Little Caesars’ Batman Calzony is part pizza and part calzone, but is it worth your time to taste vengeance?
The Dark Knight is no stranger to fast food promotional tie-ins. Going all the way back to 1989, Tim Burton’s Batman film was represented at Taco Bell through a series of super awesome plastic cups, along with some not really Batmany but no doubt tasty cinnamon twists. Batman Returns controversially shifted to McDonald’s, with some equally-cool plastic cups (with frisbee lids!) and a line of Happy Meal toys meant to promote the film that contained a load of innuendo and a penguin man who spewed black goo and bit peoples’ noses. Batman & Robin returned the tie-ins to Taco Bell with– you guessed it– some cool cups, as well as a chance to maybe win the Batmobile but probably not.
The crown jewel of all Batman fast food tie-ins came in 1995, though, when McDonald’s once again represented the brand and offered a series of incredible Batman Forever glass mugs for the low, low price of $.99. These are so great that I bought a complete set for myself just a few years ago for the decidedly not low, low price of like twenty-five bucks or something. Whatever. They rule.
And now, in the Year of our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty Two, Matt Reeves’ The Batman enters the licensing fray with perhaps the tastiest tie-in of all: the Little Caesars Batman Calzony. As a culinary concoction that is no doubt meant to appeal to the Ben Wyatt in all of us, it is both a pizza and a calzone, all in one bat-shaped dish.
For you, dear readers, I tried this masterpiece of marinara, cheese, and so much pepperoni, and am here to report my findings.
In short: it is quite delicious.
Granted, Little Caesars is more about affordability than anything, with “hot and ready” pizzas available for just around five dollars. Still, as the old adage goes, “even bad pizza is still pretty good,” and Little Caesars isn’t bad at all, particularly for the price. The Little Caesars’ Batman Calzony rings up at $7.99, which still isn’t close to outrageous, especially considering one aspect of the dish is actually really, really good.
Little Caesars’ Batman Calzony: The Box
But first let’s look at the box:
Very cool. Nice, big The Batman logo, and a neat Gotham City skyline graphic, complete with Batsignal shining in the sky and a QR code that takes you to a site where you can enter to win a trip to the film’s premiere.
But let’s take an even closer look at the box:
Haha. Nice.
I ordered both the pepperoni and cheese Little Caesars’ Batman Calzony, but only tried the pepperoni, because I have my preferences. Looking at them, they’re definitely pizzas with calzones attached:
Greasy, kind of sloppy, lots of pepperoni, shaped like a bat. Looks like pizza to me.
The pizza part of the Batman Calzony was pretty decent, with eight slices that had flavorful pepperoni in every bite, and a good cheese to sauce ratio. I like thin crust more than deep dish, so I liked how there wasn’t too much dough, but a few pieces in the middle were a little soggy from absorbing more grease than those at the outer edge of the pizza.
It’s the calzone that really sells this, though, and makes me want to order it again. The four tear-away pieces at the top and bottom of the pizza were nicely cooked with plenty of pepperoni chunks, rather than round slices, and a deliciously garlicky cream sauce that bursts with flavor. Frankly, if the entire dish was just a bunch of these little calzone pieces, I would have been perfectly fine with that.
Each pizza came with a cup of marinara for dipping, but I didn’t use that, though Batman News’ own Matina (who also created the delightful header image for this post) ordered a Batman Calzony of her own and said it tasted great with ranch.
So, if you want an inexpensive, filling meal, you could do worse than the Little Caesars’ Batman Calzony. We don’t know how The Batman is going to shape up as a movie, but as the inspiration for a slice of pizza, it’s pretty good.
It’s just too bad we couldn’t get some cool plastic cups with it too.
