McDonaldland was the name of McDonald's 1960s character-based brand world featuring Ronald McDonald and his friends.
The fictional setting gave McDonald's a shared stage for characters, television commercials, playground imagery, and children's promotions. Ronald McDonald served as the central guide, while characters such as Grimace, the Hamburglar, and Mayor McCheese added different personalities to the brand.
McDonaldland helped turn advertising into an interconnected story world. The approach was particularly effective for family marketing because children could recognize the same characters across commercials, packaging, restaurants, and merchandise.
The name is sometimes confused with the McDonald's restaurant chain itself. McDonaldland referred specifically to the fictional universe used in the company's character-based branding, not to a legal company or a geographic region.