Szechuan Sauce Scandal: McDonald’s Promotion Goes Awry

We are living through tumultuous times – times when the world needs ridiculous stories like the McDonald’s Szechuan Sauce debacle to get us through.

Let me fill you in what happened, and I’ll throw in some data along the way.

Szechuan sauce: A history

Szechuan sauce was on the McDonald’s menu back in 1998, released in tandem with Disney’s Mulan movie.

Fast forward nearly 20 years, and the insanely popular show Rick and Morty hit our screens. It became an almost instant cult hit.

Like any other popular TV show, cartoon hit Rick and Morty carries with it a lot of influence, and in a random turn of events the show started to generate demand for a re-release of the coveted sauce.

Back in April when a new episode came out, a scene featuring a reference to the 1998 sauce saw a big spike in szechuan sauce mentions online. A petition emerged to convince McDonald’s to bring back the sauce, leading to over 38k signatures.

.@McDonalds
you wanna get in on this?
Call me.

— Rick (((and Morty))) (@RickandMorty) April 2, 2017

McDonald’s, smartly, got on the bandwagon.

We have 3 half gallons of #SzechuanSauce stuck in 1998! Retweet, like or respond to bring them to present day before 11:28 p.m. EST

— McDonald's (@McDonalds) July 31, 2017

They announced that they’d do a limited edition run of Szechuan sauce for one day only – October 7th.

Then this happened.

Really, really limited edition

To be fair to McDonald’s, they did make clear that the sauce wasn’t going to be widely released.

But was the fast food giant right in releasing so few Szechuan sauce packs?

They were so limited edition that some stores didn’t stock the sauce, and packs of sauce are being auctioned on eBay for hundreds of dollars.

Of course, this was a fairly experimental release, but demand for the sauce was evident all over the internet. Granted, McDonald’s could be forgiven for not foreseeing “we want sauce” chanting mobs and police, but couldn’t they have been a little more generous?

Using Brandwatch’s Unlimited Historical Data we gathered mentions of Szechuan sauce (or #szechuansauce) back to April 1st 2017 when the new Rick and Morty season was released.

It’s fair to say that demand for the sauce was pretty high.

Let’s take a look at some of those October 7th mentions.

Youtubers documented their lengthy but ultimately empty-handed journeys to get sauce.

Journalists reported on angry crowds.

Cops are at Wellington McDonalds where tons of angry people lined up for hrs for Rick and Morty Szechuan sauce only to learn they had none pic.twitter.com/3T272osid4

— Lulu Ramadan (@luluramadan) October 7, 2017

Onlookers saw chanting crowds

Angry crowd chants "We want sauce" as police force them back. 1000+ people camped out to get #szechuansauce but McDonalds had 70 sauces… pic.twitter.com/wEaqC64Hln

— Ian ??? Sikes (@ianjsikes) October 7, 2017

Fans talked about their disappointment:

@McDonalds @RickandMorty It’s my birthday today and really wanted some of that Szechuan Sauce I’m disappointed, waited 5 hours?

— Ale (@ANicolicchia) October 7, 2017

McDonald’s heard loud and clear.

It turns out the demand (and outrage) for Szechuan sauce was recognized by McDonald’s and this could be great news for fans.

This winter, Szechuan sauce will be back in vaster quantities.

You spoke. We’ve listened. Lots more #SzechuanSauce and locations. Details soon. And that’s the wayyy the news goes! pic.twitter.com/ooIrbZBsOw

— McDonald's (@McDonalds) October 8, 2017

And Rick and Morty / Szechuan sauce fans can rest easy at last.

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