One Sunday morning I was lounging in bed, not ready to get up and get moving for the day, and wasting a little time browsing Facebook Marketplace. This is not an unusual thing for me to do on a Sunday morning when I’m lounging in bed and not ready to get up and get moving for the day.
I’ve been on the lookout for collectible glasses for the last year or two, and came across a listing for a full set of vintage McDonald’s glasses featuring all of the McDonaldland characters. For the entire set of six glasses, the seller only wanted $15.
Now that was worth getting out of bed for…
The Hamburger-happy Clown
Ronald McDonald “The Hamburger-happy Clown” was created by franchisee Oscar Goldstein and made his debut in 1963 on three local television spots in Washington D.C. Ronald was initially played by America’s weatherman, Willard Scott, decked out in various McDonald’s boxes and cups.
The character made his nationwide debut in 1965 during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and then got a makeover that same year. From there, the character’s appearance saw minor tweaks until 1975, when his design was solidified until the mid-80s. Here’s a handy picture showing the evolution of his design:
Now Entering McDonaldland
In the early-1970s, McDonald’s was beginning to transition from a purely drive-in restaurant concept to a sit-down fast food restaurant with a strong emphasis on making it a fun place for kids. As a part of that transition, the advertising agency Needham, Harper & Steers was tasked to come up with more mascots to join Ronald.
The agency developed “McDonaldland”, a fantastical place filled with wild ideas like talking apple pie trees, french fry bushes, and lakes filled with living Filet O’ Fish sandwiches.
In McDonaldland, Ronald would interact with the characters who lived there, like burger-stealing Hamburglar, Mayor McCheese, the nutty Professor, the Filet O’ Fish-obsessed Captain Crook, Big Mac, french fry-loving Gobblins (later renamed Fry Guys), and the purple, four-armed, shake-stealing Evil Grimace (who would later lose two arms and the “Evil” moniker and become more of a good-hearted, comic relief sidekick to Ronald).
The McDonaldland concept was extended to the interior designs of the new locations, most famously in the form of the talking apple pie tree that was often used as a centerpiece. The tree also became the source of many children’s nightmares.
And it was used in the outdoor Play Place, where kids could play in McDonaldland-inspired playground equipment, like the Big Mac “climber”, the Captain Crook spiral slide, the Hamburglar swings, Gobblin and Filet O’ Fish bouncy rides, the Mayor McCheese merry-go-round, and the spring-loaded Grimace “bounce and bend”…
Collectible Glasses v1.0
A few years after the McDonaldland concept was introduced, the restaurant offered collectible glasses featuring a lot of the new mascots in 1976. Apparently The Professor wasn’t popular enough to warrant his own glass…
The artwork for the glasses was mostly based on photos from the brand specification manual, essentially the corporate “bible” for the characters, that was released in 1973.
However, the 1973 version of Ronald only lasted for one year, so it appears that the glass was based on Ronald’s recent 1975 makeover instead.
The Action Series
A year later, in 1977, the Action Series of glasses debuted, featuring depictions of the McDonaldland characters that were a bit more cartoony and whimsical than the previous artwork. And rather than just showing the mascots standing on a blank background, the Action Series has them interacting with the McDonaldland environment and playing with kids.
(both photos courtesy of Jason Liebig)
For a closer look at the glasses, here’s Big Mac chasing down some hooligans breaking the 2MPH speed limit…
Here’s Mayor McCheese taking pictures of kids and Gobblins forming a human pyramid…
Here’s Grimace racing some Gobblins on a pogo stick…
Next we have an imprisoned Hamburglar on a train, still managing to steal smoke stack burgers from the steam locomotive (will he ever learn?)…
Captain Crook is sinking his own ship after pulling the bathtub plug…
And Ronald and some kids play leapfrog with unsuspecting Gobblins at Filet O’ Fish Lake…
McDonaldland Adventure Glasses
1980 saw the release of more McDonaldland character glasses in the “Adventure” series. The six glasses featured the mascots performing daring deeds. I’m not really a big fan of these glasses and apparently no one else was, either. You’re lucky to find a complete set for sale and the single glasses that do sell, don’t go for very much.
Starting in 1981 with the infamous The Great Muppet Caper glasses, most collectible glasses from McDonald’s had a movie or other licensed property tie-in hook. I imagine production costs on collectible glasses wasn’t cheap, so it was surely more profitable to put out Garfield mugs, Camp Snoopy Peanuts glasses, and The Flintstones movie mugs than spend money creating glasses that only advertised the restaurant itself. The company also started moving towards plastic collector’s cups instead, again, probably as a cost-saving measure.
Now Leaving McDonaldland
McDonaldland was a staple of McDonald’s advertising throughout the last quarter of the 20th Century. Over the years, some characters were added, most notably Birdie in 1980 and the McNugget Buddies in 1984, while other characters quietly disappeared, like The Professor and Captain Crook.
However, as McDonald’s entered the new millennium, they began to see sales slump, especially among more health-conscious parents who didn’t want to feed their kids fast food all the time. So, McDonald’s pivoted away from being a place for kids, and tried to reposition itself as a place for everyone with the “I’m Lovin’ It” campaign in 2003. The McDonaldland characters have mostly been dropped from television advertising, but you’ll still find them in brief marketing spurts, especially when the company is trying to tap into the Gen X/Millennial nostalgia market (see: The Grimace Shake viral sensation from 2023).
Conclusion
As you can see in the slideshows above, the glasses I bought are in really good shape. Most of the time these collectible glasses have paint that has flaked off, maybe a chip broken off around the rim, or they’ve faded from too many trips through the dishwasher. However, these glasses have never been used!
When I arrived at the seller’s house, he said he had the glasses in the bed of his truck, so we walked to the end of his driveway. I expected him to have a cardboard box with the glasses wrapped in newspaper, probably rescued from some relative’s garage or basement. Nope! He had purchased the glasses from an estate sale by the case! So, he had six cases of glasses – one case for each design – in the back of his truck. I watched him pull one glass from each box and wrap them in newspaper for me. I couldn’t believe it!
I have to say, these are probably some of my favorite glasses in my collection. The plain, white line art for the environment and the side characters, with the occasional splash of color, really makes the design stand out. I also really like the cartoony mascots; it just makes them feel more childlike and joyful than the plain, police lineup artwork from the older glasses. Don’t get me wrong – I’d love to get a set of the more realistic glasses too, but if I had to choose between the two, the Action Series is the one I’d pick.
