What kind of creature is Grimace from McDonald's?

In the first cycle of McDonaldland commercials beginning in 1971, Grimace was the "Evil Grimace", with two pairs of arms with which to steal milkshakes. After that first campaign, the character was revised to be one of the "good guys", and his number of arms was reduced to two.

According to McD

According to the McDonald's website:
“ Grimace is a big, loving, fuzzy purple fellow who is Ronald McDonald's best friend. He's sure Ronald is the world's ultimate authority on everything. While Grimace loves all McDonald's foods, he's absolutely crazy about milkshakes. Grimace is very enthusiastic and eager to try new things. His joyous spirit helps everyone overlook the fact he's a little slow and clumsy sometimes."

According to Wiki:
Grimace is a fantasy character, and not intended to be anything specific. However, ever since the character's introduction there has been much speculation (though much of it tongue-in-cheek) about his appearance. Because the majority of McDonald's characters more or less directly represent a food product sold at the restaurants (e.g., Mayor McCheese, Fry Guys, McNugget Buddies, etc.) many have naturally tried to guess as to what, if any, food product Grimace is supposed to represent. It is often suggested that he represents the contents of a milkshake. It has more recently been suspected that Grimace may actually be a taste bud, seeing as everything relates directly to food and that the association with a taste bud being Ronald's best friend would be an idealogical relationship. Grimace's "official" role, according to McDonald's, continues to be to represent the chain's milkshakes. However, he does this out of love for the taste, and not because he is in any way a shake-based creature himself.

Early Grimace (Evil) with Jodie Foster!

A mutant created by the nasty trans fats that they make their MacChickens in.

Some hair dopped into one of their deep fat fryers one night and that is how "Grimace" came about.

He's the caricature of a typical Sick Donald's customer.
Horribly overweight and sickly purple as the very nutrition he needs to live is being sucked out of him.
You Have the following menu choices:
• Crappy meal for the kids
• McSicken sandwich
• Big Crap with Big Crap sauce

I don't know but Ronald McDonald is very scary.

I have taken his name and broke it down to it's bare components... Grim-Ace. His appearance is remarkably similar to the most popular of Aces in a deck of cards, the Ace of Spades. He is Spade shaped in appearance. The Grim part may be reflected in his purple (might it have been originally more blue???) coloring, showing either a sickly or worried conotation.

Therefore it is my own personal conclusion that he is in all actuality a Pessimistic Spade.

Actually it was intended that Pupeteers Sid and Marty Kroft do the layout for many of the McDonalds Characters before they were created. Sid and Marty Kroft being the Brothers who created HR Pufnstuf , Lidsville and Land of the Lost and many more saturday morning TV shows from the late 60's til the late 70's. Before they could get started McDonalds decided not to use Sid and Marty to design their characters because McDonalds wanted the Krofts to let them use the same Characters they were using for their TV show HR Pufnstuf, the Krofts declined to let McDonalds have the Kroft Characters and then within the same year McDonalds had designed all the characters and used very similar ideas that Kroft team had given them, including stealing the ideas from the kroft team and HR Pufnstuf. The look of the Characters were so similar to the ideas and design of the Kroft team, The brothers decided to take leagal action against McDonalds. So it can be noted that Grimace was inspired by the Kroft brothers. Here is the info from wikipedia, also there are interviews that the Kroft brothers gave confiming this info on the extras of the HR Pufnstuf and Lidsville dvd complete series.

In 1973, Sid and Marty Krofft, the creators of H.R. Pufnstuf, successfully sued McDonald's, arguing that the entire McDonaldland premise was essentially a ripoff of their television show. In specific, the Kroffts claimed that the character Mayor McCheese was a direct copy of their character, "H.R. Pufnstuf" (being a mayor himself). McDonald's initially was ordered to pay $50,000. The case was later remanded as to damages, and McDonald's was ordered to pay the Kroffts more than $1 million.

McDonaldland itself, as it was depicted in the commercials, was a magical place where plants, foods, and inanimate objects were living, speaking characters. In addition to being the home to Ronald and the other core characters, McDonaldland boasted "Thick shake volcanoes", anthropomorphized "Apple pie trees", "The Hamburger Patch" (where McDonald's hamburgers grew out of the ground like plants), "Filet-O-Fish Lake", and many other fanciful features based around various McDonald's menu items. In the commercials, the various beings are played by puppets or costumed performers, very similar to the popular H.R. Pufnstuf program.

McDonald's had originally hoped the Kroffts would agree to license their characters for commercial promotions. When they declined, McDonaldland was created, purposely based on the H.R. Pufnstuf show in an attempt to duplicate the appeal.

After the lawsuit, the concept of the "magical place" was all but phased out of the commercials, as were many of the original characters. Those that remained would be Ronald, Grimace, The Hamburglar, and the Fry Kids

The following below article is from writer and pop culture adict Sam Tweedle, taken from Confessions of a Pop Culture Addict http://popcultureaddict.com/misc/grimace-htm/


In the late 1960s, long before McDonaldland existed, acid-driven children’s television producers Sid and Marty Kroft were approached by McDonald’s and their advertising agency Needlham, Harper and Steeles Inc, in creating colourful characters to appear in McDonald’s commercials. The Kroft brothers were still riding high off of their successful children’s program HR Puf’n’stuf, about a magical dragon who was mayor of a living island where the trees and flowers and animals talked. The Kroft brothers agreed to allow McDonald’s to use the Puf’n’stuf characters for McDonald’s advertising and worked out a hefty royalty fee. However, weeks later a phone call from McDonald’s to the Kroft brothers told them that the plans to use the Puf’n’stuf characters had been cancelled. Then, when McDonald’s introduced its McDonaldland commercials in the early seventies even a retarded child could see the blatant rip off of the Kroft Brothers characters in the advertising. The Kroft brothers quickly gathered their lawyers together and sued McDonald’s and Needlham, Harper and Steeles and were awarded $50,000 in copyright infringement.


Accused to be a rip-off of the Kroft Brother's Seymor the Spider, Grimace lost four arms and adpoted a dim, but sweet, persona.
Now the majority of the complaints in the Kroft/McDonald’s lawsuit revolved around the psychedelic look of McDonaldland, the cookie cutter similarities between HR Puf’n’stuf and Mayor McCheese as well as Officer Big Mac’s resemblance to Kroft’s Rescue Racers. These are the reasons that Mayor McCheese, Officer Big Mac as well as McDonaldland itself stopped appearing in McDonald’s commercials decades ago despite the fondness that the public still has for them. However, similarities were pointed out between “The evil Grimace” and the Puf’n’stuf villain Seymore the Spider. Thus it can only be assumed that in an attempt to save Grimace from being a victim of the lawsuit, McDonald’s amputated two of his arms and made him into a good guy, thus creating a brand new character that would not be accused of being plagiarized.

Now even in the original “Evil Grimace” commercials Grimace wasn’t all that bright and was still kind of loveable so the transition wasn’t too much of a stretch. Grimace was easily transformed into a child-like character, comparable to Steinbeck’s Lenny from Of Mice and Men. He became the perfect confidante of Ronald McDonald and was his constant companion through the rest of the seventies and into the 1990s. However, Grimace would once again evolve into an even more mystical character at the end of the last century.


Grimace as he appeared in 1999's animated feature "The Secret of Grimace Island."
In 1999, McDonald’s teamed up with Klasky-Cupso animation to make a series of direct to video McDonald’s animated features. The second feature, The Legend of Grimace Island attempted to flesh out the origins of Grimace, but did not succeed. What we learn is that Grimace is from a remote tropical Island inhabited by Grimaces. However, the origin of what Grimace is, why he gave up his life of crime or how Grimace ended up traveling from Grimace Island to McDonaldland is not revealed within the film. Grimace goes through a major character change in these direct to video films however. Apparently, in these films, Grimace now has “magical powers” and can perform miracles. Not having ever seen the films, I have no idea what these miracles are. I attempted to find out by reading this review for “The Legend of Grimace Island” but the only thing I discovered is that the film sounded pretty awful.


Grimace was retired in the current century in favor for a healthier and more "adult" ad campagin featuring Justin Timberlake music. Ironically, more Americans look like Grimace then Justin Timberlake.
Sadly, in our current century, sightings of Grimace have become more and more infrequent. It seems that McDonald’s has a desire these days to do away with colourful, cartoonish characters and show a more “mature” side to McDonald’s. Now Ronald McDonald, being the cultural symbol that he has become, hasn’t disappeared from McDonald’s advertising and most likely never will. However, the colourful McDonaldland of the past does not appear in McDonald’s new “I’m Loving It” advertising campaigns. There was one commercial in 2002 featuring Grimace and Donald Trump, but with McDonald’s attempting to make us believe that they are now offering more healthy options in their restaurants, a giant fat purple blob doesn’t seem to fit the image that McDonald’s wants to put in the minds of their customers. The “Get Moving with Ronald” fitness campaign seems to contradict the idea that drinking McDonald’s milkshakes will turn you into a fuzzy purple blob. Could this be where the true evil of Grimace lies? Perhaps Grimace didn’t ever reform at all, perhaps he only changed his tactics in creating evil. Possibly Grimace is more clever than we all thought and has been fooling us for years with his sweet demeanor. Maybe the true evil of Grimace is not in stealing milkshakes, but making children believe that McDonald’s food is good and walking them down the dark path of obesity and bad health. Yes, perhaps the evil Grimace has been plotting against us all these years and will eventually be the death of us after all.

At any rate, Grimace seems to have been put out to pasture – at least for the time being. However, the question remains… no, not what Grimace is… the question is: Is Grimace a friend to all or an evil madman? That, friends, is for you to decide.

No, no. He's a taste bud everyone.

Hey! Don't talk about my grandmother like that!! She took care of me when I was a McBaby!!;)

the best that I can come up with is that Grimace represents the way you feel after you chow down a macdonalds meal ... lol

There MUST be a real answer to this though - i emailed Mac Donalds and never got a response.

I've heard grimace is supposed to be an eggplant. A clear representation of the frequency in which eggplant makes an appearance in a mcdonalds dish.

He is the sound everyone mcdonalds customer makes after eating a quarter pounder.

He is just a big purple blob who loves milkshakes.

Uncontrollable acid reflux.

grimace represents the sweet taste bud, that is why grimace represents all the desserts at mcdonalds. when you look under a microscope the sweet taste bud, it is with a purplish color and shaped like a tongue... that is why grimace looks and shape like that...

He's the predecessor to Barney. Big, fat, stupid, 2 ton, purple dumb-ass that talks like a bumbling idiot!

I think he is a dinosaur.

Hes a second cousin once removed from Barney the Dinasour.

many of the grimaces from grimace land

He's the shape of a grease droplet coming from a quarter pounder.

hes a tumor

tastebud

A distant relative of Barney.

He is the after-version of someone who ate at McDonald's every day (Don't let this happen to you!)

Is he the weird purple thing that makes me think of nuggets?

I always thought it was a fuzzy blob of fat removed from Ronald McDonald's arteries.

Barney is The Grimaces love child, it was a big scandal in McDonaldland, that is why you never you hear of The Grimace anymore, there was a big cover up by Ronald McDonald and The Grimace is now leading a new life under a witness protection progam

You know Grimace is about the only thing I actually like about Mc Donalds.And maybe the Hamburglar.

He is an alien that came to help Ronald in the marketing department because many children are afraid of clowns.

idk i think hes related to barney.

Grimace is Ronald McDonald's retarded friend.