McDonald’s “Big Mac Chant Off,” looking for the best user performance of the classic “Two all-beef patties” jingle, has found its winner. But one of the runners-up is grabbing some of the headlines around the promotion: for having held up a McDonald’s back in 1994.

Launched on June 16 and timed to cap the 40^th anniversary celebration of the Big Mac, the contest asked users to perform their own version of the famous Big Mac ingredient list and to post the results to a contest page on the MySpace social network.

A team of professional judges winnowed the 1,000 entries received by July 16 down to five finalists. Visitors to the MySpace page were then permitted to vote for their selection from among that final five. (Promo Xtra, June 20, 2008)

The winner with 47% of the 12,000 popular votes was Jason Harper, a former corporate executive from Boynton Beach, FL, who founded a music company. His remix of the Big Mac jingle will be featured in a national TV spot for McDonald’s that will launch July 31.

But the announcement of the five finalists drew most attention for Tamien Bain and his hip hop-flavored submission. Bain, who has produced a rap album under the name “Baing the Locksmith,” revealed that he served 12 years in prison for holding up a Miami-area McDonald’s restaurant at gunpoint on Memorial Day 1994.

Bain was 14 at the time of the crime, but was charged as an adult under strict sentencing guidelines then prevalent in Miami-Dade County. He served his full term.

Press reports quote him as saying that he told contest officials about his past involvement with McDonald’s and added that it was his prison time that turned his attention to music, leading to his contest entry.

Bain solicited votes for his contest entry on his own MySpace profile page, but came in fourth with 8% of the popular ballot.

Kent Voetberg, marketing director for McDonald’s Corp., says that Bain’s “interesting” background never posed any impediment to his contest eligibility.

“We found out about this gentleman’s history and decided that he met the requirements of the MySpace promotion,” Voetberg says. “When we found out that his history was ‘unique’ with our brand, we decided that based on the social networking component for this campaign, we wanted to be inclusive of all.”

All five finalists’ entries in the “Big Mac Chant-Off” are still available on the campaign’s MySpace page. Harper’s winning remix is available as a ringtone download.

For more stories on games, contests & sweeps

What’s a Big Mac Chant Off without a contestant who served time for robbing a McDonald’s? Read why Mickey D’s allowed Tamien Bain to remain a contestant in the MySpace-based contest despite his past. And don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Go to Promo Magazine to finish this story…