Would You Like Some Fries With That Download?

vodkamattvt writes The New York Times is reporting that the Walt Disney Company is hoping to replace happy meal toys with portable media players that could hold Disney movies, music, games, or photos. From the article: "The plan could work something like this: A customer enters a restaurant and buys a meal, receiving the portable media player and an electronic code that authorizes a partial download of a movie, video or other media file, which can be downloaded while in the restaurant, according to a United States Patent and Trademark Office application filed by Disney. Then, with each subsequent return, the customer earns more downloadable data, eventually getting an entire movie or game."

Comments

Neat item- ought to be hackable

[Marxist Hacker 42]

And hundreds of geeks start ordering happy meals- not for the meal, but for the WiFi media player, which will soon be hacked to refer to any arbitrary URI, and creative commons content.

Isn't there prior art?

[planetoid]

Aren't "partial downloads" prior art as far back as, oh, the era of the floppy disk? Back when warez wasn't distributed as ISOs but as dozens or hundreds of 1.44MB fragmented compressed files? I even remember downloading Slackware like that back in 1994/1995. What exactly is "new" about this to warrant a patent?

does it come with nutrition splash screens?

[passingNotes.com]

honestly, this kinda crap makes me ill...after hearing more about the mcdonald's and nintendo wifi deal i was already kinda getting heebie jeebies...but this new idea, fast food as a conduit for media distribution - that really is an affront to mankind (uh, okay, that's kinda extreme)...these kids are already struggling with obesity (read the data folks, our kids are mostly fat), and putting more distractions in front of them during quite possibly the only time in which they might eat and interact directly with their parents and siblings is just wrong, absolutely wrong...and since we know it's gonna be all disney ads and crap trailers and advertaintment, what the hell is the point? why not just let the media companies bid directly with parents on ourkids.ebay.com and let parents sell their kids' attention spans in five minute increments to the highest bidding media and product firms?

Re:does it come with nutrition splash screens?

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand what you are saying, and I am not saying that McDonald's is or isn't nutritious. But, in my opinion, our kids being fat is not as much an issue of them eating McDonald's or any specific food, rather it is an issue of them not exercising.

Back in my youth we biked everywhere and were outside playing the VAST majority of the day. Hours of football, baseball, biking, wrestling, snowball fights, climbing trees, etc.

Get your kids outside and have them exercise, quit blaming everyone else for them being lazy. I ate McDonalds every day I could and I was 6'1" 175 lbs.

Games

[biocute]

I doubt movies will be popular, but games may actually be a good idea.

First it rolls out trendy games (like King Kong or whatever's hot at that time).

Then every week, it rolls out new levels for the game, which can be downloaded and brought home.

Re:Bits and pieces?

[Red Flayer]

"You want to keep them wanting more; if it takes 10 visits to see a whole cartoon (or whatever), chances are that the kid will lose interest"

Not if their friends have gotten the new piece.

Kids today are all up on the collectibles... they stay interested in Pokemon, or other CCGs for years, why would they lose interest in this after only 10 weeks?

Especially if the content delivered is not the same for every download... then they 'gotta catch em all'.

Genius.

Reminds me of VHS Tapes

[fohat]

About a dozen years ago Mcdonald's did a campaign with video tapes, something like buy a meal and get a movie for $2.99 (I watched The Adam's Family about 1000 times as a result). I wonder if they ever tried the same concept with DVD's? It seem's a heck of a lot easier for the consumer, and you'd still have people returning to the store to get another DVD.

Re:Some marvel figures come with that as a bonus..

[Lord Bitman]

I saw some toys the other day that were like that. You bought an action figure, and it came with an arm or a leg of another action figure.
Of course, transformers-style toys have done that forever, but this was just an arm roughly the size of the action figure's leg, nothing "rideable".

Of course, unless they're complete idiots, they wont really be selling peices of movies, they'll be selling episodes of crappy somethingorother that will be trendy for three months.

Of course, they could over-DRM this and entirely forget the benefit of collectable/tradeable stories in bubble gum or trading card packs. ("They're supposed to BUY the new chapters, not buy some of them and trade some with their friends!")

Re:Screw that

[robertjw]

Not only that, but the biggest reason McDonalds can sell happy meals at all is it comes with a toy that keeps the kids entertained for a few minutes. If they start providing a useless item that requires multiple visits to entertain a child it looks like it will decrease the value of the Happy Meal and result in fewer sales.

McDonalds really needs to quit trying to be the high tech fast food chain - I don't think it will ever work out for them.

Re:I don't know about you...

[pavon]

When I was a kid, trading cards packages would often have a special cards that could be combined to form a mural. I know that I was always excited to see the picture come together as I got the pieces. Having a very small allowance, the motivation wasn't enough to get me to buy more cards than I would have otherwise, but I am sure that it did have some effect for those kids with more disposable income.

Anyway that was the first thing that came to mind when I read the article, but there are tons of other examples, like the transformers that combine. Also the monopoly lottery game that McDonalds did - people got much more into that than other lottery games where the anticipation begins and ends as soon as you scratch the game piece.

Part of the success probably depends on if the individual pieces are usefull (or have percieved value) on their own or not. If you have to wait till you have all ten before you can watch any of the flick, then it probably wouldn't create as much anticipation. However, in general, "Gotta catch them all" has long been a successfull marketing gimmick, and will continue to be.