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According to the early seventies“Sid og Marty Krofft: A Critical Study of Saturday Morning Children's Television,”McDonald's commissioned advertising agency Needham, Harper & Steers to create a television campaign to attract young customers. The advertising team came by"McDonaldland,"a fantastic world full of kid-friendly characters, both good and evil, whose lives revolved around McDonald's various offerings. Essentially a world built around the fast food chain's established mascot, businessman and cheerful clown Ronald McDonald, allies like Mayor McCheese and Officer Big Mac helped him fend off thieves like Hamburglar and Grimace. Later, more characters would join the fray, building a vast and expansive McDonaldland universe.
Numerous advertisem*nts in the McDonaldland canon were often seen on television, especially during periods when many children were watchingMcDonald'sthe slow phasing out of most of the characters and the whole fantastical 21st century premise. Here's how these advertising icons have evolved over the years, and what went so wrong in McDonaldland.
A restart did not save the Hamburglar from second fiddle status
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The most infamous villain in McDonaldland has always been the Hamburglar, a fast-food thief who dresses like an old-fashioned prisoner in black and white stripes and a face mask. The Hamburglar exists solely to steal hamburgers from Ronald McDonald and his friends, while proudly shouting "Robble, Rooble!" challenges. as he does. But his most famous appearance, as a cartoonish, innocent villain with a smiling face and cape, wasn't McDonald's first introduction to the character.
In the 1970s, the hamburger was briefly known as the "Lone Jogger". He also had only two teeth, a hooked nose and a choking screeching sound. With an image that was both terrifying and meaningless to children (the Lone Ranger reference was lost on kids who didn't grow up with the 1940s and 1950s radio and film character), McDonald's toned down the character in the 1980s before abandoning it entirely used in commercials in 2002.
In 2015, McDonald's confusingly attempted to rename the character as "sexy" - depicted not as a full-body costume, but by a male actor wearing a skimpy face mask. This recasting of a beloved child character into a live-action adult was off-putting and short-lived. But in 2023, the Hamburglar returned in a new series of nostalgic TVads. These ads show him as his more recognizable cartoonish self, back to his old devious ways: trying to steal McDonald's burgers.
Captain Crook and Officer Big Mac were victims of budget cuts
While the Hamburglar survived until the 2000s, his partner in crime disappeared quickly and quietly in the 1980s. According to the McDonaldland specification manual (viaFlickr), Captain Crook was part of the first round of characters. And while the hamburgers were feasting on McDonald's food (beef) on land, Captain Crook was constantly searching for sea flats, Filet-O-Fish. A stereotypical pirate, later known as just the Captain, perMentale Floss, softening his image and character from sinister villain to innocent, perpetually confused villain. Because McDonaldland proved to be overcrowded with characters, it lost a few roster members in the 1980s, including Captain Crook, who didn't quite fit into the child-oriented ad campaign as a character who played the adult-oriented Filet-O-Band fish.
Also around in the 1970s, but disappeared in the 1980s due to the McDonaldland simplification: Officer Big Mac. Named after McDonald's signature three-decker, oversized sandwich, the living civilian character was a police officer who was downright obsessed with stopping both Captain Crook and the Hamburglar. After both Agent Big Mac and Captain Crook abruptly disappeared from the McDonaldland ads, Ronald McDonald dealt more directly with the Hamburglar, the only remaining villain.
Grimasse has a dark backstory
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Many of the McDonaldland characters over the years have been associated with the celebration or passion for a particular menu item: the Officer Big Mac, McNugget Buddies and Fry Kids, for example. Also among the one-track residents of McDonaldland, at least in the beginning, was Grimas. The amorphous, vaguely triangular purple orb started out as Evil Grimase, and he was known for his unquenchable craving for McDonald's shakes.
Grimace's otherwise inscrutable appearance can be explained: according to company lore, the character is supposed to resemble a taste bud. When the character of Grimace was transformed into one of Ronald McDonald's friends, his appearance was also revamped: he once had four arms (the better to hold more shakes), and in later portrayals he only had two. He was eventually removed from McDonald's advertisem*nts, along with other popular characters like Birdy or The Hamburglar - but not for long.
In 2023, Grimace would return in style to celebrate his 52nd birthday – and he brought back his beloved McDonald's shakes. In an aviral ad campaign that swept social media platforms, Grimace promoted its special birthday meal, with the choice of a Big Mac or a 10-piece Chicken McNuggets, a portion of fries and aGrima's birthday shake, who was just as purple as he was. The campaign spawned a variety of Grimace-themed merchandise and even an online browser video game called "Grimace's Birthday".
Mayor McCheese was legally forced to leave McDonaldland
McDonald's contracted the advertising agency Needham, Harper & Steers to create what would become the McDonaldland campaign. But early in the process, in 1970, according to acourt case(viaJustice), an agency director Marty Krofft contactedSid and Marty Krofft, producers of several crazy, fantastic live-action Saturday morning television shows from the 1970s, including “Sigmund and the Sea Monsters,” “The Bugaloos” and “H.R. Puffnstuff'. The Krofft organization met with the ad executives several times, with the agency eventually announcing that the McDonald's campaign for which they had created art and technical plans had been canceled.
But then in 1971 the McDonaldland commercials started appearingChicago Reader, produced in part by former Krofft employees. Kroffts immediately filed a lawsuit for copyright infringement, as there were many physical, stylistic and thematic similarities between "H.R. Pufnstuf" and the McDonaldland advertisem*nts. Pufnstuf was in charge of a fantasy world and had a huge round head, similar to McDonaldland Mayor McCheese, who had a cheeseburger for a head. The court found McDonald's liable and not only did the company pay damages, but also retired Mayor McCheese of the McDonaldland franchise.
McDonaldland was linked to childhood obesity
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In 2002 and 2003, around the time McDonald's decided to more actively serve adult customers instead of children, the fast-food conglomerate faced a lawsuit in which plaintiffs alleged that the fast-food company, along withburger Kingand others, he believed was responsible for the increasing number of children living at an unhealthy weightCNN. In August 2002, the families of two teenagers, considered obese by mainstream medical standards, sued McDonald's, accusing the company of failing to properly tell the masses that their food was packed with significant amounts of sugar, fat and salt, which in turn led to their daughters' obesity-related health problems, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol and heart disease. “We are not looking to get rich with a big settlement,” the plaintiff's attorney, Samuel Hirsch, told CNN. “We propose a foundation that educates children about the nutritional facts and contents of McDonald's food.”
A judge in New York dismissed the case, but McDonald's did not emerge unscathed. The allegations put a spotlight on McDonald's dining and business practices and led many to think the company's offering was not the healthiest choice. It would have been difficult for McDonald's to continue marketing to children the way it used to, with cheerful, food-glorifying characters.
That's why the company launched the 'Go Active' campaign, focusing on exercise and moderationHead of Marketing. Because the McDonaldland characters were associated with the old food and the old ways, they paid little attention to "Go Active," in the ads that featured Ronald McDonald working out with professional athletes.
McDonald's wanted to prove its maturity
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The entire McDonaldland canon, characters, stories, history and setting have been designed and developed over the years with the aim of appealing to children, to make McDonald's seem like a wonderful, wonderful place to eat and spend money. About thirty years after its launch in the early 1970s, McDonald's began a long process of phasing out the McDonaldland campaign because it had all worked too well. In the 21st century, McDonald's food was commonly seen as food for children (and adults with uncomplicated problems). taste) ). According to CNN, McDonald's fast food competitors such as Burger King, Wendy's and...Taco Bellfound a niche through counter-marketing and positioned themselves as destinations for budget-conscious adult dining. McDonald's lost more ground and market share to upscale, mature chains like Panera.
In response, McDonald's attempted a soft restart in 2003, scaling back new store openings and launching a new focus on food quality. All that meant less marketing to children and the promotion of the wrong foods for young people, such as Happy Meals andKip McNuggets. McDonald's was trying to prove it was growing up, so it downplayed its marketing aimed at children involving clowns, food burglars and monsters.
McDonaldland playgrounds were a legal liability
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McDonald's not only positioned itself as a child-friendly food paradise; it also promoted its restaurants as places where kids could hang out and have fun, surrounded by the same McDonaldland images from TV commercials. On the grounds of one of the thousands of McDonald's stores, there would be a PlayPlace - mini playgrounds where kids could jump, climb and mess around with other kids, surrounded by the smiling illustrations of Ronald McDonald and his cohorts on posters or of the structures themselves . The equipment was sometimes made in the image of McDonaldland characters, such as the Officer Big Mac Climb-In Jail and the Hamburglar Swing.
In the mid-1990s, a few standard playsets were removed from PlayPlaces: the Tug-N-Turn and the Big Mac Climber. In 1999 it became clear why McDonald's abolished these structures. According to that yearSouth Florida Sun-Sentinel,the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has fined McDonald's $4 million, the largest fine in the organization's history to date. Apparently, over the past twenty years, more than 400 children have suffered injuries while playing on (or falling from) the Big Mac Climber, and McDonald's had failed to report these injuries to authorities.
According toEetthe number of families with children going to McDonald's dropped completely in the 2010s, causing PlayPlaces to fall out of use. Around that time, McDonald's began a $6 billion nationwide store remodel (viaQSR), completely eliminating many McDonaldland-oriented PlayPlaces.
The slow death of Saturday morning cartoons helped kill McDonaldland
In 1996, theFederal Communications Commissionswitched to stricter enforcement in the 1990sActing on children's television, a system of media regulatory laws that requires commercially supported broadcast networks to program at least three hours per week of educational television aimed at young viewers.A lot of storeslogically opted to tape these newly mandated shows on Saturday mornings, replacing the traditional lineup of purely entertainment-oriented cartoons.
The Children's Television Act also mainly limited advertising and limited advertising space on Saturday morning television to 10½ minutes per hour. About six hours of advertising was cut from children's prime time, meaning that the companies that normally bought advertising time during that period (which sold toys, cereal or, in the case of McDonald's McDonaldland commercials, fast food hamburgers) suddenly had a lot less time. space to work with.
All these new rules ultimately turned out to cause more trouble than they were worth for the networks. With NBC becoming the first to eliminate cartoons in favor of teen-oriented sitcoms, news and sports (viaBaltimore zon), all major broadcast networkswould eventually giveanimated dishes on weekend mornings, programming educational and informative shows about travel and animals. When the Saturday morning cartoon scene retreated, McDonald's lost one of its most crucial promotional spots in McDonaldland.
Some McDonaldland characters didn't need to stick around
In addition to the enduring and best-known core casts of Ronald McDonald, Grimace, and Hamburglar, the McDonaldland landscape occasionally introduced other characters. Some of them served to fill the world and plots of commercials, while the entire existence of others was connected with the promotion of specific foods that McDonald's was trying to promote to children. Some of these creatures and animals became long-time members of the McDonaldland crowd, while others proved not to be particularly effective at promoting the McDonald's product, and were thus quietly dropped from the decades-long advertising campaign.
i 1980, the first female character arrived in McDonaldland: Birdie the Early Bird. Dressed as an old-fashioned aviator with a pilot hat and scarf, she was introduced solely as a way to promote McDonald's then-new breakfast menu to young consumers. Birdie was an active part of McDonald's commercials for years, a leading man comparable to Grimace or Hamburglar and survived his first McMuffin promotional job. And so when McDonald's phased out McDonaldland, there was no longer a pressing need for Birdie.
McDonald's didn't feel the need to save the characters in the short or long termSundaeInThe professoror. The former was Ronald McDonald's dog, coincidentally named after a McDonald's dessert offering, while the latter was a crazy inventor who occasionally drove the action in various commercials.
McDonald's liked a new strategy with Justin Timberlake
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Monumental cultural shifts and changing business strategies led to the demise and downplaying of the McDonaldland universe of characters' use in McDonald's marketing plans. In 2003, when the great die-off of Friends of Ronald McDonald began, the company had entrusted its advertising to two major corporations. In 1981, perNew York TimesMcDonald's dropped McDonaldland maker Needham, Harper and Steers in favor of Chicago-based Leo Burnett Company, but in 1997, accordingLos Angeles Times, brought Needham back to regroup after a period of poor sales led to major internal management changes.
OverChicago MagazineMcDonald's launched the 'I'm Lovin' It' campaign in 2003, conceived as a hip and modern advertising approach, aimed at potential customers of all ages and built around a jingle sung by pop star Justin Timberlake (for which McDonald's paid $6 million for its services), and based on a successful campaign in German-speaking areas of Europe. Burnett led the campaign in the English-speaking world, and Needham's siblings led the operation in German-speaking countries. "I'm Lovin' it" became one of McDonald's longest-running and most successful advertising campaigns of all time, lasting over a decade, replacing the McDonaldland characters.
The real reason why McDonald's lost Ronald McDonald
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As the host of a popular children's television show and figurehead of a fast food chain, Krusty in 'The Simpsons' is a throwback to a time when circus clowns were popular children's entertainers, as well as a parody of the McDonald's mascot (and "Chief") Happiness Officer,” saidLinkedIn)Ronald McDonald. As far as kids are concerned these days, clowns are passé at best and terrifying at worst. Most 21st century pop culture clowns are scary.
According to a 2014 study by Rasmussen (viaNBC News) 43% of Americans dislike clowns. A murderous clown named Twisty had a prominent place in the city"American horror story"anthology series in the mid-2010s that coincided with a wave of ominous clown sightings in the United States in the summer of 2016. The horror clown phenomenon became so bad that McDonald's scaled back Ronald McDonald appearances until the controversy subsided. He was a clown, and at the time Americans didn't want to see one.
McDonald's has now reinstated Ronald to active status. The character remains popularInstagramreport of his many public appearances to promote McDonald's and the Ronald McDonald House charity. But McDonald's TV commercials are a different story. In the 2020s, the company has pivoted to marketing tactics like celebrity-curated combo meals and hiring "Successions" stars.Brian Coxto tell a series of advertisem*nts.
