| Mac Tonight | |
|---|---|
 This animatronic installation was at Solid Gold McDonald's inGreenfield, Wisconsin (April 2006).[1] | |
| First appearance | 1986 |
| Created by | Davis, Johnson, Mogul & Colombatto |
| Portrayed by | Doug Jones (1986–1997) |
| Voiced by | Brock Walsh (1986–1990)Eason Chan (2007–2010) Sharizan Borhan (2007) |
| In-universe information | |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Nighttime mascot forMcDonald's |
Mac Tonight is a character used in amarketing campaign forMcDonald's restaurants from the late 1980s to the 2000s. The character was known for his giantcrescent moon head,sunglasses,piano playing, andcrooner parody of "Mack the Knife", which was made famous in the United States byBobby Darin. The original campaign's Mac was performed by actorDoug Jones and voiced by Brock Walsh.
The campaign was conceived in 1986 as a local promotion to increase dinner sales forSouthern California licensees, and its popularity prompted a nationwide campaign in 1987.[2] In 1989, Bobby Darin's son, Dodd Mitchell Darin, filed a lawsuit against McDonald's for allegedly infringing upon his father's trademark.
Following the lawsuit, McDonald's stopped using the song and mostly retired the campaign. None of the several 1990s reboot attempts were successful, including aNASCAR sponsorship in the late 1990s. A separate animated campaign featuring the character was launched in Southeast Asia in 2007. In the 2000s, the character was appropriated as "Moon Man", anInternet meme that became associated withwhite supremacy and thealt-right. TheAnti-Defamation League added this racist parody to its database of hate symbols in 2019, and theDepartment of Homeland Security used the character in its own unauthorized clip in 2025. The character's image became an icon in thevaporwave music genre.
The campaign, created by Jim Bennedict[3] and Peter Coutroulis,[4] was created for Southern California McDonald's franchisees byLos Angeles advertising firm Davis, Johnson, Mogul & Colombatto, for a budget of aroundUS$500,000 (equivalent to about $1,400,000 in 2024). Looking to increase the dinner business, the agency was inspired by the song "Mack the Knife" byKurt Weill andBertolt Brecht, made famous in the United States byBobby Darin in 1959. The agency listened to different versions of it before opting to create an original version with new lyrics. After deciding not to feature real people, the designers settled on an anthropomorphiccrooner moon on a man's body with 1950s-style sunglasses, playing a grand piano atop either a floating cloud or a giant version of the namesakeBig Mac sandwich. The song and style were designed to appeal tobaby boomers as a revival of 1950s-style music in popular culture, and to garner a "cult-like" following akin toMax Headroom.[4]
From 1986 to 1987, the campaign expanded to other cities on theAmerican West Coast. McDonald's said that the campaign had "great success", while trade magazineNation's Restaurant News announced that it had contributed to increases of over 10% in dinnertime business at some Californian restaurants. A crowd of 1,500 attended the visit of a costumed character to a Los Angeles McDonald's. With concerns that he was too typical of the West Coast, in February 1987, it was decided that the character would feature on national advertisements, which aired that September. He attracted a crowd of 1,000 inBoca Raton, Florida. A September 1987 survey byAd Watch found that the number of consumers who recalled McDonald's advertising before any other doubled from the previous month, and was higher than any company since theNew Coke launch in 1985.[4]
Doug Jones performed Mac Tonight for 27 out of the 29 commercials from 1986 to 1997.[5] In 2013, he recalled "that's when my career took a turn that I was not expecting. I didn't know that was a career option."[6] Mac Tonight's voice was provided by Brock Walsh.[7] Director Peter Coutroulis, who had won aClio Award for a previous campaign forBorax, pitched several advertisements which did not air, including a "Spielberg-like" production inspired byE.T., in which two astronomers watch Mac Tonight drive hisCadillac through the sky.[4]
In 1989, Bobby Darin's son Dodd Mitchell Darin alleged that the song infringed upon his father's trademark without prior permission. Darin filed both a lawsuit and an injunction for the song to be removed from both TV and radio ads.[8] As a response to the lawsuit, McDonald's stopped airing the advertisements.
They thought that I had co-opted his father’s singing style, and they filed suit for infringement of likeness. Specifically, my vocalization was apparently the issue. To me though, Bobby Darin wasn’t the imprint on that song. I was more influenced by guys like Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and Louis Armstrong — Louis Armstrong was known for this song, too.
That brought the gravy train to a grinding halt. I do think, though, that this lawsuit coincided with the downturn of Mac Tonight ads as effective marketing anyway. I think McDonald’s looked at it like, "Do we really want to fuck with this? Isn’t it easier to just cut and run from the whole thing?" So that’s what they did. It’s cool, though. It’s a business. I get it.
I think they tried to change the song for a bit, but it just didn’t work. Mac was done soon after that.[9]
— Brock Walsh
In 1996, Mac Tonight appeared in an ad that aired only on theWest Coast.[9] Between 1997 and 1998, McDonald's sponsoredNASCAR Hall of FamerBill Elliott with Mac Tonight featured on his car.[10] In 2016, the Mac Tonight theme was McDonald's driverJamie McMurray'sChip Ganassi Racing No. 1Chevrolet SS throwback scheme forDarlington Raceway'sSouthern 500.[11]
In 2006, McDonald's brought back the character in territories throughout Southeast Asia such as inSingapore,Malaysia,Indonesia,Philippines,Hong Kong,Taiwan,Thailand, andChina. The Asian-exclusive campaign featured an animated Mac Tonight dancing atop a McDonald's restaurant while singing and playing asaxophone.[12] These ads were made by Liquid Animation.[13]
The "Mac Tonight Mad Dash" competition was hosted on July 24, 2007, and broadcast in thePhilippines, where 24 pairs of contestants had to race to visit McDonald's locations to solve puzzles.[14]
The mask was made by a makeup and practical effects artist called Steve Neill. It weighed over 10 pounds (4.5 kg), with facial expressions motorized by animatronics. Three puppeteers controlled the lip, jaw, and eyebrow movement.[9] New masks were made with more articulation and animatronics. The Australian 1988 mask was made by Robert Bertie.[15]
Hydraulically poweredanimatronic figures were built by Mannetron, and deployed into several McDonald's restaurants in the early 1990s.[16] with the character playing a piano.[17][18] One location was a Wisconsin restaurant known as the Solid Gold McDonald's, prior to major renovations in 2011.[1] One of the animatronics was in theWorld's Largest Entertainment McDonald's inOrlando, Florida.[19][20]
Ronald McDonald House Charities started the annual Mac Tonight Gala fundraiser, which was renamed Masquerade Ball in 2018.[21]
Mac Tonight has a heavy association withvaporwave and appeared on the cover of thesplit albumLate Night Delight bySaint Pepsi andLuxury Elite,[22][23] where he became an icon of the genre.[24]
Moon Man is anInternet meme and unofficial parody of Mac Tonight that originated in 2007 on the Internet meme communityYTMND, in which the character is depicted as being awhite supremacist.[25][26] The meme gained attraction with user generated parody songs made on the site and was further popularized in thePolitically Incorrect board of4chan. Moon Man songs are parodies of mainstream songs with extremelyracist and violent lyrics, bearing themes like white supremacy,race war,ethnic cleansing,mass shooting,homophobia andmisogyny. ASalon article compared Moon Man toPepe the Frog, another meme and hate symbol. By 2016, YouTube was removing Moon Man videos for violating its community guidelines onhate speech, and AT&T modified its text-to-speech software which had been used to create the songs, to filter out the character's name and obscenities.[27] In 2019, theAnti-Defamation League added Moon Man toits database of hate symbols.[28] In 2015, amod for the video gameDoom was created, featuring Moon Man as the playable character andracist stereotypes of black, Jewish, and Hispanic people as enemies.[9]
In 2022, Mac Tonight co-creator Peter Cotroulis said 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".[9]
On October 2, 2025, theDepartment of Homeland Security posted a montage video captioned "the future is bright", with a brief clip of Mac Tonight.Talking Points Memo alleged that the use of the clip references the racist Moon Man meme. A DHS spokesperson denied the connection to the meme, commenting that "Loving hot, tasty, McDonald's does not make you aNazi."[29]