How McDonald's Removed Kids From the Equation
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 13 май 2024
- Today we're looking at how McDonald's decisions over the last 20 years have drastically changed the company's attitude towards children - for better, or for worse.
Patreon: / slow_start
Second Channel: / @slow_start2
Notable Sources
www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/0...
www.mashed.com/1213414/we-fin...
www.eater.com/2017/4/17/15222...
www.cbsnews.com/news/mcdonald...
thebarbecuelab.com/fast-food/
FilmingInMcD...
mcdonalds.fandom.com/wiki/McD...
Music
The Bywater - The Mini Vandals
Fingerprint - The Mini Vandals
Cool Vibes - Kevin Macleod
Happy-Go-Lively - Laurie Johnson
Miitomo Shop - Miitomo Music
Corduroy and Cheese - Piotr Pacyna
No Copyright Bossa Nova - Adeus Joao
Covert Affair - Kevin Macleod
Film Noire - Kevin Macleod
By Your Side - David Luong
Curious Notion - Terry Devine-King
0:00 Intro
4:40 Retiring Ronald
12:10 The Death of Dine-In
14:28 The Sad Case of the Playplace
18:30 Bye-Bye Birthdays
24:26 Crappy Meals
27:09 Conlusion 
Авто/Мото
![Shoreline Mafia - HEAT STICK (OHGEESY & FENIX FLEXIN) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/xKEY6THtwuA/mqdefault.jpg)
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 RUclips 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.
"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
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?
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 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? 🤔
I'm 37 and have two kids, and my kids like going to the McDonalds that has a play place. I'm fully aware they're germ factories, but so is any place that kids are around, and raising them in a sterile bubble is just going to stunt their immune system.
Very well said.
Make sure they are vaxxed
@@franklofarojr.2969 Well yeah obviously, but kids simply don’t have many places to have fun.
Exactly like just make your kids wash their hands when they leave 😭 I'm so worried when I have kids they're gonna just be bored bc there's nothing to do anymore. I'll try my best to find fun things for them to do but I'm worried about it
@@KassieR329 I’m not sure what you can do.
I don’t want kids to simply be glued to computer screens, but there is simply no place for them to hang out without Big Brother telling them to go home.
When I was growing up 30+ years ago we had skate rinks, barbecues, malls, joints and shops to hang out. What’s left of those places has been overtaken by homeless and drug users.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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
@@sydeguy1332 Who tf is Mokey Mouse???
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...
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Every McDonalds that is in my area, bar for one, has removed the play area entire after remodeling. I was so devastated because those McDonalds still had Nintendo 64s and GameCubes that were *actually* and *genuinely* free to play, as in the entire game! It was either Mario Tennis, Mario Kart, Donkey Kong, and a variety of other Nintendo games that was trending at the time.
I feel like the world is getting less and less kid friendly. Sure, the playplace was a giant colorful science experiment, but that's just because the tunnels are nigh impossible for adults to clean. If it was just a regular playground that a minimum wage worker could just hose down before closing it would be a different experience. Nowadays, there's nothing for kids to do that isn't online
Definitely. It’s very obvious and worries me.
Depopulation initiative.
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.
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."
The amount of lawsuits related to the play areas definitely had a hand in it.
I lived in the same city for the first 26 years of my life. It was always sad passing the same several old McDonald’s that I would go to as a lad and the play places either removed or replaced with smaller less impressive examples. Kids these days are getting screwed out of a childhood in more ways than this.
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.
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?
This is such a high quality, entertaining video. Like the editing, the script, the jokes, the research. Its all professional level.
I can’t imagine how long this took to edit. PS… amazing video. Enjoyed every second of it. You deserve everything good coming to you and your channel! Keep up the great work.
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.
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
Every fast food place is really going away from being a place child friendly. I’d say society in general doesn’t like noisy, bubbly, playing outside, energetic children.
You edit like a game theory video, which is honestly pretty high quality. Happy to be a part of witnessing this channel before it amasses a million subs 👍
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 🙀
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?
i would love to see someone do a deep dive into 90s/2000s Happy Meals
like- finding the people who were behind marketing and advertising at the time and what happened
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.
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
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
here i am high off my face just absolutely lovin the powerful engagement that you provide to the viewers!! you have earned a new sub !
I still fondly remember the McDonalds animated show that I got in the mail (or from a happy meal?) back when I was a kid. I used to be obsessed with that show and I think I had almost all the VHS tapes of it.
Also, I'm pretty sure the "gang sign" that the mother saw in the playhouse was probably just a cool S since they were everywhere. XD
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
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
This channel is going to blow up so much. Only seen 2/3 of your vids, but damn is your editing, flow, and entertainment value up there. Good luck man! :D
That McVirtual Bday party bit was freakin hilarious 😂
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.
the big concern for me is the modern push in america to lump in childhood with the teenage experience. i dont like seeing 8-12 year olds acting like 12-17 year olds on tiktok and instagram, it's uncanny. that being said there's still plenty of kids out there having "childhood experiences" especially in video game franchises
fr though, These kids got all these fancy haircuts, like when I was 9 we just cut it short when it got too long.
Yes I hate it when 12 year olds act like 12 year olds 😤
This isn't a "modern push" it's just a consequence of the internet age, and I can tell you don't remember what it was like to be a kid else you'd understand why this is. ...Or perhaps you were just a very obedient child, and don't have memories of sneaking Mortal Kombat 3 into the house, or Beavis and Butthead VHS tapes.
No kid actually wants to be a kid. They want to be "cool" and "free," like the teenage or young adult people around them. Bring the internet into the picture and now they have a means to quickly learn *how* to run with whatever social trends are currently going around in the teenage and young adult crowd.
Like it or not, this is perfectly normal and should not be interfered with, unless you want to find yourself alone in a retirement home in your old age. Stop trying to drive your kids like they're a car.
@@YourIdeologyIsDelusional yeah i did not grow up like that, makes more sense now. just wish i had a button to not see or hear about kids in the internet age it annoys me. my ass will be in that retirement home because im not having any lmao
@@YourIdeologyIsDelusional this comment owned me so hard im still thinking about it. the thought of people not wanting to be kids when i enjoyed being one is shattering
as a fellow mid- 20's year old i have to say your video essays are super informative and well-edited. propsss
Been working in advertising my entire career; so glad I discovered this channel!
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).
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
I like the format of this video plus your delivery method and editing style
4:21 as a kid that loved the museum, you can’t bring your friends and run around and have a party, you go with a parent and like 1 friend as an outing. Zoos are so expensive it’s not even worth it imo, outside, lots of strangers, arguing over where to go, they just can’t replace kids hang outs like Chuck E Cheese or McDonalds Play Place. At least you were in a much more confined space and screaming was expected.
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?
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.
Gonna be honest, didn't expect this video to be so interesting.
Well done man.
16:43
Lmao the mom probably just saw the "Super S" and thought it was gang related
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
What I learned from this
1.) The world doesn't like fun
2.) One man who proved eating one thing everyday is a bad thing (amazing i know) can kill beloved mascots
3.) Teens are stupider than kids
Pretty Much I might add one.
4.) People get what they want and then bitch about it.
Hormones are a bitch like that
It’s sad that fun is dying out 😅
I'm pretty sure the thing people are missing out of here is the shifting away from child centric venues could reflect the greater socioeconomic issues birth rates are on the decline because no one can afford kids food is more expensive there's less disposable income for adults with kids but young adults and teens have way more disposable income so yeah they gonna market towards that because in this world everything must be made for a profit if somthing is objectively beneficial to people it won't be made if there's no profit incentive I may sound cynical but its true so if child centric venues and fun are going away it's not necessarily "the world hates fun" it's because fun doesn't turn out the green or other colored pieces of paper we call money
😣 *sigh* everyone should be allowed to still have fun…life isn’t complete without it
Great videos dude! Catching style and good delivery. I'm glad RUclips recommended me your channel.
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 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.
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...don't know what's sadder--the fact that McDonalds and other restaurants COMPLETELY phased out their big, loud, happy, colorful, freakin' iconic kids' stuff...
...or the fact that I (and many others) never even noticed. :(
I'm a Gen Xer and grew up with stuff like the McDonaldLand characters, Saturday Morning Cartoons, etc. It's so SAD to think kids today don't have an equivalent to that.
McDonald's once sold these happy meal toys that are transformers in the shape of McDonald's menu items and I almost had the whole set at one point. That shit lives rent free in my head now.
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.
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.
Saw this video on November 14 but didn’t finish it. Today I saw his videos on five gum and Chuck E. Cheese so I said why not wrap this one up?
Also, I subscribed! Good luck on 106K!
My memories of McDonalds are playing with my friend in the playground after ice skating while our parents got the chance to catch up while eating dinner. Not only is it removing space for kids to be kids, but also removing a space for parents to be people while their kids are both distracted and safe. Going to a normal restaurant to socialise would require a babysitter; going to Maccas just requires an eye line and an ear out to the playground in case somebody gets hurt, but otherwise getting to interact effectively child-free for an hour or so. These spaces are important!
Edit: Additionally, McDonalds was one of the go-to rest stop locations for my family on road trips, mainly because they _knew_ the bathrooms would be clean. And when you're a little kid who's been cooped up in a car seat bored out of your mind for several hours, being able to run the sillies out in the playground was super important! Both for the kiddo and for the parents who have to deal with the bored kiddo. It's actually awful seeing the play places not being an option anymore for younger generations of kids and their families 😞
In 1995 we had a skating rink with the classic arcade games tucked in the back corner. There was a private room made for kids birthday parties. There was a food menu that had nachos & chips, hotdogs, hamburgers, sodas, root beer floats, and ice cream.
The food was actually decent.
Down the road was a McDonalds with the classic 80s/90s aesthetic. Ball pits and the familiar Ronald McDonald character.
All of it, and I mean all of it, is gone, just a memory of my younger days. I don’t exactly miss those particular locations, but my heart breaks that absolutely nothing has replaced those experiences for today’s kids.
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.
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.
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.
Underrated channel! This will be big, keep on keepin on dude!!
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?
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.
Just found this channel and instant banger gonna binge all your videos!
As a guy who watched "Super Size Me" I can see why they changed it.
Doesn't mean we should take the fun away from children and their childhood.
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.
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.
I appreciate the creativity you put in this video.
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.
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.
As a kid we had a mcdonalds adjoined to a blockbuster video. Some nights we would eat McDonald's and rent movies. Good times.
Now the blockbuster is a nail salon and the McDonalds looks like a modern nightmare
Just found this channel - great production and you’re hilarious guy! Subbed
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.
"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"
Most of this video just made me angry, but the gag at the end was so worth it.
hi, watched this video last week and literally had to come back because I'm currently sitting in a mcdonald's and I swear to God they are currently having a birthday party in the play room as I type. it's so crazy because I didn't even realize they still had a playplace in this location. but it's pretty fun
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
Yes!!! Also Pokemon toys stop being good. It just cards 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
I’m actually glad McDonald’s got rid of the clown, he was terrifying!
@@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
What a great video. Really drives the fact that eating out is dying. And if I'm being honest, that last joke commercial would probably work in real life. Imagine a kid really dying at a Freddy place. There'd be lines miles long of edgy teens looking to film their last moments live on tik tok for 1.27 seconds of them trending and making their life mean something.
Your hypothetical son being named Wolfgang made me choke on my McNugget 😂-that was hilarious
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 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.
. 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
Must be regional they literally have have promo pokemon card sets in my area
9:47 My Great grandfather was a collector of everything old,and he somehow had one of the bench Ronalds in his front yard. He put it on a post in the ground so it sat facing the road,sitting without a chair. My great grandpa was pretty cool
16:00 and what locations where kids exist *won't* you find these things? I'm sure every outdoor playground, laser tag arena, and public pool is as sterile as surgical instruments, right? I bet she could find those pathogens in her own bathroom.
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🤔
@@gracekim25 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.