Just The Specials: SpongeBob X Wendy’s — The Krabby Patty Kollab Meal
by Anton Kromoff
Welcome to the table,
Just the Specials is where your old pal Anton chows down on the new, weird, and often wild menu items, food offerings, and branded collaborations that find their way onto the plate in front of him. I was especially excited about the Wendy’s/SpongeBob collaboration. SpongeBob is quoted daily in my home and I typically really love Wendy’s limited-time food offerings.
I didn’t get pictures, but that was because I was so disappointed in what I received that I sadly ate the meal before realizing I had forgotten to take pics, so let the illustration above from the Wendy’s site serve as two things for you, dear reader.
- This is the image used on all the delivery sites, as well as the website, to showcase the meal. That means that they do not have a picture of the actual food. That should be a red flag.
- This is exactly what you get, and it honestly is not anything really outside the normal menu. No cool bag, no toy, no collectible cup. It was rolled and tucked in a normal slowly staining brown Wendy’s bag with not so much as a sticker or stain that resembled anything SpongeBob in nature.
The Krabby Patty Kollab Meal meal is said to be a burger that is “A quarter pound of fresh, never-frozen beef, American cheese, crisp lettuce, tomato, pickle, onion, and a super special secret sauce served on a toasted bun with, of course, love. Both Dave Thomas and Eugene Krabs would be proud.”
Honestly, that last bit about Mr. Krabs is kinda spot on. That dude loved money, and adding a SpongeBob callout on a regular Dave’s Single is kind of just that… a money grab.
The sauce is the only new addition. From what I tasted anyway, because there was very little on mine. It just tasted like someone mixed mustard, ketchup, mayo, and maybe a season salt of some kind together and then slapped it on the bun.
As someone who typically gets mustard, mayo, and ketchup together on my fast-food burgers, there was really nothing that tasted different on that front. It was fine, but not anything special.
The side is a normal order of fries, no green sprinkles, or fun little fry bag, just fast food fries. Good, but still not the SpongeBob-themed offering I was looking for.
What was truly disappointing was the Pineapple Under the Sea Frosty. This is said to be Wendy’s “classic Vanilla Frosty with a pineapple-puree bottom.”
It was exactly that, and was not very good. The pineapple-puree bottom tasted akin to a super sweet syrup that had, at one point, been mixed with some kind of pineapple flavoring agent and then forgotten about on a back shelf in a fridge for a couple of weeks. It was just weird and one note, and not even mixed in or layered with the rest of the Frosty.
In a world where we have had tons of SpongeBob kids’ meals, collectible watches, and cups, all dropped at fast food places, this could have been easily amazing. Yet… it feels like the digital art is the most SpongeBob thing about the whole ordeal.
Until next time, I really expected better. Honestly, the way this was rolled out and fumbled has made me question ever returning to Wendy’s. That lack of effort with execution felt like a bait-and-switch at best, and pure greed at worst.
I love Wendy’s and champion them often, but this whole thing really left a bad taste in my mouth. I could keep making excuses and saying it was because I was so excited and really looking forward to it, but any way you look at it, what I received, was just not good.
