weird McDonald’s commercials

You’ve probably seen the commercials with the Burger King King, right?  Well, for those of you who think he’s creepy (and he is), take a look at the first ever McDonald’s commercial, featuring Ronald McDonald.  He’s quite creepy here, in his original form.

Man, that was terrible!  He’s wearing his food, and his dancing is not cool / hip / trendy, even for back then.  Anyway, let’s move on.  I’ve found some other old McDonald’s commercials that you probably don’t remember.  (I know I don’t remember them all, because some were aired before I was born.)  BTW, this post may look long because of the video links, but the commercials aren’t very long, so hang in there.  This may be more amusing than you expect.

Here’s a McDonald’s commercial from 1971, featuring McDonaldland, which got shut down because of a lawsuit.  Poor Mayor McCheese, never to be seen again!

Did you notice Ronald’s afro?  It was the ’70s, I guess.  Was he wearing bell bottoms?  I’m not gonna watch it again to see, because that music gives me gas.

In this next video, Hamburglar has the Magic Touch to turn everything into cheeseburgers.  It’s definitely stupid, and you might want to watch it for nostalgia’s sake, but then you’ll realize it was really lame, and you’ll wonder why you ever thought the Hamburglar was cool, except that he had a cool name.

Plus, in that video, notice the Hamburlgar brought out a big plate of burgers, and they weren’t even wrapped.  Do you know why they weren’t wrapped?  Because he stole them!  That’s what he does!  He turned to a life of crime, to steal hamburgers from McDonalds.  But do Ronald and Grimace care?  Apparently not.  After all, he is sharing his stolen hamburgers with them.  Which would make Ronald McDonald a criminal, because he becomes an accomplice.  So he shouldn’t be selling products to kids!  Crazy stuff…

In this next video, we learn that Grimace is an evil criminal also.   His name is E. Grimace, and apparently the E is for Evil.  He stole all the cups from McDonalds, meaning kids can’t have cokes or triple-thick shakes.   So what does Ronald do?  He tricks (deceives / lies to) Grimace to distract him so they can steal the cups back and take them back to McDonalds for use.  Something just doesn’t seem right about that.  And speaking of what ain’t right, what kind of creature is Grimace?  He’s a blob with several arms / legs / appendages.  He’s kinda creepy in this video, and looks obnoxiously dumb.

This next commercial is a departure from the McDonaldland theme, where workers sing about how clean the “burger machine” is and how much fun it is to clean and scrub the floor.  Sorry, but this just isn’t realistic…  Of course, I did no research on such things back in 1970 (because I wasn’t born), but I doubt fast-food restaurants were ever that clean nor that workers actually enjoyed cleaning them.

Do you remember the McNuggets from 1985, and how they could talk and sing and bounce around and even play the drums?   If you do remember without watching the video, you should overwrite that wasted memory with something productive.  Anyway, this is lame.  And watch out for bad puns!

You might have noticed a pirate near the end.  That was Captain Crook (whose parents really pigeonholed him into a career with that name!).  He tried to steal Filet-O-Fish sandwiches while avoiding capture by Big Mac, the chief of police in McDonaldland.  I reckon the producers figured you could have different characters stealing different types of food.

Well, that concludes our journey into the history of McDonald’s commercials.  Did anybody learn anything?

Thank you, drive thru…

a fantastic name

A 19-year old British man has officially changed his name to “Captain Fantastic Faster Than Superman Spiderman Batman Wolverine The Hulk And The Flash Combined”.  His previous name was George Garratt.  He changed his name by deed poll, paying the required fee, so it’s now his real legal name.

That’s kinda cool, although I think I would choose something even better.  His name doesn’t really make sense.  I mean, it’s neat to use superhero names (although the potential for a huge lawsuit just increased), but I think he could’ve come up with something better.

BTW, his grandmother is no longer talking to him.  I reckon the elders would get upset when you refuse to carry on the family name.  I suppose that’s the price you have to pay to be weird / dorky / cool-to-a-few-people.  🙂

While reading up on this, I read of a girl born in Texas in 1984 who has the name of Rhoshandiatellyneshiaunneveshenk Koyaanisquatsiuth Williams.  Yes, that is her actual name.  I wonder how old she was before she could spell it or even pronounce it!

If you were going to change your name, what would you choose?

What happened to the ACORN investigation?

Remember the investigations about the ACORN group during the 2008 Presidential election?  Supposedly they were coercing people to vote for Obama instead of being non-partisan like they’re supposed to be.  And supposedly they were registering people to vote multiple times and also registering people who were already dead.  I haven’t heard anything about this investigation since Obama won the election.  I wonder why…

BTW, I heard that ACORN stands for “Association for Continual Obama Registration Now”.  That sounds about right…

the ultimate birthday cake

A lot of people are making birthday cakes with video game themes these days, but this one I’m about to show you really takes the cake.  (That was a really bad pun, wasn’t it?  Nonetheless, I refuse to apologize because some of you deserve it.   You know who you are.)   The design of this cake comes from the Nintendo Wii game Super Mario Galaxy (which is one of the best games ever, in case you didn’t know).  Not only is it cake, but it’s also animated.  There’s cake and Rice Krispy treats, but also electrical wiring, motors, MP3 players, a wooden frame, fiber optic lights, and so forth.  (Obviously it’s not all edible, at least for normal people.)

For starters, here’s a picture of it:

super-mario-galaxy-cake

But that picture is not a good representation of it.  At the creators’ homepage, you can see a lot more pictures of it, up close and from different angles.  (Just scroll past the text, unless you’re interested in that.)  But they also have a video of the cake in motion, as well as a few behind-the-scenes shots.  For your convenience, here’s the video:

I read the FAQ by the cake’s creators, and they’re not professional cake-makers.   In fact, they make just 2 cakes a year, or 3 if they volunteer one for a friend.  In the FAQ, someone asked them why they don’t start a cake business, because someone would pay a lot of money for that.  The creators said they don’t want to make it a business, though if someone offered them “a lot of money” they would build them a cake.  However, no one has ever offered them money for it.

The same people have made numerous cakes, with themes like Elmo, Halo, Wheel of Fortune, and so on.  That’s a lot of work for a birthday cake that gets destroyed rather quickly.   But, then again, there are sites that are talking about it (such as this one), so they are getting some publicity.  Maybe they feel famous.

I think it’s pretty safe to say I never got a birthday cake like that… but that’s okay, because I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and people like me.   I don’t need any fancy cake to tell me I’m special.