Pizza Hut's Old Marinara Dipping Sauce

I didn't want to minimize the previous posting on the "Old" PH. I really never cared for their offerings, but we would pick up a box of cheese sticks every so often back when they had those soup holding kettles and dispensed the sauce into plastic containers. They haven't done that here for many years and only have the foil covered containers. Probably the same everywhere.

One thing that I noticed was the difference in the sauce as it essentially slow cooked through the day. By late evening, it had a pretty rich and thick taste. In the afternoon it was always watery.

My main recollection of that sauce was the distinctive Thyme taste that was quite noticeable in the old sauce. Most every copycat clone uses Marjoram nor did I taste bay leaf. It wasn't plain sauce as there used to be bits of skin in it. They must have been using a ground tomato/Puree product and not sauce or paste derived base as most copycats claim.

Anyone recall similar? Problem with these copycats is they never seem to be improved once a few copycat mavens print them. Few challenge them nor do the originators revisit the recipes over time.