McDonaldland was the fictional town used for McDonald’s 1970s character branding.
McDonaldland served as the setting for a group of colorful advertising characters, including Ronald McDonald, Mayor McCheese, the Hamburglar, Grimace, and Birdie. Television commercials and promotional materials presented the characters as inhabitants of an imaginative world built around McDonald’s products and restaurants.
The name is sometimes confused with individual characters or attractions. For example, Mayor McCheese was a character within McDonaldland, not the name of the setting itself. The branding also changed over time as McDonald’s reduced or retired several of the original figures.
McDonaldland helped McDonald’s create a connected fictional universe for children’s marketing. Its influence extended beyond commercials into packaging, restaurant play areas, merchandise, and promotional campaigns, making it one of the chain’s most distinctive historical branding projects.