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After the backlash against McDonald's, nine more of the creepiest food mascots ever

As you’ll discover, McDonald's are anything but first-time offenders

McDonalds this week unveiled its new mascot ‘Happy’ - and it’s fair to say he hasn’t been well-received.

Far from making fast food fans happy, the smiling red box mainly elicited fear and confusion.

McDonald's are far from the first firm to unleash a sinister corporate mascot on the public.

Here are some more of the most memorably creepy food mascots.

And as you’ll discover, McDonalds are anything but first-time offenders.

ORIGINAL RONALD MCDONALD

Back in the early 1960s, McDonald's somehow got away with this nightmarish vision (below left) as the face of Big Macs.

Starting with the perturbing image of a scarecrow-esque clown, the original Ronald McDonald also sported a cup for a nose and a hamburger-dispensing belt.


Maybe children didn’t scare as easily in the swinging sixties. Nonetheless, there’s no way I would’ve let this benchmark for creepiness anywhere near my McDonald's birthday party.

MODERN RONALD MCDONALD

It’s a marvel of modern consumerism that McDonald's is such a global powerhouse despite coming up with a series of creepy mascots.

Modern Ronald may be a more casual, family friendly creation, but there’s still something sinister about the world-famous burger-wielding clown we can’t quite pin down.

Maybe it’s because Stephen King’s ‘It’ haunted me as a child, maybe it’s the bright red bouffant hair, yellow attire and constant wide grin. An improvement on the original, but that still doesn’t make him right.

THE HAMBURGLAR



Ignoring the fact that stealing burgers isn’t the ideal message to drum into children, the Big Mac kleptomaniac first appeared on our screens in 1971.

Amazingly, he was known as ‘The Lone Jogger’ in some 1970s commercials. Pitch that as a mascot name these days and you’d get laughed out of the marketing meeting.

THE BURGER KING

The most unsettling memory of ‘The King’ remains the TV advert where he popped up outside windows, in dark tunnels and even in people’s beds.

The unnamed, masked monarch gained such a creepy reputation that Burger King actually played up his sinister side in the ‘Wake Up With The King’ ads where he would appear from nowhere. There really is no such thing as bad publicity.

We prefer the much less threatening original ‘King’, from the late 1960s.



BILLY BOB BROCKALI

It’s not hard to see why ShowBiz Pizza Place went bankrupt when this furry behemoth was their mascot.

Billy Bob, who sported yellow braces and a small guitar, was often pictured in promotional photos looming behind small children.

He was initially a walkaround character at the now-defunct pizza chain, before later taking the form of a haunting animatronic bear.



THE HONEY MONSTER

The hulking Sugar Puffs yeti always sent a shiver down my spine as a youngster.

Marketed as a clumsy but loveable cereal-obsessed gentle giant, he always came across to me as unstoppable beast who would devour men, women and children in his quest for honey. Perhaps that was the idea all along.



THE QUIZNOS SPONGMONKEY


The reason you probably haven’t heard of sandwich chain Quiznos - aside from the world domination of Subway - is because they’re fronted by a deranged mutant gerbil.

Originally an internet phenomenon created sometime between 2002 and 2003, the spongmonkeys floated in front of a bush while singing ‘We Love the Subs’. We don’t get it either.



GRIMACE



A purple, gurning, anthropomorphic monstrosity, Grimace almost makes the original Ronald McDonald look normal. His trademark character trait was his dimwittedness.

Grimace terrorized our screens in the early 1970s and was originally branded as a villain who stole milkshakes. A household name at the time, nowadays he just resembles a conical Barney the dinosaur design reject.

KERNAL THE COBBER

Not a food mascot per se, but this very, very angry cob-themed cheerleader deserves a mention solely for his furious expression.

He’s actually the mascot for Concordia College in the US, whose college team are known as ‘The Concordia Cobbers’. Kernal wears a maroon jersey and has green husks for legs - the college insist he’s ‘angry but friendly’. Even so, we wouldn’t want him at our sports day as kids.