They brought back the Szechuan sauce, but it wasn’t enough.
Rick and Morty, created by Community’s Dan Harmon, is currently the Number 1 television comedy among millennials. It’s risen in popularity since it premiered on Adult Swim in 2013, and this weekend inspired McDonald’s to launch a one-day fan event that became way bigger than the burger chain had ever anticipated.
In Season 3’s premiere, “The Rickshank Rickdemption,” which aired April 1, 2017, mad scientist and terrible grandfather Rick Sanchez (voiced by co-creator Justin Roiland) is being interrogated by an alien Galactic Federation to find out the secret of his portal gun, which allows him and his grandson Morty (also voiced by Roiland) to traverse through parallel universes. But what’s important here is that Rick figures out that the aliens have broken into his own mind and memories to interrogate him, and drives them to McDonald’s where, in 1998, the chain released limited-edition “Szechuan” McNugget sauce to advertise Disney’s Mulan, and afterwards discontinued it.
The Szechuan sauce joke blew up so much that McDonald’s actually sent some bottles of it to Roiland, which he shared with the rest of the Rick and Morty staff. And then McDonald’s flew too close to the sun.
Last week, the golden arches announced that for one day only they would have Szechuan sauce in all of their locations for Rick and Morty fans who’d been craving the taste ever since the season premiere reminded them of what had been lost to time. But, as it turns out, McDonald’s severely underestimated how many fans would line up in droves for just one taste of Sriracha- and ginger-infused nostalgia, only sending 20 packets of the sauce to every store, causing the majority of hopefuls to go home merely ketchup-handed.
McDonald’s issued an apology Saturday afternoon after it was clear the event had gone horribly awry.
The #szechuansauce tag was inundated with disappointed fans calling for a boycott, suggesting everyone go to Wendy’s instead, posting links to eBay pages where the sauce was already selling for thousands of dollars, or suggesting that maybe Rick’s hapless son-in-law Jerry engineered the whole thing.