McDonald's original hamburger mascot was Speedee.
Speedee was a small chef character associated with McDonald's early service-system branding. The character represented the restaurant's emphasis on speed, a central selling point when the McDonald brothers operated their redesigned San Bernardino restaurant after 1948.
Speedee appeared in early McDonald's signs and advertising before Ronald McDonald became the company's best-known character. The name is sometimes confused with Speedy Gonzales, the Warner Bros. cartoon character, but the McDonald's mascot was a separate creation.
McDonald's later shifted its public-facing character branding toward Ronald McDonald and the expanding McDonaldland cast. Speedee therefore belongs mainly to the company's formative period, when the brand was built around fast service and standardized hamburgers rather than a large fictional world.