Technologies
McDonald’s Grinch Meal or Burger King’s SpongeBob Menu? We Pick a Winner
I tried all the themed menu items from the two fast-food chains, from dill-dusted fries to burgers with sponge-yellow buns to pineapple floats.
Whos down in Whoville, and underwater residents of Bikini Bottom, there’s news for both of you:Â McDonald’s and Burger King, longtime fast-food rivals, are going head-to-head. Or, to be more accurate, scary red-wigged, face-painted clown head against equally frightening red-bearded crown-wearing head.
On Tuesday, McDonald’s introduced The Grinch Meal, and on the same day, Burger King rolled out its SpongeBob SquarePants menu. So if you’re sick of Thanksgiving leftovers and want some fast food instead, you can decide if your taste buds resonate with the crabby green Grinch or the always cheerful SpongeBob.
Both are limited-edition offerings, so get to your local McDonald’s or Burger King soon if you want to try out the meals.
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McDonald’s Grinch Meal Review
Honestly, McDonald’s Grinch Meal isn’t as creative as BK’s offerings — where are the green-dyed buns, the green shake or the McRoast Beast burger? Essentially, the Grinch Meal is an adult Happy Meal, consisting of your choice of a regular Big Mac or a 10-piece Chicken McNuggets, fries and a medium drink.
Fries with Grinch Salt (dill-pickle seasoning)
McDonald’s offers only one unusual food item with the Grinch Meal, and that’s an accessory for the fries. They come with a small bag of tangy dill pickle seasoning, labeled Grinch Salt, that you’re supposed to shake on your fries for a puckery addition. Pickles, like the Grinch, are green and sour, so I guess that’s the connection here.
My review:Â How did they taste? Pretty good! I’m a pickle fan, and once I shook them up, the fries were sour and salty and overall delightful. Two green, furry thumbs up. Â I wish there was a pickle-flavored dipping sauce too.Â
Grade: A-.
No Grinch toy, but … socks?
Happy Meals always come with an extra toy or prize of some kind. But there’s no Grinch stuffed animal or Cindy Lou Who figurine with McDonald’s Grinch Meal, although the box it all comes in is cute and Grinchy-themed.
Instead, you get the one Christmas gift that’s so cliched there are endless jokes about it: a pair of socks. There are four different Grinch-themed socks showing The Grinch, Cindy Lou Who, Max the dog and some McDonald’s logo-themed ornaments. Each pair also has an all-caps, hand-scrawled-looking message from the Grinch.
The blue socks read: “These socks stink.”
The yellow socks read: “Nose Hazard.”
The red socks read: “Property of the Grinch.”
And the green socks read, “The Grinch was here.”
My review: I ended up with the yellow pair of socks. They seem to be of decent quality, and considering how lame some fast-food prizes are, this was a score for me. I might actually wear them.
Grade: A
Burger King SpongeBob SquarePants menu
If McDonald’s kind of went Grinch-appropriate stingy on its Grinch offerings, Burger King went Sponge Bob-overboard with the generous SpongeBob SquarePants menu. SpongeBob fans, you might as well go all out and order the Bikini Bottom Bundle, which gives you all four of the themed items in a pineapple-shaped box.
King Jr. kids’ meal in a pineapple box
There’s no adult meal, but there is a King Jr. kids’ meal, in a box shaped like SpongeBob’s underwater pineapple home. It includes one of six SpongeBob toys.Â
My review:Â My toy was a figurine of SpongeBob wearing a pirate’s cap and clutching a ship’s wheel. There was supposed to be a Burger King SpongeBob crown too, but my location must’ve forgotten to give those out. The SpongeBob toy was pretty cool as kids’ toys go, though. And the pineapple box is cute.
Grade: A-
Krabby Patty? Almost!
As every SpongeBob fan knows, the cheerful sponge is a fry cook at The Krusty Krab, serving up Krabby Patties all day long, so he knows his fast food. Burger King has plenty of themed menu items, way more than the McDonald’s Grinch offerings.
SpongeBob’s Krabby Whopper
SpongeBob’s Krabby Whopper is the closest thing to the Krabby Patty from the show. (Wendy’s had a Krabby Patty and Pineapple Frosty last year, you might recall.) It seems to be a pretty ordinary Whopper until you get to the bun, which is square and yellow, just like our spongy hero. The yellow dye is made with natural spices, Burger King says. Otherwise, the Whopper is just a regular Whopper.
My review: The Whopper is not my favorite burger, but I have to say the light-yellow, squared-off bun looks super cool. It didn’t taste any different, but I appreciated it.
Grade: B
Mr. Krabs’ Cheesy Bacon TotsÂ
Mr. Krabs’ Cheesy Bacon Tots are crispy, coin-shaped potato tots filled with cheese, bacon bits and potatoes, served in a treasure chest-themed carton.Â
My review: Ugh, pass on these. The artificial taste of the bacon is pretty awful, and it dried out in about 3 seconds.
Grade: C-
Patrick’s Star-berry Shortcake Pie review
Patrick Star is SpongeBob’s best friend, and in his honor, you can order Patrick’s Star-berry Shortcake Pie. It’s a strawberry shortcake pie slice featuring strawberry and vanilla-flavored creamy layers, a crunchy cookie crumb crust, shortcake cookie crumbles and pink star-shaped sprinkles.
My review: Yum! I’m not usually a fan of any fast-food dessert, but this was sweet and creamy, and the crust was tasty, too.
Grade: A
Pirate’s Frozen Pineapple Float review
Honoring SpongeBob’s pineapple home, you can order a Pirate’s Frozen Pineapple Float, described as “an icy, refreshing frozen pineapple-flavored beverage topped with tropical-flavor cold foam.”
My review: This was my favorite item among all the meals. I didn’t really detect any tropical flavoring in the “cold foam,” but the drink was kind of like a classed-up pineapple Slurpee, refreshing and sweet.
Grade: A+
Grinch Meal or SpongeBob Menu, which tastes better?
Is it wrong to say I liked the non-edible parts of both meals almost more than the food? The Grinch socks were decent quality and cute, and the SpongeBob figurine was fun.
Food-wise, Burger King gets points for the tasty pineapple float and the Patrick pie. The McDonald’s meal is just McDonald’s food with the dill-pickle seasoning for fries added. That’s fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go that far.Â
My vote, then, is if you’re only going to visit one of these chains before the limited-edition themed meals go away, hit up Burger King and try the Bikini Bottom Bundle. Unless you’re an enormous Grinch fan, pickle lover or really need some new socks.
Technologies
Trump strikes deal with Putin to supply Russian diesel to U.S. and global markets
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Technologies
Major League Baseball proposes shortening its regular season as it pushes for a salary cap
Major League Baseball proposed a return to a shorter 154-game regular season schedule as it attempts to convince players to approve a salary cap.
Major League Baseball proposed shortening its regular season to 154 games from 162 as it attempts to convince players to approve a salary cap in the league’s next collective bargaining agreement. The new shortened schedule would begin in 2029.
MLB’s CBA expires Dec. 1, after the conclusion of this season’s World Series. The most contentious issue is the introduction of a salary cap on players. MLB is the only major American sports league without a cap. The league has failed to convince the players’ union to adopt one in several previous CBA negotiations.
A 154-game season was used between 1904 and 1960, except for 1918 and 1919 when the schedule was abbreviated because of World War I. For the past 66 years, 162 regular season games has been the standard, though some seasons have been shortened.
Lopping off eight games “is good for player health, while also creating a new national broadcast window to showcase our most exciting teams and players,” MLB spokesman Glen Caplin said in a statement. “A shorter regular season unlocks making October even better for our fans — with fewer weekday afternoon games, a longer Division Series, and more opportunities to see the game’s best pitchers on the biggest stage.”
As part of the proposal, MLB wants to cement Monday as an exclusive broadcast window for one or two games to “increase national exposure for the sport.” The league could conceivably sell a package of Monday-only games to a streaming service looking to increase subscriber and advertising revenue. Every team not playing in the national game or games would have an off day.
Teams that play Monday would be off on Thursday, MLB said.
In addition to lowering the number of regular season games, MLB would extend the divisional round of the playoffs to seven games from five and would allow the higher-seeded teams in both the wild card round and in the divisional round to choose their lower-seeded opponent.
The Major League Baseball Players Association responded to the MLB’s proposed changes by claiming the league “once again made clear that all of its proposals are contingent on players’ agreement to a salary cap, a system that guts player rights and compensation, as well as its other anti-player proposals.”
An MLB spokesperson confirmed that Thursday’s proposed changes are contingent on adopting a cap – and a salary floor, which would force teams to spend a certain amount on players. Still, the MLBPA said it would review the proposed changes. “Players will weigh in on these proposals and we will respond at the bargaining table,” MLBPA said in a statement.
Technologies
Hurricane Isaias disrupts U.S. oil production in Gulf of Mexico, threatens refineries
The hurricane could tighten a fuel market that is already facing big disruptions from the wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Hurricane Isaias is disrupting U.S. crude oil production in the Gulf of Mexico and could limit about 2% of the country’s refining capacity, at a time when fuel markets are already tight around the world.
Isaias is churning toward Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida panhandle as a Category 3 storm with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center, and is expected to make landfall Friday night or early Saturday.
As of Thursday, oil companies had shut in about 1.3 million barrels per day, or roughly 63% of total U.S. production in the Gulf, according to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.
The hurricane appeared to be veering away from the dense refining region in southern Louisiana near New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
But the storm could affect Chevron
“Of course, losing any refinery capacity when diesel supplies are at their lowest level for this time of year since the EIA began reporting in 1982 is not a good thing,” Lipow wrote in a Friday note, referring to the Energy Information Administration.
Chevron’s refinery at Pascagoula remains operational, spokesperson Ross Allen said Thursday. Vertex officials weren’t immediately available for comment about its Saraland refinery.
″The biggest risk to these two refineries are a loss of electricity or flooding damage,” Lipow wrote in a note Friday. If the refineries do shut down, it would take one to two weeks to restart them if they did not sustain damage, he said.
Refineries on the Gulf Coast are running at 95% of their capacity, so there is no slack in the system to make up for lost production, Lipow said.
Diesel prices have soared as the wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East knock out refining capacity. Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries forced Moscow to ban diesel exports. Iran and its Houthi allies have also attacked refineries in the Middle East.
U.S. refiners have stepped in to take advantage of wide profit margins to export diesel around the world, particularly to Europe.
In the past, fuel prices rose while crude prices fell during outages at Gulf refineries, said Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners. That’s a result of those refineries not demanding crude and not producing fuel for consumers, Book told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday.
Lipow warned that tanker traffic will also be disrupted.
“Tankers will be delayed delivering crude oil to the refineries while other tankers are delayed loading gasoline, jet fuel and diesel out of the refineries,” the analyst said. “Florida will experience delays in receiving gasoline, jet fuel and diesel.”
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