Should Happy Meal Toys Be Banned?
I heard this story on the radio this morning: one California supervisor wants to ban fast food restaurants from selling toys with fast food meals. Of course, this is only one county in one state, so we’re hardly at the level of an argument before the Supreme Court.
A child’s “Happy Meal” may soon be a little less happy in Santa Clara County, where a local official wants to prevent fast-food restaurants from giving away inexpensive toys with kids’ orders. County supervisor Ken Yeager plans to ask his colleagues today to order up a law regulating when fast-food outlets can serve toy cars, action figures and other freebies as part of their children’s’ menus. Yeager says the toys entice young customers to load up on high-calorie fare and may contribute to childhood obesity.
The poll here is interesting, too. I mean so far there are only a whopping 7 votes, but one of the choices is “Sometimes I go out of the way to eat fast food because of a toy they are offering.” and it got me reminiscing. When I was a kid I definitely went out of my way to go to McDonald’s to collect their little plastic Chicken McNugget people (anyone else remember those?) and in college I got really addicted to collecting Monopoly game pieces whenever they had a contest. Of course these days I try to be very moderate about fast food, and I almost always get Happy Meals with apple dippers instead of fries, rather than “grownup” meals. (Which means I get toys! Woo!)
So what do you think–if you have kids, do you allow them to eat at McDonald’s? Do the toys factor in to your decision? Have you ever collected any of the Happy Meal toys? And should McDonald’s be free to sell whatever they want along with their Happy Meals, or is it more like Joe Camel, damaging advertising aimed at children that should be curtailed? I’m very curious to hear your opinions!
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Advertising, Health, Kids, Personal, Question, Tidbit
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They should ban happy meal toys based solely on the clutter they create in cars and homes.
But not because they are “enticing” kids to eat a freakin’ McNugget.
To that point, though… I DID collect those toys as a kid – but they gave away much better toys when I was young ;)
I would love if they banned those stupid toys, not because they promote obesity but because they’re a pain in the neck. My house is cluttered enough as it is, TYVM.
I remember when I was a child and my parent’s told me no when they didn’t want me to have something bad for me. I wonder where that went.
We used to do fast food all the time and yes, I got my kids more than one happy meal. We had about eleventy-kajillion of those cheap plastic toys laying around here. But you know what? I’d been struggling w/ depression and loneliness as a new mom and going out to McD’s to have lunch and get a souvenir toy and maybe play on the play structure was something other than staying in bed all day feeling depressed and lonely. I wonder which option the nanny state would prefer…
Seriously, they gave out much better toys when I was a kid. I had a few of them, but fast food was a very special treat in my house, not a regular thing.
We go out for fast food once a week. If the toy is crappy, I have the kids split a regular nugget meal instead. If it’s a really cool toy with lots of replay value, then we get Happy Meals. “Really cool toy with lots of replay value” boils down to “no batteries and very sturdy please,” although anything that comes with a stamper will also pass muster. So we have a collection of mini My Little Pony dolls and tiny stuffed animals.
Also, the last time I looked, you could buy just the toy if you wanted it that badly.
If the happy meal toys are such a big problem because they “encourage” obesity and eating unhealthy food, why not add more healthy food options? (Which I thought they had already done with the apples, skim milk, and bottled water.)
I also think it’s important that a child learn that there are a lot of different foods out there and they can all be eaten sometimes. No, a child shouldn’t live solely on happy meals and fast food, but it’s also abnormal (and unhealthy!) for a child to eat salad all the time. And as I remember it, the kids whose parents were the strictest about them not having junk food were the most enthusiastic and biggest eaters at school when they had the option. Making it completely forbidden just makes it more tempting and another way to rebel.
wanting just a smallish fast food fix last week, i went through the mcdonald’s drivethru for a cheeseburger happy meal. the toy choice was a star wars toy or an “icarly” thing that i had no reference for.
i chose the star wars toy.
on the screen by the speaker it then read: boy toy.
i suppose i should have chosen the “girl toy”?
i remember this from, oh, about 7 years ago and thinking that was particularly backward-thinking of mcdonalds.
still at it.
(this has been bothering me for a week – thanks for the opportunity to chime in, albeit slightly off topic…)
Do they really think kids won’t want fast food just because they don’t get a cheap toy with it? Do they really think parents won’t occasionally opt to get the kids a quick burger just because they don’t come with a plastic doodad?
This food is made cheap and fast to appeal to harried parents and blandly non-threatening to appeal to kids. Sometimes a kid will particularly want a specific toy one fast food place is offering, but more often they just want the meals, toy or no.
My fondness for A&W when I was a kid (and still now and again as an adult) was about great root beer and perfectly acceptable burgers, as well as the fact that it was a very rare treat. Toys? I had plenty, and didn’t care about the ones offered by most of the fast food places. OTOH, if a poor mom can give her kids food and toys at the same time, I say good on her.
Also, has anyone thought about the fact that most of these toys are tie-ins to movies and TV shows? The companies that produce the shows and movies pay for product placement at fast food restaurants, and that helps subsidize the inexpensive menu prices. No toys, and the prices might wind up going up more than expected. Either that or the quality of the food further erodes. Is that really what we want?
I seriously CANNOT BELIEVE I FORGOT TO BITCH ABOUT the boy toy, girl toy thing. The gendered toys thing is gross. Totally, totally gross.
Count me in the “Please, please ban them because I already have enough cheap, disposable, plastic crap in my house and would like to occasionally get my kid a cheeseburger without any more coming in” camp. But not because they make kids fat.
I think this is kind of funny, because I’ve seen plenty of dieting friends order the Happy Meal because they’ve memorized the points value! The Happy Meal *IS* the “diet” option at McDonalds! Go ahead and ban the toys, and maybe kids will start stocking up on Big Macs instead?
And Mo, I proudly display the cop and “Crocodile Dundee” McNugget Buddies in my living room. :-)
We choose McDonalds sometimes because I feel obliged to eat there if my kids are going to run, jump, climb, and slide in their play area.
Yeah, we could do without the plastic McCrap.
We ate there last summer and my 4 year old loved getting the toy. We don’t eat there much partly because as of yet she hasn’t liked the burgers or fries (weird, I know) but she still talks about the toy and begs to go there. We’ll hit it with our next road trip, and hope she’ll find something to eat with her “girl” toy.
I have mixed feelings as someone working with kids and feeding problems. If it’s part of a varied intake, served mostly with structure in a pleasant setting it’s probably not a big deal. I do hate all the plastic, and resent TV ads more. The use of marketing, the language of addiction, the crazy pace and appealing nature of ads bugs me more.
If my niece and nephew are any indication, most kids couldn’t care less about the food in front of them if there’s a toy to be had. Come to think of it, I was that way. I remember my mom dictating that I had to eat a certain number of bites of my meal before I could open the toy, otherwise I would have just let the burger sit cold while I pretended to make bambi fly or whatever. (This was before she discovered that BBQ sauce was like crack for me.) But even then, it was the occasional treat, and I actually stopped liking fast food by the time I was in Jr. High. Toys: Probably not making your kid fat.
Also, what a bunch of fun-killers. It’s like the people who want to stop the trend of bringing cupcakes in on birthdays in elementary school.
Presumably most children aren’t buying their own fast food anyway, so the point is kind of moot. It’s just another example of taking the responsibility off of parents and putting it on the big evil corporations that are forcefeeding them all this bad food.
First of all, home town REPRESENT!
*ahem* sorry.
Anyway it’s not the toys that are the problem, it’s the lack of healthy options. Even McD’s salads are bad for you. I don’t like the idea of the government telling businesses what they can and cannot do if they aren’t directly harming anyone. You could always just lie to your kid and say there’s no such thing as Happy Meals.
When I was young, McDonald’s, Burger King, etc. were occasional treats and I don’t remember being really too concerned with the toys.
I also agree with OC that the Happy Meal has become the “go-to” option for people who still want fast food but not a lot of calories. Sometimes I’ll choose it because I want something to eat but I’m not hungry enough for a regular-sized value meal.
Anyway, they’re not going to stop banning toys because of fat kids. The marketing factor is too much of a pull to even consider stopping it. Besides, they’ve already added healthier options on their menus. Let’s face it, most people who eat fast food aren’t going there for salads and bottled water. They’re going for the high-calorie burgers, chicken sandwiches and fries.
I’m english and my fiancee is american, and the other day we went into Chucky-Cheese for my first time. I have never had anything so revolting in my life, but we went there ‘cos the kids wanted to.
So i’m eating some reconstituted cardboard with six week old tomato paste on it, and thinking
HOW DID WE LET THE KIDS PERSUADE US INTO THIS!
I think it’s not the toys, it’s not even the halthy options, It’s us being lazy, and allowing our kids to apply the pressure.
My kids want the toys and throw much of the food away. This lawmaker is out of touch.
I live in New Zealand and we only have 3 places that offer toys; McDonalds, Burger King, and Subway. I don’t give my kids (5 year old twins) McDonalds because it sits in stomach refusing to be digested. We do occasionally have the other two. And while my kids love the toys (dunno why, ’cause they’re always crap) that’s not why we buy it – we buy it because mummy wants a treat and I can’t wait till after they’re in bed!
And the gendered things annoys me. Subway asks if I would like X or Y for the toys; Burger King just asks Boy or Girl?? Urg.
But at the end of the day – I am the parent, I am paying for this stuff, so I have the control over whether my kids eat it or not. If they are eating ‘too much junk’ it’s all my fault. I don’t need anyone else to ‘help’ me do my job.
When I was a kid, they put COOKIES in the happy meals. Yes. Cookies. Evil, decadent, five-to-a-packet mini chocolate chip cookies. Am I the only one who remembers that?
(And an ironic aside: Snackwell’s mini chocolate chip cookies taste just like my memory of those McD’s ones. Mmmmmm.)
In the dark days before Happy Meals with chicken nuggets(aka my childhood), I would beg for the meal, then give the burger to my dad because I didn’t actually eat hamburgers. That probably drove my folks nuts, but clearly there are some kids who are only in it for the toy—and in my case, usually only a particular toy, at that.
About three or four years ago my eldest had a frightening interlude with a McD’s Happy Meal toy that I had to bring to their attention. My phone rang off the hook for several days with them calling. Undoubtedly freaked that I was going to sue but I was just worried about some little kid getting hurt. Anyway, McD’s really needs to dump the Made in China toys. They could have a respectable PR bonanza by offering Made in the USA toys only and make them of more quality and maybe even educationally useful instead of just garbage. Not that I haven’t coveted a few cheesy toys myself. As to the boy/girl thing, my girls often times will ask for boy toys.
I think some of the toys are pretty fun! I remember last summer in the US my kids got books on CD, card games and a super-cool ‘scanner’ gadget (complete with sound effects!) that was the centre of a lot of imaginative, active play for days afterwards! Here in the UK, they’ve received fun ice-lolly making kits and sticker books. Let’s leave Sir Toby Belch with the last words: “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?”
I’m well beyond the age where I have small children. Oddly I don’t think we ever took our kids to a fast food restaurant (youngest kid is 28YO). About once a year I get an irresistible craving for a Big Mac. On that day, I put off getting one until I’ve finished work/shopping, etc. Why? Because I’m useless as a teat on a rain barrel after I eat one.
This leaves me wondering how folks’ digestive systems parse fast food. They always make me go into ‘thud’ mode.
I’m not a rabid health/organic food junkie. I figure my diet works out pretty well over the course of a week and an annual trip to the Texas State Fair where everything (including ice cream) is fried is just a blip on my eating radar.
In closing, legislating food choices is just another slide down the slippery slope of the ubiquitous Nanny State. Where do we go next? No chewing gum? No candy permitted? No ice cream? I imagine the list of the Banned Wagon is endless.
Hang on to your Fritos while they still are on the shelves. Stock up on incandescent light bulbs and figure on getting a black market full flush toilet from Canada.
Oh. Bletch.
I once expressed a preference for Alphabits because of the toy surprise they were advertising that month, and ended up having Alphabits at my grandparents for the next 10 years because they didn’t understand it was about the PRIZE not the cereal.
Marketing to kids totally works and shouldn’t be allowed in general. The silly plastic prizes eventually end up in landfill. Gendered toys?–OMFGWTFBBQ!
I don’t think legislation is the way to get people to ease up on junk food. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m SO HAPPY the healthcare bill passed!) But I do think that this trend of outlawing “bad” food is a slippery slope. Having a Happy Meal every now and then is OK!!! What has happened to common sense and, yes, saying “no” to our kids once in a while?
It may sound dumb initially, but like others I do remember as a kid collecting those little Happy Meal toys. And on days when I could have done just as well with a home cooked meal, I instead opted for the Happy Meal so I could get that one Beanie Baby I was missing.
And contrary to what someone above said, I don’t believe you can buy just the toy. At least not back then you couldn’t, my mom tried lol.
With everything else going on in the world we need to worry about putting a ban on Happy Meal Toys. I mean we still have a still bad economy, still suffering from a lack of jobs, natural disasters, rising energy costs, crime, etc. The important issue for Santa Clara county is the need to ban McDonald’s Happy Meal Toys. Really! They can not think of something anything else.
If they are such a pain and clutter then don’t open then dump then in a bag or box and when full take them to Toys for Tots. Trust me some kid will appreciate it.
What I think we have here is a county official with either to much time on his hands or someone thinking they are bigger and more important than they are. I can not think of a greater waste of time and money then spending any time on this idea of banning toys from Happy Meals.
Here is an idea try doing something about the Traffic, road conditions, crime, you something important.
My daughter’s father feeds her fast food all the time (believe me, I have tried and would put a stop to that if I could). For her, somtimes it’s more about the food, and sometimes it’s more about the toy. For instance, she will only ask to have Burger King if there is a “good” toy (usually a high-profile product tie-in for a movie like Albert and the Chipmunks. I KNOW, I KNOW!) Arby’s and Chik-Fil-A are widely known to have the shittiest kids’ meal toys, but she still wants to eat at these two restaurants from time to time. It’s definitely the parent’s job to govern these types of decisions.
Let kids be kids. Life is to short to start judging kids at such a young age. If you don’t want the kid to have the meal, fine. Sell the toy. Over reactive nanny state is what America is becoming. Hey, when our own government overrides the Constitution to make us buy health insurance, which should be a choice, not a mandate or law “what else is next”. Slippery slope.
I remember my parents taking us to McD’s very rarely as children and getting happy meals, the old school ones with cardboard boxes and sometimes plastic (like the pumpkins, or the penciil boxes) that my parents liked. I don’t remember going “Wow, this is the best cheeseburger” because the food was never the point. Now, we get happy meals for my two year old niece, rarely (less than once a month) with milk because she only drink water, milk and juice. She is just as happy with the toddler toy than she would be with something that costs three times as much. It doesn’t hurt her and I for one, think it works out good, to feed her and give her something she’ll like. (BTW, as far as I can tell the toddler toys are non battery operated, really sturdy and non gendered!)
I think it is ridiculous to ban the toys – it is up to the parent to decide whether or not they want to take the child to eat there. If the parent can’t say “no”, they don’t have a toy problem, they have a parenting problem. Hard sell advertising is a part of everyday life in American culture – it is best to learn how to deal with while the child is young and discuss it with them as they will be dealing with it their entire lives.
If the parents don’t want their child to have a toy, they can always donate it to Goodwill where a kid can buy it for between 10 to 25 cents (my son learned a lot about money and having to add in the tax by buying old McDonalds toys there).
I am a single Mom I took my son to McDonald’s when he was a kid more for the Playland, especially in the Winter, but the getting the toy made it into a “special time” for very little money. I would usually get a Diet Coke or a tea and him a Happy Meal and some times we would take one his friends along and I would buy them one too and spend $5-7 for a few hours of fun and I felt less guilty at parking my kid at daycare during the majority of his waking hours during the week because I had to work full time to make a living.
My parents used fast food (and yes, Happy Meals) to teach me and my brother how to behave in nicer restaurants; the ultimate goal was to teach us to sit quietly while we waited for the food and then ate, but if we were just too antsy to deal with that, it was okay for us to go run around on the play structure for a while, and mom or dad didn’t have to interrupt their meal to take us outside (which they never hesitated to do, either — I still remember being utterly mortified by my dad marching me out of a really nice Italian place when I was around 7 or so.)
I still get Happy Meals on occasion. A hamburger Happy Meal with fries is enough simple and complex carbs, protein, and fat to hold me from lunchtime to dinner, and it’s not enough to leave me weighed down and sluggish like getting one of the “adult” meals (or even the mini-meal with the mcdouble) would.
I’m all for the ban- get rid of plastic junk, stop an outlet of sweatshop labor, stop silly movie tie-in marketing, take away the attractiveness of fast food? Why not!
I don’t know. I don’t have kids, but I don’t see anything wrong with letting them have fast food once in a while, but not a whole lot because it’s just not healthy. But whether or not they should ban toys? I don’t know. They gave out Barbie and GI Joe in my day, and it was kind of a childhood staple. Promoting obesity? I don’t know about that either, but maybe if their kids want a toy, they could eat at a healthier place and their parent buy them a small toy from a store.
Also, I’m reading a lot of comments saying that they are for the banning because of the clutter in the household? Like the toys came uninvited into your homes? Lol. If it’s that bad, how about stop buying happy meals??? Maybe I’m just retarded, but it sounds like it might work to me.
What kind of society are we becoming where fun playgrounds, bake sales and now Happy Meal toys are being banned left and right? When did it become politicians’ job to manage our health choices?
This is exactly why Cali has the nutty reputation it does. The state is in a dire fiscal emergency, and this loser can’t think of any more pressing problem than Happy Meals. Nero dieted as Los Angeles burned!
I’m ambivalent about McDonald’s. During cold winter months in Chicago when my son was a toddler, the Play Place was a great place for him to run around for hours and for me, a single parent, to read, relax, and talk with other parents. I let my son eat Happy Meals, but I never insisted he “eat it all before he can go play”. I was never distressed over tossing out the leftovers.
I also never miss the opportunity to point out to him that there’s no way the toys could be made by anyone earning a living wage, otherwise they wouldn’t be part of a meal that costs under $4. And that they’re all plastic and have to travel halfway around the world to get to us, neither of which is environmentally friendly.
Over time, these tactics have eroded his interest in Happy Meals.
I miss the Halloween buckets. That was the only time of year I would want to go to McDonald’s and it continued until they stopped giving them away with Happy Meals.
On the boy/girl toy thing, I get irrationally angry about it, and always tell them which toy by name, not by gender. Especially since it is normally the “boy” toys that are better.
Did you hear that some people also are trying to get Ronald McDonald retired, and no, it’s not just PETA.
If it’s an issue of just liking the toys… you have always been able to buy the toys and not the food with it.
If they do this, then they also need to apply consistency and eliminate the “toy” from the unhealthy, presweetened children’s cereals, too. There will always be something that will promote junk food with a toy. Movie theaters. Sit-down restaurants. And really, what about places like Sonic and Chic-fil-A? They don’t do toy promotions except for educational ones. Same with Subway. Why not just encourage the fast food places to do away with movie themed toys. Although then for the adults who eat Happy Meals because they want to collect the movie themed item, this is stinky. Adults have a right to decide what they want. So do kids, which is why if parents encourage them to make healthier choices at the food establishments, toy or no toy, this should not be an issue.
As you mentioned, eating fast food in moderation is an important thing to remember. Banning the toy in a kids’ meal will not have a great effect on whether or not a parent chooses to stop occasionally at a fast food restaurant. This ban is simply taking away the rights and responsibilities of parents to make the correct food choices for their children. It is not a good solution and this ban should be stopped before it spreads to other municipalities in the U.S.
Eric Mar, member of the Board of Supervisors for the City and County of San Francisco, is asking for legislation similar to Santa Clara County’s happy meal toy ban. Call and tell him NO.
Eric Mar
415-554-7410
Eric.l.mar@sfgov.org
Mar’s request to ban kids meal toys can be found in this article from the San Francisco Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/28/MNLA1D5QFV.DTL
A leading kid-focused marketing agency for the restaurant industry, Creative Consumer Concepts (C3), has taken a stand on this issue. Bob Cutler, CEO, states that “unfortunately, banning kids meal toys from restaurants will not resolve childhood obesity. C3 has been educating, advocating and executing healthy food options for kids and parents and will continue to commit to supporting this issue.”Read more in their position paper on the toy ban: http://jenningssocialmedia.com/downloads/C3.SANTACLARA_Final.pdf