KPop Demon Hunters fans, get to McDonald’s fast. Starting Tuesday, you can nab a meal that might seem like an April Fool’s Day joke, but isn’t. Participating McDonald’s restaurants are offering both the HUNTR/X meal, named for the girl group from Netflix’s Oscar-winning animated film, KPop Demon Hunters, and the Saja Boys Breakfast Meal, named for the movie’s boy band.
I beat a path to McDonald’s on the first day the new meals were out so I could try everything.
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And the KPop Demon Hunters items are surprisingly pretty good! Be warned: Once word gets around, they might be hard to get. The McDonald’s holiday Grinch Meal sold out quickly at some locations (too bad if you wanted a pair of the adorable Grinch-themed socks that came with it), so don’t wait on this limited-edition menu.
Shake up the fries, skip the Demon sauce
The HUNTR/X Meal, named for the K-pop girl group in KPop Demon Hunters, is a 10-piece chicken McNuggets meal that includes a medium drink and three special menu items.
The top fry is one I shook up with the Ramyeon seasoning, while the other one is just a regular McDonald’s fry. I was surprised by how much I liked the seasoning!
Ramyeon McShaker fries come with a small bag of soy, garlic, sesame and spice seasoning, along with regular McDonald’s fries. You sprinkle the seasoning into the provided bag, dump in the fries, shake it all up and eat.
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McDonald’s does not skimp on the amount of fry seasoning they give you.
My take: McDonald’s fries are legendary, and honestly, I didn’t want to season them and risk wrecking the taste. Here’s the shocker: I loved it. They give you a ton of seasoning, and the fries become thickly coated, which I thought would be a nightmare. But they were a salty, tasty delight. There’s no meat in the seasoning, but it reminded me of a fried-chicken coating — tasty and rich.
The meal includes two new sauces for the fries and nuggets. Hunter sauce is a sweet chili sauce mixing notes of chili, garlic and pepper. If you’re familiar with McDonald’s longtime sweet-and-sour sauce, this reminded me of that, with just a touch of heat.
You can order one of each of the two KPop Demon Hunters sauces. Hunter sauce is better than the shockingly purple Demon sauce, in my humble opinion.
The other new sauce is Demon sauce, a mustard sauce with some heat and a bold purple color. There’s just not enough dark purple food out there. But while the color was cool, I ended up scraping the Hunter sauce cup almost empty, leaving most of the purple Demon sauce behind. I appreciated the almost-but-not-quite wasabi flavor of the mustard, but I wouldn’t order this sauce again.
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Look! My McNugget is wearing a purple wig! The best thing about the Demon sauce was the bold purple color, not the kind-of-meh hot-mustard sauce itself.
You can try both sauces without an extra charge. I ordered via the app and just selected one of each of the two new sauces.
Ramyeon McShaker fries come with a small bag of a soy, garlic, sesame and spice seasoning that customers sprinkle into a bag with the fries and shake up before eating.
There’s also a new dessert, the Derpy McFlurry, which blends creamy vanilla soft serve with berry-flavored popping boba pearls and a swirl of wild berry sauce. McDonald’s named it for the supernatural feline, Derpy Tiger, from the KPop Demon Hunters movie.
You know all the jokes about how McDonald’s ice-cream machine is always broken? I tried to order the Derpy McFlurry at my local McDonald’s, but the app said it wasn’t available. I don’t know if that location’s ice cream machine was actually broken or if they didn’t get their shipment of popping pearls, but this is America: There was another McDonald’s less than a mile away that had the dessert.
My McFlurry had kind of melted by the time I got home because the McDonald’s closest to my house didn’t have it. Insert your favorite “McDonald’s eternal broken ice-cream machine” joke here.
And I’m glad they did! Although I’m not a berries-in-ice-cream fan, the thick soft-serve and wildberry sauce (blueberry? raspberry? both? I couldn’t tell) were a smooth, sweet mash-up. The boba pearls were fun to pop inside my mouth, too, though beware, they kind of leave behind a little… boba skin?
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The Derpy McFlurry blends creamy vanilla soft serve with berry popping pearls.
If breakfast is your bag, the new morning meal is the Saja Boys Breakfast Meal.
It includes a Spicy Saja McMuffin sandwich, which is a sausage McMuffin with egg and a spicy Saja sauce, hash browns and a small drink. I hadn’t had the chance to tell my husband what was in the sandwich when he swooped through the kitchen while talking on a work call and nabbed a bite. He widened his eyes and waved at his mouth in the universal signal for “HOT!”
At first, I thought he was exaggerating, but then I had a second bite, and the orangish, peppery sauce is hot. It’s also too sweet for my taste, and I wouldn’t reorder this. Without the sauce, the breakfast is just an Egg McMuffin.
The Spicy Saja McMuffin is a sausage McMuffin with egg, topped with a peppery sauce.
Both meals come with a photocard for one of the bands and a Derpy card. My breakfast meal included a photo card of Jinu, and my lunch meal featured one of Zoey. Each meal also had a Derpy card with a picture of Derpy Tiger and a QR code that, for some reason, I found incredibly difficult to scan. When I finally did, it took me to the McDonald’s app on my phone and asked for the code on the card. Then it didn’t really do anything.
A McDonald’s rep told me that’s by design: Entering the code means I will unlock content that won’t appear until April 26 and will reveal “the winner of McDonald’s ultimate battle for the fans.” So, I got that goin’ for me.
Demon sauce is a bold mustard sauce with heat and tang — and best of all, it’s bright purple.
The full KPop Demon Hunters menu should be available at participating McDonald’s locations now, and while I nudged McDonald’s reps for an exact ending date, it’s just “while supplies last.”
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Hunter sauce is a sweet chili sauce mixing notes of chili, garlic and pepper.
My final take: KPop Demon Hunters fans will get a kick out of the meals, though if they are kids, they may wish for a smaller Happy Meal-style option. Ten McNuggets and fries are a lot, and a spicy Egg McMuffin probably isn’t for everybody. I tried to order a mini version of the Derpy McFlurry, but it was grayed out in my app, and the regular one was enormous.
If you do want to try the meals, I highly recommend the fries with the Ramyeon seasoning, the Hunter sauce and the Derpy McFlurry with its satisfying popping boba (share it with a friend if you have a small appetite or if, like me, you’re slogging through the full KPop Demon Hunter menu). I’d give a pass to the Demon sauce and the Spicy Saja McMuffin.
It’s also a bit of a bummer that the only extras in the meals (besides the colorful themed Happy Meal-style boxes) were glittery holographic photo cards and a code for online content that’s still a month away. No collectible figurines or even patterned socks a la the Grinch? That hit a bit of a sour note in this musical munch-fest.
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