# McDonald's Olympic ads **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 22, 2004, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-olympic-ads/260999 "2004-08-22T19:39:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Lamar\_Mundane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lamar\_Mundane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamar_Mundane)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2004, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-olympic-ads/260999/1 "2004-08-22T19:39:37Z")
The ones for chicken strips that show people “defending their chicken” from imaginary food thieves… Am I the only one that is getting the mental picture that these people are typical SDMB members? That is the first thing that jumped into my mind when I saw the one with the guy in the office lunchroom, and then I saw the one with the girl in her house, and I was convinced. Is it just me? ---
**Author:** ![NinjaChick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71c47a/32.png) [@NinjaChick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinjaChick)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2004, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-olympic-ads/260999/2 "2004-08-22T20:18:39Z")
Those commercials make me irrationallly angry. I hate those people, for some reason. ---
**Author:** ![Snooooopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2004, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-olympic-ads/260999/3 "2004-08-22T20:30:18Z")
But those aren’t the Olympic ads so much as they are ads running when the Olympics happen to be going on. McDonald’s Olympic ads feature – and there may be others – Ronald McDonald executing a platform dive. ---
**Author:** ![audiobottle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc8723/32.png) [@audiobottle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/audiobottle)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2004, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-olympic-ads/260999/4 "2004-08-22T20:45:10Z")
I, too, wish to destroy something beautiful when I see those ads. Although I do like the other ones that have Ronald McDonald doing the synchronized swimming. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2004, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-olympic-ads/260999/5 "2004-08-22T21:33:05Z")
I admit, I chuckled at the weightlifter who dropped his weight through the floor and onto the poor guy’s car. ---
**Author:** ![Only\_Mostly\_Dead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/f19dbf/32.png) [@Only\_Mostly\_Dead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Only_Mostly_Dead)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2004, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-olympic-ads/260999/6 "2004-08-22T22:38:37Z")
> [@NinjaChick](#): > > Those commercials make me irrationallly angry. I hate those people, for some reason. I don’t think the anger is irrational at all. I find it a perfectly sane response to want to bound and gag all of them. …then feed their chicken nuggets to a dog. If the dog then gets the taste for chicken grease and goes for the helpless idiots, so be it. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2004, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-olympic-ads/260999/7 "2004-08-22T22:58:29Z")
I am quite firmly convinced that McDonald’s in engaged in a decades-long sociological experiment to find out just how bad they can make their ads before the world rises up in a spontaneous violent effort to get rid of them once and for all. They’ve experimented with “incredibly annoying” for a long time now, culiminating with those awful “I’m lovin’ it” ads, and now they’ve moved into a whole new phase of the experiment - the “completely irrational and incomprehensible” ads. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2004, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-olympic-ads/260999/8 "2004-08-22T23:03:34Z")
Of all of McDonalds’ Olympic ads, by far the most wretched (to my mind) is the one talking about “the first great Olympic feat,” by which they meant pregnancy and childbirth. Are they telling pregnant women to eat at McDonalds so that their baby will get addicted to Big Macs _while it’s still in the womb?!_ ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2004, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-olympic-ads/260999/9 "2004-08-22T23:04:50Z")
> [@rjung](#): > > I admit, I chuckled at the weightlifter who dropped his weight through the floor and onto the poor guy’s car. That was a pretty decent commercial, precisely because it **wasn’t** a McDonald’s ad. (It was an insurance ad of some sort.) ---
**Author:** ![Wile\_E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c37758/32.png) [@Wile\_E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wile_E)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2004, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-olympic-ads/260999/10 "2004-08-23T00:10:01Z")
When I see those commercials I picture the people in the commercial as actually being in the common room at a psychiatric hospital. Then it makes more sense. McDonald’s New Chicken Selects; you don’t have to be crazy to enjoy them, but it helps. The ones with Ronald doing Olympic sports annoy me too (with the exception of the synchronized swimming one). When he’s diving the announces yell out “that was a flawless dive!”. But it had many flaws, his legs weren’t vertical on entry and he made a huge splash, a very flawed drive. Okay, maybe I’ve watched too much Olympics. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2004, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-olympic-ads/260999/11 "2004-08-23T00:25:48Z")
The guy is a clown. A typified symbolic circus clown. I think all his Olympic events should be funny, silly, comedic - clown-like, for pete’s sake. But there isn’t a sliver of humour expressed in any one of them. It boggles the mind! ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2004, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-olympic-ads/260999/12 "2004-08-23T00:52:53Z")
> [@NinjaChick](#): > > Those commercials make me irrationallly angry. I hate those people, for some reason. Funny…that’s the same reaction I have to some of the people here! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2004, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-olympic-ads/260999/13 "2004-08-23T13:54:47Z")
The ads say to me that eating Chicken Strips will turn you into a paranoid psychotic lunatic. Who operates the company copier while eating fried food, thus getting greasy fingerprints all over the glass. These ads also serve to remind me why I don’t ever, ever eat at McDonalds. ---
**Author:** ![down\_by\_law](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/65b543/32.png) [@down\_by\_law](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/down_by_law)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2004, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-olympic-ads/260999/14 "2004-08-23T14:03:17Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Funny…that’s the same reaction I have to some of the people here! 😃 did you notice in those ads no one actually wants those damn “chicken selects”? it’s just a commercial with borderline sociopaths yelling out threats to imaginary chicken thiefs. also, if these are the “selects”, where does that leave the “nuggets”? didn’t they upgrade to 100% actual chicken-like parts just recently? mcdonalds is the worst. there’s no way they’ll ever get an adult customer base. the food sucks worse than burger king. at least a whopper has a taste to go along with those 547 fat grams. i don’t know why mcdonalds abandoned the youth-centric advertising of the 80’s. when i was little that’s the only place i ever wanted to eat. i’m sure it was all because of ronald, grimace, the hamburgler, and the fry guys. i really can’t remember EATING there, just running around in the playground. ---
**Author:** ![Lamar\_Mundane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lamar\_Mundane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamar_Mundane)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2004, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-olympic-ads/260999/15 "2004-08-23T14:18:31Z")
> [@down by law](#): > > it’s just a commercial with borderline sociopaths yelling out threats to imaginary chicken thiefs. I think that is why it reminds me of the people here. 🙂 A little geeky, overly dramatic, and way too eager to indulge their fantasies. ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2004, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-olympic-ads/260999/16 "2004-08-23T14:39:53Z")
> [@Lamar Mundane](#): > > A little geeky, overly dramatic, and way too eager to indulge their fantasies. You say that like it’s a bad thing… :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2004, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-olympic-ads/260999/17 "2004-08-23T17:07:11Z")
The chicken ads are really annoying. I think that what’s worse than the imaginary thieves is the blatent name dropping. I could buy someone saying “Stay away from my lunch”, or even “I know you’re after my French Fries”. I can even buy someone saying so to an empty break room. But when it’s “Don’t you even try to steal my Chicken Selects[sup]TM[/sup]”, it’s just incredibly unnatural. On the other hand, I think the Ronald McDonald ads are incredibly funny. The humor doesn’t come from him getting tangled up in the throwing hammer chain, or hitting himself in the groin in a gymnastics routine, or anything that you’d expect. The humor is in the juxtaposition of a red-and-white faced clown with size 30 shoes doing these events competently. There’s an absurd quality to them that I like. ---
**Author:** ![audiobottle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc8723/32.png) [@audiobottle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/audiobottle)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2004, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-olympic-ads/260999/18 "2004-08-23T20:06:38Z")
> [@](#): > > The humor doesn’t come from him getting tangled up in the throwing hammer chain, or hitting himself in the groin in a gymnastics routine, or anything that you’d expect. - **Chronos** Ahh… the simple beauty of a clown, his groin, and a boffed gymnastics routine on the pommel horse. ---
**Author:** ![Mirror\_Image\_egamI\_rorriM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e56c9b/32.png) [@Mirror\_Image\_egamI\_rorriM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mirror_Image_egamI_rorriM)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2004, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-olympic-ads/260999/19 "2004-08-23T20:39:23Z")
You know, I’ve had those Chicken Selects, and they aren’t worth protecting. In fact, I would happily give them away. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2004, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-olympic-ads/260999/20 "2004-08-24T06:38:58Z")
> [@tracer](#): > > That was a pretty decent commercial, precisely because it **wasn’t** a McDonald’s ad. (It was an insurance ad of some sort.) :smack: