December 26, 2024 • 47 mins
In the great pantheon of fast food mascots, one iconic figure stands separate from the rest: a crooning, crescent moon-faced musician named Mac Tonight. Originally part of an ambitious campaign to advertise McDonald's as a place for adults as well as kids, Mac experienced skyrocketing -- yet short-lived -- viral fame. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max dive into Mac's origin story to discover exactly what happened to this once-beloved, world famous Moon Man.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer,
the man, the myth, the legend, the mascot, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hello, I'm a Max like item. Yes, you are the
Big Max.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Do you come with a combo?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Though?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Only if you get the kids meal?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I mean, what are you happy?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Happy happy meal whatever?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I haven't eaten McDonald's Max edition.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
You're a human happy meal though, And I'm sorry I
called you when I said I hate when people call
me big man or big guy what ever?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Really big bug bugs me?
Speaker 4 (01:01):
So when I called you Big Max, it was just
a reference to Big Max the sandwich. It wasn't saying
that you're like some sort of stocky fellow.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
I have my old friend Chelsea. I would call her
oll there. I'm like, what a big I say big
guy people all the time. She's like, stop calling me
big guy. Was like, all right, big girl. That would
knock over well.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
And I should probably stop taking it personally because it's
probably not the way I'm here.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah, most people are kind of talking to themselves. When
they talk to folks. You know, I used to have
an issue with people calling me buddy because in the
United States, it's usually deployed in a condescending tone, which
is different, weirdly enough, from Bud. Bud is like a
respectful fist bump in a conversation. That that dulcin tone
(01:46):
you're hearing. By the way, ridiculous historians is none other
than mister Noel Brown because and they they have often
called me Ben Bullen. On this show. Today we are
exploring a story of ridiculous fast food history. It's just
(02:07):
before our cutoff, right, because historically, arbitrarily we determined history
cuts off with Max the superhero apartheid Gorilla. That's right,
what a guy, what a prime Indeed, and you know
Noel back. Not too too long ago, we explored the
(02:30):
mythology of McDonald's, of their their excellent work with mascots,
their yeah pantheon just so, and now we're looking at
with the help of our research associate Jeff Bartlett, we
are looking at a guy we didn't talk much about
(02:51):
in our two part episode on McDonald's and their mascots,
which by the way, featured Jonathan Strickland aka the quister.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Oh my gosh, how long ago is that?
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Well, he was, he was behaving for most of it.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
He was but a young quister.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Yes, yes, he was a quizzling uh with a Z,
not the not the very mean word. Do you know
the word quizzling?
Speaker 2 (03:15):
I don't think I did. S.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Quizzling with an s uh means a trader who collaborates
with the enemy.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Good. I mean, that's not too far off from from
the quist.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I mean it is kind of in his character's DNA. Well,
who is this missing character we're exploring tonight?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Noel, Oh tonight.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
Indeed, we would be tonight for this episode for sure,
because it is absolutely a nighttime character, a nighttime figure, uh,
a McDonald's mascot for the for the grown ups, you know,
whereas all the other ones, the Hamburglar, mayor mccheese, the
Grimace of that pantheon we previously mentioned, they're much more
geared towards children. But mac Tonight, which is an odd name,
(04:07):
it's like sort of like a concept more than a name,
was indeed a fictional McDonald's mascot character figure that was
featured in commercials running for a pretty brief window of time.
From nineteen eighty six to nineteen eighty nine. He was
a sort of a Sinatra esque fellow that wouldn't seem
out of place in a cigarette advertisement. I've always pictured
(04:30):
like he should have had, like a cigarette hanging from
his not moonshaped lips.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
His head was moonshaped, though, but his lips were normal.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Wearing sunglasses, often seen sitting at a piano. Bit of
a crooner, m hm yeah, yeah, sort of a mix
of Max's Headroom and Kinski from Night Breed if you
remember that adaptation of the Clive Barker novel.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah, Moon Moonface, I believe in the movie in any case.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Right, Yeah, he's he's a cool guy, tickling the keys,
tickling the ivory. And his whole thing is, first off,
he wears sunglasses at night, and secondly, he wants you
to know that he very much wants you to know
that McDonald's is a late night place. It's not just
(05:19):
for the kiddos at eleven am. It's also McDonald's after Doug.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
McDonald's for Danner, y'all mac tonight. Get it? See pretty smart?
I mean I totally understand it.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
Where sometimes companies get such a reputation for one thing
that they need to remind consumers. No, we're not just
for the kids. We're dangerous. Check out mac Tonight. Look
at this guy.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
He was even based on a song about murder most foul.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Yes, And as a fan of Bertil Breckt, this is
especially interesting to me. At least some people found the
guy charming, some people found him off.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Putting, some found him downright Brechtian right.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
And there are machinery, a theater joke, and there is
a mystery afoot. We are over the moon to show
you why, explore together how this character became so famous
and then rejected, and why mac Tonight is possibly not
(06:22):
coming back. But before we do that, we want to
talk about the very first mascot for McDonald's, which is
just a goofy guy. He's just lovable.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
He's a goofy guy.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
We're talking about Speedy McDonald, McDonald, the creepy clown, Hamburglar, Grimace,
you know, all the hits the pantheon we talked about.
We're not always the ambassadors of McDonald's that we know
them as today. Of course, this is out of the
side of the scope of this episode, but you know,
McDonald's was in fact created initially by people with the
(06:58):
name McDonald. Richard and Maurice McDonald introduced the concept of
fast food and were then bought out and screwed over
by ray E Krock, which you can see the story
of that portrayed in the excellent film The Founder starring
Michael Keaton as I guess the titular founder, although he
(07:18):
wasn't really the founder. In fact, the founders were Richard
and Maurice McDonald's.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
He was like the popularizer, that's right.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
He saw the vision that they already kind of had,
but he saw dollar signs and like he already you know,
was envisioning that. However, many billions served that you see
on the McDonald's golden arches sign.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
And the crazy uniformity with the sesame seeds and so on.
That's croc. I love that you're bringing this up. When
Richard and Maurice mac McDonald, when they introduce McDonald as
a concept, they also introduce what is called the Speedy
Service System spe DE, and they sort of anticipated the
(08:05):
rise of what we call fast food today. This system
asked customers to walk up to a window to get
their own food. You didn't sit at a table and
get a server to come to you.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
They got rid of the middleman more or less and
decided to serve the customers directly.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
You know, you'd pay it.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
I mean, I guess it evolved, but even today you
pay it one window, I mean, if you're doing the
drive through thing, and then you roll over to the
next one in the hand of your bag, hopefully in
a speedy fashion. But that speedy system came with a character,
a mascot of the same name, to kind of really
hit home the message and clarify exactly what they were
(08:47):
all about there at McDonald's, that speedy service life.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Yeah, they also shed a lot of choice in favor
of quick delivery. So McDonald's and like many other restaurants
at the time, they stripped down their menu just burgers, fries,
soft drinks, you know, and occasionally they would branch out
later to apple pies things like that. But the point
(09:12):
was you get in, you get your food as quickly
as possible. This was such a new idea that, as
you were saying, they had to have some sort of
friendly figure to explain this so it didn't sound like
a ted talk. And when they got the speedy service system.
They wanted to humanize it or anthropomorphize it, I should say,
(09:34):
with this guy who is who's he's always kind of
winking at you. He's a cook, but despite being a cook,
he has a bow tie, and he's got a hamburger
for a head, and despite being very quick conceptually, he
also has a pot belly because he's very well fed.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Right, yeah, he obviously pulls off little pieces of his
own head and eats it, which is an abomination if
you ask me.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
But it did, you know, kind of bring that message home.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
People did understand what Speedy was about and what the
Speedy service system was all about.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
And you know, he was more of an on site
kind of presence.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Than a anthromorphic cartoon or person wearing a suit that
would appear in television commercials. He was retired, you know,
entirely in nineteen sixty two, and before that time didn't
appear in a single commercial. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Yeah. Part of it was the fact that other companies
were making mascots. In particular, Alka Seltzer had a mascot
called Speedy spelled speed Y, So yeah, and confusion potentially,
right exactly. And if you go to folks like Alan
(10:47):
Hess researching for the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.
You'll see that you'll see something that Kroc and McDonald's
recognize pretty immediately. Folks were identify McDonald's with those Golden
arches which came out in nineteen sixty one. They were
(11:10):
thinking of that more so than they were thinking of
this weird ware Hamburger that wants to give you fries.
Very quickly, so as the story goes, they dropped this
mascot Speedy and they replaced him with an absolutely terrifying
guy named Ronald McDonald who wants to hang out with
(11:31):
children across the world and make them eat French fries.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
Yeah, exactly, it's a little weird, and actually it occurs
to me, I wonder how far ahead of John Wayne
Gacy Ronald McDonald was.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah, yeah, it's a point I brought up on stuff
they don't want you to know. In the past. The
colorophobia of the Western world can be traced, in my opinion,
to Gacy, to John WAYN. Gasey, the serial killer who
was also a part time clown. In other parts of
the world, clowns are still cool, totally.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Yeah, it does appear that Gaysey's crimes took place in
the throughout the seventies, and he didn't really come to lights,
you know, in a public way until nineteen seventy eight.
So this whole Ronald McDonald thing was already going strong
from the early sixties.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And they took an l on that one. Yeah, no
supersize there, because America learned to fear clowns and associate
them with very sinister things. Now, if we go to
mash dot com, we'll see that our pal Felix Bear
says there is one Speedy operating at its original location
(12:47):
as in one you know image or icon of this character.
It's in Monsey, Indiana. The Monthly Speedy still has vertical
neon lights between the bottom of the arch and at
the top the McDonald's logo.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
Yeah, and that's definitely something you'll also see with other
fast food brands like Rby's. For example, in Athens, Georgia,
there is a classic giant neon ARB's sign that hasn't
changed since you know, the original days of that franchise.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
And that's something that like certain brands.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
You know, think about they're like, oh, well, let's let
there be this kind of like a relic of the
past that we don't mess with.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
And here's why we're telling you about Speedy. It's not
an episode about Speedy himself. We wish him the best.
It is to illustrate fellow ridiculous historians that McDonald's as
a concept as an enterprise has no problem with abandoning mascots,
with moving on to the next thing. You know, let's
(13:46):
acknowledge obviously, Ronald McDonald. Please check out our two part
series on the pantheon of McDonald's characters. Mac Tonight shows
up and he is He is a shot out of
the blue, right, he might as well be from deep space.
That's a moon joke, thank you. The whole idea was
(14:10):
that there was this guy who's like late night cool
jazzy type singer, and he says, hey, McDonald's, it's not
just for daytime. You know your kids are asleep, you
need something to eat, come on down to McDonald's. He
does not appear in McDonald land because that's for kids.
He's too cool.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
Yeah, he's probably the one that distributed all the McDonald's
branded ashtrays.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
At all the locations. Remember that was the thing they
used to be.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
You can probably still find them for sale McDonald's ashtrays
and matchbooks and all of that stuff from when everyone
used to just smoke them if you got them in
McDonald's locations, including the Playplace I would imagine, which is
the ballpit and.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
All that good stuff.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
So yeah, I mean it was very much an attempt
to and they've done this other times, you know, without
like they had like the what was it? There was
an ad campaign that Jason Alexander participated in where it
was like some kind of like mic blt thing and
it was like it's.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
A grown up sandwich, you know, for grown ups.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
And then there was like the oh gosh, it was
just called like the Mac something or like it wasn't
the Big Mac. It was the Something Deluxe Arch Deluxe,
That's what it was. That was also marketed towards grown
ups with its potato bun and like all this kind
of faux gourmet trappings, and so this is something they
definitely continued to do after Mac Tonight. But yeah, you're
(15:39):
absolutely right, Ben, it was an attempt to let people
know that McDonald's was not just for breakfast and lunch
with the kiddos and happy meals. It was also for
a grown up dinner. Heck, cater your your dinner party
with McDonald's.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
If you want to propose, why not take her to
McDonald's after nine pm? Yeah, or she would mac Tonight
would sit at his piano in the clouds and he
would sing a song. And it's a song that we'll
play for you later. It's all about how awesome McDonald's
is at night. To the earlier point there, it is
(16:15):
a parody plagiarizing the melody of a previous song called
Mac the Knife, which at that point had been performed
by some of the most famous singers in the Western world,
Bobby Darren, Frank Sinatra. The mac Tonight version is way
less bloody, but it was purposely designed and deployed to
(16:39):
leverage baby boomer nostalgia of the nineteen fifties, and for
a time this was incredibly successful. Just for a reminder,
because I don't think we mentioned it earlier, this guy
mac Tonight was only in play seriously for like three
(16:59):
years nineteen eighty six to nineteen eighty nine. So there's
this advertising company that gets this pitch going with McDonald's.
They get a budget of half a million dollars, which
is huge money. And they say we're going to make
four commercials. Each one has Mac the crescent moon faced
(17:20):
guy front and center. He's playing his piano. He's singing
his new jingle, which is set to the tune of
Mac the Knife. We'd love to play one example for
you here, folks.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Oh we must when.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
The club starts half that six.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Term to hit fun go line, it's a good time.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
For the.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
Dinner.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
McDon come on back tonight.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Yeah, I get it. Same.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
Well, and you know, and the commercial that you found
ben it very clearly highlights salads and other things that
adults might enjoy.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
I have to jump in that. That's what jumped out
to me. That was the shittiest looking solid of ever.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Come on, McDonald's.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Actually at my mom always says they have great salads there,
mcdonaldsley here is a stated condition.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
But I looked at that thing.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
I'm like, oh god, that looks like it's been in
the fridge for three weeks.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
I mean, food picks in those days always looked kind
of awful.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
The technology just wasn't there.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
As someone who managed restaurants, it was one time task
to take food picks and then was after take after
he did the food picks. No longer task to take
food picks.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
There was most of the food food photography you see
is not the actual food. I got a friend of
the show and how stuff works back in the day.
Lizzie Johnston is a food photographer and learning all the
tricks of the trade is fascinating.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
Yeah, Oftentimes that shine comes from like being coded in,
like a clear nail polish, you know, ice cream. If
you see the perfect rolled you know, spheres of ice cream,
it's some sort of weird composite clay thing.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
That mixture may vary.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
There's tons of crazy tricks around that stuff and ways
to get things to look kind of preternaturally crisp and fresh.
But you don't want to eat any of that stuff.
You would probably die instantly.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Might be an episode history of food photography. Also, at
some point we might have to add a sound cube
because I keep pitching new episodes while we're recording. We
follow up on some of them. I think we got
a good track record, sort of like mac Tonight had
a good track record in their initial marketing campaign. It
was so successful that the boffins, the c suite, the
(20:02):
suits had McDonald said, let's roll this out across the country.
So they launched this nationwide campaign and they had the
mascot Mac Tonight uppear in Bocovertad in Florida. Can I
get some like a high level, high drama, fancy city music.
(20:30):
They were good Buco Ratal Flora. And it's kind of
a big deal. It's not as big as when the
Beatles performed on that rooftop. But uh, but you see
Mac Tonight performing performing on a rooftop, people go crazy.
But the big question is who created this crazy crooning
crescent cranium.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
Ooh I wrote that. Yeah, it's good, he said it.
Brad A Ball Real Days was responsible for this. He
really loved the melody of that song. He really loved
the potential for nostalgia mining. In nineteen eighty six, Mac
the Knife originally written by Kurt Viile and Berthold Brett
(21:12):
for the Three Penny Opera. Its original incarnation very different
from the kind of more hit parade version that made
a number one hit for Bobby Darren in nineteen fifty nine.
And there's something about this, you know, just screamed like
this is this is adult, this is you know, there's
something You're right, Ben it's that baby boomer kind of
(21:33):
nostalgia thing that just that kind of crooning, you know,
hepcat finger snap and melody really evokes. So he decided
to pitch one of his biggest clients, which was an
organization called the McDonald's Operators Association of Southern California.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Ye, that's kind of shady, right, which part McDonald's Operators
Association of Southern California sounds like it's close to McDonald's
but not McDonald's.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
That's true.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
But I also know that, like you know, McDonald's is
all about franchisees, right, So it seems like maybe this
was pitched as more of a regional thing that would
you know, be participated in by you know, folks in
this part of the country, in southern California. They thought
it would like hit better there because people are like
cooler or smarter or something or more adult, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
And by the way, Brad A.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
Ball was the president of the ad organization or the
ad agency Davis.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Johnson, Mogul and Colombato.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
Incorporated DJMC for short, which was a relatively speaking small
advertising agency there in La. His creative director, a guy
named Peter Kutrulis kind of took his homework assignment and
ran with it, listening to tons of different versions, which
there were many of this song, Mack the Knife by
(22:53):
folks arranging from Bobby Darren himself to Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra.
Liberachi even worked up a a version that was very,
very popular, and he of course knew that, you know,
it needed to have some MacDonald's centric lyrics, you know,
weird Al who was also pretty big at the time.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
So you got to wonder if, like there is something
about that and.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
His Waffle King's a banger? Have you ever Waffle King.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
At What's what's that parody of?
Speaker 4 (23:23):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (23:23):
It is a It is a guy called himself the
Waffle King who realizes that he is the god of waffles.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
So it's just a it's not a parody. It's just
like one of his original songs.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
Don't know the full context. He just has a weird
banger song. He definitely has those non parody weird al
versions that usually do not go, yeah, do not stick,
of course, not quite stick to the public consciousness the
way you know, fat or Eat It or any of.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
His other anthems go.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
But you know, he was hugely popular, and I can
only imagine that that maybe figured into we need to
do a great parody song in incorporating McDonald's messaging into
a song that the people of the generation we're trying
to attract will no doubt be intimately familiar with.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Yeah, because this is a war. They are in the
trenches of what will later be called the Burger Wars,
the fast escalating fast food fight to get into the
bellies of American consumers. This is where macdnight comes from.
And look, folks, you don't have to you don't have
(24:34):
to delve too deep to realize the nineteen eighties commercial
culture was weird.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
He got the voice of macdnighte by guy named Roger Bear.
Bear passed away unfortunately in twenty eighteen, but he's a
hugely talented actor. He did a lot of voice work.
He also side note, thanks to our pal Jeff, he
voiced two Transformers characters.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Is this in Transformers the motion picture or in the cartoon? Unclear?
Speaker 4 (25:04):
Okay, fair enough, I'm not familiar with these. These seem
like deep cut Transformers run about and run amok Are
they Okay?
Speaker 2 (25:12):
So I guess they're a package deal. They can't.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
They have to be like I love this part of
the story because we know and love here ridiculous history
the work of Doug Jones, who is just an.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Incredible physical actor.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
I mean, he has a background in mime in the
theater and has portrayed iconic kind of costumed characters, ranging
from the kind of creature from The Black Lagoon, Star
of the Shape of Water by Guillelmo del Toro. He
was the thin or is it the thin man in
(25:52):
Pans Labyrinth with the creepy hands and the eyes of
his palms. Absolutely, guy is the physical actor. He's not
the d mac tonight. You know, he was this this
this really was his first kind of breakout role that
led to what was to come for him, which included
like playing bit parts on shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
He is what returns.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
Batman returns exactly. That's another I think that's maybe his
first big screen performance. He plays like an acrobatic clown
in the Penguin's Crew in that film, but he gets
his kind of big shot portraying the physical embodiment of
adult McDonald's mac Tonight in this marketing campaign that as
(26:38):
you mentioned, Ben had a pretty hefty budget for the
time half a million bucks.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Yeah. And the the guys at DJMC, they choose Jones
because he is tall, and he is third and he
has legit bona fide experience with mymery, with the arts
of the mind. He's also very animated physically, which is
(27:04):
essential for this character. And like you were saying earlier,
Jones credits his stint as Mac Tonight doing these commercials
as paving his way to overall success as an actor
and entertainer. In twenty thirteen, he's talking to Collider and
he says, look, I played this Mac to Night character
in twenty seven commercials over just those three years. And
(27:29):
because of those twenty seven commercials, I got all these referrals.
People kept coming to me and offering me new, more expansive,
more substantive roles. We could also argue this nostalgia or
this gratitude is why Doug Jones came back in the
(27:49):
mid nineteen nineties to do two more Mac Tonight commercials
during a very short lived revival for the character reasons.
And it's it's weird because backstory, I don't think any
of this is on air, but on our other show
stuff they don't want you to know. We were about
(28:11):
to record. We talked a little bit about Max Headroom
and how influential Max Headroom was as a character, later
becoming a very strange and specific Playboy Centerfold parody. Mac
Tonight is inspired by Max Headroom.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
Well, it came up in our conversation that you're referencing, man,
how come you don't ever see sexy Max Headroom costumes
around Halloween time? Might be a little too much of
a deep cut, but you pointed out that surely it's
been done and definitely in the eighties when Max Headroom
was inescapable. He's kind of this like computer generated sort
of talk show host.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Like you said up kind, and of course he was.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
You can see him portrayed in Back to the Future
Part two when they go to that kind of like
nostalgia diner or whatever, when Marty McFly like gets punked
by those kids, one of which is played by a
very baby little Elijah Wood for having to use his
hands for playing a video game of the gun game
(29:13):
or he's used to impressing the heck out of people
with that, and these kids just roll their eyes, and
you know, so he doesn't have telepathy. I guess like
everyone in the future does. That never really gets addressed again.
It's always bugged me a little bit, like you have
to use your hands, Like what do you mean, Little
Elijah Wood. But Max Headroom was also of course used
in like a big old kind of early hecking kind
(29:34):
of scam.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Right right the Max Headroom incident, and you could check
out stuff they don't want you to know. For more
information on that, we think we may have solved the case.
Shout out to the actor portraying Max Headroom, a guy
named Matt Frewer. Max Headroom was computer generated, but still
in the early nineteen eighties, or the idea was that
(29:56):
he's an AI computer generated personality. They couldn't do that yet.
The technology just wasn't there for a lot of industries,
let alone a small LA based ad agency like DJMC.
And so the firm's executives were going back and forth
and they were saying, well, should we just use real people,
(30:19):
known human celebrities in the advertisements. Why not have mister
t be the face of McDonald's for instance. I'm just
pulling an eighties reference.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
I pity the fool who doesn't go to McDonald's for dinner.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
And ultimately they said, no, McDonald's needs to have its
own mascot. Let's look at original things. There was nothing
they thought more original than Max Headroom, and so someone
in that writer's room said, we need a Max Headroom
for McDonald's and they nailed it with Mac tonight. He
(30:55):
got so popular that he even got his own happy
meal and toys, which used to be much more difficult.
Now I feel like, if you're a celebrity of a
certain achelon, you automatically get a branded happy meal.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
Yeah, and this also makes me think of the relatively
recent kind of adult happy meal thing that McDonald's been
doing with the bigger box and the full sized sandwiches
and like the kind of more like adulty collectible toys.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
I got a few of those.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
They were doing these like what was it, like something cactus,
I can't remember, but they had these cool I'm a
dorky collector of like figures and like you know, super
plastic and stuff like that. And they had this whole
thing where they had these like very psychedelic, weird, kind
of more like hipster figurines of like different mcdonald'land figures,
and I bought a few of those for that. But
if you think about it, this mac Tonight happy meal
(31:43):
and toy thing, if you you know, look at what
their whole branding play was, was kind of the first
adult happy meal in a lot of weeks.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Yeah, I think that's an astute observation. Macdnight gave McDonald's
a crucial edge, a mission critical edge in the competition
of the burger wars. He was a moon size success
(32:12):
for his time. Shout out to our friends at Retroist
for putting it that way. During this halcyon short lived era,
mac Tonight had a higher recognition rate of mid consumers
than New Coke and spoilers, folks. New Coke was a
huge boondoggle. It was such a quagmire that there's an
(32:33):
entire conspiracy theory about it, and they poured so much money, poured,
they poured so much money into advertising it all for not.
With way less money, mac Tonight was way more successful.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
All for not.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
You could also argue that for the conspiracy theory of
New Coke, that they did it all so that they
could then sell the public Classic coke with of course,
has maintained that nostalgic play kind of ever since, because
as we know, nostalgia and cocaine are a hell of
drugs and I think both were at play in this
(33:10):
Mac Tonight's scheme. It just the eighties were the big
time with that big ideas, lots of ideas that maybe
you shouldn't have ever seen the light of day, but
executives really thought quite highly of themselves in these days.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Like who greenlit the song oh make it You're so Fine?
I don't know, but it's the video, the videos, the
music video will take you places.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Also a weird ol parody Ricky You're So Fine, A
minute about I Love Lucy.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
And as a result of Mac's overnight virality is amazing success.
The campaign, as we said, extends way beyond this regional
McDonald's operators deal, real life Mac Scott's. There we Go
(34:03):
in real life Max Scott's. They would perform at restaurant
locations across the United States and thousands of people would
go to see Mac Tonight.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
They would go.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Watch them do like do the song and I guess
do some bits. It was huge.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
I think they even rolled out some animatronic versions like
Chuck E Cheese, Rock of Fire Explosion band style and
they were so popular that even when they fell into disrepair,
I guess they didn't think about the long game here.
They just left them there as statues, which is kind
of creepy if you think about it.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Oh, one hundred percent. And also to your point about
the short lived mania of the nineteen eighties and cocaine,
it feels like built spending tons of money to make
animatronic sculptures and pieces and then just abandoning them instead
of fixing them. That feels very eighties to me.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
There are these McDonald's coffee stirrs that I have seen
come up in memes and things. Is about this very
topic that were apparently really really popular for folks to
use as coke spoons. Oh wow, because they're like it's
like this long thing with a McDonald's arch at one end.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
And just a tiny little spoon on the other end.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Oh no, I've never I'm not about that life.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
I've just seen it pop up on the internet more
than a few times over the years.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
That's wild. Also what's wild is the fact that this
is a show about ridiculous history. Mac Tonight is not around.
You go to your local McDonald's, you're probably not going
to see our favorite moonface boy, and it turns out
that we know why you're not going to see them. No,
(35:50):
we have to go back to that song, Mac the Knife.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
Yeah, I mentioned that it was about bloody murder at
the top of the show, which it is. I mean,
aint the got your bad bad Leroy Brown's of course
the baddest man the whole town, undred percent, and he
did some bad things, but didn't outright kill people in
the song as Mac the Knife, as evidenced by his name,
Uh definitely did.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Yeah. Yeah, these uh, these ad execs, they're caught by
the melody, the catchy tune of the song, not the lyrics.
So when they repurpose it Al Yankovic style, they make
it a PG rated thing. You know, it's all about
how it's Mac Tonight instead of Mac the Knife. And
they get confronted by the moral majority of the eighties
(36:40):
and they say, look, it's it's totally fine for us
to use the melody from this song. We're not touching
the lyrics. The kids aren't gonna know it. The baby
boomers just remember they liked hearing it on their transistor radios.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
Yeah, and you know in their minds too, I'm not
sure it's interesting because you know, if even if you
don't use the original recording of the song and you
don't use the lyrics, if you're using the melody and
it's exactly the same, you still have to pay publishing
rights for something like that. There are parody laws and
things like that, but a lot of that doesn't preclude
(37:16):
you from being sued. It just is a defense you
can use in court, like a fair use or whatever.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
Like when Fogerty got sued for sounding too much like himself.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
Like himself because you know, owned the masters or the
rights to the publishing of his actual catalog. And this
this comes into play. But first and foremost to that
moral majority point. They are calling into question the use
of the song, to which the McDonald's defenders, the folks
you know, doing corporate pr are saying, no, no, no,
(37:48):
it's it's just the melody. We were trying to go
for this nostalgia thing. It's a little hard to make
that argument when the name of the character Mac is
in Mac the Knife, Like, I just have a hard
time believing that that the guy that thought of this
and making these connections, you know, wasn't thinking about that
play on words as well. I mean, there's no question
(38:11):
that that went in, that figured into his thinking.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Oh, it's it's kind of to go dark with it.
It's kind of like if Victorious Secret had a new
evil clown model mascot and they said, no, there's Jane
Wayne Lacy. Has nothing to do with John Wayne Gacy.
You guys are making it weird.
Speaker 4 (38:32):
Ough gaslight the public, why don't you. So that was
one strike against the campaign. That was one strike against
the character. What brought it even further into problematic territory.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Was when the estate of the late great Bobby.
Speaker 4 (38:49):
Darren filed suit against McDonald's for exactly what I was
just describing, Like they're saying, no, this is the song
and the styles, because again, you know, the song is
old and the three penny operas from nineteen twenty eight.
So even by this point that music would have fallen
under fair EUSt I'm sorry, under public domain if I'm
(39:10):
not mistaken. So they weren't paying the estate of Bert
Hoolbrett and Kurt Vile. But the problem is the hit
came from Bobby Darren and his arrangement, and his arrangement
and his vocal stylings. All of which are completely mimicked
in this ad campaign.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Yeah, and so the Estate of Darren says, mac tonight,
whatever you guys are doing to sling your burgers, it's
too close to what Bobby was doing.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
You owe us.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Ten million US dollars in damage, right, and eventually the
estate drops the suit. But it's still a bad look,
you know what I mean. It's like walking into a
room after someone has just ripped afart. So it's a damper.
You know, it's not a good vibe for the character.
(39:58):
And this is part of why McDonald's overall capital M
capital D moves into the nineties without mac Tonight. He
made a few more appearances every so often. We talked
about that short lived revival commercial run. But now unfortunately
he has become more associated with far right hate groups
(40:24):
using him as a meme.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
That's right, I mean, think Pepe the Frog, you know.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
I mean a lot of this stuff comes from like
four Chan boards, and you know, it's hard to even
trace where these things begin because it's you know, it's
kind of that game of telephone we always talk about,
and so many of those boards are populated by completely
anonymous folks hiding behind their screen names, and you know,
these kind of like kind of alt right weird comics
end up circulating and then they end up taking a
(40:51):
meaning in a kind of far right leaning, pretty gnarly.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Group sub group on the Internet.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Yeah, exactly, that's what happened dis info asymmetrical meme warfare.
Forget the Burger Wars. Think about the the meme wars.
The info wars, not Alex. Not Alex's thing. So mac
Tonite did get revived for an ad campaign in Southeast
(41:20):
Asia in two thousand and seven, but we're probably not
going to see much of them in the US because
to your point, he inspired an internet spin off called
moon Man. This is one hundred percent Moonman is to
mac Tonight as mac Tonite is to Mack the Knife Like,
(41:43):
it's clearly coming from that place. And Max lookalike is
classified as a hate symbol by the ADL, the Anti
Defamation League, because it's associated with all these memes about
racism and homophobia and other nasty stuff, particularly because there
(42:03):
was a rapping version of the character that spread as
a meme online sometime around like twenty ten, and like
you said, Nola appeared on four Chan and the first
videos were harmless parodies, but they kept.
Speaker 4 (42:17):
An early texta speech thing too, right, like kind of
like that radiohead computer voice exactly.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Yeah, yeah, good point. And this character gets repurposed for
these increasingly depraved videos about white supremacy and you know,
anti semitism, anti Islam stuff, all all kinds of nasty things.
Speaker 4 (42:36):
It kind of makes sense if you just see why
they might have co opted this figure.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Nothing whiter than the moon, you know, sa geez.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
Yeah, well i'm you know, partially colorable. I thought it
was blue. Wait it changes colors depending on what time
of year.
Speaker 4 (42:53):
Yeah, And there's a certain kind of snark and pompousness
that goes along with just like a still shot of
this moon guy kind of grinning with his sunglasses.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
You know.
Speaker 4 (43:03):
I can just picture some right wing internet weirdo seeing
that and being like it's perfect.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
I've seen it from some of my previous research for
different shows, different episodes. We do have to note this
guy was falling down around twenty ten. He popped up
The Internet is se ephemeral shout out to Max, and
then mac Tonight was revitalized yet again, re revitalized by
(43:31):
the Old Rights in twenty fifteen, and this is what
prompted it was the proverbial fry on the camel's back.
This is what prompted McDonald's to pull the last of
all Mac Tonight themed decor from restaurants.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
And this is why nationally, I mean, even like it
was just Donzo, and.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
This is why you will still see a speedy maybe
out in Munsey, Indiana, but you're not going to see
Mac Tonight at a McDonald's new or you. And maybe
it was the right choice.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Maybe, I mean, it's just it is a bummer.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
I thought it was an interesting character, but the whole
story is so fascinating. What do I care about fast
food mascots? But you know, I think we're all fans
of just following these kind of ridiculous pop culture moments.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
And I wouldn't be surprised.
Speaker 4 (44:16):
Ben if, like that Mac the Tonight commercial that you found,
if there's some you know, McDonald's lawyers or whatever that
do their best to get that stuff stripped from the internet,
you know, because they just don't want to be associated
with it at all because of all the hate group stuff.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Oh good point, and I think we have been very fair.
But in case that does get scrubbed, well, we'll do
a punch in, but I think we're safe with that one.
It's freely available. We are compresting. Yeah, we're certainly not.
I don't think we're going to be fast food mascots.
I don't really eat fast food. I don't know what
mascot we would be for that. Would we be the
(44:53):
like the Sad Salad crew. I'll be the bag man,
you put the fries in me, I'll be the face.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
Then sounds good. Max, who you want to be? The
guy in the chair?
Speaker 1 (45:04):
We'll just call him the condition, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
That's that's the guy that's like behind the scenes doing
all the like hacking and computering and stuff.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
It just seems appropriate.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Works with me, great, all right, great, and we also
literally work with you. So thank you so much for
tuning in. Fellow ridiculous historians. We love these pop culture stories.
We love hearing more about it. If you are interested
in learning the full pantheon or the rise and fall
of the Pantheon, we should say of McDonald's, tune into
(45:33):
our two parter, wherein we do light spoiler reveal the
purported identity of Grimace aka what Grimace is supposed to
be big, big thanks to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Big big thanks to Alex Williams, who composed this slap
and bop and uh no, let's uh, let's crack on
the Quist for a bit.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
We earned it, I think so. I think that's right.
Damn you Quist. Dare we stand for?
Speaker 1 (46:02):
You're like a salad at McDonald's in an eighties commercial.
Speaker 4 (46:05):
I'm wilted and it's still a little shiny because I'm
covered in nail polish.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
We only listened to the song The Grinch because it
makes us think of you. Big big fakes to Christo
rasiotis Eve's Jeffcoat, a j Bahama's Jacobs?
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Who else? Who else?
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Who?
Speaker 4 (46:23):
Ell? Hey, the rude Dude's over at ridiculous crime with
Saren and Elizabeth and who else?
Speaker 2 (46:31):
Gabe Luesier check him out?
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Ah yes, Gabe Luesier and of course no super sized.
Thanks to you, my father.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
Thanks Buddy, I appreciate that, but see I said, but
we'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer,
the man, the myth, the legend, the mascot, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hello, I'm a Max like item. Yes, you are the
Big Max.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Do you come with a combo?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Though?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Only if you get the kids meal?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I mean, what are you happy?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Happy happy meal whatever?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I haven't eaten McDonald's Max edition.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
You're a human happy meal though, And I'm sorry I
called you when I said I hate when people call
me big man or big guy what ever?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Really big bug bugs me?
Speaker 4 (01:01):
So when I called you Big Max, it was just
a reference to Big Max the sandwich. It wasn't saying
that you're like some sort of stocky fellow.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
I have my old friend Chelsea. I would call her
oll there. I'm like, what a big I say big
guy people all the time. She's like, stop calling me
big guy. Was like, all right, big girl. That would
knock over well.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
And I should probably stop taking it personally because it's
probably not the way I'm here.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah, most people are kind of talking to themselves. When
they talk to folks. You know, I used to have
an issue with people calling me buddy because in the
United States, it's usually deployed in a condescending tone, which
is different, weirdly enough, from Bud. Bud is like a
respectful fist bump in a conversation. That that dulcin tone
(01:46):
you're hearing. By the way, ridiculous historians is none other
than mister Noel Brown because and they they have often
called me Ben Bullen. On this show. Today we are
exploring a story of ridiculous fast food history. It's just
(02:07):
before our cutoff, right, because historically, arbitrarily we determined history
cuts off with Max the superhero apartheid Gorilla. That's right,
what a guy, what a prime Indeed, and you know
Noel back. Not too too long ago, we explored the
(02:30):
mythology of McDonald's, of their their excellent work with mascots,
their yeah pantheon just so, and now we're looking at
with the help of our research associate Jeff Bartlett, we
are looking at a guy we didn't talk much about
(02:51):
in our two part episode on McDonald's and their mascots,
which by the way, featured Jonathan Strickland aka the quister.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Oh my gosh, how long ago is that?
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Well, he was, he was behaving for most of it.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
He was but a young quister.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Yes, yes, he was a quizzling uh with a Z,
not the not the very mean word. Do you know
the word quizzling?
Speaker 2 (03:15):
I don't think I did. S.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Quizzling with an s uh means a trader who collaborates
with the enemy.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Good. I mean, that's not too far off from from
the quist.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I mean it is kind of in his character's DNA. Well,
who is this missing character we're exploring tonight?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Noel, Oh tonight.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
Indeed, we would be tonight for this episode for sure,
because it is absolutely a nighttime character, a nighttime figure, uh,
a McDonald's mascot for the for the grown ups, you know,
whereas all the other ones, the Hamburglar, mayor mccheese, the
Grimace of that pantheon we previously mentioned, they're much more
geared towards children. But mac Tonight, which is an odd name,
(04:07):
it's like sort of like a concept more than a name,
was indeed a fictional McDonald's mascot character figure that was
featured in commercials running for a pretty brief window of time.
From nineteen eighty six to nineteen eighty nine. He was
a sort of a Sinatra esque fellow that wouldn't seem
out of place in a cigarette advertisement. I've always pictured
(04:30):
like he should have had, like a cigarette hanging from
his not moonshaped lips.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
His head was moonshaped, though, but his lips were normal.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Wearing sunglasses, often seen sitting at a piano. Bit of
a crooner, m hm yeah, yeah, sort of a mix
of Max's Headroom and Kinski from Night Breed if you
remember that adaptation of the Clive Barker novel.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah, Moon Moonface, I believe in the movie in any case.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Right, Yeah, he's he's a cool guy, tickling the keys,
tickling the ivory. And his whole thing is, first off,
he wears sunglasses at night, and secondly, he wants you
to know that he very much wants you to know
that McDonald's is a late night place. It's not just
(05:19):
for the kiddos at eleven am. It's also McDonald's after Doug.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
McDonald's for Danner, y'all mac tonight. Get it? See pretty smart?
I mean I totally understand it.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
Where sometimes companies get such a reputation for one thing
that they need to remind consumers. No, we're not just
for the kids. We're dangerous. Check out mac Tonight. Look
at this guy.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
He was even based on a song about murder most foul.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Yes, And as a fan of Bertil Breckt, this is
especially interesting to me. At least some people found the
guy charming, some people found him off.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Putting, some found him downright Brechtian right.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
And there are machinery, a theater joke, and there is
a mystery afoot. We are over the moon to show
you why, explore together how this character became so famous
and then rejected, and why mac Tonight is possibly not
(06:22):
coming back. But before we do that, we want to
talk about the very first mascot for McDonald's, which is
just a goofy guy. He's just lovable.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
He's a goofy guy.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
We're talking about Speedy McDonald, McDonald, the creepy clown, Hamburglar, Grimace,
you know, all the hits the pantheon we talked about.
We're not always the ambassadors of McDonald's that we know
them as today. Of course, this is out of the
side of the scope of this episode, but you know,
McDonald's was in fact created initially by people with the
(06:58):
name McDonald. Richard and Maurice McDonald introduced the concept of
fast food and were then bought out and screwed over
by ray E Krock, which you can see the story
of that portrayed in the excellent film The Founder starring
Michael Keaton as I guess the titular founder, although he
(07:18):
wasn't really the founder. In fact, the founders were Richard
and Maurice McDonald's.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
He was like the popularizer, that's right.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
He saw the vision that they already kind of had,
but he saw dollar signs and like he already you know,
was envisioning that. However, many billions served that you see
on the McDonald's golden arches sign.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
And the crazy uniformity with the sesame seeds and so on.
That's croc. I love that you're bringing this up. When
Richard and Maurice mac McDonald, when they introduce McDonald as
a concept, they also introduce what is called the Speedy
Service System spe DE, and they sort of anticipated the
(08:05):
rise of what we call fast food today. This system
asked customers to walk up to a window to get
their own food. You didn't sit at a table and
get a server to come to you.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
They got rid of the middleman more or less and
decided to serve the customers directly.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
You know, you'd pay it.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
I mean, I guess it evolved, but even today you
pay it one window, I mean, if you're doing the
drive through thing, and then you roll over to the
next one in the hand of your bag, hopefully in
a speedy fashion. But that speedy system came with a character,
a mascot of the same name, to kind of really
hit home the message and clarify exactly what they were
(08:47):
all about there at McDonald's, that speedy service life.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Yeah, they also shed a lot of choice in favor
of quick delivery. So McDonald's and like many other restaurants
at the time, they stripped down their menu just burgers, fries,
soft drinks, you know, and occasionally they would branch out
later to apple pies things like that. But the point
(09:12):
was you get in, you get your food as quickly
as possible. This was such a new idea that, as
you were saying, they had to have some sort of
friendly figure to explain this so it didn't sound like
a ted talk. And when they got the speedy service system.
They wanted to humanize it or anthropomorphize it, I should say,
(09:34):
with this guy who is who's he's always kind of
winking at you. He's a cook, but despite being a cook,
he has a bow tie, and he's got a hamburger
for a head, and despite being very quick conceptually, he
also has a pot belly because he's very well fed.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Right, yeah, he obviously pulls off little pieces of his
own head and eats it, which is an abomination if
you ask me.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
But it did, you know, kind of bring that message home.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
People did understand what Speedy was about and what the
Speedy service system was all about.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
And you know, he was more of an on site
kind of presence.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Than a anthromorphic cartoon or person wearing a suit that
would appear in television commercials. He was retired, you know,
entirely in nineteen sixty two, and before that time didn't
appear in a single commercial. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Yeah. Part of it was the fact that other companies
were making mascots. In particular, Alka Seltzer had a mascot
called Speedy spelled speed Y, So yeah, and confusion potentially,
right exactly. And if you go to folks like Alan
(10:47):
Hess researching for the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.
You'll see that you'll see something that Kroc and McDonald's
recognize pretty immediately. Folks were identify McDonald's with those Golden
arches which came out in nineteen sixty one. They were
(11:10):
thinking of that more so than they were thinking of
this weird ware Hamburger that wants to give you fries.
Very quickly, so as the story goes, they dropped this
mascot Speedy and they replaced him with an absolutely terrifying
guy named Ronald McDonald who wants to hang out with
(11:31):
children across the world and make them eat French fries.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
Yeah, exactly, it's a little weird, and actually it occurs
to me, I wonder how far ahead of John Wayne
Gacy Ronald McDonald was.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah, yeah, it's a point I brought up on stuff
they don't want you to know. In the past. The
colorophobia of the Western world can be traced, in my opinion,
to Gacy, to John WAYN. Gasey, the serial killer who
was also a part time clown. In other parts of
the world, clowns are still cool, totally.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Yeah, it does appear that Gaysey's crimes took place in
the throughout the seventies, and he didn't really come to lights,
you know, in a public way until nineteen seventy eight.
So this whole Ronald McDonald thing was already going strong
from the early sixties.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And they took an l on that one. Yeah, no
supersize there, because America learned to fear clowns and associate
them with very sinister things. Now, if we go to
mash dot com, we'll see that our pal Felix Bear
says there is one Speedy operating at its original location
(12:47):
as in one you know image or icon of this character.
It's in Monsey, Indiana. The Monthly Speedy still has vertical
neon lights between the bottom of the arch and at
the top the McDonald's logo.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
Yeah, and that's definitely something you'll also see with other
fast food brands like Rby's. For example, in Athens, Georgia,
there is a classic giant neon ARB's sign that hasn't
changed since you know, the original days of that franchise.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
And that's something that like certain brands.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
You know, think about they're like, oh, well, let's let
there be this kind of like a relic of the
past that we don't mess with.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
And here's why we're telling you about Speedy. It's not
an episode about Speedy himself. We wish him the best.
It is to illustrate fellow ridiculous historians that McDonald's as
a concept as an enterprise has no problem with abandoning mascots,
with moving on to the next thing. You know, let's
(13:46):
acknowledge obviously, Ronald McDonald. Please check out our two part
series on the pantheon of McDonald's characters. Mac Tonight shows
up and he is He is a shot out of
the blue, right, he might as well be from deep space.
That's a moon joke, thank you. The whole idea was
(14:10):
that there was this guy who's like late night cool
jazzy type singer, and he says, hey, McDonald's, it's not
just for daytime. You know your kids are asleep, you
need something to eat, come on down to McDonald's. He
does not appear in McDonald land because that's for kids.
He's too cool.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
Yeah, he's probably the one that distributed all the McDonald's
branded ashtrays.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
At all the locations. Remember that was the thing they
used to be.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
You can probably still find them for sale McDonald's ashtrays
and matchbooks and all of that stuff from when everyone
used to just smoke them if you got them in
McDonald's locations, including the Playplace I would imagine, which is
the ballpit and.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
All that good stuff.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
So yeah, I mean it was very much an attempt
to and they've done this other times, you know, without
like they had like the what was it? There was
an ad campaign that Jason Alexander participated in where it
was like some kind of like mic blt thing and
it was like it's.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
A grown up sandwich, you know, for grown ups.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
And then there was like the oh gosh, it was
just called like the Mac something or like it wasn't
the Big Mac. It was the Something Deluxe Arch Deluxe,
That's what it was. That was also marketed towards grown
ups with its potato bun and like all this kind
of faux gourmet trappings, and so this is something they
definitely continued to do after Mac Tonight. But yeah, you're
(15:39):
absolutely right, Ben, it was an attempt to let people
know that McDonald's was not just for breakfast and lunch
with the kiddos and happy meals. It was also for
a grown up dinner. Heck, cater your your dinner party
with McDonald's.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
If you want to propose, why not take her to
McDonald's after nine pm? Yeah, or she would mac Tonight
would sit at his piano in the clouds and he
would sing a song. And it's a song that we'll
play for you later. It's all about how awesome McDonald's
is at night. To the earlier point there, it is
(16:15):
a parody plagiarizing the melody of a previous song called
Mac the Knife, which at that point had been performed
by some of the most famous singers in the Western world,
Bobby Darren, Frank Sinatra. The mac Tonight version is way
less bloody, but it was purposely designed and deployed to
(16:39):
leverage baby boomer nostalgia of the nineteen fifties, and for
a time this was incredibly successful. Just for a reminder,
because I don't think we mentioned it earlier, this guy
mac Tonight was only in play seriously for like three
(16:59):
years nineteen eighty six to nineteen eighty nine. So there's
this advertising company that gets this pitch going with McDonald's.
They get a budget of half a million dollars, which
is huge money. And they say we're going to make
four commercials. Each one has Mac the crescent moon faced
(17:20):
guy front and center. He's playing his piano. He's singing
his new jingle, which is set to the tune of
Mac the Knife. We'd love to play one example for
you here, folks.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Oh we must when.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
The club starts half that six.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Term to hit fun go line, it's a good time.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
For the.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
Dinner.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
McDon come on back tonight.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Yeah, I get it. Same.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
Well, and you know, and the commercial that you found
ben it very clearly highlights salads and other things that
adults might enjoy.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
I have to jump in that. That's what jumped out
to me. That was the shittiest looking solid of ever.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Come on, McDonald's.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Actually at my mom always says they have great salads there,
mcdonaldsley here is a stated condition.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
But I looked at that thing.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
I'm like, oh god, that looks like it's been in
the fridge for three weeks.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
I mean, food picks in those days always looked kind
of awful.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
The technology just wasn't there.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
As someone who managed restaurants, it was one time task
to take food picks and then was after take after
he did the food picks. No longer task to take
food picks.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
There was most of the food food photography you see
is not the actual food. I got a friend of
the show and how stuff works back in the day.
Lizzie Johnston is a food photographer and learning all the
tricks of the trade is fascinating.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
Yeah, Oftentimes that shine comes from like being coded in,
like a clear nail polish, you know, ice cream. If
you see the perfect rolled you know, spheres of ice cream,
it's some sort of weird composite clay thing.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
That mixture may vary.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
There's tons of crazy tricks around that stuff and ways
to get things to look kind of preternaturally crisp and fresh.
But you don't want to eat any of that stuff.
You would probably die instantly.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Might be an episode history of food photography. Also, at
some point we might have to add a sound cube
because I keep pitching new episodes while we're recording. We
follow up on some of them. I think we got
a good track record, sort of like mac Tonight had
a good track record in their initial marketing campaign. It
was so successful that the boffins, the c suite, the
(20:02):
suits had McDonald said, let's roll this out across the country.
So they launched this nationwide campaign and they had the
mascot Mac Tonight uppear in Bocovertad in Florida. Can I
get some like a high level, high drama, fancy city music.
(20:30):
They were good Buco Ratal Flora. And it's kind of
a big deal. It's not as big as when the
Beatles performed on that rooftop. But uh, but you see
Mac Tonight performing performing on a rooftop, people go crazy.
But the big question is who created this crazy crooning
crescent cranium.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
Ooh I wrote that. Yeah, it's good, he said it.
Brad A Ball Real Days was responsible for this. He
really loved the melody of that song. He really loved
the potential for nostalgia mining. In nineteen eighty six, Mac
the Knife originally written by Kurt Viile and Berthold Brett
(21:12):
for the Three Penny Opera. Its original incarnation very different
from the kind of more hit parade version that made
a number one hit for Bobby Darren in nineteen fifty nine.
And there's something about this, you know, just screamed like
this is this is adult, this is you know, there's
something You're right, Ben it's that baby boomer kind of
(21:33):
nostalgia thing that just that kind of crooning, you know,
hepcat finger snap and melody really evokes. So he decided
to pitch one of his biggest clients, which was an
organization called the McDonald's Operators Association of Southern California.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Ye, that's kind of shady, right, which part McDonald's Operators
Association of Southern California sounds like it's close to McDonald's
but not McDonald's.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
That's true.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
But I also know that, like you know, McDonald's is
all about franchisees, right, So it seems like maybe this
was pitched as more of a regional thing that would
you know, be participated in by you know, folks in
this part of the country, in southern California. They thought
it would like hit better there because people are like
cooler or smarter or something or more adult, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
And by the way, Brad A.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
Ball was the president of the ad organization or the
ad agency Davis.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Johnson, Mogul and Colombato.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
Incorporated DJMC for short, which was a relatively speaking small
advertising agency there in La. His creative director, a guy
named Peter Kutrulis kind of took his homework assignment and
ran with it, listening to tons of different versions, which
there were many of this song, Mack the Knife by
(22:53):
folks arranging from Bobby Darren himself to Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra.
Liberachi even worked up a a version that was very,
very popular, and he of course knew that, you know,
it needed to have some MacDonald's centric lyrics, you know,
weird Al who was also pretty big at the time.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
So you got to wonder if, like there is something
about that and.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
His Waffle King's a banger? Have you ever Waffle King.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
At What's what's that parody of?
Speaker 4 (23:23):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (23:23):
It is a It is a guy called himself the
Waffle King who realizes that he is the god of waffles.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
So it's just a it's not a parody. It's just
like one of his original songs.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
Don't know the full context. He just has a weird
banger song. He definitely has those non parody weird al
versions that usually do not go, yeah, do not stick,
of course, not quite stick to the public consciousness the
way you know, fat or Eat It or any of.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
His other anthems go.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
But you know, he was hugely popular, and I can
only imagine that that maybe figured into we need to
do a great parody song in incorporating McDonald's messaging into
a song that the people of the generation we're trying
to attract will no doubt be intimately familiar with.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Yeah, because this is a war. They are in the
trenches of what will later be called the Burger Wars,
the fast escalating fast food fight to get into the
bellies of American consumers. This is where macdnight comes from.
And look, folks, you don't have to you don't have
(24:34):
to delve too deep to realize the nineteen eighties commercial
culture was weird.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
He got the voice of macdnighte by guy named Roger Bear.
Bear passed away unfortunately in twenty eighteen, but he's a
hugely talented actor. He did a lot of voice work.
He also side note, thanks to our pal Jeff, he
voiced two Transformers characters.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Is this in Transformers the motion picture or in the cartoon? Unclear?
Speaker 4 (25:04):
Okay, fair enough, I'm not familiar with these. These seem
like deep cut Transformers run about and run amok Are
they Okay?
Speaker 2 (25:12):
So I guess they're a package deal. They can't.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
They have to be like I love this part of
the story because we know and love here ridiculous history
the work of Doug Jones, who is just an.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Incredible physical actor.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
I mean, he has a background in mime in the
theater and has portrayed iconic kind of costumed characters, ranging
from the kind of creature from The Black Lagoon, Star
of the Shape of Water by Guillelmo del Toro. He
was the thin or is it the thin man in
(25:52):
Pans Labyrinth with the creepy hands and the eyes of
his palms. Absolutely, guy is the physical actor. He's not
the d mac tonight. You know, he was this this
this really was his first kind of breakout role that
led to what was to come for him, which included
like playing bit parts on shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
He is what returns.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
Batman returns exactly. That's another I think that's maybe his
first big screen performance. He plays like an acrobatic clown
in the Penguin's Crew in that film, but he gets
his kind of big shot portraying the physical embodiment of
adult McDonald's mac Tonight in this marketing campaign that as
(26:38):
you mentioned, Ben had a pretty hefty budget for the
time half a million bucks.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Yeah. And the the guys at DJMC, they choose Jones
because he is tall, and he is third and he
has legit bona fide experience with mymery, with the arts
of the mind. He's also very animated physically, which is
(27:04):
essential for this character. And like you were saying earlier,
Jones credits his stint as Mac Tonight doing these commercials
as paving his way to overall success as an actor
and entertainer. In twenty thirteen, he's talking to Collider and
he says, look, I played this Mac to Night character
in twenty seven commercials over just those three years. And
(27:29):
because of those twenty seven commercials, I got all these referrals.
People kept coming to me and offering me new, more expansive,
more substantive roles. We could also argue this nostalgia or
this gratitude is why Doug Jones came back in the
(27:49):
mid nineteen nineties to do two more Mac Tonight commercials
during a very short lived revival for the character reasons.
And it's it's weird because backstory, I don't think any
of this is on air, but on our other show
stuff they don't want you to know. We were about
(28:11):
to record. We talked a little bit about Max Headroom
and how influential Max Headroom was as a character, later
becoming a very strange and specific Playboy Centerfold parody. Mac
Tonight is inspired by Max Headroom.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
Well, it came up in our conversation that you're referencing, man,
how come you don't ever see sexy Max Headroom costumes
around Halloween time? Might be a little too much of
a deep cut, but you pointed out that surely it's
been done and definitely in the eighties when Max Headroom
was inescapable. He's kind of this like computer generated sort
of talk show host.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Like you said up kind, and of course he was.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
You can see him portrayed in Back to the Future
Part two when they go to that kind of like
nostalgia diner or whatever, when Marty McFly like gets punked
by those kids, one of which is played by a
very baby little Elijah Wood for having to use his
hands for playing a video game of the gun game
(29:13):
or he's used to impressing the heck out of people
with that, and these kids just roll their eyes, and
you know, so he doesn't have telepathy. I guess like
everyone in the future does. That never really gets addressed again.
It's always bugged me a little bit, like you have
to use your hands, Like what do you mean, Little
Elijah Wood. But Max Headroom was also of course used
in like a big old kind of early hecking kind
(29:34):
of scam.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Right right the Max Headroom incident, and you could check
out stuff they don't want you to know. For more
information on that, we think we may have solved the case.
Shout out to the actor portraying Max Headroom, a guy
named Matt Frewer. Max Headroom was computer generated, but still
in the early nineteen eighties, or the idea was that
(29:56):
he's an AI computer generated personality. They couldn't do that yet.
The technology just wasn't there for a lot of industries,
let alone a small LA based ad agency like DJMC.
And so the firm's executives were going back and forth
and they were saying, well, should we just use real people,
(30:19):
known human celebrities in the advertisements. Why not have mister
t be the face of McDonald's for instance. I'm just
pulling an eighties reference.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
I pity the fool who doesn't go to McDonald's for dinner.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
And ultimately they said, no, McDonald's needs to have its
own mascot. Let's look at original things. There was nothing
they thought more original than Max Headroom, and so someone
in that writer's room said, we need a Max Headroom
for McDonald's and they nailed it with Mac tonight. He
(30:55):
got so popular that he even got his own happy
meal and toys, which used to be much more difficult.
Now I feel like, if you're a celebrity of a
certain achelon, you automatically get a branded happy meal.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
Yeah, and this also makes me think of the relatively
recent kind of adult happy meal thing that McDonald's been
doing with the bigger box and the full sized sandwiches
and like the kind of more like adulty collectible toys.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
I got a few of those.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
They were doing these like what was it, like something cactus,
I can't remember, but they had these cool I'm a
dorky collector of like figures and like you know, super
plastic and stuff like that. And they had this whole
thing where they had these like very psychedelic, weird, kind
of more like hipster figurines of like different mcdonald'land figures,
and I bought a few of those for that. But
if you think about it, this mac Tonight happy meal
(31:43):
and toy thing, if you you know, look at what
their whole branding play was, was kind of the first
adult happy meal in a lot of weeks.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Yeah, I think that's an astute observation. Macdnight gave McDonald's
a crucial edge, a mission critical edge in the competition
of the burger wars. He was a moon size success
(32:12):
for his time. Shout out to our friends at Retroist
for putting it that way. During this halcyon short lived era,
mac Tonight had a higher recognition rate of mid consumers
than New Coke and spoilers, folks. New Coke was a
huge boondoggle. It was such a quagmire that there's an
(32:33):
entire conspiracy theory about it, and they poured so much money, poured,
they poured so much money into advertising it all for not.
With way less money, mac Tonight was way more successful.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
All for not.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
You could also argue that for the conspiracy theory of
New Coke, that they did it all so that they
could then sell the public Classic coke with of course,
has maintained that nostalgic play kind of ever since, because
as we know, nostalgia and cocaine are a hell of
drugs and I think both were at play in this
(33:10):
Mac Tonight's scheme. It just the eighties were the big
time with that big ideas, lots of ideas that maybe
you shouldn't have ever seen the light of day, but
executives really thought quite highly of themselves in these days.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Like who greenlit the song oh make it You're so Fine?
I don't know, but it's the video, the videos, the
music video will take you places.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Also a weird ol parody Ricky You're So Fine, A
minute about I Love Lucy.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
And as a result of Mac's overnight virality is amazing success.
The campaign, as we said, extends way beyond this regional
McDonald's operators deal, real life Mac Scott's. There we Go
(34:03):
in real life Max Scott's. They would perform at restaurant
locations across the United States and thousands of people would
go to see Mac Tonight.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
They would go.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Watch them do like do the song and I guess
do some bits. It was huge.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
I think they even rolled out some animatronic versions like
Chuck E Cheese, Rock of Fire Explosion band style and
they were so popular that even when they fell into disrepair,
I guess they didn't think about the long game here.
They just left them there as statues, which is kind
of creepy if you think about it.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Oh, one hundred percent. And also to your point about
the short lived mania of the nineteen eighties and cocaine,
it feels like built spending tons of money to make
animatronic sculptures and pieces and then just abandoning them instead
of fixing them. That feels very eighties to me.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
There are these McDonald's coffee stirrs that I have seen
come up in memes and things. Is about this very
topic that were apparently really really popular for folks to
use as coke spoons. Oh wow, because they're like it's
like this long thing with a McDonald's arch at one end.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
And just a tiny little spoon on the other end.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Oh no, I've never I'm not about that life.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
I've just seen it pop up on the internet more
than a few times over the years.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
That's wild. Also what's wild is the fact that this
is a show about ridiculous history. Mac Tonight is not around.
You go to your local McDonald's, you're probably not going
to see our favorite moonface boy, and it turns out
that we know why you're not going to see them. No,
(35:50):
we have to go back to that song, Mac the Knife.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
Yeah, I mentioned that it was about bloody murder at
the top of the show, which it is. I mean,
aint the got your bad bad Leroy Brown's of course
the baddest man the whole town, undred percent, and he
did some bad things, but didn't outright kill people in
the song as Mac the Knife, as evidenced by his name,
Uh definitely did.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Yeah. Yeah, these uh, these ad execs, they're caught by
the melody, the catchy tune of the song, not the lyrics.
So when they repurpose it Al Yankovic style, they make
it a PG rated thing. You know, it's all about
how it's Mac Tonight instead of Mac the Knife. And
they get confronted by the moral majority of the eighties
(36:40):
and they say, look, it's it's totally fine for us
to use the melody from this song. We're not touching
the lyrics. The kids aren't gonna know it. The baby
boomers just remember they liked hearing it on their transistor radios.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
Yeah, and you know in their minds too, I'm not
sure it's interesting because you know, if even if you
don't use the original recording of the song and you
don't use the lyrics, if you're using the melody and
it's exactly the same, you still have to pay publishing
rights for something like that. There are parody laws and
things like that, but a lot of that doesn't preclude
(37:16):
you from being sued. It just is a defense you
can use in court, like a fair use or whatever.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
Like when Fogerty got sued for sounding too much like himself.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
Like himself because you know, owned the masters or the
rights to the publishing of his actual catalog. And this
this comes into play. But first and foremost to that
moral majority point. They are calling into question the use
of the song, to which the McDonald's defenders, the folks
you know, doing corporate pr are saying, no, no, no,
(37:48):
it's it's just the melody. We were trying to go
for this nostalgia thing. It's a little hard to make
that argument when the name of the character Mac is
in Mac the Knife, Like, I just have a hard
time believing that that the guy that thought of this
and making these connections, you know, wasn't thinking about that
play on words as well. I mean, there's no question
(38:11):
that that went in, that figured into his thinking.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Oh, it's it's kind of to go dark with it.
It's kind of like if Victorious Secret had a new
evil clown model mascot and they said, no, there's Jane
Wayne Lacy. Has nothing to do with John Wayne Gacy.
You guys are making it weird.
Speaker 4 (38:32):
Ough gaslight the public, why don't you. So that was
one strike against the campaign. That was one strike against
the character. What brought it even further into problematic territory.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Was when the estate of the late great Bobby.
Speaker 4 (38:49):
Darren filed suit against McDonald's for exactly what I was
just describing, Like they're saying, no, this is the song
and the styles, because again, you know, the song is
old and the three penny operas from nineteen twenty eight.
So even by this point that music would have fallen
under fair EUSt I'm sorry, under public domain if I'm
(39:10):
not mistaken. So they weren't paying the estate of Bert
Hoolbrett and Kurt Vile. But the problem is the hit
came from Bobby Darren and his arrangement, and his arrangement
and his vocal stylings. All of which are completely mimicked
in this ad campaign.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Yeah, and so the Estate of Darren says, mac tonight,
whatever you guys are doing to sling your burgers, it's
too close to what Bobby was doing.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
You owe us.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Ten million US dollars in damage, right, and eventually the
estate drops the suit. But it's still a bad look,
you know what I mean. It's like walking into a
room after someone has just ripped afart. So it's a damper.
You know, it's not a good vibe for the character.
(39:58):
And this is part of why McDonald's overall capital M
capital D moves into the nineties without mac Tonight. He
made a few more appearances every so often. We talked
about that short lived revival commercial run. But now unfortunately
he has become more associated with far right hate groups
(40:24):
using him as a meme.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
That's right, I mean, think Pepe the Frog, you know.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
I mean a lot of this stuff comes from like
four Chan boards, and you know, it's hard to even
trace where these things begin because it's you know, it's
kind of that game of telephone we always talk about,
and so many of those boards are populated by completely
anonymous folks hiding behind their screen names, and you know,
these kind of like kind of alt right weird comics
end up circulating and then they end up taking a
(40:51):
meaning in a kind of far right leaning, pretty gnarly.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Group sub group on the Internet.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Yeah, exactly, that's what happened dis info asymmetrical meme warfare.
Forget the Burger Wars. Think about the the meme wars.
The info wars, not Alex. Not Alex's thing. So mac
Tonite did get revived for an ad campaign in Southeast
(41:20):
Asia in two thousand and seven, but we're probably not
going to see much of them in the US because
to your point, he inspired an internet spin off called
moon Man. This is one hundred percent Moonman is to
mac Tonight as mac Tonite is to Mack the Knife Like,
(41:43):
it's clearly coming from that place. And Max lookalike is
classified as a hate symbol by the ADL, the Anti
Defamation League, because it's associated with all these memes about
racism and homophobia and other nasty stuff, particularly because there
(42:03):
was a rapping version of the character that spread as
a meme online sometime around like twenty ten, and like
you said, Nola appeared on four Chan and the first
videos were harmless parodies, but they kept.
Speaker 4 (42:17):
An early texta speech thing too, right, like kind of
like that radiohead computer voice exactly.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Yeah, yeah, good point. And this character gets repurposed for
these increasingly depraved videos about white supremacy and you know,
anti semitism, anti Islam stuff, all all kinds of nasty things.
Speaker 4 (42:36):
It kind of makes sense if you just see why
they might have co opted this figure.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Nothing whiter than the moon, you know, sa geez.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
Yeah, well i'm you know, partially colorable. I thought it
was blue. Wait it changes colors depending on what time
of year.
Speaker 4 (42:53):
Yeah, And there's a certain kind of snark and pompousness
that goes along with just like a still shot of
this moon guy kind of grinning with his sunglasses.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
You know.
Speaker 4 (43:03):
I can just picture some right wing internet weirdo seeing
that and being like it's perfect.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
I've seen it from some of my previous research for
different shows, different episodes. We do have to note this
guy was falling down around twenty ten. He popped up
The Internet is se ephemeral shout out to Max, and
then mac Tonight was revitalized yet again, re revitalized by
(43:31):
the Old Rights in twenty fifteen, and this is what
prompted it was the proverbial fry on the camel's back.
This is what prompted McDonald's to pull the last of
all Mac Tonight themed decor from restaurants.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
And this is why nationally, I mean, even like it
was just Donzo, and.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
This is why you will still see a speedy maybe
out in Munsey, Indiana, but you're not going to see
Mac Tonight at a McDonald's new or you. And maybe
it was the right choice.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Maybe, I mean, it's just it is a bummer.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
I thought it was an interesting character, but the whole
story is so fascinating. What do I care about fast
food mascots? But you know, I think we're all fans
of just following these kind of ridiculous pop culture moments.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
And I wouldn't be surprised.
Speaker 4 (44:16):
Ben if, like that Mac the Tonight commercial that you found,
if there's some you know, McDonald's lawyers or whatever that
do their best to get that stuff stripped from the internet,
you know, because they just don't want to be associated
with it at all because of all the hate group stuff.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Oh good point, and I think we have been very fair.
But in case that does get scrubbed, well, we'll do
a punch in, but I think we're safe with that one.
It's freely available. We are compresting. Yeah, we're certainly not.
I don't think we're going to be fast food mascots.
I don't really eat fast food. I don't know what
mascot we would be for that. Would we be the
(44:53):
like the Sad Salad crew. I'll be the bag man,
you put the fries in me, I'll be the face.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
Then sounds good. Max, who you want to be? The
guy in the chair?
Speaker 1 (45:04):
We'll just call him the condition, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
That's that's the guy that's like behind the scenes doing
all the like hacking and computering and stuff.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
It just seems appropriate.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Works with me, great, all right, great, and we also
literally work with you. So thank you so much for
tuning in. Fellow ridiculous historians. We love these pop culture stories.
We love hearing more about it. If you are interested
in learning the full pantheon or the rise and fall
of the Pantheon, we should say of McDonald's, tune into
(45:33):
our two parter, wherein we do light spoiler reveal the
purported identity of Grimace aka what Grimace is supposed to
be big, big thanks to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Big big thanks to Alex Williams, who composed this slap
and bop and uh no, let's uh, let's crack on
the Quist for a bit.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
We earned it, I think so. I think that's right.
Damn you Quist. Dare we stand for?
Speaker 1 (46:02):
You're like a salad at McDonald's in an eighties commercial.
Speaker 4 (46:05):
I'm wilted and it's still a little shiny because I'm
covered in nail polish.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
We only listened to the song The Grinch because it
makes us think of you. Big big fakes to Christo
rasiotis Eve's Jeffcoat, a j Bahama's Jacobs?
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Who else? Who else?
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Who?
Speaker 4 (46:23):
Ell? Hey, the rude Dude's over at ridiculous crime with
Saren and Elizabeth and who else?
Speaker 2 (46:31):
Gabe Luesier check him out?
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Ah yes, Gabe Luesier and of course no super sized.
Thanks to you, my father.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
Thanks Buddy, I appreciate that, but see I said, but
we'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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Noel Brown
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