco, and the aforementioned Chicken Bacon Club Burrito. When the special menu’s time was up, the Bacon Cheeseburger Burrito left and never returned.
So there are a few old Taco Bell menu items that you have probably forgotten about, if you ever knew about them in the first place. If you were a fan of any of these, there’s always hope that they could make a menu return at some point in the future.
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