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[Dec. 19 Update: The NYCrispy burger has reappeared on McD's menu in Belgium.]

If you were excited to try your first McDonald’s Angus Third Pounder burger earlier this month, imagine what a rush it would have been to bite into a NYCrispy instead. Even cooler, it would mean you’re summering in Madrid or Barcelona.

The NYCrispy burger, promoted in advertising from TBWA/Madrid as coming straight from “the heart of New York” and embodying the Big Apple’s cutting-edge music, culture and art, is a limited-time, summer addition to McDonald’s menu in Spain. The NYCrispy is topped with crispy onions, BBQ sauce and bacon, which don’t strike me as particularly New Yawk in style or flavors. But the funky TV spots try hard to be NYCool in attitude at least.

Spain isn’t the only market giving New York a burger salute. At McDonald’s units in Germany, the New York Beef Classic is a double-patty cheeseburger with mustard sauce. Featured in McDonald’s/Germany’s “Stars of America” promotion, the burger is promoted with a TV spot (below, left, via DDB Needham Heye & Partner) featuring Heidi Klum and her model pals Sara Nuru, Mandy Bork and Marie Nasemann. If your German’s good, or if you just like looking at Heidi, the de rigueur “making of the commercial” feature is here. 

McDonald’s summer menus in other European countries contain some other tasty new ideas. The United Kingdom, for example, is overrun with new items: The Summer BBQ Beef burger (at right) is topped with tangy (their word) BBQ sauce as well as-it’s back!--Batavia lettuce and cheese; the Summer Chicken Supreme’s claim to fame is an “herb-topped focaccia bun” that actually looks inviting. There’s more. The Little Chorizo Melt (below, right) is a mini burger with a chorizo-sausage patty, cheese, shredded lettuce and tomato sauce, and the Oriental Snack Wrap combines a Chicken Select with hoisin sauce, lettuce and sliced cucumber. Yes, nasty. Fried-mozzarella sticks are new for the summer in the UK, too.

In the Czech Republic, McDonald’s is playing “Let’s pretend we’re Greek instead.” The Czechs’ new Olympos burger (at left) is topped with feta cheese, olives and such. Austrians, too, are imagining themselves being somewhere else this summer with the McItaly and Grand Italian burgers, topped with ricotta salata cheese. The Swiss can choose from among three versions of the new Ciabatta Grande burger: Parmigiano, Maestro and Deluxe. The Dutch simply must make do with yet one more new tortilla rollup, the Chili Chicken Wrap.  Being Dutch, they aren’t complaining.

It all makes an Angus Third Pounder seem tame, doesn’t it?