Why These 8 McDonaldland Characters Disappeared

McDonaldland was a fantastical world created by the McDonald's Corporation to entertain kids and sell more products. A hit in the 1970s, McDonaldland introduced the world to a number of characters — some of which we still have today — like Grimace, the Hamburgler, and the McNugget Buddies. Though McDonaldland was a figment of corporate imagination, they weaved a strange and beautiful world, inspired by the psychedelic '60s, through a series of televised ads from 1971 to around 2003.

The successful McDonaldland characters became a staple of McDonald's marketing, transforming from their fictional television home and manifesting into real-world print ads, action figures, and slightly terrifying live appearances. Ronald McDonald, their leader and main character in McDonaldland, led the rest of the gang through 60-second-long adventures that usually resulted in them sharing a table at McDonalds. While Ronald is still around today, most of his friends aren't so lucky. We dove into some strange facts about the McDonaldland characters of yesteryear and why they disappeared. 

Mayor McCheese hit the small screen in the early 1970s and was often seen with Big Mac, a policeman. Both characters were pretty average humanoid characters, except they had large cheeseburgers for heads, topped by comically tiny top hats.

Controversy came to McDonaldland in 1973, two years after its premiere, when it was hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit. McDonald's is no stranger to controversy, but they were not prepared for this one. Sid and Marty Krofft, two brothers who ran a production company of the same name, sued the McDonald Corporation and their consultants Needham, Harper & Steers, Inc. The brothers claimed that many of the characters from McDonaldland were too similar to Sid and Marty Krofft's television series "H.R. Pufnstuf." Most apparent was the appearance of Mayor McCheese, who proved in court to be a direct imitation of the titular H.R. Pufnstuf. PufnStuf was also a mayor of his fictional land and wore a blue cummerbund similar to McCheese's blue sash. 

After a years-long battle, the United States Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Sid and Marty Krofft, claiming "it is clear to us that defendants' works are substantially similar to plaintiffs," (per Public Resource.org). As a result, in 1977, McDonald's had to rethink some of its McDonaldland characters. Shortly after, Mayor McCheese hung up his contraband top hat and disappeared from McDonaldland forever. 

Grimace's 52nd birthday took America by storm in 2023, when collectively, as a nation, we fell in love with the furry(?) purple monster all over again. Originally, Grimace was one of the first villains in televised McDonaldland ads. Aptly named Evil Grimace, Ronald McDonald's enemy had an insatiable thirst for shakes and sodas. 

The Evil Grimace debuted in November 1971, sporting two sets of arms and seemingly fewer brain cells. Despite Evil Grimace's four arms and a massive purple body, he was wholly unsuccessful in his attempts to steal shakes from the law-abiding residents of McDonaldland. By 1973, though, Evil Grimace had disappeared and was replaced with the fun-loving, two-armed Grimace we know today. Grimace's transformation is also largely due partly to the H.R. Pufnstuf lawsuit that began in 1973. The suit doesn't point to Grimace by name but notes similarities in characters, including a "multi-armed evil creature" (per Public Resource.org).

Grimace remained after McDonaldland pared down its cast of characters in the 1980s. He appeared in various ad campaigns in the following years and was even used to advertise the Happy Meal up to 2003. Then, for unknown reasons, Grimace disappeared from McDonald's marketing in 2012 after an appearance at a Dodger's game in Los Angeles. It wasn't until the 2020 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade that he popped back up again, just a year and a half before his big birthday. Perhaps his disappearance was all a ploy to bring him back in style for his big bash.

Captain Crook was another original villain in the early '70s McDonaldland universe. He was armed with a makeshift wooden sword and a fancy pirate outfit complete with tasseled shoulder pads. Unfortunately, he was a clear rip-off of Disney's Captain Hook from the 1953 Peter Pan movie, but this fictional pirate had an unrelatable hankering for filet-o-fish. 

Captain Crook — or The Captain as he later became known — worked around the clock to steal filet-o-fish from the residents of McDonaldland, which is not one of the best McDonald's hacks you should know about. In the many real-world McDonald's, though, Captain Crook predated the McDonald's Happy Meal with his "Sea Bag," a value meal marketed towards kids that included a filet-o-fish sandwich, fries, and cookies. Still true to this day, a filet-o-fish sandwich isn't exactly the most appealing McDonald's menu item for a child, and Captain Crook's meal deal was eventually lost at sea.

The fate of the TV character Captain Crook was soon to follow. In the 1980s, Captain Crook got the hook when McDonaldland was downsizing its population. In a world marketed towards kids, Captain Crook most likely just wasn't rocking the boat enough. He and his fabulous outfit sailed off into the sunset, never to be seen again. 

The Hamburglar was one of McDonaldland's few characters left standing after the great eviction of 1977 due to the H.R. Pufnstuf lawsuit. In the original series, The Hamburglar was originally called Lone Jogger – a Lone Ranger reference that was outdated even in the early '70s. He was one of Ronald's main nemeses, stealing hamburgers and speaking unintelligibly in several episodes. Over the years, The Hamburglar underwent several cosmetic changes, becoming younger and less menacing. By the early 2000s, he was all but forgotten when McDonald's began phasing out their McDonaldland characters in lieu of a new, 21st-century marketing campaign. 

In 2015, though, The Hamburglar made a triumphant (and brief) return. To breathe new life into its now mid-40s character, McDonald's decided to show a different side of the devilish Hamburglar. For the first time, The Hamburglar was portrayed in live-action form by a mysterious and hunky man. The masked bandit, dressed in a black trench coat and red Nike Flysteppers, was coined a DILF by the internet. The move wasn't loved by everyone, though, and ultimately, the hot Hamburglar hung up his fedora after just one appearance.

The Hamburglar went into hiding again for eight years, until one fateful afternoon in April 2023. To promote "small but tasty improvements" (per McDonald's ) to their line of burgers, McDonald's once again reintroduced the old-school Hamburglar, marking his first cartoonish appearance in over twenty years. Hopefully, by now, he's learned how to order the only freshly cooked burger available at McDonald's. 

It wasn't until 1980 that Birdie the Early Bird was bussed into McDonaldland to promote McDonald's new breakfast products. She made her debut the year before in print ads for other items on the McDonald's breakfast menu — like their flapjacks — but was not featured in all her televised glory until the start of the new decade. 

A 1986 commercial tells the story of Birdie, the Early Bird's arrival at McDonaldland, when she appeared as a large egg that was hatched overnight by Ronald McDonald and his enemies-turned-friends like The Hamburglar and Grimace. Later that same year, Birdie came out of her shell even more when she got what can only be described as full-body surgery to become the Birdie we know and love today. She learned how to fly during a TV spot the following year and began promoting McDonald's breakfast foods as one of the most well-known members of Ronald's gang, but the restaurant has since stopped serving all-day breakfasts. 

Beginning in the early 2000s, Birdie and most of the other remaining McDonaldland characters started appearing in fewer and fewer television or print ads. Her final official appearance was in 2003. Over twenty years later, though, the time is ripe for a Birdiessance. After the success of Grimace's birthday in 2023, Birdie the Early Bird seems like a likely gimmick for the fast food corporation to pull out of their red and white striped sleeves.

McDonaldland had its very own in-house professor and inventor, one of the very first characters introduced in the 1970s. He originated as the Mad Professor, but lost his edge after just a few years and became known simply as The Professor, siding with good over evil and creating new contraptions to help the residents of McDonaldland eat more McDonald's. 

The Professor was mostly a minor character throughout Ronald's adventures in the '70s, but he hit his stride in the '80s. In 1983, the year that chicken nuggets revolutionized the McDonald's menu, The Professor introduced the iconic new product (which McDonald's didn't invent) through a commercial in his laboratory. That same year, he was honored to introduce the Chicken Nugget Buddies to the world. He is credited with creating the speaking, animated chicken nuggets in his lab. A true underrated breakthrough in GMO-food science. 

Maybe he went into retirement after his billion-dollar invention, or maybe The Professor went Mad again. Either way, besides two international video games in 1992, he was completely phased out of McDonald's advertisements shortly after McNuggets came to play in the mid-1980s.

Officer Big Mac was one of the original McDonaldland characters introduced in the 1970s. Armed with nothing but a Big Mac for a head, a whistle, and a badge with no identification number, he was the sole legitimate law enforcement agent in all of McDonaldland. Often biting off more than he can chew, Officer Big Mac called on the vigilante Ronald McDonald to help take down villains like The Hamburglar and The Evil Grimace. 

Power clearly went to his oversized hamburger head over the years, and soon, Officer Big Mac began jailing innocent children all over America. These Officer Big Mac jails were part of McDonald's PlayPlaces for a brief time. Now, they sometimes pop up for sale online, costing thousands of dollars, for people who are in the business of jailing their kids in the comfort of their backyards. 

The 1980s were a time of economic growth in America, but recession took hold of the fictional McDonaldland. Some secondary characters, like Officer Big Mac, were eventually phased out in 1985 to save costs. Now more than ever, though, would be a great time to introduce a new character to support the pleasantly surprising Chicken Big Mac. 

McDonald's first introduced its sundaes in 1978, featured in a commercial in which Ronald and the gang follow a map to discover the sweet new treat. Unlike many of its products, though, the McDonald's sundae didn't get a McDonaldland character persona until much later. 

Sundae the dog was a golden tan color with a bad orange wig resembling Sideshow Bob's from "The Simpsons." He appeared in the spin-off straight-to-VHS series "The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald" that began in 1998. Part puppet and part cartoon, Sundae was a talking dog and household pet of Ronald McDonald. It remains a mystery how Sundae had the gift of speech while other humanlike creatures roaming McDonaldland, such as The Hamburglar, spoke mostly in gibberish. But Sundae was much smarter than most of the residents of this new-age McDonaldland. 

Prone to go on half-hearted tirades about the existence of aliens, monsters, or McDonaldland's place in the universe, Sundae was an existentialist at best and a conspiracy theorist at worst. He often set up the scene for the titular wacky situations that the new-aged gang would get into. Sundae's only appearance in the McDonald's lore is in his six-episode arch that began in 1998 and ended in early 2003. Maybe the aliens came down and took him home.