Meet Heinz's Kranch, A Combo Of Ketchup, Ranch, And Sadness

Heinz isn't doing great. After its 2015 merger with Kraft, the food giant has seen record losses ravage its immortal "mom doesn't feel like cooking" empire, posting a loss of over $15 billion by the end of 2018. But Heinz only saw this defeat as a pretext for a heroic comeback, using that same inventive go-getter spirit that gave the world ketchup to wow us all with new mouth-watering sauces. And the best they could come up with was this: What about ketchup, but worse?

While "Kranch" sounds more like a late-season Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles villain than something you squirt on your chicken nuggets, it is in fact the latest social-media-inspired sauce by Heinz. The name is the portmanteau for the eldritch marriage between ketchup and ranch dressing, which we can only imagine tastes like the sweat of a country club waiter.

About a year ago, Heinz stumbled upon a surprise viral hit when its Middle Eastern bottle of ketchup-mayonnaise mix called Mayochup (or as the Europeans call it, shitty cocktail sauce) became viral on social media. Ignoring the fact that most of the comments involved people saying they would sooner dip their genitals in Mayochup than their fries, Heinz imported the sauce combo to the States, where it proved successful enough a gimmick to become the only flicker of hope for the slowly drying sauce company.

Now, fueled by desperation and presumably leftover bottles of Salad Cream, the executives at Heinz have launched an entire lazy range of sauce combo bottles, called Saucy Sauces -- which, again, makes them sound less like a delectable treat and more like this bottle of mustardy mayo can't wait to tell me how it Miranda'd a busboy on holiday in Dubai. In March, the company launched two more variations, called Mayocue and Mayomust (which is also the Urban Dictionary term for the smell white people give off when they're stress-calling the police on their new black mailman). And it seems like they've already run out of mediocre ideas with Kranch, every sex dungeon's least favorite safe word.

So why does Heinz keep doubling down on their existing sauces? It might be because the terribly named combos are giving them something we all know is even better than money: exposure. "When we launched Mayochup, Mayomust, and Mayocue, our fans speculated on social media what they thought the next condiment mashup should be -- the tweets were pouring in!" crowed the Heinz associate director of marketing. So does that mean the more the internet makes fun of these Saucy Sauces, the more of them they'll squeeze into existence?

Oh no.

This article alone has just spawned something called Worcestartar! Please, whatever you do, don't post what you think will be the next combo sauce in the comments! We must stop feeding them! The snark will drown us all! The snark will drown us a-

During the writing of this article, Cedric was swept away by a freak wave of something tasting vaguely of mustard and Bearnaise sauce. You can follow his adventures on the condiment high seas on Twitter.

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