McDonald's let customers create their own burgers - and clearly didn't anticipate what they might dream up.

McDonald's New Zealand has been left with egg on its face after a raft of bad-taste burger suggestions from customers forced it to quickly take down its new design-your-own-burger website.

The company launched its "Make Burger History" site this week, as part of a new promotion where customers can "build your own unique burger" and get free fries and a medium soft drink.

"Just come in to a participating 'Create Your Taste' McDonald's and order your Creation at the self ordering kiosk," McDonald's promised.

But its failure to consider what pranksters might dream up online has left the company red-faced, with the website overrun by racist, homophobic and otherwise offensive suggestions. The page now redirects to the McDonald's homepage.

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The burger concepts ranged from the mild, such as "Bag of Lettuce" (literally just a pile of lettuce leaves) and "The Carbonator" (seven burger buns, no filling), to X-rated, including "Girth" (a stack of seven undressed burger patties) and "Ron's Creamy Surprise" (a pile of mayonnaise, best left unexplained).

But many went totally tasteless, creating burgers with names like "Mosque at Ground-Zero", "Rektal Prolapse" and "Toddler Body Bag", some of which ended up on the website's front page before it was shut down entirely overnight.

A cached version of the page reveals a multitude of offensive suggestions, with racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic names.

McDonald's isn't the first company to encounter a customisation blunder: Nutella last year allowed customers to create their own label - and ended up with ideas like "poop" and "diabetes".