Hello everyone. Welcome to Friday. You made it to the end of the week. Congrats. I have a treat for you all: Taco Bell’s 2024 Live Mas Event. What’s that? It’s basically a Taco Bell mini-E3 complete with musical acts, announcements, and all the cringey moments you crave from something like this. Yes, if you guessed that this would be a weird, late-capitalist fever dream, you are correct.

I had no idea this event was happening until someone on Twitter began tweeting about it. I immediately dropped everything and started watching.

The event opened with Taco Bell’s CEO showing up and talking about how great the fast food chain is and how anyone can enjoy its giant tacos and burritos. To illustrate this, he pointed to a tweet that I’m 98% sure is a joke and wasn’t meant to be taken seriously by anyone, especially not the dude running Taco Bell. It called Taco Bell “the last great melting pot of class in this country.”

After that, there was some more fluff, and I’ll be honest with you all: If you tuned into this event for big news about the Baja Blast or what’s next for Taco Bell’s menu, you were probably a bit frustrated by all the fluff stuffed into this Ubisoft circa 2015 conference.

At one point, someone began handing out awards to folks for best menu hack and best Taco Bell wedding. Later on, the whole event stopped for a few minutes to let two dudes play some acoustic music. They sounded fine, but camera shots of the crowd (including a dude’s hat that had “Wet Dreams Surf Club” emblazoned on it) seemed to indicate that the room was very much not into this vibe and just wanted to know what new slop Taco Bell was dropping.

Finally, after nearly 30 minutes of...whatever that all was, the chief marketing officer at Taco Bell, Taylor Montgomery, showed up to deliver some Taco Bell product news to thunderous applause and cheering. The news: Taco Bell wants to and plans on making its popular nacho fries permanent menu items. But they are still trying to “figure out” how. Okay...

After that, he gave us a shadow-drop (it’s just like Hi-Fi Rush at the Xbox Developer Direct!), announcing a new “Cheesy Chicken Crispanda,” a shredded cheese-filled, chicken-stuffed empanada. Folks gasped (not kidding) when he confirmed that this new menu item would be available nationwide next week.

Next up, he revealed Taco Bell is bringing chicken nuggets to the menu. At the sight of these fried bits of chicken, someone in the crowd yelled out “No way!” Montgomery was quick to reply: “Yes way! Whoever said ‘no way,’ YES WAY girl!”

Then, after some airhorns, Montgomery revealed a new “very limited time” item: Baja Blast ice cream. It is planned to launch this summer. I assume at this point at least one person in the audience had fainted from all the Taco Bell news. It was just too much.

And for all you sauce packet sickos, Taco Bell knows you are tired of the boring old packets. So it’s changing them up this year and we got our first look at the new ones. Exciting stuff, folks. I’m vibrating.

But Taco Bell wasn’t done. No. After all that, Montgomery showed an image of a Crunchwrap and said, “Looks like a regular Crunchwrap, right?” Folks, that’s your first clue that the man is about to trick you all. And he did. It turns out, it wasn’t a regular Crunchwrap (GASP!) but in fact it contained a giant Cheez-It.

“Ooohhhhhhh!!” went many folks in the audience. “WAAHhh!” yelled someone else at this revelation.

“I present to you: the Cheez-It Crunchwrap!” More cheering followed. According to Montgomery, this new item will be available at every Taco Bell this summer. The event then ended with a rap break.

Enjoy your weekend folks, and remember to Live Mas!

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