McDonald’s Goes Viral with Grimace Shake…But for the Wrong Reasons!

McDonald’s created a Grimace Shake for a limited time in hopes that it would become a viral sensation.

What the company likely did not intend was for the shake’s success to come from TikTok users playing dead.

Since the debut of the Grimace shakes earlier this month, TikTok users have been excitedly ordering the shake, released in honour of McDonald’s character Grimace’s “birthday,” and then pretending to die on camera after consuming the purple beverage. They often dump the shake over their convulsing bodies, apparently signalling that Grimace, that bumbling bestie of Ronald McDonald, killed them.

The TikTok videos have been viewed millions of times this month.

@guaquamolininjabenis He will be grim-missed #grimaceshake #mcdonalds #trending ♬ Grimacing Sounds – Jon & Eli

McDonald’s made the Grimace shake available beginning on June 12, which is Grimace’s birthday. (Reports indicate that Grimace is 52 years old.) 

FUN FACT ABOUT GRIMACE…

Grimace wasn’t always a happy-go-lucky amorphous creature. When he was first introduced in the 1970s, commercials referred to him as the “evil Grimace,” a four-armed purple blob who used his many limbs to abscond with cups of milkshakes, according to Food & Wine. Even in those commercials, though, the bumbling thief never attempted to poison or murder anyone who got in his way.

When ad execs realized that Grimace was frightening young potential consumers, they softened the character, dropping the “evil” from descriptors and lopping off one of his sets of arms. Soon, benevolent Grimace was just a triangular lump in Ronald McDonald’s gang of fast food lovers, and the villainous Hamburglar filled Grimace’s former role.