tl;dr Fast food ‘Kids Meals’ need to stop giving our toys, and start giving out books

Yesterday, my family went to Burger King for lunch. My wife got a cheeseburger kids meal. It came with a toy. My 3 1/2 year old daughter wanted to have cereal for lunch, so we let her (we needed to go grocery shopping really bad- don’t judge me).

We ended up giving my daughter the toys from my wife’s kids meal. The toy is this 3 inch tall plastic character from a new “Madagascar” movie. The toy had a lever in the back that when pressed, it was raise it’s arm in a saluting-type motion. It had a lever…

Needless to say, this toy ended up in the trash in ~ 5 minutes.

Fast food restaurants: stop putting toys in happy meals. Their quality has gone down in the past decade. They are no longer interactive and fun. They are lame and a waste of resources.

According to this blog post the average cost of the toy in a McDonald’s Happy Meal between 1999 and 2001 was $0.43. I can think of much better uses for that money.

One such option is books. My daughter has three (3) books on her bookshelf that she has gotten from Kids Meals over the years. She continues to read them months (and years!) after the meal is gone.

(For those who are interested, that 1 book for Runza, 2 books for Burger King and 1 book for McDonald’s)

Book are the gift that keep on giving. They can be educational and inspiring.

One book in particular, the Magic School Bus, has sparked a huge interest in the MSB series and science in general for my little one. I have yet to read a children’s book that doesn’t lend a good, moral message. The books in the above photo are about making friends, recycling, and being appreciative. Boom.

And if I don’t like a book that comes with a Kids Meal, I can recycle, which I’d have to imagine is better for the environment.

I am not sure how much buying small books like this in bulk would cost but I have to believe that it’s about the same cost the plastic trash fodder that currently accompanies the meal.