Mac Tonight was the name of McDonald’s crescent-moon character used in advertising from 1986.
The character appeared in a campaign promoting McDonald’s as an evening destination. Mac Tonight had a crescent-moon head, wore formal clothing, and played a piano, giving the campaign a distinct lounge and nightlife style unlike the company’s traditional McDonaldland advertising.
The campaign used a rewritten version of the song “Mack the Knife,” which led to a legal dispute with the song’s rights holder. McDonald’s ultimately stopped using the original campaign after the dispute, although the character remained a notable example of the company experimenting with a separate visual identity.
Mac Tonight is often confused with McDonald’s permanent restaurant mascots, but he was primarily an advertising character tied to a specific 1980s campaign.