AKE! We sent Kris Hall on an Indiana Jones type quest to the find the Lost Realm of ‘McDonaldland.’ It wasn’t exactly the company’s clowning glory, but you’ll be loving reading about it...

The McDonalds crew - if you came name them all you are a lot cleverer, and possibly a lot fatter than your friendly neighbourhood caption writer...

Once he was universally adored by the crowds of people who turned up in great numbers wherever he was scheduled to appear. But, over the last two decades, a growing awareness began to develop that he might actually represent a danger to children’s health and well-being, and it has seen this once feted former ambassador increasingly side-lined as something of an embarrassment to the corporation he remains indelibly linked to. No, not Prince Andrew -I’m talking about a creepy clown with frozen pasty-white features and a haunted look in his glassy eyes, that ‘Merry Andrew’ known to the world as ‘Ronald McDonald’*

As bizarre as it may seem to anybody who grew up before the turn of the 21st Century, there is a generation of children living now who might struggle to pick Ronald McDonald out of a police line-up if he was standing alongside Pennywise, Krusty and Charlie Cairoli. The Hamburglar would be even less likely to be convicted. Mayor McCheese? Couldn’t get elected these days. And what of Captain Crook? Or the special sauce-cephalic, ‘Officer Big Mac’? Wherefore now art the moronic gurning grin of the Barbapapa-alike amorphous purple blob called ‘Grimace’? I suspect the attempt to recover memories of these characters might begin even to strain the amygdala of anyone born after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Don’t even get me started on more obscure figures such as ‘The Professor’, ‘The Fry-guys’, ‘The Hamburger Patch’ (where, like the bad trip of a malnourished acid casualty, talking hamburgers grew like strange fruit on tiny, stunted trees) or ‘Uncle O’ Grimacey’, Grimace’s Irish uncle, who would turn up annually for the St. Patrick’s Day appearance of McDonald’s minty green ‘Shamrock Shake’.

All these characters were the denizens of ‘McDonaldland’, a fantasy world created to further the company’s ambitions to expand on their success with the character of ‘Ronald McDonald’ by next creating an entire world for him to live in. Ronald first appeared in commercials on American TV in 1963 and had been an instant hit, becoming arguably the 2nd most recognisable fictional character in America (behind only Santa Claus).

McDonald’s restaurants in the 1960s had almost exclusively been based on a counter-service, take-away model with busy American workers the target demographic. Realising that marketing to families presented an opportunity to maximise sales further - especially if they could encourage them to consume food on-site - the owners started looking for ways to make McDonald’s more of an ‘experience’. The concept of ‘McDonaldland’, a make-believe world with a host of quirky characters, was the winning pitch of Chicago-based advertising agency, ‘Needham, Harper & Steers’. When it came time to film the commercials, Keith Reinhard, a NH&S creative executive explained:

The first ever UK McDonalds, which opened in Powis Street, Woolwich in 1974. At that time, a value meal would have set you back the princely sum of 48p. Back then ashtrays were laid out on every table and hamburgers were a mere 15p

McDonaldland in all its glory and early designs

‘In thinking of where this little society could live and operate, we came up with the concept of a gigantic set in which the McDonald’s food items were the chief elements and landmarks’.

Alongside the aforementioned ‘Hamburger Patch’, the fantasyland would comprise of areas such as ‘Filet ‘O Fish Lake’ (where the eponymous snack was rod-caught), ‘Apple-pie trees’, ‘French Fry Bushes’, and ‘Thick Shake Volcanoes’. Notable landmarks would include ‘The Golden Arches Bridge’, a track for the steam train that Ronald would use to carry around his giant milkshake machine and, naturally enough, McDonaldland would have its own McDonald’s restaurant. Each commercial took the form of a narrated short story that usually began with the words ‘One day in McDonaldland…’ before launching into a whimsical short story promoting a particular menu item. The regular gang of characters were often joined by occasional visitors such as ‘Birdie, the Early Bird’ (promoting the breakfast menu), ‘The McNugget Buddies’ and ‘The Trash Can Twins’ (‘Don’t forget to feed waste baskets!’).