Oh man. You just took me waaaaay back to the internet of the early 2000s.
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I’ll second this. I liked him as a kid, too. Setting aside RM as a corporate symbol, folks who dress up as clowns are generally trying to be good folks and when I’ve seen him in costume it’s been in that spirit.
( quietly gets on a small soapbox )
I’m not going to spit bile at the “clowns are scary” meme that’s ascendent but I would point out that inverting childhood tropes of safety and celebration is the same low-hanging fruit as killer dolls and holiday massacres. When this starts impacting real folks - in this case kids - it ignites a distain similar to what I feel when I see killer nurses and haunted asylums. People need these things to feel safe, often at times when they’re pretty low. It’s not cool to take that away.
( descends from said soapbox )
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We need to go deeper (and weirder)
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Oh, are we going there? Very well, let’s go there.
It seemed to me that Ronald McDonald had already been largely dropped. Always struck me as a bit odd, even as a young’un.
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That didn’t take off, did it? I can just tell.
And Ronald loves kids too. Just sayin’
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I dunno. I’m boycotting Grimace until he distances himself from his old friend:
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I don’t if there is a deeper reason for it, but Ronald McDonald has never featured very prominently in McDonald’s advertising in Germany. He is on some of the children’s merchandise and packaging, but that’s it.
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As a kid I liked Ronald McDonald. For some reason I didn’t associate him with McDonalds food which I really didn’t like. He was just another clown, and clowns were funny to me. It wasn’t until Poltergeist that I thought clowns could be scary.
It’s nice to know there are other kids now who feel the same way. The scary clown has become a cheap and easy cliche when the history of clowns is complicated and interesting. To take just one example there was Emmet Kelly’s bravery in the Hartford circus fire.
ETA Since we’re also talking fast food mascots does anyone else feel Colonel Sanders has taken several disturbing turns lately?
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Somewhere Burger King smiles - the campaign had been a great success.
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They’re on a wacky and unexpected kick of replacing the Colonel every few months; I have to admit I really liked the Norm MacDonald Colonel. The newest Colonel is the “sexy hot” version, which is definitely disturbing.
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Thank you. It’s so overdone. Any hint of shock value is cliche now.
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In my book, the worst Ronald was the Klasky-Csupo animated version. Somehow he just comes off as a deranged harlequin.
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Special Sauce [shudder]
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Ronald —with his greasy, salt-covered costume — has always been creepy.
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With the crack-down on creepy clowns increasing, I guess that I need to dig out my old creepy rabbit stuff. (Trix, you’re next)
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http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/2011/06/bob_basset_-_fe.html
I guess I can’t wear my mask this year.
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The original McDonaldLand stuff was surprisingly dark. Grimace made his debut as ‘the evil Grimace,’ who wanted to eat children until Ronald convinced him to switch to hamburgers instead.
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I was just at the original McDonald’s in San Bernadino. It was pretty interesting.
