The McDonald’s Mac Tonight campaign used the character Mac Tonight, who sang a parody of “Mack the Knife.”
Mac Tonight debuted in McDonald’s advertising in 1986 as a character with a crescent-moon head, dark sunglasses, and formal evening clothes. The commercials promoted McDonald’s as an evening destination and used a rewritten version of Bobby Darin’s well-known recording of “Mack the Knife.”
The campaign was particularly associated with late-night dining and became one of McDonald’s most distinctive short-lived advertising concepts. Mac Tonight is sometimes confused with Ronald McDonald because both were branded characters, but Mac Tonight was a separate campaign figure created for nighttime promotion.