Mac Tonight was McDonald’s moon-faced character used in advertising beginning in 1986.
The character was created for a campaign promoting McDonald’s evening business. Mac Tonight had a crescent-moon head, wore sunglasses, and commonly appeared in advertisements connected with the restaurant’s nighttime offerings.
His commercials were strongly associated with a stylized version of the song “Mack the Knife.” That musical connection helped distinguish the campaign from McDonald’s daytime advertising and gave Mac Tonight a deliberately different visual and tonal identity.
Mac Tonight is sometimes confused with the long-running McDonaldland characters. He was a separate promotional character rather than a resident of the classic fantasy cast. His campaign was especially prominent in the United States during the late 1980s, although the character later became less central to McDonald’s branding.