Ronald McDonald's greatest nemesis, The Hamburglar, was a fast-food icon…
so why did this cheeseburger-stealing villain suddenly disappear from McDonaldland? Let's
find out why this bamboozling burger bandit was ultimately relegated to the pop-culture dustbin.
"Good morning, class!"
"Good morning, Ronald!"
"Today's subject? The Hamburglar!"
In 1970, McDonald's hired an advertising company to come up with a super-groovy ad campaign that
would attract young customers. The ad execs ultimately pitched "McDonaldland," a magical
world populated with creatures that were absolutely obsessed with McDonald's food.
Suddenly, Ronald McDonald had a host of creepy new friends:
the shake-obsessed purple thing Grimace , the stately Mayor McCheese, and, of course,
the villainous Hamburglar. Honestly, doesn't this guy remind you of Jigsaw from the Saw movies?
"And sure enough, the crafty old Hamburglar went for it."
"Hamburgie!"
McDonaldland ads started airing in 1971,
and improbably enough, they were an instant hit. But as you can
see the original Hamburglar wasn't particularly appealing. No wonder he was revised in 1985 and
given red hair and smoother facial features to make him look more childlike and cartoonish.
"Touch? Cheeseburger! Oooh, touch! Ronald McCheeseBurger!"
Nope - still creepy.
In the early 1970s, the Hamburglar had another adversary named Officer Big Mac. The character,
who is now retired, had a giant hamburger for a head, much like Mayor McCheese.
And rest assured, the Hamburglar didn't always
work alone. Far from it. When the character debuted in the 1970s,
he also had a sinister and swashbuckling partner-in-crime named Captain Crook.
"We don't have any apple pies with us."
"Then find some - quick!"
Let it be known that Captain Crook could translate his sneaky friend's gibberish into English.
"Hamburglar, what are you doing in jail?"
"Bugga bugga cheeseburger."
"He says he captured himself to get the reward!"
Over the years, McDonald's kept tinkering with the Hamburglar's appearance. Meanwhile, Captain
Crook disappeared from the scene altogether after a full-fledged McDonaldland revamp in the 1980s.
In 2002, the Hamburglar made a rare appearance in a McDonald's commercial that wasn't specifically
tailored to kids. He popped up in an ad alongside tennis legends Serena and Venus
Williams to promote the chain's Dollar Menu offerings. As The Atlantic reports,
this was the last commercial to feature the Hamburglar mascot as we knew him. What a bummer.
The Hamburglar's unceremonious end may have reflected an overall downturn in
fortune for McDonald's. In 2002, the company's stock fell by 39 percent, and
the chain lost more than $435 million in value. McDonald's responded to the stock
tumble by closing numerous locations and cutting a large swath of jobs.
The next year, the fast-food chain set out to thoroughly rebrand itself
as an establishment that offered more sophisticated and refined fare.
In order to make that happen, something evidently had to give. Around the same time,
McDonald's conspicuously began downplaying its McDonaldland characters, including the Hamburglar.
“I don't know what you are."
"Rubble ramble ramble ramble."
"What you say about my momma?"
"Eh?"
"Hahaha."
By their very nature, ad campaigns tend to have a rather limited shelf life. After all,
companies certainly don't want to run the risk of their products seeming old-fashioned,
outdated, or woefully out of touch.
"The last fry!"
"Play you for it!"
"You better ketchup!"
"That was so funny I forgot to laugh!"
With that in mind, the Hamburglar had a good long life. He somehow managed to terrorize
our television screens and steal an ungodly amount of burgers for thirty solid-gold years.
But near the end of his illustrious career, he was starting to seem rather old hat,
particularly since it could be argued that he was dressed to somewhat resemble
The Lone Ranger, a radio and TV show that was popular with kids back in the 1950s.
As Time magazine reports, a generation of viewers that came of age in the early 2000s
may have just found the character to be straight-up creepy, which... of course he was.
"Ronald, help us!"
"He's got a cheeseburger!"
"Got a train to catch! I'll head him off The Pass!"
By the 2010s, the Hamburglar was gone, but not forgotten.
In fact, the character eventually re-entered our lives, though in a freshly updated form.
When the Hamburglar reemerged in 2015, he was suddenly a tall,
handsome, stubbly gentleman who looked rather fetching in his Hamburglar-inspired threads:
There was the long trench coat, the striped shirt, the eye mask,
and the brimmed hat. So, what was this all about? As a McDonald's marketing exec told Mashable,
"We felt it was time to debut a new look for the Hamburglar after he's been out of
the public eye all these years. He's had some time to grow up a bit and has been
busy raising a family in the suburbs and his look has evolved over time."
Not only had the Hamburglar grown up,
but so had his tastes. McDonald's used the updated character as an attention-getting,
limited-time-only mascot in order to promote its adult-oriented Sirloin Third Pound Burger
in a series of online advertisements. And as of the making of this video,
that's the last we've seen of him. Nevertheless, we strongly suspect he'll come back into our lives
somewhere down the line… after all, who could ever get enough of that sweet little face?
" Why it's that crafty Hamburglar, stealing all of those delicious McDonald's hamburgers?"
"What do we do?"
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