The plot involves Ronald McDonald and friends setting up a radio station, having fun with the limitless number of signals they can receive and converting the station into a spaceship to rescue aliens they hear a distress signal from.
Curiously, Grimace, Hamburglar and Birdie the Early Bird were voiced by their standard McDonald's commercial voice actors Frank Welker, Carl W. Wolfe and Russi Taylor rather than their respective Wacky Adventures voice actors Kevin Michael Richardson, Charlie Adler and Christine Cavanaugh.
The audio play can be listened to on archive.org
, but be aware that several tracks are out of order.
Tropes:
- Adapted Out: In spite of being based off the Wacky Adventures videos, there is no mention of Sundae or the McNuggets and the McDonaldland gang are accompanied by a different group of kids than Tika and Franklin. In contrast, the Fry Kids are featured even though they were dropped from the series after the very first video "Scared Silly".
- Artistic License – History: "We'll Be Listening for the Signal" has a bit where the gang's radio enables them to listen to historical events. One of the events is Christopher Columbus preparing for his voyage towards the Americas, which perpetuates the misconception that no one was aware the Earth was spherical before Columbus set sail.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Ronald notes after saving the aliens that they have to get off of Asteroid 23 before it gets sucked into a blackhole, they are destroyed in the process and late for dinner as well.
- Audio Adaptation: This is more or less an audio drama of The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald, with the cover art of the not-publicly-available CD even depicting Ronald, Grimace, Hamburglar and Birdie sporting character designs influenced by their depictions in those videos.
- Chekhov's Gun: The gang at one point pick up some cubic zirconia, which later come in handy when they turn out to be the fuel the aliens need for their spaceship.
- Continuity Snarl: Assuming the audio play is intended to be canon in the first place, Birdie claims during the track "The Land of Lost and Found" that she's never lost anything, which is contradictory to how she clearly lost the belongings she brought with her on the boat trip in "The Legend of Grimace Island" and was never indicated to be able to recover said belongings after the adventure ended.
- Educational Song: "Be Cheerful, Be Perky" consists of Birdie giving advice on how to be polite and well-behaved.
- Fear Song: "Unidentified Knocking Object" concerns Ronald and friends singing about their fear at investigating a mysterious knocking sound from outside their spaceship.
- Food Songs Are Funny: "Lima Beans" has Grimace sing about times where he had dreams about vegetables.
- Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: "Do Monsters Know How to Rock and Roll?" has a vampire contact Ronald and friends solely to teach them a dance called the Zombie Lurch.
- Furry Reminder: "Eggs-actly What's Inside" has the gang find a giant egg, with Birdie deciding to try and hatch it since birds tend to hatch eggs and she's the only bird around.
- Hurricane of Puns: "Eggs-actly What's Inside" has Ronald make several egg-based puns while speculating on what could be inside the egg Birdie is trying to hatch after the gang find it.
- I Want My Mommy!: Grimace pleads that he wants his mother in "Unidentified Knocking Object".
- Never Say "Die": In the song "Save the Aliens", Ronald and friends only say that the aliens could be "destroyed" or "history" if they don't come to their rescue in time.
- Percussive Maintenance: One of the kids suggests to Ronald that they can fix the radio station by hitting it like his father does with the television during the track "We'll Be Listening for the Signal". Ronald points out that such a technique isn't recommended on such delicate equipment, but figures it couldn't hurt to try anyway.
- Secondary Adaptation: An audio play based on a series of animated videos based on advertising mascots.
- Super-Sargasso Sea: "The Land of Lost and Found" is all about Ronald and friends finding themselves on a planet full of lost objects, some of which are items they misplaced themselves. The song humorously ends with Ronald declaring that he's spotted Mayor McCheese, a retired McDonaldland mascot who was phased out after McDonald's was sued by Sid and Marty Krofft over the character's similarities to H.R. Pufnstuf.
- That Reminds Me of a Song: Some of the songs come out of nowhere and have nothing to do with the overall plot of Ronald and friends traveling through space to respond to the aliens' distress signal they received on their radio station, the most obvious ones including "Be Cheerful, Be Perky" (where Birdie sings about how to be a well-behaved person), "Do Monsters Know How to Rock and Roll?" (where Ronald observes a werewolf constellation and wonders if monsters boogie before a vampire makes contact with the gang to teach them a dance called the Zombie Lurch) and "Lima Beans" (where Grimace sings about having dreams about vegetables).
- Unstoppable Mailman: "Unidentified Knocking Object" has a mailman go to the trouble of delivering a package to Ronald through outer space, even explaining his reasoning for making the delivery while the gang are in orbit by saying a variant of the United States Postal Service creed.
