Big Mac Tonight, September 1987

Big Mac Tonight
McDonald's advertisement 
September 1987

When the clock strikes
Half-past six, babe
Time to head for
Golden Lights

It's a good time 
For the great taste 
(dinner !)
At McDonalds.........
It's Mac Tonight !

(come on make it Mac Tonight !)

In September, 1987, I was in grad school and renting a room in a brick rowhouse on South Potomac Street in the Highlandtown neighborhood of Baltimore.

The rowhouse didn't have central air, and the muggy Baltimore heat turned it into an oven. I had recently moved up from the South so I was accustomed to the heat to some extent, but still, there wasn't much relief to be had from a window fan when the temperature inside the second floor of the rowhouse was in the high 70s.

Then, as the second half of the month finally arrived, there would come a night when the temperature would get down to the 60s, and life got a bit more comfortable. And when the end of the month came, the daytime temps slowly would get milder and more bearable.

Along with the arrival of Fall, airing in September 1987 was a cool commercial for McDonald's and its Big Mac sandwich. A man - who would come to be known as 'Mac Tonight' - wearing a quarter-moon mask sang a jingle based on the old 1959 Bobby Darin hit Mack the Knife.

It was sufficient motivation for me to step out into the cooling night air and walk to the nearest McDonalds. Not for a Big Mac - I think it's their worst burger - but a Quarter Pounder with cheese was fine for me and my grad student budget.

Now, some 32 years later, as those first cooler days and nights of September come I think back again to that commercial. And I will head for the 'Golden Lights' ! 

For an interesting look at the commercial, and the 'Mac Tonight' character, there is this YouTube video.