MCDONALD'S Happy Meal celebrates 25 years of feeding kids

More healthful options to the traditional burger, fries and Coke are in the works.
HARTFORD COURANT
HARTFORD, Conn. -- A quintessentially American meal is celebrating a big birthday this year, but it's not meatloaf or spare ribs or Mom's apple pie.
It is the humble Happy Meal, rolled out 25 years ago under the Golden Arches in a prescient campaign to build loyalty among the very youngest of McDonald's customers.
It is not, of course, the Happy Meal's culinary contributions that make it a national classic. Rather, the original kiddie meal wins a place in American gastronomy because it has consistently reflected so much of American culture, from the crowning of convenience to the rise in marketing to kids to, most recently, the deep concern over nutrition and childhood obesity.
That's a lot of weight for such a little bag.
Humble beginnings
McDonald's did not set out to create a cultural icon when, in 1977, a franchisee in St. Louis asked his advertising agency to come with a bundled meal -- with maybe a cheap toy thrown in -- that could be pitched to kids.
Two years later, the concept was rolled out across the nation. It featured a burger, fries and a soda, housed in a thin cardboard box made up to look like a circus wagon and decorated with games and puzzles.
It soon became a mealtime staple among harried families -- the on-the-go version of the TV dinner. It also symbolized the decline of the traditional family meal, as parents and children spent fewer and fewer nights gathered together around the dining-room table.
Happy Meals, selling by the hundreds of millions every year, became an all-purpose juvenile pacifier. And McDonald's soon hit on a way to keep kids coming back, at a cost of just a few cents' plastic.
Early toys
The earliest Happy Meal toys were decidedly lame -- a plastic ID bracelet with stick-on letters, a puzzle lock, a Mr. Spock secret compartment ring. But then came a 10-year exclusive deal with Disney. Characters from "The Little Mermaid," "Aladdin," "The Lion King," "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," "Hercules," "Mulan," "Tarzan," "Monsters, Inc.," "Lilo & amp; Stitch" and "Finding Nemo" were all miniaturized for Happy Meal bags.
The deal drove business into McDonald's, helped promote Disney's animated movie franchise, and for better or worse taught Madison Avenue a thing or two about the value of the pre-pre-pre-teen market.
For some kids, the food undoubtedly became secondary to digging down for the prize. And the supremacy of the toy reached absurd proportions in 1997, when McDonald's started offering Teenie Beanie Babies -- pint-sized versions of the insanely popular beanbag animals -- into Happy Meals. On the orders of their children, adults were gleefully walking out of restaurants, extracting the plastic-wrapped toy and stuffing the meal into the nearest garbage can.
McDonald's distributed 100 million Teenie Beanie Babies, and the craze said volumes about the nation's consumerist tendencies. But it also exposed the thriving collectibles market for Happy Meal toys. Americans collect everything, and entire books have been written cataloging the thousands of freebies McDonald's has produced, from the Flintstones' car to United Airlines jets. (United, because the airline offers Happy Meals on some flights.)
McDonald's rings up more than $3 billion in Happy Meals every year, and they have been traditionally a key earnings driver. But the company has been struggling to keep those numbers up. And the company's biggest challenge today comes not from its competitors, but from its customers.
Nutritional concerns
Kids may still love Happy Meals, but they typically need Mom to get them to the Golden Arches, and more and more, she's balking.
McDonald's recognized it had two problems -- moms found nothing on the menu they wanted to eat, and they weren't too thrilled with what their kids were being served either. So the company in the last year has made dramatic menu changes to attract mothers and fend off complaints that its food is making American children, even infants, fat.
Around the world, the company is introducing healthier -- or at least healthier-sounding -- Happy Meal options in response to a growing trend toward better nutrition. Australia is trying toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches. The United Kingdom is getting organic milk. Italian kids can choose fruit cups. And in America, the Happy Meal menu will include low-fat milk and "apple dippers" -- slices of apple with a caramel dip.
And to make Mom willing to stand in line, McDonald's has heavily promoted its line of Premium Salads and is experimenting with a "Go Active!" adult Happy Meal that includes a salad and bottled water, as well as a pedometer and fitness guide.
It's a long way from the burger-fries-Coke trifecta.
"Our goal," said Larry Light, McDonald's global chief marketing officer, speaking in perfect brandspeak, "is to make the Happy Meal experience even happier."
A venerable American icon deserves no less.