McDonald’s fictional fantasy world for its advertising characters was called McDonaldland.
McDonaldland appeared in McDonald’s advertising beginning in the 1960s and provided a shared setting for Ronald McDonald and characters such as the Hamburglar, Grimace, Mayor McCheese, and Captain Crook. The world turned the restaurant’s food and visual symbols into a children’s entertainment setting.
The campaign helped McDonald’s make its branding more narrative. Instead of presenting only a restaurant or a menu, advertisements offered recurring characters, locations, and stories that children could recognize from one commercial to the next.
McDonaldland is sometimes confused with the real-world name of McDonald’s restaurants or with the company’s playground equipment. It was specifically a fictional advertising universe. Some of its characters and settings later attracted legal and creative disputes, but the name itself remains a distinctive part of McDonald’s branding history.