Giant Robot Invasion! – Home of Comedy Writer Matt Willard

Remember McDonaldLand, that wonderful world of whimsy from those classic McDonalds’ commercials? I sure do. The idea of a magical place filled with people who love cheap burgers made eating at McDonalds feel really special. These days McDonaldLand has been phased out, which is a shame. Now McDonalds needs to get creative to push those Happy Meals. “When you buy a Happy Meal, you get great food and a cool toy. Even better, now your Happy Meal won’t be ground up and fed to horses.”

Now, McDonaldLand commercials usually played out a basic scenario with characters like Birdie, Grimace, or the Hamburglar. They’re the kind of episodic stories you’d see in a children’s show. That might be why McDonalds teamed up with animation company Klasky-Csupo to produce The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald, a series of tapes sold at McDonalds’ restaurants. The first tape, called “Scared Silly”, was promoted as a spooky-type story. Made sense, since Halloween was around the corner at the time. I knew this because my uncle gets paid to hunt down superheroes and carve them out for children to wear.

I didn’t watch these tapes when they first came out, but thanks to the power of the Internet, I can finally see what “Scared Silly” is all about. And since Halloween is coming up in a few weeks, why not jaunt through some appropriate nostalgia? The only question – does “Scared Silly” live up to the hype? For $3.49, it’d better. With that money, I could’ve had a butler for, like, five seconds.

So each video actually starts off with a live-action segment. If you’re here to see all the other McDonaldLand characters in glorious realism, prepare to be disappointed. Only Ronald is featured in these segments, along with his faithful companion…

…Whatever The Hell This Thing Is.

Actually, this amazingly ugly creature is Ronald’s dog Sundae. He only shows up in these tapes, and that’s a good thing considering how hideous and creepy he looks. It’s obvious this freak was based off the animation design (which we’ll get to in a minute) because no sane designer at McDonalds would make a costume this horrifying. Still, I’m surprised Sundae is hanging around Ronald. You’d think he’d look better with a different clown. Like that guy from It. Or Johnny Knoxville.

So while Sundae and Ronald are watching an old horror movie together, some alarm goes off and spooks them both. It’s the alarm for Ronald’s picture phone, so he slides downstairs via a pole and answers it, bringing up some random girl named Tika who invites him to go camping in Far-Flung Woods. You know, that’s always been my problem with McDonaldLand. How do these random kids become Ronald’s friend? Do you have to get introduced by Captain Crunch or something? Maybe you just need to save Ronald from an assassin armed with BK Chicken Fries.

Ronald agrees to go camping, and after calling his friends, he leaps into a ball pit that leads to a tube spiralling towards ground floor. And that’s the thing – while Ronald slides down this tube, he somehow transforms into a cartoon version of himself. Of course, since Klasky-Csupo was involed, we have to see their ugly art style at work, giving Animated Ronald an incomplete hairdo and MASSIVE M.C. HAMMER PANTS that make him look bottom heavy. Maybe it’s a subtle poke at the long-term health effects of eating at McDonalds. (EDITOR’S NOTE – We later found out that Ronald’s pants are the first portable Ronald McDonald House.)

So Ronald lands in a ball pit in the garage. Sundae, who leaped in the tube after Ronald, lands in it too. You know, he was pretty creepy in live-action. I wonder what he looks like when he’s animated?

Ah, good. He’s still incredibly horrifying. Just checking.

Ronald opens the garage door to reveal Tika and all of the other friends he invited, including the standard group of Birdie, Grimace, and the Hamburglar. Hope you weren’t expecting them to look presentable! Klasky-Csupo has made sure cartoon Birdie looks ridiculously thin and short, while the Hamburglar has abandoned his usual stripes for a black jacket, red shorts, and stupid goggles. I don’t understand why these characters had to be redesigned. What was wrong with how they looked before? I guess somebody looked at the live-action Hamburglar and went, “Okay, we gotta slim him down. He looks too fat-it’s like there’s another guy in there!”

Everyone gets in the car and heads towards Far-Flung Woods. Tika almost immediately brings up something called the Far-Flung Phantom, which is apparently a spirit that haunts the woods and frightens innocent campers. This scares Grimace. (ProTip: Everything scares Grimace.) Ronald tells Grimace it’s just a story, and instead of passing around scary stuff like that, what they need is a good driving song.

So one begins. Yep. Surprising no one, there are a couple of songs throughout the video. So what better way to start this off than to sing one of the WORST songs on the entire tape? You know you’re off to a bad start when your song refrains four times with this compelling list of things you’ll find in the forest:

“There’s flowers!”
“And squirrels!”
“And fish!”
“And frogs!”
“Caves and rocks!”
“And lots of logs!”

HOLY CRAP! Man, forget video games and explosions, we’ve got ROCKS AND LOGS! HELL YEAH! Then maybe at the campfire we can have some BREAD and WATER! GONZO!

After the song mercifully ends, they park and hike out to their camping spot which, according to Ronald, takes more than THREE HOURS to get there. Why the hell would you park your car so damn far from the campsite? To fill time, of course! And fill it they do-from Sundae getting chased by a squirrel in camo pants to the group escaping from an angry bear, there’s no shortage of wacky filler to go around. I guess this is where Seltzer and Friedburg got their ideas for padding out Disaster Movie.

Along the way, a walkie talkie falls out of Tika’s backpack. When Birdie returns it, Tika quickly makes up an excuse about needing them in case they get seperated. While this is a perfectly good reason to bring walkie-talkies to a camping trip, this still draws Birdie’s suspicion. It’s compounded when she also notices a camera emerge out of a branch and study her before retracting. Does Birdie warn Ronald about this? No. That’s assuming she was smart. At most she probably thought, “Now how can I poop on that?”

Eventually the group arrives at the campsite and sets up. Later they roast marshmallows by the fire, and when Hamburglar brings up the Far-Flung Phantom again, Ronald decides to take a walk. It’s during this walk that Ronald spots a strange house in the distance.

Now let’s backtrack for a minute here. Remember how I told you this video was advertised during Halloween, implying a spooky atmosphere? Let’s take a look at the cover real fast.

Judging by this cover, would you expect that the first SIXTEEN MINUTES of the video would be taken up by songs and camping, and only JUST NOW would we see the haunted house? And the characters aren’t even at the damn house yet – they’re still at the campsite! For something promoted as a cartoon for Halloween, it sure feels like a bait and switch, doesn’t it? I can just imagine kids squirming in their seats, wondering when the good part’s going to come on. Just like church.

Back at the campsite, Hamburlgar hoiss a fake ghost on a rope, making it fly around and scare everyone. Ronald comes back to the site and figures it’s Hamburglar causing trouble, so he gets Grimace to help him pull down on the ghost as it swoops by. The rope was slung over a branch, so this pulls Hamburglar up, over the branch, and back down to earth with a painful impact. (Little known fact: this is how Hamburglar developed his vocal tic of “robble robble”. It’s also why he can’t tell you what 2+5 is.)

Suddenly, stormclouds gather, and it starts to rain. Since the group didn’t expect rain, they didn’t bother to pack any raingear. Ronald notices a bunch of large flowers on a bush, and when he picks one and blows into the end, the petals unfurl into a makeshift umbrella.

Tika: “Hey, this should keep us dry, as long as it doesn’t get too-”

“-windy.”

Well, that was entirely pointless. Thanks a bunch.

So the group grabs what they need for the night and head to the obviously haunted house. They all rush inside, only to have the door lock behind them and trap them all inside. All they can do now is explore the house and see what lurks down its halls. See, you wouldn’t have this problem if you had planned for bad weather. Being in the woods is no excuse. Just use your cellphone to check online for weather updates. For a more personal weather report, you should check out my grandma’s weather blog at “mykneeisactingup.com”.

Now we are officially nineteen minutes into the video. Not counting the theme song, we have just burned almost HALF of this video with pointless filler. And what’s worse is that there’s no reason for it. Would it have been so hard to get the group to a haunted house earlier in the movie? Like, for example, a plot where they hear about a haunted house and decide to investigate because they think they can prove it’s not haunted. Sure, it’s cliche, but at least it would’ve gotten to the point a bit faster!

Well, since this is about forty or so minutes long, I’m gonna have to break this review up into two parts. Time for some dramatic narrative text. Ahem:

WILL RONALD AND HIS FRIENDS DISCOVER THE SECRET OF THE HAUNTED HOUSE? WILL IT EVER STOP RAINING? WILL THIS VIDEO DRASTICALLY IMPROVE DURING ITS SECOND HALF AND MAKE “SCARED SILLY” ONE OF THE BEST CARTOONS OF 1998? THE ANSWER: IT’S NOT FOR SALE. TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR THE EXCITING CONCLUSION!

Related posts:

1. The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald: Scared Silly, Part 2
2. Mortal Kombat: The Journey Sucks
3. Robot Reviews: Rocket Knight Adventures
4. Fall of the House of Wimzie! I Am Jonas, Destroyer of Worlds
5. The Bubsy Cartoon: What Can Possibly Go Right?