Happy Meal, please, hold the plastic hunk
Tana Zwart
Tana Zwart
Issue date: 2/5/04 Section: Commentary
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McDonalds. It's quick, easy and you don't have to worry about doing the cooking. There's nothing better than a slab of processed beef topped with all the fixings (including those weird looking pickles that manage to teeter on the line between artificial and natural). And who can forget the side of lard-crispified french fries? They have to be the best ever!
En route to my point. I, in need of sustenance and soon, drove myself to McDonalds for a Happy Meal. Yes, I'm a grown college student, and, yes, I said Happy Meal. Quite frankly, it's easier to say "Happy Meal" than to say "cheeseburger with french fries and a Coke."
Everyone knows that with a Happy Meal there comes a toy. That's why they're happy, of course. So, like I was five again, I tore open the bag to see what awesome toy I got. Sadly, I was unable to identify what exactly my toy was, so I threw it in the bag and went about eating. After a busy day I decided to examine the awkward looking hunk of plastic. To my surprise it did a little something, but I was confused as to what purpose it actually served. What it ended up being was a "spooky" hand that popped out of a brown box when the box was opened.
Call me cynical, but when did Happy Meal toys start to suck? What happened to the high quality Cabbage Patch Kids, the cool miniature Smurf action figures and the awesome looking Hot Wheels? It seems they have been replaced by unidentifiable...things. Maybe that's the fun of it, trying to figure out what your toy is. It adds a little more mystery and challenge, or something. If not, talk about a waste of money. According to www.thebluebrick.net, it takes 34 cents to manufacture and package each Happy Meal toy. At 2.5 million Happy Meals sold annually, $850 thousand is spent on those little wads of plastic a year.
Do kids really need a toy with their meals? They are just going to disregard ever owning it in less than a week, anyway. There are numerous more productive things McDonalds could be doing with $850 thousand. Help feed a third-world country, perhaps? Believe me, kids will survive without a brown plastic box. I'm pretty sure I did.
En route to my point. I, in need of sustenance and soon, drove myself to McDonalds for a Happy Meal. Yes, I'm a grown college student, and, yes, I said Happy Meal. Quite frankly, it's easier to say "Happy Meal" than to say "cheeseburger with french fries and a Coke."
Everyone knows that with a Happy Meal there comes a toy. That's why they're happy, of course. So, like I was five again, I tore open the bag to see what awesome toy I got. Sadly, I was unable to identify what exactly my toy was, so I threw it in the bag and went about eating. After a busy day I decided to examine the awkward looking hunk of plastic. To my surprise it did a little something, but I was confused as to what purpose it actually served. What it ended up being was a "spooky" hand that popped out of a brown box when the box was opened.
Call me cynical, but when did Happy Meal toys start to suck? What happened to the high quality Cabbage Patch Kids, the cool miniature Smurf action figures and the awesome looking Hot Wheels? It seems they have been replaced by unidentifiable...things. Maybe that's the fun of it, trying to figure out what your toy is. It adds a little more mystery and challenge, or something. If not, talk about a waste of money. According to www.thebluebrick.net, it takes 34 cents to manufacture and package each Happy Meal toy. At 2.5 million Happy Meals sold annually, $850 thousand is spent on those little wads of plastic a year.
Do kids really need a toy with their meals? They are just going to disregard ever owning it in less than a week, anyway. There are numerous more productive things McDonalds could be doing with $850 thousand. Help feed a third-world country, perhaps? Believe me, kids will survive without a brown plastic box. I'm pretty sure I did.