| Mac Tonight | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Vital Information | |
| Species: | Humanoid Moon Creature |
| Gender: | Male |
| Character information | |
| Appeared in: | 1986 |
Mac Tonight is a character that was used in marketing for McDonald's during the late 1980s. Known for his crescent moon head, sunglasses and piano-playing, the character played the song "Mack the Knife", which was made famous in the United States by Bobby Darin. The character was utilized to advertise the restaurants late night dinner menu.
History
The original campaign in the United States included twenty-nine commercials, initially airing from 1986 to 1997. Doug Jones played Mac Tonight in twenty-seven of them. A number of three-inch hard plastic Mac Tonight toys were available in Happy Meals. Mac Tonight also made a cameo in a Big Mac commercial in 1988.
During the late 1980s through the early 1990s, people in Mac Tonight costumes used to greet McDonald's customers, along with people appearing as Ronald McDonald, Grimace and other characters. Additionally, select McDonald's restaurants featured Mac Tonight hydraulically powered animatronic figures built by Mannetron, complete with a piano. One of the animatronics still operates in the World's Largest Entertainment McDonald's in Orlando, Florida.
Between 1997 and 1998, McDonald's sponsored NASCAR Hall of Famer Bill Elliott with Mac Tonight featured on his car. In 2016, the Mac Tonight theme returned as McDonald's driver Jamie McMurray's Chip Ganassi Racing No. 1 Chevrolet SS throwback scheme for Darlington Raceway's Southern 500.
Into the 2000s the character was sparingly used. He's been seen in commercials from 2004 and 2013 for the launch of the After Midnight Menu.
In 2006, McDonald's brought back the character in territories throughout Southeast Asia such as in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand and China. The Asian-exclusive campaign featured a CGI-animated Mac Tonight dancing atop a McDonald's restaurant while singing and playing a saxophone. These commercials were made by Liquid Animation. Later in the ads animated by SiLLY THING, Mac Tonight was depicted in a Chibi style, he was seen in various surreal situations throughout the campaign.
Mac Tonight's last known appearance was in the background of a Canadian McDonald's ad on a poster. The poster design was made and used for the General Mills/McDonald's Promotion. This artwork was done by Tom Dubois.
Ronald McDonald House Charities has an annual fundraiser named after Mac Tonight, this fundraiser was named the Mac Tonight Gala. In 2018 the event was renamed 'Masquerade Ball'. In 2019 they stopped mentioning the name 'Mac Tonight Gala' for unknown reasons.
Jingle
(Sung to the tune of "Mack the Knife" by Bobby Darin)
"All day and all night, step out for a bite. Oh for treats that delight, --24 Hours a day! Come down to Mac Tonight, hey! [Plays a Short Piece on a Saxophone] Chill out, (name of country), McDonald's is 24 Hours Come down to Mac Tonight, -24 Hours 'round the clock. Come on down to Mac Tonight!"
In popular culture
Mac Tonight has a heavy association with the vaporwave genre of music. His likeness is often used in music videos and other visuals within the genre. Most famously, Mac Tonight appeared on the cover of the split album Late Night Delight by Saint Pepsi and Luxury Elite.
Mac Tonight was referenced in multiple episodes of The Simpsons. In the episode "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bangalore", it is shown that Homer owns a Mac Tonight cardboard cutout. In "Fatzcarraldo", his head is seen in the sky playing a trumpet. In "Burger Kings" he appears in Homer's imagination.
Moon Man
Moon Man is an internet meme revolving around an unofficial parody of Mac Tonight. In 2007, a user on the website known as "You're The Man Now Dog", uploaded a .gif file of Mac Tonight that would start spreading around the website. Other users would begin to use it to depict Mac Tonight as a white supremacist, singing or rapping parodies of popular songs with racist and violent lyrics. Around this time the meme gained very little attention; it wasn't until the mid-2010s where the meme would gain mainstream attention. By 2016, YouTube was removing Moon Man videos for violating its community guidelines on hate speech, and AT&T, whose text-to-speech software was used to create the meme, had edited it to filter out the name "Moon Man" and obscenities. In 2019, the Anti-Defamation League added Moon Man to their database of hate symbols. A mod for the classic shooter video game Doom featuring Moon Man as the playable character and racist stereotypes as enemies was also created. Moon Man was widely compared to Pepe the Frog, another character that was reappropriated by the alt-right as a racist meme.
Referring to Moon Man, Mac Tonight co-creator Peter Cotroulis said in 2022 that he would "love to bring Mac back" but that "with how he’s been twisted in recent years, I don’t think that will ever happen now". A lot of fans speculate that due to the meme, McDonald's refuses to acknowledge the character in modern times, also pointing to the fact that the Ronald McDonald House renamed the "Mac Tonight Gala" event to the "Masquerade Ball" in 2018. However, McDonald's has never commented on the matter. Despite all of this, the character has been occasionally referenced on McDonald's social media.