Shanghai McNuggets: A Love Letter

Ed. note: Since "ChickenFingersIsBack" requested that I reprint my letter to McDonald's, I will do that and more.

Does anyone else remember Shanghai McNuggets? It doesn't seem like it. I just Googled it in quotation marks and it returned 127 results. By contrast, "OJ is innocent" yielded over 8,000 results. My God, "nude pictures of Kirstie Alley" returned 215 results. More people are interested in that than Shanghai McNuggets? I swear, I'm nothing but a stranger in this world. (Oh, and if my friend Elizabeth is reading this... I used your computer to Google all three of those things. Sorry.)

Shanghai McNuggets were the greatest fast food promotion ever. They were tasty, unhealthy, and more than a little bit racist. That's all I ever ask out of life. (I can't decide whether my favorite part of the commercial is the line reading "Cooked in 100% vegetable shortening" or the announcer saying "Taste the Orient at McDonald's!") Basically they were McNuggets served with three dipping sauces - teriyaki, sweet & sour, and hot mustard. They came in an Asian-style box with chopsticks and - I kid you not - a "Mcfortune cookie."

Is there anyone reading this who would not buy them if they came out again? I might camp out overnight to be the first in line, something I have not done since Showgirls was released back in '95. This was the letter I wrote to McDonald's back in October of 2007, to which I never heard a reply:

"Greetings! I am writing you to suggest that you bring back Shanghai McNuggets. I, and all of my friends who grew up in the 80s with me, agree that was the greatest fast food promotion of all time, even better than Burger King's Return Of The Jedi glasses (not counting the Ewok glass, obviously; that was freaking awesome.)

I recently took some young cousins of mine to McDonald's and while we were there I told them about the Shanghai McNuggets. They thought those sounded so spectacular that they made me take them home so that they could eat their McNuggets with chopsticks and dip them into teriyaki sauce.

I could go on and on with anecdotes about how many people I know loved Shanghai McNuggets. One time my brother and I were eating them and he poked me in the eye with a chopstick. It hurt like crazy but I did not care because I was busy enjoying the greatest food combination of all time: McNuggets and a fortune cookie.

Every person whom I have told that I would be writing you about this matter has been extremely encouraging. Literally 100% of my friends would love to see a return of Shanghai McNuggets. My friend Bryce got a tear in his eye reminiscing about them. So I suggest a limited return of Shanghai McNuggets in the Southern California area. There is a whole generation of people who would love them as much as my friends and I did."

So, if anyone else would like to see the return of these delicious little treats, feel free to let McDonald's know. And if not, that's okay, too. I have certainly had stupider ideas. (Like waiting all night to watch Showgirls. I don't know what I was thinking. That movie was so bad that even though I was 17 and the movie was full of naked girls, I still walked out.)