Originally published at: The rise and fall McDonaldland | Boing Boing
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Ronald McDonald = standard clown. No problem
Hamburglar = a thief who steals food. OK
Mayor McCheese-- a talking humanoid hamburger. OK. I guess.
Grimace = ??? corporeal manifestation of an ice cream headache, maybe?
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IIRC, originally Grimace was the Evil Grimace, who wanted to eat children until he was introduced to McDonalds’ shakes. He was eventually rebooted as something a bit less sinister.
Having so many of the characters be food items seemed like a bad sales strategy, so the little walking things of fries eventually went away. I thought there was a Big Mac character and a Filet-O-Fish character, too, but I don’t remember now. None of them hold a candle to Mr. Delicious.
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Didn’t watch the Yesterworld video, but as I recall, McD’s hired the Kroffts to develop some Pufnstuf-like characters for McDonaldland. McD’s ripped off those characters (like from the demo reel or whatever samples they were shown), not Pufnstuf per se.
As for the Krofft Supershow, IIRC all of Capt. Kool & the Kongs’ songs were written (if not performed by?) the Osmond Bros. (Also IIRC if the older Osmond Bros. had things their way, they’d have recorded more prog-rock.)
Somewhere out there (I haven’t looked) is the footage of the Krofft Puppets while they were on the Oral Roberts show (I think around the same time as when they were on Barbara Mandrell’s show).
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Big Mac was a cop which my marketing-saturated Gen X brain remembered, and the Captain which I hazily recalled but blocked.
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That’s quite a character arc right there.
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