Remco McDonaldland Characters
This 1976 Toy Trade ad for Remco’s McDonaldland characters seems a little odd to me. While I was fond of the McDonald’s commercials and had many birthdays at my local franchise, I clearly remember not understanding why there were action figures. Well made action figures at that.
However, some folks on the forums have told me these figures are very happy memories of these and honestly, that play set is pretty funky cool.
More McDonalds Toys:
Did you know that Sid & Marty Krofft (creators of Pufnstuf, Bugaloos, Lidsville, and other kidvid) were first approached by McDonald's to develop this sort of thing, then backed out and went with this? The Kroffs, when the commercials hit the air, sued McDonald's over this… and they won! Which is why these characters ended up disappearing after a very short time.
Of all the weird junk that I had as a kid, including tons of fast food related merchandise, I'm amazed that I never had any of these.
For some reason I'm really curious to know what Grimace feels like.
The sleeping kid is a young Morgan Spurlock.
You can blame McDonalds for a lot of stuff but you have to congratulate them for Grimace. Who ever came up with him is a genius.
I still see these characters once in a while. It usually occurs right after eating too much of the goo they put into the Big Macs.
I had Ronald and Grimace.. Ronald (as well as some of the others) had a joystick on their backs that controlled head movement. I always wished other figs like Mego had this feature.
BTW, Grimace was like a tightly packed stuffed animal with hard plastic legs. Not as cuddly as you'd imagine, plasticfetish. 🙂
My sister had the Ronald doll. Like many of our 70's era toys it just disappeared one day. My mom swears she never throw anything away but it all mysteriously vanished.