It’s odd that we never associated a sentient purple blob that hangs out with a clown as anything other than nightmare material before.
TikTokers have started a pretty funny trend that’s been inspired by a McDonald’s promotion. In honour of its classic character Grimace’s 52nd birthday, the fast-food chain has released a limited-time Grimace Shake, a berry-flavoured frozen delight that is “inspired by Grimace’s iconic colour and sweetness.”
The idea behind the promotion seems pretty tame, but over on TikTok, Gen Z has turned it into a completely different beast.
Since the promotion started on June 12, the social media platform (and Twitter) has been flooded with videos under the #GrimaceShake hashtag that all seem to follow a similar, but very funny, format.
In each video, a user is seen wishing Grimace a happy birthday before taking a sip of the shake. Once the sip is taken, however, the TikTok typically devolves into a mini-horror movie in which Grimace and his evil concoction bring a horrific death upon its sipper.
It doesn’t seem as if most people who are making the Grimace Shake TikToks or those who are sharing the videos really know what the meme is about — other than it’s funny. But a few things McDonald’s and their former employees have done and said does propel Grimace into creepy territory.
McDonald’s, for example, promoted the Grimace Shake before it was released by having the character take over its TikTok account, and the videos that feature the character are, well, somewhat unsettling — though it seems their intent was to be light and sweet.
There’s also the fact that a manager of a McDonald’s franchise in Canada revealed the origin story behind Grimace in 2021, and it’s uh, a bit weird.
“He is an enormous taste bud, but a taste bud nonetheless,” Brian Bate told CBC in an “unofficial” explanation, adding that the character was meant to show that the food tastes good.
But the actual answer to what this Grimace Shake trend is really all about may be more simple: It’s merely absurdity.
Or at least that’s what the TikToker who claims to have started the trend says is its point.
TikTok user @thefrazmaz, who claims to have posted the first Grimace Shake video on June 14 (above), explained the meme in a follow-up post to his original video.
Explaining the trend, he wrote: “What does this trend mean? Is the shake bad? What’s going on? Since I am the original ‘victim’ of Grimace, it’s quite literally just a meme.”
“When I decided to make this video, I was thinking, ‘Oh this is like the Spider-Verse burger,’ where it’s an unnatural color, it’s unique,” he continued. “And I saw a guy do it with the burger where he took a bite and the next scene was him in the hospital. So I was like, ‘let’s do something similar’.”
So, there you have it! Have fun sleeping tonight!