In 1974, the American burger chain McDonald’s opened its first franchise in Guatemala. It was
run by husband-and-wife team Jose Maria Cofiño Valladares and Yolanda Fernández de Cofiño
and it served the same fast food fare available in the states. Though McDonald’s had become a
cultural giant in the U.S., the chain was still novel in Central America. This sometimes caused
confusion regarding certain menu items. Yolanda noticed young customers struggling to finish
adult-sized sandwiches like Big Macs, and it got her thinking—what if they started serving smaller
portions just for kids? In 1977, she launched the Ronald’s Menu, which featured a hamburger,
small fries, a small Coke, and a small sundae. The kids’ meals were served
on trays—not collectible boxes—but they did come with toys Yolanda purchased from the local market.
This may sound like the clear beginnings of the Happy Meal, but the story of the McDonald’s staple
isn’t quite so simple. In fact, throughout its 45-year history—which includes allegations of
trademark infringement and adults bending the rules to get their hands on stuffed animals—the
Happy Meal has been embroiled in a surprising amount of
controversy.
Hi, I’m Justin Dodd. Welcome to Food History. The Happy Meal is the first thing many people who
grew up in the 1980s, ‘90s, and 2000s associate with McDonald’s, but it may not have originated
with the brand. In 1973, the now-defunct chain Burger Chef introduced the Funmeal to customers.
At the time, the business operated more than 1000 locations across the country, making it the second
largest hamburger company behind McDonald’s. The kid-oriented offering gave Burger Chef an edge on
its biggest competitor amongst young consumers. In every Funmeal, kids received a burger,
fires, a small drink, a dessert, and a toy to take home. Some packages even came with a vinyl record,
for the young hipster population apparently. The special combos were hawked by two cartoon mascots:
Burger Chef and Jeff, ably assisted by Count Fangburger, Wolfburger, and Burgerilla.
Fortunately, the field of fast food puns has come a long way since the ‘70s.
The Funmeal was a hit. It was so successful, in fact, that in 1978 Burger Chef
landed a licensing deal with Star Wars, the highest grossing film in history
at the time. Customers who got the meal were treated to Star Wars-themed goodies, like
C-3PO boxes with shapes kids could punch out and assemble into their own cardboard robot.
Burger Chef’s dominance in the children’s fast-food market wouldn’t last for long. In 1979,
McDonald’s across America started selling the Happy Meal—an idea that, according to the
company’s official story, came from advertising executive Bob Bernstein. McDonald’s had been
toying with marketing meals to kids for years, and Dick Brams, the company’s regional advertising
manager for St. Louis, asked the ad-man to develop that kernel of an idea into a full-fledged
concept. The product Bernstein ended up pitching was inspired by his son Steve. Every morning,
Steve looked at the games and illustrations on the cereal box while eating his breakfast. Bernstein
wanted to create packaging for McDonald’s that offered young customers the same entertainment.
When the Happy Meal debuted at the end of the decade, it was the colorful characters and
puzzles on the outside of the box, in addition to the kid-friendly food and toys inside,
that captured the attention of young clientele. While kids and parents welcomed the Happy Meal,
the executives over at Burger Chef were less enthused. The chain promptly sued McDonald’s,
demanding they stop selling Happy Meals and turn over any past profits earned off the concept.
McDonald's denied any allegations of trademark infringement and countersued Burger Chef,
claiming they obtained their trademark under false pretenses and asking for the trademark
to be canceled. Burger Chef lost the legal battle, and as McDonald’s international profile exploded,
its rival descended into obscurity. An over-eager expansion contributed to the closure of hundreds
of Burger Chef locations throughout the 1970s. In 1982, only a few hundred locations were still in
operation. Hardee’s bought the chain for $44 million and converted most of the remaining
stores to Hardee’s restaurants or closed them altogether. In 1996, the last surviving Burger
Chef in Cookeville, Tennessee, shuttered permanently. RIP, Burgerilla and friends.
Burger Chef obviously did not win its lawsuit against McDonald’s, but their case may have been
well-founded. In 2019, Paul Schrage, the former McDonald’s senior executive vice president who
approved the Happy Meal, told the Chicago Tribune: “The idea (for the Happy Meal) came
from our competitor, Burger Chef, which had been offering gifts to kids. Our regional ad manager
in St. Louis, Dick Brams, was aware of this and thought it was a nifty idea and he contacted a
guy in Kansas City named Bob Bernstein.” Whoops! Brams, himself, has been called the “father of the
Happy Meal,” despite Bernstein’s claim that he was the real creative force behind the project.
And what about Yolanda Fernández de Cofiño? The link between her Ronald’s Menu and the Happy Meal
is less direct. She presented the concept at a McDonald’s marketing conference in Chicago in
1977—around the same time the Happy Meal was being developed—but according to Bernstein,
he didn’t learn about her or her idea until much later. Even if Yolanda didn’t directly
inspire the meal as we know it, McDonald’s did recognize her innovation with a silver
Ronald McDonald statue at an award ceremony for outstanding owners and operators in 1982.
The Happy Meal’s kid-sized portions solved a practical problem, but it was the toys
that made it a phenomenon. After Burger Chef nabbed the licensing rights for Star Wars,
McDonald’s made a deal with another stellar sci-fi franchise. The fast-food chain rebranded
its Happy Meals as Star Trek Meals to promote the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979.
Boxes were branded with the likenesses of Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk, and toys like
plastic video communicators and U.S.S. Enterprise rings were included with the burgers and fries.
The promotion marked the first time the company used a pop culture tie-in to sell Happy Meals.
The trend continued throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, with properties like Fraggle Rock,
Super Mario Bros., and Power Rangers getting their own pocket-sized collectibles. The Happy
Meal had become such an effective marketing tool in the children’s entertainment space
that Disney agreed to make McDonald’s its primary promotional restaurant partner in 1997. Disney
animation was in the middle of a renaissance, and McDonald’s became the only place to go for
kids’ meals toys promoting their films. The deal generated an estimated $1 billion for Disney over
a decade. It also resulted in countless cheap toys millennials still haven’t gotten around to
cleaning out of their parents’ attics. Sorry mom, I’ll get rid of those Hercules plates eventually.
Happy Meals turned generations of kids into collectors, with a seemingly endless
series of toys and other offerings. Starting in 1988, McDonald's introduced Halloween pails that
came in three spooky designs: McBoo, McPunk'n, and McGoblin. The seasonal trinkets appeared in Happy
Meals throughout the late '80s and 1990s, with new varieties enticing guests year after year.
Some toys appealed to adults. At the height of Beanie Mania in 1997,
McDonald’s partnered with Ty Inc. to produce miniature Beanie Babies called Teenie Beanies.
Ads promoted the collectible nature of the items, and soon restaurants were attracting
Beanie obsessives who were more interested in the toys than the food they came with. The promotion,
which had been planned to last a month, ended after two weeks when Teenie Beanies sold out
nationwide. When McDonald’s brought back the much sought after plushes as Happy Meal toys in 1998,
they gave stores a list of special rules to follow, including caps of five Beanie
Babies per purchase and no return trips to the counter within two hours of ordering.
Between their Happy Meals, Play Places, and colorful mascots, McDonald’s gave young people
a lot to love in the ‘80s and ‘90s. In a couple of decades, the chain had gone from ignoring
the kids who ate at its restaurants to making them feel like the most important customers.
Then, in the early 2000s, people started to really question whether all this child-centric marketing
was a good thing. The documentary Supersize Me (2004) put the nutritional content of McDonald’s
menu under a microscope. The impact of salt- and fat-laden fast food on children was an especially
big concern. Around the same time, the severity of childhood obesity in the U.S. was becoming
glaringly apparent. Between the 1960s and 2000s, obesity rates among American children ages 6
to 11 had increased by 54 percent. McDonald’s became a popular scapegoat for the issue, and
not entirely without cause. In 2001, 50 percent of the calories in a Happy Meal derived from fat,
when health experts recommended that kids get no more than a third of their calories
from fat. The soda that came with the meal was also a significant source of sugar and calories,
with kid’s cups having grown to 12 ounces—a third more than the suggested serving for adults—over
the decades. McDonald's was hardly the only brand marketing food that fell short of nutritional
standards to children, but it was the biggest name in fast food and therefore an easy target.
In light of the controversy, Disney severed ties with the fast-food brand when it was
time to renew their partnership deal in 2006. McDonald’s responded to the parade of bad PR
by revamping the Happy Meal in 2011. They came up with a few ideas to make their food healthier
while still appealing to kids, some of which were more successful than others. A concept for
bubble gum-flavored broccoli never made it past a young focus group. Instead of making vegetables
taste like candy, McDonald's downsized the kids’ portion of fries and pushed apple slices as a
healthier side. The changes helped improve the brand’s image, but according to some critics, they
didn’t go far enough. Some lawmakers targeted the toys in kids’ meals, arguing that they manipulated
children into consuming unhealthy food. In 2010, San Francisco passed a law banning fast food
restaurants from including free toys with meals that didn’t meet their nutritional standards.
McDonald’s got around the law by charging 10 cents for Happy Meal toys in the city.
More recently, Happy Meal toys have come under scrutiny for a different reason.
Considering the current environmental crisis, plastic toys that often end up in the trash
moments after they’re opened no longer feel so cute and wholesome. McDonald’s has addressed the
problem by promising to dramatically reduce the amount of fossil fuel-based plastics in their
toys by 2025. Some markets have already started to reimagine what a Happy Meal toy can be. In 2019,
McDonald's in New Zealand handed out 800,000 mini Roald Dahl books with its kids’ meals. To clarify:
the books themselves were small, they weren’t penned by a mini-Roald Dahl. Sadly.
From lawsuits to local bans, the Happy Meal has attracted controversy since its beginnings in
the 1970s—and for better or worse, the world’s most famous kids’ meal has managed to adapt
and stick around. And if the Happy Meal does ever end up in the fast-food graveyard,
you’ll always have the Teenie Beanies in the back of your closet to remember it by.
Comment below with your most prized Happy Meal toy of all time. Thanks for watching.