When I was a kid, we didn’t have Happy Meals.
This isn’t one of those old man rants about walking thru snow, uphill both ways, blah blah blah. I was a fat kid. My parents drove everywhere. We always drove to McDonald’s, except of course for that brief period in which McDonald’s had delivery and pizza. It’s true; I grew up in a test market for that shit. Some things you just can’t forget.
But we didn’t have Happy Meals. I thought about this while I was at Mickey-Deez with the kids the other day. Sure, in Canada we always had access to the Happy Meal toys – you could buy one for an addition 99 cents or something like that. I had all the Muppet Babies, Batman Returns cars, Upper Deck hologram cards, and the other ones that don’t stand out so well in my memory. We just couldn’t get those toys inside a little box with a burger or nuggets. We had meals. We were happy. But there were no Happy Meals to be had in Canada until the late 90’s or early 2000’s. Long after I was too old to have a Happy Meal.
It really is a fucking happy meal, though, isn’t it?
The minute you tell a kid that you’re taking them to Ronnie Mac’s Burger Shack, all they hear from that point on is ‘Happy Meal’.
“Should I get a hamburger or chicken nuggets?” My daughter asks me. I want to reply with, “It doesn’t really matter sweetheart, they’re both terrible for you.” But instead I poke the bear a bit and try to tell her she’s too old for a Happy Meal. “You can’t have a Happy Meal. You have to eat the cheap 79 cent hamburger like Daddy does because you’re getting too old for the Happy Meal.”
She’s six. She’s not too old at all. Hell, if I couldn’t feel the weird stares of strangers on my skin, I’d order myself a Happy Meal just to see what all the fuss is about. But I can’t do that. “Did you see that 50 year old guy order a Happy Meal and get excited about the Superman toy inside? I bet he still pees the bed at night too and is afraid of the dark.”
“I’m in my mid-thirties!!!!!!”
My daughter, Ryleigh, flip flops between the hamburger and the chicken nuggets. It always comes down to a very suspenseful game of Eenie-Meenie-Miney-Mo. It’s like a life or death situation. Kinda like choosing between saving the damsel in distress from a tub of alligators or the rest of the city from poison gas. You can’t save them all Ryleigh! You have to choose!
Well, Mo always means no (unless she secretly has her heart set on the other option and she keeps rhyming until she gets the choice she wanted) and this time Mo was no for the burger. So she had the nuggets.
Grayson, the boy, always has nuggets. It may seem predictable but I appreciate the way he doesn’t hold up the line the way Ryleigh does. He knows he wants the nuggets, so just give him the nuggets. He doesn’t even care if he has sauce. It’s in this moment that I can see into the future, and realize that someday Ryleigh will have a boyfriend or husband who has to wait thirty minutes after asking her where she’d like to go for dinner while she does the Eeenie-Meenie-Miney-Mo method while wearing a fancy dress and nice shoes.
The nice teenage girl working at this McFranchise asks if the kids would prefer french fries or apple slices. I just stare back. “Yeah, nobody picks the apples,” she says as she laughs to herself. I truly believe there aren’t even apple slices physically there in the joint. One of these days I’m going to insist on the apple slices just so I can see what happens. “Uhh… let me check with my manager…”
“Fuck shit piss! Someone – you – quit battering those filet o’fishes and run to the grocery store and buy an apple! No, I don’t care what kind of apple, just get an apple before the customer realizes we don’t have any! No, wait! Just tell the customer they can’t have apple slices because we’re currently cleaning the apple machine so it’s turned off.”
Well, it always works for the McFlurry.
I will say, though, that the yogurt tube thing is kind of a nice touch. And the kids seem to really like it. You can tell it’s the only semi-healthy offering at McDon Juan’s simply because of how hard the packaging is to open. Double Quarter Pounder with extra cheese and bacon? No problem! Here it is in a little box that barely stays closed. Super-sized salty fries? They’re practically falling out of the red box and into your mouth. Coca-Cola? Serve yourself with free unlimited refills! The yogurt tho? I can’t open that shit without wearing half of it. And the kids think it’s hysterical. And I have yet to see a wet nap in the Happy Meal box, so I have to start licking lukewarm red yogurt off my arms and thumbs. It might be strawberry, but it’s likely a plain yogurt that’s been mixed with powdered ketchup.
On a side note, that Michael Keaton movie was awesome! Did you see it?
Okay, back to the Happy Meal and the piece de la resistance – the toy. The goddamn fucking toy. The whole reason for the Happy Meal. Did you know that Ronald and the Fry Guys sell more toys every year than Toys R Us? Crazy.
Happy Meal toys are pretty cool. But they are always the cause of some kind of problem. When we were in line, Ryleigh was looking at the Pokemon toys on display. “I have this one, and this one, and this one already. I hope I don’t get them.” I let that sink in for a moment, as these Pokemon toys are fairly recent in the great tradition of McPlay-things. “How often does your mother take you to McDonald’s?”
If you want a guaranteed, 100% chance of seeing a child be upset (and who doesn’t like those odds?) then watch them pull out a McDonald’s toy from the box they already have. In that moment it’s like the entire trip – the journey of adventure and amazement – was all for nothing. Might as well just go home, get jammies on, and straight to bed because it’s clear that life in this moment has no real meaning whatsoever. Same old toy. Same old fries and nuggets, my friend. That’s when Super-Dad (played by me cause it’s not so much the role I was born to play as they were born and now I have to play it…) Super-Dad here has to take the little Pokemon up to the counter and try to sweet talk some minimum wager into caring enough to give me a different toy.
“I’m sorry the McFlurry machine is turned off for cleaning. Oh wait. A different toy? Sure. No problem.”
I have two kids so I always run the risk of them getting the same friggin’ toy at the same time. I have nightmares of this scenario that play out in my sleep on a fairly regular basis. And it’s always like playing Russian Roulette with their emotions. It’s either gonna be an excited rendition of, “Hooray! We both got Pikachu! Samesies! Besties! BFFs!” or it’s the coming of the apocalypse and life as we know it is about to end. Ryleigh getting the same toy as Grayson might be worse than getting the same toy she already has. It’s almost demoralizing. If we go back to the idea that the Happy Meal is an adventure, not unlike Indiana Jones, in which the toy inside the box represents the Holy Grail then imagine if Dr. Jones and Short Round each got their own Holy Grail.
Yeah, I know Short Round wasn’t in that movie but I sure wish he was.
Anyway, you get my point. That toy just ain’t special if your sibling has the exact same one. Usually, when this happens I have to take one of them to counter for another sweet talking of a McEmployee. But sometimes they don’t have any other toys because the toy machine is turned off for cleaning. So I have to come up with a way to make keeping both of the same toy a great idea.
“You know, having two Pikachus is great, cause, like… if one breaks, you can just steal your the other one from your brother.” Wow, I’ve watched enough Full House in my lifetime to know that was the worst Danny Tanner dad talk ever. But, hey – it worked!
We tidy up our garbage, clean up the reddish tinted yogurt from the table, the walls, and my pants, and then head on our way. Happy with the meal we’ve had. And yeah, it was a happy meal. Until an hour later when I had a massive case of the McGurgles in my stomach that made me run for the potty. How come that never happens to the kids?
-ryan
Dad Blog 