Oct. 7, 2017 was the day I lost faith in McDonalds. This day is a day that will live in infamy. It was the day McDonald’s made a promise, that fell short and ruined the lives of many. What happened you ask? McDonald’s didn’t give us the Mulan Szechuan Chicken McNugget Sauce we were promised. And now the world is angry.
A little backstory. On April 1, season 3 episode one of Rick and Morty secretly premiered as a form of April fools joke. I’m about to drop a spoiler for anyone who hasn’t happened to see this episode yet.
It is revealed in this episode that Rick’s goal in life, and the reason for his adventures are so he can acquire the 1998 McNugget sauce promoting the release of the Disney movie Mulan. This sauce was dubbed the Mulan Szechuan McNugget Sauce. It was only available for a limited time way back in 1998. Naturally, when the main protagonist of an extremely popular TV show mentioned wanting to have it, the internet exploded.
Immediately after the release of the episode petitions started popping up begging McDonald’s to return the sauce to stores. Everywhere you went on twitter there was meme after meme, post after post, about the Szechuan Sauce. A few months later, McDonald’s sent a half gallon of the sauce to Justin Roiland, co-creator of Rick and Morty. His response, “holy shit.” Soon after, McDonald’s released 3 half gallons of Szechuan sauce to be given out to random fans of the show. One fan that acquired a half gallon put the sauce up on eBay. The price for it quickly entered the thousands.
It took some time, but McDonald’s had announced that they were in fact bringing back the Szechuan Sauce for a limited time in limited amounts. The date was set, Oct. 7, the sauce was coming back. McDonald’s was cryptic about exactly how the sauce was going to be reintroduced. Was it going to be given to every restaurant? How much sauce will be given out? Those who payed attention to the McDonald’s Twitter feed discovered that it would be given to many restaurants scattered around the United States. It was stated the sale of the sauce will begin exactly at two o’clock and in extremely limited amounts.
The day had arrived. I got in my car and drove to the nearest McDonalds to me that had the Szechuan Sauce. I decided to purchase the new buttermilk tenders to accompany my sauce, but I was soon outraged when I was told by the employee, “We don’t have that anymore.” The time was 2:20 p.m., the sauce had sold out within 20 minutes of its being released.
I turned to Twitter to discover the restaurants on the list of sauce recipients only received 20 packets of the sauce. Some didn’t receive any sauce at all. Myself and many other Rick and Morty fans were tricked into purchasing McDonalds on that day, attempting to acquire the poorly distributed sauce.
Across America riots formed outside of McDonald’s restaurants over America all for the famed Szechuan McNugget Dipping Sauce. At around 6 p.m. on the day of the sauce catastrophe co-creator of Rick and Morty had this to say on twitter,
“FYI: We had nothing to do with this McDonald’s stuff. Not happy with how this was handled. Please be cool to the employees it’s not their fault.”
McDonald’s severely underestimated the pure mania that would ensue upon the return of the Szechuan Sauce. McDonalds released a formal apology to all those affected by the great sauce shortage of 2017, they promised that sometime in the future they will bring back the Szechuan Sauce in massive amounts to satisfy the needs of many.
The massive amounts of Rick and Morty fans that flooded into McDonald’s restaurants on Oct. 7 taught them to never underestimate the following of a large TV show again. I hope they do in the future release the sauce for more time without attempting to link it to a promotion of a new batter on their chicken tenders and in larger amounts. It’s funny how all this mania started over a sauce that co-creator of Rick and Morty, Dan Harmon calls, “A sauce that was trying to prove it was different and in doing so it worked harder than a sauce should; it was working too hard to be a sauce…”