Anyone checked on Grimace lately?

On June 12, Grimace, McDonald’s fuzzy purple mascot, turned 52 years old. To celebrate, the fast food giant started offering the Grimace Meal and Shake “while supplies last.”

Well, supplies didn’t last too long, thanks to social media. And if you’ve opened TikTok over the past few weeks, you know exactly what we’re talking about.

📱 The trend: In a play on Grimace’s villainous origin story, TikTokers are pretending to die in violent and strange ways after drinking the Grimace Shake. Creators typically wish Grimace a happy birthday, taste the drink, and then the video cuts to a clip of them playing dead or injured with the purple milkshake oozing out of their mouth, nose, or head (#Grimacestrikesagain).

And this doesn’t appear to be a meticulously-planned marketing stunt. According to a LinkedIn post published yesterday by McDonald’s marketing director, Guillaume Huin, the company has nothing to do with creating the trend – Huin attributed its existence to “peak absurdist Gen Z humor.”

• One of the earliest Grimace posts came from a 28-year-old Knoxville-based social media manager named Austin Frazier – and things snowballed from there.
• On TikTok, the hashtag #grimace has amassed 2.5 billion views. #grimaceshake isn’t far behind, with 2.4 billion views.

🟣💰 Big picture: These virtual views translated into very real dollars. Demand surged when the trend picked up, and millions of Grimace Shakes and Meals were sold between June 12–June 30, according to McDonalds – who’s been hush-hush on whether Grimace will return in 2024.

P.S. If we’re missing a writer tomorrow, you’ll know who’s responsible.