Middle-school students.
McDonald’s has gone on to announce, in a catch-phrase-laden Twitter announcement that goes out of its way to avoid mentioning the name of the program they’re trying to cash in on, that they’ll be brining Szechuan sauce to all locations this winter.
I don’t think McD’s was fully prepared to deal with millennial internet weirdos who don’t realize that the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory ceases to apply when you’re participating in a public riot because a restaurant doesn’t have the condiment you wanted.
Well, there’s a couple of things here…
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I had a quick look (not that bothered), but the word ‘riot’ is being misused here. A bunch of people shouting “we want sauce” when they don’t get anything from this incredibly stupid promotion is not a riot. Slow news day, I think…
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It was a joke. A joke about the nostalgia of some sort of short lived food promotion from years ago which you cherish for no particular reason. Nothing more. I struggle to understand how people don’t actually get that, and think this sauce is of some sort of importance… A lot of bored idiots, I think.
That McDonalds turned into a promotion/publicity stunt that they then fucked up royally.
Uh, in some areas the police had to be called.
Is that now the criteria to call something a riot?
Riot. (noun) a noisy, violent public disorder caused by a group or crowd of persons, as by a crowd protesting against another group, a government policy, etc., in the streets.
I’d say a group of a hundred geeks forming a human wall and chanting “WE WANT SAUCE” qualifies.
That’s Violence?
I’d say that’s a protest. Not a riot. I really don’t see how anyone can just miss out reading the third word in that definition. But hey, people want to protest about sauce, perhaps some pepper spray might have added that violence and given them some sauce too…
Hey, look, so much this.
I don’t get why McDonalds didn’t put Szechuan sauce back in their arsenal months ago, after the initial fan outcry. There are a LOT of Rick and Morty fans, and there’s clearly plenty of demand here. Pulling a move like this is just dickish to customers who want to give you money for no apparent reason. It can’t be that hard to make more sauce.
(Not that the behavior of the fans wasn’t absurd and childish, but still. Stupid move, McDonalds.)
Or not at all. That’s the part that sticks in the craw:
Again, it’d be less dickish if they’d done nothing. Or if they’d played along with the gag by showily sending the actor a little something for fun publicity – while never once saying “oh, hey, we’re going to make the sauce available to the public, too.”
I’d sympathize with McDonald’s if folks came up with unreasonable expectations all by themselves and demanded a menu item from maybe twenty years back. But if I find myself asking “why do you have this expectation” and the answer is “see, this, here,” we’re then in a different story with a different moral.
I like a description from here: Rick and Morty fans anger
“No one was prepared for the enthusiasm of Rick and Morty fans, who are already getting an online reputation for, believe it or not, narcissism and toxicity.”
Aw jeez, that sounds awfully like Rick.
Fit’s with the generic sci-fi packaging as “Rick and Morty labels” … they apparently did not come to a deal to actually co-promote. That would have had a full roll out, not just 4000 packets. I’d guess the winter one is going to be a real marketing deal paying for the IP use, real Rick and Morty labels and toys and everything. Which will also piss off fans!
Maybe you’ll get a free Plumbus with every Happy Meal. Everyone needs a Plumbus.
Well, they averaged 2.5 million viewers per episode this last season, which of course doesn’t count pirated episodes, etc, etc. Just the people who watched it when it was on.
So 2.5 million hardcore fans, probably another million or so from other sources, and they decided to send out only 4,000 packets of the sauce? No, this isn’t the fans being assholes, this is McDonalds being fucking morons about a promotion.
That makes the assumption that everybody who watched the show wanted the sauce.
And I don’t see McDonald’s wanting a tie-in with R&M; McDonald’s sees itself as “family-friendly,” so the last thing I think it wants is to advertise an animated program, where young kids will see the ads and want to see the show, and then their parents will freak out and blame McDonald’s. My first thought for the announcement of a winter release was, maybe they wanted a tie-in with a re-release of the Mulan Blu-Ray, but it was just re-released (along with the direct-to-video Mulan II) in February.
BTW, Dan Harmon played what may or may not have been himself on the most recent Simpsons episode (he voiced the character), teaching about “Professor Harmon’s TV Writing Story Circle: Basic Cable, Fired, Network TV, Fired, Rehired, Cancelled, Yahoo, Teaching, then back to Basic Cable.”
I watch the show religiously and think its currently the best thing on TV but have zero interest in the sauce. If it was good it would have been popular back in 1998. Would have liked the poster though, but its not a huge deal.
No, son, do the math. McDonalds figured an absurdly low figure would cost them almost nothing and get them good publicity. That’s enough sauce for about 0.1% of the fans, which is betting on a near zero participation rate.
Except I don’t think the publicity was good…
This was a really shitty thing for McDonald’s to do. For the first time in, ever (?), something in pop culture addresses their food in a positive light (with the possible exception of the McRib, but even that seems to be enjoyed ironically) and they capitalize on it by shitting on the fans and customers. It would have been better to ignore it than stoke fan interest for 6 months and then have a promotion where they distribute 20 packets to a single location in a city. That this location was usually on college campuses shows they knew what they were doing.
Any publicity is good publicity
I don’t think underestimating the crazy R&M fans is “a really shitty thing for them to do”, I think they just vastly underestimated the response. Also, the conspiracy theorist could surmise that the abject failure of the promotion lead them to re-releasing the sauce to placate everyone, which will bring more business, which is actually kinda genius.