KFC Includes Pickle Pepsi on New Pickle Mania Menu

We love pickles, and we’re not the only ones. It seems like the whole world is locked in a delicious dance with these little lip-puckering transformed cucumbers, and that shows no signs of abating any time soon. As a result, we continue to see food and non-food companies alike jumping on the pickle train, and in the last couple of months, we’ve brought you news of everything from dill pickle-flavored cheese to pickle lip balm. It’s been a weird time.

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Now, KFC is getting involved. The chain just announced that it’s launching a limited-time Pickle Mania menu, which will feature, of all things, Pickle Pepsi Max. We’re not quite sure how we feel about this one, but look, it’s happening. Only in the UK, though.

KFC’s New Pickle Mania Menu Has One Standout Star

This new suite of menu items is a UK exclusive (lucky for me, I guess, if you count suddenly having access to a pickle-flavored drink as luck), and it’ll be dropping today, March 23. The pickly goods will be available until April 19, at which point KFC will presumably assess whether to take these new menu items to the rest of the world, or banish them to the depths from whence they came.

The most eye-catching menu item here is, of course, the Pickle Pepsi Max it’s brewed up, which actually isn’t pickle-flavored. Instead, you get a regular Pepsi Max with a side of pickle juice, and it’s your job to mix the two. This feels kinda like a cop-out on KFC’s part, but there we are. Will it taste good? We’re not sure. Do I want to try it? Yes, I sort of do. It may also be very good for a hangover.

The Rest of the…Best?

Elsewhere, KFC is bringing UK customers a Pickle Burger, Pickle Loaded Fries, and “Frickles.” The Pickle Burger is essentially a standard chicken sandwich amped up with a bunch of different pickle-flavored adornments, including pickle ranch and pickled chips. The Pickle Loaded Fries, meanwhile, are coated in dill seasoning, topped with pickle chips, and finished off with a drizzle of pickle ranch sauce. And those Frickles? They’re fried pickles.

As the Pickle Mania menu drops today, it’s a little early to get a broad consensus on whether any of this is actually any good. It’s fair to say that in the UK, we don’t have the same enthusiasm for pickles embedded in our national psyche (although don’t underestimate the power of a pickled onion), so this could be a dud – or it could be the change we all need.