Mickey D's got itself into a bit of a pickle after making a bad bet on some chicken wings this quarter.

The fast food behemoth introduced the Mighty Wing — a bone-in chicken wing priced at $4.99 for five pieces — in September. Now they're stuck with 10 million pounds of chicken, nearly 20 percent of their initial order, in frozen storage.

The wings sold well during a trial run in Atlanta, but failed to translate into national sales.

Experts cautioned that the high price point, coupled with the difficulty of eating the wings as compared with chicken nuggets, could discourage customers. But as it turns out, McDonalds had to charge so much because their massive chicken order actually drove up the price of the wings.

"They underestimated their own impact on wings' costs," Wedbush Securities analyst Nick Setyan told USA Today. "Now they have got all this extra supply they don't know what to do with and they are going to try to force it down franchisees' throats again."

McDonalds CEO Don Thompson admitted they made a mistake on the wings, telling investors that the wings were probably too spicy for customers and the $1 per wing price was “not the most competitive.

The company — which advised its employees to sign up for food stamps last month — will probably reintroduce a milder, cheaper version of the wing to offload the surplus.

[image via AP]