Has Taco Bell Jumped the Shark with the Doritos Locos Taco?

By Anthony Todd in Food on Dec 9, 2011 4:00PM

This hasn't been a great year for Taco Bell. First, there was that little lawsuit claiming that the ground beef wasn't quite ground beef. No matter how much damage control they tried, they couldn't make it go away. Sales weren't very high in 2011, and Taco Bell CEO Greg Creed told Nation's Restaurant News that 2011 was a "terrible year." How to fix it? A crazy new product that combines even more kinds of junk food together into one neat little package: The Doritos Locos Taco.

This taco, which replaces the traditional taco shell with a giant nacho cheese Dorito, is supposed to change everything. Creed called it "a breakthrough product designed to reinvent the taco." We're a bit confused about why anyone would want to buy a taco rubbed with artificially-flavored nacho cheese powder, but, frankly, a lot of things about Taco Bell confuse us. For instance, their other "breakout product" for 2012? Their new line of breakfasts.

Huffington Post points out that Taco Bell promised a 33 percent sodium reduction in all of their products by the end of 2011 — the average taco at the chain has about 1/4 of your RDA of sodium. How will this affect that? Well, Doritos (and their strange powdery coating) are pretty darn salty. Guess we'll have to buy another soda to wash it down.

Frankly, we're more concerned about the mechanics. Our dominant memory of Nacho Cheese Doritos is trying to get the orange gunk off of our hands - and wrapping our paws around a taco coating this stuff would be asking for a stain-filled clothing nightmare.

The product debuted in the California market earlier this year. Here's the California advertisement.