Shady Things About McDonald's Happy Meal

The McDonald's Happy Meal is the absolute pinnacle of a child meal. The basics of today's Happy Meal are an entrée choice, sides, drink, and a toy, all contained in the iconic Happy Meal box, typically designed to celebrate McDonald's current toy partnership.

Between the toys, smaller portion sizes, and healthier side and drink options (like apples and juice boxes), it's a win for many families. However, the Happy Meal isn't all sunshine and rainbows arching over McDonaldland. In fact, there's plenty about the well loved Happy Meal that is problematic and shady. Some of our issues with the Happy Meal have been remedied since its introduction, but other problems persist.

Though you may imagine our concern is largely with the few healthy items offered in the child's meal, McDonald's has been addressing this common concern over the last decade. In fact, fries aren't the only side choice anymore, giving families the option to choose more fruit based items if they wish. Even with these changes, our beef surrounding Happy Meals continues to give us just a moment of pause before ordering one for the youngest members of our family.

The primary goal of a Happy Meal is to offer families with young children a range of meals that is the ideal size with the perfect options. This balance can be a little more complicated than it may seem. After all, picky eaters want simple, more stereotypically child friendly foods, but adventurous eaters need something a little different. Since McDonald's leans pretty heavily into safe food territory without many alternatives, some kids will struggle to find something that excites them.

More than just families looking for interesting options, McDonald's doesn't offer the same flexibility to Happy Meal entrées that adults have. For instance, the chain offers a Filet O Fish because people sometimes prefer (or need) to eat fish instead of beef or chicken. However, that same understanding doesn't extend to the Happy Meal. Instead, McDonald's kid's meal only has three entrée choices, limiting children who want something more interesting or those who do not want beef or chicken. Though there are aspects of the Happy Meal that make it perfect for kids, the sheer lack of support when it comes to helping kids try new things is frustrating to kids and their parents. Though McDonald's has started offering different sides in more recent years, the main courses have space to catch up. It doesn't feel like too dramatic of a leap to include a Filet O Fish or even a chicken sandwich among the Happy Meal options. Not all kids fit into this very narrow, simplistic menu.

We think vegetarian options would be a delicious addition to McDonald's Happy Meals. Although we typically think of vegetarian diets as more of an adult choice, there are plenty of families raising vegan and vegetarian kiddos, and having options for them on a kids' menu would certainly be more accommodating. Since some countries already have vegetarian options built into the Happy Meal menu, this doesn't feel too much of a reach.

In the U.K., kids have an option for veggie dippers as part of their meal, which also comes with cucumber sticks and water. Veggie dippers are a combination of peas, tomato, bread crumbs, rice, flour, sun-dried tomato, and several other ingredients, all creating something that looks like a vegetarian chicken nugget, but made of veggies. German McDonald's locations even have McPlant Nuggets. These nuggets that look remarkably close to a typical chicken nugget are made out of Beyond's alternative meat, using a wheat and pea based protein.

If we're honest, one of our favorite meals at McDonald's is breakfast. There's just something about a bagel sandwich, hash brown, and a McDonald's iced coffee that just gets the day moving in the right direction. Unfortunately, when it comes to McDonald's breakfast, there are no Happy Meal options. We believe this is a missed opportunity on McDonald's part.

Certainly, there are foods on the menu that kids enjoy, like Hotcakes, for example, but the breakfast platter options are much better suited for adult customers than they are kids. For instance, the smallest portion offered for hotcakes are a stack of three good-sized pancakes. This is quite a bit of food for little ones, but the platters only get bigger. You could also get a hotcakes and sausage platter which includes the three hotcakes and sausage. For a massive breakfast, you can order a Big Breakfast with Hotcakes, which has pretty much all the food you could want in a McDonald's breakfast, including hotcakes. There are no hotcakes and hash brown options. We would love it if there were a McDonald's Happy Meal breakfast with smaller hotcakes that come with a hash brown, and protein of some kind, eggs or sausage, possibly. This doesn't feel like a massive stretch, and it would definitely open up the menu options for family and breakfast time. As it stands right now, families are splitting up meals to accommodate people in their family or forgoing McDonald's breakfast all together.

For kids, one of the biggest draws of a Happy Meal is the toy that comes with it. Oftentimes, there are two sets of toys, and for years, McDonald's employees would ask if the Happy Meal was for a girl or a boy. The answer would determine which kind of toy was added in the meal. This often resulted in girls being given toys that were stereotypically fitting the pink verses blue aisles at the toy store. However, a few years ago, McDonald's altered the way they train their staff. Now, when there are two toy options, staff members should ask customers what kind of toy they want based on the theme, not by the gender of the child enjoying the meal.

More than gendered toys, California State University professor Kristen Discola found the way the McDonald's Happy Meal boxes instructed children to play with the toys was subtly different as well. Her findings showed that the gendered girl toys instructed children to "try" and "guess," while the stereotypical boy toys had higher expectations for boys and typically included words like "challenge" or "achieve." These findings by McDonald's show that the instructions have higher expectations for boys versus girls.

Most of the time, McDonald's Happy Meal toys are connected to a brand. More often than not, it seems to be a toy brand, but not always. Mattel, for example, has been known to bring Hot Wheels or Barbie toys. Ty headed up the Teenie Beanie Baby fad of the '90s and early aughts. Disney is another regular contributor to McDonald's toys, both for the theme parks and characters. In fact, brands are so tightly connected to Happy Meals toys, when McDonald's offered a Collector's Meal for adults that included plastic, collectable cups celebrating different toy offerings over the years, several of the cups featured some of those popular toy brands. In instances where toy brands aren't the primary focus, movies are common. McDonald's cashes in on kids; love of seeing their favorite new characters come to life off the silver screen.

McDonald's toys don't start and end with Happy Meals, though. There have been many real toys populating toy aisles celebrating the fast food chain. Mattel had a whole line of kid sized food makers which would allow you to create sweet versions of its most popular items. But that wasn't all. As one of Barbie's many jobs, you could purchase a Barbie all decked out to head to her job at a McDonald's restaurant.

It's a fascinating cycle: McDonald's gets to offer popular themed toys, and brands get a nice promotion, selling to young customers in the process. It's a beneficial, if a little shady, win for all.

As part of the branding with Happy Meal toys, it's common for prizes with the meal to be something closer to a collectible item than a toy children can play with at the table. For instance, at the time of writing, McDonald's Happy Meals come with Croc clips in the Happy Meals. These keychains are designed to look like smaller versions of Crocs clogs come in several McDonald's themed designs. Venture to the Crocs website, and you'll see that Crocs has come out with a collaboration featuring life size version of its comfy shoes sporting McDonald's designs. The options offer such notable designs as Birdie the Early Bird of McDonaldland fame, a Happy Meal Croc, and even Jibbitz to further trick out your favorite Crocs.

While fun for any Crocs and McDonald's fan, it begs the question: How are these Crocs collectibles toys? Clearly, it's more advertising than anything else, even feeling like a ploy to engage teenage fans and young adults. If Happy Meals are the kid's meal, then the toys should be designed with kids in mind; not their older siblings or even parents.

When we think of a kid's meal with a toy, we think of McDonald's Happy Meal. However, it's not the first. The first fast food giant that included a children's meal with a toy was Burger Chef in its Fun Meal.

Burger Chef got its start in the 1950s and petered out after being purchased by Hardee's in the '80s. The Fun Meal didn't arrive on the scene until 1973, and McDonald's did its first test run only a few years later, in 1977. This initial test was only at a few locations, and a couple of years later, it went national in 1979. Those early happy meals had a burger, fried, a soda, cookies, and, of course, a toy.

The Happy Meal is an easy marketing ploy to interest children. Plenty of restaurants have meals for kids, but McDonald's goes about it quite uniquely. To see exactly how the chain does it, you need only investigate the various aspects of a Happy Meal.

To begin, Mcdonaldland characters create a fantastical world, flush with characters celebrating the food of the restaurant. Ronald McDonald is a kind clown who is fun, joyful, and seemingly the leader of the talking burgers, nuggets, and food thieves of Mcdonaldland. Inside a Happy Meal, you'll find food that is stereotypically childlike. Though we might have a beef with the limited options, we willingly admit that the available choices do seem squarely in the majority of kids' wheelhouses. Then, of course, there's the toys. Anything that comes with a toy will be of interest to especially young customers.

McDonald's Happy Meal is an easy tradition that is passed from generation to generation. Beginning with kids growing up in the late seventies, an whole age of children passed on their love of Happy Meals to the next generation and those kids grew up to follow suit.

The initial draw of McDonald's is the obvious draw of the Happy Meal, but that's only the beginning. After McDonald's reels in a young customer and they have a couple Happy Meals, traditions and memories begin to form. Throughout childhood, Happy Meals become a fun way to enjoy a fun an engaging meal with family. During college, there's no better way to mop up a night of college partying. Into adulthood, given enough time, and that Happy Meal cycle can begin all over again. It's like creating advertising within a family's internal workings.

Even though we have major gripe over the fact that the Happy Meal menu is so very limited, we wish that within that limited menu, the food items were a little more pure. It sure would make us feel a little better about its limitations. Unfortunately, no such luck, as the burgers, for example, are not fresh, but instead frozen.

McDonald's is far from the only fast food chain that uses frozen patties. These frozen patties may not give us the fuzzy wuzzy feels, but we appreciate the consistency they create. Using frozen patties ensures that burgers taste the same each time a customer orders one. For kids who struggle when their food doesn't taste right, this is especially great.

If you want to ensure that your Happy Meal loving kid gets a fresh off the grill burger, ask for a small change to be made to the order. This way, since it's different from the regular burger order, you can ensure the crew will make it fresh to your specifications. That tweak could be as small as removing the ketchup for the cheeseburger, an easy condiment to add back to the burger should your Happy Meal kiddo want it.

Though that burger's biggest offense is that it is frozen right before cooking, the chicken nuggets have more of a complicated (unappetizing) makeup. Before broiler chickens turn into nuggets, they get to roughly 47 days before they make their official journey to becoming nuggets in a Happy Meal. McDonald's chicken nuggets come from white meat, but with most nugget brands, there is often more to the picture. That said, it's tough to determine exactly what's in a nugget's meat, but the ingredients listing paints an altogether unappetizing mixture. There are also plenty of additive and scientific-sounding ingredients.

Of course, that's not even taking into account the odd shape and feel of a nugget. McDonald's nugget has a very fried exterior, but it's not crispy. Instead, it's more of an even texture that looks every bit the fake nuggets like you'd purchase for a child looking to play make-believe. We wish these nuggets had more of a breaded and lightly fried texture that would feel more natural.

Originally, a Happy Meal came with soda. Though that may work for adults, many kids do not drink soda, either in preference or their parent's choice. In 2013, parents could choose apple juice for their child's Happy Meal. Initially, the brand of choice for McDonald's was Minute Maid, and it was 100% juice. Then, the juice changed as McDonald's continues to tweak Happy Meals.

Now, rather than Minute Maid, Honest Kids is the brand. Unfortunately, this means that the juice content is down from 100% and sits at 42%, a steep decrease. The very first ingredient is not juice but water, followed by apple juice, natural flavors, and additives. While we're big fans of the design of the apple duck on the box swimming through apple juice, we wish the juice was actually 100% juice. Honest Kids' biggest selling point is that there's no sugar added. According to the label, this claim is true, but it doesn't help the juice percentage. The sugar content is certainly lower in the juice than the Hi-C or other sodas McDonald's would offer, but getting a full juice experience seems rather obvious and more preferable to us.

It seems obvious to say, but Happy Meal toys are intended for children. Certainly, there are some that come out that veer more into collector territory, like the Crocs clips, for example, but there are plenty of toys that appear in Happy Meals that are true toys. These toys should be for kids.

Unfortunately, especially when large fandoms or brands are represented, adults can ruin that fun. In an attempt to collect all toys, or grow a collection of knick-knacks, adults will call around, scout stores, or just ask to purchase every toy McDonald's is offering. Of course, a McDonald's employee would be hard pressed to turn down a request to have a customer spend money, but in the instance of toys, we really believe that this kind of practice can make it harder on kids. We've even seen adults taking McDonald's Happy Meals and turning them into ornaments for a Christmas tree. When a popular toy sells out, there's a good chance it's not from too many kids visiting a McDonald's to get a Happy Meal. Instead, it's adults seeking out those toys instead. It's the very definition of "This is why we can't have nice things." Ever seen a kid miss out on a fly ball at a baseball game because an adult grabbed it instead? Same premise.