Source: Creativity
McDonald’s dug deep into its inventory of discontinued menu items, resurrecting its long-forgotten “Mulan” Szechuan dipping sauce, and now it’s riding a wave of good karma on social media. This weekend, the fast food chain sent a half-gallon bottle of the dipping sauce to creator of “Rick and Morty” Justin Roiland, because he mentioned the sauce in his freaky sci-fi show’s season premiere. In April, season three of the cult hit “Rick and Morty” streamed online, before launching the full season this weekend, and there were multiple mentions of the McDonald’s dipping sauce. Since the premiere, McDonald’s hinted it might just re-release the sauce, which had been created for a limited time in 1998 to promote the Disney cartoon film “Mulan.”
“Rick and Morty” is based loosely on the old mad scientist and scraggly-voiced kid characters of “Back to the Future.” Rick, the grandfather, takes grandson Morty on sci-fi adventures. In the season premiere, Rick uses the deliciousness of Szechuan sauce to distract aliens and make an intergalactic prison escape. At the end of the show, he frightens Morty by revealing his true master plan all along has been to track down the McDonald’s dipping sauce in whatever dimension it’s still being made.
McDonald’s couldn’t help but notice when the fanbase went crazy over the sauce on Reddit back in April. The company even hinted it might bring back the sauce so everyone could taste the nostalgia. For season three, McDonald’s sent show creator Roiland a personal batch of the sauce, and promised to award three more containers to fans. A picture of the Szechuan sauce got 17,000 retweets on Twitter, and a Periscope video promoting the giveaway got nearly 200,000 views. These are numbers that McDonald’s typically never reaches on social platforms.
SOS 073017 2130EST TWTR 3x.5GAL pic.twitter.com/pHvDzKVYMv
— McDonald’s (@McDonalds) July 30, 2017
