Is there any product on the face of the planet more perfectly named than the McDonald’s “Happy Meal”? It’s rather arrogant if you think about it. THIS meal — not some other meal, cooked by you, perhaps, or purchased elsewhere — is so certain to produce happiness in the consumer that it is NAMED after happiness.
For once, the wizards at McDonald’s decided to pull back on the whole “Mc” thing and not call it a “Happy McMeal” or a “McHappy Meal.” No, there is no need to bastardize the meaning of it all.
It is a meal.
And it makes you happy.
At least it does if you’re under the age of ten, as both my children are. (Nine and three, to be exact.) They get happy at the mere NOTION that we might be heading to McDonald’s to get some grub. And who can blame them? It’s perfect, really. You get your protein in the form of some Chicken McNuggets. You get your fruits/veggies in the form of french fries or apple dippers. (What’s the ratio there, do you think? Seventy five orders of fries for every one order of apple dippers?) You get a drink, which can be milk or juice. And, best of all, you get a toy. A toy made in China by a child half the age of your children, but, hey, it’s a global economy and toys are important. We like toys in this country. We NEED toys.
Today, the toy for boys was an Astro Boy action figure and for girls it was a My Little Pony. (There is not even a hint of gender sensitivity in the toy selections. At McDonald’s, boys like to blow things up; girls like to play with dolls. As a father of a boy and a girl, that’s pretty much right, but do they have to be so OVERT about it?)
My kids figured out a few visits ago that the bottom of the Happy Meal box tells you which toys are up next. (The DaVinci McCode.) This is a great way to keep abreast of pop culture, but also indicative of our tiny lil’ attention spans. A whole lot of people probably worked for five years on Astro Boy — a perfectly fine film, by the way. Doesn’t it merit more than a week or two in the Happy Meal line-up? Apparently, it does not.
In Astro Boy (as in so many other movies for children these days), we have completely befouled the Earth and now use it largely as a giant dumping ground for worn-out robots, discarded from the floating city above where all the cool people live. Someday, a thousand years from now, an archaeologist will stumble across my garbage from this afternoon. She’ll carefully dust off Astro Boy and Iris, the My Little Pony, with a delicate brush.
“My God,” she’ll say, her voice barely above a whisper. ”They had rockets coming out of their feet. And really gay looking horses.”
Tags: astro boy, happy meal, mcdonalds, my little pony
November 9, 2009 at 1:20 pm |
A perfect McPost!
From the ratio of french fries to apple dippers (I think you’re about on target with the 75:1) to the archaeologist’s reaction… very funny.
And I must say, on the rare occasion when I DO choose to eat fast food, it is McDonald’s Hamburger Happy Meal for me 100% of the time. You just can’t beat the perfect sized hamburger for driving, the steamed bun, just the right amount of catchup, always 2 pickles, and just a scant few onions. Mmmmmmm good!
But I always throw out the toy … I mean why add fuel to the fire with 1 toy when you have twin boys? But what would the dumpster-diving archaeologist say upon discovering a toy *inside* the empty bag? “Kid’s in 2009 didn’t play with toys!”