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Whatever Happened to Mac Tonight?
Update: 2024-12-26
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In the great pantheon of fast food mascots, one iconic figure stands separate from the rest: a crooning, crescent moon-faced musician named Mac Tonight. Originally part of an ambitious campaign to advertise McDonald's as a place for adults as well as kids, Mac experienced skyrocketing -- yet short-lived -- viral fame. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max dive into Mac's origin story to discover exactly what happened to this once-beloved, world famous Moon Man.
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Transcript
00:00:00
"Radiculous History" is a production of "I-Heart" radio.
00:00:03
Welcome back to the show "Radiculous Historians."
00:00:29
Thank you as always so much for tuning in.
00:00:32
Let's hear it for our super producer, the man, the myth, the legend, the mascot, Mr.
00:00:36
Max Williams.
00:00:37
Hello, I'm a Max-like item.
00:00:40
Yes, thank you.
00:00:42
All right, the big, big Max.
00:00:44
Do you come with a combo, though?
00:00:46
Only if you get the kids meal.
00:00:48
I mean, what are they called?
00:00:49
Happy meal.
00:00:51
Happy meal.
00:00:52
Whatever.
00:00:52
I've eaten McDonald's in my condition.
00:00:54
You're a human, you're a human happy meal, though.
00:00:56
And I'm sorry, I called you.
00:00:57
I was nice to hate when people call me big man or big guy or whatever, really big bugs me.
00:01:01
So when I called you big Max, it was just a reference to big Max, the sandwich.
00:01:06
It wasn't saying that you're like some sort of stocky fellow.
00:01:09
I have my old friend Chelsea.
00:01:11
I would call her over there.
00:01:13
I'm like, what a big guy.
00:01:13
I said, big guy people all the time.
00:01:15
She's like, stop calling me big guy.
00:01:16
I'm like, all right, big girl, that would not go over well.
00:01:18
And I should probably stop taking it personally, because it's probably not intended the way I'm here.
00:01:23
Yeah.
00:01:23
Most people are kind of talking to themselves when they talk to folks.
00:01:27
You know, I used to have an issue with people calling me buddy, because in the United States, it's usually deployed in a condescending tone, which is different weirdly enough from bud.
00:01:40
Bud is like a respectful fist bump in a conversation.
00:01:44
That, that dulcetown, you're hearing, by the way, ridiculous historians is none other than Mr.
00:01:51
Noel Brown to say, and they, they have often called me Ben Bolin on this show.
00:01:59
Today, we are exploring a story of ridiculous fast food history.
00:02:06
It's just before our cutoff, right?
00:02:09
Because historically, arbitrarily, we determined history cuts off with Max, the superhero apartheid gorilla.
00:02:19
That's right.
00:02:19
What a guy.
00:02:20
What a primate indeed.
00:02:22
And you know, Noel, back, not too too long ago, we explored the mythology of McDonald's,
00:02:33
of their, their excellent work with mascots, their, the pamphlet of characters, right?
00:02:38
Yeah.
00:02:39
Pantheon, just so.
00:02:41
And now we're looking at, with the help of our research associate, Jeff Bartlett, we are looking at a guy we didn't talk much about in our two part episode on McDonald's and their mascots,
00:02:56
which by the way featured Jonathan Strickland, aka the quister.
00:03:00
Oh my gosh.
00:03:00
How long ago was that?
00:03:02
Well, he was, he was behaving for most of it.
00:03:05
He was about a young quister.
00:03:07
Yes.
00:03:07
Yes.
00:03:08
He was a quisling with a z, not the, not the very mean word.
00:03:14
Do you know the word quisling?
00:03:15
I don't think I do.
00:03:16
Yes.
00:03:16
Quisly with an S means a traitor who collaborates with the enemy.
00:03:23
Good to know.
00:03:24
I mean, that's not too far off from the, the, the quister.
00:03:27
I mean, it is kind of in his characters DNA.
00:03:29
As soon as we'll house.
00:03:30
What's up, y'all?
00:03:34
So on a recent episode of Quisly Up Supreme, my co-hosts, I'm Pay Bill and Sugar Steven and I sat down with the king at rock of the Beastie boys.
00:03:40
We talked about the early days of the beasties, thinking for records around the globe.
00:03:44
And now it makes music these days in the cabin in the mountains.
00:03:47
Oh, and this jewel.
00:03:48
I was trying to start a band in the 90s called the nasal tongue.
00:03:53
Me and Q-tip and MC Mil and B-reel.
00:03:56
Listen to the Quisly Up Supreme on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:04:03
Welcome to the criminelia podcast.
00:04:07
I'm Maria Tremarki and I'm Holly Frye.
00:04:09
Together, we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime.
00:04:15
Each season, we explore a new theme from poisoners to art thieves.
00:04:20
We uncover the secrets of history's most interesting figures from legal injustices to body snatching.
00:04:27
And tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocked tales inspired by each story.
00:04:33
Listen to criminelia on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:04:39
Hey everyone, it's John, also known as Dr.
00:04:44
John Paul.
00:04:46
And I'm Jordan or Joho.
00:04:48
And we are the Black Fat Film Podcast.
00:04:50
A podcast where all the intersections of a daddy are celebrated.
00:04:54
Oh, shot.
00:04:55
This year we have had some of our favorite people on including Kid Fury, T.S.
00:04:59
Madison, Amber Ruffin from the Amber and Lacey Show, and Jellic Ross and more.
00:05:04
Make sure you listen to the Black Fat Film Podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, girl.
00:05:12
Oh, I know that's right.
00:05:13
The forces shaping markets and the economy are often hiding behind a blur of numbers.
00:05:21
So that's why we created The Big Take from Bloomberg Podcasts to give you the context you need to make sense of it all.
00:05:28
Every day in just 15 minutes we dive into one global business story that matters.
00:05:32
You'll hear from Bloomberg journalists like Matt Levine.
00:05:35
A lot of this boomstock stuff is I think embarrassing to the SEC.
00:05:39
Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen.
00:05:44
Curious about queer sexuality, cruising and expanding your horizons?
00:05:50
Hit play on the sex positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's cruising confessions.
00:05:55
Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson-Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast Sniffy's cruising confessions.
00:06:04
Sniffy's cruising confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.
00:06:08
You can listen to Sniffy's cruising confessions sponsored by Giliad, now on the iHeart radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:06:17
New episodes every Thursday.
00:06:20
Well, who is this missing character we're exploring tonight?
00:06:25
No.
00:06:26
Oh, tonight, indeed, we would be tonight for this episode for sure because it is absolutely a nighttime character, a nighttime figure.
00:06:35
McDonald's mascot for the for the grownups.
00:06:38
You know, whereas all the other ones, the hamburgerler, Mayor McCheeze, the grimace, all of that pantheon we previously mentioned are much more geared towards children.
00:06:48
But Mac tonight, which is an odd name.
00:06:51
It's like sort of like a concept, more than a name, was indeed a fictional McDonald's mascot character figure that was featured in commercials running for a pretty brief window of time from 1986 to 1989.
00:07:06
He was a sort of a Sinatra-esque fellow that wouldn't seem out of place in a cigarette advertisement.
00:07:13
I've always pictured like he should have had like a cigarette hanging from his moon, not moon-shaped lips.
00:07:18
His head was moon-shaped though, but his lips were normal.
00:07:21
We're in sunglasses, office scenes sitting at a piano, bit of a crooner.
00:07:25
Yeah, yeah, sort of a mix of Mac's headroom and Kinske from Nightbreed.
00:07:32
If you remember that adaptation of the Clive Barker novel.
00:07:36
Yeah, moon-face, I believe, in the movie in any case, right?
00:07:41
Yeah.
00:07:42
He's a cool guy, Ticklin the Keys, Ticklin the Ivory, and his whole thing is first off, he wears sunglasses at night.
00:07:53
And secondly, he wants you to know that he very much wants you to know that McDonald's is a late night place.
00:08:02
It's not just for the kiddos at 11 a.m., it's also McDonald's after dark.
00:08:08
McDonald's for dinner, y'all, Mac tonight.
00:08:10
Get it?
00:08:11
Pretty smart.
00:08:12
I mean, I totally understand it, where sometimes companies get such a reputation for one thing that they need to remind consumers that no, we're not just for the kids.
00:08:23
We're dangerous.
00:08:24
Check out Mac tonight.
00:08:26
Look at this guy.
00:08:27
He was even based on a song about murder most foul.
00:08:30
Yes, yes.
00:08:31
And as a fan of Bertolt Brecht, this is especially interesting to me at least.
00:08:38
Some people found the guy charming.
00:08:40
Some people found him off-putting.
00:08:44
Yes.
00:08:44
Some found him downright Brechtian.
00:08:46
Right.
00:08:46
And there are machinery, a theater joke, and there is a mystery of what we are over the moon to show you why explore together how this character became so famous and then rejected.
00:09:03
And why Mac tonight is possibly not coming back.
00:09:08
But before we do that, we want to talk about the very first mascot for McDonald's, which is just a goofy guy.
00:09:16
He's just loveable.
00:09:18
It's a goofy guy.
00:09:19
We're talking about speedy.
00:09:21
Ronald McDonald, the creepy clown, hamburger, grimace, you know, all the hits, the pantheon we talked about.
00:09:28
We're not always the ambassadors of McDonald's that we know them as today.
00:09:33
Of course, this is out of the side of the scope of this episode.
00:09:37
But, you know, McDonald's was, in fact, created initially by people with the name McDonald's.
00:09:44
Richard and Maurice McDonald introduced the concept of fast food.
00:09:48
And we're then bought out and screwed over by Ray E.
00:09:52
Croc, which you can see the story of that portrayed in the excellent film, The Founder, starring Michael Keaton.
00:10:00
As I guess the titular founder, although he wasn't really the founder.
00:10:04
In fact, the founders were Richard and Maurice McDonald's.
00:10:07
He was like the popularizer.
00:10:09
That's right.
00:10:10
He saw the vision that they already kind of had, but he saw dollar signs and like he already, you know, was envisioning that, however, many billions served that you see on the McDonald's golden arches sign and the crazy uniformity with the sesame seeds and so on.
00:10:27
That's Croc.
00:10:28
I love that you're bringing this up when Richard and Maurice, Mac McDonald, when they introduce McDonald's as a concept,
00:10:38
they also introduce what is called the speedy service system, S-P-E-E-D-E-E.
00:10:45
And they sort of anticipated the rise of what we call fast food today.
00:10:52
This system asked customers to walk up to a window to get their own food.
00:10:59
You didn't sit at a table and get a server to come to you.
00:11:03
They got rid of the middle man, more or less, and decided to serve the customers directly.
00:11:09
You know, I mean, I guess it evolved, but even today, you pay at one window, if you're doing the drive-thru thing and then you roll over to the next one and they hand you your bag.
00:11:19
Hopefully in a speedy fashion, but that speedy system came with a character, a mascot of the same name to kind of really hit home the message and clarify exactly what they were all about there at McDonald's,
00:11:33
that speedy service life.
00:11:35
Yeah, they also shed a lot of choice in favor of quick delivery.
00:11:41
So McDonald's, unlike many other restaurants at the time, they stripped down their menu, just burgers, fries, soft drinks, you know,
00:11:51
and occasionally they would branch out later to apple pies, things like that.
00:11:56
But the point was you get in, you get your food as quickly as possible.
00:12:00
This was such a new idea that as you were saying, they had to have some sort of friendly figure to explain this so it didn't sound like a TED talk.
00:12:11
And when they got the speedy service system, they wanted to humanize it or anthropomorphize it, I should say, with this guy who is, who's, he's always kind of winking at yeah,
00:12:23
he's a cook, but despite being a cook, he has a bow tie and he's got a hamburger for a head.
00:12:29
And despite being very quick, conceptually, he also has a pot belly because he's very well fed.
00:12:35
Right.
00:12:35
Yeah, he obviously pulls off little pieces of his own head and eats it, which is an abomination if you ask me.
00:12:42
But it did, you know, kind of bring that message home.
00:12:45
People did understand what speedy was about and what the speedy service system was all about.
00:12:50
And, you know, he was more of an on-site kind of presence than a anthropomorphic cartoon or person wearing a suit that would appear in television commercials.
00:13:00
He was retired, you know, entirely in 1962 and before that time didn't appear in a single commercial.
00:13:07
Yeah, yeah.
00:13:08
Part of it was the fact that other companies were making mascots.
00:13:15
In particular, Alka Selzer had a mascot called Speedy spelled S-P-E-E-D-Y.
00:13:22
So yeah, our brand confusion potentially.
00:13:27
Right.
00:13:28
Exactly.
00:13:29
And if you go to folks like Alan Hess researching for the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, you'll see that you'll see something that Crock and McDonald's recognized pretty immediately.
00:13:45
Folks were identifying McDonald's with those golden arches, which came out in 1961.
00:13:54
They were thinking of that more so than they were thinking of this weird wear hamburger that wants to give you fries very quickly.
00:14:03
So as the story goes, they dropped this mascot Speedy and they replaced him with an absolutely terrifying guy named Ronald McDonald who wants to hang out with children across the world and make them eat French fries.
00:14:19
Yeah, exactly.
00:14:20
It's a little weird.
00:14:22
And actually, it occurs to me, I wonder how far ahead of John Wayne Gacy, Ronald McDonald was.
00:14:30
Yeah, it's a point I brought up on stuff they don't want you to know in the past.
00:14:36
The cool refobia of the Western world can be traced, in my opinion, to Gacy.
00:14:42
To John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer who was also a part-time clown.
00:14:48
In other parts of the world, clowns are still cool.
00:14:52
Totally.
00:14:53
Yeah, it does appear that Gacy's crimes took place in the, but throughout the 70s and he didn't really come to light in a public way until 1978.
00:15:02
So this whole Ronald McDonald thing was already going strong from the early 60s.
00:15:08
And they took an L on that one.
00:15:10
Yeah, no super size there because America learned to fear clowns and associate them with very sinister things.
00:15:20
Now, if we go to mash.com, we'll see that our pal Felix Bear says there is one speedy operating at its original location.
00:15:31
As in one, you know, image or icon of this character.
00:15:36
It's in Muncie, Indiana.
00:15:38
The Muncie speedy still has vertical neon lights between the bottom of the arch and at the top of the McDonald's logo.
00:15:46
Yeah, and that's definitely something you'll also see with other fast food brands like Arby's, for example, in Athens, Georgia.
00:15:53
There is a classic giant neon Arby sign that hasn't changed since, you know, the original days of that franchise.
00:16:00
And that's something that like certain brands, you know, think about.
00:16:03
They're like, oh, well, let's let there be this kind of like relic of the past that we don't mess with.
00:16:07
And here's why we're telling you about speedy.
00:16:10
It's not an episode about speedy himself.
00:16:14
We wish him the best.
00:16:15
It is to illustrate fellow ridiculous historians that McDonald's as a concept, as an enterprise has no problem with abandoning mascots,
00:16:26
with moving on to the next thing.
00:16:29
You know, let's acknowledge obviously Ronald McDonald, please check out our two part series on the pantheon of McDonald's characters.
00:16:40
Mac tonight shows up and he is, he is a shot out of the blue, right?
00:16:46
He might as well be from deep space.
00:16:50
That's a moon joke.
00:16:52
Thank you.
00:16:53
The whole idea was that there was this guy who's like a late night, cool, jazzy type singer.
00:16:59
And he says, Hey, McDonald's.
00:17:01
It's not just for daytime, you know, your kids are asleep.
00:17:05
You need something to eat.
00:17:07
Come on down to McDonald's.
00:17:08
He does not appear in McDonald's land because that's for kids.
00:17:13
He's too cool.
00:17:14
What's up, y'all?
00:17:15
So in a recent episode of Quest Love Supreme, my co-hosts, I'm pay Bill and sugar Stephen, I sat down with the king at rock of the Beasties boys.
00:17:24
We talked about the early days of the beasties, thinking for records around the globe.
00:17:28
And now it makes music these days and a cabin in the mountains.
00:17:31
Oh, and this jewel.
00:17:32
I was trying to start a band in the 90s called the nasal tongue.
00:17:36
Me and Q-tip and MC Mill and V-Riddle.
00:17:39
Listen to Quest Love Supreme on the I Heart Radio app.
00:17:42
Have a podcast or wherever you get your podcast.
00:17:46
Hey, everyone.
00:17:50
It's John, also known as Dr.
00:17:53
John Paul.
00:17:54
And I'm Jordan or Joho.
00:17:56
And we are the Black Fat Film podcast.
00:17:59
A podcast where all the intersections of a daddy are celebrated.
00:18:03
Cool shot.
00:18:04
This year we have had some of our favorite people on including Kid Fury, T.S.
00:18:08
Madison, Amber Ruffin from the Amber and Lacey show, Angelica Ross and more.
00:18:13
Make sure you listen to the Black Fat Film podcast on the I Heart Radio app.
00:18:17
Have a podcast or wherever you get your podcast, girl.
00:18:20
Oh, I know that's right.
00:18:21
Welcome to the criminelia podcast.
00:18:27
I'm Maria Tramarki and I'm Holly Fry.
00:18:32
Together we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime.
00:18:37
Each season we explore a new theme, everything from poisoners and pirates to art thieves and snake oil products and those who made and sold them.
00:18:45
We uncover the stories and secrets of some of history's most compelling criminal figures, including a man who built a submarine as a getaway vehicle.
00:18:54
Yep, that's a fact.
00:18:56
We also look at what kinds of societal forces were at play at the time of the crime from legal injustices to the ethics of body snatching to see what, if anything,
00:19:06
might look different through today's perspective and be sure to tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in custom made cocktails and mocktails inspired by the stories.
00:19:17
There's one for every story we tell.
00:19:20
Listen to criminelia on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:19:26
Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?
00:19:31
Hit play on the sex positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.
00:19:36
Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson-Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new I Heart podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.
00:19:45
Sniffy's cruising confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.
00:19:49
You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:19:56
New episodes every Thursday.
00:19:58
Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro, host of the Hit Podcast, Family Secrets.
00:20:02
How would you feel if when you met your biological father for the first time he didn't even say hello?
00:20:08
And how would you feel if your doctor advised you to keep your life altering medical procedure a secret from everyone?
00:20:16
And what if your past itself was a secret and the time had suddenly come to share that past with your child?
00:20:24
These are just a few of the powerful and profound questions we'll be asking on our 11th season of Family Secrets.
00:20:31
Some of you have been with us since season one and others are just tuning in, whatever the case and wherever you are.
00:20:39
Thank you for being part of our Family Secrets family.
00:20:42
Where every week we explore the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
00:20:50
Listen to season 11 of Family Secrets on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:20:57
Yeah, he's probably the one that distributed all the McDonald's branded ash trays at all the locations.
00:21:07
Remember that was a thing, but you can probably still find them for sale.
00:21:11
McDonald's ash trays and matchbooks and all that stuff from when everyone used to just smoke them if you got them in McDonald's locations, including the play place.
00:21:22
I would imagine which is the ball pit and all of that good stuff.
00:21:25
So yeah, I mean, it was very much an attempt to, and they've done this other times, you know, without like they had like the, what was it?
00:21:32
There was an ad campaign that Jason Alexander participated in where it was like some kind of like Mick BLT thing and it was like, it's a grown-up sandwich, you know, for grown-ups.
00:21:42
And then there was like the, oh gosh, it was just called like the Mac something or like it wasn't the big Mac, it was something deluxe arched deluxe.
00:21:51
That's what it was.
00:21:52
That was also marketed towards grown-ups with its potato bun and like all this kind of faux gourmet trappings.
00:21:59
And so this is something they definitely continued to do after Mac tonight.
00:22:04
But yeah, you're absolutely right, Ben.
00:22:05
It was an attempt to let people know that McDonald's was not just for breakfast and lunch with the kiddos and happy meals.
00:22:13
It was also for a grown-up dinner.
00:22:15
Heck, cater your dinner party with McDonald's.
00:22:18
If you want to propose, why not take her to McDonald's after 9 p.m.? Yeah, I'm sure she would.
00:22:26
Mac tonight would sit at his piano in the clouds and he would sing a song.
00:22:33
And it's a song that we'll play for you later.
00:22:36
It's all about how awesome McDonald's is at night to the earlier point there it is a parody plagiarizing the melody of a previous song called Mac the Knife,
00:22:48
which at that point had been performed by some of the most famous singers in the Western world.
00:22:54
Bobby Darren, Frank Sinatra, the Mac tonight version is way less bloody, but it was purposely designed and deployed to leverage baby boomer nostalgia of the 1950s.
00:23:09
And for a time, this was incredibly successful.
00:23:14
Just for a reminder, because I don't think we mentioned it earlier.
00:23:19
This guy, Mac tonight, was only in play seriously for like three years, 1986 to 1989.
00:23:28
So there's this advertising company that gets this pitch going with McDonald's, they get a budget of half a million dollars, which is huge money.
00:23:39
And they say we're going to make four commercials.
00:23:42
Each one has Mac, the crescent moon-faced guy, front and center.
00:23:48
He's playing his piano.
00:23:49
He's singing his new jingle, which is set to the tune of Mac the Knife.
00:23:54
We'd love to play one example for you here, folks.
00:23:58
Oh, we must.
00:23:58
When the clock strikes half past six days and time to hit four, go to life,
00:24:09
it's a good time for the trade chains.
00:24:15
Dinner at McDonald's.
00:24:29
This is Mac tonight.
00:24:29
Come on, make it Mac tonight.
00:24:26
Yeah, get it.
00:24:31
Oh my gosh.
00:24:34
Well, and you know, and the commercial that you found been very clearly highlights salads and other things that adults might enjoy.
00:24:45
I have to jump in.
00:24:46
That's what jumped out to me.
00:24:48
That was the sh*tiest looking salad I've ever seen.
00:24:51
It's amazing.
00:24:52
It was glistening.
00:24:53
Come on.
00:24:53
McDonald's actually at my mom always says they have great salads there.
00:24:56
I haven't eaten McDonald's for years.
00:24:58
It's a state of condition.
00:24:59
But I look at that thing.
00:25:00
I'm like, oh god.
00:25:02
That looks like it's been in the fridge for three weeks.
00:25:04
But I mean, food picks in those days always look kind of awful.
00:25:07
The technology just wasn't there.
00:25:09
It's someone who managed restaurants.
00:25:11
It was one time task to take food picks and then was after take after he did the food picks.
00:25:15
No longer task to take food picks.
00:25:18
Most of the food photography you see is not the actual food.
00:25:23
It's a good friend of the show and how stuff works back in the day.
00:25:28
Lizzie Johnson is a food photographer and learning all the tricks of the trade is fascinating.
00:25:35
Yeah, oftentimes that shine comes from like being coated in like a clear nail polish, you know, ice cream.
00:25:43
If you see the perfect rolled, you know, spheres of ice cream, it's some sort of weird composite clay thing that mixture may vary.
00:25:52
There's tons of crazy tricks around that stuff and ways to get things to look kind of a predator naturally crisp and fresh.
00:26:00
But you don't want to eat any of that stuff.
00:26:02
You would probably die instantly.
00:26:04
Might be an episode, history of food photography.
00:26:07
Also, at some point we might have to add a sound cube because I keep pitching new episodes while we're recording.
00:26:14
We follow up on some of them.
00:26:16
I think we got a good track record.
00:26:18
Sort of like Mac tonight had a good track record in their initial marketing campaign.
00:26:23
It was so successful that the boffins, the sea suite, the suits have McDonald's said, let's roll this out across the country.
00:26:33
So they launched this nationwide campaign and they had the mascot Mack tonight up here in Boca Raton, Florida.
00:26:42
Can I get some like a high level high drama fancy city music.
00:27:01
There we go.
00:27:01
Boca Raton.
00:27:01
It's kind of a big deal.
00:27:01
It's not as big as when the Beatles perform on that rooftop.
00:27:04
But you see Mac tonight performing on a rooftop, people go crazy.
00:27:11
But the big question is who created this crazy crooning present cranium?
00:27:16
I wrote that letter.
00:27:18
Yeah.
00:27:19
It's good.
00:27:20
He said it.
00:27:20
Brad A ball.
00:27:23
Real day was responsible for this.
00:27:25
He really loved the melody of that song.
00:27:28
He really loved the potential for the nostalgia mining in 1986.
00:27:34
Mac the knife originally written by Kurt Vile and Bertolt Brecht for the three penny opera.
00:27:41
It's original incarnations very different from the kind of more hit parade version that made a number one hit for Bobby Darren in 1959.
00:27:49
And there's something about this, you know, just screamed like this is this is adult.
00:27:54
You know, there's something you're right, Ben.
00:27:57
It's that baby boomer kind of nostalgia thing that just that kind of crooning, you know, hep cat finger snap and melody really evokes.
00:28:06
So he decided to pitch one of his biggest clients, which is an organization called the McDonald's Operator's Association of Southern California.
00:28:14
That's kind of shady, right?
00:28:16
Which part?
00:28:17
McDonald's Operator's Association of Southern California sounds like it's close to McDonald's, but not McDonald's corporate.
00:28:26
It's true.
00:28:26
But I also know that like, you know, McDonald's is all about franchisees, right?
00:28:32
So it seems like maybe this was pitched as more of a regional thing.
00:28:36
Oh, that that would, you know, be participated in by, you know, folks in this part of the country in Southern California, they thought it would like hit better there because people are like cooler, smarter or something or more adult.
00:28:48
I don't know.
00:28:49
And by the way, Brad eight ball was the president of the ad organization or the ad agency Davis Johnson mogul and Colombato Incorporated DJMC for short,
00:29:00
which was a relatively speaking small advertising agency there in LA.
00:29:06
His creative director, a guy named Peter Catrulis kind of took his homework assignment and ran with it listening to tons of different versions, which there were many of this song,
00:29:18
Mac.
00:29:18
The knife by folks ranging from Bobby Daron himself to Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Liberace even worked up a version.
00:29:26
It was very, very popular.
00:29:27
And he of course knew that, you know, it needed to have some Mac Donald's centric lyrics, you know, I'll weird out who was also pretty big at the time.
00:29:36
So you got to wonder if like, there is something about that.
00:29:39
And his waffle King's a banger, dude.
00:29:41
Have you ever waffle King?
00:29:43
No, no, I don't know.
00:29:45
You were, what's what's what's the parody of?
00:29:49
Uh, it is a, it is a guy call himself the waffle King who realizes that he is the God of waffles.
00:29:57
So it's just a one off.
00:29:58
It's not a parody.
00:29:59
It's just like one of his original songs.
00:30:01
Don't know the full context.
00:30:04
He has a weird banger song.
00:30:06
He definitely has those non parody weird out versions that usually do not, yeah, do not stick.
00:30:10
Of course, not quite stick to the public consciousness, the way, you know, fat or, uh, eat it or any of this other body shaming anthems go.
00:30:20
Um, but you know, he was hugely popular.
00:30:22
And I can only imagine that that that may be figured in.
00:30:26
So we need to do a great parody song incorporating MacDonald's messaging into a song that the people of the generation we're trying to attract will no doubt be intimately familiar with.
00:30:37
Yeah.
00:30:38
Because this is a war.
00:30:40
Uh, they are in the trenches of what will later be called the burger wars, the fast escalating fast food fight to get into the bellies of American consumers.
00:30:54
This is where Mac tonight comes from.
00:30:57
And look, folks, you don't have to, you don't have to delve too deep to realize the 1980s commercial culture was weird.
00:31:06
Okay.
00:31:06
He got the voice of Mac tonight by guy named Roger bear.
00:31:11
Bear passed away.
00:31:12
Unfortunately in 2018, but he was a hugely talented actor.
00:31:17
He did a lot of voice work.
00:31:19
He also side note, thanks to our pal Jeff, uh, he voiced two transforpers characters.
00:31:25
I just then transformers the motion picture or in the cartoon unclear.
00:31:30
Okay.
00:31:31
Fair enough.
00:31:31
I'm not familiar with these.
00:31:32
These seem like deep cut transformers run about and run a muck.
00:31:36
Are they like one word each?
00:31:37
Okay.
00:31:38
So they, I guess they're a package deal.
00:31:40
They have to be like twins.
00:31:42
I love this part of the story because we know and love your ridiculous history.
00:31:49
The work of Doug Jones, who is just an incredible physical actor.
00:31:55
I mean, he has a background in Mime, in theater, and has portrayed iconic kind of costume characters ranging from the kind of culture from the black lagoon star of the shape of water by Guillermo del Toro.
00:32:14
He was the thin, or the, is it the thin man in, in pan's labyrinth with creepy hands and the eyes of his, and the eyes of his palms and his palms.
00:32:22
Absolutely.
00:32:22
I can't.
00:32:23
This guy's the physical actor.
00:32:24
He's not the fairly straight Mac tonight.
00:32:26
You know, he was this, this, this really was his first kind of breakout role led to what was to come for him, which included like playing bit parts on shows like Buffy,
00:32:37
the vampire slayer.
00:32:39
Um, he is what that may return.
00:32:41
That may return.
00:32:42
Exactly.
00:32:43
That's another, I think that's maybe his first big screen performance.
00:32:47
He plays like an acrobatic clown in the penguins crew in that film.
00:32:53
But he gets his kind of big shot portraying the physical embodiment of adult McDonald's Mac tonight in this marketing campaign that, as you mentioned,
00:33:04
Ben had a pretty hefty budget for the time, half a million bucks.
00:33:09
Mm hmm.
00:33:10
Yeah.
00:33:11
And the, the guys at DJMC, they choose Jones because he is tall and he is thin.
00:33:18
And he has legit, bona fide experience with a memory.
00:33:23
I, with the arts of the mind, he's also very animated physically, which is essential for this character.
00:33:32
And like you were saying earlier, Jones credits his stent as Mac tonight doing these commercials as paving his way to overall success as an actor and entertainer in 2013.
00:33:45
He's talking to collider.
00:33:46
And he says, look, I played this Mac tonight character in 27 commercials over just those three years.
00:33:54
And because of those 27 commercials, I got all these referrals.
00:34:00
People kept coming to me and offering me new, more expansive, more substantive roles.
00:34:07
We could also argue this nostalgia or this gratitude is why Doug Jones came back in the mid 1990s to do two more Mac tonight commercials during a very short lived revival for reasons,
00:34:25
for reasons.
00:34:26
And it's, it's weird because backstory.
00:34:30
I don't think any of this is on air, but on our other shows, stuff they don't want you to know, we're about to record.
00:34:37
We talked a little bit about Max headroom and how influential Max headroom was as a character later becoming a very strange and specific Playboy centerfold parody.
00:34:49
Mac tonight is inspired by Max headroom.
00:34:52
Well, it came up in our conversation that you're referencing Ben.
00:34:55
How come you don't ever see sexy Max headroom costumes around Halloween time might be a little too much of a deep cup.
00:35:01
But I you pointed out that surely it's been done.
00:35:04
It's had and definitely in the 80s when Max headroom was inescapable.
00:35:08
He's kind of this like computer generated sort of talk show host like he said.
00:35:14
And of course, he was, you can see him portrayed in back to the future.
00:35:23
Part two, when they go to that kind of like nostalgia diner or whatever, when Marty McFly, like it's punked by those kids, one of which is played by a very baby little Elijah Wood for having to use his hands for playing a video game,
00:35:37
the little gun game, or he's used to impress in the heck out of people with that.
00:35:41
And these kids just roll their eyes and you know, he doesn't have telepathy, I guess, like everyone in the future does that never really gets addressed again.
00:35:47
It's always bugged me a little bit like you have to use your hands like what do you mean little Elijah would.
00:35:52
But Max headroom was also of course used in like a big old kind of early hacking kind of scam.
00:36:00
Right, right.
00:36:01
The Max headroom incident and you can check out stuff they don't want you to know for more information on that.
00:36:07
We think we may have solved the case.
00:36:09
Shout out to the actor portrayed Max headroom, a guy named Matt Fruer.
00:36:14
Max headroom was computer generated, but still in the early 1980s or the idea was that he's an AI computer generated personality.
00:36:24
They couldn't do that yet.
00:36:27
The technology just wasn't there for a lot of industries, let alone a small LA based ad agency, like DJMC.
00:36:36
And so the firm's executives were going back and forth and they were saying, well, should we just use real people known human celebrities in the advertisements?
00:36:48
Why not have Mr.
00:36:50
T be the face of McDonald's?
00:36:51
For instance, I'm just pulling an 80s reference.
00:36:54
I pity the fool who doesn't go to McDonald's for dinner.
00:36:58
And ultimately they said, no, McDonald's needs to have its own mascot.
00:37:05
Let's look at original things.
00:37:07
There was nothing they thought more original than Max headroom.
00:37:11
And so someone in that writer's room said, we need a Max headroom for McDonald's and they nailed it with Mac tonight.
00:37:20
He got so popular that he even got his own happy meal and toys, which used to be much more difficult.
00:37:26
Now I feel like if you're a celebrity of a certain echelon, you automatically get a branded happy meal.
00:37:33
Yeah.
00:37:33
And this also makes me think of the relatively recent kind of adult happy meal thing that McDonald's been doing with the bigger box and the full size sandwiches and like the kind of more like adulty collectible toys.
00:37:45
I got a few of those.
00:37:46
They were doing these like, what was it like?
00:37:48
Something cactus.
00:37:49
I can't remember, but they had these cool.
00:37:51
I'm a dorky collector of like figures and like, you know, super plastic and stuff like that.
00:37:56
And they had this whole thing where they had these like very psychedelic, weird kind of more like hipster figurines of like different McDonald's figures.
00:38:05
And I bought a few of those for that.
00:38:06
But if you think about it, this Mac tonight happy meal and toy thing, if you look at what their whole branding play was, was kind of the first adult happy meal in a lot of ways.
00:38:16
Yeah.
00:38:17
I think that's an astute observation.
00:38:19
What's up, y'all?
00:38:22
So in a recent episode of Quest Love Supreme, my co-hosts, I'm pay Bill and Sugar Stevens.
00:38:26
I sat down with the king at rock of the Beastie boys.
00:38:28
And we talked about the early days of the Beasties thinking for records around the globe.
00:38:32
And now it makes music these days and a cabin in the mountains.
00:38:35
Oh, and this jewel.
00:38:37
I was trying to start a band in the 90s called the nasal tongue, me and Q-tip and MC Mill and B-reel.
00:38:43
Listen to Quest Love Supreme on the iHeart radio at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.
00:38:50
Hey, everyone.
00:38:53
It's John, also known as Dr.
00:38:57
John Paul.
00:38:59
And I'm Jordan or Joho.
00:39:01
And we are the Black Fat Film Podcasts.
00:39:03
A podcast where all the intersections of a daddy are celebrated.
00:39:07
Cool shot.
00:39:08
This year we have had some of our favorite people on including Kid Fury, T.S.
00:39:13
Madison, Amber Ruffin from The Amber and Lacey Show, and Jellic Ross and more.
00:39:17
Make sure you listen to the Black Fat Film Podcasts on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast girl.
00:39:25
Oh, I know that's right.
00:39:26
Welcome to the criminelia podcast.
00:39:33
I'm Maria Tramarket and I'm Holly Fry.
00:39:36
Together, we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime.
00:39:41
Each season we explore a new theme, everything from poisoners and pirates to art thieves and snake oil products and those who made and sold them.
00:39:50
We uncover the stories and secrets of some of history's most compelling criminal figures, including a man who built a submarine as a getaway vehicle.
00:39:59
Yep, that's a fact.
00:40:00
We also look at what kinds of societal forces were at play at the time of the crime from legal injustices to the ethics of body snatching to see what, if anything,
00:40:10
might look different through today's perspective.
00:40:13
And be sure to tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in custom made cocktails and mocktails inspired by the stories.
00:40:21
There's one for every story we tell.
00:40:24
Listen to criminelia on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:40:30
Curious about queer sexuality, cruising and expanding your horizons?
00:40:35
Hit play on the sex positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's cruising confessions.
00:40:40
Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson-Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising relationships and culture in the new iHeart podcast Sniffy's cruising confessions.
00:40:50
Sniffy's cruising confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.
00:40:54
You can listen to Sniffy's cruising confessions sponsored by Gilead.
00:40:57
Now on the iHeart radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts, new episodes every Thursday.
00:41:02
Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro, host of the hit podcast, Family Secrets.
00:41:06
How would you feel if when you met your biological father for the first time, he didn't even say hello?
00:41:12
And how would you feel if your doctor advised you to keep your life altering medical procedure a secret from everyone?
00:41:20
And what if your past itself was a secret?
00:41:24
And the time had suddenly come to share that past with your child?
00:41:28
These are just a few of the powerful and profound questions we'll be asking on our 11th season of Family Secrets.
00:41:35
Some of you have been with us since season one, and others are just tuning in, whatever the case, and wherever you are.
00:41:43
Thank you for being part of our Family Secrets family.
00:41:46
Where every week we explore the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
00:41:54
Listen to season 11 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:42:02
Max Knight gave McDonald's a crucial edge, a mission critical edge in the competition of the burger wars.
00:42:16
He was a moonsize success for his time, shout out to our friends at Retroist for putting it that way during this Halcyon short-lived era.
00:42:26
Mac tonight had a higher recognition rate of mid-consumers than New Coke.
00:42:33
And spoilers folks, New Coke was a huge boondoggle.
00:42:37
It was such a quagmire that there's an entire conspiracy theory about it, and they poured so much money poured.
00:42:45
They poured so much money to advertising it all for not.
00:42:51
With way less money, Mac tonight was way more successful.
00:42:55
All for not.
00:42:56
You could also argue that per the conspiracy theory of New Coke, that they did it all so that they could then sell the public classic Coke.
00:43:04
With course, of course, which is maintained that nostalgic play kind of ever since.
00:43:11
Because as we know, nostalgia and cocaine are a hell of drugs.
00:43:15
And I think both were a play in this Mac tonight scheme.
00:43:19
The 80s were the big times with that.
00:43:22
Big ideas, lots of ideas that maybe shouldn't have ever seen the light of day, but executives really thought quite highly of themselves in these days.
00:43:30
Blake, who greenlit the song Oh, make a year so five.
00:43:34
No, no, but it's right here.
00:43:36
The video, the videos, the music video will take you places.
00:43:41
Also a weird out parody.
00:43:42
Oh, Ricky, you're so fine.
00:43:44
It made about a minute about I love Lucy.
00:43:47
And as a result of Mac's overnight virality is amazing success, the campaign, as we said, extends way beyond this regional McDonald's operators deal real life Mac scots.
00:44:06
There we go.
00:44:09
A real life Mac scots.
00:44:12
They would perform at restaurant locations across the United States.
00:44:17
And thousands of people would go to see Mac tonight.
00:44:21
They would go watch him do like do the song.
00:44:24
And I guess do some bit.
00:44:26
It was huge.
00:44:28
Yeah.
00:44:28
I think they even rolled out some animatronic versions like Chuck E.
00:44:31
Cheese, Rockefeller explosion band style.
00:44:34
And they were so popular that even when they like fell into disrepair, I guess they didn't think about the long game here.
00:44:40
They just left them there as statues, which is kind of creepy if you think about it.
00:44:46
Oh, 100%.
00:44:47
And also to your point about the short-lived mania of the 1980s and cocaine, it feels like building spending tons of money to make animatronic sculptures and pieces and then just abandoning them instead of fixing them.
00:45:04
That feels very 80s to me.
00:45:07
There are these McDonald's coffee stirers that I have seen come up in memes and things about this very topic that were apparently really, really popular for folks to use as Coke spoons.
00:45:20
Oh, wow.
00:45:20
Because they're like, it's like this long thing with a McDonald's art shit one in.
00:45:25
And just a tiny little spoon on the other end.
00:45:28
Oh, no, I've never, I've, I've, I've not about that life.
00:45:31
Oh, neither am I just seen it pop up on the internet more than more than a few times.
00:45:36
I'm over the years.
00:45:37
That's wild.
00:45:38
Also, what's wild is the fact that this is a show about ridiculous history.
00:45:43
Mac tonight is not around.
00:45:46
You go to your local McDonald's.
00:45:48
You're probably not going to see our favorite moon face boy.
00:45:52
And it turns out that we know why you're not going to see him.
00:45:57
No, we have to go back to that song.
00:46:00
Mac, the knife.
00:46:01
Yeah, I mentioned that it was about bloody murder at the top of the show, which it is.
00:46:06
I mean, we got your bad, bad Leroy Browns.
00:46:09
Of course, the baddest man, the whole day out.
00:46:11
100% and he did some bad things, but didn't outright kill people in the song as Mac, the knife as evidenced by his name definitely did.
00:46:21
Yeah.
00:46:23
Yeah.
00:46:24
These, these ad execs, they're caught by the melody, the catchy tune of the song, not the lyrics.
00:46:32
So when they repurpose it, Al Yankovic style, they make it a PG rated thing.
00:46:37
You know, it's all about how it's Mac tonight instead of Mac, the knife.
00:46:42
And they get confronted by the moral majority of the 80s.
00:46:47
And they say, look, it's totally fine for us to use the melody from this song.
00:46:54
We're not touching the lyrics.
00:46:56
The kids aren't going to know it.
00:46:57
The baby boomers just remember they liked hearing it on their transistor radios.
00:47:03
Yeah.
00:47:03
And, you know, in their minds too.
00:47:05
I'm not sure.
00:47:06
It's interesting because, you know, if even if you don't use the original recording of the song and you don't use the lyrics, if you're using the melody and it's exactly the same, you still have to pay publishing rights for something like that.
00:47:19
There are parody laws and things like that, but a lot of that doesn't preclude you from being sued.
00:47:25
It just is a defense you can use in court, like a fair use or whatever.
00:47:29
Like when Fogarty got sued for sounding too much like himself, like himself, because you know, they're owned the masters or the rights to the publishing of his actual catalog.
00:47:40
And this comes into play, but first and foremost, to that moral majority point, they are calling into question the use of the song to which the McDonald's defenders,
00:47:52
the folks, you know, doing corporate PR are saying, no, no, it's just the melody.
00:47:57
We were trying to go for this nostalgia thing.
00:47:59
It's a little hard to make that argument when the name of the character, Mac two nights is the knife.
00:48:07
And like I just have a hard time believing that the guy that thought of this and making these connections, you know, was wasn't thinking about that play on words as well.
00:48:16
I mean, there's no question that that went in that figured into his thinking.
00:48:20
Oh, it's it's kind of to go dark with it.
00:48:23
It's kind of like if Victoria's secret had a new evil clown model mascot.
00:48:30
And they said, no, there's Jane Wayne Lacey has nothing to do with John Wayne Gacy.
00:48:37
You guys are making it weird.
00:48:40
Gas like the public.
00:48:41
Why don't you?
00:48:43
So that was one strike against the campaign.
00:48:46
That was one strike against the character.
00:48:49
What brought it even further into problematic territory was when the estate of the late great Bobby Darren filed suit against McDonald's for exactly what I was just describing.
00:49:02
Like they're saying, no, this is the song and the style because again, you know, this song is old and the three penny operas from 1928.
00:49:11
So even by this point, that music would have fallen under fair use.
00:49:15
I'm sorry, under public domain if I'm not mistaken.
00:49:18
So they weren't paying the estate of Bertold Brecht and Kurt Vile, but the problem is the hit came from Bobby Darren and his arrangement and his vocal stylings,
00:49:30
all of which are completely mimicked in this ad campaign.
00:49:34
Yeah.
00:49:34
And so the estate of Darren says, Mac tonight, whatever you guys are doing to sling your burgers, it's too close to what Bobby was doing.
00:49:44
You owe us 10 million US dollars in damages.
00:49:48
Right.
00:49:49
And eventually the estate drops the suit, but it's still a bad look.
00:49:54
You know what I mean?
00:49:55
It's like walking into a room after someone has just ripped apart.
00:49:59
So it's a it's a damper.
00:50:01
You know, it's it's not a good vibe for the character.
00:50:05
And this is part of why McDonald's overall capital M capital D moves into the 90s without Mac tonight.
00:50:13
He made a few more appearances every so often.
00:50:16
We talked about that short lived revival commercial run.
00:50:21
But now unfortunately, he has become more associated with far right hate groups using him as a meme.
00:50:33
That's right.
00:50:34
I mean, think Pepe the frog.
00:50:36
You know, I mean, a lot of the stuff comes from like forechan boards and it's hard to even trace where these things begin because it's, you know, it's kind of that game of telephone.
00:50:46
We always talk about so many of those boards are populated by a completely anonymous folks hiding behind their screen names.
00:50:53
And you know, these kind of like kind of alt-right weird comics end up circulating.
00:50:57
And then they end up taking a meaning in a kind of far right leaning pretty gnarly group on the internet.
00:51:05
Yeah, exactly.
00:51:07
That's what happened.
00:51:09
This info asymmetrical meme warfare.
00:51:12
Forget the burger wars.
00:51:14
Think about the meme wars, the info wars, not Alex, not Alex's thing.
00:51:21
So not tonight did get revived for a ad campaign in Southeast Asia in 2007.
00:51:29
But we're probably not going to see much of them in the US because to your point, he inspired an internet spin off called moon man.
00:51:38
This is a hundred percent moon man is to Mac tonight as Mac tonight is to Mac the knife.
00:51:49
Like it's clearly coming from that place.
00:51:53
And Max look alike is classified as a hate symbol by the ADL, the anti-deformation Lee because it's associated with all these memes about racism and homophobia and other nasty stuff,
00:52:08
particularly because there was a wrapping version of the character that spread as a meme online sometime around like 2010.
00:52:17
And like you said, no, it appeared on 4chan.
00:52:20
And the first videos were harmless parodies.
00:52:24
But they cast an early tech to speech thing too, right?
00:52:26
Like kind of like that radiohead computer voice.
00:52:28
Exactly.
00:52:29
Yeah.
00:52:29
Yeah.
00:52:29
Good point.
00:52:30
And this character gets repurposed for these increasingly depraved videos about white supremacy and anti-Semitism, anti-Islam stuff,
00:52:41
all kinds of nasty things.
00:52:43
It kind of makes sense if you try to see why they might have co-opted this figure.
00:52:48
Nothing wider than the moon, you know.
00:52:51
I'm just saying.
00:52:52
Geez.
00:52:53
Yeah.
00:52:53
Well, I'm, you know, partially colorful.
00:52:55
I was that was blue.
00:52:57
Wait, it changes colors depending on what, what like time of year.
00:53:00
Yeah.
00:53:00
And there's a certain kind of snark and pompousness that goes along with just like a still shot of this moon guy kind of grinning with his sunglasses.
00:53:10
You know, I can just picture some right wing internet weirdo seeing that being like it's perfect.
00:53:16
I've seen it from some of my previous research for four different shows, different episodes.
00:53:23
We do have to note this guy was falling down around 2010.
00:53:28
He popped up the the internet is so ephemeral shout out to Max.
00:53:32
And then Mac tonight was revitalized yet again re revitalized by the old right in 2015.
00:53:41
And this is what prompted it was the proverbial fry on the camel's back.
00:53:47
This is what prompted McDonald's to pull the last of all Mac tonight themed decor from restaurants.
00:53:54
And this is why I mean, even like it was just and this is why you will still see a speedy.
00:54:00
Maybe out in Muncie, uh, Indiana, but you're not going to see a Mac tonight at a McDonald's near you.
00:54:07
And maybe it was the right choice.
00:54:09
Maybe.
00:54:09
I mean, it's just it is a bummer.
00:54:11
I thought I was an interesting character, but the whole story is so fascinating.
00:54:14
What do I care about fast food mascots?
00:54:16
But I, you know, I think we're all fans of just following these kind of ridiculous pop culture moments.
00:54:21
And I wouldn't be surprised, Ben.
00:54:23
If, um, like that Mac tonight commercial that you found, if there's some, you know, McDonald's lawyers or whatever that do their best to get that stuff stripped from the internet,
00:54:34
you know, because they just don't want to be associated with it at all because of all the hate group stuff.
00:54:39
Oh, good point.
00:54:40
And I think we have been very fair, but in case that does get scrubbed, we'll do, we'll do a punch in.
00:54:45
But I think we're safe with that one.
00:54:47
It's freely available.
00:54:49
We're commenting.
00:54:50
Yeah.
00:54:51
We're certainly not, uh, I don't think we're going to be fast food mascots.
00:54:55
I don't really eat fast food.
00:54:57
I don't know what mascot we would be for that.
00:54:59
We'd be the, like the sad salad crew.
00:55:02
I'll be the bagman.
00:55:03
You can put the fries in me.
00:55:05
That'll be the face then.
00:55:07
Mm hmm.
00:55:07
Sounds good.
00:55:08
Max, do you want to be the, the guy in the chair?
00:55:11
We'll just calm the condition.
00:55:12
You know what I mean?
00:55:13
Let's think that's the guy that's like behind the scenes doing all the, like hacking and computing and stuff.
00:55:17
It just seems appropriate.
00:55:18
Works with me.
00:55:19
All right.
00:55:20
Great.
00:55:20
And we also literally work with you.
00:55:23
So thank you so much for tuning in.
00:55:25
Fellow ridiculous historians, we love these pop culture stories.
00:55:29
Uh, we love hearing more about it.
00:55:32
If you are interested in learning the full pantheon or the rise and fall of the pantheon, we should say, up McDonald's tune into our two-parter wherein we do light spoiler reveal the purported identity of Gremis.
00:55:47
AK, what Gremis is supposed to be?
00:55:50
Big, big thanks to our super producer, Mr.
00:55:53
Max Williams.
00:55:53
Big, big thanks to Alex Williams who composed this slap and bop and, uh, no, let's, uh, let's crack on the quister for a bit.
00:56:00
We earned it.
00:56:01
I think so.
00:56:02
I think that's right.
00:56:03
Um, damn you, quister.
00:56:07
There we go.
00:56:08
Stand for.
00:56:09
That's all right.
00:56:09
You're like a salad at McDonald's in an 80s commercial.
00:56:12
I'm wilted and, and, and it's still a little shiny because I'm covered in nail polish.
00:56:16
We only listen to the song The Grinch because it makes us think of you.
00:56:21
100% Big, big thanks to Christopher Osie Otis, Eve's Jeff Coat, uh, AJ Bahamas, Jacob, who else?
00:56:30
Who else?
00:56:30
Who else?
00:56:31
Hey, the rude dudes over at Ridiculous Crime, with Zaryn and Elizabeth, and, uh, well, some Gabe Luzier.
00:56:39
Check him out.
00:56:41
Ah, yes.
00:56:42
Gabe Luzier, uh, and, of course, no, super size.
00:56:47
Thanks to you.
00:56:48
Oh, thanks.
00:56:49
I appreciate that bud.
00:56:50
See, I said, bud.
00:56:51
Um, we'll see you next time, folks.
00:56:54
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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So on a recent episode of Quest Love Supreme, my co-hosts, I'm P.
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Oh, I know that's right.
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Curious about queer sexuality, cruising and expanding your horizons, hit play on the sex positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's cruising confessions.
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