The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald "The Legend of McDonaldland Loch" (found episode of animated series; 2003)

Cover of the VHS tape.

Status: Found

Date found: 6 Sept 2015

"The Legend of McDonaldland Loch" is an episode of The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald, a six-episode animated series based around McDonalds' mascots produced by the ka-chew! division of Klasky Csupo from 1998 to 2003. Each episode was released on separate VHS tapes, with this episode only being available for purchase on cooltoons.com (now cooltoons2.com) from Jan 30, 2003 to Mar 6, 2005.^[1]

Plot

The episode follows Ronald and friends as they travel to Scotland in search of the Monster O' McDonaldland Loch as part of a competition to win $1,000,000 for finding him. When they eventually find the monster, they discover that his name is Simon, and after talking to him, ultimately decide to keep his existence a secret.

Meanwhile, two professors are building a fake Monster in order to win the prize money. It goes on the loose when the McNuggets take control of it. When the gang visit Sundae's Scottish terrier cousin, Simon appears to fight the fake monster and wins. After the fight, the town holds a festival.

Discoveries

On December 20, 2014, an anonymous poster of the board /co/ on 4chan claimed to have a legitimate copy of the tape, saying that if it "really is lost, it's (sic) neat that I found it or something. Well, by found I mean my older brother looked up to see how much the whole set was worth, and could not find a set of 6."^[2]

The anonymous user posted several photos of the tape and its cover, in addition to low-quality photos of the tape playing on a "half-broken" CRT TV screen. The anonymous user received offers upwards of fifteen thousand dollars for the tape on the condition that it is not digitally uploaded. On May 9, 2015, the anonymous owner claimed to rip the tape to his PC, willing to sell it and then upload it to YouTube shortly after^[3].

Throughout June 2015, Lost Media Wiki user Inklingboy leaked several screenshots of the tape, both proving there are multiple individuals in possession of this video, and spurring rumors that the video would soon surface. Following hundreds of requests for the release of some form of video evidence, Inklingboy leaked two segments of the ending of the episode on YouTube on June 28, 2015, with specific instructions to never duplicate or re-upload the segments. The channel and videos were deleted on an unknown date.

On July 12, 2015, a YouTube user by the name of glbracer uploaded an unlisted 18-second clip, making a possible third holder for the tape.^[4]

On August 14, 2015, a YouTube user by the name of Austin Solom uploaded another four minutes in an unlisted video.

On September 6, 2015, YouTube user What a Cartoon uploaded the entire episode publicly. While the original video was deleted, it has since been re-uploaded by other users.