McDonald’s Update: Back to the Future!

We’ve just posted about McDonald’s long-awaited, highly-touted Blueprint for the Future. That was an anticlimax of sorts, many of the components having been leaked or test marketed months in advance. But we missed another development that may generate more customer interest: The return of The Hamburgular!

The Hamburgular - Then and Now - © McDonald's RestaurantsMcDonald’s Hamburgular – then and now. He’s grown up since we last saw him
back in the 80s. He’s also grown darker and edgier. And his tastes
have matured from plain old Burgers to Sirloin.

That’s right. The guy with the cape and the mask and the funny hat is coming back, in a new McDonald’s commercial coming to a number of selected markets promoting the limited time availability of a new Sirloin Burger. But he’s no longer the demon child character last seen in the 1980s. He’s grown up, has a wife and a family of his own. And a carefully-cultivated, evil-seeming facial stubble designed to suggest that his childhood impishness has also matured – into a very adult, decidedly dark ‘bad boy’ persona which McD’s just may be using to try to entice straying younger patrons back from competing menus and milieus.

The Hambiebler - © 2015 maggiejs.caMy capsule analysis: Although it’s traditional for the actors portraying McMascots to remain anonymous, McD’s might have made much greater ‘hay’ of the return of The Hamburgular by putting bad boy wannabe Justin Bieber behind the mask and letting the social media run wild with rumours for a while: ‘Is it or isn’t it – The Hambiebler?’

~ Maggie J.

 

Would you recognise Justin Bieber
in this cunning disguise?