McDonald's • Happy Meal • McDonaldland

McDonald's (MCD) used to build a lot of its advertising on the McDonaldland characters. This was a fictional world where Ronald McDonald, the chain's iconic clown, lived with friends including Mayor McCheese, Grimace, and of course, notorious hamburger thief, Hamburglar.

In later years, the chain added Early Bird (to promote breakfast), the Fry Guys, and a bunch of unnamed Chicken McNuggets. Those characters have in recent years mostly been retired and even Ronald McDonald rarely appears (perhaps because clowns have moved from silly to creepy in most kids' eyes.

There was a brief revival of Hamburglar as a live-action character, but nobody really enjoyed seeing a grown man with a family who somehow made living stealing hamburgers. It was a silly idea for a cartoon, but one that really did not make the leap to live action.

Kids may not even know these characters, but adults most certainly do and there's nothing adults enjoy like things that fondly remind them of childhood. Fast-food chains have long exploited this idea by bringing back dishes from the past, but now McDonald's has gone a step further.