Taco Bell Double Decker Taco
A crunchy taco wrapped in a soft flour tortilla with a layer of refried beans holding the two together. Taco Bell introduced it in 1995 with Spike Lee commercials starring Shaquille O'Neal and Hakeem Olajuwon, made it permanent in 2006, pulled it in 2019 and has been bringing it back for limited runs ever since.
The Double Decker Taco is a regular hard-shell taco wrapped in a flour tortilla that has been spread with refried beans. Taco Bell introduced it in 1995 as a limited-run promotional item, and the promotion is what people remember: a series of commercials produced by Spike Lee with Shaquille O'Neal and Hakeem Olajuwon, including one with the two centers riding a bicycle built for two through Central Park. The timing was pointed. Olajuwon's Houston Rockets had just swept O'Neal's Orlando Magic in the 1995 NBA Finals.
The taco outlived the promotion. It joined the permanent menu in June 2006, and in 2011 a Cheesy Double Decker briefly added nacho cheese sauce between the tortilla and the shell. Then, on September 12, 2019, Taco Bell dropped it in a menu purge that also took the Cool Ranch and Fiery Doritos Locos Tacos, the Beefy Mini Quesadilla and the XXL Grilled Stuft Burrito.
Fans did not let it go. In a 2022 vote to bring back a discontinued item, the Double Decker took 38 percent and lost to the Enchirito, and the requests kept coming in a company Reddit session. On December 5, 2023, it returned for a limited time at $2.99, or $3.69 for a Supreme with tomatoes and sour cream. "The Double Decker Taco holds a deep space in the hearts of our Taco Bell fans," the chain's chief marketing officer, Taylor Montgomery, said. "The insane amount of love for this product from fans across our social platforms was impossible to ignore." It came back again from October 10 to 30, 2024, and once more on the Decades Y2K Menu that launched on September 9, 2025.
It is homed here in the 1990s for the Shaq-and-Hakeem launch, even though it spent its longest stretch as a standard menu item in the 2000s and 2010s.
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A 7'1" force of nature who refused to stay on the court. Nineties Shaq dunked on the NBA, went platinum as a rapper, starred in a fighting game, and played a genie in Kazaam — the decade's most cheerfully unstoppable multimedia franchise disguised as a center.