The Tortured Soul of Mr. Delicious, Fast Food’s Most Bizarre Mascot

It’s not often that a mascot for a fast-food franchise will detail the discomfort prompted by hemorrhoid surgery in a national television advertisement. But Mr. Delicious rarely played by the rules.

Mr. Delicious was the cartoon spokesman for Rax, a chain of roast beef eateries that grew popular in the 1980s. But by 1992, sales were dwindling—so the company recruited “Mr. D” to liven up their brand identity. Middle-aged and burdened by a difficult marriage, the character was an anti-Ronald McDonald.

“Mr. Delicious just had some rather delicate surgery,” he announced in one spot for value meals priced in round numbers. “If there’s no change, he doesn’t have to squirm so much to put it back in his pocket, does he? He just grabs his combo and drives ever so slowly over the speed bump.”

In other spots, Mr. Delicious would refer to his aversion to children, a midlife crisis involving inappropriately aged women, and heading to Rax to nurse a hangover.

Rax thought the irreverent Mr. Delicious was a solution to their ailing sales numbers. They were greatly mistaken.

Having Beef
Truth in Advertising

Having Beef

The Ohio-based Rax was founded in 1967 as a destination for roast beef sandwiches, a category then and now dominated by Arby’s. Their meat, Rax boasted, was roasted fresh in their locations beginning at 7 a.m. Their signature menu item was the BBC, or beef, bacon, and cheddar; patrons who wanted less meat could opt for the salad bar. An atrium, or sunroom-style dining area, completed the sophisticated look. Rax management positioned the restaurants as a cross between fast service and more traditional sit-down dinner outlets.

If that sounds confusing, it was. But in the 1980s, Rax’s eclectic menu was seen as a positive. “They’ve done a good job of differentiating themselves from other fast-food chains,” investment analyst John Weiss told The Sacramento Bee in 1987. “They are among the most innovative companies in the industry. They were the first with the baked potato, a salad bar and green house (architectural) look.” These choices, Weiss added, were seemingly copied by rival Wendy’s.

The fast-food-for-adults concept worked well enough, with 530 Rax locations dotting the country in the late 1980s. But by the early 1990s, competition from Arby’s as well as fast food giants like McDonald’s and Taco Bell had cramped Rax’s growth. The pizza and pasta offered by the salad bar was a confusing expansion of their core beef business. They had not reported a profitable sales quarter since 1988. Action needed to be taken.

The company recruited the Deutsch/Dworin ad agency, a high-profile firm out of New York. With input from Rax CEO William Underhill and marketing vice president William Welter, the agency developed a campaign that would position Rax as a destination for adults to enjoy fast food. If McDonald’s had Happy Meals and playgrounds, Rax would have sensible meals and butcher block tables.

Reinforcing this message was Mr. Delicious. Clad in a plaid suit and bow tie, nursing a toothpick, and toting a briefcase, the animated character was a sardonic counterpoint to energetic food mascots. In television, radio, and print ads, Mr. D promoted Rax meals while blending in details of his often-disturbing personal narrative.

“My job?” Mr. Delicious asks rhetorically in his first television spot. “To encourage you to enjoy tasty, affordable meals in a more mature dining environment.” In another, he stresses Rax’s “adult-sized delectables.”

Affordability was important to Mr. Delicious. As he reveals in one spot in his third-person delivery, “Mr. Delicious is, well, a little overextended.”

Mr. D’s radio spots were more aggressively peculiar. In one, Mr. Delicious seemingly refers to a strong dislike for the kid-friendly atmosphere of other fast-food chains that borders on the violent, saying, “You see, Mr. Delicious doesn’t appreciate unnecessary commotion while he’s eating. It brings out the dangerous, hostile side of Mr. D.” He again expresses appreciation for Rax’s low prices because “his analyst charges a lot to keep Mr. D’s hostility all locked up.”

Another spot makes mention of Mr. D’s midlife crisis, which involves a Porsche, “custom-designed hair weaves” and a “vacation ... to Bora Bora with two young ... friends.” A third ad suggests that Rax’s carb-heavy meals are ideal for someone suffering from a hangover.

Several spots ended with a nonsensical catchphrase (“Tickity-dee”) as well as Rax’s self-deprecating tagline: “You can eat here.”

Truth in Advertising

In the minds of Rax executives, Mr. Delicious’s extreme weirdness was purposeful. His latent psychopathy invited curiosity, which would ideally lead to consumers thinking of Rax.

“Mr. Delicious is a controversial character,” Underhill, Rax’s CEO, said in a promotional video sent to Rax franchisees in an apparent attempt to explain the curious creative choices made with the cartoon. “For every bad reaction we get for Mr. Delicious, we get hundreds of positive ones.”

Not all of the restaurant operators were placated. According to Underhill, some in rural West Virginia objected to the salacious content of the Mr. Delicious ads and even declared him “effeminate.”

It was obvious Rax and Deutsch were positioning Mr. Delicious to be a meta commentary on advertising characters and hoping his edge would become a kind of postmodern cult hit. At the time, The Simpsons was enjoying considerable success as a satirical cartoon.

“It’s like a psychic handshake with the consumer in which we acknowledge that yes, this is an ad, but we're going to try to have some fun with it,” Deutsch/Dworin creative director Greg DiNoto told Ad Age in 1994. Mr. Delicious, he added, was a “self-aware” campaign.

It’s long been believed Mr. Delicious was met with a tepid reception and led directly to Rax’s freefall. But in 1993, a year after Mr. Delicious debuted, revenue was bouncing back and losses were down. Then, according to Underhill, the company made a fateful decision.

“We turned it from where we were losing a million a month to making about $4 million a year,” he told Ohio radio station WYSU in 2022. “Then, we made the mistake of taking over for Citicorp the third largest Hardee’s franchisee. And that’s really what sunk things. Some people try to link it to Mr. D, but it wasn’t him.”

Despite later internet theories that the character was widely reviled, executives within the Deutsch/Dworin agency had a soft spot for him. He also impressed higher-ups at the Hardee’s restaurant chain, who soon turned their $75 million ad account over to the agency.

Today, there are roughly six Rax locations left, a significant drop from a high of 500. It was not Mr. Delicious who led to the decline, but it was unlikely he provided much help. He was soon relieved of his Rax duties and, one presumes, went to nurse his sorrows—and hemorrhoids—in Bora Bora.

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