McDonald's brings back the Hamburglar as an oddly dressed suburban father

The new Hamburglar. — (Image credit: Twitter.com/Mashable)

When we last saw the Hamburglar, he was a husky, red-headed cartoon criminal who liked to wear prison attire. Now? He's an actual man who looks like a cross between Inspector Gadget and a bandit who bought his wardrobe at a Party City fire sale.

It's been 13 years since the Hamburglar made his last official appearance in a McDonald's ad, and the company thought his return was overdue. "We felt it was time to debut a new look for the Hamburglar after he's been out of the public eye all these years," Joel Yashinsky, vice president of U.S. marketing for McDonald's, told Mashable. "He's had some time to grow up a bit and has been busy raising a family in the suburbs and his look has evolved over time." The Hamburglar is already shilling the new Sirloin Third Pound Burger online, and will soon show up in TV spots. It remains to be seen if McDonald's will clue us in to why he's decided to return to a life of crime.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.