If you were among the disappointed masses who lined up at McDonald’s restaurants across the nation last year in hopes of snagging some special edition Rick & Morty-themed szechuan sauce packets, only to see supplies fall far short of demand, take heart, the sauce is back.
One catch: the packaging is not Rick & Morty-themed this time around, but the contents are the same.
The restaurant announced via Twitter this morning that 20 million packets of the coveted condiment were available.
��20 MILLION SZECHUAN SAUCE CUPS NOW AVAILABLE NATIONWIDE!��FINALLY get the sauce!�� Celebrate w/ some Buttermilk Crispy Tenders (or other qual. purch.), a cup of Szechuan, and The Sauce: a podcast about the surreal, true Szechuan story. Listen now at https://t.co/Gcrq5kM71E pic.twitter.com/rHnvwEdQ71
— McDonald's (@McDonalds) February 26, 2018
If you’re curious how this whole szechuan sauce fiasco got started, there’s also a new podcast from McDonald’s called The Sauce, which for whatever reason does not refer to Rick & Morty by name but instead calls it a “popular cartoon for adults,” and lays out the entire story.
You can listen to that three-episode podcast here, or on the Apple Podcasts app.
If you’re not going to commit to listening to a podcast about fast food dipping sauce, here’s the short version: Last April, the hugely popular cartoon series Rick & Morty made a joke that referenced the deliciousness of a limited-edition, teriyaki-flavored, Chicken McNuggets Szechuan Sauce released in 1998 to promote Disney’s Mulan.
Rick & Morty fans began begging McDonald’s and relentlessly campaigning via social media to bring the sauce back to stores, and eventually, McDonald’s actually went for it.
But the company obviously underestimated the voracious appetite for this sauce. Some stores found hundreds of people lined up outside before dawn, and the sauce ran out quickly. There were even Szechuan Sauce “riots,” which weren’t really riots but did illustrate the crowds and their disappointment.
In Tampa Bay, pretty much every McDonald’s location was sold out in less than an hour.
Even now, you can find single packets of the Szechuan Sauce listed on Ebay for more than $100.
The Great Szechuan Sauce Letdown of 2017 was somehow the second, Rick & Morty-related fiasco in Tampa Bay last year. In September, 1,500 fans showed up in Tampa to meet the “Rickmobile,” a truck bearing the title character’s likeness. Tampa police had to shut that event down when it got out of hand.
