Beloved but Elusive, McDonald's McFlurry Is a Fast-Food Icon

The treat-laden frozen dessert is in 99 countries—too bad it's so hard to get one

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Americans have much to thank Canada for inventing. There’s insulin, for example, and the pacemaker. A trio of Canadian filmmakers developed the IMAX format in 1967, and a Nova Scotian inventor named Samuel McKeen gave us the odometer.

Then there’s a pioneer named Ron McClellan, who told Canada’s CTV in 2015: “I never expected that my creation would circle the globe.”

That globe-trotting creation was the McFlurry.

In 1995, McClellan, a McDonald’s franchisee in the New Brunswick town of Bathurst threw some candy into a cup of vanilla soft serve, whipped it up and—voila!—a new dessert was born.

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This story first appeared in the Sept. 20, 2021, issue of Adweek magazine. Click here to subscribe.