No, smartypants, we don’t mean the kind of mystery food item where you look at it and still can’t tell what it is (Spam, for example). We mean they want you to pay $2.99 upfront for a new product they won’t even tell you the name of, let alone get any kind of look at.

Here’s how it works: you send them money now, wait for an email to tell you your order has been received, then pick it up at your local Taco Bell on February 6th, two days before whatever-it-is is unveiled and marketed to the public.

So what might it be? Gone are the days when you could go by the old Onion joke “Taco Bell’s Five Ingredients Combined In Totally New Way,” because nowadays Taco Bell is just as likely to throw in a new unrelated product like Doritos, Starburst and/or Crunch Berries. Hand-in-hand with the whole mystery angle comes a series of commercials in which the item is replaced by a green brick, so even the celebrity endorsers don’t know what they have. We can guess, based on the price and apparent size, that’ll it’ll probably have the mass of a burrito, but the fact that the commercial narrators keep telling the pitchmen they’re holding it upside-down might indicate an open-topped item like nachos or a salad.

So will they find a way to throw Mountain Dew-flavored salad dressing in there? Monster Energy-infused blue-cheese crumbles? A new Chalupa shell made out of KitKats?

Actually, given that one of their new pitchmen is History Channel’s Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, I fear it’s worse than that. In fact, I’m terrified their new secret ingredient will be…

Maybe they taste just like shrimp, though. Come to think of it, I’d heavily bet this is a seafood item of some kind, since Lent begins two days after launch, and the fast food chains always lean heavily on fish products from then until Easter.

Can we get Taco Bell’s sibling chain Long John Silver in on this deal, with its deep-fried fish crumbs? Your guess is as good as mine, for now.

So let’s have it. What would you want Taco Bell to add to their menu…and do you trust them enough to pay $2.99 for a sight-unseen, ingredient-unknown menu item?

I’m still trying to decide whether to do this or not, and your voice may sway me. So speak out in comments below!

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Images: Aliens meme via History Channel and memegenerator; Tsoukolas commercial via YouTube/Taco Bell