Overview

Grimace's Birthday is a promotional campaign run by McDonald's in June 2023 centered around one of the company's tertiary mascots, Grimace, who's depicted as a rotund, purple creature. The campaign, and particularly the introduction of a purple Grimace Shake / Milkshake, amused the internet following its debut, leading to a swell of Grimace-related jokes, memes and content during the month across social media — most notably the Grimace Shake Trend on TikTok.

Background

On June 5th, 2023, the @McDonalds Twitter^[1][2][3] page posted a series of tweets written as if by Grimace, explaining that Grimace had a surprise coming on June 6th (shown below). One tweet encourages viewers to text "707-932-4826" to learn more.

The next day, the account posted a tweet^[4] announcing Grimace's birthday on June 12th, coinciding with the release of the Grimace meal and Grimace shake, a purple, berry-flavored milkshake, garnering over 23,000 likes in six days (shown below).

Developments

The tweets inspired numerous memes about Grimace's surprise and his birthday. For example, on June 6th, 2023, Twitter^[5] user @ben_rosen tweeted, "a june 12 birthday suggests grimace may have been conceived on September 11," garnering over 23,000 likes in six days (shown below, left). On June 8th, Twitter user @davidmackau^[6] posted a photo of what appears to be a Grimace dick pic, writing, "texted grimace and he just sent me this??" garnering over 89,000 likes in four days (shown below, right).

On June 12th, 2023 (the day of the meal's release), YouTuber TheReportOfTheWeek posted a review of the Grimace meal, giving it an 8/10 overall and garnering over 100,000 views in a day (shown below, left). On the same day, Badlands Booker posted a video to YouTube chugging the shake, garnering over 30,000 views in the same span of time (shown below, right).

On that date, June 12th, McDonald's also released an official video game based on Grimace titled Grimace's Birthday, produced by Krool Toys. The game is meant to resemble Gameboy Color games and is playable on grimacesbirthday.com^[7] (playthrough shown below).

The promotion also inspired fan art tying Grimace to Pride Month, also taking place in June 2023. For example, on June 13th, Twitter users @raspbearyart^[11] and piophany^[12] both posted pieces tying Grimace to Pride Month, gaining over 950 retweets and 4,500 likes and 220 retweets and 800 likes, respectively, in two days (shown below).

Grimace Shake

The "Grimace Shake" released alongside the promotion on June 12th, 2023, became a prominent point of amusement for social media in the following days. The shake is a purple, blueberry-flavored soft-serve drink.^[8] Online, social media users jokingly exaggerated the effects of drinking the shake.

For example, on June 14th, Twitter user @jpbrammer^[9] joked that drinking the Grimace shake "binds you to his will," gaining over 490 retweets and 4,300 likes in one day (shown below, left). The same day, user @notsofiacoppola^[10] joked that every McDonald's was "milking" Grimace to produce the shake, gaining over 200 retweets and 2,000 likes in one day (shown below, right).

On TikTok, the promotion inspired several surreal clips. For example, on June 13th, user @ugh_madison of herself painted purple and drinking the shake, gaining over 259,000 likes in two days (shown below, left). The same day, user @spookyquill posted a TikTok of themselves vaping in "celebration" of "Mother Grimace," gaining over 18,000 likes in the same time frame (shown below, right).

Grimace Shake Incident

On June 13th, 2023, TikToker@thefrazmaz posted a video where he takes a drink of the McDonald's Grimace Shake, a limited time item in celebration of Grimace's birthday, then cuts to a scene of him lying on the floor dead with purple drink around his mouth, garnering over 1.7 million views in two weeks (shown below).

On June 25th, other TikTokers began to make similar videos. That day, TikToker @reecenator661 posted a slideshow of various people acting dead after drinking the shake, calling it the "Grimace shake incident," garnering over 970,000 views in two days. Some of the most popular examples of the trend uploaded that day include videos by TikTokers @_loganross and @wheresxander, garnering over 6.5 million views and 5.9 million views respectively in two days (shown below, left and right). The trend also inspired fan art on Twitter where artists draw characters from various fandoms dying after drinking the shake.

Search Interest

External References