Pizza Hut's New Menu Makes Us Cringe

Pizza Hut has officially jumped on the customized ordering trend. Yesterday the pizza chain announced a complete overhaul of its menu which, like McDonald's and Taco Bell before it, will follow the build-it-yourself Chipotle model and offer customers the choice to customize their pizzas. According to a press release, the choices are nearly limitless, with "more than two billion" ways to customize a pizza. Customers can choose from new toppings like Peruvian cherry peppers, crust flavors like Salted Pretzel and sauces like Honey Sriracha.

It's like the wild west of pizza-making (or at least it will be until the wacky choices eventually lose their wow-factor as they're seen over and over again at the thousands of Pizza Huts across the nation). What ever happened to grabbing fast food because you're in a rush and don't have time to make unnecessary decisions, or because you're lazy and simply don't want to?

Luckily, for the time-pressed or lazy, chains like Pizza Hut are still offering set menu items, so you're not forced to choose every last ingredient, down to the "drizzle." (Will it be balsamic, barbecue or buffalo?) Pizza Hut's updated set menu offers 11 new “Explore Flavor” recipes. Unfortunately, some of the names are so cringe-worthy we may prefer designing our own pizzas, for no other reason than to save ourselves the embarrassment of uttering the names out loud. The pizzas might be good -- and we have no doubt we'll find ourselves happily eating some honey sriracha drizzled pizza one of these days -- but the names are enough to have us running for the hills.

Here are six of Pizza Hut's new pizzas with the most offensive names.

• Cock-A-Doodle Bacon™
  Pizza Hut
  What it is: Creamy garlic Parmesan sauce topped with grilled chicken, hardwood smoked bacon and diced Roma tomatoes – flavored up with toasted Parmesan on the crust edge. 
  
  Why we hate it:We're supposed to wake up and want bacon on our pizza -- that's what this pizza is telling us, right? This makes us want to stay in bed and hide from the world.
• Giddy-Up BBQ Chicken™
  Pizza Hut
  What it is: Barbeque sauce topped with grilled chicken, hardwood smoked bacon and fresh red onions – flavored up with toasted cheddar on the crust edge and a barbeque sauce drizzle. 
  
  Why we hate it: Can you imagine saying "giddy-up" when you call to order your pizza? We rest our case.
• Buffalo State of Mind™
  Pizza Hut
  What it is: Buffalo sauce topped with grilled chicken, sliced banana peppers and fresh red onions – flavored up with toasted cheddar on the crust edge and a Buffalo sauce drizzle. 
  
  Why we hate it: The pizza sounds pretty delicious, but the name is just painfully cheesy. It rings in our ears.
• Pretzel Piggy™
  Pizza Hut
  What it is: Creamy garlic Parmesan sauce topped with hardwood smoked bacon, fresh mushrooms and fresh spinach – flavored up with a salted pretzel crust edge and balsamic sauce drizzle. 
  
  Why we hate it: Piggy? Make it stop!
• Hot and Twisted™
  Pizza Hut
  What it is: Premium crushed tomato sauce topped with premium salami, sliced jalapeño peppers and fresh red onions – flavored up with a salted pretzel crust edge. 
  
  Why we hate it: This name just makes us feel ill. And uncomfortable, and guilty too. Did we do something wrong by wanting to order this pizza? It sure sounds like it.
• Skinny Beach™
  Pizza Hut
  What it is: Premium crushed tomato sauce with grilled chicken, fresh red onions, Peruvian cherry peppers and fresh spinach. 
  
  Why we hate it: This name leaves us with very little words and almost too much frustration to think straight. First of all, it makes no sense (but then again, neither do any of the names.) It it a play on the term "skinny bitch," the title of a diet book, a cocktail, and most upsettingly, a derogatory term for a woman? Or is it referring to the actual beach somehow? (The ingredients certainly give no indication.) Are we forced now to consider our "beach bodies" when ordering a pizza? It's all wrong, whatever the intention. Quite simply, it's just bad taste.

Unfortunately the cringe-worthy names don't stop at the full pizzas. New crust flavors include "Ginger Boom Boom" and "Get Curried Away." Make it stop! The names are like bad dad jokes gone terribly wrong. Let's hope the new pizzas make up for in the flavor department what they're lacking in the name-department. We're looking forward to trying them -- we'll just let someone else say the order out loud.