What fictional setting did McDonald’s use for its character-based advertising?

McDonaldland was the fictional setting used by McDonald’s for its character-based advertising.

The campaign presented McDonald’s characters as residents of an imaginary world populated by Ronald McDonald, Grimace, the Hamburglar, Mayor McCheese, and others. It gave the company a shared setting in which separate characters could appear together in television commercials, packaging, and promotional materials.

McDonaldland emerged in the early 1970s as McDonald’s developed a more elaborate family-oriented identity. The setting borrowed visual ideas from children’s television and fantasy worlds while connecting the fictional locations to menu items and restaurant experiences.

The setting is sometimes mistaken for the name of a single mascot or a restaurant chain. McDonaldland was the world itself; its characters had separate names and roles within that world.