{"id":800058,"date":"2026-08-02T22:41:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T22:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/800058\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T22:41:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T22:41:14","slug":"mcdonalds-celebrated-50-years-of-the-filet-o-fish-by-introducing-fish-mcbites-which-flopped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/800058\/","title":{"rendered":"McDonald&#8217;s Celebrated 50 Years Of The Filet-O-Fish By Introducing Fish McBites, Which Flopped"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>            &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n<p>                                             &#13;<br \/>\n                                                    &#13;<br \/>\n                            &#13;<br \/>\n                        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"gallery-image \" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/intro-1784915310.jpg\" data-slide-url=\"https:\/\/www.tastingtable.com\/2222701\/mcdonalds-filet-o-fish-fifty-year-anniversary-menu-flop\/\" data-post-id=\"2222701\" data-slide-num=\"0\" data-slide-title=\"McDonald's Celebrated 50 Years Of The Filet-O-Fish With A Complete Flop: \" width=\"780\" height=\"438\" alt=\"customer holding Filet-O-Fish box\"\/>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                    FOOD PHOTO STOCK\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n<p>The Filet-O-Fish has had dedicated fans since its launch in the 1960s. A franchise owner in Ohio saw his profits tanking during Lent, so he came up with a way to bring customers back,and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tastingtable.com\/1154059\/everything-you-need-to-know-about-mcdonalds-famous-filet-o-fish\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Filet-O-Fish sandwich<\/a>. To celebrate the\u00a050th anniversary of this entrepreneurial stroke of genius, McDonald&#8217;s thought that releasing Fish McBites would be received with eager customer fanfare. Rolled out in 2013, press releases detailed the bite-sized pieces of wild-caught Alaska pollock, the same fish used to make the Filet-O-Fish. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tastingtable.com\/2117729\/what-happened-to-mcdonalds-fish-mcbites\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">poppable pieces of fish<\/a> were breaded and fried and could be purchased in three different sizes.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Many customers\u00a0enjoyed the taste, yet some\u00a0likened the flavor to that of tater tots. In addition to a $1 snack-size promotion, Fish McBites was the first new Happy Meal option McDonald&#8217;s had offered in a decade. Ad campaigns pictured a dancing fish mascot and a &#8220;Fishy Fishy&#8221; jingle, and customers were invited to use Twitter hashtag #FlauntYourFishFace to enter to win free McBites. &#8220;This song still follows me wherever I go to this day,&#8221; wrote a user on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=XKBzLXDro-w\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">YouTube<\/a>.\u00a0Even with all of this hubbub, the Fish McBites failed to find solid footing, and less than three months after their debut, the Fish McBites were pulled from menus.\u00a0&#8220;I&#8217;m still desperately hoping they will return someday,&#8221; wrote a fan on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VPyqeg9lhbQ&amp;t=4s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">YouTube<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                A \ufeffsandwich that deserves a proper celebration\ufeff<\/p>\n<p>After the nationwide rollout of Fish McBites, McDonald&#8217;s U.S. sales figures dropped, and analysts pointed to other competitors like Chipotle and Panera making their marks on the fast food landscape.\u00a0Those scouring the internet for proof of the anniversary item have discovered that Fish McBites have made additional appearances as limited-time offerings on menus at some international locations. A\u00a0similar product,\u00a0Fish Bites, has also been seen\u00a0on McDonald&#8217;s menus in the U.K. and Ireland.<\/p>\n<p>The Fish McBites weren&#8217;t the only seafood item to flop in McDonald&#8217;s portfolio. In\u00a02017, four McDonald&#8217;s locations in the San Francisco Bay Area sold a crab sandwich made on a sourdough bun. Like the bites, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tastingtable.com\/2143835\/failed-mcdonalds-seafood-crab-sandwich-vs-filet-o-fish\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">crab sandwich<\/a> was also quietly discontinued. Given that the McLobster, Fish McBites, and regional <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tastingtable.com\/1859969\/worst-discontinued-mcdonalds-menu-items\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">crab cake sandwiches ended up in the McDonald&#8217;s culinary graveyard<\/a>, the lasting success of the Filet-O-Fish makes it even more worthy of a proper celebration.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; FOOD PHOTO STOCK\/Shutterstock The Filet-O-Fish has had dedicated&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-800058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}