McDonaldland was the name of McDonald’s fictional advertising world launched nationally in 1971.
The campaign placed Ronald McDonald alongside a large cast of fantasy characters and gave the brand a storybook setting. Characters such as Mayor McCheese, Grimace, the Hamburglar, and Birdie the Early Bird were presented as residents or visitors. The setting helped McDonald’s make its advertising especially appealing to children and gave its mascots a shared narrative environment.
McDonaldland was not a physical theme park or an official geographic place. It was a fictional world created for commercials, packaging, restaurant displays, and promotional merchandise. Its characters and rules changed over time, and some figures appeared only briefly.
The campaign is sometimes confused with the name of an individual character, especially Ronald McDonald. Ronald was the central mascot, while McDonaldland was the larger fictional setting in which the characters appeared.