has anyone who acted as Ronald McDonald ever hit the big times? And How many different McDonalds have there been? Every now and the there will be some new guy in the suit and he seems so much different from the last one. And where the hell is Grimace?
Weird…I live near a Ronald McDonald House, and I was wondering the exact same thing as I drove by it yesterday. Its seems that all those old characters arent even in advertisements for McDonalds anymore. Wheres the Hamburgler and Mayor McCheese?
Willard Scott was the first Ronald MacDonald.
Huh. I have to admit that sounded like an UL-but darned if it isn’t true!
“In his first TV appearance in 1963 the happy clown was portrayed by none other than Willard Scott.” (From McDonald’s official corporate history.)
IIRC, Bob McAllister of Wonderama fame (showing my age here) was a Ronald McDonald. Don’t know if that counts as big time.
Haj
Am I the only one that finds Ronald McDonald more than a little disturbing?
If true, it probably would’ve been a step backwards. McAllister took over Wonderama from Sonny Fox at WNEW in New York before MacDonald’s started the “Ronald McDonald” shtick bigtime. I don’t recall seeing Ronald Macdonald commercials anywhere near as early as 1963 – the MacDonald’s ads back then still featured that hamburger-headed monstrousity, and the TV commercials I recall still didn’t feature Ronald until the late 1960s-early 1970s. Remember “MacDonald’s is Your Kind of Place?”
You think today’s Ronald is disturbing? Ever see Willard’s version? That clown sure has changed over the years!
Ahhhhh! Rush of bad job memories. I used to work in the McDonaldland costume shop, renting out Birdie Suits and big fierglass burger heads, and teasing Ronald wigs until I was giddy with AquaNet.
Did any Ronalds make it big? That depends. There are two types of Ronald. There is the Ronald in the comercials (who I never got to meet) and the field Ronalds, a helluva lot of clowns, some of whom forever cemented my hatred of all things clownish.
TV Ronalds have included King Moody, circa about 60’s/70’s. He is/was a character actor on shows like Get Smart; and Squire Friedl (sp? I’m guessing). He was the Ronald when I worked there and worked before that as the guy who jumped up in the air and waved his arms in the Toyota commercials. He also wrote a book about how to get work in TV commercials. He should know. I don’t know who came after him as I got out of that Godforsaken hole and never looked back.
The burger heads and characters: Mayor McCheese, Officer Big Mac; Hamburgler, Grimace, Capt. Crook (later just “The Captain”, fish sandwiches) and Birdie(breakfast), where still around when I quit about 1987. But they had just redesigned Hamburgler (he used to look like a child molester IMHO) and were about to redo Grimace to make him goofier. Hamburgler, Grimace and Birdie are the only ones left because they represent the foods that kids eat. Once they came up with the Happy Meal, no kids were eating Big Macs, and who ever ate those fishwiches?
Was it on this site somewhere that I read about the court battle between Sid and Marty Kroft and McD’S? I think the Krofts did the prelininary designs and got ripped off. That’s why McDonald land looked like the neighboring country to HR Puffinstuff.
Thank you Sofa King! That’s the one. Now if only we could prove that Roanld copied Bozo…
I do remember the “McDonald’s is Your Kind of Place” Thanks. Now that jingle will be stuck in my head for the rest of the day.
Clearly my memory is faulty again. Now that I think about it, I think that he may have been a Bozo before Wonderama. I remember him talking about it during an interview quite a few years ago. Yeah, yeah, I know, think THEN post. I need to work on that.
Haj
Sing it, kids!
McDonald’s is your kind of place
Hamburgers in your face
French fries between your toes
Dill pickles up your nose
And then we have our special shakes
Made from polluted lakes
McDonald’s is your kind of place!
Sorry–I seem to be having flashbacks to the second grade.
[Ziegfried impersonation]
“This is KAOS, Shtarker! We don’t ‘AAH’ here!”
[/Ziegfried impersonation]
Moody, of course, played Shtarker (sp?). Bernie Kopell of The Love Boat played Ziegfried.
Kind of. Willard Scott was offered the opportunity to create Ronald because he was such a good Bozo in D.C. The original Ronald’s costume was made up of Mickey D.'s packaging, like the old foam burger boxes, and his shtick was pretty much Scott’s regular shtick.