That's it's official name. it is actually much younger than the impact that formed the Hellas Basin.

it dates to a time of global collapse of near-surface sediment layers, perhaps associated with volcanic heating. Ken Tanaka and I collaborated on a couple of papers on this one, along with Bruce Banerdt and Jeff Kargel. One made the cover of "Geology" with a neat picture of the Hellas basin. This is a local "mud ocean" with rather thick and large clumps in the mud!

I see the slumping and sliding of blocks, layers, and "skins" of sediment, all sliding into the Hellas basin and rucking-up into a giant deformed heap. You can see cross-sections of the former sediment pile, turned on their side, and folds and ridges.

it has all been exposed by billions of years of wind scouring the Hellas basin, eroding the surface down like sandpaper on wood - wearing the weaker layers quicker. The fine dust is blown out of Hellas and deposited planetwide.

Your analogy to taffy is excellent. At the time the slumped material was flexible - it folded, buckled, and stretched a wee bit to pack into the new shapes...

Whether the lubricant was liquid water or some other fluid is unknown.