In the season premiere of the third season of Rick and Morty, Rick Sanchez revealed his diabolical passion for McDonalds' Szechuan Sauce, a dipping sauce for chicken nuggets which was created to promote Disney's MULAN and was only available for a limited time. Somehow, this sparked a craze for the long-discontinued sauce and McDonalds actually brought it back last October. Unfortunately, they vastly underestimated the demand and the end result was bidding wars, riots, and a lot of unhappy Rick and Morty fans.
If you weren't able to get your hands on a packet of Szechuan Sauce, then you'll be happy to know that McDonalds is bringing is back once again, but this time, they'll be ready with 20 million packets available across all U.S. McDonalds starting on February 26th. Here's what McDonalds had to say:
Last October, we truly meant well when we brought back a super-limited batch of Szechuan Sauce, but it quickly became apparent we did not make enough to meet the expectations of our fans. We did not anticipate the overnight crowds, the cross-state travel and the amazing curiosity, passion and energy fans showed. Our super-limited batch, though well-intentioned, clearly wasn’t near enough to meet that demand. We disappointed fans and we are sorry. To fully make amends, we felt it was important to not only bring back much more sauce this time, but to also admit our mistakes, answer questions and give fans access to the story behind the story.
We’ve worked every day since October to bring back much, much, more of the sauce our fans have been craving. And we’re excited to announce that starting Monday, February 26, 20 million packets of Szechuan Sauce will be available across all US McDonald’s restaurants with a qualifying purchase, while supplies last (which this time around, we hope is a while).
In addition to bringing back Szechuan Sauce, McDonalds also produced a three-part lighthearted investigative podcast series titled The Sauce which aims to get to the bottom of the great Szechuan Sauce debacle of 2017. The Sauce director Andrew Harding told The A.V. Club that, "We were surprised how candid McDonald’s was willing to be about what happened on October 7, and how ready they were to let us get to the bottom of all this. [The Sauce] became a look into all the angles. It’s the inside story of how one of the world’s biggest companies responds to what went wrong in the good-intentioned giveaway—from how it all started to how they contained it to how they’re now trying to make it right." All of this because a cartoon mentioned a twenty-year-old sauce for chicken nuggets. What a world.
Will you be grabbing your own packet of Szechaun Sauce next week?