Choco Tacos: A Meet-Cute Love Story

Is my true love just trapped in another fork of the multiverse?

Rick McClelland

Apr 02, 2025

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Summer 2022. The rotation of my Earth wobbled on its axis. The end seemed imminent.

I am referring, naturally, to the announcement that the Choco Taco was being discontinued.

For the uninitiated, a Choco Taco is a divine fusion of crisp wafer and velvety chocolate ice cream. Nestled within this cocoa-kissed embrace are roasted peanuts, crowned by a drizzle of caramel. A serenade to the senses, a Choco Taco is not just a confection but a celestial experience that lingers as a sweet and joyous memory.

I could write ten thousand words about these tacos but it is more illustrative to just show a picture:

Note the unbridled joy on my face as I consumed my final Choco Taco a few weeks after the announcement. It was a blistering beach day with friends in July. A random ice cream vendor came wandering down the sand and somehow still had them in stock. He was blissfully unaware that they could be sold online for $100 a piece. I bought one, a final goodbye to a beloved childhood treat. A more fitting funeral for a mass produced confectionary can hardly be imagined.

Except OOOPS, JK JK, RICK'S BEEN PUUUUNKED!!!

Because now, nothing's ever really gone. In this age of remakes, reboots, spin-offs and sequels, it's only logical that the Choco Taco is returning. It's the Dalai Lama of desserts, reborn for another spin around the Wheel of Life. And why not? In modern America, NOTHING is ever final anymore.

Mean Girls, Ghostbusters, Road House, Star Trek and Wars, Harry Potter, E.T., Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Avatar, Aladdin, Toy Story, Lion King, Mulan, The Little Mermaid, Cruella (okay, just all of Disney), and superhero movies ad infinitum. There is no franchise spared, no intellectual property left un-optioned. Quality notwithstanding.

Even Twister, the corny 90's disaster film, came back last summer. Totally unnecessary. The original Twister sits upon an indisputable throne of nostalgia. The trailers played constantly on TV, terrorizing six-year-old Rick into believing a tornado would murder me at any moment. This despite living in the rural mountains of Pennsyltuckey.

Once, an awful rainstorm struck a campground my family was staying at. I screamed bloody murder at my father, blaming him for putting us where a tornado could so easily end our lives, begging for him to save me. Finally, he loaded me into his Ford F-150 and we drove directly through the storm for an hour. Which was somehow more comforting to my young self than just sitting in the camper.

Another core family memory cheapened by a half-assed remake.

Now, the idyllic moment of consuming my final Choco Taco is disrupted. Thrown into chaos by the Return of the Choco. Alternative working titles: Choco's Revenge, The Choco Taco Strikes Back, Choco Taco: Into Darkness, Choco 2: Chocolate Boogaloo, 2 Choco 2 Taco, Choco Forever After, and The Dark Choco.

I was at peace and happy with my final tasting. Hell, later that week I even had a dream where I got MARRIED because of the Choco Taco. Could this be the answer to my love life woes? The dream was light on specifics (my new wife was pretty) but it was very clear that my romantic fulfillment was due to the Choco Taco. Maybe this contented version of me actually exists in an alternate reality universe.

It can’t in this one though because finality is dead.

We're all doomed to relive our memories as corporations cynically repackage our nostalgia and serve it up to us like we're bloated diners in a Golden Corral. What am I supposed to do with the knowledge the Taco is returning? Go to a Taco Bell every week this thing is in stock and buy one or two or three, eating them in some dumpy fast food store with poor lighting and irritated staff members who just want me to go home so they can clean up and close the seating area? But I can't leave because now I'm sobbing and rolling around on the floor, desperate for a human connection to anything, even if it's just the childhood memories of a simpler time, and the only thing that can provide it is the chocolate nectar pouring forth from a taco-shaped waffle cone. And then, through my watery, tear-consumed vision, in walks the most beautiful woman in the world. She, too, has come for the nostalgic vibes. And the kitchen staff gets pissed because the dining room is supposed to be closed already, but we lock eyes and time stops as our meet cute bends the very fabric of existence, turning dream to reality. We then share a Choco Taco, eating it from opposing sides, meeting in the middle for the fabled first kiss on the way to our indomitable, multiverse-spanning love story.

Woah. That actually sounds pretty awesome. I bet we could get at least a trilogy out of that.