McDonaldLand: A Tasteful Dive into Fast Food’s Most Bizarre Ad Campaign

by Quinn from Twitter

When I picture my childhood, a few distinct memories come quickly to my mind. The unmatched happiness of birthday parties and sleepovers, running home from swimming lessons with my sisters on hot summer days, and the feeling of biting into a Yummy™ McDonalds™ Hamburger™ :)

As a child, there was no feeling comparable after days of begging and pleading with your parents to take you to McDonald’s of finally being gifted that delicious Happy Meal, gazing at the colorful walls all around you adorned with strange clown imagery, putting your shoes in the sneaker keeper, and racing to the very top of the McDonald’s Play Place and refusing to come down. 

But how did we get here? How did McDonald’s end up being this one-stop-shop children’s utopia? And who is the clown running this joint???

Boy oh boy, let me tell you…

It all started in 1940. The first ever McDonald's was opened in San Bernardino, California by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald. It was a modest hamburger stand with little on the menu other than burgers, fries, milkshakes, and various soda pops. In 1948, however, they were influenced by the growth of other modern fast-food chains like White Castle and expanded their business to be focused on quick-time service, opened up several new locations across the California Valley, and even implemented their first-ever mascot, a pot-bellied sentient hamburger named Speedee, yum! Only seven years later, the McDonald brothers hired on Ray Kroc as a business agent to their budding franchise, and not only did he have the name of a cartoon villain, but he also would go on to buy McDonald's out of the hands of the brothers that built it up and would be single-handedly responsible for the massive conglomerate that we now know today. 

In 1962, a year after Kroc’s full takeover of the McDonald’s enterprise, America was experiencing the Year of the Clown. All across the United States clown imagery was popping up all over the place. The Clown had become a symbol of many children’s advertising spots and was rising to popularity due to the creation of the character Bozo The Clown portrayed by Willard Scott who was given an animated TV show that began airing in 1958 and gained virality due to the surge in Saturday morning early cartoons.

Kids everywhere were loving this clown, and so when Ray Kroc was rebranding McDonald’s from head to toe not only did he implement the now iconic golden arches, but he also introduced the new face of the McDonald's Empire…Ronald. The original Ronald McDonald was portrayed by Willard Scott (of Bozo fame) and BOY did he look scary!

He was crudely painted and had a little soda cup for a nose and the saddest-looking red wig you’ve ever seen. Unsurprisingly, this version of Ronald didn't last very long and they soon changed his design to something more palatable and much more similar to the design we see today. 

After McDonald's was up and running with this new character design they started to see the real effect of running ads targeted at children. The demographic for McDonald’s Hamburgers seemed to change overnight as they were now appealing to a much wider audience. Kroc saw the success they were having with this new TV Personality and decided to run with it and up his game. Taking inspiration from shows like H.R. Pufnstuf (the creators of which would later sue McDonald’s for plagiarism) Willard Scott and Oscar Goldstein worked to develop the character of Ronald as well as build friends for him to adventure with and a world for them to play in.

That world was called McDonaldLand.

McDonaldLand was a whimsical set built to feel as if you took a McDonald’s restaurant and blew it up to be the size of the world. It had this undeniable charm to it as it took the greenery and nature aspects of the set and warped them to be fast food themed. You had tiny hamburgers with big googly eyes growing like flowers in the bushes, you had the fry kids, these mischievous pom-pom looking creatures running around with Ronald and skating up and down the streets of McDonaldLand in perpetual bliss, stealing french fries from wherever they could find them. And you of course had Grimace, the amorphous purple blob that was Ronald’s closest friend and confidant.

The advertisements McDonald’s were running at the time were quick 30 second spots that featured upbeat silly music and were often narrated over and involved short stories of all the troubles going on in McDonaldLand. The Hamburglar and Captain Crook (two of the world’s infamous baddies) always out to steal from Ronald once again, and always finding their plans foiled all in the last second. These ads worked wonders! Kids across America loved  Mcdonaldland and were hooked to their screens every day and were begging to adventure out to the golden arches. 

This TV success continued for the McDonald’s team until the aforementioned lawsuit in 1973, but after retiring some characters and paying upwards of $1,000,000 to Sid and Marty Kroft, they bounced right back and upped their game yet again. McDonald’s began releasing merchandise of all the most popular McDonaldLand characters including action figures, Happy Meal toys, and even a playset featuring all the highlights of the world!

But it still wasn't enough for the McDonald’s crew. They knew they could do more to appeal to the children of America so in 1971 they debuted the first ever McDonald’s Play Place. The Play Place was a sectioned off part of the Mcdonald’s restaurant with a dedicated McDonald’s themed playground. Each of the aspects of the Play equipment was themed around a different character of McDonaldLand which caused strange design choices to be made (ex. The Grimace cage). 

 

They continued running advertisements of McDonaldLand all throughout this time but the creators felt limited by their 30 second slots, they saw the potential in what they were creating and knew that they could do something huge for McDonald’s marketing. So in 1989 they released The Adventures of Ronald Mcdonald: McDonaldLand Treasure Island, a half hour long animated film, as well as various McDonald’s themed video games such as M.C.Kids and McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure. Whatever they could squeeze out of Ronald and his gang, you better believe they were doing it. 

In the late 90’s carrying into the 00’s in the height of their VHS animated series era, McDonald’s not only introduced a variety of new characters, but spiced up some of their old character designs as well. One of their new characters was Ronald McDonald’s pet dog Sundae. Sundae is a raging pessimist who speaks only in a monotone voice and is literally the most uncomfortable thing to look at.

They went on to launch a half live-action/half animated VHS series entitled The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald that featured the clown himself and all his friends getting into similar antics until eventually the buzz of the McDonald’s craze wound down and these strange characters were slowly phased out. But despite some of the arguably questionable choices made by the creators of McDonaldLand, I’m being sincere when I say that the world they created and the characters they designed brought genuine joy into my life. The world they made was bright and eccentric and the adventures they were showing me on screen really had me believing as a kid that I could so easily walk into my local McDonald’s and start adventuring right alongside them. I believe McDonaldLand was one of the craziest, wackiest, and all around most charming things to ever come out of the fast food world.

And don’t even get me STARTED on Mac and Me…