Ronald McDonald became McDonald’s best-known mascot after first appearing in a 1963 Washington, D.C., advertisement.
The character was created for local television promotion by Oscar Goldstein, a McDonald’s franchise owner in the Washington area. Willard Scott played the original Ronald McDonald in those early advertisements, using a costume and props built around McDonald’s food imagery.
Ronald’s later appearance became more standardized as the character was adopted nationally. He became the central figure in McDonald’s child-focused branding and appeared alongside McDonaldland characters such as the Hamburglar and Grimace.
Ronald McDonald is sometimes confused with the earlier mascot Speedee. Speedee belonged to McDonald’s pre-1960s branding, while Ronald helped define the company’s family-oriented identity from the 1960s onward.