RONALD McDONALD #3, Jan 1971

In 1970, McDonalds had the idea to syndicate a daily and/or Sunday Ronald McDonald comic strip.  They took it to the Hearst corporation and it was quickly picked up by their strip department at King. During the development stage King, which had a license agreement with Charlton at the time, brought the concept to the offices at Derby.

Drawn,and most likely written, by longtime King artist (and eventual editor in chief of King itself) Bill Yates, the title was a weird mish mash of kids stories and surreal tales that *seemed* like kids stories but were definetely of a more mature age group target. Although the daily strip never happened (at least not to my knowledge) Charlton was able to knock out four issues before the idea was scrapped. It's interesting to see that this was treated like any other strip, and that it wasn't used as a way to put McDonalds products into every story as marketing---the way it would certainly be if this were being published today.