McDonald's "Ran Ran Ru" Commercials

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About

McDonald's "Ran Ran Ru" Commercials refers to a series of MAD video remixes based on Japanese McDonald's commercials involving Ronald McDonald, also known in Japan as "Donald McDonald" (ドナルド・マクドナルド).^[1]^[2] "Ran Ran Ru" (Japanese: らんらんるー or ランランルー) is a gimmicky expression used by Ronald, usually in combination with hand gestures, to signify happiness. The videos reached peak popularity in 2007.

Origin

Between 2004 and 2007, a series of short advertisements named "Ronald Rumors" (Japanese: ドナルドのうわさ – Donald no uwasa) were broadcast on Japanese television.^[12] They featured a Japanese version of Ronald McDonald asking trivial questions about himself. The answers were then posted on the official McDonald's website. These ads were mostly targeted towards children and, in most of them, Ronald does his infamous "Ran Ran Ru" pose (popular example of "Ran Ran Ru" ad shown below).

Translation :

Intro: Donald's Rumors! (Donald sneezes)
Slide: What is "Ran Ran Ru"?

Ronald: Ran Ran Ru! When Ronald gets happy I always have to do this. Come on everyone, join in! Here we go!

RAN RAN RUU!

Nico Nico Douga users (NND) were the first to remix "Ran Ran Ru" advertisements. On May 3rd, 2007, NND^[4] user すこぺん uploaded a video mashup featuring one of the McDonald's commercials spliced together with footage from the Japanese TV series Ultraman Mebius, garnering over 32,000 views in 13 years (shown below) and representing the first "Ran Ran Ru" edit.

Precursors

Prior to "Ran Ran Ru" video edits, Donald has appeared in a number of online parodies such as photo collages on Futaba Channel (2chan) or Shift-JIS arts on 2channel since the early 2000s.

Famous examples include reaction image / Shift-JIS art called "You, Step Outside" (お前ら表へ出ろ)^[3] (shown below, left and center) and a parody illustration by Masao (マサオ). The latter was incarnated on 4chan as a reaction image called What the F*ck Am I Reading? (shown below, right).

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WHAT THE F--- AM I READING Know Your Meme

Spread

On December 6th, 2007, another remix was uploaded on NND^[5] mashing up "Ran Ran Ru" with the song U.N. Owen Was Her from the popular video game series Touhou Project (shown below).

On January 1st, 2008, an unknown NND^[6] user uploaded a mashup of a "Ran Ran Ru" ad and "U.N. Owen Was Her" to the site. The original upload has since been deleted, but was reuploaded to YouTube^[13] by mrhorseshoe under the title, "Ronald McDonald insanity" the same day, garnering over 15 million views in 13 years (shown below). This video helped to popularize the genre for a North American audience.

"Ran Ran Ru" is one of three fads that exploded around the same time, including Werther’s Original and Nerunerunerune. The three trends together are considered “The Three Major Religions on NND” (ニコニコ三大宗教, NicoNico Sandai Syūkyō).^[7]

The irrational fear of clowns,^[9] often developed by people in the West, contributed to the popularity of the meme outside of Japan. On March 11th, 2010, an article on the Australian website PC World^[10] listed "Ronald McDonald Insanity" as one of the most disturbing YouTube videos of all time, although the article has since been removed.

As the genre gained popularity in North America, "Ronald Donald Insanity" began to see use in bait-and-switch videos, similar to the practice of Rickrolling, dubbed being "McRoll'd" (example shown below displaying McRoll'd variants).

Since 2008, thousands of videos related to Ronald McDonald and his catchphrase have been posted to NND^[8] and YouTube (examples shown below).

M.U.G.E.N

On December 17th, 2007, Ronald McDonald was introduced as a playable character in the customizable freeware fighting game engine M.U.G.E.N by Japanese M.U.G.E.N contributor kishio.^[14] Some of Ronald's voice samples are borrowed directly from the "Ran Ran Ru" commercials, while his sprites are modified models of Dio Brando’s sprites in Capcom's JoJo's Bizarre Adventure fighting game for the Sony PlayStation.

Left: Donald vs. Mario | Right: Donald & Kamen Rider vs. Nobita & Miyoco
(Each of them is a reprint of a million-viewed video.)

McGiygas

On March 17th, 2008, a "Ran Ran Ru" MAD edit showing Ronald McDonald moving in sync to the final boss theme with Giygas from the SNES game EarthBound was uploaded to YouTube^[15] and NND (shown below, left).^[11] The video became known as "McGiygas" among North American users and resulted in several related video edits (example shown below, right).