Gone or Weirdly Immortal
Fast food companies spend enormous amounts of money creating mascots, only to abandon most of them within a decade. Sometimes the audience they were designed for grows up and moves on. Sometimes a corporate rebrand sends them into retirement. And sometimes executives simply decide the company needs to look a little more serious about food. A handful somehow survive. Here are 10 fast food mascots that disappeared and 10 that are still around.
1. Speedee
Before the golden arches meant anything, McDonald's had a winking chef with a hamburger for a head. Speedee ran from 1948 until about 1962 and was named for the speedy service system the brothers had built. He was dropped in part because customers kept confusing him with Speedy Alka-Seltzer, who had a nearly identical look and a far bigger ad budget behind him.
2. Ronald McDonald
The most recognized character in the industry was never formally retired, which makes his disappearance stranger than a firing would have been. McDonald's pulled him from public appearances in 2016 during a wave of creepy clown sightings across the United States, and he simply never came back to the advertising.
3. The McDonaldland Cast
Mayor McCheese ran a city populated by Officer Big Mac, the Fry Guys, and a talking moon. The whole world got McDonald's sued by Sid and Marty Krofft, who argued it borrowed heavily from H.R. Pufnstuf, and the Kroffts won. Corporate phased out the cast in the early 2000s when the chain repositioned itself toward adults.
4. The Hamburglar
Robble robble was the extent of his vocabulary for thirty years, and he went out with the rest of McDonaldland in 2003. McDonald's brought him back in 2015 as a live-action suburban dad in a mask and a leather jacket, which the internet found deeply upsetting. He lasted a few months before disappearing again with no announcement.
5. Mac Tonight
A man with a crescent moon for a head sat at a piano in a lounge singing a rewritten version of "Mack the Knife." The campaign started in 1986 and worked well until Bobby Darin's son sued over the song. Mac Tonight kept appearing overseas for a while and eventually became an internet meme with no connection to hamburgers at all.
Adam Lautenbach (Adaml212 at English Wikipedia) on Wikimedia
6. The Noid
Domino's spent the late eighties telling people to avoid a red-suited gremlin who ruined pizza. In 1989 a man named Kenneth Noid, who was experiencing severe mental illness, took two Atlanta employees hostage because he believed the ads were about him. Domino's ended the campaign not long after, and the character has only surfaced a couple of times since.
7. Herb the Nerd
Burger King built a 1985 campaign around a man who had supposedly never eaten a Whopper, offering money to any customer who spotted him. Herb toured the country in thick glasses and high-water pants while nobody cared even slightly. The promotion ended after about a year and routinely lands on lists of the worst campaigns ever run.
8. The Taco Bell Chihuahua
Gidget was a female dog playing a male character, and "yo quiero Taco Bell" was everywhere from 1997 to 2000. Sales did not actually improve much, and the campaign drew steady criticism for the accent. Two men later won a judgment against Taco Bell claiming they had pitched the idea first.
9. Fred the Baker
Michael Vale spent fifteen years shuffling out of bed before dawn muttering that it was time to make the donuts. Dunkin' retired him in 1997 with an actual parade and free donuts across the country. The character worked because he looked exhausted rather than charming, which no focus group would sign off on today.
10. The Arby's Oven Mitt
Someone at Arby's decided the brand needed a talking oven mitt, and Tom Arnold voiced it. The mitt appeared alongside a straight-man narrator for several years in the 2000s. Arby's dropped it once the chain moved toward its meat-focused ads, and almost nobody noticed it was gone.
Now, here's 10 that are somehow still working.
1. Colonel Sanders
Harland Sanders was a real man who died in 1980 and has been on the bucket ever since. Since 2015 KFC has run the odd strategy of casting a rotating series of comedians and celebrities as him, including Norm Macdonald and Reba McEntire. Swapping the actor every few months turned a static logo into something people check on, which is more attention than the original ever got.
2. The Chick-fil-A Cows
Cows advocating for their own survival by pushing chicken instead has been running since 1995. The misspelled handwriting was the whole idea, since cows presumably can't spell. The cows have outlasted nearly every other mascot campaign in American advertising and have barely been updated.
3. Jack Box
Jack in the Box blew up its own clown mascot in a 1980 commercial to signal a change in direction. Fifteen years later the company brought him back as a corporate executive with a ping-pong-ball head who blows up the boardroom in his first appearance. The revival worked better than the original ever did.
4. Wendy
The girl with the red braids is a drawing of Dave Thomas's daughter, Melinda Lou, whose nickname was Wendy. She has been on the sign since 1969 and got a modest redesign in 2012. The actual Wendy Thomas has spent her adult life as a franchisee and spokesperson for the chain named after her.
5. Grimace
Grimace started in 1971 as a four-armed creature called Evil Grimace who stole milkshakes from children. The arms and the villainy were removed after a couple of years, leaving a purple blob whose species McDonald's has never explained. A 2023 birthday shake turned him into a meme and briefly made him the most discussed mascot in the industry.
6. Little Caesar
The toga-wearing Roman holding a spear with a pizza on it dates back to 1959. His entire vocabulary is "pizza pizza," which started in 1979 as a way to advertise two pizzas for one price. He has been redrawn a few times and never fundamentally changed.
7. Big Boy
A chubby kid in checkered overalls holding a burger over his head has stood outside restaurants since 1936. The chain tested replacing him with a cow named Dolly at a few Michigan locations in 2020, and the reaction was bad enough that Big Boy returned within months. Most of the statues still standing out front are older than the people eating under them.
8. Rooty the A&W Bear
A&W added a bear cub to its root beer branding in 1963, and he never left. Rooty wears an orange sweater with a letter on it and hugs a frosty mug. The chain leans on nostalgia harder than most, and the bear is a large part of how it does that.
9. Chuck E. Cheese
Nolan Bushnell, who founded Atari, invented a rat mascot in 1977 to sell pizza alongside arcade cabinets. The company spent decades softening him from a rat into something more mouse-adjacent, then rebuilt him in 2012 as a slim rock guitarist. Kids who were terrified of the animatronic version are now bringing their own children.
10. Jollibee
A grinning red bee in a chef's hat and blazer has fronted the Philippines' largest chain since 1980. Jollibee outsells McDonald's in his home country by a wide margin, which almost no other national chain manages anywhere. The bee has expanded into North America with him unchanged, which is unusual for a mascot crossing markets.
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