When you were young, McDonald's was the place to be thanks to promise of playing in the
PlayPlace.
They were the best, right?
They were a place to meet other kids, to explore what was possibly the best playground in town,
and have adventures you just couldn't have anywhere else.
But adulthood comes with a lot of baggage, and unfortunately, some of that baggage is
the realization of just what it was you were playing in and crawling through.
Get ready to have your childhood memories sullied beyond redemption, because here's
a look at the weirdest things to ever happen at McDonald's PlayPlaces.
Dirty needles
It's not just kids that love McDonald's PlayPlaces.
Apparently, addicts do too.
In 2018, an 8-year-old playing in a West Virginia McDonald's found a needle and turned it in
to her mother, but not before getting stuck with it.
Luckily, she was fine, but it wasn't even the first time drug paraphernalia had been
found at a McDonald's PlayPlace.
In 2014, two toddlers in a British Columbia McDonald's found a syringe, needle, and some
burnt foil.
The culprits were never found, but the incident did lead to tighter security and video surveillance.
Couple ODs in front of the kiddies
Speaking of heroin, in 2014 CBS News reported that emergency services were called when Robert
Paul Palmer and Tamica Lynn Jeffers overdosed on stuff while their 5- and 8-year-old children
played in an Ohio McDonald's PlayPlace.
The New York Daily News says it was restaurant employees who discovered the couple and called
for help.
Authorities reported that one adult was completely unconscious while the other was just unresponsive,
and both later recovered from what police described as "life-threatening overdose."
Later, the Palm Partner Recovery Center reported they were each sentenced to six months in
jail, with Jeffers receiving a suspended sentence and time served.
Talk about a not-so-happy meal!
Mom gets banned for her concern
You can probably guess that playgrounds of all kinds get pretty gross, but in 2011, child
development specialist and mother-of-four Erin Carr-Jordan launched a crusade against
not just McDonald's, but against all fast food chains that had playgrounds.
After videotaping the disgustingness she found inside fast food playgrounds, she took swabs
and sent them off to the lab for testing.
Those tests found fecal matter in 90 percent of the playgrounds she tested.
Yuck!
Instead of spurring McDonald's to clean up their act, though, Carr-Jordan was actually
banned from entering the PlayPlaces at a number of Phoenix, Arizona locations.
Since then, she's founded Kids Play Safe, an organization that certifies restaurants
that regularly clean and sanitize play areas, and perform safety checks of the equipment.
Playing cards
PlayPlace staples like the Big Mac Climber are long gone, and some have been replaced
by video games.
But even those can pose a potential hazard, as one Pennsylvania mother and her 11-year-old
daughter found out the hard way.
Jennifer Mudrick's daughter called her over to one PlayPlace card game to show her the
photos on the backs of the cards, which featured nearly buff women.
“For her daughter Lilly, this wasn’t the break she deserved today.”
“You could almost see some private parts.”
Naturally, the Mudricks complained to management then went to CBS affiliate KDKA.
Reporters actually went to the McDonald's in question and when they got there a few
hours after the incident, they found the game was still on and still had the card deck in
play.
It was only after reporters started asking some uncomfortable questions that management
turned it off and referred them to corporate, who later said they were investigating what
happened.
Hash bars
Given the various issues McDonald's has had with their PlayPlaces around the world, from
parents losing their kids through a secret exit in New Zealand, to a child eating a used
rubber in Chicago, it wouldn't be a surprise if McDonald's decided to phase out PlayPlaces
entirely.
But despite widespread internet rumors, there's one thing they won't be doing: replacing PlayPlaces
with hash bars.
Yes, it sounds kind of silly when you say it out loud, but thanks to some viral fake
news, many people were convinced that McDonald's locations in Colorado are in the process of
phasing out PlayPlaces so they can turn them into safe places for folks to smoke the state's
legalized marijuana.
However, it's all just a hoax, as McDonald's issued a statement confirming,
"100 percent that this is not true."
Sorry, pot fans.
Looks like you'll have to get your munchies the old fashioned way, at the drive thru,
like everybody else.