Set your way back machines to 1963 kid­dies. The Bea­t­les have landed, Kennedy’s been shot, and a grow­ing ham­burger chain meets up with its legendary-mascot for the first time. Cre­ated by Willard Scott for the Washington-Annapolis fran­chises, Ronald McDon­ald looked a fair bit dif­fer­ent than the clown we know and love today. Long before mak­ing a name for him­self as the first roundish weath­er­man on the Today Show (who still comes back to wish birth­day greet­ings from time to time), Willard was rather famous as the DC Area’s own Bozo the Clown. The local fran­chisee con­tacted Willard, one thing led to another, and the next thing you know some­one is utter­ing the words “Intro­duc­ing the worlds newest, sil­li­est, and ham­burger eatingest clown — Ronald McDon­ald!” Hamburger-eatingest. That’s my new favourite adjective.

Nor­mally I try to change it up every week with our McDonald’s Mon­days posts, how­ever, this is a two-parter just wait­ing to hap­pen. Tune in next week when we visit Willard behind the make-up nearly a decade later — not quite the clown we know today, but a lot closer than this drink-tray-hat-wearing lunatic in 1963.

McDonald’s Mon­days is a weekly series of posts writ­ten by our own Jim Squires that ini­tially appears on his pop cul­ture blog fjetsam.com.