Slashdot Mirror
McDonalds Facing Lawsuit For Happy Meal Toys
cosm writes "Looks like personal responsibility died a little bit again today. From the article: 'A watchdog group says giving away toys with Happy Meals contributes to childhood obesity, and threatens to sue. The [watchdog] organization on Tuesday served the fast food giant with a letter expressing its intent to sue if toys are not removed. The letter is legally required in several states before lawsuits can be brought under consumer protection statutes. ..."McDonald's is the stranger in the playground handing out candy to children," Stephen Gardner, litigation director for the advocacy group, said in a statement. "McDonald's use of toys undercuts parental authority and exploits young children's developmental immaturity."'"
This watchdog group is implying parents need help keeping their kids away from McDonalds. Are parents incapable of saying "no honey, we're going to eat in tonight" or "no we're going to ... instead" or "no you can't have a Big Mac and fries, but you can have the grilled chicken sandwich and a fruit salad." When do lawyers become more important to our society than parental responsibility? It's just all backwards.
This summary, and even the NYT article seem to be missing the point.
The point is not that MacDonald's serves crap. We all know MacDonald's serves crap. Even MacDonald's knows MacDonald's serves crap, which is why they are constantly saying "look! We have these non-crap things on the menu, TOO!" (And even when they do that, they point to their alternative to fries -- apples you can dip in a sugar mixture. Brilliant.)
The issue is advertising to children.
To quote the article: "Citing toys aimed at promoting the latest "Shrek" movie, the Center for Science in the Public Interest said that the plastic promotions lure children into McDonald's restaurants where they are then likely to order food that is too high in calories, fat and salt."
The important part of this line should be: "Citing toys aimed at promoting the latest "Shrek" movie, the Center for Science in the Public Interest said that the plastic promotions lure children into McDonald's restaurants" Because that is ILLEGAL.
Advertising to children is not legal. It's something that we, as a society, have looked the other way on for many, many years, but there are laws aimed at preventing it. When you advertise to children, you externalize the cost of advertising to the parents because the children will nag the parents until they cave. Influencing adults costs a lot more, when you do it directly, and sometimes it's just impossible. Many parents wouldn't dream of ever taking their kids to MacDonald's, but cave when they're shrilly begged for MacDonald's for the 400th time. You want to keep your children healthy by keeping them from eating that crap, but it's far, far easier to cave than to fight your kids every single day, and even if you do, their sitter or grandmother or even their teacher on a field trip will cave. It's practically an irresistible force.
I once talked to a MacDonald's ad man (a woman, in this case) who proudly pointed out to me that Ronald never eats the burgers. You see, any MacDonald's ad is broken into segments. The entertainment segments don't advertise. The advertisement is only the parts where Ronald isn't on screen. The parts where Ronald is on screen is apparently a friggin' PSA.
The toys in the Happy meal are supposedly a value item to help an adult make a judgment to buy a happy meal because it will both feed and entertain his/her child. That's value. That's also bullshit. The toy, as we all know, is there because kids will want to go to MacDonald's to get the toy.
They're advertising to children. They need to stop.
The fact that they serve crap is immaterial.