“Mad Men” made its debut on AMC in the summer of 2007, the creation of a former writer of “The Sopranos” whose pilot script was rejected by HBO, starring an unknown leading man and residing on a network best known as a second-tier movie channel, one that didn’t cost extra.

Seven years on, much has changed for everyone and everything involved with the show — even some of the products woven into it. As the series returns on Sunday for the first half of its final season — the second half arrives next year — we look at that altered landscape.

Jon Hamm

THEN Best known for playing a firefighter on the little-remembered “Providence.”

NOW After six seasons as the emotionally stunted Don Draper, he’s emerging as a leading man in the movies, starring in Disney’s coming “Million Dollar Arm,” about a down-on-his-luck baseball agent who decides to turn Asian cricket players into Major League Baseball pitchers. Meanwhile, he’s spoofed his sex symbol image on “Saturday Night Live” and in “Bridesmaids,” and did his “Mad Men” character proud with commercial voice-over work for Mercedes-Benz and American Airlines.