Parents vs. McDonald's: The Battle Over Happy Meal Toys

Happy Meals aren't bringing everyone joy. In fact, they're making a lot of parents pretty pissed off. Not only do the meals contain foods that are high in fat, calories, salt, and sugar, according to one advocacy organization, the toys McDonald's is currently promoting advocate violence. Unhealthy eating and aggression? Not exactly the lunchtime lesson you want for your kids.

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), a coalition that aims to combat marketing that's harmful to children, recently launched a letter-writing campaign demanding that McDonald's discontinue its current toy promotion featuring Marvel comic book heroes. I use the term "heroes" pretty loosely. One character, dubbed "The Thing," screams "It's clobberin' time!" when kids push a button on its back. Another, "The Human Torch," features a man consumed by flames whose power is to — well, I'm not really sure what his power is, but presumably it's to burn people. Superheroes sure have digressed down a disturbing path since the days of Superman and Batman.

"It's bad enough to use junk toys to sell children on junk food," CCFC's director, Susan Linn, said in a press release. "But now, for preschool boys, a so-called Happy Meal at McDonald's features the horrifying spectacle of a man engulfed in flames and a menacing figure that explicitly spurs them to violence."

CCFC's letter-writing campaign comes on the heels of another campaign against McDonald's use of toys in Happy Meals. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) recently said it will sue the Golden Arches if the company keeps marketing its unhealthy meals to kids through enticing toys. CSPI claims that using toys to push meals that are too high in fat, calories, sugar, and salt is unfair, deceptive, and illegal according to some states' consumer protection laws.

It's easy to see why parents, health care professionals, and groups like CCFC and CSPI are so irate: McDonald's Happy Meals can cause health problems that are downright depressing. According to CSPI, all 24 Happy Meal combos contain more than 430 calories, the recommended caloric intake for lunches eaten by kids ages four-to-eight. Foods that are high in fat, salt, and sugar can lead to obesity and diabetes. A recent study also suggests that teens who eat a regular diet of junk food are much more likely to develop Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) than kids who eat healthy. Plus, the chemicals present in some of McDonald's offerings are enough to put even the most adventurous eaters off their lunches. As I blogged about recently, Chicken McNuggets contain a petroleum-based preservative and dimethylpolysiloxane, a form of silicone also found in Silly Putty.

It's bad enough that kids who eat fattening Happy Meals are rewarded with a new toy (I mean did Pavlov teach us nothing about how associations affect eating habits and cravings?). But the fact that these toys advocate "clobberin'" is just icing on the already unhealthy cake. Take action now, and sign CSPI's petition demanding that McDonald's stop using toys to market junk food to kids.

Photo credit: guy schmidt via Flickr