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…