Uncle O’Grimacey is BACK
The bearer of the Shamrock Shake has been released from the weird mascot vault after decades of being in hiding.
In early 1975, a new character was introduced into McDonaldland: Grimace’s very Irish uncle coming from Sham Rock, Ireland, aptly named Uncle O’Grimacey. He’s Grimace-shaped, bright green, wears a green top hat and a vest, and carries one of those Irish sticks—so basically like the Chicago St. Patrick’s Day parade just vomited all over a grimace. He introduced the world to the Shamrock Shake, a minty green milkshake that’s only available around St. Patrick’s Day every year. While the Shamrock Shake has been a cultural staple every year since, it seems as though the bearer of the shakes, Uncle O’Grimacey, was pushed into the background and into obscurity.
That is, until the announcement of his return this year, 40 years after his debut and 30 years after he was taken out of the spotlight into McDonaldland mascot purgatory. That’s right, our favorite mysteriously-shaped Irish guy is BACK!
Besides slinging Shamrock Shakes, Uncle O’Grimacey’s return seems to serve two purposes: in celebration of the 50-year anniversary of Ronald McDonald House Charities they are pledging to donate 25 cents for every Shamrock Shake. The other is that it seems like McDonald’s is doing a brand collab with Ancestry.com. In a video we see a current American Grimace (unable to type words right) doing a DNA test on the Ancestry website and finding that he’s got an uncle that lives in Ireland! Who cares that a private company has your DNA forever and it can be used by the police to like, pin murders on people? You, a white person (or weird purple thing) may find out that you have relatives who are from Ireland—that’s so unique and has never been heard of before!
The rest of Grimace’s family (Aunts Mille and Tillie, Grandma Winky) lives on Grimace Island (assumed to be somewhere in America) while his Uncle O’Grimacey stayed in Ireland. This makes me wonder if as a species a grimace’s fur color changes along its environment. All of the grimaces who live in North America are the signature purple color, while Uncle O’Grimacey in Ireland is pure green. They still retain the regular globular grimace shape, regardless of geographic location. Either that, or Uncle O’Grimacey dyes himself green because he loves being Irish so much. Or eating too many Shamrock Shakes can turn you green. If the fan theory is true that the berry-flavored purple Grimace shake is Grimace’s cum, then that means that Uncle O’Grimacey cums mint. What other flavors of grimace cum shakes are out there? I do not want to expand on any of this because if any of this is true, it can get dicey depending on where else in the world a grimace can live.
So why did Uncle O’Grimacey disappear in the expanded McDonaldland universe? There is a rumor that he was discontinued after an incident in Philadelphia in 1978 where the person who wore the costume vocalized his support of the IRA. There’s no record of anything like this happening, and the closest source comes from an article in The Onion, super known for saying things that are true. In my expert opinion, I think that weird-looking mascots were growing unpopular among kids and the old fuzzy thing who was also Irish just did not make the cut.
Uncle O is making a comeback mostly riding on the coattails of the success of Grimace’s birthday shake in June 2023 that was taken by storm on social media (notably, Grimace’s birthday is the same day as the anniversary of my mom’s death and I have felt very close to Grimace personally after that). The kids LOVE weird mascot brand deals, especially when it involves a cum shake (see like two paragraphs above).
Being in America this time of year, everyone adopts an Irish identity in one way or another, usually in the form of wearing green and day drinking the Saturday before St. Patrick’s Day. That is not what people in actual Ireland like to do in March, so I wondered what actual Irish people in Ireland would think about Uncle O’Grimacey’s cartoonishly Irish appearance. I asked my one Irish friend what he thought about Uncle O’Grimacey coming back after all this time and he said, “Honestly, I don’t know who that is.” After I showed him a picture of a present-day Uncle O, my friend replied with, “Hahaha that this is so weird.” So there you have it, folks: the opinion of what every person in Ireland thinks about Uncle O’Grimacey.
The Shamrock Shake is only available for a limited time each year, but hopefully McDonald’s corporate doesn’t give him the boot and we can see him make an appearance next year. With all he’s found from an Ancestry test, original purple Grimace might want to see if he’s eligible for birthright citizenship for Ireland—I think a grandparent makes the cut over there and Grimace might need a new passport in the upcoming years. Who knows?
Dr. Coke is back on the Wednesday show at Finley Dunne’s this week, starting at 8pm!
Also, I finally uploaded the incomplete video footage of me doing a PowerPoint presentation about the entirety of the DCOM series ‘Descendants.’ Please give it a watch!