If you have a massive craving for chicken nuggets, great news out of your local fast-food outlets: the nugget price wars have begun. Kind of. After McDonald’s launched its inexplicable deal featuring a box of 50 nuggets for $9.99, Burger King has fired back, offering the more reasonable quantity of ten nuggets for $1.49. It’s all about attracting foot traffic as fast-food outlets try to get American consumers to come back.

The McDonald’s ten-dollar nugget party box works out to 20¢ per nugget, while Burger King’s smaller box costs 15¢. While we joke about “nugget parties,” that really is what McDonald’s has in mind: expect the deal to be heavily promoted before the Super Bowl for parties, maybe as a cheaper substitute for chicken wings. Check ahead at your local franchise before you plan any parties around a nugget box, though: local franchisees have the option to not take part in the promotion. It’s a limited-time deal, but McDonald’s hasn’t yet said when they plan to end it. That will probably be whenever they run out of nuggets.

Burger King ran the same promotion back in October, ending it when nugget supplies ran short. Last time, the deal was twenty nuggets for three bucks, so perhaps their goal this time is to get even more customers through the door. More McDonald’s customers through the door…they hope.

In a statement, the King’s Chief Marketing Officer explained why the promo is back so soon. “When we first offered our guests this value back in October, they went crazy for it. We are bringing it back again in January during a time when people are watching their wallets after all that holiday shopping.”

Burger King Revives 15-Cent Nuggets in Price War With McDonald’s [Bloomberg]

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