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How I stopped worrying and learned to love the Jack in the Box regular taco

10:56 PM PST on January 7, 2010

Well the truth is I can never love the regular Jack in the Box tacos. I only have love for the monster taco. And the monster taco is gone. Not the temporarily type of gone. The gone for good gone. And so a long love affair with yours truly and the monster taco has ended. A love affair that began some 25 years ago when I was a young lad whose knowledge of what a taco was reached about as far as the jack in the box monster taco(then called the super taco) would take me. And it took me far. From the picnic blankets at Douglass park in Santa Monica as a young boy to the kitchen table of a beer fueled twenty-something. The monster taco was my homeboy.



Don't get me wrong. This taco is about as authentic as a bag of fritos dipped in chile con carne. The oddly long somewhat stale corn shell, the mystery beef, the slice of American cheese, the picante sauce that would settle in the bottom of the wrapper with lettuce droppings. One was aweseome, two less awesome, three disgusting.

I was at my local Jack in the Box the day after the word came down and asked the girl behind the counter what the reaction was from customers.

"They cuss at me " she said. "One guy...he just started yelling..."

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