Mr. Six
A bald old man in a tuxedo and giant glasses shuffles off a vintage bus, the Vengaboys kick in, and suddenly he's dancing like his knees are twenty-five. Six Flags' Mr. Six made an entire country want to follow that bus to the park.
Mr. Six arrived in 2004, invented by Doner Advertising for Six Flags' "It's Playtime!" campaign. The formula never changed and never needed to: an apparently ancient man — tuxedo, bow tie, thick black frames, liver-spotted head — creaks off a cream-and-red party bus in a bored suburb, cranks up an instrumental of the Vengaboys' "We Like to Party!", and erupts into a full-speed dance routine before busing the whole neighborhood to Six Flags. The ads were inescapable through 2004 and 2005, the song became permanently fused to the parks, and the dancer's identity stayed a genuine mystery — Six Flags kept it under wraps, and performer Danny Teeson later said his contract came with a hefty NDA.
The first retirement was abrupt: when Daniel Snyder took control of Six Flags in November 2005, the new regime dropped the character almost immediately, with Snyder dismissing him as pointless. The exile didn't hold: Mr. Six teased his comeback on the company's website in February 2009 and was officially back that spring, dancing in new spots under the "More Flags, More Fun" tagline with a pint-sized sidekick, Little Six. He faded again after 2010, but the brand knows what it has: Mr. Six resurfaced in a 2024 Fright Fest ad after a fourteen-year absence.
For 2000s kids the character is pure summer — the promise that somewhere at the end of a highway there was a place loud enough to justify dancing like that on a sidewalk.
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