Fast food brands f*cking love Halloween. There isn’t another holiday that activates fast food brands quite like Halloween does, and we’re here for it. We can’t blame the big brands for wanting to dress up their menu for the holiday; we certainly love to do it too, and if it means new food for us, we can’t get mad at what is essentially a blatant cash grab.
Because let’s face it, none of this food is sticking around after the holiday, but this traditionally spooky time of year gives brands a chance to do something out there and weird. And that can be a lot of fun. If it tastes good, we don’t care how much food coloring they use to make it spooky (see the Burger King Ghost Pepper Whopper).
First up in what is sure to be a month full of Halloween fast food reviews, we’ve got Jack in the Box, who is dropping two new spooky menu items: The Mummy Wrapped Monster Taco and the cheekily-named Witch Please milkshake. We’ve tasted both, so you don’t have to. Here are our thoughts.
Mummy Wrapped Monster Taco
Thoughts & Tasting Notes:
What is Jack in the Box to do when the menu already contains a Monster Taco? Wrap the taco in another tortilla, add a few ingredients, and call it “Mummy Wrapped” I guess. I suppose that’s better than dying the whole thing green and calling it “Dr. Frankenstein’s Monster Taco,” though the latter certainly sounds cooler.
The Mummy Wrapped Monster Taco features the same build as a regular Monster Taco: weird soy-based “meat,” shredded lettuce, taco sauce, and *shudder* American cheese, wrapped in a flour tortilla and melded together with bacon bits and melty cheese sauce. The result is a salt bomb of zesty flavor with a sweet and smokey finish.
It’s not terrible, but if you already find JiB’s tacos off-putting, this isn’t exactly going to win you over. If you do however have a soft spot for JiB’s tacos, this does feel like an elevation of the menu staple.
The Bottom Line:
Add this to the menu permanently, Jack in the Box! This would certainly slap under the right circumstances (buzzed or high), but if you already hate JiB’s tacos, you’re going to hate this too.
Witch Please Shake
Thoughts & Tasting Notes:
I hate the Witch Please Shake because of its name. I just don’t like saying to a fast food employee, “Can I get a Witch Please?” It feels ridiculous. And I have a sneaking suspicion that they don’t like hearing it either.
Name aside, the Witch Please Shake is pretty damn good, but — and this is a big but — I feel the quality control needs work. JiB advertises this shake as being purple with swirls of Oreo cookie crumbles throughout.
What I received was a white vanilla shake with pools of purple goop along the sides of the cup and at the bottom with a sprinkling of Oreo cookies on the whipped cream. I didn’t realize at first the shake wasn’t supposed to look like this, so I drank it, and the intense sweetness from the purple goop was so sweet it burned my throat. Maybe that’s on me, but be warned that when you get this shake, you’re going to have to mix it up with a few straw stabs to distribute the purple flavoring.
Mixing it up vastly improves the experience, the Witch Please Shake features a rich, sweet, slightly floral semi-nutty ube flavor. If you’re unfamiliar with ube, it’s a sweet purple yam flavor that is extremely popular and common at boba shops. JiB has taken a lot of influence from boba shops for its dessert drinks recently, and we’re here for it! The Witch Please is the best boba-influenced drink JiB has ever dropped.
The Bottom Line:
Overall, I love this shake and like the Mummy Wrapped Monster Taco, I think it deserves a permanent spot on the JiB menu.
