Cartoon fans disappointed by reissue of McDonald’s sauce
MCDONALD’S was skewered on social media by frustrated customers who had hoped to score some of its limited edition Szechuan sauce but were instead turned away and left empty-handed.
The fast-food behemoth behind the McRib, the Shamrock Shake and other cult favourites promised to bring back the same Szechuan sauce that debuted when the Disney film Mulan was released in 1998. It was only to be available on Saturday, and only in select stores.
But the lines were long. The sauce was scarce. It was a recipe for disappointment.
The television show Rick and Morty has created a new generation of Szechuan sauce fans, some of whom signed a petition demanding that McDonald’s bring it back. The animated sci-fi series, which has pulled in big ratings to become Adult Swim’s top comedy, featured the sauce this year in Season 3.
“I’m not driven by avenging my dead family, Morty. That was fake,” said Rick, the show’s sociopathic scientist, in an unhinged monologue directed at his dimwitted grandson. “I’m driven by finding that McNugget sauce. I want that Mulan McNugget sauce, Morty. That’s my series arc, Morty. If it takes nine seasons.”
Jonathan Primus, 22, had tried to get it in Tallahassee, Florida, and said he was “really upset” when he learned the McDonald’s there had run out.
Primus, a fan of the show, had been visiting friends in Texas and drove back with a friend to Florida on Saturday, calculating a route that would place them in Tallahassee at precisely 2pm, the time that McDonald’s announced it would start giving the sauce away.
They arrived at 2pm, but it was too late: The restaurant had already run out.
“I kind of did a little bit of a yell of sorts,” he said. “It was a disappointing drive home.”
Primus had plenty of company. Al- though some fans were lucky – and in some cases tried to sell the sauce on eBay – McDonald’s had underestimated just how popular it would be.
Employees were inundated with requests.
At a McDonald’s in Los Angeles, a crowd chanted, “Szechuan sauce! Szechuan sauce!” as employees tried to maintain order.
Dominick Tao, 31, a graduate student in New York, visited three McDonald’s restaurants on Saturday afternoon. At one of them, he spoke with people in line who told him they had been there since 8am.
For Tao, who is also a Rick and Morty fan, the sauce was steeped in nostalgia. He remembered eating it at McDonald’s with his family when it was first released.
He was hooked.
“It increased my McDonald’s consumption probably twofold,” he said. “I would beg my mom to take me back to McDonald’s.”
Tasting the sauce again would have been “fulfilling a childhood dream”, he said. Even so, he wasn’t willing to wait hours in line. He struck out at two other locations before eventually giving up.
As of Sunday evening, the McDonald’s Twitter account was still featuring a photo of the limited-edition sauce. The company apologised for the shortage in a pinned tweet: “The best fans in the multiverse showed us what they got today. We hear you & we’re sorry not everyone could get some super-limited Szechuan.”
A promotional website for the sauce, which was meant to lift sales of its new Buttermilk Crispy Tenders, invited fans to “get obsauced” – with the caveat that the Szechuan sauce could only be found in select locations. “When we say limited, we mean really, really limited!” the website said.
“It was just kind of a mess,” Primus said. “But I’m hoping that McDonald’s hears the fans and we get our sauce.”
Until then, making it from scratch might be the best option.