Retroist Mac Tonight Podcast
Welcome to Episode 14 of the 14th season of the Retroist Podcast. In this episode, I talk about the beloved McDonald’s advertising mascot, Mac Tonight.
I recorded this podcast multiple times. The first time it didn’t turn out great, so I decided to transcribe it and edit it into a post about Mac. People really seemed to like that, so I decided to give recording another shot.
I begin by talking about seeing an animatronic performance and not having a camera to capture it on film. Then I speculate about if that was actually a good thing. After recording this multiple times and thinking about it a lot, I believe it is a good thing.
Then I move onto Mac Tonight. I discuss his creation, the people behind it, his release, popularity, comparisons to Max Headroom, and much much more.
I think about food mascots a lot. Mac has always been a bit of an outlier, and that has made him even more intriguing. So I am pleased to finally be able to cover him
Listen and download the Mac Tonight Podcast
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Production Notes
This is the 14th episode of the 14th season of the podcast. It was the seventeenth episode I recorded this season. This was the third time I recorded it.
Doug Jones really is a nice-seeming guy and was especially nice to his fans when I saw him. While Jones doesn’t sing in the commercials, I found this clip of him singing the extended jingle to a fan. It’s amazing.
I tried to track down all the commercials they made online, but only a handful of them have been posted in a decent format. I was going to include more of them in the show, but they are very visual and in a podcast they sounded redundant.
I didn’t know anything about the Hate Group stuff and didn’t want to dive too deeply into it. At any level, it’s a shameful use of the character by bad people.
I cut out a segment about Mac Tonight Merchandise. It was short, but I didn’t think it added anything. Mostly because they have so many things.
When making this show, I thought about McDonald’s food way too much.
I misspoke during my story at the start and even after editing and listening back to it, I didn’t hear it. Then when uploading it, I let it run and hear it. Prosperity! It’s very frustrating. Should be posterity. This is what happens when you do not have a script and use words that you have historically mixed up. I apologize for the mixup.
I really wish Mac and Ronald teamed up.
All the music you hear in this episode is by the mighty Peachy.
Here is the original art provided by Christopher Tupa that I used for social media promotion. Christopher did two pieces, both are great. One shows Mac in action, and the other wonderfully captures the energy of a late night fast food run. Look for these images in promotions I post on social media and of course here on the site.
Thanks for listening to the show and I hope you have a great weekend.