McDonald's used Speedee as its mascot before Ronald McDonald appeared in 1963.
Speedee was a small chef character representing the restaurant's early focus on fast service. The name reflected the original Speedee Service System developed by Richard and Maurice McDonald at their San Bernardino, California, restaurant.
The character appeared in early McDonald's signs and promotional material, often as a smiling chef with a hamburger-shaped head. This imagery connected the brand to efficiency rather than to a large fictional world of characters.
Ronald McDonald gradually replaced Speedee as McDonald's best-known mascot during the 1960s. People sometimes confuse Speedee with later McDonaldland characters, but Speedee belongs to the chain's earliest branding era, before characters such as the Hamburglar and Grimace became familiar. The mascot's name is also sometimes written as Speedee Service, but the character's name itself was Speedee.