McDonald’s named its moon-faced advertising mascot introduced in 1986 Mac Tonight.
Mac Tonight was created for a McDonald’s advertising campaign designed to promote evening dining. The character had a crescent-moon head, wore formal clothing, and sang a modified version of “Mack the Knife,” giving the campaign a distinctive musical identity.
The advertisements ran primarily in the United States during the second half of the 1980s. Mac Tonight became one of the chain’s more unusual advertising figures because he was aimed at changing perceptions of McDonald’s as mainly a daytime restaurant.
Mac Tonight is sometimes confused with Ronald McDonald or the chain’s other fictional characters. Unlike Ronald, he was not presented as a long-term member of the McDonaldland character group; he was principally the centerpiece of a separate evening-focused campaign.