Mascots are fascinating. They have many of the biographic features of actual people (or at least of celebrities) glommed together with some of the endearing qualities of animals or natural entities…and yet they are completely ersatz. Teams of marketers, advertising executives, and other suchlike sharkish folk invent mascots as tools to manipulate us for their own ends. The results of this unholy nexus can often result in a bizarre plunge into the uncanny. As an example, let’s look at the deeply disconcerting career of “Mac Tonight” the crooning moon from the late eighties who (which?) attempted to sell McDonald’s to baby boomers as a good option for a dinner restaurant.
Mac Tonight was made to cash in on 50s music nostalgia among Baby Boomers. He had a human body with a stylized moon head (with an elongated chin and overhanging forehead). A glasses-wearing musician, Mac sat at a piano on a cloud and played a bowdlerized version of “Mack the Knife” in which the original murder-themed lyrics were replaced with lyrics about, um, going to dinner at a fast food restaurant previously targeted mainly at children. Mac’s appearance was meant to distance him from Ronald, Grimace, Hamburgler, et al. and yet he also shared an obvious leitmotif with them. Because of a branding crossover, Mac somehow got tied to Nascar. Yet in 1989, Mac’s career was nipped in the bud by a lawsuit from the estate of Bobby Darin, the original composer of “Mack the Knife.” Although Bobby Darin himself originally took the concept and the music from a Brecht play about a footpad that raped and murdered people, Darin somehow toned down the dark gestic drama into smooth uptempo jazz. His heirs convincingly made this argument to a court and McDonald’s didn’t want to pay royalties.
This should have been the end of Mac Tonight: he was obviously crafted wrongly from the very beginning (just look at his nightmarish features which evoke some sort of doofy demon from a Fred Savage movie) and yet Mac crawled back from corporate America’s dustbin. In 2007, a white supremacist named “farkle” used an online meme site to relaunch Mac as “Moon Man” a racist figurehead who rapped and danced and gave hate-speeches crafted with that creepy robotic text-to-speech software. In today’s increasingly debased political culture, Moon Man now has a steady gig endorsing the Ku Klux Klan, the president, police brutality, and violence against the LGBT community. He would probably easily win a house seat in Montana if he decided to run (or if he were, you know, real, in any way whatsoever).
I am a space enthusiast and my middle name is “Mack”. Plus I like McDonald’s and came of age in the 80s, however Mac Tonight has always been distasteful to me (even before his off-brand second career as a goddamned white supremacist icon). Somehow the cartoonish fixed grin does not capture the beauty of the moon or the glamor of the post-war era in my heart. Yet equally obviously, Mac Tonight has something…some element that appeals to all sorts of people. After Mac’s launch “a 1987 survey by Ad Watch found that the number of consumers who recalled McDonald’s advertising before any other doubled from the previous month, and was higher than any company since the New Coke launch in 1985.” Was it Darin’s song? Was it love of astronomy or burgers? Were there elements of his sinister later career already present? I have no idea. Can anybody explain this or is the sheer randomness of this story the true source of Mac’s nocturnal power?
8 comments
Comments feed for this article
June 7, 2017 at 1:33 AM
tangent
Gosh, some white supremacists have no taste.
June 7, 2017 at 10:54 PM
Wayne
Oh snap!
June 7, 2017 at 10:48 AM
Dan Capuzzi
I suggest it is the same thing that makes Freddy Krueger or Jason or Leatherface such memorable (beloved?) cultural icons. For me, at least, there is something deeply threatening about Mac, something that through its complete unreality somehow approaches a primal and awful truth about the nature of violent death. That grinning moon-face is as likely the visage of death as the grim reaper’s skull and scythe. In fact, whenever I hear the Bobby Darin song, I now ONLY imagine Mac the mascot in the role of Mac the Knife. And it works. It works well.
November 29, 2017 at 5:03 PM
Wayne Moises
Mac Tonight the singing crescent moon in Mc Donald’s TV commercials & endorser in popular culture in TV films comics & animation. Thanks!
June 7, 2017 at 11:03 PM
Wayne
Yikes…now I can’t stop thinking about that either–like he’s coming up behind me right now. My favorite graphic novelist, Jim Woodring, uses a character named Whim (who is for all intents and purposes Mac) as his avatar for cruelty, bad deals, and doom, so maybe Mac really does tap into some deeper darkness, It makes you wonder about advertisers.
June 7, 2017 at 11:30 PM
nycblacksmith
I was thinking that Mac might be a more appropriate mascot for those other dillusionists since he’s not the portly chum with the roundish face, Mac has a crescent head.
June 13, 2017 at 9:45 AM
Beatrix
If you’ve ever longed to see a human sized animatronic version of Mac Tonight singing, playing piano, and doing stand-up comedy you are in luck! Just swing by the World’s largest Play Place McDonald’s in Orlando, FL & have a listen. (Preferably before you’ve suffered the misery of all 5 Disneyworld parks of course)
November 29, 2017 at 5:01 PM
Wayne Moises
He is the fictional character inspired from the popular song Mack the Knife by Bobby Darrin resemblance to the crescent moon with sunglasses/shades & a piano introduced in 1987-88 became a famous TV commercial & endorsed by Mc Donald’s & a true iconic mascot in popular media in TV films comics & animation throughout the world. Thanks for the information.From:Wayne waynemoises@gmail.com.