TribLive Taste Test: McDonald's Shamrock Shake

TribLive Taste Test team member Patrick Varine tried the Shamrock Shake in sixth grade. And he did not like it.

Would the result be any different more than two decades later? Find out in this week’s TribLive Taste Test!

But before you do, the shake itself has quite an interesting history, with a connection to Pennsylvania.

Prior to the shake’s launch in 1970, Philadelphia Eagles tight end Fred Hill’s 3-year-old daughter was being treated for leukemia, and the Hill family regularly spent the night at the hospital during her treatments. The family saw others in the same predicament, and wondered if there was some way to help them feel more comfortable.

Hill and his teammates raised money, and the Eagles’ then-general manager Jim Murray reached out to Dr. Audrey Evans, head of the pediatric oncology unit at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Evans, McDonald’s officials said, had been advocating for pediatric patients to have a sort of home-away-from-home while their children were being treated at the hospital.

From there, it was a perfect storm of connections: Murray called a local McDonald’s advertising agency to ask what their next promotion was going to be. With St. Patrick’s Day coming, he was told it would be the Shamrock Shake — and it was even going to be green, the Eagles’ color.

With the support of a regional manager as well as McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc, a week-long promotion was launched, and the donations were used to purchase a four-story house near Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which opened in 1974 as the very first Ronald McDonald House.

The charity now has more than 500 sites and programs all across the globe … and that makes it pretty difficult to hate on the ol’ Shamrock Shake.

TribLive Taste Test team member Jonna Miller makes her position clear early on, but what will the retaste lead to?