Users of Twitch, a live streaming platform for the gaming community, are particularly interested in snapping these up in order to record unboxing videos, in which they stream a live-opening of the cards to their followers.
So, what's in these booster card packs, exactly? Each pack comes with four cards, and there are 50 to collect in total. Then, advocacy groups asked for changes so kids could have healthier options, and the burger chain responded. Now, McDonald's is making more tweaks to make the Happy Meal even leaner. On Thursday, McDonald's said it would make a It's the second time this year that McDonald's has instituted changes for the Happy Meal.
In February, McDonald's said it was eliminating cheeseburgers from the Happy Meal lineup although they are available on request and reducing the size of the fries that go with it. McDonald's also said it was cutting sodium in Chicken McNuggets and using a different recipe for the chocolate milk, in order to reduce its sugar.
Those initial changes were rolled out in June, and now the company is following through with these additional ones. The company has been working with the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a children's advocacy group, which has urged the changes. The Happy Meal evolution has been under way since , when McDonald's began offering apple slices as a healthy alternative.
McDonald's has promised that Happy Meal combinations offered on its meal sign boards will be available in calories or less. Eliminating a sugary soda or chocolate milk alone will help push down some calorie counts. Some McDonald's franchises also have backed away from telling customers that Happy Meals are available. The first toys were tops, stencils, wallets, puzzles and erasers. And initially, meals included a hamburger or cheeseburger, fries, a soft drink and cookies.
He still keeps a bronze Happy Meal in his office, awarded by McDonald's in - the inscription thanks him for "for bringing the Happy Meal, a bold idea", to the company. When Dick Brams died at 45 in , the former McDonald's employee, a popular figure in midwest advertising, was celebrated at his funeral as "father of the Happy Meal". Bernstein said it's here that the company started to say the Happy Meal was Brams' idea, "and that's just not true — Dick did a lot, but after the Happy Meal had already been created".
A touring exhibit of Happy Meal memorabilia, to mark its 30th anniversary, also identified Brams as "father of the Happy Meal". Yolanda Cofino, the president of McDonald's in Guatemala, is credited with being one of the creators of the Happy Meal. Photo: McDonald's Guatemala. She's 84, president of McDonald's Guatemala, and prefers to go by her husband's last name, Cofino.
Jose Maria Cofino founded the first McDonald's in Guatemala in he died in , and in , Yolanda created a "Ronald's menu" for the restaurant. It contained a hamburger, small fries, small Coke, small sundae. She added little toys that she bought at a local market. She packaged the whole thing on a tray — no box. And because they really didn't understand the name of the sandwiches, you would see a boy trying to finish a Big Mac.
So I thought there should be a smaller meal, for a parent to order that a child could finish. She said she never asked Oak Brook executives for permission to create Ronald's menu, but in , at a McDonald's marketing conference in Chicago, she presented them with her idea. Bernstein said he began hearing only recently about Yolanda.
He doesn't doubt her — again, the idea was in the air — but he insists he invented the Happy Meal as we know it. A media representative told me Yolanda "was the first to have this idea" of a value meal for kids. Indeed, in , five years before Bernstein received his bronze Happy Meal for bringing the Happy Meal to fruition, the company gave Yolanda a silver Ronald McDonald statue, for developing the Happy Meal, as well as helping to grow the company's standing among children; they also credit her with developing the idea of McDonald's as a ready-made location for birthday parties.
Like the creation of many cultural icons, when it comes to the invention of the Happy Meal, it appears there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen. The Happy Meal became synonymous with suburban childhoods, as well as integrated, synergistic ecosystems of intellectual property tent poles spread across robust platforms. Rich Seidelman, of Illinois, worked as an art director on Happy Meal TV commercials for 22 years, mostly as an employee of the Leo Burnett advertising firm.
Because the first Happy Meals initially included "such chintzy toys", Seidelman said the advertising took pains to avoiding revealing "the prizes". But eventually Happy Meals became vehicles for showcasing cultural franchises, and the toys became more sophisticated.
Controversies concerning the Happy Meal were apparent from the start. Still, the majority of controversies centred on nutritional value. In , a California class-action lawsuit claimed McDonald's used toys to unfairly entice children into eating unhealthy foods the lawsuit was later dismissed ; in , New York teenagers sued McDonald's, claiming Happy Meals contributed to their obesity.
You can still find toys inside Happy Meals. And because McDonald's finally recognised a need to rework its nutritional standards, side options in Australia include apple slices and cherry tomatoes. Christopher Bryan, an assistant professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago — who recently co-authored a study to help kids avoid fast food — is not impressed.
It's not even clear where blame lies now.
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