The Reason McDonald's Chicken Selects Were Discontinued Is A Tale As Old As Time

McDonald's has a long history of discontinued items. The popular chain has let all kinds of menu items go throughout the years, ranging anywhere from discontinued McDonald's sandwiches to discontinued McDonald's desserts. Discontinued items have gained a following online of foodie historians and collectors, to the point that McDonald's discontinued sauces have sold for thousands of dollars online.

Even popular menu items at McDonald's aren't immune to getting cut from the menu. The McDonald's Chicken Selects are a perfect example of this. Essentially a higher quality chicken tender version of the already popular McNuggets, McDonald's Chicken Selects first appeared in 2002 and proved to be successful almost immediately. However, the tenders were cut from the menu in 2013. Supposedly declining sales in contrast with the item's higher price tag resulted in McDonald's Chicken Selects becoming yet another item in the McDonald's discontinued catalog.

Unfortunately, McDonald's Chicken Selects are far from the first or last item to get cut from the menu due to lackluster sales. The chain has a history of testing out new products and not all of them make it to permanent menu status; a lot of the reasoning behind this comes down to the chain's bottom line and what drives public interest and therefore makes more money. In the case of McDonald's Chicken Selects, the original might be gone but that didn't stop the chain from finding other ways to keep the concept alive.

The original McDonald's Chicken Selects had a good run for over a decade from 2002 to 2013. Although the item was sadly removed due to lower than desirable sales, McDonald's did resurrect the product in 2015 for about a month due to demand from social media to bring the tenders back.

The demand from customers combined with the previous success of the chicken tenders would eventually be repurposed into McDonald's Buttermilk Crispy Tenders. These tenders were basically the same product but rebranded with a new moniker. The Buttermilk Crispy Tenders were released in 2017 but were eventually discontinued once again in 2020 due to low customer influx as a result of the pandemic lockdown.

Years later, McDonald's decided to once again resurrect the idea of chicken tenders with an entirely new name: McDonald's McCrispy Strips. Released in spring 2025, this current iteration of chicken tenders at McDonald's is the version that is still available; it was released in tandem with a new sauce that was specifically made to be paired with the chicken tenders: Creamy Chili Dip. Since it's been a few years since McDonald's had a chicken tender item available, it definitely helped fill the void somewhat left behind by the initial discontinuation of Chicken Selects. However, the reception has been mixed. Comparisons to the original Chicken Selects have been widely made online, with more than a few customers saying they prefer the old chicken tenders to the new ones.