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McDonald’s senior marketing director Guillaume Huin had a revealing moment when he admitted the McRib is the company’s “most-mentioned limited-time product online.”³ Translation for normal Americans: the company has trained customers like Pavlov’s dogs to panic whenever the sandwich pops up.
A Failed Sandwich Became a Manufactured Obsession
Most people do not realize the McRib was never born as a fan favorite. It came out in 1981 only because chicken shortages forced McDonald’s to slow down McNugget production.⁴ The McRib was supposed to fill the gap. Instead, customers ignored it and the chain pulled it off menus by 1985.⁴
Then something changed. When McDonald’s quietly brought it back in 1989, executives realized a psychological truth. People crave what they cannot easily get. Scarcity creates desire. And desire creates dollars.
Scarcity Over Pork Prices
Some analysts still push the claim that McDonald’s times the McRib’s release around cheap pork trimmings. Yes, the cuts are cheaper during certain seasons. But that is not the real engine behind the comeback.
The true power of the McRib is manufactured urgency. McDonald’s stages these returns to generate headlines. They have run multiple “farewell tours” since 2005.⁵ Every time they swear it is gone for good. Every time it magically returns a year or two later. It is the same blueprint aging rock stars use when they run out of new material.
Crypto traders even joke that Bitcoin rallies whenever the McRib shows up.⁶ That should tell you how deeply this marketing myth has spread.
McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski once compared the sandwich to sports legends like Tom Brady and Michael Jordan.⁷ Imagine putting a molded pork patty on the same level as championship athletes.
Why the Sandwich Always Returns When It Does
Here is the part McDonald’s would rather you ignore. The McRib shows up when corporate numbers start looking ugly. Analysts at DecisionNext discovered the chain uses the sandwich to juice sales when foot traffic slows.⁸ And according to McDonald’s own third quarter 2025 earnings, lower income customers have been cutting back across the fast food industry.⁹ That is the sanitized corporate way of saying families cannot afford their food like they used to.
So McDonald’s pulls an old trick from the shelf. They present a cheap sandwich as a rare treasure. They push the narrative that you must buy it now or miss out for a year.
The truth is simple. The McRib is built from inexpensive pork shoulder, a cut that maximizes profit margins on a massive scale.¹⁰ And with more than 13 thousand stores in the United States, even a “limited release” moves mountains of meat.¹⁰
Customers Are Catching On
More Americans are finally calling out the game. Polls and comments show people complaining it is “too expensive,” with some saying they can get better food for less at sit down restaurants.¹¹ Others flat out admit they never cared for it at all. One wrote, “I never understood the hype of this.”¹² Another joked it should be “kept in a time capsule.”¹²
They are not wrong. The McRib’s comeback has never been about loyalty or nostalgia. It is about creating panic buying on command. And McDonald’s has been running this corporate sleight of hand since the early eighties.
Artificial scarcity. Inflated hype. And a cheap sandwich dressed up like a national event. That is the real McRib secret recipe.
