what if i told you the creator of rugrats partnered with mcdonald's to make an animated show
about ronald mcdonald up until the past five years the mcdonald's corporation had put in a lot of
effort into the construction and development of the mcdonald's cinematic universe marketing the
world of mcdonaldland was essential to their fast food branding as was their iconic clown mascot
ronald mcdonald the fast food chain knew who they were marketing to as well putting further emphasis
on media that underdeveloped brains would attach themselves to this led to producing animated
content based off of ronald mcdonald and his gang of mcdonaldland friends in the 1980s but before
there was the wacky adventures of ronald mcdonald series there was ronald mcdonald and the adventure
machine released in 1987 and it was really only shown exclusively at mcdonald's birthday parties
sign me up in this eight minute short the mcdonald land gang use an adventure machine to travel to
the arctic old west jungle and a prehistoric island about three years later a stand-alone
animated special with a run time of 25 minutes was created titled the adventures of ronald mcdonald
mctreasure island that's a lot of nuggets this was more distributed than the first it was animated
by studio kurumi which also helped animate well-known ghibli movies like castle in the sky
and porco rosso in this we follow ronald and his friends as they sail the seas in search of
yeah you guessed it a treasure distributed on vhs by high tops video a spokesperson for
the company said it was made because it's a fun adventure story based on a great book which kids
can learn from but we also know it was definitely a more marketable way of spreading the concept of
mcdonald land to children as a marketing effort it was a somewhat cleverly disguised 25-minute
commercial if we're being perfectly honest this animated special must have performed
well because a few years later in 1998 the first episode of the wacky adventures of ronald mcdonald
was released let's dig into this happy meal oh a toy the wacky adventures of a ronald mcdonald
for the record i'm not having fun anymore
come on guys distributed on vhs tapes each 40-minute animated special was available for
purchase at participating mcdonald's locations from october 9 1998 to january 30 2003.
there were a total of six episodes that were released individually each one marketing the next
making a point to literally say hey kids remember how much fun you had watching all
these vhs well make sure you don't miss the next one if you thought that was fun
take a peek at some of the other adventures we have in store for you but the animation
studio is what is most remarkable about the series klasky supo supo chupo listen i know
i'm saying it wrong so just know that i know i'm saying it wrong but please feel
free to make fun of me in the comments but just know that i'm going to keep saying it's supo
but i know i'm wrong so we're on the same page which you may recognize from their work on very
well-known series like rugrats as well as the wild thornberries duckmen and many more klasky
super was founded in 1982 by arlene klasky and garber suppo in their los angeles apartment
since their company's creation they've produced shorts for sesame street music videos for bands
like the beastie boys and later expanded into tv shows that we all know and love today like
i just said the rugrats wild thornberries oh all real monsters but you can't you can't forget santo
bugito see i don't even remember this one and i'm the hey wait remember guy they even branched
out into live action for garbo supo's directorial debut in bridge to terabithia so why in the world
would a serious animation company work on such a commercial project well as it turns out klasky
suppo branched out from their television work and established a commercial branch in 1995. they also
worked on branding and commercials for coca-cola taco bell oscar meyer lunchables and craft their
statement on their website reads klasky supo is much more than a 21st century cartoon factory it
turned out to be a multimedia enterprise devoted to film tv video publishing and advertising this
was not a completely alien project for the company and judging off of the diverse amount
of work they've done in the past with music videos and commercials this really isn't all
that surprising but it is interesting why there is a striking resemblance to rugrats specifically
didn't you hear him no dessert after dinner the hamburglar is very clever and very sneaky
if you want something to smile about just say cheeseburger at mcdonald's
most people who look at this show can't help but make that comparison immediately there's obviously
artistic range in the work that klasky suppo puts out but they chose to stick to the specific style
for the show so why didn't they give this cartoon its own unique art style well we actually don't
know but we can speculate this could be because the animators wanted the art style to be similar
hence being easily recognizable for marketing purposes rugrats was an intensely popular show and
extremely distinguishable too another reason for this could be that the animation company was given
a lot of artistic control over how the characters would be stylized in this series comparing it to
the two other animated specials that came before it this one stands out as an artistic expression
as opposed to more traditional cookie cutter 2d animation i'm going to keep it a buck with you
could be completely honest here i kind of forgot a few times that this series serves as a gigantic
commercial for the mcdonald's corporation it's literally just propaganda to brainwash kids into
thinking that they can't live without their essential nutrients from mcnuggets every day
it's almost to the point where i would roll my eyes because come on how could i stand to watch
it but honestly i had fun with it because i was distracted by the heavily stylized and
recognizable character designs oh no their plan worked on me the creators also incorporated a
lot of the rugrats soundtrack into the episodes as well mark and bob mothersba the composers of
the music for rugrats were also brought in to work on this project so not only does it
look like the rugrats it sounds like it too we did be prepared that's the mcnugget model wait
you're telling me that these two were also part of devo you know with the the funny hats and the
whip it real good and if that's not enough voice actors for the series include christine kavanagh
as birdie a young chipper bird with pigtails and was originally introduced with the mcdonald's
breakfast menu but you may know her as her role as chucky finster there was kath soakey as one of the
fry kids and also known as the voice of phil lil and betty deville and charlie adler who voices the
infamous scheming hamburglar as well as ickis from ah real monsters and professor spooky in rugrats d
bradley baker voices sunday ronald's monotone talking dog and also voices fifi in rugrats oh and
kevin michael richardson the voice of grimace the giant airheaded purple taste bud he also voiced
martin luther king jr in an episode of the rugrats the only other main actors that didn't also appear
in the rugrats was the role of ronald mcdonald played by jake depkey in the first three episodes
and david hussey in the remaining three this is most likely because once someone signs on to
being ronald mcdonald they're in it for life the commercials the appearances the whole nine yards
other than ronald verne troyer is also credited as puppeteering sunday the dog in the live-action
segments that bookend the animated episodes the show further developed scenarios and themes that
were explored in the preliminary two animated specials starting off with a bang the first
episode of the series is a halloween special entitled scared silly in which the gang goes
camping but when they prove to be unprepared for the bad weather they're forced to take
shelter in an old abandoned mansion infamous for being and you're not gonna believe this haunted
from there we have an episode much like the second special where the gang travels to an island
in search of treasure but in this version they are actually recruited to help the grimace population
in exchange for some of their hidden treasure i hope it's more mcnuggets in the next episode the
gang must rescue the hamburglar from alien taurus after he agrees to go on vacation with them not
realizing that he would be gone for thousands of years despite hamlet despite hamburglar's attempts
to steal burgers the gang helps their friend who is a is a criminal but we're advertising him here
is is a character to sell burgers but he steals the bert should i go to mcdonald's and steal some
burgers mcdonald's that was a joke i am not going to steal any burgers the fourth episode is titled
birthday world where ham where hamburglar is tricked into giving ronald mcdonald and the rest
of the gang tickets to a fake amusement park where they are trapped and de-aged by a mad scientist
in episode 5 titled have time will travel they all travel to various locations with the help of
franklin's dad's time machine they explore the prehistoric past being swallowed by a dinosaur
meeting their neanderthal counterparts traveling further to the elizabethan era 1800s wild west
and then to a 1970s mcdonaldland disco party it seems like they just kind of reused that
other old idea that they used already but this one has a disco party in the final episode they
all travel to scotland where birdie befriends the loch ness monster and foil the exploitative
plan of the evil duo styles and also pip ronald mcdonald why didn't you say something
throughout the series there is a lot of down time where we are shown the straight absurdity
of ronald mcdonald's magic clown abilities defies the laws of gravity giving a giant middle
finger to all of physics and despite all of these inexplainable magical acts that ronald does to get
them out of impossible situations watching this series feels pretty surreal this could be because
we currently live in a time where mcdonaldland and the characters that live there feel like a distant
1990s early 2000s fever dream the use of ronald mcdonald ceased around 2015 2016ish when there
was a bit of controversy due to the infamous clown attacks of the time despite this the mcdonald's
corporation was already beginning to phase out the use of their mascots this could be due to
the natural evolution of their marketing but it's just a fact that kids of the newest generation
don't seem to appreciate clowns like kids did in the 1960s well at least some people on twitter
still appreciate clowns why do i even go on this website you know i'm just gonna say it i don't
know why clowns weren't always considered creepy in the first place some of the first commercials
depicted ronald mcdonald approaching kids outdoors and taking their hands leading them to mcdonald
land where burgers and nuggets grow naturally in the environment i mean that's that's absolutely
terrifying so they were already not using the mascot very often but they publicly decided
to retire ronald when the deadly clown attacks started to ramp up and without ronald the gang
doesn't really have a purpose either due to this i don't see a revival or reboot in the
future of this series happening anytime so does this mean we'll never see these characters again
absolutely not if there's anything mcdonald's is constantly trying to do it's marketing and vintage
or nostalgia based content is a great market with high demand well okay that was a drive by myself
it's very possible that these characters could return for a throwback campaign as an effort to
draw in more of a crowd with older demographics we may not get a reboot of this cartoon but we
could get re-edited footage or new media with the same characters whether it's a 15 second
commercial or a whole marketing effort like the bts meal or the fortnite burger or whatever as
long as the mcdonald's corporation is alive so is the mcdonald's cinematic universe so you tell me
who is the real mcu good old reliable capitalism but what about you guys did i just resurface any
forgotten memories watching this show sure did for me let me know down in the comments what you
thought about the wacky adventures of ronald mcdonald and thank you so much for watching
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