Thursday, December 7, 2017

Mayor McCheese Is A Rip-Off Of H.R. Pufnstuf?? That Is All Kinds Of B.S.

 
You may be familiar with the characters of McDonaldland, such as Grimace, the Hamburglar, Officer Big Mac, and Mayor McCheese. That last character was forcefully discontinued in 1985 following successful legal action taken for copyright infringement.

McCheese was a rip-off of H.R. Pufnstuf, who was also a mayor and bears a striking physical similarity to McCheese. Also, H.R. Pufnstuf had first appeared in his eponymous children’s television show in 1969. McDonald’s had launched the McDonaldland advertising campaign two years later.

The similarities were not limited to Pufnstuf and McCheese, either. The entire concept of McDonaldland was weird and psychedelic, anthropomorphizing normally mundane bits of the environment as if we had a secret peephole into Ronald McDonald’s brain as he experienced an acid trip. That does sound pretty unique, right? Well, that’s a large chunk of why the copyright infringement was so flagrant. It was unique—when done in the H.R. Pufnstuf show.

McDonald’s attempted to argue that minute details, such as clothing differentiation between Pufnstuf and McCheese, made the characters different. The jury in the court case disagreed, specifically stating, “We do not believe that the ordinary reasonable person, let alone a child, viewing these works will even notice that Pufnstuf is wearing a cummerbund while Mayor McCheese is wearing a diplomat’s sash.”

After a relatively paltry initial payout of $50,000, Pufnstuf’s creators took the case to appeals court. There, the amount to be paid was raised to more than $1,000,000.

http://listverse.com/2017/12/05/10-outrageous-mcdonalds-scandals/

6 comments:

j-swin said...

Well well well....how the mighty hath fallen.

Dr. Theda said...

one or two of the designers of "Puffnstuff" (and "Living Island) were designers for "Mcdonalds Land"
That was a main reason for that law-suit's win in court...

DrGoat said...

And he's ugly at that. McDonalds sucks, just like almost every other corporation.

Debra She Who Seeks said...

Lock him up! LOCK HIM UP!

Cal's Canadian Cave of Coolness said...

He didn't touch anyone. It was Grimmace who always hugged the ladies a bit too long.

Nathan said...

From what I've heard, there were some blatant similarities between the two, but the examples given here aren't very good. McCheese doesn't look that much like Pufnstuf aside from just the general style of puppet, and the Kroffts hardly invented living background items.