Saltgate: Iconic Morton Salt Girl had rocky start in KC before amphitheater debut
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kansas City influencers nicknamed the Union Station event “Saltgate.
- About 20 women marched as Morton Salt Girls in a roughly 90‑second presentation.
- The viral backlash drew widespread attention to Morton Amphitheater before its opening.
During the soft opening Monday of Kansas City’s new Morton Amphitheater it became clear, from what visitors posted on social media, that there’s already a popular selfie spot at the 16,000-seat music venue.
People took photos with the neon sign of the Morton Salt Girl, the iconic mascot of Morton Salt.
No surprise.
Girl is always camera-ready with her cute blond bob, sunny yellow dress and matching shoes, holding a blue box of Morton salt in one hand and umbrella in the other for those rainy days.
Kansas City can expect to see more of this advertising darling now that the salt company has moved its headquarters from Chicago to Overland Park.
People lined up to take their picture with her at a Kansas City Chiefs game last year.
And she’s on a large sign that lights up at night outside the company’s new headquarters.
But Girl’s introduction to Kansas City influencers — which occurred last month, in a publicity event at Union Station promoting the new music venue — was a little rocky.
The moment went viral and quickly earned a nickname from this influential group: “Saltgate.”
They got salty about it.
“I think we just got punked,” Kansas City content creator Sarah Leick — aka Sarah Styles Blog — summed up after the event.
Here’s what went down.
On May 14, a Kansas City public relations firm sent emails to local content creators and media outlets. In boldface lettering, the email urged: “Block off May 20 for something BIG!“
The email didn’t reveal what the event was about; it simply invited people to meet at Union Station at 12:15 p.m. on May 20 “with cameras ready.”
There are few surprises left in life, the email read, “don’t miss this one!” A reminder email went out the day before.
In post-event videos, influencers said they were nervous, excited, even scared, about what was happening. One filmed herself nervous-eating a bowl of Harvey’s gumbo as she waited for the action to begin.
The crowd that showed up included some of Kansas City’s most popular content creators — local TV crews, too.
Kelley Thrasher, Kansas City’s popular Taylor Swift imitator, Almost Andy Reid personality Matt Black and a guy dressed as Ron Burgundy, Will Ferrell’s character in the “Anchorman” movies, also showed up.
Few knew what was about to happen.
They wondered if it had to do with World Cup. The new Royals stadium? A streetcar announcement?
Nope.
It was this.
About 20 women, all dressed like the Morton Salt Girl, marched down Union Station’s Grand Plaza to a recorded drum cadence, then stood in front of the crowd for about 15 seconds, marching in place and striking poses with their umbrellas.
They stopped, stood in place for a few more seconds, then walked off.
The presentation lasted about a minute and a half.
“I think something else is about to happen,” KC Cool Mom Tori Wade can be heard saying in her video as the women walked away.
But it didn’t.
“It was a flash mob. Actually it was more like a salute. It was almost more like a cosplay-does-rock-band, kinda, because the people that were doing the flash mob were dressed as Morton Salt Girls,” Leick said in the video she posted later.
“I don’t think anything could have prepared me for that and I think that would have been fine if they had like, danced, you know, like if it was a dance crew and they had like really good choreography.”
Couldn’t they have splashed around, she wondered, in a sandbox full of salt?
“It was honestly indescribable,” she said. “A weird freaking day, man.”
Maybe, she wondered, the event would go viral.
It did, quickly. As disappointed influencers posted their videos in the hours that followed, the event was jokingly dubbed “Saltgate.”
Content creator Tori Manzy, who was hired as one of the Morton Salt Girls, posted Instagram videos sharing her take from behind the scenes. In one, she demonstrated the simple choreography the women learned.
“For everyone asking us what Saltgate is, it’s not that serious,” she said in one of the videos. “It’s the epitome of a Midwest scandal.”
But she called the presentation “pretty cringey.”
She noted how people showed up just to see “a 10-second flash mob,” using air quotes around “flash mob.”
“Everyone was left really confused,” Manzy said. “What was that? Why did we rearrange our days for this?”
But there’s no reason to “cancel Morton Salt, other than the fact that they wasted all of the influencers’ time, which is not great,” she said. “My time obviously was not wasted since I got paid $40 an hour …”
“It was such a fun experience that just ended up being a fail and cringey ... the amphitheater itself is really cool. We were practicing on stage while all the construction guys were around working.”
“Saltgate” has been revisited on social media in recent days as the amphitheater prepares to open Wednesday with its first concert, headlined by singer Kesha.
In spite of how viral it went in May, some people commented that they were wondering what “Saltgate” was.
“The marketing was dumb but turned out to be genius honestly, do you know how many videos and how many people are talking about how big of a disaster it is but what is that doing?” a KC sports influencer commented on a “Saltgate” video.
“It is bringing mad attention to the new amphitheater ... everybody’s talking about Morton salt now ... dumb yes ... but any publicity is good, whether it’s bad or good.”
Maybe that was the point, Leick conceded on Instagram.
“Were they trying to (tick) off the whole Kansas City influencer community? And then just ride the publicity?” she wondered.
If that was the goal, she said, “maybe this is a good PR campaign.”
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