McDonald's used the name McDonaldland for the fictional world inhabited by Ronald McDonald and other advertising characters.
McDonaldland appeared in television commercials, restaurant promotions, playground equipment, and packaging. It gave separate mascots a shared setting and allowed McDonald's to build recurring stories around food-shaped buildings, colorful landscapes, and familiar characters.
Ronald McDonald was the central human figure, while characters such as Grimace, the Hamburglar, Birdie, and Mayor McCheese occupied different roles in the imagined world. Their designs and relationships changed across advertising eras, so not every character appeared in every campaign.
McDonaldland is sometimes treated as though it were the name of one mascot. It was instead the setting or branded universe. The name also became part of a legal dispute in the 1970s involving the children's entertainment group Sid and Marty Krofft.