McDonald’s Worst Character Now The Reason For Their Most Popular Meal
The Grimace Shake has led to viral videos and a massive increase in McDonald's profits.
While most of the internet has been going crazy joking about “girl dinner,” McDonald’s has been making a cool profit off a very different meal altogether. The corporation recently released The Grimace Birthday Meal along with the Grimace Shake.
That shake became an unexpected sensation when it became the subject of countless viral TikTok videos in which drinking the shake caused people to die or get seriously injured. But there’s no such thing as bad press, and ComicBook.com reports that the hype over the Grimace Birthday Meal and Shake helped McDonald’s almost double their net income to $2.3 billion in the latest quarter.
The Grimace Birthday Meal along with the Grimace Shake helped McDonald’s almost double their net income to $2.3 billion in the latest quarter.
As McDonald’s explained on a call with investors yesterday, Grimace is the primary reason for their soaring profits. Company CEO Chris Kempczinski explained that the purple character “has been everywhere” in recent months, and Grimace-related videos on TikTok had earned over three billion views.
It’s quite literally the kind of publicity that even the richest companies can’t buy, and every tongue-in-cheek Grimace Shake video is helping the world’s most famous burger company become that much wealthier.
If you’re out of the loop on all this and just curious about what was included in McDonald’s Grimace Birthday Meal, it’s pretty simple: customers were given the option of ordering either a 10-piece McNuggets order or a Big Mac, with fries accompanying their entree.
What really puts the “Grimace” in the Grimace Meal, though, is the fact that it came with a purple “vanilla berry” drink that tasted for all the world like liquefied Fruity Pebbles. It was a very distinct taste, and many on the internet jokingly suggested that this was the closest McDonald’s ever came to confirming what Grimace tastes like.
As for the viral Grimace Shake videos on TikTok, they mostly share a kind of horror movie premise: unsuspecting customers order the Grimace Shake, enjoy the first few sips, and then suddenly appear dead, injured, or otherwise incapacitated.
For added effect, many of these TikTok videos feature remnants of the purple shake dribbling out of their mouths like vomit or splashed around their body like brightly-colored Klingon blood. On paper, this looked like it might have been a bad trend for McDonald’s, as the clear implication of the silly videos is that this newest milkshake is downright deadly.
Grimace Shake TikTok videos went viral, more and more people ended up checking the shake out, either to make their own videos or just experience the flavor.
However, McDonald’s doesn’t particularly care whether consumers enjoy every last sip of the Grimace Shake or immediately destroy it for a video as long as people kept buying the product. And that’s exactly what happened: once the Grimace Shake TikTok videos went viral, more and more people ended up checking the shake out, either to make their own videos or just experience the flavor.
This led to an insane increase in sales and free marketing from consumers, and we wouldn’t be surprised if McDonald’s is already planning its next would-be viral phenomenon.
As for this recent phenomenon, if you haven’t already tasted the Grimace Birthday Meal and Shake, you may be sad to discover that McDonald’s discontinued the meal on July 9. Still, since this was meant to celebrate Grimace’s birthday, it’s possible that McDonald’s will bring the meal and shake back on an annual basis.
But whether bringing back the shake will bring back the viral meme sensation of the past month is anybody’s vanilla berry-flavored guess.
