Chicken nuggets are great – I think we’ve been through this before – and McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets are a perfect example of this. Just delicious, especially with that BBQ sauce.

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Normally when I’m eating Chicken McNuggets though, I’m too busy scoffing them down to realise that they come in four distinct shapes. Sure, I know that they’re in different sizes and shapes from each other, but I never actually noticed that there were four of these.

It turns out that the four shapes are called the ball, the boot, the bone and the bell. Here’s what they look like:

Yeah, I bet you’re thinking exactly what I thought when I saw that: that this makes a hell of a lot of sense. Of course that’s the boot and that’s the ball.

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According to the McDonald’s website:

Our Chicken McNuggets are shaped uniquely for kids and kids at heart – it makes dipping more fun.

The four shapes we make Chicken McNuggets in was the perfect equilibrium of dipability and fun.

Three would’ve been too few, five would’ve been wacky. We also make them similar in size to ensure consistent cooking times for food safety.

Well, I don’t really know if any of that makes any sense – why the hell would five be wacky? – but it’s nice to know that there’s some method behind the madness there. On the other hand, I’m not really sure if there was any method behind the madness of creating this giant chicken nugget, but I want one anyway.