The HAMBURGLER, damn it! The old Hamburgler! One of my crazy relatives got a Hamburgler figure when I was like 3 or 4 years old for some reason and it had a pull string to make it talk …. that shit got put in a hole in the woods. Really what were they thinking? Ronald was bad enough but for God's sake, the Hamburgler too?
Wow. I had the talking Hamburglar. Thanks for the post. I recently blogged about the creepy McDonaldland characters. Given that you started this thread, and it's related, do you mind if I post a link here in the comments?
If you mind, I won't do it. I enjoy commenting on this site and want to remain welcome.
Wow, reading fail. I saw unkle lancifer's name as having posted it and didn't see that Daniel E. submitted the traumafession. Never mind my earlier request.
Dustin,
We'd love to see your post too! Please feel free to leave that link so we can check it out! 🙂
Thanks, unkle lancifer
Here is the link to that entry:
http://ascaleof.blogspot.com/2013/02/mcdonaldland-characters-scale-of-ronald.html
Haha! I LOVE it! I'm so glad you mentioned how Grimace was once "Evil Grimace" and had four arms!!!
Here are two Evil Grimace clips. Notice how
in both cases Ronald tricks him by offering fame!
How did they ever end up friends?
I believe that's a young Jody Foster in the first one…
Thanks, unkle lancifer, for the thumbs up and the Grimace commercials.
As for how they became friends, I imagine Ronald bribed him somehow, figuring it was cheaper than having to continually waste resources covering everything Grimace stole. Grimace, as stupid as he is clumsy (like Admiral Needa), fell for it.
On that note, in the early 90s during the Barney the Dinosaur craze, we had a billboard aimed at preventing unprotected sex among middle schoolers. The character on the billboard was a purple "thing" similar to Grimace, possibly to avoid a lawsuit from the Barney people. He was singing, "I love you/you love me/Do you want/my STD?"
Hilarious, but the billboard didn't last long. I'm guessing McDonald's was about as thrilled as whatever company owned the copyright to Barney and put a stop to it.
I love the groovy psychadelic music in the second commercial. My eyes often look like Grimace's "beautiful eyes" while I'm working. Speaking of Grimace, have you ever wondered why a character selling food would be named "Grimace"?
When I was somewhere under the age of 5 my parents took me to a haunted house at Haloween time. I don't remember much or being scared that much until the damn Hamburgler jumped out and scared the crap out of me. So yes he is a Kindertraumatizer!
The Onion had a story about 10-12 years ago about McDonalds srapping their Hammurderer character, because he was apparently frightening to children.
I won't parrot the whole article here because it's rather funny. I'll provide the link so anyone who wants to can read it:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/mcdonalds-drops-hammurderer-character-from-adverti,127/