You know the logos, but did you know the stories behind some of the most iconic cartoon faces of America’s most popular chains? While they may exist in the land of carry-out, some of the most recognizable logos in the world are actually based on real people, some of whom are still alive today. As you can tell from the photo above, Sun-Maid raisins used a live model for their logo. Lorraine Collett Peterson was 17 when she became immortalized in the logo, after being asked to hold a basket and pose for a watercolor painting in 1910. The Missouri native worked as a seeder, packer, and promoter for a subsidiary of Sun-Maid Company in Fresno, Calif., at the time. Here are some other logo mascots that may surprise you.
 |
| Wendy’s is the fast food chain with the red-headed girl with a smattering of freckles and blue bows in her hair as its logo. When Dave Thomas founded the burger chain in 1969, he chose his daughter, 8-year-old Wendy, as the emblem of the fast-food restaurant. Wendy, whose real name is Melinda, says she still loves being the face of the chain. |
 |
| Kentucky Fried Chicken — known today as KFC — uses a portrait of Colonel Harland Sanders on its logo. Sanders is the founder of the fried chicken chain, and his face has remained on the logo even after he sold the company in 1964. |
 |
| Little Debbie, the brand of tiny snack cakes that originates from the south, features a logo of a rosy-cheeked young girl with curly brown hair and a straw hat, wearing a light-blue colored dress. The girl is actually Debbie McKee, who was 4 years old when she was snapped. Little Debbie’s founder, O. D. McKee, used his daughter as the model for the snack cakes. |
 |
| Ronald McDonald is the mascot for the famous burger chain, McDonald’s. It’s unlikely that you ever imagined that TV weatherman Willard Scott was actually the model. Prior to being a broadcaster, Scott played a character called Bozo the Clown. McDonald’s based their mascot on the clown, which makes Willard Scott a member of the Mickey D family. |
 |
| Chef Boyardee features a smiling chef in his whites with a siren-red scarf. A noticeable difference in the modern logo to the actual chef is the dark mustache. Hector Boiardee was an Italian chef born in 1897 in Piacenza, Italy, who launched the Chef Boyardee Company with his brothers Mario and Paul, in 1928. They made the decision to spell the name phonetically so American's could pronounce it. |
