McDonald's Chicken McNuggets Shanghai cardboard box

In 1987, McDonald’s released Chicken McNuggets Shanghai, a promotional campaign complete with chopsticks, McFortune cookies, and “oriental sauces” like hot mustard, teriyaki, peanut satay, black bean, and Cantonese sweet and sour. McDonald’s branded its new release with a graphic identity packed with oriental motifs and produced TV commercials that cast Chinese culture in absurdly cartoonish stereotypes. One such advertisement features a Fu Manchu-type character who states he has “come many miles from inscrutable Orient to tell you about Chicken McNugget Shanghai” while others depicted white Americans fumbling with chopsticks. Borrowing from pernicious stereotypes of Orientalism and Yellow Peril, McDonald’s simply repackaged its product in attempts to capitalize off the “exoticness” of the East.