FOXSYLVANIA

Over the years, you have probably puzzled as I have over what exactly McDonald’s mascot Grimace was supposed to be. To me, he resembled something like an ambulatory eggplant, or perhaps how Barney the Purple Dinosaur came to appear as he completely let himself go. Yet it turns out that the anthropomorphic purple blob was not actually intended to be any of these things, so wonder no longer.

Grimace first appeared in 1971 as Evil Grimace (above), complete with two sets of arms to steal milkshakes and other drinks. About a year later, however, the character was reformed to just be Grimace, a dull-witted character intended as a comic foil to Ronald McDonald. He has continued to be one of the gang ever since. This group includes Mayor McCheese and the Hamburgler.

Now thanks to Canadian franchise holder Brian Bates, we have learned that Grimace is actually nothing more than a gigantic taste bud whose presence is intended to represent that McDonald’s tastes good. The goofy grin on the character’s face is intended to reinforce his happiness with the product’s flavor. I suppose that we should be grateful that Grimace is not supposed to represent some component of the lower gastrointestinal tract.

Sometimes, the less that we know about our food, its processing, and promotion, the better…

This entry was posted on September 3, 2021 at 5:59 pm and is filed under furry. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.