There are few greater feelings in childhood than begging your parents to take you to McDonald’s, and them finally relenting. Nothing made you happier than a Happy Meal, the colorful cardboard box filled with either a burger or McNuggets, French fries, and of course ... a toy.
While a trip to McDonald’s as grown-up may be just as delicious, the joy is often replaced with a sense of shame and desperation. You don’t fit in the PlayPlace, you can feel the grease from the burgers clogging your arteries. And no toy.
Until now. Mickey D’s is trying to recapture that unbridled joy of the Happy Meal for adults — with Happy Meals for adults.
The Cactus Plant Flea Market Meal Box is available until Oct. 30 — a collaboration with the popular streetwear company of the same name. The meal features a Big Mac or 10 Chicken McNuggets, fries and a drink in a Cactus Plant Flea Market-themed cardboard box that’s bigger than your typical Happy Meal container. And of course, it comes with a toy. A Cactus Plant Flea Market-themed toy — figurines of Grimace, Hamburglar and Birdie, classic McDonald’s characters, as well as “Cactus Buddy,” the fashion company’s mascot. In an oddly creepy twist, all four toys feature two sets of eyes.
This was the toy I got in my adult Happy Meal and I am still creeped out. (Jeremy Schneider | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)
The combo will run you $12.29 for a medium fries and drink and $12.89 for large (a large Big Mac combo meal is usually $9.79).
There’s nothing special about the food that comes in the adult Happy Meal, and there doesn’t need to be. We can debate Shake Shack versus Five Guys all we want, but the Big Mac is still old reliable. It’s not the best fast food burger, but it’s the most iconic and for good reason — it hits the spot every time. If you want to get McNuggets instead, knock yourself out, but you’re making a mistake. They’re just fine. McDonald’s fries, on the other hand? Ten out of 10, no notes. Maybe the best single item to ever come out of a drive-thru window.
There’s nothing special about the toy, either, but in a bad way. If you’re going for true nostalgia, maybe don’t make the toy a bland, lifeless partnership with a hypebeast fashion company — and a creepy one at that. There were so many directions McDonald’s could have gone with the toys that would have felt special. Comic book toys. Nickelodeon toys. Ninja Turtle toys. These would have turned the Millennial nostalgia up to 11. But instead they decided to try to do something with ... fashion, complete with limited edition sweatshirts that cost $150. No one thinks about fashion and McDonald’s. They think fries.
It’s silly to be surprised that McDonald’s, one of the most blatantly capitalist enterprises in American society, would try to turn nostalgia into a commodity. It’s even less of a surprise that it will work. People are gonna buy these, even if the whole thing is a blatant cash grab.
But if you’re able to look past that and get some earnest joy from getting a Happy Meal as an adult, good for you. Enjoy your Happy Meal. And save me some fries.
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Jeremy Schneider may be reached at jschneider@njadvancemedia.com and followed on Twitter at @J_Schneider and on Instagram at @JeremyIsHungryAgain.