YouTube Ad Fail… or Win

Let’s face it. YouTube ads suck.  I spent last year catching up on Yogscast episodes of Minecraft only to have to suffer through that stupid Xfinity… sorry Comcrap song, “Fun for you…Fun for me…” I was reaching for a gun by about episode 15.

ARRGGHH! YOUTUBE ADS SUCK. THEY SUCK. THEY REALLY SUCK! They suck almost as much as Zynga ads during games. Honestly, I have five seconds to harvest these crops before they die and the effers put up a pop up ad telling me to spend real money to get fake money. WTFBBQSTD!!!


Now, I am glad that the newer ads have a five second skip feature, but still, Who cares about the 5AM warrior, or whatever it is?

But are the ads targeted?  Is the video content I'm about to watch paired with an ad that speaks directly to the subject matter? 

If so, count this as a fail... or win, depending on how you feel.
I watched the trailer for The Hunger Games and the ad before the trailer was for McDonald’s.
I watched a stupid video depicting how bad Siri fails at understanding questions on the iPhone 4S and the commercial before it was for Android. 

The iPhone 4S thing wasn't even a good video.  I was expecting to find some humorous instances where Siri didn't work as expected.  What I got was a couple of haters, with bad accents, that Siri couldn't understand when they pronounced certain words.  Hell, I couldn't understand them.

It's a Beautiful Song

It's a Daddy-Daughter weekend, once a month, when my wife has to work.   Sometimes, we go all over the place.  Sometimes, we just veg out at the house.  It is never a dull moment though.

This past weekend I had a lot to do and had to bring the little one with me.  First, I had a haircut to get and she was an angel, even managing to negotiate her way into a lollipop and a free nail painting, instead of having what she really wanted, a haircut. 

Next, its off to get the oil changed at Walmart, which is always fun, from a sarcastic point of view.   Then, it's to the Buy Backs to see what pre-owned Wii game, I can get for me and my Father-in-law.

And, if she's really a good girl, she'll get a trip to McDonald's to play on the slide.  Of course, right now she's glued to the game screen over behind the giant Big Mac.... she's my daughter.

However, one the way here, she sat in the back of the car, wearing sunglasses and looking cool.  I was flipping through radio stations, avoiding 96.1 as much as possible because I hate Ke-dollar sign-HA, Katy Exploding Boobs Perry and generally other pop bubblegum, played ever hour music.  

As I scanned the dial, I slid, unknowingly into a Celine Dion song on the lite rock station.  I quickly switched it and this little voice shot out of the back, "Hey, put that back on!"

I couldn't believe it.   "You mean this song?" as I put back on Celine's 'Because You Loved Me'.

"Yeah.  I like that song."

"Kiddo, you don't even know that song.  Mommy doesn't like that song.  Daddy doesn't listen to that song.  Why do you want to."

"Because it's a beautiful song."  She said. 

"Fine."

We sat in the parking lot of McDonald's until it was over.   Somewhere, I've wronged my child.   My constant barrage of Rush, Journey, Led Zeppelin, The Refreshments, The Clarks, AC/DC, Warren Zevon, and other classic acts just hasn't sunk in enough.   I weep for the future.  

Actually, I don't.  She's still cooler than me.  Celine and all.

Listen to Your Parents When It Comes To Food.

Long, long ago in a Foodland far, far away my Mother stood at the deli counter picking up lunch meat. I was a young lad, not yet possessing a discerning palate. I immediately saw something I deemed to be good and told my mom that, “I want it.” At such a young age; outside of pizza, ice cream and PB&J I had very little experience in the culinary specialties available to the general public. Still, I was convinced that what I wanted was going to be the most incredible, tastiest treat I’d ever had.

It was deviled crab. I hated it. It went into the freezer and died a slow death over the next few months.

From that experience, I realized that perhaps my parents possessed a worldly wisdom that trumped any genius from Harvard or MIT. When it came to knowing what I would and wouldn’t like, they were Einstein, Freud, and Watson (The Computer) all rolled into one.

As a parent, myself, I am constantly thrust into the middle of the battle of the, “I want” syndrome that all children experience. They see something, they want it, they don’t understand that we know they won’t like it and we ultimately give it to them to save our own sanity. Three minutes later, they want something else and whatever it was that you just gave them might as well be a big steaming pile of crap.

Case in point. Often, when I pick up my child from preschool, I reward good behavior with a small shake from McDonald’s. They last month or two, whenever we go, my daughter sees ads for the Mango Pineapple Smoothie and immediately wants them. I tell her no and she continually asks for that instead of a chocolate shake.

I know. I should be happy that she wants something that isn’t as bad for her but I know that she will not like Mango. She’s never tasted Mango. She doesn’t even like applesauce. So, why waste three dollars on something she will not like and then have to endure the deluge of the, “Can I have a shake, now, instead?” requests after she realizes what I already know?

McDonald’s made it easier, this week, by offering the smoothies for a quarter. Finally, I can prove my point to a four year old. Believe me, these arguments are epic in nature and usually persist into hour long sessions based around one word.

“Why?”

We rolled into the drive through and I bought two. I figured, “Why not? It’s only a quarter.” I pulled into a parking space and gave her the usual talk about holding it right and not making a mess. She started drinking it as I got my straw unwrapped.

“How is it?” I asked.

“Good.” She said.

“So, you like it?”

“Yeah.”

I took a sip of the smoothie and immediately winced. Under my breath I uttered, “Oh my God, that’s horrible.” I can see why it’s only a quarter. I tried not to say it too loud because my kid was still sipping away in the backseat.

By now, I knew she had to have been lying. When we got home she asked me to put it into the freezer. That’s how I knew. Still, I gave her credit because she realized I was right but wasn’t about to give me the satisfaction of knowing it.

Somewhere, a half eaten deviled crab is laughing.

I Wanna Be a McMillionaire So I Can Pay For Heart Surgery

It’s October again, and that means some of us will inevitably pack on the pounds as we try to win a million dollars from McDonald’s Monopoly.   I, for one, will probably not be participating with as much gusto as I have in the past.  It used to be that I lived for the days where I could justify buying a Big Mac, large French fry, and large drink just so I could get a few game pieces in the hopes of finding the elusive “Boardwalk” game piece.  Now, I’m a little older, a little wiser, a little bigger and a little less richer.   So, for me, the road to riches will not be paved in little pieces of paper with Monopoly properties on them. 

Monopoly is one of my all time favorite games.  I have two board game versions, two console editions, one for Playstation and one for the Wii.  I also have a version on my mobile phone which makes time go by quicker when you are stuck in waiting rooms or lobbies for various appointments.   Another favorite of mine is McDonald’s.   Of course, heading into my late 30s I really need to curb that love.   I have, in the past, frequented a McDonald’s two or three times a week just because of the Monopoly game going on at the time.  Hoping and praying for that little Boardwalk piece to show up on my large Diet Coke.

But it will never happen and I may have finally turned the corner on that hope.    Let’s face it.  You probably have a better chance at winning the Powerball than you do at hitting that top prize.   That is, of course unless it’s the year 2000 and you know Jerome Jacobson.  He’s the guy that was the chief of security for the sub contracted company hired by McDonald’s to handle the organization and promotion of the game.  He pulled out all the rare pieces and handed them out to associates who then would go and claim most of the top prizes that year.     I had no idea what these “rare” pieces were about.  I was under the impression that there were pieces just scattered about and it was luck of finding them.

But I learned the hard way.   In 2006, I made a trip to San Francisco on business and our meeting space was right next to a McDonald’s.   During lunch breaks I made the trek across the parking lot for a Ranch BLT Chicken sandwich, large fry and diet coke.  Hey, I’m a cheap date when it comes to business expenses.  However, I don’t know how my employer would have felt about me possibly winning a million dollars on their dime.    Not like they had anything to worry about anyway, but still.    My thinking at this time was that perhaps it was a regional issue.  Maybe the pieces were split up among regions.  Perhaps pieces like Park Place were distributed into the East while Boardwalk was sent into the West.  Maybe, by getting pieces from different parts of the country I could put together a winning set.   Unfortunately, in the age of the Internet, this is a highly unlikely scenario because communications about those pieces would flow back and forth creating opportunities for people to make deals with others holding the complementary pieces.   However, the deception is even greater than that.

Turns out, in case you didn’t know already, there are these “rare” pieces.  For each set of properties, including railroads, there is one piece that is considered rare, usually the last property in a set by alphabetical organization.    The exception is Boardwalk which is the last property in the arrangement of the game as well as the most expensive.    I haven’t seen all the statistics but my guess would be, that out of all the game pieces in circulation, Park Place has the highest number of appearances.  Why?  Because that entices people to keep playing. “Hey, if I have Park Place, then I only need to get Boardwalk to win.”   Since Boardwalk is a rare piece, you’ll never see it and at the end of the contest, you’ll be holding fifteen Park Places and an extra 15 pounds instead.

A few years later, I had not learned my lesson and continued to purchase unhealthy meals in hopes of finding the elusive rare pieces.  In fact, I escalated my obsession into keeping all the pieces and playing online.   The online version of the game allowed you to enter in the codes listed on the pieces for a roll of the dice.  As you moved around the virtual board, you picked up properties and other items.  The rolls always seem to put just to one side of the last piece needed to win, another carrot dangled.  In the end of that promotion year, I ended up winning a ringtone for my phone. Oooh, I’m a big winner, huh?  Turns out, it was a Sprint led promotion and I have Verizon wireless.    Bummer for me.  I ended up writing them to complain about it and in exchange for winning the incompatible ring tone, they gave me a free game download, which was a joke.  It was a flash game in which you had to slide blocks in certain directions and in a certain order so that you could move your cell phone shaped game piece along a straight line and out of the board through an opening.  I then learned that even the roll of the dice was not random.   The outcome of the dice rolls are scripted to randomly select moments when they could result in a player landing on a winning square.  There are even instances where the game would crash if you did complete a set of properties.  That’s all gone now as it is simply a random choice of cards.  No dice rolling or board advancement is involved.

So, over the last couple years I’ve given up on the whole scheme because every time I would go to the store, my choices for food with game pieces were limited to stuff I could care less about and half the time, that particular location would always be out of the containers holding game pieces.   That’s not to say that people aren’t figuring out ways to win or at least make money off the game.

There are blogs, message boards, forums, and a number of websites devoted to tips and tricks to winning.  In fact, there were even free game pieces by mail (along with a SASE, so that’s almost a dollar in postage) which could hold another 15 Park Places.  For awhile I had a bunch of Best Buy Bucks or discounts from Foot Locker if I spent a certain amount.  Truly, can anyone see the value added by wasting time on this game?   Instead of spending the money on McDonald’s, unless you naturally go there a lot, why not use that money to buy what you want at those stores.  Best Buy no longer gets involved and I didn’t even know Foot Locker was still around.

But beyond the actual purchasing of food to win money, there is a subset of people who are using the contest as a way to scam people into thinking they can win.   I will give humanity credit because they are getting somewhat smarter but a few years ago EBay was rife with scam auctions promising you an edge to winning.  First of all, there is the cheaply listed rare pieces list that gets emailed to you for the low price of $0.99.  In this scam, hucksters promise you a competitive edge to winning by identifying the rare pieces in the game and a few tricks and tips to winning more prizes.  First of all, the rare pieces are easy to list.  In fact, that information is available for free, everywhere.  All it takes is a simple search.

There are outrageous Buy It Now auctions listed for hundreds of thousands of dollars.  The item for sale is Park Place.  The piece that is everywhere and everyone always has was being sold for up to $500,000 because someone thought that “Hey, I have Park Place and could sell it for half the winnings because some idiot might believe that they can find Boardwalk on their own.”   That’s true dickery, there, and I know dickery.     LOL.

I guess the lesson to be learned here is that corporations that run contests like this are not looking to really pay out to a winner.  The quicker consumers learn that the better.   Yes, it’s fun to play and get caught up in the machine but realistically, understand this.  McDonald’s is out to make money, just like everyone else.  The contest has been set up to maximize revenue on their part by continually enticing people to play through promotion and marketing, i.e. the prevalence of Park Place in nearly every cup or container that has game pieces on them.   The online version is just as  controlled, or rigged if you wish to believe it, to only pay out a certain amount of low level prizes.  People, smarter than us, sit in boardrooms and come up with plans to maximize buy in and minimize pay outs.  Remember that, in most cases, all chances of winning are subject to randomness based upon odds that are in favor of the house, i.e. rare pieces.

To give you a different analogy, imagine that the instant win pieces on items are akin to prizes won at a “Guess Your Weight” game in an amusement park. You pay $2.00 and the attendant guesses something about you and gets it wrong. You walk away with a sombrero or blow up toy. You feel pretty proud of yourself for being able to fool the guesser. However, that item you are so proud of owning only costs a fraction of what you paid to get it. Go back and watch The Jerk. There’s a hilarious exchange between Steve Martin and a guest where explains what they can actually win. That’s the same philosophy here. A scale game at an amusement park is always going to come out ahead because the cost of any item is always going to be a small fraction of what the game costs.


In fact, the attendants aren’t there to be psychic or somehow intuitive. They don’t even have to get it right half the time. They are they to get you to play. They use their people skills to draw in a crowd of people to watch them. They use their people skills to get someone to play. When that person wins it makes others feel confident that they can win and that means more revenue coming in and low cost toys going out. Those items are then used as free publicity and promotion to pull other guests in when they see someone walking around with the prize they won at a scale. Put that in terms of McDonald’s Monopoly and you can see how the machine works and why it’s silly to imagine yourself with a million dollar payday. The online version used to advertise winners on screen while you were playing as a tool to get you to play. Who knows if these people really existed. It doesn’t matter, it’s the power of suggestion. They won, so I can win.


It’s just food for thought.


Here's some more food for thought.
How many Big Mac's do you have to eat to win X prize?
How are you faring at McDonald's Monopoly

Madison Avenue Death Camps

There is a movement that has been sweeping the country in the past few years. Ultra-nutjob-extremist groups have been targeting and rounding up those they consider to be problematic individuals. These individuals do not look like the rest of us and therefore they are deemed undesirable. Additionally, these groups believe that the actions of these “individuals” are responsible for degradation of our youth and our values and must be eradicated.

In 1992, these extremists began their crusade against an individual. Not only did they disapprove of their public perception, they also disapproved of the lifestyle of a female parading as a male in public. The individual disappeared and mysteriously died of kidney failure the following year. Four years later, an individual by the name of Joe was targeted and removed from the public eye, never to be seen again. He was thought to have led to the corruption of minors. Five years prior, they began these extremists began their crusade against these Since then, the phasing out of these public personas has taken place without intervention and now they have set their sights on what they believe is Public Enemy Number One. If we allow them to take out this intended target then there will be no stopping them.

Ronald McDonald has been a corporate icon for the McDonald’s Corporation since 1963. He is now being pushed into retirement by a group known as Corporate Accountability International. They feel that McDonald’s has been using the friendly faced clown as an enticement for children to eat and crave fast food. Well, duh?!?!?!   Come on, it’s a frickin’ clown. Who else are they marketing to?  You want to go one step further?  Who the hell is the demographic for Happy Meals?   The damn thing comes with a burger, fries, soft drink and toy!   Of course, that is by choice not the only option when it comes to picking the meal.  

To say that Ronald McDonald is the leading cause for the increasing levels of obesity among children is like saying that the lingerie section in the Sears catalog is leading cause of sex addiction. While it may be true that kids eat too much fast food, it’s not because a damn clown said to. It’s because the parents buy it. Unless these kids are taking their allowance money and riding their big wheels to McDonald’s I don’t think they are doing the buying. That being said, if they DID DO THAT, we probably wouldn’t have an obesity problem because these kids would be getting exercise going to the Golden Arches.

Why is it that these nut jobs keep blaming corporations for what’s wrong in the world. I admit I have no warm fuzzies for huge, multibillion dollar/cannot fail type corporations and I’m sure that there are a lot of things being done wrong within the walls of HQ but to blame them outright for a problem that has started in the home is ridiculous. Look, I go to McDonald’s and I have a child. She hasn’t acquired a taste for hamburger yet and pretty much eats only the cheese from the sandwich but I agree that it’s not healthy for any of us. We go as a reward for doing something especially good and we go mostly so she can play on the slide. In other words we go to a fast food restaurant for her to get exercise. They one getting fatter is me and I’m old enough to make my own decisions not ones based on clown influence. Besides, most kids are scared of clowns. Hell, my kid is afraid of Santa but will walk up to a six foot tall mutant mouse named Chuckee and kiss him on his fake oversized nose. She loves the mouse not the pizza.

Back in 1992 and 1997 when Spuds Mackenzie and Joe Camel were given pink slips the claim was that the visage of these anthropomorphic mascots was contributing to underage alcohol and tobacco use. Still, the safeguards for preventing this consumption was in place. You had to be of a certain age and furnish identification in order to obtain these vices. The fact that the usage of these things was so prevalent among teens and underage children wasn’t so much the fault of the lovable and cuddly mascots on the advertisements but the safeguards in place failed to prevent the acquisition of such things. Fake IDs, lazy or incompetent store clerks, PEER PRESSURE and oh, heaven forbid, unaware or uncaring parents were failing to protect the impressionable.

If you want to ban something, ban kids. Peer pressure and desire to imitate role models is far more of an incentive to do something. They learn it by watching others who they look up to and they want to emulate that behavior. It could be their parents or that older kid who looks cool lighting up a cigarette. They get into these bad habits and form addictions either because of the nature of the behavior or the drug itself has addictive properties.

And since we can’t ban kids, let’s ban professional athletes. The recent indiscretions of my own state’s team is enough cause to shield the impressionable youth from their off the field antics. When a kid with an Internet connection can read a twitter feed from their favorite football player and see the atrocious use of language and demeanor towards women and another kid can come home from school wearing their favorite quarterback’s jersey and ask their parents, “What’s sexual harassment?” Then we know that there has to be some type of intervention. But it has to be on the parents’ part, not the pro or anti groups.

But back to food, my favorite vice. This attack on corporate mascots is a veiled attempt to somehow correct the problem that parents do not take care of their kids. They give them too much freedom and convenience and expect them to make the right decision before they have the maturity to do so.

I’m just as guilty. My kid has way too much awareness of the English language and she’s not even three. But I do not blame shows like The Family Guy for teaching my child the word douche bag. I blame myself for allowing her to watch The Family Guy at an age where she absorbs anything that makes me laugh, when I see it, and then wishes to be funny and see her Daddy giggle uncontrollably. We don’t watch it anymore and the effects are still apparent and she knows that it’s wrong but we’re slowly reaching her with our admonishment of that sort of behavior. But we try to do other things, continually, to get her into the habit of eating better foods. We are still working at it and admittedly she doesn’t get all the good foods that she should.

Who’s next, Ernie the elf. Him and the other Keebler elves will be rounded up and forced to stop selling cookies. Their only chance for a sustainable income will be to get their own show on TLC like Little People Big World, The Little Couple, Our Little Life, and Little Chocolatiers. Honestly, what the hell is going on with TLC, they’ve suddenly become The Lilliputian Channel. Then, look out Jack in the Box and Chester Cheetah. If Ronald falls you are on notice. They’ll be coming by and putting you on a train to the Little Debbie Death Camps.

I Don't Know Is Not An Answer

Having worked in the customer service field a number of years in both the food industry and corporate office environment I can safely say that once in a while you kind of have to make shit up. I’m not talking total lie about something but you can recognize a foul up or potential issue and while it may be of little impact to fix, the perception by a customer that you’ve fouled up can be devastating.

Case in point. This weekend I spent both days helping my sister-in-law move. It was much my like my own disaster of moving from one place to the other. Limited time. Limited help. Multitude of stuff. I caught lunch on the fly from McDonald’s and ate it while driving on the turnpike from my place to hers.

Now, I already have a prepared sense of “This will get screwed up” with this particular location but what makes matters worse is the fact that it has a double drive thru. Of course I ended up embarrassing my wife during the whole process.

First off, when you get to the speaker to give your order they come on with this, “Thank you for blah blah, would you like to try a Filet O Fish value meal.” I just said, “No.” My wife looked at me like, “Prick, much?” I told her that it’s a prerecorded greeting and that I’m not responding to an actual person. They come on afterwards. Sure enough, the voice taking my order was different than the one asking me to buy a Fish sandwich. In fact, who knows if the real person I’m speaking to is even in this store?

Needless to say, we placed the order and then took turns with the other cars getting in line to pay. The first window took my money and had the right order. The second one was manned by some 15 year old kid who proceeded to hand me three bags. Now, I know we bought a lot of food but three bags full? I said, “Um, are you handing me one or all three?” He paused and then took the bags back in and slid the window shut. “Ok.” He opened back up after conferring with someone and said, “Do you want to just pull into the parking lot and we’ll bring your food out to you?” I said sure, but then felt a little impish and wanted to just joke with the kid, “What happened to my order?” He looked at me and said, “I don’t know. They just stuck me in this window.” My jovial spirit lessened, I looked at him, as he retreated from my minimum throttling distance, and said, “That’s not an answer.” By now my wife was getting peeved  and told me to. “Just park it.” I said, “Come on, that wasn’t an answer. At least he could have lied to me and said the Fryalator was down or the Hamburglar stole my quarter pounder. ‘I don’t know’ is a crap answer. “

“You’re embarrassing me I don’t want them spitting in my food.” My wife said. You have to remember, this is the same woman who worked in a job where she once told a customer to shove a turkey up his ass in front of her boss. This was after he complained about her not being sympathetic towards his plight. Meanwhile, she was doing more than humanly possible to find his Thanksgiving order and eventually figured it out where someone less committed to a job would just say, “I don’t know.” And call it a day. And again, this weekend, she was getting her boots ready to kick the ass of the people her sister were renting the house off of over all these problems to which I said, “They know that your sister has to move in, this weekend, and you are spoiling for a fight that could give them the inkling to say, ‘Fine, don’t live here.’” After a few minutes the manager (aka man with the key to the register) appeared and gave us our order. We were on our way, and I bit down on the tongue of frustration and waited until we were out of the parking lot to press the matter. “Look, you’ve worked in this kind of job. Did you act like that at 15?” She said no although she did have her share of moments where her thumb might have pressed a little hard on someone’s tomato. I said, “You took pride in what you did. If I would give that response to someone at my job, I’d have my ass working at McDonald’s next to numb nuts there.”

Let me clarify something. I am not meaning that my job is all that glamorous and above someone who works at McDonald’s. I am simply saying that if I chose to handle myself in such a fashion I would be in the drive thru hole along with that kid because they were willing to hire him with that level of discipline. I don’t care if you work at Walmart or Wall Street, when you work with customers or the public you conduct yourself in a way that doesn’t make them become a former customer. Saying “I don’t know” is the same as saying, “I don’t care. I’m just here for a paycheck.” You find out or at least you give a reason that satisfies the customer until you can rectify the problem. While I understand the value of having teenagers work in a job that can teach them discipline and respect I don’t think that the management of those companies takes a hard look at how those employees are actually obtaining those habits if they are at all.

It’s hard to have a teen comprehend the value of customer service since they are sometimes working a job because their parents want them to. I used to dread my old company because of the lack of good workers they hired over the need to throw bodies at the job. I would come in at 7:00 AM and do my work and fix their mistakes because they were too busy screwing around at night, more worried about going out to party then actually doing a good job. In fact, one instance where I had worked a 14 hour shift I nearly lost it. I had come in that morning, set up a lunch and took care of meetings, worked the lunch, turned over the lunch into a wedding and then bartended and served dinner for the wedding. After dinner I was supposed to be relieved to go home but couldn’t until a particular person came out to take my bar. Now, this guy was a bit of a slack so I knew exactly where to find him. He was back in the boiler room, in the dark, blazing up and I said, “You want to come take my bar so I can go home.” I then went to my boss and said, “You know why I’m still here? Because (blank) is back in the boiler room getting stoned.” She walked back but dismissed the smell of weed for cigarette smoke. I said, “If he was smoking a cigarette, then why was he hiding in the boiler room, in the dark, instead of going out into the courtyard like everyone else?” Guess what her answer was? “I don’t know.” Now you know why it was my former job.

If anyone under the age of 20 actually reads this stuff do yourself a favor, learn some discipline and some tact. I know it’s not cool to be a company man and play by the rules. I’ve been there. I refused to follow the ambiguous rules that left me open to interpret them because I didn’t want to be considered un-cool. You make more friends with the in crowd of kids if you act all “I don’t give a shit” but what does it really get you? Have you ever seen Falling Down? Exactly. Some people don’t like “I don’t know” as an answer and they’re willing to take their frustrations out on you. Is it worth it to you? Don’t answer that.

Meh Meal

Time for another tale of Little Mongo.

Once upon a time, specifically on a Monday, Little Mongo went to a wonderful place with magical creatures walked and talked and looked something like food. That place was McDonald’s. You see Little Mongo’s Daddy was a member of a service organization that held their meetings on Monday nights and that meant that sometimes Little Mongo got to go Mickey D’s as a treat.

We’d all pack up the family truckster, which at that time was a silver Maverick with black vinyl interior that flayed the skin from your arms and legs in the hot summers. It was complete with an AM radio with the push button presets that made you feel like you were at a vending machine. Still, it got us from point A to point B and at that time, car seats weren’t as required as they are today.

So, there we were at McDonald’s on Route 40 in Uniontown, which was just a couple of minutes away from the restaurant where the Big Mac was created. This McDonald’s, however, was not in a shopping plaza but right off the road main road in a row of three restaurants that made up what I liked to call the primary colors of fast food. McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and Burger King all in a line. Further up the road there was a Wendy’s and Hardees, and a Rax, too. There’s a blast from the 80s. But I preferred McDonald’s over the others, even though the Pizza Hut had a cocktail cabinet version of Galaga which was pretty awesome. The two main reasons I chose the Golden Arches over the King or the Hut was that I could get a Happy Meal and sit on a train.

That’s right, in the main eating area of the restaurant there sat a group of seats fashioned into a locomotive and a number of cars, each with a table. The locomotive was a two seater with the table set up as the dashboard of the engine. Not content with sitting anywhere else, I immediately staked my claim to that engine seat and if circumstances [read: obscured visibility] permitted, I was willing to jack someone, Grand Theft Auto style from my seat. I hated facing backwards on that damn thing. Once I was seated and got my nice little cardboard box, with two holes cutout of the base of the arches for little fingers to carry, I was ready to nom nom nom that bad boy up. Life was good. And afterwards, we’d usually play a stupid trick on unsuspecting patrons as we would stack a ketchup packet or two beneath behind their front wheels. When they backed out it looked as if they ran over a small rodent.

If the weather was particularly nice we would go out into the playground area of the restaurant. Back when McDonald’s had their equipment outside and it was primarily made of metal instead of molded soft plastic. Our McDonald’s consisted of a few Fry Guy spring riders, a giant Grimace that you stood inside and just rocked back in forth as if you were a shake and he had just gulped and a Big Mac Climber. I mean Big Mac as in the character from the commercials. You know, the constable or Johnny Law of McDonald land. The thing consisted of a hole in his butt that had ladders. Climbing one ladder put you into his head which was open with metal bars that kept you from falling out. Now if you took another ladder you could end up inside his hat which had holes in it to look out. It was kind of like a sweatbox in a Georgia prison but it was still fun. Something that always troubled me about that Big Mac character, he was a horrible representation of law enforcement. The Hamburgler was always loose, the Fry Guys were always jacking other people’s fries and that Captain Crook character always stole a bunch of Filet-O-Fish and never did any time down at Gitmo.

In later years after I pretty much outgrew the playground equipment, they were removed and now most Playland’s as they are called are indoors. I’m sure there were some pretty horrific accidents that occurred at the hands of a huge metal hamburger that you could potentially fall out of onto the concrete. In fact a quick Google Street View of route 40 shows the horrible truth of my lost childhood. The McDonald’s no longer has the distinct shape it once had. Instead it is now an outdated glass box housing a Playland inside the restaurant. Worse yet, the Pizza Hut down the road is gone, leaving only an empty hut and sign out in the front of the parking lot. It’s a shame.

My interaction with McDonald’s nowadays is limited as I’ve grown up. I still try to eat there once in awhile and look forward to the Monopoly game in the fall, even though it is a rip. Of course, I eat way too many bad things as it is now that I’m into almost into the back nine of my 30s. I’m sure I’ve passed along some quips on my unhealthy love of the Baconator. But, living where I live, now, near the equally busy area around Route 30, I have loads of choices for fast food including the original fast food primary colors of Red/Yellow, Red/White, and Red/Blue/Yellow. But, now I have a two and a half year old who gets to enjoy the prefabricated plastic Playland in the newer McDonald’s Big Mac Museum.

Frankly, it was about time. The store that sat in the spot, previously was sorely outdated. It looked like a rogue Miami Subs mated with a Taco Bell producing the ugliest shades of pastels known to man with a speckled grey color for table tops. Now we have this huge McStarbucks looking thing with weird cushions and mosaic tiles and they have yet to get one of my orders right. But inside the automatic sliding doors lies a huge jungle gymonstrosity. My kid loves it. At first we took it easy letting her just climb around the bottom platforms under close supervision but since she turned two in July of 2009 we’ve loosened up the grip and she pretty much runs wild in there. I do get concerned over the older kids not having the ability to be aware of a smaller child in the area but that was quickly resolved as I witnessed my child taking out a kid twice her size on the slide when the older kid tried to climb the tube from the bottom. She can hold her own.

Gone are the days of the sharp metal chutes and ladders as well as the old train I used to pine for on Tuesday mornings. Now we have hip looking seats and backs like something out of a IKEA catalog. Another drastic change to the iconography of McDonald’s is the Happy Meal. I said before that it was customary to get a small cardboard box that contained a burger, fries and a toy. Growing up, the toy ranged from hot wheels to something tied to a popular movie, usually Disney. Now, the toys are not much more than cheap plastic and the presentation itself of a Happy Meal is in a paper bag instead of the box. I understand the need to be eco-friendly or reduce costs but come on, you could use recycled cardboard and tout yourself as green.

Sadly, my kid will grow up in a world where all of the greatest things about mass consumerism and 80s advertising will be replaced with this madness. In fact, I had a conversation about this with my wife as my kid threw a forearm at line jumper for the slide. Happy Meals aren’t the same, the playground equipment is different, and I bet that a guy like Jim Delligatti could not invent a revolutionary sandwich like the Big Mac in the corporate giant that is McDonald’s, today. Something like that would be constructed at the McLabs with scientists in white coats and no souls. The ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit that built the backbone of corporate America has wrought with scoliosis which is corrupt and contrived. Big business goes after the little guy for using just the letters ‘MC’ in something, regardless of the intention to confuse trademark or not.

The world is passing out Meh Meals to our inner child and the toy inside is a lead paint based piece of crap from China called capitalism. I’m am SO NOT lovin’ it.