My local McDonald's was remodeled a couple years ago with this drab gray color for the floors and ceiling and some tacky cheap plywood-like material for the walls while also being decorated with pictures of steam pipes. Now it feels more like a craft brewery in Seattle than McDonald's. The kids room was the saddest looking thing I had ever seen when compared to the expansive playplaces many McDonalds' had in the past. The experience didn't just feel anti-child but anti-human in general.
I think there’s one over here in LA that wasn’t remodeled even a single time. It still looks very much like when it was first built, but obviously updated so the place stays standing. I can confirm, cause I have been there AND eaten there. I think they even have a short section where you can view some pictures and read a little bit of the McDonald’s history.
I had my 12th birthday in the basement of a McDonalds. They brought in a guy in a Grimace costume and we got to play Tony Hawk Pro Skater on their demo computers.
My kids, born in the mid to late 2000s, were among the last generation to see McDonald's as the fun place to eat. Just as they were outgrowing Playplaces and Happy Meals, the company was beginning to phase them out. I never liked McDonald's food, but I wouldn't trade those memories with the kids for anything.
As a person born in 2002 I can say that's true! I remember McDonald's from my childhood as a place where you could have lots of fun. The pace of phasing out of the children marketing was lined up with my growing up. It felt as if I've matured along with the restaurant.
I guess this happened with McDonald's worldwide, as here in Indonesia McDonald's are nowhere child-friendly as they used to be too. Yes, they are still frequented by families with children, but I pity those Gen-Alpha kids who never got a chance to enjoy the fun we Millenials once enjoyed.
Yeah this is the case for me born in 2003. I feel like it's a really unique time to grow up because I'm part of the last generation that had a childhood before the internet and social media was really as widespread as it is today. My sister, born in 2012 (so less than 10yrs apart from me) has had a completely different childhood and upbringing, and it's honestly fascinating how much has changed in such relatively little time.
This feels like a form of hostile architecture against customers. Make the lobby bland and unappealing so people are in a hurry to get in and out. Give kids nothing to do so they get fussy and loud, and parents will feel pressured get them out of there faster. Conveniently discourages people from loitering, coming there to use wifi, bringing loud messy kids that might annoy other customers or create more work for the staff.
Yeah! The one by my house used to have a tv that had the news or something on and they removed it like a few years ago. Its like they are actively hating their own customers and want to die off.
Idk what your talking about. I remember when every McDonald's had to uncomfortable metal chairs that were bolted into the floor and hard plastic booths. And the restaurant was always dirty. Now it actually looks appealing and has comfortable furniture and the place is clean.
As a kid I found out that if I went to McDonald's down the block for my house during birthday parties, I would be able to crash them sometimes and get free burgers and cake if I just acted natural and acquainted myself with the other kids and most of the time the adults wouldn't even notice. Once they did notice I already ate my food and was hopping on my bike to head home😂
@@andrewbatts7678 not that it makes a difference but in the olden days McDonald's toilets. The bathrooms were only accessible from the outside. The toilets would freeze their jingle went McDonald's golden arches in your neighborhood. My uncle nick redid it to McDonald's frozen toilets in your neighborhood. Then talked about cigars (links of poop) frozen In the toilet. People's pee pees were getting frostbite.
I think the bigger issue with this outside of McDonald's is that we don't really have fun spaces/things for kids anymore. At least not like it was back in the 80s and 90s. It's like kids today don't have their own "secret" spaces to be themselves and have fun without their parents. Like we had McDonald's, Nickelodeon, etc. Things that were not marketed to adults much at all that were ONLY for us as kids. I think kids today need outlets like that for their own imagination/creativity and should be brought back for the next generation. Kids should not just be miniature adults or treated like accessories to their parents. They're individuals.
Unfortunately that's not how things work legally children are considered property also in this era of heck (youtube won't let me say he double hockey sticks) you either mature early or the world slaps you in the face when your older I don't want it to be that way but... That's life
And you can’t just toss the kids outside like it’s the 70s because someone will call CPS on you 😂😢 I got to ride my bike all around the city stranger things style, visit restaurants, friends, libraries, the swimming hole. My kid tries that and he’s coming back with a cop 👮♀️ 😢
despite it's influence. the Super Size Me doc had it's own problems. like how the experiment has never been able to be replicated, how Sperlock didn't keep a log of his daily food intake, the fact that Sperlock was a raging alcoholic which probably did more harm to his body than eating McDonald's everyday, among other things.
I used to eat McDonalds frequently. As a grown adult I’m normal weight. I also move around quite a bit. And I still eat McDonald’s at least once every month or so. Sometimes more frequently and sometimes less frequently. It averages to about once a month.
Maybe but it illustrates a argument that spoke to the cultural zeitgeist of "greater conscientousness" in the 1990's to "healthful self-concern" that predicated the "wild world of selfie-media" by 2020's. It was a place in time, and he fit perfectly as that month or season's cultural avatar. Being a raging alcoholic out of public kind of validates my considering it this way
Quick story about the jungle gyms. I remember playing in one that had a rope like bridge at the top that you crawled through. When I looked at it, it was frayed with duct tape on it and I refused to go across it. When I got down my mom was like "Why wouldn't you go across the bridge? Were you too scared?" So I asked her "Who fixes the playground when it breaks" and she said "The workers" and I responded with "The workers that make the food?" and she said "I don't know, probably?" so yeah most parents just kinda blindy trusted logos back then.
And yet, if you'd injured yourself, she'd be the first one to screech up a storm and (I assume you're american) go contact a BillBoardLawyer for some bux.
@@yoza7359 Thats just it though, carpenters/tradesman definitely put it in and performed the initial maintenance, but once it was in there, I'm not sure if all the restaurants kept up with the maintenance, or if the staff just tried to do it themselves as a cost saving (judging by the duct tape, I'm thinking the latter)
Kind of surprising that the main reason for the shift in this culture was only mentioned briefly as a side note: government regulation. Marketing fast food to children and developing “brand loyalty” in minors was heavily cracked down on in the early 2000’s to tackle rising child obesity and diabetes rates which forced fast food companies like McDonalds to change their child-centric marketing model since they were legally not allowed to do that anymore. It wasn’t a lightbulb moment for McDonald’s, they would have happily continued doing it had the regulations not stopped them.
I think the cause was definitely the Super Size Me film. I remembered how many people told me they'd never eat there again. IMO, for me it was only about the milkshakes and ice cream.
Here's the thing: we can make it fun without simply marketing for kids. The fact that many idiots stigmatizes the idea of fun for adults is the reason why things are so ass backwards. McDonalds would unironically benefit from putting a go kart or a bunch of arcade cabinets but they won't because their profit margins are razor thin compare to their out of touch with fun CEO's bonuses
I don't recall any laws here in the U.S. that made it actually illegal for fast food companies to market to kids. You probably just read something off Facebook and took it as real.........and McDonald's also did the same.
We live in an age where kids aren't allowed to be kids because they are exposed to so much online way too early. But the thing is, where else are kids to go, what else are they to do? Go outside, where? The shopping mall that doesn't allow unsupervised teens? The park that got bulldozed for a parking lot? Or the small town designed for those with cars, making it impossible to walk anywhere without it taking 30+ mins? Kids are forced to grow up on the internet and not allowed to exist in real life. As much as I would love for kids to have time off of screens, parents don't have 24/7/365 to spend with their kids, and there isn't anywhere for kids to safely go nowadays.
In my town everything is overtaken by kids. Even the activities meant for adults, adults bring their kids and make it a kid event. It's really annoying as a 21 year old that just started being able to go to adult events
@@katc2040 But think about it this way, those kids are probably having fun, and getting a chance to have fun. And if you're a spiteful person, they'll probably grow up and be upset that kids are in their locations meant for adults.
@@katc2040 I never see kids and teens outside in my smalltown, on the weekends they congregate at some designated spots such as the school grounds and the closed down bath house parking lot other then that there is nothing for them to do and nowhere to go, a stark contrast growing up in the same town doing stuff every weekend with friends both as a kid and teen.
To put things into perspective, large number of current McDonalds employees probably don’t even remember / know that they ever had party rooms or hosted parties - they are too young to have experienced that.
in europe, it was i gues done, i think i once saw an other kid in mc donalds as 'birthday party' , but it seemed little more then some paper crown, and being shown behind in the kitchen for like 5 min tops.. i never saw e person dressed up as ronald mc donald, he was just a cartoon figure , the other the same, i saw then on paper i guess , mc donalds was simply : happy meal with toy, a playground, and that's about it. also drive throughs, we tend to call them drive in, even mc donalds here labels them drive in, but they are to pass a window and pick up the meal. here that mean pick up to eat at home mostly.. eating in the car, some overworked people that have to drive around for work all day? in city of 80.000 i know of ONE , single line Mc donalds drive throught, one burger king, and one VERY recently KFC i think, all have just one line :p , seems a huge difference to what i see in that video, but USA is extreme car centric .. here eating in the car makes you feel a) in a hurry b) seem pittyfull, why not take at least a bench in a park or something c) okay, it's really rainy, restaurant not plesant to sit, i'll guess we'll just have to eat in the car.. point is, it's always somewhat a negative choice in my head :). or just time saving, but then it's more logical to get a way healthier normal sandwich, NOT american overly suggary sandwich bread with way to much fatty fillings ;-). mm, why would obsetas be over double in the usa as in westen europe.. i wonder :).
@JeroenJA What was the point of your comment again? Or do you belong in the special camp of Europeans who have a fetish of trash-talking Americans? I'm so confused cause we, Americans, don't bad-mouth Europeans. But your kind, always has something bad to say. Jealous much?
I’d argue it’s a different angle entirely. I don’t see many teens working at McDonald’s anymore because automation is taking entry level job opportunities away from teens next to grown adults who take up all the serious jobs in the back, so most are left to find work elsewhere. What you’re probably dealing with are the few teens that do make it in, or just bored adults who couldn’t be bothered to try to remember… You just don’t see low-stakes workplaces being run by teens anymore, it’s almost all washed up adults and I’m not trying to insult anyone that’s grown who relies on a fast food job to get by I’m just saying they’re taking simple jobs away from teens.
More than ten years later, I am still depressed over the fact that my local Dairy Queen removed their outdoor patio tables with the permanent umbrellas and literally replaced them with nothing. There is just a ginormous concrete slab with no shade and no seating. How am I supposed to eat my Dilly Bar outside on a sunny day, when there's just a concrete Sahara desert? 😢
Up until now, I didn’t think it was possible to have 2nd hand embarrassment for a company. But damnit that “virtual birthday party” segment had me feeling a certain type of way.
The confusion in the last woman's voice when you asked if they did birthday parties haha. That's crazy how there's people who don't remember those being a thing at McDonalds now.
This leaves out an important fact. In the 1960's, McDonalds, while not exactly struggling, was not the juggernaut that they would eventually become. They got a hold of a study that showed that in a vast majority of cases, it was the child who would decide where to go out to eat. They then began aggressively marketing to children. It paid off and McDonalds became the top fast-food chain in America. Eventually those kids all grew up and began taking their own kids, so the marketing model eventually became obsolete and unneeded. The damage was already done, so to speak. They now focus on keeping older customers who might be less inclined to see a Big Mac as a suitable meal.
Every company targets kids first. That's the whole point of Disney Television, kids candies, and young artists. You follow these audiences throughout their lives.
I think a big part of the shift away from children's marketing is reflective of major socioeconomic issues within the last two decades. Birthrates are on the decline, food is much more expensive than it used to be, and families today have less disposable income to spend on fast food than they did 20 years ago. Childless adults on the other hand have more disposable income which is why they are being marketed to more and why stores and menus have been redesigned to better reflect their tastes.
That’s so strange, this corporate chameleon camouflaged to align with the generation. The most important aspect is the leadership, what will they do with this power to feed so many. I suspect the food is poison to us. Such a sick thought.
As a teen right now, I'm stuck in the strange place where things like mcdonalds play places, chuck e cheeses, and even mall arcades were at their prime when I was too young (and too poor) to go to them. Now that I'm older and my family is better off all of those things are being phased out. I remember seeing commercials for them on TV and being so excited for when I could finally go- only to end up in a place where I can but they are no longer there. It's the depressing feeling of being promised something wonderful only to be told it doesn't exist anymore. Ignorance is bliss and I, unfortunately, never got to have the ignorance that the world was always an unfriendly place for kids and teens.
tbh you didn't miss much. I've been to all of them as a kid, but never really cared for any of them except for mall arcades. play places and chuck e cheeses got boring super quick when I was little. mall arcades were only places really worth going back to once I became a teen.
I think already in the 2000s, some Mickey Ds limited the times for their patrons to a little than 30 minutes. Most Mickey Ds look so ran downish, that you do not want to spend much time.
Sadly, I feel like we live in an age where kids aren’t even allowed to be kids anymore. With phones and tablets and pretty much unsupervised access to the internet, children these days are growing up faster than kids my age did, and I’m only 25 lol.
This is very true. Kids are seeing things online that they shouldn't be exposed to such as sexual content, violence, etc. When we were little, most of that was relegated to cable ironically.
They are not growing up faster. Compare how kids the same age look today versus how they looked 40-50 years ago. They look way more immature now than they did then.
@@cas2985 that’s not the point lol I’m not speaking on looks, I’m speaking on the fact that teenaged girls wear full faces of makeup now, have their nails done like grown women, parents are dressing their toddlers like little mini adults… Kids these days may look like children still, that’s the point because they _are_ children, but they don’t *act* like children anymore. Sure, those old ass looking kids back in the 70’s may have looked mature, but they probably played and acted like children. Kids don’t play outside anymore, they don’t watch cartoons, they’re not allowed to be innocent anymore. In this day and age of technology, most kids mirror what they see on UA-cam and TikTok.
we live in an age where parents are the kids friends and give there kids phones. I'm sure they do not buy them thereselves. my kid doesn't have a phone. All starts with the parent. raise your child and don't rely on society and McDonald's
@@Ziko577crazy. all these kids out here paying for there own internet so young and buying there own devices to get online . Wild. Back when I was little my parents bought me things because i didn't work.
I think part of the minimalism thing is to make the restaurants easier to clean and feel more sanitary. Play places feel nasty, making adults maybe not want to eat there.
Probably while some parents appreciate the playgrounds at McDonalds to allow their kids to blow off steam, other parents just won't let their kids use it because they are probably never cleaned and if your child gets scared it's nearly impossible for an adult to get in and retrieve the kid.
This reminds me of the thesis someone wrote about how society has essentially shifted towards a hostile environment against kids. Its way too long to summarize properly but it essentially reaches the consequence of there being no room for any sense of childhood for future youths. Future children will grow up in drab, colorless neighborhoods, schools, and public spaces where it almost seems like being a playful child is discouraged, and instead life as they know it is something they just don’t understand yet because they’re kids. Then as teenagers, the lack of carefree, low stakes work available forces them to consider more serious careers for money early on as teenagers, priming them earlier on for the kind of serious, no-nonsense working class future the rest of their life will be. All the while the only concepts of fun that seem to have been validated for them are adult ones. Drama, substances, sensuality, materialism, all of these things are normalized and the kids of the future will be expected to pick out something they’ll “like to do” for the rest of their life. This in turn is what will cause the emergence of “little adults” instead of young adults. Kids acting, talking, dressing, and to the best of their ability, thinking like adults. You can see the existence of little adults today even, where although kids seem to mind their own business away from adults, they find themselves involved in increasingly more and more adult situations on social media and the worst cases have 13 year olds almost looking like 20 year olds in how they dress and present themselves. It’s tragic as an early Zoomer to see the later half and younger generations turn out this way.
There are also less third places to hang out safely. Back in the 1980s, 90s and even early 2000s we still had safe good places to hang out and enjoy ourselves. I miss the 1990s arcades and race-o-rama places we had to just hang out, have pizza and coke, and then do some mini-golf, then Go-Cart, then play arcades, and then relax, and after 5 hrs go back home to play Mario cart with cousins and friends online or face-to-face... whole some good times. Now it is so nasty and boring. No where to be be or go. Even online gaming seems to be so dystopian and dull. I feel so bad for todays' kids who never had the chance the way we did... The economy isn't helping either. People can't afford to take kids to parks muchless to arcade places and such the way we did of old generations. More reason NOT to have kids... look how dull, boring, colorless, stiff and nasty the world is. I am 42 years old and I don't see the point, imagine a child living in a poverty nation lack of inspiration, goodness, color, and fun... my goodness. No thank you. I will not put any child through that, especially not my own. 🥺😪
for example, my elementary school used to have blue trims on the roof and green walls and yellow paint around the windows, so from the outside it looked like a fun place! But recently it got a paint job, and the entire building is painted gray now... like wtf
@@LadyCoyKoi How can you have arcades today when everyone has a computer at home? It's the same approach with food - eat out or cook at home. Of course cooking at home is much easier and cheaper.
This opens up into a bigger discussion on how modernization and social media affect children in the long run. I feel that we are destroying the idea of being a child by taking away things that are to be perceived as “childish”. Don’t even get me started on TikTok and beige babies. Little edit: The replies do a better job on expanding my point better than I could, thanks guys❤️
I’ve been thinking about this ever since I watched this video because it really makes you think and brings you into so many other topics -the modernization/simplification of buildings, websites, etc -cringe culture -social media -the media in general And more I can’t think of atm. Ik there’s video essays on bits of this but I would LOVE to see one touching on everything. There’s lots of ways to go on about this and it leads to a way broader discussion that I believe we should absolutely be having.
Ding ding ding. You see the truth. Add this to the reality that corporations treat adults like children (can't curse, can't see adult things, can't talk about adult topics, etc) and you're beginning to see what 'childishness' has become in 2023+.
@@Vespyr_ the irony of adults being treated like children, and children needing to act like adults... I really wish we could kill cringe culture :( but then again that'd require kids not sharing everything online or having a safe space to do so. Cuz yes, there are, or at least there were safe places - TV programes and magazines where you could send in your short story or drawing and you felt so happy when it was featured, they never ridiculed anything... And yeah, I think that regulating adults everywhere is bullshit, we need to act like there could be a child seeing our content at any given time at any given place, just because parents don't bother to monitor their six years olds. Not my fault that little Johnny found my horror cartoon comics which had a huge adult content warning at the beginning but he ignored it and now he has nightmares...
What is “childishness,” but whatever we’ve defined it as, over the years? Not that I disagree with the idea that everything is just really freaking boring and sterile. I’d hate to try to raise a kid, nowadays.
@@Vespyr_This is just false. Oppenheimer is one of the highest grossing movies this year. Almost a billion dollar for an R- rated biopic. Baldurs Gate 3 is one of the most successful video games this year. Also R-rates with full nudity and plenty of gore. Plenty of TV shows that are made for adults like The Last of Us, The Bear, House of the Dragon, The Boys, Gen V, Succession… Same goes for animated shows for adults like Rick and Morty, Bojack, Invincible, Archer… Maybe YOU are the problem. Stop consuming “childish” content. There are more content made for adults than ever. This “corporates treat me like a child” idea is silly. Nah, your taste is just childish.
One thing that almost never gets brought up when discussing the removal of Ronald and co. from McDonald's marketing is that, around the same time questions were being raised about advertising to kids in general, questions were raised over the fact that the characters were also used by the Ronald McDonald House Charities, and how that might also be indirectly advertising McDonald's to children through charity work. A decision was made on whether to either retire Ronald from the charities or from McDonald's marketing, and they opted for the latter.
Seriously? I never heard that discussion. As a child with a chronic illness that's required multiple hospitalizations, Ronald McDonald house has always been a place of safety and calm. So what if it was advertising? Money from purchases helps to fund those houses.
One thing that I think is weird, is how the kids targeted in the 90s were the teens targeted later, and then the adults. Literally the gradual stripping away of child-friendly elements (i.e. maturing) practically follows a whole generation into their adult years. I guess they had to maintain some sort of loyalty?
The "modernization" of McDonalds has made the dining room as boring as the kitchen. When I was a kid, I wanted to go to McDonalds to have a fun time. It wasn't until I was in high school that I realized how much I disliked the food.
I used to work at McDonalds and the “getting things done fast” mentality was toxic. Managers would clear orders from the board so the measured time it took to complete is as low as possible. Meaning that workers who had to get the orders ready and out needed to memorize every order and the number to it since an order marked as completed was now off the monitor. I was also told to go out into the rain to collect money from customers in drive through so the orders could be marked as finished faster.
@@kymo6343 Managers do it because they don't want to get fired. Sure, the managers need a reality check, but the ones that really needs that are the executives!
One of my managers at Panera did this too! (he got fired eventually, not for that though.) It was annoying for the customer too because they'd get notified that the order was ready when really he just marked it that way to keep the average time per order down. Just a lose-lose for everyone but corporate and a sucky manager.
I hated my job at McDonalds. My manager did the same damn thing and I'm a guy that has a time remembering sequential information when there's a lot of it. He'd clear the board near the drive-through, so I didn't know what order was what. Thankfully, the more intelligent workers helped by organizing the orders on the table behind me, but there were still some instances where I almost handed out the wrong order.
When McDonald's first came to China, it was ridiculed for being "Too childlike" especially with their first parade there ever. This made little sense to their market due to the one child law, it made more sense to sell to the parents not the kids. I imagine McDonald's has shifted their marketing after lessons they learned overseas as well.
I will say I remember enjoying the Playplace as a place where adults couldn't go, and it felt very secret and special. I feel bad for kids who don't get to experience that in some fashion. We also had stuff like tree houses, and tunnels in the snow. We don't even get enough snow here anymore for kids to be able to do that.
I was freaked out by the play places as a kid but I always wanted to build my own igloo and I loved making pillow forts and camping in my backyard from what I remember of it(memory loss got holes in my brain sorry lol)
It's true though. Kids need venues where they are (ultimately safe yet) free to explore and experience small thrills related to adventure and discovery. This will help them develop personal security as well as proper levels of attachment to parents. Without it, they may become too risk-adverse or timid as adults.
The Playplace really was an exclusive little world as a kid. It was a place where you'd interact with your friends and total strangers alike. Each group would occupy parts of the structure like little gangs and negotiate passage and changing territory while maximizing fun for everyone, all on our own. The code was unwritten and just understood. Each location had slightly different customs on "how to play on this thing" so that you get the best results while taking care of the equipment. Nobody even stole shoes. Not that nothing bad ever happened, but we somehow naturally pulled off anarchic hedonism at the same time as general peace and order. Makes me wonder if there are even any outlets for children these days to gain actual social skills by running their own little areas that aren't online video games. There were a LOT of places back in the day where a kid can go do this, but I don't know of any left.
Fast food places were a real treat as a kid from a lower income single mom. It was never a thing to be eaten every day, but when we went? Playplaces even a SNES lover like me would tire myself out on, genuinely neat little toys that found their way into my toy box for years to come. It's a real bummer that general outrage, people not wanting to learn about nutrition, and a... pretty misleading campaign from a guy who knew the studies were off kicked off the end to all of that. I especially pity the live people who still work at them as things get more uniform, faster, and generally sterilized. Fast food is brutal work, it grinds people down, the money is unlivable, and the customers don't see them as fully human most of the time.
@@KaminoKatie yes in a perfect world automation would be used to ease the burdens of the worker instead of simply removing them from the equation to skirt costs, but that isn't really possible in our system. Corporations and shareholders believe in nigh mythological, "infinite growth." That means that eventually every bit of suboptimal operation must be sliced away, until the thing itself no longer even has full functionality, because infinite growth means the money that's coming in just needs to go up and up and up, until growth or even function is no longer sustainable. At which point the company is stripped of any remaining assets, the people at the top all get a nice big parting check, and they move onto the next one.
@@rivetsquid8887It’s not that deep. Flipping burgers doesn’t require intelligence it requires fine motor skills. AI can’t flip a burger… yet. Burger flipping machines are too expensive. Therefore fast food workers ain’t going nowhere.
It feels like these companies' attempts at removing the human interaction from the experience is a deliberate move to avoid accountability. If there's no one to complain to when your order gets, inevitably, fucked up then they don't have to take any losses ever.
10 years ago my dad would make fun of me for going to mcdonalds as a teenager, he would say 'that place is for kids'. Well guess who goes to mcdonalds now because it's so classy... my dad.
@@midorithefestivegardevoir6727 It's not classy, but the whole point of the video was about how they have changed the appearance of Mcdonalds to suck white collar workers in
Actually, there's still one location that hasn't changed at all, still has the videogame areas as well as all the old characters, play area, and the old theme! The kids love it and the fact that despite it being basically ancient but still adored by children today shows you that there could've been a compromise somewhere instead of outright getting rid of children. Keep in mind the place I mentioned is still very popular for both parents and children alike Edit: it's in Los Angeles, Southern California. Though I do have a suspicion that it may be taken down soon all things considered, bc y'know, it Cali?
For the longest time, my local McDonald's had a purposefully retro aesthetic, like a 60s diner with checkerboard tile flooring, red leather booth seating, bar stools, chrome accents, a jukebox, and shiny white countertops. It never had a playplace, but considering it was right next to a high school, it never needed one. I loved going in there, just for the atmosphere. It was kind of like an In-N-Out Burger, but better. Then they had to modernize. Now they're like a Starbucks, and everything that made the location unique is gone. Change is not always bad, and some old styles definitely needed to go away, like shag carpet or dark orange tinted window glass. But that 60s diner look was timeless and classic.
I got a happy meal a week or two ago for nostalgia's sake, and the 'toy' that was listed on my receipt was a cardboard image of a pokemon. Not a card, just like a weird cardboard octagon thing. I feel bad for kids these days. IVe heard them say its to phase out plastic toys for environmental reasons but it seems more like a copout to me.
. Weren't theyre suppose to phase the straws soon, a lot of food companies started not including them, unavailable. had to bring a reusable straw. To one food franchise since my front teeth are sensitive
There was something so special about 90s McDonald's. The character spinny chairs, the happy meal toys, the video game cabinets that never worked, the playplace.
The unhealthy addictive food that caused millions of obesity related ☠ . Not everything in the 90s was good. Homemade meals with whole ingredients are a good 90s think, not evil Big Corporations!
@@CordeliaWagner "That's wrongthink!" is all I get from your comment. Bro, please just stop. The 90s had some of the best economies we ever had and the US died off after 2012. The obesity related deaths are from people who didn't know better and would gouge on that garbage. If "no fun allowed" was a person it'd probably be you.
@@CordeliaWagnerlol it's not McDonald's fault for causing obesity, nobody is forcing those people to eat there, it's their choice if they want to eat fast food for every meal. Food is not addictive in any way, shape, or form because again, you CHOOSE to eat fast food, you're not going to die if you don't get your big Mac fix. Let's not dare to blame self control issues and living a sedentary lifestyle.
It sucks that people couldn’t play the game kiosks or didn’t know about them 😂 We still have two of the McDonald’s VHS tapes that had the mini movies! Me and my siblings still sing the songs from time to time 😂😂 I miss McDonalds from the 90’s to the early 2010’s.
The sad thing is that scientists and doctors have retrospectively picked apart "Supersize Me", exposing it as bad science, with no variable controls nor research standards. It was made out of malice to sensationalize McD as THE CAUSE of obesity in Americans at the time, which was completely unfair. The guy who made the film never published his food log, either, and it turned out that he was an alcoholic and much of his "health issues" during filming was him being hungover.
I staunchly maintain that Spurlock was the one who firmly point McDonalds on this path. A conman, and a complete liar. The moral of Supersize Me is the warning of the damage that moral do-gooders cause to our society.
There definitely is still room for experiences like this. I recently visited a kid-friendly arcade that opened only half a year ago (this is in the PNW, but not Seattle), and not only was it pretty well-visited, it had a party room _and_ was successful enough that it was in the process of expanding, with the expansion to include a full restaurant. The problem was that, for corporations, this market wasn't _growing_ anymore, and corporations grow or die.
Yall are both right. So many corporations went bankrupt trying to chase the myth of endless growth by cutting corners on seemingly trivial things that added up in the long run
@@CordeliaWagner Endless growth being impossible should be obvious to anyone so I didn't bother to point it out explicitly - but yes, you are absolutely right, on all points.
in my city all the local and even the regular chains meant for children are getting close down and it’s so frustrating like what are children going to do 😭like yeah parks meusems whatever blah blah but like for birthday parties for little treats out
I just watched this video while having a McDonalds lunch on my break. Yes I work there and this video is super true. I even asked a manager afterwards if we do bday parties and she said no. We still have a play place but it’s closed. A manager said it’ll be reopened soon but idk. The drive thru is also way more crowded then the lobby. Great video! Learned a lot. Especially the toys cause I was literally wondering a few days ago why the toys became worse. It’s understandable why they’re doing all this but it’s also sad. You put it best when you said death of fun. The world is losing all joy.
I like McDonalds but won't deny their advertising could really be cass sometimes. In the early 2010's the UK branch did an ill advised ad where a kid trying to learn about his dead dad from mum finds out he's not got much in common with him....other than they both love Fillet of Fish and always get the tartar sauce on their mouths. Like you can tell execs were like "yessss relatable!" Without thought of capitalizing on a family's grief for flipping fish sandwiches
Overcrowded drive-thrus are really annoying and I hate how my family won't even entertain the idea of dining in outside of special occasions. It's quicker, food is more fresh and honestly way more fun.
@@maximos905 It's both. Y'all need to stop letting parents off the hook and coddling them all the time. Weirdo parents are the reason why McDonalds changed in the first place. They're catering to the desire of the people so they can make more money. If parents in the 2000s and 2010s weren't so bitchy about McDonalds appealing to kids and letting kids have something for them FOR ONCE, McDonalds would've been just as kid oriented as before.
I am honestly amazed that Super Size Me had as big of an impact on McDonald's as it did. I was born in the 90s and I knew how unhealthy McDonald's was before then lol. Like did people not know that super size fries weren't good for health?
@@wasp165 I mean also the guy sensationalized it like crazy, he went waaaay over the serving sizes for everything and pushed the numbers to the max. It was less about getting the truth out and more making a big hit shock documentary which would put his name on the map. Which he succeeded in.
Supersize Me just reinforced and refreshed the nutrition nannies screed from 15ish years earlier. 88/89 IIRC it might have been the first shot by Center For Science In The Public Interest at McDonald's in particular and fast food in general. McDonald's dropped the beef tallow for the fries,dumped the soft serve ice cream for low fat frogurt as well as some other things that 35ish years has made me forget that were done to yield to the busy bodies and just about every other fast food chain went to at the time ( unfortunately several chains attempts caused drop off in sales because the healthier alternatives actually tasted like crap). Additionally I'm sure a lot of the progressing changes in McDonald's probably had to do with trying to get off CFSITPI's radar as every report they issued claiming Chinese food or movie popcorn or whatever as near instant heart attack threat the " lethal levels of fat,salt,etc was given in equivalent number of Big Macs.
@@rottytherottski522 He also very conveniently didn't really mention that he'd been vegan for a couple years before doing the "documentary." Ofc suddenly reintroducing meat into his diet was going to make him sick as hell.
@@ursfan Didn't he also conveniently didn't mention he was an alcoholic during the documentary and blamed his poor liver function on the Mcdonald's instead?
As a kid growing up in 2007 I've seen a mix of the old and the new. My favorite mcdonalds was in the near city with the playplace going all around the store, I would wave at cashiers, wave at people eating and have the time of my life. I'm sad to see them go.
my favorite mcdonalds was one in a walmart that had a bunch of retro horror movie posters and even a costume. I also liked the 50s diner one with a working jukebox and that other one that had a mini train that went around the whole building.
Mc Donalds went from "Kid Friendly and Fun" to "Depressed 40y old just going for a Coffe" Edit: oh damn ty for all the Likes!. Read some of the Comments. Mixxed Opinions still all Valid, some are just older some are younger, hope every1 still has a good day! Head´s Up ppl Ps: dont forget to Sub, dude put some effort into it
It’s all this modern futuristic crap & the fact technology is low key taking up space for most kids in America. After covid things became colder and less social
I remember our local McDonald's had an entire floor dedicated to kids parties. The bottom floor was normal (still bright colours) with a few booths for eating in. But upstairs was a play area, tables and chairs shaped like characters, the staff came out and performed and played games, you got a party bag to take home. We were too poor to have one of those parties (or to regularly go to Maccy Ds) so I had to wait for a richer kid to have a birthday and hope they had the kind of parent that made them invite the entire class.
I remember one of the most bizarre things for me post lockdown was going to the same McDonald’s that had always been near where I live and seeing that you order and pay into a screen, instead of telling the cashier what you want and paying them. It just feels odd having the only human interaction as getting handed the food and saying thanks. Only a matter of time before they find a way to completely automate the entire restaurant and in the process kill millions of jobs.
Did it get your order correct? A McDonald's near me automated the drive thru and somehow got my order wrong. Even when automated, it is the same poor standard of service.
@@robertnewland8358 I don’t go there often, but yeah it’s gotten my order right every time I can remember. The Taco Bell ordering machines are another story though, those get my order wrong like 80% of the time lol
>Only a matter of time before they find a way to completely automate the entire restaurant and in the process kill millions of jobs. Thanks to people pushing for a $15 MW, McDonalds has an even bigger incentive to push for automation. Because people do not seem to realize that low-skill work is easy to automate, and the only thing holding them back is that its cheaper and less maintenance-intensive to hire people than it is to buy and maintain machines. You know, until now.
@@robertnewland8358that’s because humans are still putting the orders together. They are working on getting people use to not seeing people in store first. Eventually their won’t be any people either. They already have a robot that can drop fries. Theirs not too many jobs artificial intelligence can do. Universal basic income is coming sadly
companies have been wishing for full automation of random min wage jobs like that for eons now, and on the surface it sounds positive - no more abusive customers or dealing with any of the usual min wage bullshit - but then you have to deal with the issue of "wait, where will everyone go?" when there's no more unskilled jobs left, all there is is skilled labour - but the economy just isn't designed around that (nor can it be easily changed). i think that's the main reason it hasn't happened yet. The tech has been around for at least a few years now (i think some places are even doing test runs of fully automated restaurants/stores/etc.), so the societal pushback of firing millions of workers is kind of the only "obstacle" left.
at 13:50 when you referred to 2023 as "the 20's" gave me such a weird feeling, like I don't think I've ever thought of the fact we're technically in the 20's. Maybe I'm just too high
@@giggs-chan2004More like the sighing 20's, everything needs to change but nobody knows where or how to start because we're all either burnt out or working 🥂😪
In Australia outside of the CBD of major cities McDonald's locations are mostly on highways, most people Aus will use a McDonald's as their break on a road trip but would rarely go to one any other time.
When I worked at McDonald's, I got yelled at by a couple who wanted a party for their kid, but got mad when I told them that we didn't do parties and haven't done them in a long time. I also got yelled at for corporate discontinuing items, raising prices, wait times, adding items, dirty bathrooms, the frappe machine being cleaned...
real felt all of this in bones I got yelled at by an old lady because she was yelling at a new person and I took her order instead and I was like girl wtf😭😭
Yupp I work there now, it's ridiculous... when something doesn't work it's our faults🤦🏾♀️, prices are up our faults as well... like we own the place.... our oj machine hasn't been working, the lady in the drive thru says she should get a discount for the inconvenience 🤦🏾♀️ like just wow... I will never understand it...
Working fast food sucks. You get the nice ones every so often, but more times than not you get the people who are looking for a reason to be mad or who attack you for something out of your control.
It seems that there are fewer and fewer places for kids to socialize with each other and to play every year, for a lot of parents with low incomes McDonald’s and places like it also served as a very inexpensive way to entertain your children. I feel bad for the next generation of kids. Also I highly doubt the health concerns at McDonald’s play places were all that much worse then what would be at a normal park, I’d certainly say anecdotally that I’ve seen way more gang sign graffiti at my local parks then I ever saw at McDonald’s, and many other unsavory things at that...
Capitalism ensures that any space for people to gather must be utilized to make a profit. Parks and activity centers don't fit into the vision of capitalism. Even a McDonald's play place is an example of profiting at any cost.
I never went to McD as a kid and I turned out just fine. My parents played with me or I had my PS2 and toys. I didn't need to be taken anywhere to "be entertained". I made my own entertainment. Then again, McD's here in Croatia had less "play" stuff, and I am a disabled person, but point stands.
As a person who did grow up with McDonalds playplaces, I don't consider my early induction into fast food a good thing. It would be different if you went there just to play but making parents, especially poor parents, feel safe taking their kids there was just a dangle cord of bait to sell bad food that while cheap, was still a markup on even cheaper ingredients. And to delude kids into obsessions over cheap not-worth-it toys. If anything the 'cheap' price of a happy meal was a bad thing. My mom, who I don't blame, exhausted single mother that she was, I know saw it as a net benefit that she could buy me a meal and let me run around for a bit before home and homework. But my alternative would have been what? a quick sandwich at home and probably better ingredients. And running around outside with the neighborhood kids for a bit. I think that would have been fine.
@@soulsphere9242 Capitalism expands until people no longer are able to pay. Socialization in public spaces should be free. Period. Your bootlicker system doesn’t and hasn’t worked since people lived in communities of five hundred or less individuals.
Anybody ever think about how Ronald, despite being a clown, actually looks VERY FRIENDLY? Like, a lot of kids can be scared of clowns, but I never hear anybody say they’re scared of Ronald McDonald.
@@ToyInsanity if you're like unironically scared of ronald ur just a wuss bro i was literally scared of images of mokey mouse when i was younger (yes, MOKEY mouse) yet ronald was still my favorite mascot and still is like ever fun fact i met the REAL!!!! ronald mcdonald at my pre-k when i was like 4 and he was doing a speech or something idk i forgot but he was there
I remember being at a birthday party when I was younger and Ronald McDonald told me he was going to take my mom (as his own) and he freaked me out for many years after wards
That's a normal clown. Lol. Its more funny that clowns have been so discriminated against and demonized in todays society they they forgot clowns just wanna make folks smile
The books at mcdonalds is honestly one of the only good things theyve done. Some kids get so excited over books! But there should def be a toy option for kids who have books and no toys
Books are great, but pit time and effort into making them - not just the crappy thin paper that wont last. And ffs no more cardboard toys or "scan this QR code to play on an app!"
I remember back when we lived in Maine in 2005 till 2012. Everything used to be so family friendly everywhere we go and never had any problems. I had my mom and dad me in my high school years and a sister under 5 years old at the time and we could go anywhere anytime and eat our food and always had a great time. Fast forward today and it feels so unfriendly to everyone everywhere and going out just feels like you’re gonna get busted by the police or deal with Karen’s. When I used to bartend at restaurants, there were barely any people coming over having drinks anymore, and I wasn’t making money like I used to it’s a little overwhelming and America is starting to look like a Third World country.
@@jamesstanley792 I mean it is also plausible that parents gave their kids outside food along with McDonald's. Also, pretty sure the apple slices and milk can definitely rot.
great video and what a shocking turn: these restaurants slowly close kids out from their target audiences (here, they were just lazy to check if the playground's state was still safe tbh) while game franchises and cartoons PUSH kid friendliness even on genres, like horror
The 80s and 90s was a great time to go McDonald's as a kid. Actually it felt like all of society was just different than and really pushed family oriented marketing and lots of fun Saturday morning kids shows, breakfast cereal with actual toys and then tons of toys.
Early 00's era wasn't bad either as a kid. I had a good childhood filled with Chicken Selects and PlayPlaces. Didn't care for the toys, but my friends did.
As a 90's baby, I remember being taken by my mom or friend's parents to Carl's Jr. There, they had amazing gym play places. We would even fight with these large cushion shapes and hit each other. It was so much fun, so much physical activity. I made a lot of friends that i never saw again. And it was outdoors. Good times.
@@jennifermarlow. Sadly the outdoors has become more hostile as time has gone; a vast majority of homes no longer have ready access to good natural settings. You have a street but people go 40+ mph down it, you have a park but junkies burn it down every other week, you can't have a bbq due to fire ordinances and or apartment rules stating you'll be evicted if you do due to liability risk. "Go play outside" has become more and more unobtainable over the last 20 years; add to that the constant access to electronic escapism, nobody to fight these negative trends because everyone's heads are buried in sand, and it becomes more and more of a positive feedback loop over time. I grew up butt-naked playing in mud, climbing trees, helping my parents garden, catching frogs and snakes, eating wild fruit I knew how to identify in the area around my childhood home. I got in fights, fell asleep in tall grass, and stayed inside for a week or so when we got reports of a cougar sighting in the area; I loved that childhood. The modern childhood is unrecognizable to me.
In the Netherlands there is a law where you can't use popular children's brands or ip's (like disney or dc comics) to advertise fast-food or desserts. They made this to combat child obesity. As a result, happy meals are getting next to no marketing nowadays. The marketing for Mcdonalds shifted from a place where kids could have fun time to a place where (young) adults can hang
@@ChristopherSobieniakyes it's very sad. Nowadays I barely see any children in my local McDonald's. Even on tv all of McDonald's ads are marketed for (young) adults. Some of them are nice (for example they had one with a deaf character and another one with a lesbian couple) but most of the time it's giving "how do you do fellow kids" energy
No way there's such a law. I'm from The Netherlands and in the past year or two Happy Meals contained toys from Pokemon, Batman, Minions, Mario and Kung-Fu Panda.
people in the UK would be utterly shocked to see that McDonald's second floor isn't ALWAYS closed for cleaning in the Philippines. in fact, both the first and second floors are LOADED with people! families coming in to have lunch/dinner, friends of all ages just looking for a quick bite, it's extremely wholesome.... just don't expect the service to be as fast lol
McDonald’s in the Philippines still has parties at least I can confirm since I live in the Philippines and the last birthday party I went to at McDonald’s the wet floor sign was just meant as a “there’s a child’s birthday party” on the second floor It’s not closed for cleaning it just means there’s no space on the second floor and some child’s having a birthday
1) I loved play places as a kid! Good memories that kinda feel like fever dreams to be honest. 2) legit any public place is going to be covered in some nasty bacteria. imagine if she knew how many germs were on her phone screen.
Maybe the world really does become less and less colorful as you age. As a kid everything felt more colorful and happy because I didn’t see the real world. But then as you get older reality sets in and you realize the cruel world we live in.
@@therealspeedwagon1451 I think thats true to a point.. but at the same time, it really WAS more colorful back then..... McDonalds, Blockbuster..... The outside of mcdonalds now, and even some elementary schools just looks like a prison.
I'm a teen myself, I haven[t experienced nor seem any of these past ideas and concept for kids and even how children acted like in general but I hate how people act in the modern times. None of what i've seen nowadays is fun, everything is just the same and it honestly sucks. Hearing that The Philippines still do birthday parties (my home country) actually makes me more happy that i'm born a Filipino.
Things suck rn, the places, the people, all of it has a connection, feel glad that you're able to recognise it, because recognising it is the first step towards moving things in a better direction.
I went with a friend to get McDonald's this February and I am simply never going back. As weird as it sounds, the complete lack of atmosphere in the establishment made the experience so much worse. Without the feeling of indulging in "hedonism with a safety net", now it just feels like you're eating a fat, greasy pile of sodium and carbs with some spiked sugar to wash it down. No thanks.
15:08 As much as I loved the McPlay Place as a kid, as a teen who worked for Mcdonalds, they would literally have staff climb into those tubes to clean them. Because I was on the small side of employees I was often told to do go in and clean up kid leftovers and one time vomit. We did not get paid extra for this btw.
They got rid of nearly every play center I've ever gone to. All 12 places I know are now gone and I can't exactly remember when they started turning all the colors into grey bland ones but I think the saddest part is that they used to have a boy and girl happy meal with creative collabs. Now it's just basic movie promotions.
Seems the 2010’s really overdosed on bland office style. Check any of the major logo changes from the 2000’s to the 2010’s. Cactus Club and Pepsi are 2 major ones. Thank goodness Coca Cola never lost their classic logo
there has been a bit of a trend of retro style redesigns, not just Pepsi, but Pizza Hut and Burger King as well. maybe this bland aesthetic is finally getting pushback.@@himikotoga4270
In the Philippines, aside from birthday parties, in-store dine ins are pretty much alive. It is hard to afford a car here thanks to our measly salary. If everyone could afford a car, we'd suffer from heavy traffic. I don't see any of our McDonalds turning themselves car-centric anytime soon.
It's so interesting to me that the dine in locations are going away AGAIN. When I was a kid, every taco bell in my town had no indoor dining. A couple of tables outside, that was it. Suddenly every single one remodeled to have indoor dining. A few other chains added indoor dining that didn't have them before. Now it's totally reversed.
Has anyone else noticed Taco Bell's seem to be fewer and fewer? Or is it just me? Most of the ones I've seen in recent years are merged with KFC, and KFC appears to be going extinct from what I've seen in recent years. If they're not with a Taco Bell, most have been replaced with a Mary Brown's or Popeyes.
Worked at a Burger King in the late 90's... had a concerned parent come to the counter and complain her kid was in hysterics as they saw a "dead hamburger" in the playground. So i was volunteered to crawl through the whole thing to find a.piece of half-eaten hamburger sandwich.
I think that McDonald’s toys definitely peaked during my early childhood (2007-2013), in particular, the movie toy lines. A lot of the toys had awesome gimmicks, and some of the toys in certain sets were literal full-sized action figures (Shrek, Po, Tai-Lung, etc)! Nowadays, they look like thimbles!
You should have seen the toys just before your early childhood. My friend had the full collection of animatronic wind up bath vehicles for each of the McDonalds cast.
@@JackieOwl94 Oh yeah! The McDonald’s toys honestly had their peak from the late 90’s to the early 2010’s! Think about it, you will never see a more detailed and big toy such as Po from Kung Fu Panda, or Shrek from Shrek the Third, or even Sulley from Monsters INC again!
Burger king went the hardest imo but both are decent quality. Toy affordability has gone way down hill, they have to focus more on collectors because parents just dont have the money ours did. You can really see the child poverty in what our toys look like. We have gotten to the point that we, America, get the ghetto versions of japanese toys like transformers and power rangers. Japan gets the fancy stuff. USA fell off
Game cube boxes did exist, the one at my McDonald's was like hacked by McDonald's to vut you off, it was very annoying for years you could only play half a game and then it would crash or say something about how you have played as long as the game would allow. And when your half way through a game of super smash baseball, it'd force a rage.
As a 25 year old who grew up poor in a small town, McDonald’s was the only special treat/outing I had as a kid. It’s sad to see how things have changed but to be fair, even as a kid I thought the play places were kinda gross. I was mainly focused on happy meals- those toys used to be awesome, especially as a kid who didn’t get a ton of toys
As a kid from the 90’s the holy trinity for Birthday Parties were Mcdonalds, Chuck-E-Cheese and literally any Bowling Alley. So to see that all 3 are basically dying is a clear signifier that Fun is dead. These are the new Dark Ages. Where Brutalism is king and Colors are against the law.
Fun isn't dead. Plenty of bowling alleys have frequent customers and I've been in a bowling league for a while now w hundreds of players throughout the week ... But that's in Houston though idk what smaller towns look like.. the other reason is these kids don't find anything entertaining unless it's hypebeast, trending or supported by their favorite influencers
Umm yeah i have kids and mcdonlads sucks compared to the new birthday places. Skyzone, urban air and incesible pizza factory. There are giant obstacle courses, go carts, mini roller coasters, ziplones and trampolines.
Idk where you live, but Bowling alleys are still going strong. There's like... 5 of them in 10 miles of each other where I live. But that's probably becuase there's nothing else to do in my town.
About the crappy toys, one of the effects of super size me phenomena was actually Disney dropping support for the company and stopping them from licensing their characters for toys in 2006. Disney would eventually go back on this decision 12 years later, but by then it was too late. They had over a decade of dealing out crappy toys no kid wanted. You would often see parents just buying these happy meals simply because of the small portion size and the toys that came with it were just left to the side or thrown out.
You're totally wrong. Every kid I knew loved the Disney toys from Happy Meal, they were super popular! I still collect them today. The quality of the plastic toys were also very high. Disney's worst business decision ever was to stop promoting their movies with Happy Meal toys
I remember a long time ago, I saw some kids take the food trays and use them as sleds to go down the tube slides faster. They got kicked out after the employees found out. Also, kids who would climb up the slide backwards would often scrape their spines on the uneven roof of the tube.
Northern Mexican over here, recently went to a McDonald's on a mall with a small playplace and kids running, climbing and playing with those Ms. Marvel and Stitch plushies from their happy meal. Was truly interesting seeing the joy of being a kid prevailing on that new sterile cardboard cutout deco the restaurant had.
It's so interesting watching this from a UK perspective. McDonalds is universally viewed as the place to go after the club/when you're drunk. I wonder how that developed.
When I worked at McDonald’s years ago, we had a drunk guy come in one late night, order food, then fall asleep at his table without touching his food 😂
McDonalds is cheap, fast and has lots of salt so that's basically everything you want when you're drunk, plus no one gives a shit if you're loud since it's McDonalds.
Most restaurants these days don't really market themselves to children anymore. Subway doesn't market themselves to kids for really good reasons. Their mascot loved kids way too much.
Time to tell the tale of my local McDonald's. As long as I can remember it being there, it had a sort of 50s/60s retro diner aesthetic, complete with diner style seating, the old route 66 style of product posters on the walls, a jukebox, which probably hasn't worked since it was installed- and the ceiling having vinyl record neon lights. It was great. It also had the playplace. Truth be told I think the hard diner look was done a bit later. Regardless. As a kid it *had* to be that McDonald's. No other. Frankly, I didn't really eat much of the food. Two bites of the hamburger and off to the hamster tubes. Now this McDonald's also had an outdoor part of the playplace. Which was where the ball pit was. About a decade ago they removed the outdoor section and ball pit. They replaced it with some outdoor seating, which was ok. Now even as an adult, I enjoyed going to that McDonald's. I love that retro diner aesthetic. A few years ago they closed the McDonald's for renovation. And it reopened the same awful "modern" Technicolor interior as all the rest. Gone is the playplace, gone are the retro diner seats, and the neat rock n roll retro mural on the wall, checkerboard floors, the lot of it. I have not set foot back in that McDonald's since. I mean, what, did they think I was going for the food? If I wanted good fast food burgers I go to Wendy's instead. They're victims to modernity too, but at least their modern interiors are welcoming. Wood floors and accents to give more of a restaurant feel, and a fake fireplace even. (Lol) As for the playplace itself, I feel that is something that was never going to last. Anyone gen x and gen y that grew up with it, reaches a point growing up where they realize just how scary filthy those were, and would never be caught dead letting their kids go there. I think back to the many times I was crawling around and my hand landed in something wet and I shudder to think of what it might have been. Still, it's a shame to see McDonald's fall from grace. Because its not like this has somehow resulted in huge profits. McDonald's has been struggling to find an identity since they abandoned the one they had. And they've not been doing great. I recall back in April they suddenly closed their corporate offices ahead of corporate layoffs.
I disagree. Gen x was fine with letting their kids play in the playgrounds. My mom is in gen x and is germophobic, and even she let us play in those playgrounds, and I know that gen z also played in those playgrounds a lot too, and those playgrounds were always extremely crowded. I can't speak for millennial parents and gen alpha kids though, but I'm sure that the same applies to them. Then again, when you consider the pandemic, I suppose that millennial parents being a little more paranoid because of the recent pandemic could make sense too, but generation x had no reason to be paranoid, and the majority that I knew weren't. I think the issue is that less families are dining in, including the ones with children, not that parents are all Karens who don't want their kids to have fun anymore. People in the comments section have pointed out that the decreasing birth rates may also be the reason why you see less kids in these types of playgrounds or don't see companies being as kid friendly as they once were.
Everything started to turn to boring black and white "minimalist" design right when we grew up. We gotta be the main characters, or maybe we were just lucky enough to experience the tail end of the of the old world. Either way, it's really depressing now :(
“The children? I don’t care about the children! All I care about is their parents’ money! Ah, the fact that their feeble minds are easily manipulated by cheap playgrounds and talentless clowns is no skin up my nose!” -Eugene H. Krabs (AKA Krabby the Clown, AKA Cheapy the Cheapskate), 2004
@marshalmarrs3269 He made me happy as a kid. I just want future generations of children to experience the fun of Mcdonaldland and the place places. I will say that the ball pits were a failure becuase some ignorant parents would let their sick children into the restaurant to spread the seasonal flu to the healthy children. When your child is sick don't take them into a McDaonlds or Burger King in fact feed them something more nutritious.
old spongebob had its finger on the pulse more often than people remember. ironically i spongebob was criticized in the same category as mcdonald’s in late 90s early oughts
It's so bizarre hearing about all these kid-friendly aspects of McD's *in the process* of fading away because the only one near me has been devoid of these things for the 20 years I've lived here. I've never experienced any of this stuff before.
I think there was definitely some legislative pressure in various markets for McDonald's to pivot towards the teen and adult market. Unhealthy food advertising laws banning such advertising aimed at children began to be introduced in the late 90's and 00's, particularly in Europe and South America. This would have meant much of McDonald's previous advertising would have been illegal under the new legislation. That combined with increased public scrutiny of fast food chains as was mentioned, it probably made sense to start focusing on teens and adults instead of children, it was just the less risky option going forward.
Once you said the "kids-centric dining becoming extinct", that reminded me of the "Alladin cafe" which existed in my hometown since the late 90s... and got ultimately killed by McD coming to town as the next big thing for kids. We just thought "it's cool and American" and wanted the golden arches over anything we had before. And now McD's killed off their side of things too, so it's extinct at least in that specific city.
As a 12 year old, I always looked at McDonald’s as just a normal fast food place but I never knew it was like a fun place with a ball pit and jungle gym and cool stuff. Now it’s way more boring
The McDonald's near my old neighborhood would have blown your mind. It had remnants of the old "Mcdonald world" campaign. It was a literally indoor park with a fake grass carpet and two jungle gyms. (One for older kids and one for toddlers!) Plus a giant resin tree that was cartoonish and had 3 attached mini tables that had seats that looked like cheeseburgers. The tree was a "food" tree and had fake burgers and fries among the plastic molded leaves. All that *and* a giant ball pit. It was absolutely magical!
@CheezMason5508 oh without a doubt. It's a bit sad to see everything become so watered down and boring. At least putting down hop scotch squares or something would be an improvement over nothing.
Mine used to have a big indoor jungle gym climb that was made of the same material as those big blue mats from gym class. I remember climbing up those and hissing at people who would pass by because I was pretending to be a gargoyle. Truly the most unhinged era. I constantly wish I had a way to give even a fraction of my childhood to your generation 😭💙
What kind of places are fun for you nowadays? Mall, arcade, Chuck E Cheese, like what is it you consider to be fun, and what was around when you were like 5 or 8 that was fun? I'm curious because I grew up with ball pits and Toys R Us and I've noticed there isn't much of that around anymore.
One thing I remember most fondly from 90's happy meals were the boxes they came in. They had marks where to tear up the box and turn it into a thematic build: when I got a stuffed camel, I could turn the box into a backdrop of palm trees and pyramids. For me it was even better than the toy part.
Honestly great video about this topic, but the manic energy you put into the ending made me die of laughter. I was barely holding it together after 28:49 but when you said "THE SKEEBALL MACHINE DISPENSES FRICKIN' V-BUCKS!!!" I couldn't breath lmao.
If they cleaned them regularly, it would've saved them, but these factors probably stopped that from happening: 1) Actual cleaning staff means more pay, which the company/franchisees likely wouldn't spring for. 2) Making the regular staff clean them on top of their regular duties, which would lead to longer wait times, burned out employees, and food poisoning outbreaks.
From my European perspective this gap for "child-/family friendly" bistros/cafes left behind by McDonalds has been well filled by genuinely child friendly and family oriented "mama cafes", offering healthy foods and clever, beautiful playrooms.
It sucks how all these kid-centric places are disappearing. Kids these days will never have the same kind of experience I had. Their childhood will be nothing but tiktok and cocomelon. Kids these days don't want to go to the park, they don't play outside, they don't go to Chuck E. Cheese, they don't watch Saturday morning cartoons, they don't try to get that one cool McDonalds toy, etc
That’s not necessarily true my cousins kids are taken to Chuck E. Cheese quite often and love McDonald’s happy meals and I’m sure there are plenty of kids that do all of that and more.
It’s not that they don’t want to it’s that parents give kids devices way too young and are too busy working multiple jobs to make ends meet to really take their kids anywhere or do things with them. And as this video establishes, there’s really no where to take kids anymore
It's good that places like McDonald's aren't so focused on kids anymore. That shit was fucked up beyond words. Using kids' movies to advertise fake food, lying about what's in the food, doing charity work to help kids who are dying because of the "food", & then praising themselves for it even though they get the money from the customers, most of whom are poor.
My local McDonald's was remodeled a couple years ago with this drab gray color for the floors and ceiling and some tacky cheap plywood-like material for the walls while also being decorated with pictures of steam pipes. Now it feels more like a craft brewery in Seattle than McDonald's. The kids room was the saddest looking thing I had ever seen when compared to the expansive playplaces many McDonalds' had in the past. The experience didn't just feel anti-child but anti-human in general.
Considering how low-quality the food at McDonald's is, I'd say an anti-human vibe is just accurate marketing.
@@purplehaze2358😂
There was a KIDS room?
I think there’s one over here in LA that wasn’t remodeled even a single time. It still looks very much like when it was first built, but obviously updated so the place stays standing.
I can confirm, cause I have been there AND eaten there. I think they even have a short section where you can view some pictures and read a little bit of the McDonald’s history.
Dining areas are hangouts for homeless ppl nowadays
I had my 12th birthday in the basement of a McDonalds. They brought in a guy in a Grimace costume and we got to play Tony Hawk Pro Skater on their demo computers.
I'm sorry did you just say BASEMENT of a McDonald's? Wtf 💀
@@Fluffleclawswhat McDonald’s did the go to? Lol
@@Fluffleclaws Maybe it was a McDonald's in a city, with limited horizontal space, so things are vertical (such as more dining room on the 2nd floor).
That just sounds weird.
a basement? Is that where they keep all of the bodies?
My kids, born in the mid to late 2000s, were among the last generation to see McDonald's as the fun place to eat. Just as they were outgrowing Playplaces and Happy Meals, the company was beginning to phase them out. I never liked McDonald's food, but I wouldn't trade those memories with the kids for anything.
Nah for real
As a person born in 2002 I can say that's true! I remember McDonald's from my childhood as a place where you could have lots of fun. The pace of phasing out of the children marketing was lined up with my growing up. It felt as if I've matured along with the restaurant.
I guess this happened with McDonald's worldwide, as here in Indonesia McDonald's are nowhere child-friendly as they used to be too. Yes, they are still frequented by families with children, but I pity those Gen-Alpha kids who never got a chance to enjoy the fun we Millenials once enjoyed.
😮 Your kids were born between 2050 and 2099??😢
Yeah this is the case for me born in 2003. I feel like it's a really unique time to grow up because I'm part of the last generation that had a childhood before the internet and social media was really as widespread as it is today. My sister, born in 2012 (so less than 10yrs apart from me) has had a completely different childhood and upbringing, and it's honestly fascinating how much has changed in such relatively little time.
I bet the "gang signs" in the slide were actually the Super S and other easy-to-draw things kids would write in the margins of their school work.
Underrated comment
Don't mess with the ABC crew.
😅😅😅😅😅😅😅 what up 90s kids😂😂😂
@@dabbasw31 Don't come by 123 territory, cuh.
Oh, absolutely
This feels like a form of hostile architecture against customers. Make the lobby bland and unappealing so people are in a hurry to get in and out. Give kids nothing to do so they get fussy and loud, and parents will feel pressured get them out of there faster. Conveniently discourages people from loitering, coming there to use wifi, bringing loud messy kids that might annoy other customers or create more work for the staff.
Yeah! The one by my house used to have a tv that had the news or something on and they removed it like a few years ago. Its like they are actively hating their own customers and want to die off.
That didn't even occur to me. That's a really good point.
Idk what your talking about. I remember when every McDonald's had to uncomfortable metal chairs that were bolted into the floor and hard plastic booths. And the restaurant was always dirty. Now it actually looks appealing and has comfortable furniture and the place is clean.
@@shcdemolisheromg ours did too on my break I’d sit in the lobby and watch some stupid day time tv to unwind and they took it out 😭
My nearest McD always has groups of teens loitering inside, especially during the cold season.
As a kid I found out that if I went to McDonald's down the block for my house during birthday parties, I would be able to crash them sometimes and get free burgers and cake if I just acted natural and acquainted myself with the other kids and most of the time the adults wouldn't even notice. Once they did notice I already ate my food and was hopping on my bike to head home😂
And this was back in the late 80s early 90s
you hamburgalur
@@JasonAdankgood work Jason
That is genius and I never thought of that lol despite living one block from a McDonald's growing up hahaha
@@andrewbatts7678 not that it makes a difference but in the olden days McDonald's toilets. The bathrooms were only accessible from the outside. The toilets would freeze their jingle went McDonald's golden arches in your neighborhood. My uncle nick redid it to McDonald's frozen toilets in your neighborhood. Then talked about cigars (links of poop) frozen In the toilet. People's pee pees were getting frostbite.
I think the bigger issue with this outside of McDonald's is that we don't really have fun spaces/things for kids anymore. At least not like it was back in the 80s and 90s. It's like kids today don't have their own "secret" spaces to be themselves and have fun without their parents. Like we had McDonald's, Nickelodeon, etc. Things that were not marketed to adults much at all that were ONLY for us as kids. I think kids today need outlets like that for their own imagination/creativity and should be brought back for the next generation. Kids should not just be miniature adults or treated like accessories to their parents. They're individuals.
Agreed
Unfortunately that's not how things work legally children are considered property also in this era of heck (youtube won't let me say he double hockey sticks) you either mature early or the world slaps you in the face when your older
I don't want it to be that way but...
That's life
Hmm
And you can’t just toss the kids outside like it’s the 70s because someone will call CPS on you 😂😢 I got to ride my bike all around the city stranger things style, visit restaurants, friends, libraries, the swimming hole. My kid tries that and he’s coming back with a cop 👮♀️ 😢
@@endcaps1917 Why couldn't you say "hell"? Was your comment removed because of it? 🤔
20:39 that lady seemed genuinely upset she wasn't able to throw a birthday party to your son Newton. Bless her heart lol
Poor Newton :(
She seemed sweet, hope she's doin' alright. 😊
@@LoveMyUnusualit's really sad but I heard she's not doing ok 😢
despite it's influence. the Super Size Me doc had it's own problems. like how the experiment has never been able to be replicated, how Sperlock didn't keep a log of his daily food intake, the fact that Sperlock was a raging alcoholic which probably did more harm to his body than eating McDonald's everyday, among other things.
I mean there are people that eat a big mac a day and they are the happiest MF I've seen.
I remember Fat Head got made to disprove Super Size Me
I used to eat McDonalds frequently. As a grown adult I’m normal weight. I also move around quite a bit. And I still eat McDonald’s at least once every month or so. Sometimes more frequently and sometimes less frequently. It averages to about once a month.
@@randomtinypotatocriedit’s still dubious imo
Maybe but it illustrates a argument that spoke to the cultural zeitgeist of "greater conscientousness" in the 1990's to "healthful self-concern" that predicated the "wild world of selfie-media" by 2020's. It was a place in time, and he fit perfectly as that month or season's cultural avatar.
Being a raging alcoholic out of public kind of validates my considering it this way
Quick story about the jungle gyms. I remember playing in one that had a rope like bridge at the top that you crawled through. When I looked at it, it was frayed with duct tape on it and I refused to go across it. When I got down my mom was like "Why wouldn't you go across the bridge? Were you too scared?" So I asked her "Who fixes the playground when it breaks" and she said "The workers" and I responded with "The workers that make the food?" and she said "I don't know, probably?" so yeah most parents just kinda blindy trusted logos back then.
You did well 😅
That's kinda terrifying tbh
Mum's just not thinking lol, obviously carpenters etc put the gyms together and someone else probably inspected them
And yet, if you'd injured yourself, she'd be the first one to screech up a storm and (I assume you're american) go contact a BillBoardLawyer for some bux.
@@yoza7359 Thats just it though, carpenters/tradesman definitely put it in and performed the initial maintenance, but once it was in there, I'm not sure if all the restaurants kept up with the maintenance, or if the staff just tried to do it themselves as a cost saving (judging by the duct tape, I'm thinking the latter)
@@hellacoorinna9995 ok? Stereotype much?
Kind of surprising that the main reason for the shift in this culture was only mentioned briefly as a side note: government regulation. Marketing fast food to children and developing “brand loyalty” in minors was heavily cracked down on in the early 2000’s to tackle rising child obesity and diabetes rates which forced fast food companies like McDonalds to change their child-centric marketing model since they were legally not allowed to do that anymore. It wasn’t a lightbulb moment for McDonald’s, they would have happily continued doing it had the regulations not stopped them.
I think the cause was definitely the Super Size Me film. I remembered how many people told me they'd never eat there again.
IMO, for me it was only about the milkshakes and ice cream.
Here's the thing: we can make it fun without simply marketing for kids. The fact that many idiots stigmatizes the idea of fun for adults is the reason why things are so ass backwards. McDonalds would unironically benefit from putting a go kart or a bunch of arcade cabinets but they won't because their profit margins are razor thin compare to their out of touch with fun CEO's bonuses
I don't recall any laws here in the U.S. that made it actually illegal for fast food companies to market to kids. You probably just read something off Facebook and took it as real.........and McDonald's also did the same.
No such law.
That turned out fine of course, children stopped consuming fast food and obesity isn't on the rise. The government always knows how to fix an issue.
We live in an age where kids aren't allowed to be kids because they are exposed to so much online way too early. But the thing is, where else are kids to go, what else are they to do? Go outside, where? The shopping mall that doesn't allow unsupervised teens? The park that got bulldozed for a parking lot? Or the small town designed for those with cars, making it impossible to walk anywhere without it taking 30+ mins? Kids are forced to grow up on the internet and not allowed to exist in real life. As much as I would love for kids to have time off of screens, parents don't have 24/7/365 to spend with their kids, and there isn't anywhere for kids to safely go nowadays.
In my town everything is overtaken by kids. Even the activities meant for adults, adults bring their kids and make it a kid event. It's really annoying as a 21 year old that just started being able to go to adult events
@@katc2040 But think about it this way, those kids are probably having fun, and getting a chance to have fun. And if you're a spiteful person, they'll probably grow up and be upset that kids are in their locations meant for adults.
@@katc2040 I never see kids and teens outside in my smalltown, on the weekends they congregate at some designated spots such as the school grounds and the closed down bath house parking lot other then that there is nothing for them to do and nowhere to go, a stark contrast growing up in the same town doing stuff every weekend with friends both as a kid and teen.
Sorry but I disagree
@@3182john You're disagreeing...with facts?
To put things into perspective, large number of current McDonalds employees probably don’t even remember / know that they ever had party rooms or hosted parties - they are too young to have experienced that.
in europe, it was i gues done, i think i once saw an other kid in mc donalds as 'birthday party' ,
but it seemed little more then some paper crown, and being shown behind in the kitchen for like 5 min tops..
i never saw e person dressed up as ronald mc donald, he was just a cartoon figure ,
the other the same, i saw then on paper i guess , mc donalds was simply : happy meal with toy, a playground, and that's about it.
also drive throughs,
we tend to call them drive in, even mc donalds here labels them drive in, but they are to pass a window and pick up the meal.
here that mean pick up to eat at home mostly..
eating in the car, some overworked people that have to drive around for work all day?
in city of 80.000 i know of ONE , single line Mc donalds drive throught, one burger king, and one VERY recently KFC i think, all have just one line :p ,
seems a huge difference to what i see in that video, but USA is extreme car centric ..
here eating in the car makes you feel
a) in a hurry
b) seem pittyfull, why not take at least a bench in a park or something
c) okay, it's really rainy, restaurant not plesant to sit, i'll guess we'll just have to eat in the car..
point is, it's always somewhat a negative choice in my head :). or just time saving, but then it's more logical to get a way healthier normal sandwich,
NOT american overly suggary sandwich bread with way to much fatty fillings ;-).
mm, why would obsetas be over double in the usa as in westen europe.. i wonder :).
thanks for making me feel old
@JeroenJA What was the point of your comment again? Or do you belong in the special camp of Europeans who have a fetish of trash-talking Americans? I'm so confused cause we, Americans, don't bad-mouth Europeans. But your kind, always has something bad to say. Jealous much?
They still have the party room at maccas in my town.
I’d argue it’s a different angle entirely. I don’t see many teens working at McDonald’s anymore because automation is taking entry level job opportunities away from teens next to grown adults who take up all the serious jobs in the back, so most are left to find work elsewhere.
What you’re probably dealing with are the few teens that do make it in, or just bored adults who couldn’t be bothered to try to remember… You just don’t see low-stakes workplaces being run by teens anymore, it’s almost all washed up adults and I’m not trying to insult anyone that’s grown who relies on a fast food job to get by I’m just saying they’re taking simple jobs away from teens.
More than ten years later, I am still depressed over the fact that my local Dairy Queen removed their outdoor patio tables with the permanent umbrellas and literally replaced them with nothing. There is just a ginormous concrete slab with no shade and no seating. How am I supposed to eat my Dilly Bar outside on a sunny day, when there's just a concrete Sahara desert? 😢
They removed our outdoor patio with the umbrellas too, I liked those!! :(
In your car like an adult I would suppose. Park somewhere with a nice view
@@Niiiiithweird vibes
Somewhere else. Get your shit and leave. You're loitering.
@@Niiiiithadults aren’t allowed to sit outside?
Up until now, I didn’t think it was possible to have 2nd hand embarrassment for a company. But damnit that “virtual birthday party” segment had me feeling a certain type of way.
I think the way a lot of things were handled during "The Big Sick" will become increasingly embarrassing in hindsight.
Everything uniquelly american is being destroyed.
Same
@@nicholasstauffer5830Well, nothing is perfect the first time you do it. Messi probably missed his first shot kicking a ball.
I can imagine out of all places for your birthday picking this world be the worst thing imaginable
The confusion in the last woman's voice when you asked if they did birthday parties haha. That's crazy how there's people who don't remember those being a thing at McDonalds now.
This leaves out an important fact. In the 1960's, McDonalds, while not exactly struggling, was not the juggernaut that they would eventually become. They got a hold of a study that showed that in a vast majority of cases, it was the child who would decide where to go out to eat. They then began aggressively marketing to children. It paid off and McDonalds became the top fast-food chain in America. Eventually those kids all grew up and began taking their own kids, so the marketing model eventually became obsolete and unneeded. The damage was already done, so to speak. They now focus on keeping older customers who might be less inclined to see a Big Mac as a suitable meal.
Yuuuup
Is there a book on this phenomenon? The “generational marketing” as it were
Every company targets kids first. That's the whole point of Disney Television, kids candies, and young artists. You follow these audiences throughout their lives.
Brilliantly explained, dude. If I’d had you as a teacher in HS I might’ve done better!
So McDonald's is the result of spoiled little Boomers bossing the Greatest Generation about where to eat.
"They shall want for nothing."
I think a big part of the shift away from children's marketing is reflective of major socioeconomic issues within the last two decades. Birthrates are on the decline, food is much more expensive than it used to be, and families today have less disposable income to spend on fast food than they did 20 years ago. Childless adults on the other hand have more disposable income which is why they are being marketed to more and why stores and menus have been redesigned to better reflect their tastes.
That is a good point.
Agreed
That's the thing most people seemingly forget when talking about this stuff and you hit the nail right on the head
That’s so strange, this corporate chameleon camouflaged to align with the generation.
The most important aspect is the leadership, what will they do with this power to feed so many. I suspect the food is poison to us. Such a sick thought.
Only teenagers, the obese, the nostalgic, and the “kidults” eat at McDonalds these days.
As a teen right now, I'm stuck in the strange place where things like mcdonalds play places, chuck e cheeses, and even mall arcades were at their prime when I was too young (and too poor) to go to them. Now that I'm older and my family is better off all of those things are being phased out. I remember seeing commercials for them on TV and being so excited for when I could finally go- only to end up in a place where I can but they are no longer there. It's the depressing feeling of being promised something wonderful only to be told it doesn't exist anymore. Ignorance is bliss and I, unfortunately, never got to have the ignorance that the world was always an unfriendly place for kids and teens.
I still turn into a kid at Round1 but that's really for the rhythm games.
Get used to that because it’s gonna happen at least 1 more time on the adult end.
exactly, we were promised these fun and colorful things in the future yet its being taken away from us. It's really sad.
tbh you didn't miss much. I've been to all of them as a kid, but never really cared for any of them except for mall arcades. play places and chuck e cheeses got boring super quick when I was little. mall arcades were only places really worth going back to once I became a teen.
I don't need to hear about how you have money now, pal
There are no third spaces for americans anymore. Not for children, teens, or adults. Very few places are left, and most are incredibly expensive.
Support your local library, then. Mine frequently does events for children, teens, and adults
I think already in the 2000s, some Mickey Ds limited the times for their patrons to a little than 30 minutes. Most Mickey Ds look so ran downish, that you do not want to spend much time.
Sadly, I feel like we live in an age where kids aren’t even allowed to be kids anymore. With phones and tablets and pretty much unsupervised access to the internet, children these days are growing up faster than kids my age did, and I’m only 25 lol.
This is very true. Kids are seeing things online that they shouldn't be exposed to such as sexual content, violence, etc. When we were little, most of that was relegated to cable ironically.
They are not growing up faster. Compare how kids the same age look today versus how they looked 40-50 years ago. They look way more immature now than they did then.
@@cas2985 that’s not the point lol I’m not speaking on looks, I’m speaking on the fact that teenaged girls wear full faces of makeup now, have their nails done like grown women, parents are dressing their toddlers like little mini adults… Kids these days may look like children still, that’s the point because they _are_ children, but they don’t *act* like children anymore. Sure, those old ass looking kids back in the 70’s may have looked mature, but they probably played and acted like children. Kids don’t play outside anymore, they don’t watch cartoons, they’re not allowed to be innocent anymore. In this day and age of technology, most kids mirror what they see on UA-cam and TikTok.
we live in an age where parents are the kids friends and give there kids phones. I'm sure they do not buy them thereselves. my kid doesn't have a phone. All starts with the parent. raise your child and don't rely on society and McDonald's
@@Ziko577crazy. all these kids out here paying for there own internet so young and buying there own devices to get online . Wild. Back when I was little my parents bought me things because i didn't work.
I think part of the minimalism thing is to make the restaurants easier to clean and feel more sanitary. Play places feel nasty, making adults maybe not want to eat there.
Yeah bad odor from rotten pieces of food in the playground and plus kids are loud and annoying.
Probably while some parents appreciate the playgrounds at McDonalds to allow their kids to blow off steam, other parents just won't let their kids use it because they are probably never cleaned and if your child gets scared it's nearly impossible for an adult to get in and retrieve the kid.
It's also just about staying up to date, McDonalds resturants were starting to look incredibly outdated and ugly so they needed a face lift.
@hedgehog3180, ironically, nowadays, they look like every other restaurant out there with their bland, grey, and rectangular designs
This reminds me of the thesis someone wrote about how society has essentially shifted towards a hostile environment against kids. Its way too long to summarize properly but it essentially reaches the consequence of there being no room for any sense of childhood for future youths.
Future children will grow up in drab, colorless neighborhoods, schools, and public spaces where it almost seems like being a playful child is discouraged, and instead life as they know it is something they just don’t understand yet because they’re kids. Then as teenagers, the lack of carefree, low stakes work available forces them to consider more serious careers for money early on as teenagers, priming them earlier on for the kind of serious, no-nonsense working class future the rest of their life will be. All the while the only concepts of fun that seem to have been validated for them are adult ones. Drama, substances, sensuality, materialism, all of these things are normalized and the kids of the future will be expected to pick out something they’ll “like to do” for the rest of their life. This in turn is what will cause the emergence of “little adults” instead of young adults. Kids acting, talking, dressing, and to the best of their ability, thinking like adults.
You can see the existence of little adults today even, where although kids seem to mind their own business away from adults, they find themselves involved in increasingly more and more adult situations on social media and the worst cases have 13 year olds almost looking like 20 year olds in how they dress and present themselves. It’s tragic as an early Zoomer to see the later half and younger generations turn out this way.
There are also less third places to hang out safely. Back in the 1980s, 90s and even early 2000s we still had safe good places to hang out and enjoy ourselves. I miss the 1990s arcades and race-o-rama places we had to just hang out, have pizza and coke, and then do some mini-golf, then Go-Cart, then play arcades, and then relax, and after 5 hrs go back home to play Mario cart with cousins and friends online or face-to-face... whole some good times. Now it is so nasty and boring. No where to be be or go. Even online gaming seems to be so dystopian and dull. I feel so bad for todays' kids who never had the chance the way we did... The economy isn't helping either. People can't afford to take kids to parks muchless to arcade places and such the way we did of old generations. More reason NOT to have kids... look how dull, boring, colorless, stiff and nasty the world is. I am 42 years old and I don't see the point, imagine a child living in a poverty nation lack of inspiration, goodness, color, and fun... my goodness. No thank you. I will not put any child through that, especially not my own. 🥺😪
Do you remember who it's by or what the name of the piece is? It seems very interesting to read.
@@tinkz2009 I’m actively trying to seek it out for my own college essay right now so I’ll have to get back to you on that…! I hope I do find it
for example, my elementary school used to have blue trims on the roof and green walls and yellow paint around the windows, so from the outside it looked like a fun place! But recently it got a paint job, and the entire building is painted gray now... like wtf
@@LadyCoyKoi How can you have arcades today when everyone has a computer at home? It's the same approach with food - eat out or cook at home. Of course cooking at home is much easier and cheaper.
Getting a Burger King ad in the middle of this video honestly felt diabolical
Such a Wendy's move
Taco Bell could never.
Honestly the same can be applied for Burger King - cool play places, the "Burger King Kids Club", the kids meals with Men In Black/Pokemon tie ins...
@@bluekewne to be fair, those Pokemon Burger King Kids Meals were awesome (except for those ones that were a choking hazard).
This opens up into a bigger discussion on how modernization and social media affect children in the long run. I feel that we are destroying the idea of being a child by taking away things that are to be perceived as “childish”. Don’t even get me started on TikTok and beige babies.
Little edit: The replies do a better job on expanding my point better than I could, thanks guys❤️
I’ve been thinking about this ever since I watched this video because it really makes you think and brings you into so many other topics
-the modernization/simplification of buildings, websites, etc
-cringe culture
-social media
-the media in general
And more I can’t think of atm. Ik there’s video essays on bits of this but I would LOVE to see one touching on everything. There’s lots of ways to go on about this and it leads to a way broader discussion that I believe we should absolutely be having.
Ding ding ding. You see the truth. Add this to the reality that corporations treat adults like children (can't curse, can't see adult things, can't talk about adult topics, etc) and you're beginning to see what 'childishness' has become in 2023+.
@@Vespyr_ the irony of adults being treated like children, and children needing to act like adults... I really wish we could kill cringe culture :( but then again that'd require kids not sharing everything online or having a safe space to do so. Cuz yes, there are, or at least there were safe places - TV programes and magazines where you could send in your short story or drawing and you felt so happy when it was featured, they never ridiculed anything... And yeah, I think that regulating adults everywhere is bullshit, we need to act like there could be a child seeing our content at any given time at any given place, just because parents don't bother to monitor their six years olds. Not my fault that little Johnny found my horror cartoon comics which had a huge adult content warning at the beginning but he ignored it and now he has nightmares...
What is “childishness,” but whatever we’ve defined it as, over the years? Not that I disagree with the idea that everything is just really freaking boring and sterile. I’d hate to try to raise a kid, nowadays.
@@Vespyr_This is just false.
Oppenheimer is one of the highest grossing movies this year. Almost a billion dollar for an R- rated biopic.
Baldurs Gate 3 is one of the most successful video games this year. Also R-rates with full nudity and plenty of gore.
Plenty of TV shows that are made for adults like The Last of Us, The Bear, House of the Dragon, The Boys, Gen V, Succession…
Same goes for animated shows for adults like Rick and Morty, Bojack, Invincible, Archer…
Maybe YOU are the problem. Stop consuming “childish” content. There are more content made for adults than ever. This “corporates treat me like a child” idea is silly. Nah, your taste is just childish.
"Manipulative Marketing" also known as "Marketing"
if youre cynical, maybe.....
@@2-Way_Intersection It's entirely realistic. I worked in market research, and this is how marketing/advertising is designed.
@@gamingweasel4633Even stuff like PSAs are trying to manipulate people. I don't get how people still don't get that for marketing
I don't know I feel if you really get manipulated by an add that's you not being smart enough to go no I'm not getting mcdonald's today
I don't know I feel if you really get manipulated by an add that's you not being smart enough to go no I'm not getting mcdonald's today
One thing that almost never gets brought up when discussing the removal of Ronald and co. from McDonald's marketing is that, around the same time questions were being raised about advertising to kids in general, questions were raised over the fact that the characters were also used by the Ronald McDonald House Charities, and how that might also be indirectly advertising McDonald's to children through charity work. A decision was made on whether to either retire Ronald from the charities or from McDonald's marketing, and they opted for the latter.
@@jennifermarlow.eating insects is against my religion and culture. Therefore forcing insects into my diet is against my constitutional rights
@@jennifermarlow. The food is absolutely delicious.
@@jadapinkett1656they don’t even give you tomatoes or lettuce on most of their burgers without charging extra 😑.
Seriously? I never heard that discussion. As a child with a chronic illness that's required multiple hospitalizations, Ronald McDonald house has always been a place of safety and calm. So what if it was advertising? Money from purchases helps to fund those houses.
@@jadapinkett1656 no it's fucking not lmfao
it tastes like depression and unknown medical conditions (but mostly the latter).
This is such a high quality, entertaining video. Like the editing, the script, the jokes, the research. Its all professional level.
One thing that I think is weird, is how the kids targeted in the 90s were the teens targeted later, and then the adults. Literally the gradual stripping away of child-friendly elements (i.e. maturing) practically follows a whole generation into their adult years. I guess they had to maintain some sort of loyalty?
Exactly. As if their core market is a specific generation and the company must adapt to their different phases in life.
TRUE
The "modernization" of McDonalds has made the dining room as boring as the kitchen. When I was a kid, I wanted to go to McDonalds to have a fun time. It wasn't until I was in high school that I realized how much I disliked the food.
McDonald's is great if you go to the right locations.
@@Geno2733 then none of the right locations have ever been close to me
@@Geno2733this is so true. Can’t stand the McDonald’s the street but the one up it got me through community college
People were always bitching that McDonalds was targeting kids. So now people got what they wanted. Plain buildings.
@@Geno2733translation: Higher than giraffe 🙀
I used to work at McDonalds and the “getting things done fast” mentality was toxic. Managers would clear orders from the board so the measured time it took to complete is as low as possible. Meaning that workers who had to get the orders ready and out needed to memorize every order and the number to it since an order marked as completed was now off the monitor. I was also told to go out into the rain to collect money from customers in drive through so the orders could be marked as finished faster.
That's trash
I personally don't comply if demands get too unreasonable. Managers need to be kept in check with reality too.
@@kymo6343 Managers do it because they don't want to get fired. Sure, the managers need a reality check, but the ones that really needs that are the executives!
One of my managers at Panera did this too! (he got fired eventually, not for that though.) It was annoying for the customer too because they'd get notified that the order was ready when really he just marked it that way to keep the average time per order down. Just a lose-lose for everyone but corporate and a sucky manager.
I hated my job at McDonalds. My manager did the same damn thing and I'm a guy that has a time remembering sequential information when there's a lot of it. He'd clear the board near the drive-through, so I didn't know what order was what. Thankfully, the more intelligent workers helped by organizing the orders on the table behind me, but there were still some instances where I almost handed out the wrong order.
When McDonald's first came to China, it was ridiculed for being "Too childlike" especially with their first parade there ever. This made little sense to their market due to the one child law, it made more sense to sell to the parents not the kids. I imagine McDonald's has shifted their marketing after lessons they learned overseas as well.
Oh my god it's the guy who makes funny videos about cars!
Wow, wise about cars and economy! Good to see you around.
I will say I remember enjoying the Playplace as a place where adults couldn't go, and it felt very secret and special. I feel bad for kids who don't get to experience that in some fashion. We also had stuff like tree houses, and tunnels in the snow. We don't even get enough snow here anymore for kids to be able to do that.
I was freaked out by the play places as a kid but I always wanted to build my own igloo and I loved making pillow forts and camping in my backyard from what I remember of it(memory loss got holes in my brain sorry lol)
Even if they smelt like piss.
It's true though. Kids need venues where they are (ultimately safe yet) free to explore and experience small thrills related to adventure and discovery. This will help them develop personal security as well as proper levels of attachment to parents. Without it, they may become too risk-adverse or timid as adults.
The Playplace really was an exclusive little world as a kid. It was a place where you'd interact with your friends and total strangers alike. Each group would occupy parts of the structure like little gangs and negotiate passage and changing territory while maximizing fun for everyone, all on our own. The code was unwritten and just understood. Each location had slightly different customs on "how to play on this thing" so that you get the best results while taking care of the equipment. Nobody even stole shoes. Not that nothing bad ever happened, but we somehow naturally pulled off anarchic hedonism at the same time as general peace and order. Makes me wonder if there are even any outlets for children these days to gain actual social skills by running their own little areas that aren't online video games. There were a LOT of places back in the day where a kid can go do this, but I don't know of any left.
Fast food places were a real treat as a kid from a lower income single mom. It was never a thing to be eaten every day, but when we went? Playplaces even a SNES lover like me would tire myself out on, genuinely neat little toys that found their way into my toy box for years to come.
It's a real bummer that general outrage, people not wanting to learn about nutrition, and a... pretty misleading campaign from a guy who knew the studies were off kicked off the end to all of that.
I especially pity the live people who still work at them as things get more uniform, faster, and generally sterilized. Fast food is brutal work, it grinds people down, the money is unlivable, and the customers don't see them as fully human most of the time.
They might as well use Ai to do the low-income jobs instead of the arts
@@KaminoKatie yes in a perfect world automation would be used to ease the burdens of the worker instead of simply removing them from the equation to skirt costs, but that isn't really possible in our system. Corporations and shareholders believe in nigh mythological, "infinite growth." That means that eventually every bit of suboptimal operation must be sliced away, until the thing itself no longer even has full functionality, because infinite growth means the money that's coming in just needs to go up and up and up, until growth or even function is no longer sustainable. At which point the company is stripped of any remaining assets, the people at the top all get a nice big parting check, and they move onto the next one.
@@rivetsquid8887 'infinite growth' comment absolutely nailed it
“Infinite Growth” aka Greed
@@rivetsquid8887It’s not that deep. Flipping burgers doesn’t require intelligence it requires fine motor skills. AI can’t flip a burger… yet. Burger flipping machines are too expensive. Therefore fast food workers ain’t going nowhere.
It feels like these companies' attempts at removing the human interaction from the experience is a deliberate move to avoid accountability. If there's no one to complain to when your order gets, inevitably, fucked up then they don't have to take any losses ever.
Good point. It also means they'll be run by machines and therefore they don't have to pay workers, so the people at the top get 100% of the profit
I think the bigger incentive is just cutting labor costs.
I'd believe it especially since it seems like when I order food on apps my orders get messed up so much more often
10 years ago my dad would make fun of me for going to mcdonalds as a teenager, he would say 'that place is for kids'. Well guess who goes to mcdonalds now because it's so classy... my dad.
In 2024 kids are a small demographic and boomers are as always, the biggest demographic and where the money is.....
It's classy...? Going to McDonald's is like meeting your depressed highschool friend who used to be the class clown.
Who the hell thinks McDonald's is classy?
@@HurricaneBady I was relating it back to the video, the dude was saying it's geared towards white collar worked
@@midorithefestivegardevoir6727 It's not classy, but the whole point of the video was about how they have changed the appearance of Mcdonalds to suck white collar workers in
Actually, there's still one location that hasn't changed at all, still has the videogame areas as well as all the old characters, play area, and the old theme! The kids love it and the fact that despite it being basically ancient but still adored by children today shows you that there could've been a compromise somewhere instead of outright getting rid of children.
Keep in mind the place I mentioned is still very popular for both parents and children alike
Edit: it's in Los Angeles, Southern California. Though I do have a suspicion that it may be taken down soon all things considered, bc y'know, it Cali?
For the longest time, my local McDonald's had a purposefully retro aesthetic, like a 60s diner with checkerboard tile flooring, red leather booth seating, bar stools, chrome accents, a jukebox, and shiny white countertops. It never had a playplace, but considering it was right next to a high school, it never needed one. I loved going in there, just for the atmosphere. It was kind of like an In-N-Out Burger, but better. Then they had to modernize. Now they're like a Starbucks, and everything that made the location unique is gone. Change is not always bad, and some old styles definitely needed to go away, like shag carpet or dark orange tinted window glass. But that 60s diner look was timeless and classic.
Where is it?
There all franchises so they can do what they want as long as they pay the royalties to McDonald's corporation
you can't just mention a location and not actually drop a location. this is the absolutely most evil gatekeeping i've seen this week yet
@@Blaze5857 Its probably for privacy reasons.
I got a happy meal a week or two ago for nostalgia's sake, and the 'toy' that was listed on my receipt was a cardboard image of a pokemon. Not a card, just like a weird cardboard octagon thing. I feel bad for kids these days. IVe heard them say its to phase out plastic toys for environmental reasons but it seems more like a copout to me.
It totally is, if they really wanted to do that, the toy would have been a legit Pokemom card.
But they still have plastic straws? You can resell mcdonalds toys.
. Weren't theyre suppose to phase the straws soon, a lot of food companies started not including them, unavailable. had to bring a reusable straw. To one food franchise since my front teeth are sensitive
@@viviangarcia5696 some places are trying to go to paper straws.
Here in Aus plastic straws are banned we only get paper straws
There was something so special about 90s McDonald's. The character spinny chairs, the happy meal toys, the video game cabinets that never worked, the playplace.
The unhealthy addictive food that caused millions of obesity related ☠ .
Not everything in the 90s was good. Homemade meals with whole ingredients are a good 90s think, not evil Big Corporations!
@@CordeliaWagnerNo Fun Allowed!
@@CordeliaWagner "That's wrongthink!" is all I get from your comment. Bro, please just stop. The 90s had some of the best economies we ever had and the US died off after 2012. The obesity related deaths are from people who didn't know better and would gouge on that garbage. If "no fun allowed" was a person it'd probably be you.
@@CordeliaWagnerlol it's not McDonald's fault for causing obesity, nobody is forcing those people to eat there, it's their choice if they want to eat fast food for every meal. Food is not addictive in any way, shape, or form because again, you CHOOSE to eat fast food, you're not going to die if you don't get your big Mac fix. Let's not dare to blame self control issues and living a sedentary lifestyle.
It sucks that people couldn’t play the game kiosks or didn’t know about them 😂 We still have two of the McDonald’s VHS tapes that had the mini movies! Me and my siblings still sing the songs from time to time 😂😂
I miss McDonalds from the 90’s to the early 2010’s.
The sad thing is that scientists and doctors have retrospectively picked apart "Supersize Me", exposing it as bad science, with no variable controls nor research standards. It was made out of malice to sensationalize McD as THE CAUSE of obesity in Americans at the time, which was completely unfair. The guy who made the film never published his food log, either, and it turned out that he was an alcoholic and much of his "health issues" during filming was him being hungover.
He probably wasn't sober, and he was probably going through withdraw or drank heavily the night before when he threw up in the documentary
true
I staunchly maintain that Spurlock was the one who firmly point McDonalds on this path.
A conman, and a complete liar. The moral of Supersize Me is the warning of the damage that moral do-gooders cause to our society.
There definitely is still room for experiences like this. I recently visited a kid-friendly arcade that opened only half a year ago (this is in the PNW, but not Seattle), and not only was it pretty well-visited, it had a party room _and_ was successful enough that it was in the process of expanding, with the expansion to include a full restaurant.
The problem was that, for corporations, this market wasn't _growing_ anymore, and corporations grow or die.
Wrong. Endless growth isn't possible and the socalled laws of the market are total BS.
Yall are both right. So many corporations went bankrupt trying to chase the myth of endless growth by cutting corners on seemingly trivial things that added up in the long run
@@CordeliaWagner Endless growth being impossible should be obvious to anyone so I didn't bother to point it out explicitly - but yes, you are absolutely right, on all points.
in my city all the local and even the regular chains meant for children are getting close down and it’s so frustrating like what are children going to do 😭like yeah parks meusems whatever blah blah but like for birthday parties for little treats out
Good there are some who still market fun childfriendly experiencies, it's specially difficult to find anything that isn't too expensive.
I just watched this video while having a McDonalds lunch on my break. Yes I work there and this video is super true. I even asked a manager afterwards if we do bday parties and she said no. We still have a play place but it’s closed. A manager said it’ll be reopened soon but idk. The drive thru is also way more crowded then the lobby. Great video! Learned a lot. Especially the toys cause I was literally wondering a few days ago why the toys became worse. It’s understandable why they’re doing all this but it’s also sad. You put it best when you said death of fun. The world is losing all joy.
Technically joy is only for the rich. You on the other hand will have nothing and like it. Get back to work.
Seriously though, it does feel like this.
I like McDonalds but won't deny their advertising could really be cass sometimes. In the early 2010's the UK branch did an ill advised ad where a kid trying to learn about his dead dad from mum finds out he's not got much in common with him....other than they both love Fillet of Fish and always get the tartar sauce on their mouths.
Like you can tell execs were like "yessss relatable!" Without thought of capitalizing on a family's grief for flipping fish sandwiches
@@RebeccaGunn That is so incredibly fucking stupid and not surprising at all at the same time. 🤦🏻♂
Overcrowded drive-thrus are really annoying and I hate how my family won't even entertain the idea of dining in outside of special occasions. It's quicker, food is more fresh and honestly way more fun.
I think after like 2010 everyone just went insane and most places became more sterile looking to soothe psychotic parent's worries
Yea blame it on the parents and not the childless marketing teams
@@maximos905 It's both. Y'all need to stop letting parents off the hook and coddling them all the time. Weirdo parents are the reason why McDonalds changed in the first place. They're catering to the desire of the people so they can make more money. If parents in the 2000s and 2010s weren't so bitchy about McDonalds appealing to kids and letting kids have something for them FOR ONCE, McDonalds would've been just as kid oriented as before.
@@maximos905It was partly psychotic parents. Look at the woman who went across the country to test all of those McDonald’s for bacteria.
@elizrebezilmadommdo1662 lol nothing you are saying makes an oz of sense 🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@rich2583I’m pretty sure I could understand what he meant off an oz of weed
That McVirtual Bday party bit was freakin hilarious 😂
I am honestly amazed that Super Size Me had as big of an impact on McDonald's as it did. I was born in the 90s and I knew how unhealthy McDonald's was before then lol. Like did people not know that super size fries weren't good for health?
It’s one thing to “know” something, it’s another to see it.
@@wasp165 I mean also the guy sensationalized it like crazy, he went waaaay over the serving sizes for everything and pushed the numbers to the max. It was less about getting the truth out and more making a big hit shock documentary which would put his name on the map. Which he succeeded in.
Supersize Me just reinforced and refreshed the nutrition nannies screed from 15ish years earlier. 88/89 IIRC it might have been the first shot by Center For Science In The Public Interest at McDonald's in particular and fast food in general. McDonald's dropped the beef tallow for the fries,dumped the soft serve ice cream for low fat frogurt as well as some other things that 35ish years has made me forget that were done to yield to the busy bodies and just about every other fast food chain went to at the time ( unfortunately several chains attempts caused drop off in sales because the healthier alternatives actually tasted like crap).
Additionally I'm sure a lot of the progressing changes in McDonald's probably had to do with trying to get off CFSITPI's radar as every report they issued claiming Chinese food or movie popcorn or whatever as near instant heart attack threat the " lethal levels of fat,salt,etc was given in equivalent number of Big Macs.
@@rottytherottski522
He also very conveniently didn't really mention that he'd been vegan for a couple years before doing the "documentary." Ofc suddenly reintroducing meat into his diet was going to make him sick as hell.
@@ursfan Didn't he also conveniently didn't mention he was an alcoholic during the documentary and blamed his poor liver function on the Mcdonald's instead?
As a kid growing up in 2007 I've seen a mix of the old and the new. My favorite mcdonalds was in the near city with the playplace going all around the store, I would wave at cashiers, wave at people eating and have the time of my life. I'm sad to see them go.
Yo I saw one like that in DC 2 story McDonald’s the second floor and the sides of the build were all a kids area
my favorite mcdonalds was one in a walmart that had a bunch of retro horror movie posters and even a costume. I also liked the 50s diner one with a working jukebox and that other one that had a mini train that went around the whole building.
Mc Donalds went from "Kid Friendly and Fun" to "Depressed 40y old just going for a Coffe"
Edit: oh damn ty for all the Likes!.
Read some of the Comments. Mixxed Opinions still all Valid, some are just older some are younger, hope every1 still has a good day! Head´s Up ppl
Ps: dont forget to Sub, dude put some effort into it
stolen very nicely
Stolen very nicely
@@ImYourHucklebery117 ?
Or a Covfefe
It’s all this modern futuristic crap & the fact technology is low key taking up space for most kids in America. After covid things became colder and less social
The amount of times they showed “super size me” doc in school was crazy I swear I basically knew the doc word for word
and it was a lie too bc that guy had alcoholism induced liver damage smh
@@sltwtr806vegan, too. suddenly eating meat again can make your tummy flip. as can any massive shift in diet
Yep, nothing but propaganda.
I remember our local McDonald's had an entire floor dedicated to kids parties. The bottom floor was normal (still bright colours) with a few booths for eating in. But upstairs was a play area, tables and chairs shaped like characters, the staff came out and performed and played games, you got a party bag to take home. We were too poor to have one of those parties (or to regularly go to Maccy Ds) so I had to wait for a richer kid to have a birthday and hope they had the kind of parent that made them invite the entire class.
I remember one of the most bizarre things for me post lockdown was going to the same McDonald’s that had always been near where I live and seeing that you order and pay into a screen, instead of telling the cashier what you want and paying them.
It just feels odd having the only human interaction as getting handed the food and saying thanks. Only a matter of time before they find a way to completely automate the entire restaurant and in the process kill millions of jobs.
Did it get your order correct? A McDonald's near me automated the drive thru and somehow got my order wrong. Even when automated, it is the same poor standard of service.
@@robertnewland8358 I don’t go there often, but yeah it’s gotten my order right every time I can remember.
The Taco Bell ordering machines are another story though, those get my order wrong like 80% of the time lol
>Only a matter of time before they find a way to completely automate the entire restaurant and in the process kill millions of jobs.
Thanks to people pushing for a $15 MW, McDonalds has an even bigger incentive to push for automation. Because people do not seem to realize that low-skill work is easy to automate, and the only thing holding them back is that its cheaper and less maintenance-intensive to hire people than it is to buy and maintain machines.
You know, until now.
@@robertnewland8358that’s because humans are still putting the orders together. They are working on getting people use to not seeing people in store first. Eventually their won’t be any people either. They already have a robot that can drop fries. Theirs not too many jobs artificial intelligence can do. Universal basic income is coming sadly
companies have been wishing for full automation of random min wage jobs like that for eons now, and on the surface it sounds positive - no more abusive customers or dealing with any of the usual min wage bullshit - but then you have to deal with the issue of "wait, where will everyone go?"
when there's no more unskilled jobs left, all there is is skilled labour - but the economy just isn't designed around that (nor can it be easily changed).
i think that's the main reason it hasn't happened yet. The tech has been around for at least a few years now (i think some places are even doing test runs of fully automated restaurants/stores/etc.), so the societal pushback of firing millions of workers is kind of the only "obstacle" left.
at 13:50 when you referred to 2023 as "the 20's" gave me such a weird feeling, like I don't think I've ever thought of the fact we're technically in the 20's. Maybe I'm just too high
Maybe you’re not high _enough_ 😉
That shit blew me.
We’re in the roaring 20’s. Again.
@@giggs-chan2004More like the sighing 20's, everything needs to change but nobody knows where or how to start because we're all either burnt out or working 🥂😪
I think about this all the time like wait I’m in my 20s 🥺
In Australia outside of the CBD of major cities McDonald's locations are mostly on highways, most people Aus will use a McDonald's as their break on a road trip but would rarely go to one any other time.
When I worked at McDonald's, I got yelled at by a couple who wanted a party for their kid, but got mad when I told them that we didn't do parties and haven't done them in a long time.
I also got yelled at for corporate discontinuing items, raising prices, wait times, adding items, dirty bathrooms, the frappe machine being cleaned...
real felt all of this in bones I got yelled at by an old lady because she was yelling at a new person and I took her order instead and I was like girl wtf😭😭
Yupp I work there now, it's ridiculous... when something doesn't work it's our faults🤦🏾♀️, prices are up our faults as well... like we own the place.... our oj machine hasn't been working, the lady in the drive thru says she should get a discount for the inconvenience 🤦🏾♀️ like just wow... I will never understand it...
did you have to clean the playplace after a kid had explosive diarrhea in the ballpit?
Working fast food sucks. You get the nice ones every so often, but more times than not you get the people who are looking for a reason to be mad or who attack you for something out of your control.
It seems that there are fewer and fewer places for kids to socialize with each other and to play every year, for a lot of parents with low incomes McDonald’s and places like it also served as a very inexpensive way to entertain your children. I feel bad for the next generation of kids. Also I highly doubt the health concerns at McDonald’s play places were all that much worse then what would be at a normal park, I’d certainly say anecdotally that I’ve seen way more gang sign graffiti at my local parks then I ever saw at McDonald’s, and many other unsavory things at that...
Capitalism ensures that any space for people to gather must be utilized to make a profit. Parks and activity centers don't fit into the vision of capitalism. Even a McDonald's play place is an example of profiting at any cost.
I never went to McD as a kid and I turned out just fine. My parents played with me or I had my PS2 and toys. I didn't need to be taken anywhere to "be entertained". I made my own entertainment. Then again, McD's here in Croatia had less "play" stuff, and I am a disabled person, but point stands.
As a person who did grow up with McDonalds playplaces, I don't consider my early induction into fast food a good thing. It would be different if you went there just to play but making parents, especially poor parents, feel safe taking their kids there was just a dangle cord of bait to sell bad food that while cheap, was still a markup on even cheaper ingredients. And to delude kids into obsessions over cheap not-worth-it toys. If anything the 'cheap' price of a happy meal was a bad thing. My mom, who I don't blame, exhausted single mother that she was, I know saw it as a net benefit that she could buy me a meal and let me run around for a bit before home and homework. But my alternative would have been what? a quick sandwich at home and probably better ingredients. And running around outside with the neighborhood kids for a bit. I think that would have been fine.
Ok then explain the multi million dollar skate parks being created all over TBE place
@@soulsphere9242 Capitalism expands until people no longer are able to pay. Socialization in public spaces should be free. Period. Your bootlicker system doesn’t and hasn’t worked since people lived in communities of five hundred or less individuals.
Anybody ever think about how Ronald, despite being a clown, actually looks VERY FRIENDLY? Like, a lot of kids can be scared of clowns, but I never hear anybody say they’re scared of Ronald McDonald.
I am scared of Ronald McDonald
@@ToyInsanity if you're like unironically scared of ronald ur just a wuss bro i was literally scared of images of mokey mouse when i was younger (yes, MOKEY mouse) yet ronald was still my favorite mascot and still is like ever
fun fact i met the REAL!!!! ronald mcdonald at my pre-k when i was like 4 and he was doing a speech or something idk i forgot but he was there
What do you mean despite? Clowns are supposed to be friendly/funny it's fairly recently they were turned into horror icons
I remember being at a birthday party when I was younger and Ronald McDonald told me he was going to take my mom (as his own) and he freaked me out for many years after wards
That's a normal clown. Lol. Its more funny that clowns have been so discriminated against and demonized in todays society they they forgot clowns just wanna make folks smile
Been working in advertising my entire career; so glad I discovered this channel!
The books at mcdonalds is honestly one of the only good things theyve done. Some kids get so excited over books! But there should def be a toy option for kids who have books and no toys
I agree! I love books now and I did when I was little. I developed my love and respect for books from my mother ❤
no
Books are great, but pit time and effort into making them - not just the crappy thin paper that wont last.
And ffs no more cardboard toys or "scan this QR code to play on an app!"
They need boy toys
I doubt there is a child anywhere i this world who eats at McDonalds and has more books than toys.
It wasn’t until I had my son (now 4yrs) that I realized how the world had become so unfriendly to parents. It’s actually kinda depressing :,)
I'm sad now... Hopefully things will get better in the future
@@DonutDothatit won’t
@@tikifreaky5204 lmfao I used to pull that kinda stuff.
We can make things if we try, I've seen evidence of that already.
I remember back when we lived in Maine in 2005 till 2012. Everything used to be so family friendly everywhere we go and never had any problems. I had my mom and dad me in my high school years and a sister under 5 years old at the time and we could go anywhere anytime and eat our food and always had a great time. Fast forward today and it feels so unfriendly to everyone everywhere and going out just feels like you’re gonna get busted by the police or deal with Karen’s. When I used to bartend at restaurants, there were barely any people coming over having drinks anymore, and I wasn’t making money like I used to it’s a little overwhelming and America is starting to look like a Third World country.
@@slurpwis that’s why I plan to be leaving this country and went from being the American dream to an American nightmare
I'm amazed she found rotting food in the crevices of the play place because I was under the assumption McDonald's food cannot rot.
Where did you get that notion? Did their advertising off-hand claim that?
@@jamesstanley792 Do you like, work for McDonald's or something? Their "food" is absolute garbage. I made a joke.
I think there are actually UA-cam time-lapse videos demonstrating that McDonalds food doesn't rot. It just sits there unchanged for months.
@@jamesstanley792 I mean it is also plausible that parents gave their kids outside food along with McDonald's.
Also, pretty sure the apple slices and milk can definitely rot.
@@ferociousgumby when mcdonalds food get old it dries out and mold doesn't really grow on food unless its moist
great video and what a shocking turn: these restaurants slowly close kids out from their target audiences (here, they were just lazy to check if the playground's state was still safe tbh) while game franchises and cartoons PUSH kid friendliness even on genres, like horror
The 80s and 90s was a great time to go McDonald's as a kid. Actually it felt like all of society was just different than and really pushed family oriented marketing and lots of fun Saturday morning kids shows, breakfast cereal with actual toys and then tons of toys.
*then, not than
There was a magic that began to die around 2008
@@nothanks9503 the magic probably was dead by then. I always just say the world changes from 2010 to 2012 because iPhone and other smart phones.
@@zombiedearth nah early smart phones was part of that magic it was when Facebook bought Instagram and Snapchat I think
Early 00's era wasn't bad either as a kid. I had a good childhood filled with Chicken Selects and PlayPlaces. Didn't care for the toys, but my friends did.
As a 90's baby, I remember being taken by my mom or friend's parents to Carl's Jr. There, they had amazing gym play places. We would even fight with these large cushion shapes and hit each other. It was so much fun, so much physical activity. I made a lot of friends that i never saw again. And it was outdoors. Good times.
@@jennifermarlow. Sadly the outdoors has become more hostile as time has gone; a vast majority of homes no longer have ready access to good natural settings. You have a street but people go 40+ mph down it, you have a park but junkies burn it down every other week, you can't have a bbq due to fire ordinances and or apartment rules stating you'll be evicted if you do due to liability risk.
"Go play outside" has become more and more unobtainable over the last 20 years; add to that the constant access to electronic escapism, nobody to fight these negative trends because everyone's heads are buried in sand, and it becomes more and more of a positive feedback loop over time.
I grew up butt-naked playing in mud, climbing trees, helping my parents garden, catching frogs and snakes, eating wild fruit I knew how to identify in the area around my childhood home. I got in fights, fell asleep in tall grass, and stayed inside for a week or so when we got reports of a cougar sighting in the area; I loved that childhood.
The modern childhood is unrecognizable to me.
In the Netherlands there is a law where you can't use popular children's brands or ip's (like disney or dc comics) to advertise fast-food or desserts. They made this to combat child obesity. As a result, happy meals are getting next to no marketing nowadays. The marketing for Mcdonalds shifted from a place where kids could have fun time to a place where (young) adults can hang
Sad, but that's what we did Raise a generation of cynicism.
@@ChristopherSobieniakyes it's very sad. Nowadays I barely see any children in my local McDonald's. Even on tv all of McDonald's ads are marketed for (young) adults. Some of them are nice (for example they had one with a deaf character and another one with a lesbian couple) but most of the time it's giving "how do you do fellow kids" energy
@@krystallights1325 See, that's how I feel. Nothing's really for me anymore. I aged out of what is considered the demographic they are going for now.
No way there's such a law. I'm from The Netherlands and in the past year or two Happy Meals contained toys from Pokemon, Batman, Minions, Mario and Kung-Fu Panda.
@@Putper Good!
people in the UK would be utterly shocked to see that McDonald's second floor isn't ALWAYS closed for cleaning in the Philippines. in fact, both the first and second floors are LOADED with people! families coming in to have lunch/dinner, friends of all ages just looking for a quick bite, it's extremely wholesome.... just don't expect the service to be as fast lol
I would be utterly shocked to see a McDonald's with a second floor.
there's a 2nd floor in the McDonald's here in Cancun too! I've never seen that before.
McDonald’s in the Philippines still has parties at least I can confirm since I live in the Philippines and the last birthday party I went to at McDonald’s the wet floor sign was just meant as a “there’s a child’s birthday party” on the second floor
It’s not closed for cleaning it just means there’s no space on the second floor and some child’s having a birthday
I'll be moving to the Philippines in the future. The West is finished.
@@simpleanswer8954 Come to London and you will see one with three floors.
1) I loved play places as a kid! Good memories that kinda feel like fever dreams to be honest.
2) legit any public place is going to be covered in some nasty bacteria. imagine if she knew how many germs were on her phone screen.
Maybe the world really does become less and less colorful as you age. As a kid everything felt more colorful and happy because I didn’t see the real world. But then as you get older reality sets in and you realize the cruel world we live in.
@@therealspeedwagon1451 I think thats true to a point.. but at the same time, it really WAS more colorful back then..... McDonalds, Blockbuster.....
The outside of mcdonalds now, and even some elementary schools just looks like a prison.
I'm a teen myself, I haven[t experienced nor seem any of these past ideas and concept for kids and even how children acted like in general but I hate how people act in the modern times. None of what i've seen nowadays is fun, everything is just the same and it honestly sucks. Hearing that The Philippines still do birthday parties (my home country) actually makes me more happy that i'm born a Filipino.
I'm sad that you weren't able to experience the good days I'm not a fan of the modern decor of their buildings too
@@thedarkforce9596 I was referring to everything nowadays but yeah, sucks I never played there
Things suck rn, the places, the people, all of it has a connection, feel glad that you're able to recognise it, because recognising it is the first step towards moving things in a better direction.
@@DonutDothat Very well said. We have to take notice and see the changes before we shift things in a better direction.
As a first time viewer, I love the attention to detail, like the 2003 Viewsonic monitor and the GTA San Andreas startup sound. 💯
_Wolfgang and Renato_ 😂
I went with a friend to get McDonald's this February and I am simply never going back. As weird as it sounds, the complete lack of atmosphere in the establishment made the experience so much worse. Without the feeling of indulging in "hedonism with a safety net", now it just feels like you're eating a fat, greasy pile of sodium and carbs with some spiked sugar to wash it down. No thanks.
15:08 As much as I loved the McPlay Place as a kid, as a teen who worked for Mcdonalds, they would literally have staff climb into those tubes to clean them. Because I was on the small side of employees I was often told to do go in and clean up kid leftovers and one time vomit. We did not get paid extra for this btw.
Yeah if that was ever gonna be a thing it should’ve been well paid professionals doing it, not teens.
They got rid of nearly every play center I've ever gone to. All 12 places I know are now gone and I can't exactly remember when they started turning all the colors into grey bland ones but I think the saddest part is that they used to have a boy and girl happy meal with creative collabs. Now it's just basic movie promotions.
Or some basic promotion to cash grab geeks, like the constant collabs with pokemon for instance.
Seems the 2010’s really overdosed on bland office style.
Check any of the major logo changes from the 2000’s to the 2010’s. Cactus Club and Pepsi are 2 major ones.
Thank goodness Coca Cola never lost their classic logo
@@Thomasmemoryscentral Pepsi brought theirs back
Behold your future now come present and revel in it. You get no flying cars, just gender neutral happy meal toys.
there has been a bit of a trend of retro style redesigns, not just Pepsi, but Pizza Hut and Burger King as well. maybe this bland aesthetic is finally getting pushback.@@himikotoga4270
In the Philippines, aside from birthday parties, in-store dine ins are pretty much alive. It is hard to afford a car here thanks to our measly salary. If everyone could afford a car, we'd suffer from heavy traffic. I don't see any of our McDonalds turning themselves car-centric anytime soon.
Even with the jeepneys and trikes, traffic already is pretty bad in the Philippines.
EDSA comes to mind.
It's so interesting to me that the dine in locations are going away AGAIN. When I was a kid, every taco bell in my town had no indoor dining. A couple of tables outside, that was it. Suddenly every single one remodeled to have indoor dining. A few other chains added indoor dining that didn't have them before. Now it's totally reversed.
they build new locations with smaller dinning rooms, most use the drive through
Has anyone else noticed Taco Bell's seem to be fewer and fewer? Or is it just me? Most of the ones I've seen in recent years are merged with KFC, and KFC appears to be going extinct from what I've seen in recent years. If they're not with a Taco Bell, most have been replaced with a Mary Brown's or Popeyes.
Worked at a Burger King in the late 90's... had a concerned parent come to the counter and complain her kid was in hysterics as they saw a "dead hamburger" in the playground. So i was volunteered to crawl through the whole thing to find a.piece of half-eaten hamburger sandwich.
the image of this is hilarious 😭 underrated comment
Dead Hamburger is hilarious, thank you
I think that McDonald’s toys definitely peaked during my early childhood (2007-2013), in particular, the movie toy lines. A lot of the toys had awesome gimmicks, and some of the toys in certain sets were literal full-sized action figures (Shrek, Po, Tai-Lung, etc)! Nowadays, they look like thimbles!
You should have seen the toys just before your early childhood. My friend had the full collection of animatronic wind up bath vehicles for each of the McDonalds cast.
You should have seen the early-2000s toys. I remember getting the Pokemon toys in 1997, as the first one I remember.
@@JackieOwl94 Oh yeah! The McDonald’s toys honestly had their peak from the late 90’s to the early 2010’s! Think about it, you will never see a more detailed and big toy such as Po from Kung Fu Panda, or Shrek from Shrek the Third, or even Sulley from Monsters INC again!
Sorry kiddo but your toys were just as shabby
Burger king went the hardest imo but both are decent quality. Toy affordability has gone way down hill, they have to focus more on collectors because parents just dont have the money ours did. You can really see the child poverty in what our toys look like. We have gotten to the point that we, America, get the ghetto versions of japanese toys like transformers and power rangers. Japan gets the fancy stuff. USA fell off
Game cube boxes did exist, the one at my McDonald's was like hacked by McDonald's to vut you off, it was very annoying for years you could only play half a game and then it would crash or say something about how you have played as long as the game would allow. And when your half way through a game of super smash baseball, it'd force a rage.
"Turns out customers weren't just an amorphous blob of mouths and money!"
That won't stop McDonald's from treating them as such, though.
the amorphous blob part describes any customers that eat too much Mcdonald's
What a handsome boy!
most of their customers are
"from waffle time to slow start everywhere i see his face"
McDonald's customers are just cattle.
As a 25 year old who grew up poor in a small town, McDonald’s was the only special treat/outing I had as a kid. It’s sad to see how things have changed but to be fair, even as a kid I thought the play places were kinda gross. I was mainly focused on happy meals- those toys used to be awesome, especially as a kid who didn’t get a ton of toys
As a kid from the 90’s the holy trinity for Birthday Parties were Mcdonalds, Chuck-E-Cheese and literally any Bowling Alley. So to see that all 3 are basically dying is a clear signifier that Fun is dead. These are the new Dark Ages. Where Brutalism is king and Colors are against the law.
We still have our kids birthday parties at the bowling alley.😂
Fun isn't dead. Plenty of bowling alleys have frequent customers and I've been in a bowling league for a while now w hundreds of players throughout the week ... But that's in Houston though idk what smaller towns look like.. the other reason is these kids don't find anything entertaining unless it's hypebeast, trending or supported by their favorite influencers
Umm yeah i have kids and mcdonlads sucks compared to the new birthday places. Skyzone, urban air and incesible pizza factory. There are giant obstacle courses, go carts, mini roller coasters, ziplones and trampolines.
@@michaelparrott7142Skyzone is awesome, lots of fun, wish their food as a bit cheaper though haha
Idk where you live, but Bowling alleys are still going strong. There's like... 5 of them in 10 miles of each other where I live. But that's probably becuase there's nothing else to do in my town.
16:05 I remember back in like 2006 there was a dookie on the end of a slide in the playplace. What a time.
About the crappy toys, one of the effects of super size me phenomena was actually Disney dropping support for the company and stopping them from licensing their characters for toys in 2006. Disney would eventually go back on this decision 12 years later, but by then it was too late. They had over a decade of dealing out crappy toys no kid wanted. You would often see parents just buying these happy meals simply because of the small portion size and the toys that came with it were just left to the side or thrown out.
You're totally wrong. Every kid I knew loved the Disney toys from Happy Meal, they were super popular! I still collect them today. The quality of the plastic toys were also very high. Disney's worst business decision ever was to stop promoting their movies with Happy Meal toys
I remember a long time ago, I saw some kids take the food trays and use them as sleds to go down the tube slides faster. They got kicked out after the employees found out. Also, kids who would climb up the slide backwards would often scrape their spines on the uneven roof of the tube.
Northern Mexican over here, recently went to a McDonald's on a mall with a small playplace and kids running, climbing and playing with those Ms. Marvel and Stitch plushies from their happy meal. Was truly interesting seeing the joy of being a kid prevailing on that new sterile cardboard cutout deco the restaurant had.
That zoom party was amazing trying to make the most of something depressing and the crushing feeling of despair after dropping the cake just perfect
It's so interesting watching this from a UK perspective. McDonalds is universally viewed as the place to go after the club/when you're drunk. I wonder how that developed.
it’s the UK
huh?@@franze4
this is kinda true in the US too tbh, the vast majority of times I've been to McDonald's in the past few years I was high out of my mind
When I worked at McDonald’s years ago, we had a drunk guy come in one late night, order food, then fall asleep at his table without touching his food 😂
McDonalds is cheap, fast and has lots of salt so that's basically everything you want when you're drunk, plus no one gives a shit if you're loud since it's McDonalds.
Most restaurants these days don't really market themselves to children anymore. Subway doesn't market themselves to kids for really good reasons. Their mascot loved kids way too much.
It's sad to see it gone now.
Mascot? They never had one🤔
@@gracekim1998 True, unless we're talking about Jared Fogle.
@@ChristopherSobieniak I am referring to Jared Fogle.
@@ChristopherSobieniakto be honest I’d rather not know who that is.
Time to tell the tale of my local McDonald's.
As long as I can remember it being there, it had a sort of 50s/60s retro diner aesthetic, complete with diner style seating, the old route 66 style of product posters on the walls, a jukebox, which probably hasn't worked since it was installed- and the ceiling having vinyl record neon lights. It was great. It also had the playplace. Truth be told I think the hard diner look was done a bit later. Regardless. As a kid it *had* to be that McDonald's. No other. Frankly, I didn't really eat much of the food. Two bites of the hamburger and off to the hamster tubes. Now this McDonald's also had an outdoor part of the playplace. Which was where the ball pit was. About a decade ago they removed the outdoor section and ball pit. They replaced it with some outdoor seating, which was ok.
Now even as an adult, I enjoyed going to that McDonald's. I love that retro diner aesthetic.
A few years ago they closed the McDonald's for renovation. And it reopened the same awful "modern" Technicolor interior as all the rest. Gone is the playplace, gone are the retro diner seats, and the neat rock n roll retro mural on the wall, checkerboard floors, the lot of it.
I have not set foot back in that McDonald's since. I mean, what, did they think I was going for the food? If I wanted good fast food burgers I go to Wendy's instead. They're victims to modernity too, but at least their modern interiors are welcoming. Wood floors and accents to give more of a restaurant feel, and a fake fireplace even. (Lol)
As for the playplace itself, I feel that is something that was never going to last. Anyone gen x and gen y that grew up with it, reaches a point growing up where they realize just how scary filthy those were, and would never be caught dead letting their kids go there. I think back to the many times I was crawling around and my hand landed in something wet and I shudder to think of what it might have been.
Still, it's a shame to see McDonald's fall from grace. Because its not like this has somehow resulted in huge profits. McDonald's has been struggling to find an identity since they abandoned the one they had. And they've not been doing great. I recall back in April they suddenly closed their corporate offices ahead of corporate layoffs.
I disagree. Gen x was fine with letting their kids play in the playgrounds. My mom is in gen x and is germophobic, and even she let us play in those playgrounds, and I know that gen z also played in those playgrounds a lot too, and those playgrounds were always extremely crowded.
I can't speak for millennial parents and gen alpha kids though, but I'm sure that the same applies to them. Then again, when you consider the pandemic, I suppose that millennial parents being a little more paranoid because of the recent pandemic could make sense too, but generation x had no reason to be paranoid, and the majority that I knew weren't.
I think the issue is that less families are dining in, including the ones with children, not that parents are all Karens who don't want their kids to have fun anymore.
People in the comments section have pointed out that the decreasing birth rates may also be the reason why you see less kids in these types of playgrounds or don't see companies being as kid friendly as they once were.
The reason they stopped including kids is actually because I stopped being a kid and I'm clearly the main character of the universe
Everything started to turn to boring black and white "minimalist" design right when we grew up. We gotta be the main characters, or maybe we were just lucky enough to experience the tail end of the of the old world. Either way, it's really depressing now :(
“The children? I don’t care about the children! All I care about is their parents’ money! Ah, the fact that their feeble minds are easily manipulated by cheap playgrounds and talentless clowns is no skin up my nose!”
-Eugene H. Krabs (AKA Krabby the Clown, AKA Cheapy the Cheapskate), 2004
@marshalmarrs3269 He made me happy as a kid. I just want future generations of children to experience the fun of Mcdonaldland and the place places. I will say that the ball pits were a failure becuase some ignorant parents would let their sick children into the restaurant to spread the seasonal flu to the healthy children. When your child is sick don't take them into a McDaonlds or Burger King in fact feed them something more nutritious.
@@mapgar1479keep in mind not everyone likes clowns😅
The early Ronald McDonald was creepy! No offense to the guy who portrayed Ronald in the 1960s. Other than that, clowns don't scare me!
old spongebob had its finger on the pulse more often than people remember. ironically i spongebob was criticized in the same category as mcdonald’s in late 90s early oughts
The difference is that Krabby Land actually had a playground.
It's so bizarre hearing about all these kid-friendly aspects of McD's *in the process* of fading away because the only one near me has been devoid of these things for the 20 years I've lived here. I've never experienced any of this stuff before.
I think there was definitely some legislative pressure in various markets for McDonald's to pivot towards the teen and adult market. Unhealthy food advertising laws banning such advertising aimed at children began to be introduced in the late 90's and 00's, particularly in Europe and South America. This would have meant much of McDonald's previous advertising would have been illegal under the new legislation. That combined with increased public scrutiny of fast food chains as was mentioned, it probably made sense to start focusing on teens and adults instead of children, it was just the less risky option going forward.
I love your approach to journalism and documentation. Keep up the great work bro !
Once you said the "kids-centric dining becoming extinct", that reminded me of the "Alladin cafe" which existed in my hometown since the late 90s... and got ultimately killed by McD coming to town as the next big thing for kids. We just thought "it's cool and American" and wanted the golden arches over anything we had before. And now McD's killed off their side of things too, so it's extinct at least in that specific city.
As a 12 year old, I always looked at McDonald’s as just a normal fast food place but I never knew it was like a fun place with a ball pit and jungle gym and cool stuff. Now it’s way more boring
The McDonald's near my old neighborhood would have blown your mind. It had remnants of the old "Mcdonald world" campaign. It was a literally indoor park with a fake grass carpet and two jungle gyms. (One for older kids and one for toddlers!) Plus a giant resin tree that was cartoonish and had 3 attached mini tables that had seats that looked like cheeseburgers. The tree was a "food" tree and had fake burgers and fries among the plastic molded leaves. All that *and* a giant ball pit. It was absolutely magical!
That sounds amazing 😨 I bet it’s just a drive thru now
@CheezMason5508 oh without a doubt. It's a bit sad to see everything become so watered down and boring. At least putting down hop scotch squares or something would be an improvement over nothing.
Mine used to have a big indoor jungle gym climb that was made of the same material as those big blue mats from gym class. I remember climbing up those and hissing at people who would pass by because I was pretending to be a gargoyle. Truly the most unhinged era. I constantly wish I had a way to give even a fraction of my childhood to your generation 😭💙
What kind of places are fun for you nowadays? Mall, arcade, Chuck E Cheese, like what is it you consider to be fun, and what was around when you were like 5 or 8 that was fun? I'm curious because I grew up with ball pits and Toys R Us and I've noticed there isn't much of that around anymore.
One thing I remember most fondly from 90's happy meals were the boxes they came in. They had marks where to tear up the box and turn it into a thematic build: when I got a stuffed camel, I could turn the box into a backdrop of palm trees and pyramids. For me it was even better than the toy part.
Honestly great video about this topic, but the manic energy you put into the ending made me die of laughter. I was barely holding it together after 28:49 but when you said "THE SKEEBALL MACHINE DISPENSES FRICKIN' V-BUCKS!!!" I couldn't breath lmao.
Someone said "McDonald's buildings went from colorful and fun to a depressed adult"
That hit me hard
The amount of lawsuits related to the play areas definitely had a hand in it.
If they cleaned them regularly, it would've saved them, but these factors probably stopped that from happening:
1) Actual cleaning staff means more pay, which the company/franchisees likely wouldn't spring for.
2) Making the regular staff clean them on top of their regular duties, which would lead to longer wait times, burned out employees, and food poisoning outbreaks.
I remember growing up almost all McDonald's had a play area but nowadays I'm stunned when I see one.
From my European perspective this gap for "child-/family friendly" bistros/cafes left behind by McDonalds has been well filled by genuinely child friendly and family oriented "mama cafes", offering healthy foods and clever, beautiful playrooms.
It sucks how all these kid-centric places are disappearing. Kids these days will never have the same kind of experience I had. Their childhood will be nothing but tiktok and cocomelon. Kids these days don't want to go to the park, they don't play outside, they don't go to Chuck E. Cheese, they don't watch Saturday morning cartoons, they don't try to get that one cool McDonalds toy, etc
Kids everywhere do all that.
That’s not necessarily true my cousins kids are taken to Chuck E. Cheese quite often and love McDonald’s happy meals and I’m sure there are plenty of kids that do all of that and more.
It’s not that they don’t want to it’s that parents give kids devices way too young and are too busy working multiple jobs to make ends meet to really take their kids anywhere or do things with them. And as this video establishes, there’s really no where to take kids anymore
Kids born after 2010 can’t play outside. All they know is charge they phone, watch Skibidi toilet, be annoying, eat hot chip, be bisexual and lie.
It's good that places like McDonald's aren't so focused on kids anymore. That shit was fucked up beyond words. Using kids' movies to advertise fake food, lying about what's in the food, doing charity work to help kids who are dying because of the "food", & then praising themselves for it even though they get the money from the customers, most of whom are poor.