Last night we had dinner with some friends, and there was a fascinating discussion about Grimace. You know, the big purple guy at McDonald’s. One of the guy said, you know, obviously the Fry Guys are fries and Birdie the Early Bird for breakfast food and the Chicken McNuggets represent . . . well, Chicken McNuggets. And we’ve got Mayor McCheese and the Hamburglar. But what does Grimace represent? I immediately guessed cookies, because 1. The cookies are shaped like Grimace and 2. It’s fun to yell “COOKIES!” Everyone gave me a look like, “What are you, four?” One of the guys said he thought Grimace was supposed to represent a milkshake. At the end of the evening, I was insisting that Grimace=COOKIES! so they told me to research it. I am here to present the results of my five minutes of “research.”
The consensus seems to be that Grimace represents milkshakes. Apparently, before 1975, he used to have more arms (creepy!) and he’d steal everyone’s milkshakes.
His extra arms have mysteriously disappeared (Mayor McCheese? Maybe not as nice as he appears, but the crime rate is lower, so who can complain), so now the theory is that he just represents what a milkshake free of its cup would look like. Or perhaps Grimace is what you and I would look like if we drank too many shakes. Either way, it looks like I was wrong. Grimace is not equal to COOKIES. He’s a petty thief tortured into submission by an evil dictator.
Now those are some great role models for kids.
No Trackbacks
You can leave a trackback using this URL: http://throughaglass.net/archives/2004/07/22/the-results-of-the-grimace-research/trackback/
15 Comments
considering our recent conversation.. I find this post completely disturbing..
WE are apparently more AWESOME than we first thought…
I would like to point out that Mayor McCheese has not been around for a long time….yet, the Hamburgler remains.
Coincidence? I think not.
Yes, Trey, VERY DISTURBING. Why would you bring up Grimace today of all days? Do you have spyware on my computer?
Mayor McCheese is busy running crime rings elsewhere. He’s so corrupt, he let the Hamburglar take over.
on your computer.. pshh.. I have you whole house bugge… uhh.. wait.. I mean.. no.. coinsciendence.. completely.. I swear…
I’m at work. You’ve got the library bugged, too?
Persistence. I admire that.
if nothing else.. I am desperat.. I mean.. persistent…
i always thought grimace represented regularity. you know — prune-ish as he is.
and mayor mccheese is just the hamburglar with his fake hamburger head on. he only steals the hamburgers so he can sew their perfectly sized bodies into a “skin” which he can wear. duh! i saw it on csi.
Wow, Tami, I wish I had known that you are so wise in the ways of McDonaldland. hehe.
tami.. thats just scary.. truly..
thank you :takes a bow: thank you
i remember the old mcd’s playground used to have a big mayor McCheese that you could climb into, and then you got up to the hamburger and it was just like a small jail. i don’t know what that says about mcdonaldland’s crime rates though.
and i’ve found out recently from a lady friend that there really is a hamburger university. when she said it the first time, i said “you mean that’s a real place?” apparently it is.
I know this is an old thread, but I needed somewhere to let this out of my head (knowledge leftover from a pre-teen to mid-teens semi-obsession with Grimace, having created what may be called a “cult of Grimace” in the 80’s with a good number of similarly aged enthusiasts. anyway…)
Back when McDonalds had those really good boxes of cookies, that were basically like Animal Crackers, in the shapes of McDonaldland characters, in one of three or four different packaging, one of which was of course a purple box (with graphics that changed at least once or twice) with Grimace on the front. My local McDonald’s restaurants could not keep enough “Grimace Cookies” in stock – initially restaurants were seemingly confused by requests for specific “Grimace” boxes of the cookies, but they eventually got used to it and were frequently sold out.
One side-effect of this rush on Grimace cookies by teens in my area for a period of years was that early on, the boxes had a poem about Grimace on the back – which I and many others had memorized from eating so many boxes of the cookies. It is this poem I’m going to share with the world here as feedback on your blog, relating to Grimace and his shakes. Sorry to be so long-winded, maybe by printing this poem here I can free up much needed space in my brain’s memory, while simultaneously ensuring Grimace’s poem is not forgotten (I couldn’t find it elsewhere on the net so I believe this will be its first introduction to cyberspace.) Here it is:
There’s a funny someone in McDonaldland
who always has a shake in hand.
You’ll know who it is by the sound, “Slosh! Slosh! Slosh!”
and if you’re close by you’l say, “Oh my gosh!”
‘Cuz he’s big and fuzzy and purple and – Hey!
Let’s Hear it for Grimace, “Hip Hip Hooray!”
I always thought he was a rotten peach or a giant mold spore. …Anyhow,keep him the hell away from my food!
Thats f*cking creepy.
It kinda made me loose my appetite.
-ps-
I always thought he was some random purple blob with legs.
Who knows?