Classic American Fast food has never been in my must-have list of food items. I went a number of years without partaking in the time-honored tradition of the drive-thru or free refills and didn’t feel that I was particularly missing anything other than extremely high sodium intake.

Then you have kids and kids love McDonald’s.

Why the childhood taste pallette craves what I can only assume is legally food is beyond me. I suspect it has to do with that vegetable oil blend that I’m told makes their fried food compounds a taste flavor explosion and the subliminal messaging. The lengthy menu, it’s healthy items scattered about like green weeds across an open pavement, their apple slices in a happy meal a plastic bagged second thought, all leading to the one and only thing all three of my kids can agree on: the McDonald’s Chicken McNugget.

Inside it’s fried golden exterior is a mystery I dare not think to much about. During the pandemic, they’ve become this elusive prize for the kids some reason (we all miss something) and on the occasional errand run we inevitably give into the temptation of those delicious little morsels.

For the holidays, Monica and I decided to gift them the forever McDonald’s Chicken McNugget, coated in epoxy resin with a custom little box. Our plan was pretty simple: gets some nuggets, hide a few from the kids and then secretly produce what I can only imagine is just an extension of their shelf life. I’m not convinced they’d decompose.

Now, I was not sure this would work. They are deep fried in oil after all, they contain moisture, and they are food, all of which you generally doesn’t lend itself to easy resin coating. I therefore stashed the three nuggets in the darkroom for two weeks to dry out.

Two weeks turned into four weeks due to pandemic time warping and I soon found myself staring at terrifyingly unchanged nuggets on Christmas Eve. The kids were like bloodhounds.

“Why does it smell like Chicken McNuggets in here?”

“YOU’RE CRAZYYYY GET OUT DAD HAS TO CHRISTMAS ARRRRT.”

My kids clearly through I was more crazy than usual, but as kids do went back to the common pandemic task of ignoring my existence.

I riffled through what I had on hand: some wire, some old two part five minute clear epoxy resin, and a lot of scrap common pine. It was time to get to work.

I rapidly stuck some nuggets on wire to find that they had clearly dried out more than their appearance had led on and mixed up some epoxy and started pouring. The temperature in the garage did not lend itself to an easy resin pour, so I hit them with the heat gun and things were looking way better than I expected.

While things dried, I rough cut a number of pine boards on the bandsaw and created some boxes. I quick tacked with nothing more than a brad nailed and glue a solid box, and using a trick I had picked up from Adam Savage’s early builds on Tested, I cut the box on the bandsaw to give me a clean fit. With my free hand stencil skills showing their subparness, I created my version of a McDonald’s golden arch to apply to the box.

As things dried up, I have to say that spare Grimace-like purple felt really brings it together in a somewhat disturbing way.

In total I spent a little less than a two hours putting these together. The project was ridiculous and rushed, the mixing of resin and oil a smell I do not wish to revisit any time soon. Ah, whom I kidding, I’m totally making a whole box of them. Those smiles alone proved the concept brings laughs and joy, and I would not trade for the world.