The Fast Food Dipping Sauce '90s Kids Will Remember (Especially If You Always Wanted To Get Slimed)

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

If you're in the fast food game, you're in the business of innovation. Customer attention spans shift fast, so knowing when to get in on a trend and when to get out can help a chain make a bundle, while misfires can lead to being cast off to the scrap pile of history, like the Pizza Hut hot dog crust pizza. And the '90s? A wild time. Enter Burger King: In 1999, the burger joint introduced the not-particularly-catchily-named Gooey Apple Green Slime Sauce.

It was a perplexing, but undeniably creative, culinary decision to introduce a saccharine apple-flavored sauce in which to dip chicken tenders. Why did Burger King do it? To capitalize on the popularity of the kids' channel Nickelodeon, and the green slime that would become intertwined with the channel's entire image. The sauce was described as having a taste similar to liquidated Jolly Rancher candy (and was just as sweet). 

The sauce was marketed as part of the Burger King Big Kids Meal, which contained more chicken tenders or a bigger burger — but also a back-to-school supply like a calculator, rocket pen, or dry-erase board in lieu of a toy. Who said fast food was bad for kids? 

Burger King's dalliance with green slime sauce was enough of a hit that two years later, Burger King went back to the slime well for their Choose the Ooze promotional campaign. This included green ketchup, green Minute Maid Cherry frozen beverages, and, of course, the titular dipping sauce, now renamed Gooey Green Apple Ooze. This campaign ended May 6, 2001, just two weeks before the original "Shrek" movie was released, making it a natural tie-in for a company whose target demographic was four- to 10-year-olds.

The sauce has long since been retired, but for those curious to try it, you can make a reasonable facsimile at home. Start by boiling apple juice, water, and sugar, then add honey, lemon juice, and Toxic Waste Green Apple Slime Slicker Squeeze, which can be bought on Amazon. If you want it to be electric green, however, you'll need to add some blue and yellow food dye.

While it may seem like an unusual combination, Burger King wasn't the first fast food joint to try chicken tenders and apple sauce. In the 1980s, McDonald's sold Holiday Christmas McNuggets with apple, cranberry, and orange dipping sauces. This festive menu has been lost to time like McDonald's Szechuan Sauce (pre-"Rick and Morty" revival), the McLobster, and other McDonald's menu item fails like the McDLT, which even a pre-Seinfeld Jason Alexander couldn't save from irrelevance.