Super-seize me

Willard Scott as the first Ronald McDonald

In Japan, Ronald McDon­ald is known as Don­ald McDon­ald. Name and other vari­a­tions aside, he’s prob­a­bly the most famous clown on the planet.

While doing research (yeah right) on a job we were doing, we came across sev­eral bits of trivia which were quite funny. Like the time in 1996 when a tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial was shot and for some rea­son the actor play­ing the clown lost it (who wouldn’t?) and threw a plate at the direc­tor, who had prob­a­bly earned the actor’s ire by call­ing him Bozo or something.

In response, the direc­tor attacked a life-sized cut out of Ronald McDon­ald, think­ing it was the actor.

Life-sized stat­ues of the clown have always been tar­gets of pranksters, and at uni, freshies were always tasked to ‘kid­nap’ Ronald from the neigh­bour­hood McDon­alds and placed in var­i­ous other loca­tions, the most pop­u­lar of which was the taxi stand out­side cam­pus. It was fun watch­ing cabs slow down, think­ing a big haired man in baggy clothes was flag­ging down a ride. This hap­pened so often (but the cabs still stop) we never recalled the Mac­cers’ staff call­ing the cops, because Ronald was always returned to his right­ful res­i­dence after Ori­en­ta­tion Week.

Appar­ently, after the Super-Size Me con­tro­versy, the com­pany has decided to revamp its mar­ket­ing, and Ronald’s friends The Ham­bur­glar, Gri­mace and Birdie are going to be killed off as they elim­i­nate mar­ket­ing at chil­dren under 12. Ronald him­self will be made an ambas­sador for healthy liv­ing, and was recently named “Chief Hap­pi­ness Offi­cer”, which is prob­a­bly what the Japan­ese had in mind with their campaign:

You’ll want to eat her burger

Tech­no­rati Tags: McDon­alds, TVC, Ronald McDon­ald, Super-Size Me