Yass mcdonalds definitely knew what they were doing, that sign's been up there since the 90's at least (that's when i first saw it on my way to Canberra)
I lived near this sign and passed it a dozen times, they only took it down in the last few years. It was pretty infamous, even before it hit the internet.
That meme is old as fuck. I legitimately burned a cd of "funny pictures" with this on it 25 years ago for a friend in highschool because we both had dialup and sharing pictures was just too cumbersome.
A CD of "funny pictures"? Even with ancient tech, that must have been a crazy number of pictures, funny or otherwise.
I'm not doubting your claim, I'm just impressed by your commitment. I also had a huge amount of "funny pictures" and a dodgy Internet connection, but I didn't have any friends, so I setup DDNS to host pictures that no one but I would ever see.
edit: I forgot, before I used DDNS, I put many of my pictures on an Angelfire account used by my friend's StarCraft clan. At the time I didn't realize Angelfire was free, at least at that tier, and was unable to convince my parents to pay for one. Even with our piddly 28.8 connection, it was worth it. This was, I think, the last image I uploaded there (sorry about the reddit link):
edit 2: At least for me, the reddit link didn't work. Here's another version of the same picture: