McDonaldland was the name of McDonald’s 1960s fantasy setting for Ronald McDonald and related advertising characters.
The setting turned McDonald’s branding into a fictional world populated by characters such as Grimace, the Hamburglar, Mayor McCheese and Officer Big Mac. Television commercials and promotional materials used this world to make the restaurant’s identity especially appealing to children and families.
McDonaldland is sometimes mistaken for the name of a restaurant attraction or a single advertising campaign. It was broader than either: it described the fictional universe in which the characters lived. The setting became one of the defining features of McDonald’s character-based branding during the second half of the twentieth century.