McDonald's used McDonaldland as the fictional world for characters such as the Hamburglar and Mayor McCheese.
McDonaldland was an advertising setting built around recognizable food-related characters and locations. It gave McDonald's commercials a shared story world, allowing the company to connect menu items and restaurant branding with recurring personalities that children could remember.
The Hamburglar, Mayor McCheese, Grimace, Officer Big Mac, and other figures appeared in this imaginative environment. Each character had a distinct role or visual identity, which helped separate McDonald's advertising from ordinary product-focused commercials.
McDonaldland was not the company's first branding device. Speedee had represented fast service since 1948, and the Golden Arches had developed from restaurant architecture into a corporate logo. McDonaldland instead represented the later period when McDonald's used a cast of characters and fantasy storytelling to build a family-oriented brand universe.