Not Another D&D Podcast - Rot Topic - The Bizarre History of McDonaldland
Episode Date: March 13, 2026Welcome to Rot Topic, the show where we delve deep into the dumpsters of our mind and share our fascinating findings with the world! This week, Head Rotsearcher Emily Axford takes us on a tou...r of the french-fried fantasy realm known as "McDonaldland." WARNING: Spoilers for "The Founder" (2016) ABOUND.Images and videos referenced in the episode are linked below!First-Ever Appearance of Ronald McDonaldOriginal McDonaldland CommercialEvil Grimace CommercialGrimace Bounce & BendGrimace's Beautiful LipsMac Tonight CommercialCREDITSSound Mixing and Editing by Trevor LyonGet tickets to our Radio City and Sydney Opera House shows HERE!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
This is a headgum podcast.
Welcome to ROT topic.
Whoa.
Ew.
We're trying out something new.
Be on the lookout for Gangs of Neogal later on, our new campaign coming out on March 26th.
Next week we'll be doing dungeon court.
But we thought in the meantime we try something fun.
We've got a lot of dumb stuff that we talk about, particularly over at the mixed bag and short rest over on the Patreon.
There's a lot of like nostalgia.
fever dream.
Yeah.
If you know anything about us, we like to work way too hard on something very dumb.
Yeah.
So we've decided to do a little bit of a deep dive into McDonald's land since we've talked
about that.
The hamburger has leaked into the main...
Yes, that's right.
This is really related to me.
Yeah.
Because we've talked about VHS's at McDonald's.
Yes, we've talked about...
The Nugget Friends.
Yes, the Nugget Friends.
A lot of childhood memories of McDonald's and the characters of it, and then it
finally Nyack disguising himself as the hamburger.
I think it was kind of like the slow launch of the fact that we talk about a
watershed moment.
Yeah.
I would say a McDonald's Sunday shed moment.
Yeah.
McDonald's land has become a huge part of the NAD pod nightmare verse.
Certainly has.
Yeah.
And so we're going to try this out.
Maybe every once in a while do some rot topic where we come up with something
dumb that we've been talking about and do a little bit of a deep dive into it.
Something that's specifically rotting our brain.
Like the brain worms, this is how we expunge them is by talking about it in depth like this.
Right.
Like the hamburger has pretty interesting origins.
Yeah.
Emily went into that.
He's a misunderstood hero.
Well, actually, he's not.
He's not.
He was worse.
And then gets a baby face turn.
Like, he would not believe.
And then they try to make him hot in the 2015s.
We'll talk about that.
I think they succeeded.
Because Emily, you're going to be our head rot searcher for this episode.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I felt I felt the.
Hall of research.
Yeah.
Of research that I could never get a PhD on.
I watched a lot of stuff over M's shoulder.
Oh, yeah.
I just,
I know some of this stuff.
I remember the freaking McDonald's land playgrounds.
Yeah.
You already had your McDonald's master's.
Uh-huh.
And I really delved into it in the past day to the point where when I was putting
on my socks this morning, I was like, whoa, these socks are like grimace purple.
And then I was like, dear God, I'm going to burn these papers when I'm done with them.
Okay, so I thought we would kick it off just with a little history of McDonald's creation itself, because I thought it was a little interesting.
Spoilers for the founder.
Spoilers for the founder.
Huge spoilers.
Watch out.
Michael Keaton, get off our fucking ass.
Yeah, get off our ass, dude.
Spoilers to the founder, go ahead.
I fucking did this already.
Okay.
In 1940 brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald, aka Dick and Mac,
open a car hop drive-in barbecue stand in San Bernardino, California.
However, in 1948, they find out that the hamburgers are selling so well that they make a
limited menu and they simplify the menu, expedite the process so that they're just selling
hamburgers, cheeseburgers, coffee, potato chips, soft drinks, ice cream, and apple pie.
Fuck yeah.
Yeah, man.
God, take me back.
In 1952, they moved their burger joint into a new building, which features for the
first time two 25 foot yellow sheet metal arches trimmed in gold known as the golden arches.
You got to get those custom made. Spoilers for the founder. If you see them, they are like,
they don't spell an M. They're like on both sides. They almost look like little handle. Right,
like the gateway to heaven. Whoa. That's probably what was based on it. The pearly gates. Yeah.
I think so. Spoilers for the founder, I guess. Spoilers for the founder, yeah. Well, they also create a
roadside sign featuring their very first mascot. Speedy.
A chef with a human body
And a huge hamburger head
Yeah, I will say speedy
Yeah
Speedy looks a lot like Mr. Met
Is he really?
Is he kind of the proto Merrimack cheese
In some ways?
In some ways
He's like, so Merrimic Cheese
Is also a rip off of something else
Is a ripoff?
We'll learn.
There's lawsuits galore.
Age something puff and stuff?
Oh yeah, Sid Marty Croft,
HR puff and stuff.
Yeah, HR puff and stuff.
There you go.
Each something puff and stuff
The fuck am I talking about?
But he, speedy is like a bun turns like vertically.
And Mayor McShe's is like just a straight up burger.
Yeah.
Bun turned vertically?
Yeah, it's just like everything's going to fall out.
Oh, oh, I thought it was like, and to the side.
Oh, to the side.
He's like a thin head.
That looks like genital.
No, yeah.
His mouth like talks like vertically.
Oh, yeah.
I guess you know what I'm thinking of.
George.
That's what I'm thinking of.
Georgia O'Beefe, go on
Georgia O'Beefe, that's good.
Oh, that would have been good.
Wow, that's good.
We can do our own faster thing.
That should have been McDonald's mascot.
Where is Georgia O'Beefe in McDonald's land?
Show me that suggestive vaginal burger.
Spoilers for the founder they wish.
Spoilers for the founder.
Right, yeah.
There's the scene where Keaton is just rejecting that.
And that's, and then like 20 years later they flash forward and he's like,
fucking shit a gombed with Georgia O'Beefe.
Well, the reason that I highlight Speedy is because not only is the first mascot, but also he's a nod.
to their kind of cynical business model, in my opinion.
Oh, yeah.
Because they implement a number of techniques to encourage eaters to eat more quickly,
including but not limited to reducing heating in the dining area, placing seats far enough
apart to reduce socialization.
Great.
And using cone-shaped cups so customers have to hold their drinks while eating.
Fucking brilliant.
Okay, so is this- Get it, man, get around.
Are these the original McDonald's brothers doing this?
Yeah.
Okay.
So they're kind of jerks too.
Yeah.
Because there's a lot of...
Efficiency King.
Yeah, okay.
Because there's a narrative of...
I think everyone in this story
is probably just bad.
Right, right.
The narrative is like,
oh, these humble burger guys
got taken advantage of it.
Eat our shit!
Get the fuck out!
No, you can't be war!
You get burgers and you fucking walk!
It's like something from like a rolled doll book.
It's just like,
ah, we'll make the cup's cone
so they can't put him down.
It's fucking Matilda's dad shit.
I do.
Honestly, I love a cone cup.
There's something so great about.
Do you just love holding something and not having two hands to eat?
No, dude, that's terrible.
A cone cup?
It's been so nostalgic for me.
Yeah, for water.
Yeah, right.
On the tennis court when I was like 10 years old.
Whoa.
Pulling it out of the iglo sleeve.
Oh, yeah.
That's so funny because I associate a cone cup with like the doctor's office.
Oh, wow.
That's a negative association.
I think that's really interesting.
Yeah, it is an office building accessory.
Yeah.
I was thinking about getting one for my office.
Oh.
They brought that office couture to McDonald's.
I would be so mad if someone handed me a cone cup at a restaurant.
I know.
Yeah, a restaurant with burgers and fries.
But even, yeah, even at McDonald's, if you just had to hold your drink.
Wait, wait, because they had milk shakes there too, right?
Like, or maybe not at this point.
At this point, they didn't have milk chicks.
So the ice cream and that apple pie.
Okay.
Was the founder right?
It's Roycroft great.
Was that his name, Roycroft?
Roycroft, yeah.
So in 1953, they start franchising.
And what their franchising is not just like their food recipe.
It's this operation.
It's this like efficiency model.
Right.
It's these cone cups that no one can put down.
How uncomfortable can people be while eating and still enjoy themselves?
The hamburger is not the only villain in this story.
The other villains are everyone.
The seat is also like cone.
Because like now I feel like people can like build algorithms or like they have like models they
can use to test this stuff.
But back then they're just like, we're just going to make all of our clients uncomfortable.
I just noticed that everyone leaves quicker when they have a cone.
Because I'm-cubs for everyone.
I believe the original, like, implementation of, like, the red and yellow is to, like, get everyone the fuck out of there.
It is, like, an uncomfortable color palette.
That could be because of this.
Everything was designed to do that.
Which is, like, much more subtle.
And I think maybe a better way to handle it than to just be, like, just give them gups that you can't put down.
But that color palette is terrible for employees, right?
Like, that's the...
Certainly irritating.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So they start franchising it, but I don't think that they even intended.
for it to be like, yes, you also have to take the name.
It was just the first guy to franchise it,
just to the surprise of everyone,
used the name McDonald's.
And then everyone followed suit,
except for one guy in North Hollywood,
who insisted on calling his place,
Peaks.
That's awesome.
Peaks because of the artists.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
That's peak.
It's weird that they were surprised
that the franchisees would want to name it
after the popular thing.
Right, yeah.
Yeah.
But I think this is just,
this is when, like, franchising isn't even,
even as much of the thing.
What year is this, by the way?
1953.
1953.
So like music at this point in time is mostly just people copying other people's music.
So it makes sense that for like a business you'd be like, well, I'm just going to do the
successful thing.
Yeah.
Sell it again.
And honestly.
No heat you say?
That's pretty smart.
It's going to be a pitfall that gets McDonald's sued multiple times.
It's just copying other people.
So then 1954, Ray Kroc enters the scene.
He's kind of, I mean.
Oh, it's Ray Kroc.
Not right.
Right.
You're thinking of Marty Croft,
sit in Marty Croft.
Ray Crock.
Ray Croc.
The topic guys are crofts and we got Croft.
Sure.
At some point I said Ray Croft and everyone was like, yes, that's correct.
Check their earlier podcast, I think.
We did that to make you look stupid, man.
Or maybe we're trying to be supportive.
All right, sure.
We don't like to tell Murph now.
Yeah.
We saw you watching.
I feel like I made a mistake and then said,
is it Croft or Kraft and you guys said Croft?
And now we're to say crap.
Well,
Play it back.
I didn't know.
Play it back.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Emily texted us and said,
hey, Murph gets really sensitive
about all this McDonald's stuff
because it's so important to him.
So please be.
It is kind of important in him.
Not like currently in his life,
however.
Right.
Well,
not the like Ray Kroc part of it is cool.
But freaking the hamburger?
Yeah.
Or just the McNuggets when they dress up?
Well,
maybe argue that Ray Kroc is the original
hamburger.
Oh, okay.
I actually don't know if anyone else argued that.
I watched a lot of YouTube videos and no one said that.
Maybe it's been said before, but maybe not.
I like that.
Let's say.
So Ray Crock is just a milkshake machine salesman.
And he sees that one place is using, yeah,
Sprolet for the founder.
See that one place is using eight of his milkshake machines.
And he's like, what the fuck's going on?
Goes there only to discover a formula for efficient dining he believed could thrive
anywhere in the United States.
Not just California.
Spoilers for the founder.
I got to say, watching them work
those little ketchup squirters looks kind of fun.
Sure.
You have these like, it's in the founder.
They have these like,
they have these like funnel things
where they just like press a button
and squirt ketchup on like 12 burgers at the same time.
Wow.
That's satisfying.
That is fun.
So that's satisfying.
That's the fun part about it.
The not fun part about it is the cones.
Yeah.
And the land.
accumulation.
That'll come later.
That'll come later.
In fact,
I don't think we'll talk about that.
But basically,
he goes to the brothers
and he says,
I think we can do this elsewhere.
They're like,
it would only work in California.
You're crazy.
But here's the rights to,
here's the right to open.
People only want to be
freaking cold inside
and drink out of cone cups in
that cold and sand burger diesel is the thing.
Burgers are illegal in the southeast
because of religion.
So with his,
with the permission of the founders.
Sure.
Dick and Mac.
Dick and Mac.
He opens, he starts opening McDonald's.
And by 1960, they're grossing 56 million annually,
thanks to the suburbanization and the rise of the U.S. automobile.
And by 1961, he bought out the founding McDonald's brothers for $2.7 million.
Wow.
If you were making, how much annually were they making?
$256 million.
56 million.
You would take a buyout.
out for two? I think they got 0.5% of every place
opened. Oh, okay. So they probably weren't
They didn't get much. Yeah. And I think you, we have to watch the founder.
Yeah. I really dig into this. Yeah, I don't, yeah. I think the Dick and Mac were in it just
for the love of the game, the game being expediency. Yeah, just for the love of keeping people
cold and I'm going to get their drinks down. Yeah, they like having their little hell boxes where people
suffer just a little bit. They were all about mom and pop torturing people.
to like mass doing it.
They wanted to torture people
and see the pain on their faces.
They put it in there and they opened Dick's last stand
for their mean to you.
Oh yeah, Dick.
It's right in the name.
Wow.
Which was originally called Dick's Mac stand.
Whoa.
Spoilers for the founder.
So the reason that he bought them out too
was because they were like disagreeing
with how they wanted to move forward.
They wanted the restaurants colder.
Georgia O'Beefe reared her head again.
Yeah, actually Dick and Mac were like
Georgia O'Beefe.
And but obviously Ray Croc had other ideas.
What was his other idea?
In 1963, Ronald McDonald appears for the first time in a televised commercial.
Croc was right.
I'm sorry.
He's the fucking hero.
Like, he brings Ronald, though.
Yeah.
Well, what does McDonald's without Ronald?
Wait till you see the first iteration of Ronald.
He looks so bad.
He's covered in trash.
We're going to watch it in a second, but in his first appearance, his design looks much
less familiar.
His yellow and red stripes are vertical rather than horizontal.
He's got a takeout tray on his head, a to-go cup on his nose, and from what I can tell,
actual garbage for hair.
He looks like he woke up out of the trash.
He looks like he jumped out of the trash and then he accosts a child.
And he escaped from French fry jail.
Yeah.
So I've pulled it up.
Why don't we watch it?
Okay, let's load the clip.
Introducing the world's newest, silliest, and hamburger-eatingest clown, Ronald McDonald's.
Now, where is that clown?
Oh, Ronald, Ronald, Ronald.
Hey, Ronald.
Oh, my God, it's so dark.
Especially where you've got delicious McDonald's hamburger.
Ronald, you can't be on TV and watch it at the same time.
Now, come on and meet the boys and girls.
Oh, we've already met.
I know we're going to be friends, too,
because I like to do everything boys and girls like to do.
Especially when it comes to eating those delicious McDonald's hamburgers.
A magic tray here keeps me well surprised.
McDonald's hamburgers, french fries, and milkshake.
Watch for me on TV.
We'll have lots of fun.
He's Ronald McDonald's.
The hamburger happy clown.
A McDonald's dry restaurant.
Favorite place in town.
Okay.
That was so fucking tough.
I'm going to have nightmares.
One thing I didn't notice at the time,
it looks like he's wearing a duct tape
Cumberbond.
Yeah.
I think it's like, clearly they had that like magic tray attached,
and he's like, oh, I can't dance while wearing that.
So he's just got like the duct tape they're using
to attach the magic tray.
He's also just like a clown that likes McDonald's in this.
He doesn't.
And TV.
He's not really.
And TV.
He loves watching TV.
It's so meta.
He's close to the hamburger.
He just liked, he's the original hamburger.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, he is, he's freaking duping those burgers.
He's downloading them illegally pirating them.
Right.
Because he has a magic tray that he can make burgers appear on.
He's got a burger glitch.
Yeah.
The cut is so obvious.
It's really jarring.
Yeah.
It's also really jarring to see a grown man just, like, really say, I like what kids like.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like everything that boys and girls like.
Yeah.
It's like an adult man voice.
Every part of it is so creepy.
He's like, we've met already.
I just hang out outside of McDonald's.
We've met already watching that as a child being like, I think I would have remembered you.
Yeah, it's a freaking tray that makes burgers appear.
Why does he need to go to McDonald's?
Oh, one would add charge.
Yeah, it has to be close to it.
Yeah, he needs to, like, absorb the aura.
Oh, got you.
There is something crypted about him.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Is that what they're called cryptids?
Yeah.
There is something crypted about him.
because the commercial starts being like,
where is that guy?
I know he's lurking around here somewhere.
And the pants to him in the dark.
Yeah.
I think that's the most unsettling part.
It's like pants from McDonald's to like a dark control room.
Yeah.
Just in the outline of the tray on his head.
And then it's revealed it's a child's bedroom.
There's like toys everywhere.
I did not clock that.
I was so distracted by all the trash.
Does this predate clowns being scary?
Well, no.
This is actually.
inspired by the bozo the clown
Oh right? But I don't think people thought Bozo
was scary though. I don't think they did.
No, yeah. So I think it does predate people thinking clowns
are scary. Yeah, yeah. I think this is when clowns were
popular. Because this is like howdy duty and shit.
Like all of this stuff is terrifying as
fuck and when we go back and we watch this stuff
and we're like, this is so fucking scary
but that's just what people watched.
People saw this fucking clown
covered in trash dancing outside of a
McDonald's making burgers appear in children's rooms.
And they were like, this is hilarious.
You know what it was? Like,
they didn't have the 70s serial killers to scare that.
Oh, there you go.
I think it's like that.
And then like Stephen King, who is like raised by all of this.
Oh, that's true.
It crystallizes it with it, I think, is how it comes about.
The phrase, my magic tray keeps me well supplied is going to be stuck in my head for the rest of my life.
I mean, the show is called Rot Topic and like the topics are rotting inside my brain as we speak.
I just see you like with your family arms around them thinking like,
My magic tray keeps me well-s supplied.
My little women.
That keeps on giving.
So then in 1970, they're hopped up on the success of this launch of this clown.
Got to be.
Right.
All right.
We're outside of the founder now.
Now we're getting into the freaking meat.
Let's go.
We're saving this for the founder, too.
We're getting into the Giorgio beef.
In 1970, McDonald's reaches out to an advertising agency to expand the McDonald's land universe.
And by 1971, television viewers were getting their first taste of McDonald's land.
Yes.
Yes.
A magical land of thick shake volcanoes, French fry patches that grow like wildflowers,
talking apple pie trees, and a really groovy late 60s theme song.
Let's check this one out.
Yeah, come on.
Let's roll the clip.
We need a phrase that we say for when we go to the clip.
Caldwell.
Turn around and click the videos
I love it
That's really catchy
Get yourself ready for a trip through McDonald's land
Take a love a friend
And grab a hold of Ronald's hand
Follow Ronald McDonald's
And don't be surprised
If you meet Big Maconald
Cheese as you're heading for a McDonald's in McDonald's land.
Those kids are 60s.
And that cloud is dead.
I think they're older than that.
Okay, so thoughts.
Huge glow up.
My God, they had it.
They figured it out.
They had it.
They nailed it in one.
They peaks right there.
Yeah.
This is why North Hollywood kept peaks.
Yeah, dude.
That was perfect.
That is quintessential 20 years before I was born, but that feels like quintessential.
This is why advertising is good and it's never been bad.
Well, it was, it is interesting at this time to go from the, I guess it's been almost 20 years at this point, right?
Because the other one's in the like early 50s and this one's in 1970?
The first one was 1963 and this one is 1971.
Okay, so less than 10 years.
I thought the other one was early 50s because it was so fucking bad.
Oh, they built like a whole like set to film.
Yeah, so they literally went from like, let's film a commercial in like my buddy's garage.
Yeah.
To being like, we actually need to make the Muppet show.
Yeah.
And hire not great version of the Beach Boys to do a song.
I think with this like agency must have done.
The first one was like their idea of what kids would want, sure.
Which was a creepy clown in their bedroom.
Yeah.
This is like, there was research into kids would want a tree made of French fries and a mountain made of a milkshake.
So like it actually feels like a fantasy land.
And Emily, you brought up that this was inspired, inspired in quotation marks by Sid and Marty
Croft's H.R. Puff and Stuff, which was a TV show.
Croft or Croft?
It's more sinister than inspired.
At this time, this ad agency wanted to style McDonald's land like a show that already
existed called H.R. Puff and Stuff, mayor of Living Island, which was about a huge-headed
bumbling mayor that lived on an island where everything was alive and there were talking
trees. Okay. I feel like I
was early to say that this was
peak then.
If you see HR puppet
stuff, this looks exactly like it
except they made the guy a burger.
And it is more sinister. The ad agency
reached out to Sid and
Marty Croft said, will you
help us develop these characters?
And then told them,
too bad guys, the campaign is off.
Even though a year later it just
came out as a bunch of televised
commercials. So Sid and Marty
Croft sued and got, I think, $1 million in damages in 1977, which equates to like $5.3 million
now.
Everyone's taking a bad deal.
Their business plan is like, yeah, we'll rip everybody off and pay them a little bit.
Ray crock.
Ray crook, more like, right?
Ooh, nice.
Hey, thank you.
So McDonald's Land also introduces us to a cast of characters that populates its fantastical
world. Obviously, Ronald McDonald's.
Who had a huge glow up.
Oh, yeah. He doesn't look as, he doesn't look scary anymore.
And his pants are a lot more fun. His pants are cool. He's dancing. He's got like the
color scheme. He doesn't have a magic tray or a box on his head. He's not in your room.
Yeah. He seems to like out of bedroom. He seems at least like work at McDonald's.
He doesn't seem like desperate to be around kids, but not around them. Yeah. He lives at
McDonald's land. So he's like showing you around. Right. Yeah. He's your tour guy. That's who he's got
those like big explorer pants on.
Yeah, yeah. But then it also introduces us to Mayor McChese, a hamburger-headed elected official
with a top hat and a diplomat sash who seems honestly pretty bad at his job.
Officer Big Mac, a Big Mac-headed police officer in a constable's uniform and a custodian helmet,
and the professor, a spectacled white-whiskered scientist who invented many things on McDonald's land,
including the psychedelic electronic hamburger machine,
which I guess creates pumpkins.
Huh.
And extraneous-ass character.
We don't need them.
And this one, I'm quoting from Wikipedia,
an invisible car that helped Ronald McDonald get to McDonald's
to meet with the kids.
Huh.
Why does it need to be invisible?
Yeah, the professor just doesn't need to be there.
I don't, they go in that complete opposite direction, right?
because in the first commercial with Ronald McDonald,
he's got the burgers just appearing on the tray.
And then they're like, okay, that doesn't make any sense.
We need a professor to make a way for Ronald McDonald to get a McDonald's.
And it's really like, what if Ronald's like could just walk to McDonald's?
Yeah.
They also like have him in there.
Like one of the commercials was him trying to invent the best hamburger only to learn
that the best hamburger had already been invented.
Why not just have him be like, I've done it.
I've created the best hamburger.
and then that's how you debut a new hamburger.
Oh, that's interesting.
Instead, he was, like, put in there to always look like a fool.
Because Ray Kroc said, like, nobody tops me.
Like, I'm the one that's in charge here.
The professor is a bumbling fool.
The professor is my bitch.
I'm looking at a picture of the professor from his debut,
and it looks like he has, like, a plastic beard put on top of his face.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
It's an elderly look.
Some of the human characters could have just looked like humans.
Right.
Because Ronald McDonald is just a guy with paint on.
Yeah. But I feel like Ronald should be the only human.
Is Ronald's face supposed to be covered in red ketchup? Is that what's going on?
No. He ate a bunch of ketchup. And now his face is a little messy. It doesn't look like that at all.
It kind of looks like that. Oh, I never thought of it like. Wait, what do you mean? What do you mean?
What do you look like a clown? Why are we sitting here saying that the red and yellow is like a manipulative tactic? It's probably just ketchup and mustard.
No, it's definitely manipulative tactic. Could be both.
Could be both. But I guess it's true when you see those golden arches like, you know, you are supposed to.
to think of fries. That's like what you're supposed to visualize in your mind and make you hungry.
Yeah. Yeah. But it doesn't have to be red. Yeah. Well, McDonald's also introduced a crew of
antagonists. Here we go. Good. A couple of bad boys. Heavy hitters. We've got the hamburger.
Yes, dude. When the hamburger is introduced, it is also a very different hamburger. This hamburger
speaks only in gibberish,
has a long nose and gray hair,
wears a hat, a mask,
and a trench coat that he opens
to reveal a shirt that says the words,
in quotation,
I'm saying this in quotation.
Loan jogger.
What?
He's like a streaker.
Or like, what is it called
when you just like a flasher?
Flasher, yes.
I could not find context
for why it says lone jogger.
Is this because of the jogging craze
that was hitting around the 70s?
But what is the comment?
I think it's maybe like, oh, I'm just a lone jogger.
Don't mind me.
I'm just here walking on a little exercise.
I think it's probably a thing of like flashers of being like this lone jogger would come up to people at restaurants and deal his burgers and fries.
I mean, he is like built.
He has like stringy gray hair.
He really looks like if you've ever seen pictures of, you know, people dressing up for Halloween in like the 60s and 70s and they just look.
fucking terrifying. Like all the masks are just off and just like real rubbery.
Yeah. This guy looks like he's wearing one of those masks because he probably is.
Yeah. Because that's the, that's the time period. But he looks bad. He's not fun. He flashes people.
His name is the lone jogger. The lone jogger. I like that they had time to workshop all this.
Oh, you know what? We didn't consider this. He kind of looks like the lone ranger, right? Because he's got that little mask and hat.
Oh, okay. But why jogger? Because he's jogging up to people.
The jogging craze and show you his freaking nuts.
Oh, while you're distracted.
Which is the bigger offense.
Yeah.
While you're distracted looking at his French fried dick, he swipes your burger.
It makes perfect sense.
That makes a lot of sense.
They also introduce evil grimace.
We have talked about this before, but grimace was introduced as a fluffy, hairy, purple creature who had four arms lived in a cave and stole shakes and cola from children.
Where's the Coke?
Where are the shakes?
There's a lot of also overlap with like the novelty song.
from the period, like the, like one-eyed, one, what's it, one-eyed, one-horn, something purple
people-y.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, that makes way more sense because in 2012, they, like, put out a statement saying that
Grimmis was either the embodiment of a milkshake or a taste bud, but they didn't commit to either.
I mean, taste bud seems better than the embodiment of a milkshake because he's purple.
Yeah.
Taste buds feels kind of right, but also bad.
I mean, they're both bad.
Your tongue shouldn't be that color.
Yeah, your tongue also.
shouldn't be purple unless you're fucking freezing.
He's also like a giant taste, but
he lives in a freaking cave. He's just like
essentially tasted dirt all the time as he sleeps
on the freaking ground. But maybe he likes the way
dirt tastes. Wow, okay.
Shout out. And then the third
antagonist that gets introduced
is Captain Crook, a pirate
captain. Another thief.
Now this looks a lot like Captain Hook
and only ever wants to steal filo fish
sandwiches. Oh.
You need two separate guys.
Right. Okay.
He ain't interested in fish.
Okay?
No.
You need a fish face.
He thinks the fish is nesting.
Yeah.
McDonald's.
He specifically says it in all of the commercials.
Ew, filet of fish.
Gross.
Gross.
That's what my grandma eats.
What am I Catholic?
I'm not a pescatarian.
I feel like McDonald's land has a very diverse ecosystem.
Sure.
I mean, in the same way that, like, you know, a cow couldn't eat like pork.
They're not a carnivore.
Sure.
You know, like, Grimmis couldn't eat a filly of fish.
He can only eat milkshakes.
Sure, yeah.
It makes perfect.
Okay, okay.
I will say that Captain Crook, he's obviously not nearly as interesting as the hamburger.
He was extremely interesting.
But I will say that we were watching the old commercials just to prep for this, not for fun.
But he, by the nature of him being in the water, he gets thwarted in much more fun ways.
Oh, yeah.
Ronald will throw like our freaking cast a fishing one.
line and then pull a cork out of his ship and make him sink.
Yeah.
Vers the hamburger who just like kind of gets caught, but they can't show violence.
So they just like kind of like stand in front of them and they're like, you're caught.
And with Grimmis, it's just psychological violence because Grimmis is always outsmarted by getting told he's getting invited to a beauty pageant or that Ronald McDonald is a big time director who's going to make him a star.
Oh, yeah.
They're abusing Grimis.
Well, I do that I like this version of Ronald, though, because he's kind of like a trickster god.
Sure.
He's got like a buzz funny vibe to him.
No, he's like having a lot of fun.
He's a gaslighting king.
He's posing as a cast of director.
All he cares about is the smiles of children.
This episode of Nadpod is brought to you by Mint Mobile.
I don't know about you guys, but I like keeping my money where I can see it.
Unfortunately, traditional big wireless carriers also seem to like.
keeping my money too.
Quit it, wireless carriers.
I need that money to buy dumb shit, like video games and car insurance.
Thankfully, Mint Mobile is here to slay the dragon hoarding all of our money
and offer us affordable mobile plans that are way cheaper than the big carriers.
So stop overpaying for wireless just because that's how it's always been.
Mint exists purely to fix that.
Mint Mobile is here to rescue you with premium wireless plans starting at $15,000,000.
month. You can bring your own phone and number, activate with ESIM in minutes, and start
saving immediately. No long-term contracts, no hassles, just the pure mint green blade of justice,
smiting all of our foes and returning those hard-earned dollars to your pockets. Wow, what a snap. If I was
in the market for a new phone plan, this is the one I'd choose. So if you like your money and you want
it to stay your money, Mint Mobile is for you.
Shop plans at mintmobile.com slash pop-aw.
That is mintmobile.com slash pop-off.
Upfront payment of $45 for three-month five-gigabyte plan required, equivalent to $15 per month.
New customer offer for first three months only, then full-price plan options available.
Taxes and AMP fees are extra.
See MintMobile for details.
All right.
That's all for me.
Say true, Warriors.
Bye-bye.
Well, McDonald's land was a huge success.
And it spawned comic books, calendars, souvenir glasses, bed sheets, puzzles, and play sets.
Oh, yeah.
And, of course, McDonald's playplaces.
Oh, yeah, here we go.
Do you guys remember?
These were recreational activity rooms and playgrounds that featured McDonald's twists like
the Captain Crook's spiral slide, the hamburger swing, the Mayor McChese roundabout,
and the grimace bounce and bend, which was basically a cage.
Oh, yeah.
This is maybe the thumbnail.
Yeah, this is like a bouncy cage that you essentially got in and there's a spring underneath
it and you just freak out back and forth.
Yeah.
And there's a giant like hole in the middle.
It looks like a little mini jail cell.
Yeah.
With the bars bent, like your cartoon character escaping.
Yeah.
So you can get in and then you hang on to the bars and you just bounce back and forth,
almost like a rocking horse.
I had my fifth birthday at this place.
Yeah, in like a huge cage.
Yeah.
Did you use the grimest bouncing bend?
Yeah, of course.
I have a home video of me and all my friends freaking out at McDonald's.
What?
Yeah, when I was five.
What was the hottest ride?
Oh, man.
Was everyone like trying to get the Captain Crook like spiral slide or was it the grimest
bounce?
I think it was the grimace bounce.
It was the boundaries.
Was it like, let's see how many people we can get into the group.
Just to be clear, this wasn't like a bouncy thing.
Like we had a different play place in the 80s and 90s.
It wanted to be like a real old McDonald's that didn't update their stuff.
Yeah.
If anything, this looks like a grimace-themed, like, Iron Maiden.
Yes.
So this thing looks like if you took it off at spring, probably weighed, like, 600 pounds.
Okay.
I have to see a picture.
It was an enormous cage on top of a spring, and it almost was like a rocking horse
where it went back and forth, and there's no way that, like, kids didn't get really hurt.
Yes.
Oh, they did have that?
Yes.
That's awesome.
It almost looks like a decomposing whale.
Yeah.
It's a whaleful.
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
Yes, dude.
It suggests that maybe you've been devoured by Graham's.
but also like grimace is like parting his rib cage to let you in.
Yeah.
And we should note that it does have four arms.
So this is original evil grimace.
I don't know when they made this switch,
but like when I was a little kid,
all of McDonald's playscapes were outside.
Yeah.
Remember we'd go to McDonald's and we'd be playing outside.
And then at a certain point,
our McDonald's got a renovation and everything was inside.
And then it's all like the tubes and everything.
I think what happened is too many kids saw Grimmis
and then just ran right into the street
because they were so scary.
It was also the,
He's got to steal my sheep.
I feel like the one that you would probably see the most often.
I feel like these kind of hung around at old McDonald's is Officer Big Mac's jail,
the burger jail.
And it was like you climbed up into it and you were like in like a burger jail.
Yeah.
And then brave kids would, I don't know how everyone didn't die, but people would like crawl out
and like climb on top of the burger.
Yeah.
And I think just like get yelled at by the 16 year old that works there.
It's lawless.
It's even.
Yeah.
I think I was reading about like the happy meals as well.
And it does seem like a lot of the franchise.
is like fought back against this stuff because it did mean more responsibilities for them.
Oh.
Yeah.
What do I do when someone falls under the freaking grimace?
Do you get a first aid kit for like when you obviously get impaled on the grimace?
That's so funny to get like a phone call and it's like, hey, so tomorrow morning a truck's
going to come by with a ton of playground equipment.
So make space for it.
We're going to put the slide right near the drive through.
You know how you're a restaurant people drive to it?
Well, you can't do that anymore because make sure it hasn't like rained recently or anything
because that'll get pretty slick and the kids will fall on the drive-thru line.
And this shit does get rusty.
Yeah. It goes like roundabout things and this grimmest thing are like super dangerous because
anything that's on a spring like that, I feel like people would fall under.
Oh yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Getting trapped on it.
I got trapped under a personal trampoline once and that was really painful.
That sucks.
I just got jumped on.
You're just getting jumped on?
So scary.
Jumped on.
Trapolines are one of those toys that are awesome, but nobody should have one.
You can only have a friend with the trampolade.
You can't be the trampolian family.
I feel like this wasn't from the old McDonald's land things, but just like old school playplaces
and stuff.
I have a memory of being an affair or something and being young enough that I fell into
a ball pit and I just couldn't get out because I think I was like three.
Yeah.
And like some brave five-year-old having to dig me out.
Because there was like no parents were allowed.
Who are you now?
If you're listening, come collect you reward.
They were just like my parents directing a first grader to dig me a preschooler out of
ball pit.
Well, McDonald's
continued, but as we talked about
after the lawsuit, they
began slowly phasing out
some of the more egregious
copyright infringement.
Yeah, the burger guys looked a hell
a lot like HR puff and stuff.
Which unfortunately meant a lot of the more
whimsical things got phased out.
By 1985,
Mayor McChese, Officer Big Mac,
Captain Crook, and the professor
were all phased out.
Holy shit, I was born in 1985.
Welcome back, Mayor McCheese.
Yeah, dude.
Reborn?
Reborn?
Reborn.
Welcome back.
And they did kill him.
Yeah, they killed him.
Brian Murphy, Mayor McCheese reborn in parentheses.
They had my mom eat the last birthday.
And then I was born.
Yeah.
You actually died in that ball pit.
And then she also gave birth in a grimace.
I died in a ball pit in 1984.
Well, if people do water.
births. I think some people do ball pit births. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. And during this time,
both Grimmis and the hamburger underwent significant makeovers. Grimus lost two of his arms,
obviously, became friends with Ronald, which actually, which actually there is the origin
story of their friendship. They met because when Grimmis was a baby, he was in a runaway stroller
and Ronald intercepted him. Wow. And then he took Grimus from his parents because you guys
let go with that stroller.
That's actually true because Grimmis does have parents sometimes.
There's like a shadow, like they do like a whole thing where they're like showing Grimmis
celebrating his birthday like at McDonald's.
And it's all like this like 80s grainy footage that looks really sad.
And they show like the shoulder of his parent.
Oh my God.
What happens to them that they let that stroller run away?
I don't know.
Is this to imply that like Grimmis is still small?
like grimace is an adolescent or something like that like he's not full grown yeah maybe he's not a
grown up yeah maybe can you imagine a full size grimace so in the 80s not only did uh did you have
this face turn yeah but he also at one point got braces in a mullet and at one point in 1984 they gave
him pink human lips that no thanks made him look like he had like fillers so they made him hot
was that so grimace is canonically beautiful
The sexiest taste buddy you've ever seen
Do you think you were like setting something up there
Where they're like well we're gonna need grimace to kiss
Like he's gonna we're gonna introduce grimace's girlfriend soon not yet
Yeah
Yeah yeah you're like grimace in 1985 he's gonna fuck
Right
What do we do to prep people for this?
As soon as he has lips then we can give him a dick
Right yeah once they see lips
Once they see how they respond to lips
Yeah and then we'll give him a dick
Everyone's brain goes right to fallaccio
Yeah
1886
Grimmis is 69ing the Burger King King.
Yeah.
Grimus having lips
suggests that he can suck dick.
And then the hamburger,
the hamburger got a rounder face.
They gave him a little butt and nose.
And they gave him,
rather than two teeth,
they gave him a single tooth.
Apparently there's something less threatening about that.
He lost the lone jogger.
Thank God.
That's fair.
Yeah, that's good.
And they renamed him Hamilton B.
Grasgler.
Great.
It makes a lot of sense.
Charles Entertainment cheese style.
Yeah.
Well, it's just, it's tough because it's just like, is it biology or is it nature or nurture
that made the hamburger, the hamburger?
Right.
Because like when you're named that, what else are you going to do?
Yeah.
That's a really good point.
That's a really good.
Well, his last name's Urgler, so I guess he could ergle.
He could ergle.
It's true.
Ergling is kind of rude, though.
Yeah.
I think ergling is specifically for food.
Like, you can ogle anything, but you can only ogle food.
Well, irgling is when you're looking at this is lips.
Ergling sounds like a sucking day.
Like, oh, look at this guy's left.
I'd like to urgle him.
Oh, sorry, I was urgling all last night.
There was something in my throat.
Yeah, they were getting people ready by showing a lot of pictures of grimace,
like just seductively licking the fries.
So even though we lost Mayor McChese, Officer Big Mac,
Captain Crook and the professor.
Captain Crook, we didn't.
We didn't.
We didn't.
We didn't.
Do you guys think that Captain Crook was inspired by Ray Crock?
Crook, Crook.
There it is.
He's calling himself a crook.
It's sort of like a confession.
Absolutely.
That's what it was for.
Wow.
This is how he found peace.
I thought that the hamburger was his OC, but maybe it was Captain Crook.
He's fried like a piece of cod.
Maybe he's putting himself everywhere.
You know?
You think he's putting a little piece of himself in each of these characters?
And then Gabe Grimmis his lips.
Yes.
Because Croc is like, I have these dick-sucking lips.
I want them portrayed.
I need to share these with the world.
So, but we did get new characters.
In 1977, we got Uncle O Grimacy, Grimacy's uncle, who appears to promote the shamrock shape.
Yes.
In 1979, we get a yellow bird and a pink jumpsuit, flight cap, and scarf that is the first female character.
Welcome.
Thank you.
It's about time.
It's about time.
Progress.
Welcome, Bertie.
Welcome, Bertie.
Welcome, Birdie.
The early bird is introduced to promote.
the new breakfast menu.
Oh.
Which I also wanted to highlight that another promotional thing they did for the breakfast
menu was including a free disposable razor with the purchase of a breakfast breakfast
entree.
I remember that.
That is.
Oh, this is, because they were going to shave grimace.
That's why they introduced the lips.
What?
Me.
Well, no, because this was in 1978.
Okay.
In 1978, they.
So it's like wake up with McDonald's.
You shave.
Yeah.
It was like, you got your breakfast.
marketed to men.
Oh, wait, okay.
I'm piecing it together now
because, like, you get the razor.
You're going to go in the McDonald's bathroom
to shave.
But then, like, you've got grimace with the lips.
And, like, they're advertising the breakfast,
but also that they have really clean bathrooms
and they're clean enough to get your dick sucked in.
Oh.
Can you put the glory holes in the bathroom in 1979?
Can you imagine working at McDonald's in the 70s
and they're just like people shaving in the bathroom
and kids brutally injuring themselves on the playground?
It's flawless.
I also just feel.
Like all of the advertising for like the free promotional razor, it's like a real put together, man.
Yeah.
And I'm like, no.
I don't think that's who's getting pancakes from McDonald's and using the razor.
If you're shaving it McDonald's, you do not have all of your shit together.
When did disposable razors come out, though?
I think you feel like that's a very 70s thing.
Yeah.
It's just like wastefully making a ton of shit.
It's so funny how different this is than like Mac and Dix vision.
is like in and out, you're gone.
And then the new McDonald's is like,
you can play here, you can shave here.
How do we make it so people live here?
By 2026, it is a hotel.
McDonald's apartments, yeah.
Don't leave, eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner right here.
You don't have to leave your room.
You sleep inside Grimmis now.
And the funny thing is they actually brought back
the razor promotion in 1986.
Wow.
As late as 1986, but then people started finding razors
and other things that.
I was going to say it's,
Seems like such a liability to just be like, hey, let's take this kid with his first job and have them make a burger and throw a razor in there with it.
Yeah.
You got to like make sure it doesn't get mixed up.
Are you doing parents or you're doing kids?
Okay.
So when you start out here, first of all, apple pies go in this box, razor's going that box.
Don't mix them up.
Mike came with a cigarette and a whiskey too.
And then in 1979, we get the Happy Meal Gang, which is a talking hamburger, a talking fries, talking drinks.
in a non-speaking happy meal box.
I'm going to say the little happy meals, guys,
sorry to say it, they're cute.
Yeah.
You're freaking cute.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's right.
Yeah.
So,
to say it, the McNugget buddies.
They're cute.
I think that I actually,
they're going to roast you for that take.
When did Big Nuggets make it onto the menu?
Did that come up?
I think it's an 80s thing.
It's an 80s thing.
Yeah.
I think that there was actually a point where like maybe the,
so like I did a little research into the happy meal.
Yeah.
because I was like very curious about like when the like the integrations with like films and like TV started.
Oh yeah.
The first one was in, I believe, 1979 with Star Trek.
Is that right?
Yeah, it was Star Trek because basically all the other fast food chains,
McDonald's saw a dip in sales.
Yeah.
Because all the other fast food chains were partnering with Star Wars.
Oh shit.
And basically like everyone stopped wanting to go to McDonald's because they're like,
but if I go to Burger King, I get a Star Wars toy.
Yeah.
So then.
It's so funny that McDonald's is just like.
like, don't you want this clown that lives at our store?
Or do you get a burger king and get a lightsaber.
One or the other.
Look, there's three criminals that live here all the time.
And then McDonald's was like, we got to get into this.
The Star Trek original motion picture is coming out.
And that was their first partnership.
They must have been so close.
It's just been like Star Trek, Star Wars.
Same thing.
Same audience.
Guarantee.
We love stealing adjacent things.
Yeah.
I looked it up.
The first set of toys they ever made for the Happy Mealboxes was actually, I think it was a
racers.
Really?
Oh, no.
Razors and erasers.
Yeah.
I mean, they almost fumbled the bag so many times.
Those bands, you really don't want to confuse those.
Another fun detail.
It was launched nationally in 1979 at $1.10 per Happy Meal.
Wow.
Which is approximately $39 now.
Yeah.
Steal.
But yeah, the Happy Meals, they used to have like full color, like wraparound art on the boxes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, it was based on like cereal boxes.
Yes.
Like how you look at the back and there would be like a maze or something like that.
They would have puzzles and stuff like that.
Mm-hmm.
Shout out to Sims to back who designed the first Happy Meal box.
Wow.
Shout out, dude.
Yeah.
Cool.
I'm sure you got paid $25.
You sued and got $1,000.
So do well.
In the end.
And Ray Kroc actually, in the end, he bought Tatooine.
So they won the Star Wars War.
And then in the mid-80s, we get Cosmic the East.
alien, an orange alien that travels around in a space pod. It emerges from like a turtle.
And instead of stealing like Captain Croke or the hamburger grimace, early grimace, he trades,
a.k.a. steals. Oh, so he's like a new little scampy thief. But he's like, I'm here on a trade
mission. I wonder what it is. Like, you would think that as a business model, you wouldn't want to make
kids afraid to come to your restaurant. But maybe it's like creating that.
that scarcity mindset where you are like,
if the hamburger might get all the stuff.
My shit.
The hamburger should have won sometimes the commercial because they should have been like,
get in now before the hamburger gets all of the burgers.
The hamburger is broken in.
He's in the hamburger ball.
We cannot sustain this level of thievery.
Get here before he eats it all.
You want a burger.
Come now.
Ronald buckled over of like blood falling out of his chest.
He's been stabbed.
Yeah.
Question, this alien, did the alien leave cool stuff, like precious alien minerals?
From what I watched, he was like kind of trading what looked like maybe a balloon animal hat.
Okay, that's not worth it.
So, yeah.
I, a balloon for a burger, no fucking thank you.
Yeah, he wasn't like handing over laser guns.
Give me your precious alien minerals.
Or even laser razors.
Yeah, I'll take a laser razor.
The 80s was obsessed with like friendly aliens.
I think it must have been like all like post-E-T.
People were just like, we got to get friendly aliens.
Right.
I bet we could like trace everything back like what McDonald's is introducing to any other
popular party that came out one year before.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, it's literally the original, um, the original Ronald McDonald is the guy who played
Bozo the clown.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Is like the most famous clown.
Yeah.
I feel like McDonald's is probably not nearly as creative as anybody who could have put
him out.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The final entry, I guess like vague entry into McDonald's land like character is yet another.
ripped off thing. In 1986, they introduced Mac Tonight. A sunglasses wearing piano playing lounge
singer with a huge crescent moon head that only exists because some ad executive got obsessed
with doing a parody of the song Mac the Knife, which is like from the 50s. And it's a murder
ballad about a guy going on a killing spree. And some guy got- He's love fucking criminals.
Some guy got obsessed with doing a parody of that to promote McDonald's.
dinner sales.
That guy should be investigated.
When you see a picture of Mac tonight, this guy false.
I mean, this guy is weak.
You thought grimace fuck.
Yeah, you thought grimace fucked?
No.
No, they made a guy who fucks.
Yeah.
And then McDonald's was once again successfully sued.
Just always.
By the, by the like, descendant of the person who's dad.
Who wrote the Mac the Knife?
Cool.
That's good.
But speaking of the fact that Mac Tonight fucks, the actor who played Mac Tonight
in the commercials was Doug Jones and would go on to play the iconic love interest
amphibian man in the shape of water.
Yeah.
So that guy does fuck.
Yeah.
Oh, absolutely fucks.
He's also Abe Sapien.
I think he played the creepy eye guy in Pan's Labyrinth.
Yeah, yeah.
He's done so much stuff.
Hell yeah.
From Mac Tonight to Stardom.
Wow.
Wow, that's very cool.
That's incredible.
Shoot for the moon, you'll become a star.
Man, do you think he's still got the moon face somewhere?
God, I hope so.
You got to find out where he leaves.
See if he has a storage unit.
Knowing Guillermo del Toro, he's definitely got it in his house next to a giant
Frankenstein head.
They did used to have them in McDonald's, like singing animatronics almost like.
Yeah.
Like Disneyland style.
An earnest pitch that I think we can't do, but I think we should do, is create
Nad Pod land where we buy like stuff like this old
Grimmis.
Oh, yeah.
We just,
and then all of our 30-year-old fans
get so heard.
Yeah.
People just come and you can
wander through like a weird
little garden that we've created.
I have to say,
thinking about grimace,
bounce,
and bends through the lens
of like an adult,
it is kind of like,
there are days when I would love
to go thrash and...
Oh, sure.
It's lymphatic drainage.
That's all the rage.
Forget about your Tai Chi.
Yeah, I feel like they're doing stuff now.
I mean, obviously there's like
escape rooms and stuff,
but there's like elevated
escape rooms or you're like jumping through lasers and shit like that.
Let's bring back dangerous playgrounds for adults.
Yeah.
With your friends could hurt you and you have to be rescued by a first grader.
We don't need adult camp.
We need dangerous adult playground.
Who do you guys think would get hurt first?
At one of these things?
Oh me, definitely.
I'd be doing a goof.
Yeah.
I think you might get hurt first because I think I would be shy.
I'd go pretty light.
Yeah, Calvo would like set the tone by getting so hurt.
I would probably trip on the way to the playground.
Wow.
Wow.
I've seen this happen before.
And then get a face full of gravel.
Emily gets hurt in the parking lot.
Caldwell climbs Captain Crook's slide and falls on the top.
Yeah.
I feel like Caldwell does the most painful thing, but I get hurt the most if that makes sense.
Oh, that makes sense.
Okay, so Caldwell, like, goes up on top of Captain Crook's slide, says, I'm going to surf down it and is standing up and falls and falls from the top, lands on his head and gets like pretty hurt.
Yeah.
Like a scary way, but not that bad.
But I've only had one concussion in my life, so it's fine.
Yeah.
And then Jake, like, is starting to climb up Officer Big Mac's jail and tweaks his back.
Yeah.
A brutal way where we have to take him to the hospital.
I pitched something.
I was climbing so lightly.
So, like, I think, yeah, we meow wolf this where we're, like, people have to sign a million waivers.
And they can just, like, wander the hell around this, like, kind of phantasmagorical McDonald's land play space that we've created here.
I do think like I know that people can buy like McDonald's franchises.
I don't know how much free reign you have.
We don't want the food.
We don't want the food.
We don't want the food.
We don't want McDonald's.
We don't want their old shit.
We want their old place-based stuff.
Okay, great.
That must be for sale on some like weird auction website.
I did see just the head of a grimace bounce and bend on a auction website.
Yeah.
Wow.
That's rad.
I'm getting on the fucking worldwide web as soon as we're done recording.
On them on the McDonald's land.
Wiki, there's a picture of a officer Big Mac Burger Jail that's just, I think it's still in San Bernardino
in like the original area, but it's in like kind of the woods next to some cabins.
Oh, that's so literal.
Yeah.
Yeah, let's go climb in the Big Mac Jail.
If we buy that parcel of land, we could definitely charge people a hefty sum just to come
and like hang out next to.
True McDonald's style.
Whoa.
I'll make the burgers.
Fuck, why not?
So that's basically like that Mac tonight is kind of like the last like bit.
There's like a couple one shot characters that like appear in like an ad here or there.
Yeah.
But that's kind of like the last big character.
In 2003, the I'm Lovin it campaign debuts.
Wow.
This is kind of the great streamlining.
Including the weird, complicated era of McDonald's.
Yeah.
That filled me with a sadness.
Yeah.
But when you said that.
It's they fucking.
They got focused grouped out of existence because they're, because people finally sat down and they're just like, how much do people like this clown that lives at McDonald's?
Yeah. People are like, they're okay with my cats.
The adage is driving sales. Yeah. What if everyone just went around saying that they loved McDonald's, would that drive sales more?
I would, I would also argue that because they had all these lawsuits for stealing the world of the crofts, that they had to start removing whimsical elements, which means no more talking trees. And then they literally start making.
making ads that are in like more realistic settings.
It's more like Ronald and his friends in the real world.
I don't want that.
No.
No.
I don't want to see a puppet in the real world.
I want to see a puppet in a world full puppets.
Right.
I need to know that they can't cross the veil.
Yeah.
We had the, in our mall, we had the apple pie trees.
Wow.
We had apple pie trees, those big weird trees with weird faces.
Yeah, yeah.
And if you could get a seat under the freaking apple pie tree.
Oh, that's nice.
Yeah.
That's shit.
I actually have a real bad memory at that McDonald's.
What?
I had bought Diablo 2 and I put it under the table.
And then I walked away for getting Diablo 2.
And when I came back, it was gone.
No.
So, fucking grimace.
Someone else has such a good.
The hamburger.
The hamburger.
The hamburger.
The lone jogger.
This is the work of the lone jogger.
The hamburger was replaced.
Yes.
But joggers are in the mall.
They're all up in the mall.
Oh, my God, dude.
I got got got by the lone jogger.
He thought that the hamburger changed,
but he didn't.
He went into hiding.
He went into hiding,
waiting for me to bring
an expensive video game in like 2000.
The hamburger never changed.
The world changed around.
He became the gambler.
He steals video games.
Whoa.
The camp burglar.
The cambergler.
Still think about that
was absolutely fucking brutal.
It's like another like six months
before I could buy it again.
Oh,
like 13.
Absolutely fucking brutal.
So that's pretty much the last we've seen in McDonald's land.
In recent years, characters have been rebooted, including a very 2010's attempt to make
the hamburger hot, in which ads of a scruffy-faced square-jawed blonde man were supplemented
by a cheeky Twitter account and a tongue-in-cheek LinkedIn profile.
I feel like that would hit even harder now.
Like, the internet is ready to fuck the hamburgler.
See?
It feels so 2010s.
Really?
I feel like...
A looks maxing hamburger.
Oh, you're right.
That's what it is.
He would be more looks max now.
Right.
Yeah.
I'm stealing hearts.
Ravle,
rabble.
Although I guess like,
I guess like mid-2010s,
like somebody tweeting out in all lowercase letters with no punctuation
hamburger just saying kind of want to fuck the hamburger.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Would like do numbers.
I could see that.
I could definitely see that.
And then in 2023,
they started selling $75,
Donald Birdie
Hamburger and Grimmis
Crocs. That's it?
Not Ray, Crocs.
It all comes back to Croc.
Wow. Wow.
But there's no return in sight
to the land of thick shake volcanoes,
hamburger patches and
fillet of fish ponds.
And that's why NADPOD land is going to lift
the torch. Yeah. High and proud.
So go to the woods near your house.
Come find us in the woods.
We will compost your nostalgia.
Sweet. Great work, Em.
Thanks for putting together all that.
Yeah, no work.
Over on the Patreon, we're going to be doing a view crew of the many adventures of Ronald McDonald
animated by the same crew that did the Rugrats.
Right.
And as told by Ginger, we're talking about claskey supo folks.
Oh, yeah.
It's kind of the dying gasp of McDonald's land right before the 2003, I'm loving it shift.
Yeah.
It gives me a new appreciation for it, actually.
Yeah.
Not that much.
It wasn't, it's real.
bad despite looking good like the animation is really good but the live action stuff up top it's tough
it's nauseating real fast real fast cuts i'll be talking about that over on the patreon patreon dot com slash
nadpod that's any dd p o'd don't sing yet we don't do it don't do it don't we're loving it uh we've got
no we're not um we've got some shows coming up on april 10th we're going to be at radio city
music hall so be on the lookout for that uh new york city uh natpod dot com slash live get you
tickets now. Anyone else have anything they'd like to plug?
Yeah, I'll plug. My friend Mike is starting a D&D Twitch streaming show with some of his
friends called Goblin Guys. It's going to be three different tables running. It's like him and a bunch
of his friends. It seems like it's going to be fun. Go check it out.
Sweet. Right on.
In the meantime, you can follow us on social media that we may or not use at C.
First Me at Caldice Caldwell, at a extras Emily, and I check Gertz is Jake. And you can talk about
the show online using hashtag Nadpot. That's NEDD-D-POD.
We are, we are. The Youth of the Nation. We are. We are.
We are the Youth of the Nation.
There's the end of the show volcanoes.
You'll even find a French fry thatch.
Now just turn around and see if you won't find a hamburger patch.
As you're heading...
It's the end of the show and you know what that means?
We simply must shout out our Council of Elders, starting with Brad D.
Jeffrey S. Lord of the Fjord.
Later, McSgater, Matt M.
Cutter W. Olivia A.
Daniel G. Danielle the dastardly dame.
Carpe Liam.
Victor T. Balnor's boy.
Heides a friend.
Justin I.
Danny Danster.
T.J. M.
Haley the Grey Faye.
Dr. O'hee. Now you have to say it.
Jordan L.
Cyborg version of Josh the Cobald
Stevie Wags
Hellish rebuquer the NBDMPHD
Jack L
Nicholas C
star of every film
ever made in Bohumia
Alka Smelzer Plus
Great value chema
Tyler F
Echupacro is a rabbit folk detective
Timmy R
Jake's jerk jelly
Hashtag CCCC
CACPboard
CASS
Stephen C. wants to remind you ACAB.
Nick W. Nico, the underpaid English teacher.
God bless you, though.
William W. Big Bad Bairdo the Mad.
Zachary A.
Perciville, Frederick Stein, von Musa, Klausowski, Dorolo, the third.
Jay Dragonborn.
Guardian of the vibe.
Honoring the Cock.
Impressive.
Dongle.
Ben A.
Dave H.
Not that Nick.
Danny.
Hockey Pierce, Big Bad John, D. PC is awesome, brand new wife.
Shone, the shade tree mechanic of Selbeldar, Summer Rose Grand Terre, Mark the Dark Lord's Taint,
Mesa of House In Zunza, Ariel the occasional mermaid, Selena and Valaci Raptor, B, Perky, always,
Pat L, Lauren H, serve 16, Annie the Faywild, there are,
Perogi Frenzy
Bioquirt 7
Bean Rat was innocent
Jack H, King of the Mole
People under Iron Deep, trust
and blue and fighting his
way through a bracket
style tournament
Vealin
Paj the bitch and bunny
Bard, druidic Peyton
Carlin C
Omri M. Noah
the gentleman fister
hashtag Anna the Cock
James G
Everything Bego, the Eladron who just wants to hang out with his pet badger, Stripey, Reverend Chatterbounds, Han, Eric B, Marcos, Ph.D., eventually, learns the balance, druid, Frida M., Maggie, Holly the Green Laughing Haina, Papa Bumbino and Chinos, Bud Heavy, Russell H, Cody C, Lorelae, the succuby, and Kira, the succulent.
snack. Ellen S. Your friendly neighborhood, Yon and Uncle Andrew and Sid.
Lobbying for another Atlanta live show, Mr. Adams. James F. Wayfarer now has to do
something with the trolls. Get rid of them. Turn to page 42. Keep them turn to page 69.
Soft, loose, uncertain hand. Oreo. City name. Barpo, Good Barbarian. Charlie Brown's
best friend.
Renee, the monster captain.
Olivia, the enchanting bard and Jared,
the sub-opra cleric who are preparing an epic playlist
for the final battle.
Blue Ash.
Fico.
J.
K. Guard.
The sugar-bum fairies are out caroling.
Happy Hoglides.
Kentrip Dumbledore, the Bear Wensie wearing barbarian.
Lexi H. M.J. the B.F.G.
Roger L. No drag.
the pass a fist barbarian
Goose Toes
Jean Luca
Leon Comori legendary hero
of a bohumia from a future
campaign
Shenanigans O'Connor
Josh S. Linz W.
Sky the Wise
The Spudfucker himself
Johnny Dude Kay
The mischief of Nat Potts familiaras
Pavu Escanar
The Goliath Paladin
Providing Service with a smile
Jake well Murpally
Tim M. Dragon Knight 86. Richard Strungle, the main event.
TR. MLG. Cheeto shall be Kenna's first favorite sprite girl saying goodbye to Borovia by checking in to the great wolf strudge with obsidian.
Jet S. Snellis the Eldritch snail. Smoke a blunty finster.
Maybe that was a direction. Smoke a blunty finster, right. Oh, Joe.
Stormy 52
Mima Sky Days
Megan N
Anthony B
Balnor's best friend
Steve
Stephanie of House
Inzunza
Benjamin A
sacrificial otaku
bringing otaku
culture to a fantasy
realm near you
Mickle A
S tier
Crickwater and Joyer
Josh H. Pilot
of the Nightmare
verse flight
The two grew
blew through
Ethan the mailman
Maple the shy bookworm
Nick A.J. Ashosaurus. Seth the stroker, bearer of all hog-related burdens.
Billy Batson. Tori the tungsten dragoose, warily watching the warehouse of wily wildwater wardens.
Michael Lyle S. the second. Carl B. Plummer of the Realm. Ace Dreg's High Lord of Critsback.
Vind diagram. D.M. Charby.
Catamilius the consumed
Cam the frogletace man
Dean
Jake W. Hi Mom
Tuesday Cross only here
for the surf and mirth
We love you right Jesus
Smores
Tyler M. God dog
Zibada Bakery
God into Zibitabackery
is really blessed and actually
we're going to keep it fun with
Liminac
Kaylee
Katerina C
Lance Carly C
Olaf dies and
frozen two. What are you doing to us? KC.J. Paupaw's litigation associate. Greg W., there's so many of us now,
but hey, you're doing great and we love you. Right back at you, Greg W. Baruch, Thunderhelm,
a fifth generation, Minotaur, working as an abandoned labyrinth tour guide. Chippa Cabri.
Capi B of the schooner Lewis R. French. Richard Jen's left glove tailor. Boney is dead.
The Waterworth, your four-legged Greg Companion, Nick, the raging Ranger, Echo Ashmore,
Aidan, D&D, Courts lowliest intern, Aege 15, Canari, watch me kick-flip my neck,
Chef Julie B, Mama Mayhem, Chef Julie B, I actually was thinking of you recently because I've been getting into different types of apples, so curious to hear your thoughts.
Mama Mayhem, Gen rules kinda, Tomasi, Little Dark Lotus Creations, Kendra A. Miller, James, the polymorphed boot, Joshua H, Jacob M., Lou H, Ajide, Ben V, Prince Slagathor the Third, Shinka Kinsune, or Skylar the only male Katsune in Bohumia, Laini Stoop, Toxic Ghost.
Daniel M. Chris A. is super stoked to see you at Radio City. Thank you. We are similarly stoked. Angie H. And of course, Melissa A. Thank you all so much for supporting us. We love you.
Goodbye, sweeties. That was a hit gum podcast.
