Hamburglar was first on the McDonald’s scene in March of 1971. He was cast as the villain of the group even though he was friends with Ronald McDonald, Grimace and Birdie he lost all control when it came to them eating hamburgers and sometimes cheeseburgers. He was often try to steal those delicious burgers away from them and often in quantities then he would run as fast as he can.   That is how he developed his beloved name of Hamburglar.

He first appeared as an shaggy grey hair older man with a sharp nose.

In some of the ads for McDonald’s he wore a shirt that said “Lone Jogger and spoke in a language that only Captain Crook (an often lost and not very well known Mcdonald’s character) understood and was able to translate it to the rest of the McDonald’s gang. When Captain Crook appeared he often had Hamburglar with him as part of a team.

Hamburglar got a makeover in 1985 due to the creepiness factor of the original version. There was complaints that he was consider to scary for children and his new appearance became more of a young, scary cute version. He still kept the staples from his original outfit like the cap and hamburger tie.

However they made some adjustments such as the direction of the stripes in his jumpsuit, add red gloves and shoes and made the hat wider.

He also started to appear more regularly in the commercials after the make over:

This is the version of Hamburglar I remember more when I was growing up. I really enjoyed watching a lot of the commercials that had the Hamburglar in it. Such as the one where the Hamburglar turned himself into a cheeseburger:

There was even a commercial explaining how the Hamburglar got his famous stripes:

You will also notice in the commerical he has a catch phase “robble, robble” and he is a little more coherent  in his speech although he only says things in short phrases.

The Hamburglar became a standard character until 2002 and then he retired. He did come out of retirement in 2015 as this new version:

Which is probably my least favorite version of this character to be honest. The character was brought out of retirement to promote a sandwich but I felt like they should of gone back to the 1985 version of him instead:

Who is your favorite McDonald’s character? Comment below!

 

 

Source: McDonald’s Wiki