Taco Bell’s Mexican Pizza keeps dying and coming back and I have questions

I don’t know if you remember where you were when Taco Bell killed the Mexican Pizza the first time, but I do. It was 2020. A pandemic was happening. And somehow, Taco Bell looked at that moment and said, you know what else would be fun? Discontinuing the Mexican Pizza.

The internet lost its entire mind. Demi Lovato made a TikTok about it. There was a Change.org petition. People were signing petitions for a fast food item while the world was on fire, and honestly, I get it.

So Taco Bell brought it back. Then they sort of took it away again — briefly — because they couldn’t keep up with demand. Then it came back for real. And now it’s supposedly permanent. But here’s the thing. After everything this pizza has been through, does anybody actually believe that?

What even is the Mexican Pizza, for the uninitiated?

The Mexican Pizza is two fried flour tortilla shells stacked with seasoned beef, refried beans, pizza sauce, cheese, tomatoes, and green onions. It sounds like something you’d invent at 2am with whatever’s left in your kitchen — and that is exactly why it works.

It’s been on the Taco Bell menu since 1985. Nearly four decades of that little fried pizza disk just vibing in the background while other menu items came and went. The Enchirito. The Crunchwrap Supreme. The ill-fated Waffle Taco. The Mexican Pizza just kept going.

Until it didn’t.

Why did Taco Bell cancel it the first time?

Taco Bell’s official reason for the 2020 discontinuation was environmental — the packaging was generating too much waste. And honestly? Fair. The little box it came in was not doing the planet any favors.

But the timing was rough. Pulling a 35-year menu staple in the middle of a pandemic, when people were desperately clinging to comfort food and anything that felt normal, felt like a betrayal on a very specific emotional level. Like finding out your favorite diner closed while you were already having the worst week.

According to reporting from The New York Times, the backlash was significant enough that Taco Bell actively tracked the cultural conversation around it before deciding to bring it back. They weren’t just being nice. They were watching the data.

Was Demi Lovato really involved in this?

Yes. Demi Lovato — who had publicly discussed being vegetarian and then vegan and then vegetarian again — made a very earnest TikTok mourning the Mexican Pizza. They partnered with Taco Bell on the official comeback campaign in 2022. There was a Broadway-style musical number. A literal musical. For a fast food item.

And you know what? I’m not even making fun of it. I respect the commitment. If Taco Bell is going to bring back my favorite thing, they can absolutely get a Broadway number out of it. That’s the deal.

The collab was a little unnecessary and also kind of perfect, which is exactly where the best things in life live.

Okay but then it went away AGAIN?

Here’s where it gets genuinely chaotic. Taco Bell brought the Mexican Pizza back in May 2022 to massive fanfare. It sold out across thousands of locations within weeks. Like, people were driving to multiple Taco Bells trying to get one.

So Taco Bell pulled it again. Not because they wanted to — but because they literally couldn’t make enough of them fast enough to meet demand. They put it on pause until September 2022, brought it back, and then in early 2023 announced it was joining the permanent menu.

Permanent. That word is doing a lot of heavy lifting right now.

Should we actually trust “permanent” this time?

This is the real question, isn’t it. Taco Bell has a long and storied history of “permanent” items disappearing without warning. In my lifetime — and I’ve been paying attention — I have watched the Enchirito, the Double Decker Taco, and roughly 47 other things get quietly removed from a menu that swore they were staying.

Now, to be fair — and I’ll steel-man Taco Bell here for a second — the Mexican Pizza situation is genuinely different from most menu removals. The cultural moment around it was massive. The petition had hundreds of thousands of signatures. Celebrities got involved. Taco Bell built an entire marketing campaign around the comeback. That’s not nothing. That’s a company understanding that this particular item has a fanbase that will notice if it disappears again.

But I’ve been burned before. And so have you. So we watch. We order it regularly to keep the demand numbers healthy. We do our part.

Why does this keep happening with Taco Bell specifically?

Taco Bell has always been weirdly aggressive about rotating its menu. They have this strategy of creating scarcity and urgency around limited items — which works, obviously, it absolutely works — but it means the menu is in constant flux in a way that most other fast food chains aren’t.

McDonald’s has been quietly making the same Filet-O-Fish since 1965 and nobody is starting petitions about it. There’s something about Taco Bell’s menu specifically that makes people feel ownership over it. Like these are our items and you can’t just take them.

Which, honestly, is great brand loyalty work even if it’s accidental.

Is the Mexican Pizza actually good though?

Yes. I will die on this hill. Is it objectively fine dining? No. Is it a crispy, saucy, cheesy little situation that scratches an itch nothing else quite scratches? Absolutely yes.

The texture is the thing. Two fried tortilla shells means you get crunch from all angles, not just the edges. The combination of beef and refried beans is more interesting than either alone. The pizza sauce is doing something slightly unhinged and I mean that as a compliment.

Could you make something better at home? Sure. Are you going to? At midnight? For four dollars? No. You are not.

What does this whole saga actually tell us about fast food culture?

The Mexican Pizza drama is a perfect little case study in how much people project onto fast food. It’s not just a menu item — it’s nostalgia, it’s comfort, it’s the thing you got after soccer practice, it’s the thing you ate in the parking lot at 11pm when everything felt possible.

When Taco Bell took it away, they didn’t just remove a menu item. They took away something that felt like theirs to people who had been eating it for thirty years. That’s a different kind of loss than you’d think it should be for a four-dollar fast food thing.

And the fact that they brought it back — and that the comeback genuinely mattered to people — says something kind of sweet about how we attach meaning to the most ordinary things. But what do I know? I’m just someone who signed the petition.

The Mexican Pizza is back. It’s supposedly permanent. I’m cautiously optimistic in the way you’re cautiously optimistic about anything that has broken your heart before.

What I do know is this: Taco Bell created one of the most unintentionally compelling brand stories in recent fast food history entirely by accident, by trying to get rid of a 35-year-old menu item and discovering that people were not going to let that happen quietly.

Order the Mexican Pizza. Keep the numbers up. Don’t let them forget what happened last time.

📌 Pin this post