Observations: McDonald's "The Straw"

In case you didn't get your hands on McDonald's "The Straw" yesterday, they were nice enough to send me one of the multi-holed, hooked straws and I tried it out.

I went and got a small Chocolate Shamrock to see how it would go.

First off, with the shape of the straw you either have to give it a little squeeze to get it through the hole in the lid or remove the lid completely. With a small cup, the end of The Straw curves up to about half of the cup when pushed all the way into the cup but the capsule-like hole at the curve of the straw ensures that you can suck up most of the shake in the cup in the same way as a regular straw.

You might be wondering about the weird hook design of the straw. Well, it you were to just take a straight straw and poked holes in its sides near the vacuuming end, most of your suction would be used up at the highest holes and you'd have problems getting much shake from the very tip (especially once the uppermost holes are no longer submerged). It seems like the "hook" of The Straw solves that problem by allowing a vacuum "tunnel" to occur along its inner edge (which does not contain any holes).

So does The Straw let you get an even mixture of mint and chocolate shakes? You have to position it to makes sure to get both layers but yeah, it does a pretty good job, although both flavors seem a bit muted than if you got one or the other. Note that The Straw is narrower than McDonald's regular straw and requires noticeably more effort to drink through. Though, if you find McDonald's shakes on the thin side, it may be a positive quality for you.

Basically, The Straw is a mostly unavailable joke item that McDonald's came up to drive some buzz to the launch of Chocolate Shamrock Shakes this year, but it's a joke item that actually works.