The Sunset Flip

As the first entry to The Sunset Flip, I wanted to showcase something that was equal parts bizarre, ballsy, satiric and sleazy. Something that both celebrates and skews the mildly poisonous nostalgia culture us '90s kids' have inherited. The first and only entity that came to mind was the self-published mini-comic by a Massachusetts artist named Sam Gascan, Robble Robble.

Before we get there, remember M.C. Kids? You know, the late-NES platformer featuring Mick and Mack (one white, one black!) two kids stranded in McDonaldland on a mission to collect puzzle pieces (don't ask) in an effort to return a Magic bag to Ronald McDonald. Why can't Ronald do this himself? Two reasons:

1. McDonalds, as a company, has thrived upon its inception on using young people to do their dirty work.

2. Mick and Mack are surrogates for the diabetic, video-game obsessed audience. After all, who else is going to buy a Nintendo game based on an advertising campaign but the fast-food-fed children who (in a pre-internet age) have no other outlet?

Such was the landscape of McDonaldland in the 80s and 90s. Ronald could appear in a video game, literally ask the player to do his bidding, and we eat it up like so many McDoubles. The man (clown?) could even orchestrate a dance-party at one of his fine southern California restaurants within a feature-film E.T. knock-off like Mac and Me:


Was our affection for Ronald, Grimace and The Early Bird a pavlovian response to our french-fry, milkshake and hamburger addiction, or were these classic characters that just so happened to be corporate mascots? Likely the former, but it was an affection nonetheless, albeit an uneasy one. Which brings us to our subject, Robble Robble.

Sam Gascan's  30-page mini-comic makes no attempt to subvert copywrite and create also-ran versions of the McDonaldland squad ("Meet Donald McRonald and Smirk!"). To put on an emphasis of Gascan's IDGAF approach, the inside cover features four photos of actual McDonalds locations in MA, NY and "somewhere in FL," presumably taken by the author. We are then treated to a sexually-charged conversation between two sentient cheeseburgers before it's cut short by one's call to duty as somebody's lunch. If the description of this scene sounds absurd to you, remember that if you are like me you did grow up with an emotional attachment to a group of roller-skating french fries and what I assume to be a massive, purple, milkshake slinging butt-plug.

The scene transitions into the antics of two teenage fry cooks who make Beavis and Butthead's Burger World tenure look like Ray Croc. In the universe of Robble Robble, however, Croc may well be the fictional figurehead as Ronald himself is the exasperated, no-BS boss who quickly reprimands the two goofballs. Things only get weirder from here as the entrepreneurial clown soon realizes that he cannot make this month's money-maker, The Shamrock Shake!, without O'Grimacey's "St. Patrick's Day Magic." This sets the stage for our adventure to McDonaldland, with Ronald and Grimace on the trail of their #1 suspect, none other than The Hamburglar.

Even at his worst, The Hamburglar was never much of a villain. Watch as his attempt to steal from Ronald and Grimace (who, in this ad, are carrying way more cheeseburgers than any two people, clowns, or gigantic sex toys could eat in a single sitting) begins with a handshake and ends with Ronald handing his foe a burger out of pity after thwarting his plan.



Pathetic. Even as a kid you wonder what's wrong with the Hamburlgar for being such a polite mugger, and Ronald for being so generous as to reward his assailant. Gascan's comic re-imagines these characters as truer versions of themselves, no longer tethered to the "everybody wins" philosophy of children-targeted advertising. Grimace is an imbecile, comparable to Patrick Starr of SpongeBob. Early Bird is shrill, annoying and clumsy but good-natured. The Hamburglar is a knife-wielding sociopath. And Ronald is the bitter, irascible leader with little patience for the fools surrounding him. He's like Rick Sanchez with red hair and face-paint.



Seeing these characters behave like this feels like working behind the counter of a fast-food restaurant. You see first hand that the savory delights you've developed a taste for aren't so much the colorful creations of an Oz-like utopia, but merely big plastic bags of frozen, dead flesh waiting for one last chance to be turned into something someone will pay for before resting, finally, in some sewer. Unlike working flipping burgers, however, Robble Robble is hilarious and rewarding even if some of the humor isn't for everyone.

The McDonaldland characters, sans Ronald, were retired in the early 00s in favor of a more "real-world" approach. I imagine children today have the same taste for fast-food and small collectable toys as they did when I was a child, but as news of McDonalds' suffering continues to make headlines, one has to wonder if part of the problem is their inability to connect with the youth's imagination. In an age grade-schoolers racking up bills on their parents' Apple Store accounts with endless in-game app purchases, you'd think there is room for these characters to thrive (McPlay is their mobile game, but it features outside properties like My Little Pony and Transformers).

So what's left of Grimace and Mayor McCheese is how we remember them. With fondness, bewilderment, amusement a little disgust, and a sesame-seed bun.

You can read the entirety of Sam Gascan's Robble Robble here.