McDonald's first mascot was Speedee, a chef-like character with a hamburger-shaped head.
Speedee was created to represent the restaurant's early emphasis on fast service. The McDonald brothers introduced their Speedee Service System in 1948 after reorganizing the restaurant around a limited menu and assembly-line preparation. The mascot gave that operating idea a simple visual identity.
Speedee is easy to confuse with later McDonald's characters because the company eventually built a much larger cast of mascots. Ronald McDonald became the best-known figure in the 1960s, while the Hamburglar and Grimace appeared in the 1970s. Speedee belongs to an earlier stage of the company's history, before the familiar character-filled advertising world took shape.