Watch a young Jason Alexander, moved by McDonald’s burgers, sing and dance in fast food joy
The resurfaced 1985 McDonald's commercial stars Alexander as an enthusiastic burgermonger
TV Features Jason Alexander
Almost every actor, unless they have the same last name as another famous actor, has to pay their dues before they get to work on projects that hopefully aren’t entirely soul-crushing. Keanu Reeves helped sell Coca Cola and Corn Flakes before he became a star. Stephen Colbert tried to get a Sex And The City bit part as a diarrhea-stricken man before he became a late night mainstay.
And Jason Alexander, in his pre-Seinfeld era, once led singing, dancing flash mobs in a commercial advertising McDonald’s bygone McD.L.T. sandwich.
Digg resurfaced the old commercial, which sees a young Alexander, free of glasses and with flowing brown hair, do his absolute utmost to convince TV viewers that they should share his excitement over the concept of a “D.L.T.”
“You say you’re getting tired of lettuce and tomato hamburgers in this town that don’t quite make it?” Alexander asks, throwing out his hands and wearing the plastic grin and rolled-sleeve suit jacket of a constantly sniffling ‘80s sales agent. A group of people shout “yeah!” in response.
“You say that just once you’d like your hamburger hot and your lettuce and tomato cooool and crisp all at the same time?” he prompts them again.
After hearing the mob’s desire for just such a thing, Alexander presents them with “McDonald’s new lettuce and tomato hamburger, the McD.L.T.” He then begins dancing around a city street and showing off this fabulous new culinary invention, which basically just separates the hot burger patty on one side of a styrofoam container and the cold vegetables on the other until it’s time to be assembled and eaten.
So thrilled by this item that he can’t contain his feelings, Alexander also sings lead on a song whose lyrics describe the quality and ingenuity of a fast food product that nobody would ever remember had once existed if it wasn’t for a Seinfeld alum selling the absolute hell out of it. (A sample: “The beef stays hot, the cool stays crisp! Put it together, you can’t resist!”)
The physical and sonic presence of this hamburger salesfreak, who speaks and looks like George Costanza but is so unlike him in crucial ways, is undeniable. Watch the commercial to see this for yourself and then spend a few moments considering the desperate showman version of Jason Alexander that Seinfeld took from us.
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84 Comments
I think this resurfaces once a year. It’s the McDonald’s version of the “baby it’s cold out” nontroversy
I said it 35 years ago and I stand by it: keeping the cheese separate from the patty is the stupidest part of the whole stupid enterprise.
I was just looking at that thing and internally yelling, “The cheese is on the wrong side! It needs to be melty! What is wrong with you monsters?”
Something about the McDLT kind of fascinates me… They put the cheese on the “cold” side between tomato and lettuce in this ad and other pictures I’ve seen. Is that really how it was served? Because cold ultra-processed McDonalds cheese doesn’t seem the least bit enticing…
They don’t really melt the cheese anyway, they just put it on a hot patty and it softens. But to your point, still preferable
No, it doesn’t, but I suspect if that processed cheese slab lingered too long on the hot patty, you’d end up with some unsettling orange-yellow liquid pooled in the bottom of the container. Which is certainly even more gross.
Your comment raises an interesting (well, to me) question. Is a cheeseburger actually better if the cheese is hot/melted? My reflexive answer is yes, and that’s how I cook them at home, but now that I really think about it, I’m not sure. Melted cheese on a burger patty tends to make it all kind of meld together, so you lose the distinct texture of cheese. Meanwhile, my favorite burgers are the kind you get at roadside stands, and often the cheese slice is still solid, but it all works well together. It’s like the cheese ends up being a buffer between the hot patty and the cold lettuce/tomato/onion.
Yes. Of course.
When it comes to a burger, I don’t fuss about the texture of the cheese. It’s all about the taste, and that is enhanced with a little heat.
The cold cheese like substance made that sandwich disgustingly inedible.I also recall Letterman endlessly mocking it in that withering, Letterman way.
Man, I miss the McDLT (not the packaging, though). The idea of separating the patty from the cold veg was great, at least for takeout orders. IIRC, the hot side didn’t actually stay all that hot, but I liked how the lettuce didn’t get steamed and wilted by the time you got the food home.
So you still got a cold burger, but at least you could toss that out and turn the lettuce and tomato into a decent salad.
Ha! Well, the burger was always going to be lukewarm at best, but at least the veg would be in decent shape. This just makes me think about how weird it is in the first place to put cold veg on a hamburger. It only makes sense if you’re going to eat it immediately.
Petroleum-based “cheese”.
“cheese product”
“Cheese inspired burger stuffing.”
Didn’t this go viral like ~15 years ago?
ya, 1985
Ridiculous. 1985 was 25 years ago.
So, chrisk, I have to tell you something. You might want to sit down. 1985 was…
I seem to recall they even showed this clip when he was interviewed on some late night talk show. So, yeah, nothing we new here.On that same show, Alexander mentioned another pre-Seinfeld commercial he did where they dropped like a barrel’s worth of milk on him. They didn’t show a clip, but that’s one I’d really want to see.
nothing new hereThe AV Club
Every five years, like clockwork. I’m fairly certain I’ve seen it reported on this very website before.
I’m fairly certain I’ve seen it reported on this very website before.The AVClub
I was just thinking this the other day about a “check this out, Beanie Babies used to be a thing!” article I read. Some stories seem to get exhumed every few years and presented as if it’s a brand new discovery. I tend to assume it’s a young writer. No wonder elderly people are so cranky.
The dead give away of the writer’s age is implying that nobody would remember the McDLT if this young muckraker had not bravely explored the depths of Youtube to find an old commercial. I don’t think its possible not to remember the McDLT if you ever watched TV in the mid 80s. The advertising blitz for this sandwich was inescapable.
Every generation discovers it!
Idk. I’m 14.
Since 1985, McDonalds probably realized how to genetically modify their lettuce so it doesn’t wilt with that hot, hot beef.
Some companies have been working on meatless beef patties, but McDonald’s has instead been developing a lettuce cow that still needs to be slaughtered.
I miss jacket and tie as casual wear.
Sport coat with the sleeves pushed up. So casual.
back when it were still actual hamburgers and not mystery meat
That’s not Clint Howard? Huh.
“the concept of a “D.L.T.””
You *get* that the D in McDLT is part of the McD, right?
This has been “resurfaced” for literal decades.
It didn’t so much resurface as float for decades in the Pacific Garbage Pile of celebrity video oddities, where it’s occasionally noticed by a lifeboat of starving, dehydrated Seinfeld fans.
I think the “Podcast: the Ride” boys may have done an entire episode on it
I wonder if agents “resurface” this kind of stuff when their clients careers are suffering.
If Jason Alexander’s career is suffering, I’d think the only sensible move would be to reboot Duckman.
What the hell are YOU staring at?!
eh, he’s got a net worth of 50 million, I think he will be fine.
Ahhh … the “Lettuce and Tomato Special”. That was the name before it was relaunched as the much better named MdDLT. The packaging kept “the hot side hot and the cool side cool.”
I um……grew up in a very uncool time. Looking back at 1985 is painful.
I remember an even worse McDLT commercial, if you can believe it.Anyone nostalgic for the 80s should be shown this and thousands of similar commercials as an immediate antidote.
I remember a McDonald’s commercial for chicken strips with the lyric being something like “Gonna get my strip on…before that chicken’s gone”.I can’t find it on YouTube but I don’t think I’m going crazy.
That’s how it starts…
They should have to watch a full 1986 commercial break, followed by the middle act of an episode of Webster. At that point they can turn off the TV, but there will be people smoking in the house, Ronald Reagan is president, and mentioning Tom Hanks elicits the response, “Oh, that guy from Splash? What about him?”
LOL
I thought the kids commercials form the 80s were cool. this is weird but sometimes when I’m high as fuck listening to records ill put stuff on tv, and ill put you-tube collections of 70s and 80s commercials to play in the background and I gottta say visuals that didn’t rely on CGI and actually filmed sets, costumes and puppets or whatever are visually pleasing.
Even if you had grown up in a cool time, you’d still have been overshadowed by the incredible coolness of the Nineteez: Xtreme Decade (Now in Slime Green and Atomic Purple editions).
As someone born in 1983 (so fairly aware for the second half of the decade), I have never understood this persistent 80s nostalgia. The fashion was atrocious, the entertainment was cheesy, rampant capitalism was seen as a good thing, everyone smoked, and the cynicism of the 90s was barrelling towards us.Keytars were cool though.
:+1: for keytars
I cannot disagree with any of this.
I graduated from high school in ‘84. I think many of us have some sense of nostalgia for things from our teen years, before life became…real. Our favorite music and our favorite pizza are what we listened to and what we ate when we were in high school.
I think a lot of it is because it’s between the 70’s and 90’s cynicism. We were determined to enjoy ourselves before that nuclear holocaust!
.I hope you had the time of your life……
Where’s the kid in the wheelchair?
It was the 80s. We didn’t care about the disabled.
The 60s had been pushing racial tolerance and the 70s had been making a big deal about women’s lib. Frankly, we were burned out on caring about people.
yes it is that same McDonald’s that will have kids and an alien disguised as a bear spontaneously dance!(two whole days went by and no one got your reference tsk tsk)
Maybe if Paul Rudd shows up with a clip of that kid rocketing his wheelchair off a cliff…
I’ve never been that happy, about anything, in my life. Ever.
Might I suggest ordering your lettuce and tomato on the side the next time you go to McDonald’s?
I’m kind of wondering what the direction was on this ad:“Yeah, that was good Jason, but can we do it again, and this time deliver it as if you’re on the verge of a full-blown psychotic breakdown.”
Thing is, he comes across as enthusiastic rather than crazy. Some of those lines are way too complicated for a twenty second commercial, but he manages to motormouth them without losing intelligibility. And his choreography is really fluid, even if the moves are simple. Dude’s a pro.
“You know that maniacal glee you brought to the last take? You need to bring it up a few notches.”
I don’t know which is funnier, the clothing or the way McDonald’s managed to find a way to double-down on styrofoam…
Now with twice as much styrofoam packaging!!!!!
Can’t-stand-ya.
This McDLT … is making me THIRSTY!
This McDLT is MAKING me thirsty!
That song fuckin slaps though
Somehow the explanation “you want the burger and cheese to stay hot and the lettuce and tomato to stay cool” along with the process is…well, is it very Seinfeld, in that it could fit in on the show with Jerry repeating every step loudly after George says it, or is it just Jason Alexander’s voice that makes it seem this way?
I’m baffled…but I’m Lovin’ It.
Crazy! Matt LeBlanc was in a Cherry 7up commercial before he was on Friends!
Stephen Colbert tried to get a as a diarrhea-stricken man before he became a late night mainstay.“Man, I wish I hadn’t gone method in preparation.”
They put the cheese on the cold side?Lunacy.
My favorite part of this commercial has always been the repeated references to ‘lettuce and tomato hamburgers’. Like the marketing department was determined to make that phrase a thing.
The McDLT was awesome. So was the Arch Deluxe – one of the best fast food hamburgers ever. If it’s good McDonalds will kill it. And Jason Alexander actually sells this corny AF commercial.
Wow, look at all those people breathing all over each other and that burger. Funny how that used to be normal.
My takeaway is just how tiny Jason looks compared to everyone else.
What is it about the lettuce and tomato that makes it go so well together?
I mean by this point he had already had three, well not leads but significant roles on Broadway—two musicals (including Sondheim’s big flop Merrily We Roll Along) and one Neil Simon play and did a number of commercials. Sure it was pre-Seinfeld, but it’s not like his career was completely flat.