McDonalds has retired most of its marketing cast, clearly aimed at children as it was, but occasionally brings the Hamburglar out of retirement to pitch healthy or premium menu options. Now invariably cute or sexy, the latest incarnation is the carb criminal's first cartoon-style outing in twenty years. But when Axios described this as the "traditional" 1970s form of Hamburglar, that set off my Hmmm Let's Take A Look radar pretty good.
It turns out that the original Hamburglar was in fact an extremely upsetting character occasionally presented as "The Lone Jogger", a mirthless parody of The Lone Ranger (hence the mask) who would stalk young visitors to McDonaldland in television advertisments with all the grim menace of a British child abuse PSA. Ur-Hamburglar was an old man with an enormous nose, straggly hair and a wide-brimmed black hat barely echoed by the modern character's petite porkpie.
Even the "robble robble" catchphrase is revealed to be an echo of the original's stream of foreign babble.
Anyway, having subjected myself to all this I thought you might also like to watch some starkly unpleasant ads from the 1970s featuring Der Ewige Hamburgler.
