Rick and Morty Fans Go Crazy for McDonald’s Szechuan Sauce
by Edward Baillargeon
For one day only, McDonald’s decided to bring back their Szechuan sauce on October 7, 2017 for a limited supply at participating locations across the United States. But, before we can examine what happened at several locations of the multi-million dollar fast food chain, allow me to explain the history of this mysterious sauce. Our story begins in June 1998, when McDonald’s released the Szechuan sauce to go with their Chicken McNuggets for a limited time as a cross-promotion with Disney to promote their 1998 animated feature Mulan, the story of a brave daughter who posed as a man and enrolled into the Chinese military to take her father’s place in the fight against the Hun invasion. To coincide with Mulan’s release, McDonald’s created the Szechuan Teriyaki dipping sauce to mimic traditional Chinese Szechuan sauce. But after the promotion was done, the sauce faded into obscurity. It wasn’t until almost 20 years later when the sauce exploded back into popularity on April Fools Day 2017. Talk of the sauce became prominent when Adult Swim’s hit animated series Rick and Morty as a gag in the surprise premiere of Season 3. In the episode, Rick has a dream in which he goes to a McDonald’s within his memory to experience the taste of the Szechuan Sauce for one last time. The episode continued as normal until the gag was brought up again at the end of the episode, when Rick goes mad and yells about how one day, perhaps in 9 seasons or in 97 years, he will finally receive more Szechuan Sauce. The discussion of the episode exploded on social media with many users tweeting at McDonald’s yelling “I WANT MY MULAN MCNUGGET SAUCE MORTY!” causing many fans of the show wanting to try the sauce. But, at the time the episode aired, the sauce was available on eBay for stupidly high prices and most definitely expired. Some people predicted that the sauce would return in 2019 when Disney’s live-action remake of Mulan would be released, but McDonald’s promotional agreement with Disney ended in 2006. On July 29th, Justin Roiland, one of the creators of the show and voice of the title characters, posted on his Twitter that McDonald’s had sent him a four pound bottle of the sauce. On October 1st, McDonald’s confirmed the sauce would return for one day only at select locations. What happened on the day of the return of the sauce was total chaos with them only serving 20 packets of sauce per location which was easy bait for scalpers to sell them on eBay for ridiculous prices like what happened with Nintendo’s Amiibo. Heck, at one location in Los Angeles, a man was stabbed in the middle of a long line during the promotion, the police had to show up at some locations, several protests outside the restaurant with people shouting “WE WANT THE SAUCE!” and even one guy wanted to try to boycott McDonald’s because he couldn’t get a packet of sauce. But the funniest overreaction from a fan was in a YouTube video where a fan that didn’t get the sauce started yelling at the cashier and jumped onto the table shouting “I WANT SZECHUAN SAUCE! WHERE’S MY SZECHUAN SAUCE? I’M PICKLE RICK! WUBBA-LUBBA-DUB-DUB! I’M PICKLE RICK!” and runs out of the restaurant. Because of this, McDonald’s posted on Twitter that they would make sure to supply more sauce if it ever returns in the future.
