Fast Food and Crappy Toys

A nutritional watchdog group recently threatened to sue McDonald's for their practice of providing toys for their Happy Meals. The complaint alleges that McDonald's is luring innocent children with colorful toys to consume their unhealthy food, which thus leads to greater childhood obesity and later, health problems including adult-onset diabetes and heart disease.

I think this is probably well intentioned, but I'm not sure that the root of the problem is cheap plastic toys which accompany a kid's McNuggets and fries. The case basically rests on the premise that kids are somehow compelled into buying unhealthy food. It's not breaking new ground by saying that excessive consumption of fast food is unhealthy (nobody, including McDonald's would disagree) - the group is essentially trying to eliminate any sort of marketing strategy which may encourage kids to eat McDonald's, which is ridiculous. Insomuch that including toys drives more sales, isn't that the point? It's part of the incentive tie-in and cross-promotion we learn in Marketing 101. Are we going to stop letting companies including freebies in toys, cereals, candy bars and collectors cards? Are we going to make it illegal for GM from offering free OnStar because it fools me into buying a crappy car?

There's no doubt that toys are part of the fast-food marketing strategy towards children, otherwise the industry wouldn't have spent $520 million on it. In my personal experience, the toys don't drive the decision to eat fast food, it just serves as a bonus for a family who has already made a decision to poison, I mean, eat there. If my kids insist upon the Happy Meal, I tell them 'no' - because I'm not spending a $2 premium on a meal that for a colorful box that we're going to throw away in 20 minutes and a 25-cent Disney-movie-based plastic toy made in Taiwan which will get tossed in a day. At least I can be assured that amongst my kids, toys don't compel us to eat fast food, because they ain't gettin' any of that. Well, I take that back if they're they're giving away Legos... or Transformers. And if McDonald's ever starts doing a promotion where buying 100 meals gets you an iPad, I'd probably be tempted. Wow, this gimmick is effective.

I suppose the nutritional watchdog group's dream of McDonald's putting their happy meals in brown boxes which state in bolded red letters: THIS MEAL WILL MAKE YOU FAT AND CAUSE YOU TO DIE EARLY will have to wait another day.