“After watching a bunch of Halloween specials and episodes this year, I have to say I was SHOCKED at the legitimacy of this one.
First of all, at no point do they eat McDonald’s food. Not even once! I was positive they’d be in the woods, and someone would be like, “Boy am I hungry. Maybe we should stop and eat some delicious, nutritious Quarter Pounders and charge up!”
But, no. The only instance that comes close to promoting McDonald’s (other than the presence of McDonald’s characters) is at the very, very end when Ronald McDonald, almost as an afterthought, pops his head out of a porthole and says something like, “Hope to see you in person soon at McDonald’s!”
And that’s it. In a 40-minute animated adventure, with songs and character designs by Klasky-Csupo, makers of AAH! Real Monsters, Rugrats, Rocket Power, Wild Thornberries, and others, a journey that takes us from the city to the wilderness to a haunted house to a series of traps and riddles, we get ONE McDonald’s promo that I suspect wasn’t even in there originally, and someone was like, “Wait, shit, we probably gotta mention McDonald’s like once, right?”
I know there are those in the world who hold onto this ancient marketing idea that just putting the McDonald’s brand in front of people would somehow result in them eating McDonald’s, but I’m really not a big believer that watching a clown screw around with his friends is able to subliminally convince me to eat McDonald’s. In fact, I don’t think I even thought about McDonald’s, the restaurant, at any point during this special.
So that’s the hollow corporate product discussion out of the way, let’s talk a little bit about the special itself.
It’s got a decent journey, unlike a lot of specials were we spend the entirety in one location, it’s got decent songs that would actually be pretty fun for kids, the characters have traits. They’re simple traits, but traits nonetheless.
The character designs and animation are great. I say that with no hesitation.
The wraparound portions with real-life Ronald and his dog also have an incredibly high production value. The dog is a big nightmare-fuel-y, but that’s what happens when you design a dog in this art style and then tell someone to make this highly-stylized cartoon into a real creature suit. Which was filled by Vern Troyer, BTW.
I don’t want to gush too hard about this, it’s not like it was life-changing. I just had extremely low expectations, and all I can assume is that SOMEONE gave a shit while making this. “