On Saturday,McDonald’s decided to re-release it’s Szechuan sauce that was available in 1998 when they were promoting the Disney movie,Mulan. What we didn’t know was how limited the release was really going to be.

The sauce was released again as a promotion for their new Buttermilk Chicken Tenders and was to be released at 2 p.m. local time. I remember the sauce when it was released and loved it and was hoping I could be one of the lucky ones to get some thinking locations had like,a case or two,to give away.

It turns out that the sauce was a very limited supply. Here in the Sacramento-area where I,T.J. the Sports Geek,reside there was only one location that was listed as having it and upon driving 35 minutes to the town of Antelope to see if I could get in line for the sauce (the line was pretty long when I arrived),I was being informed by people who had just left the restaurant that they only had about a couple of dozen packets to give out. 

Many fans drove hours to the nearest location to try and get the sauce only to find out that the time they spent to do so was a waste.

This was the scene at a location in San Jose.

McDonald’s offered an apology to the folks who were not so lucky to get the sauce,and that was basically 95-percent of the people who waited.

Unfortunately that may not be enough for fans of not just the sauce,but the animated series Rick & Morty,where during the show’s season 3 premiere main character Rick Sanchez goes back “to the day it all began” in his memory when he could still order Szechuan Sauce and taste it one more time.

He then goes crazy at the end of the episode, yelling that he wants that “Mulan McNugget sauce” and it will take nine more seasons or 97 years.

Many are calling this the worst promotion of all time and some are even boycotting the fast-food giant and some are even seeing the sauce pop up on eBay, convinced that employees of McDonald’s were hoarding what was even available to begin with in order to make some money on the side by selling it on the auction site.

Here’s my theory: Someone found a box of this lying around somewhere that was tucked in a corner of a closet since 1998 and decided to distribute 20 packets or so to various locations around the country and make this their “limited” run on an old fan favorite from the 1990s.

Is that what happened? Probably not. But what it was,in my opinion, was a big hype for a whole bunch of nothing and something that ultimately was a bad promotion that left thousands of people upset. If you’re going to do a promotion for an item you haven’t had in almost 20 years, you have to do it right. Like when Crystal Pepsi was released again in 2016 after 23 years. It was a nice limited run on a product from the ’90s that people wanted to try again. There was no chaos, there weren’t people going on Twitter displaying their anger about not getting any. In fact,it was brought back again this year after it’s original limited release the year before.

That’s how you bring back something from the ’90s that people like. I think McDonald’s owes a disappointed group of people some zesty sauce for them to dip their McNuggets into. Part of me thinks they just might right around the release of the live-action Mulan remake in 2019, but who’s to say at this point. All I know is that McDonald’s owns the title of the worst limited time promotion ever.

UPDATE: 10.8.17-You spoke,McDonald’s listened,and for the exciting news, click this link down below.