McDonaldland was the name of McDonald’s 1970s advertising world populated by Ronald McDonald and friends.
The setting gave McDonald’s a common fictional backdrop for commercials and promotional material. Characters including Grimace, the Hamburglar, and Mayor McCheese appeared as residents or visitors in this imaginary landscape.
McDonaldland was especially important to the company’s child-oriented branding. Instead of presenting mascots as isolated figures, the campaign linked them through a recognizable world with recurring locations, stories, and visual motifs.
The name is sometimes confused with individual character names or with McWorld, which McDonald’s used in a later advertising campaign. McDonaldland refers specifically to the earlier fictional universe built around the classic McDonald’s characters.