Gender Neutral Happy Meals

[Disneylover99]

I’ve always been asked if the happy meals ordered were for a boy or a girl. It was never a big deal to me. Usually I was at the drive through and so I ordered one of each. If I’m actually in the restaurant I might ask what the toys are and then decide, but mostly, my kids weren’t interested in the toys anyways, so a non issue.

 

[ronandannette]

If you can remember boy or girl, you can remember Hot Wheels or Barbie.

Also, can we have a better girl toy?

Lots of girls LOVE barbies; some boys too.

I don't think you're giving employees enough credit here. They can remember the current toy. They really can. I remember when the original Cars was still in the advertising mode and we were waiting ever so patiently for the movie, McD's had the Cars characters...tons of them, and they switched every few weeks all summer long. I was forever calling and stopping by different McD's because my kid was so super obsessed with Cars already, and the employees never had any issue knowing exactly what the current characters were AND if they had any older ones hanging around, too. (Sure, they may sometimes say the wrong thing once and again, but that's true of anything. )

Plus, it saves them some time, too. Because inevitably if they say "Boy or Girl?", there will absolutely be people who will then ask what the current toys are. And then they need to say "Hot Wheel" or "Barbie", anyway.

By the way, saw that they are bringing back all these nostalgic Happy Meal toys, so I bet they'll be getting people calling and stopping by trying to get them all just like we did back in the Cars days.

And along that same line of thought, I bet most kids and parents know exactly what toy they want before they even place their order, so they can just order the "Hot Wheel" happy meal right off the bat and avoid the question entirely.

I thought I'd confess to being the only parent on earth that took their kid to McDonald's often enough that sometimes he'd take the "girl" toy just because he already had all the "boy" ones.

Possibly. But I don't fault the employee for saying boys or girls toy either. If it bothered the parents, they can always ask what the toys are are request by the toy, not by gender.

The bottom line, in a perfect world it would be nice to say the toy 100% of the time, but maybe it is just easier at times to say boy or girl. I don't fault the employee.

And I may be unpopular with my opinion, but getting upset over being asked "boy or girl" is making a bigger issue out of it than it is. Kids really don't care, they just want the toy! When you make a ordeal about it, then they notice.

And let's face it - almost all kids are boys or girls and of those sub-sets the majority of boys will choose the car and the girls will choose the barbie, without any coercion on anybody's part. It's almost to the point now where them doing so is implied to be "wrong" somehow.

 

[DuskKodesh]

When I was little the toys were always gender neutral except for maybe one month outta the year when it was Barbie and Hot wheels. The disney movies all had toy sets, the Pokemon toys, Fraggle rock, REAL lego sets, Neopets, halloween buckets, transforming fry guys, the Christmas train sets. None of those were gender divided. Now every happy meal is and the new toys kinda are terrible.

 

[wenrob]

And let's face it - almost all kids are boys or girls and of those sub-sets the majority of boys will choose the car and the girls will choose the barbie, without any coercion on anybody's part. It's almost to the point now where them doing so is implied to be "wrong" somehow.

I think this is the part that bothers me the most. It’s implying that having a preference that is geared towards the gender you happen to be isn’t okay. It’s as bad as telling a boy he can’t wear pink IMO. Just let them be kids and let them choose for themselves. If you make too big of a deal about you’re going to make them feel bad about any preference they might have.

 

[low-key]

The more I read the more I know I need to just get back in my cave

 

[MamaLema]

I am 1000% over this gender neutral crap

 

[L&Lfan]

Which toy do you want with your Happy Meal?
Problem solved.
And I say that as a boy who would have chosen the Barbie.
But I came of age LONG before Happy Meals existed.

 

[kimblebee]

I haven't ordered a Happy Meal in years so I don't know what they ask now but it used to be "girl toy" or "boy toy". I would ask my kids what they wanted and that is what they got. NBD.

I’m happily married but I might be interested in the latest boy toy

 

[VandVsmama]

Easy solution to this problem:

Happy Meals from here on out should only include a sad pack of crayons and a dumb coloring book. Thus, no kid will want the dang toy. It's gender neutral. Everybody ends up unhappy and mad. Problem solved.

 

[kaytieeldr]

Boy/girl: seven letters, two syllables
Hot Wheels/Barbie: fifteen letters, four syllables
Which toy would you like? twenty-one letters, five syllables - and then the extremely possible response is, "what are the choices?"

So, hysically, "girl or boy" is simpler and requires less time than any other option unless the toys are each one brief syllable.

Only issue with this would be that they (at least when I was there) one of each available. So by saying which toy you are asking for someone saying the purple mustang but all you have is the blue porsche.

Why would you ask which toy when there is just one?

 

[Diznygrl]

Heck, there are legislators who don't want there to be any toys at all in Happy Meals. Don't get me started!

It's funny, when I was a kid the only time I remember there being separate boy and girl Happy Meal toys was for Barbie and Hot Wheels weeks. Other than that it was always just one thing for everyone, usually based on whatever was the latest kid movie/tv show du jour, or stuff with the McDonald's characters (how I miss them!). Didn't matter if it was Batman or The Little Mermaid, it was all one line of toys. There are definitely a lot more separate boy/girl Happy Meal toys now than ever before. You'd think it would be the opposite, what with everyone so "woke" nowadays vs. the 80s and 90s. I don't have a problem with it, just an observation.

This article was just one huge eyeroll for me. Aside from the whole "I just dropped in from Mars and I have no idea how McDonald's works" thing, the way she reacted to the boy or girl question was a bit overdramatic. If you're so worried about your kids getting confused about expectations of gender then stop making such a big deal about it. The only way kids become confused over this crap is if their parents make them confused. Just let them have whichever toy they prefer and move on. Personally I couldn't care less if McD's wants to call them girl and boy toys (which they've been doing for years). There's no law saying a kid can't have one or the other, it's just a guideline to make things simpler, not only for the employees but also for the parents, who MORE LIKELY THAN NOT have either a girl who would prefer Barbie or a boy who would prefer Hot Wheels.

 

[indimom]

Honestly, the only thing that caught my attention in that article wasn't the McDonald's employee's word choice... it was "super mommy" who chose to get in a line and order meals and pay while her 4 year old needed to use the restroom... who does that?
Bathroom first. Then order.

As for the 'boy toy' and 'girl toy' issues. I guess I'm just from a different mindset. I've got a grown son and a daughter. From a young age, even they knew which toys were considered 'boy' or 'girl' at our local McDonalds - and at the same time, knew that they could ask for either one. My daughter would happily announce that she wanted a "boy" toy and go home and play with it. Unless an employee tried to force a boy toy on my son or a girl toy on my daughter, the language choice is just a non-issue to me and I don't see the deal.

That said "Barbie" or "matchbox" is just as easy. I'm just tired of being told that every word or choice other people make will somehow upset or define my kids in ways they just can't get over. Sheesh.

 

[FlightlessDuck]

How about just have one toy that any child can enjoy?

Yes, I agree. But ... how about not have a toy at all?

 

[NYCgrrl]

Agreeing with @FlightlessDuck .
Concentrating on making more palatable food would be more sensible to me.

 

[mom2rtk]

I saw somewhere that they're doing a line of retro Happy Meal toys. Hamburgler, Furby and such. I was thinking about picking one up for myself!

 

[DisLiss]

When I was little the toys were always gender neutral except for maybe one month outta the year when it was Barbie and Hot wheels. The disney movies all had toy sets, the Pokemon toys, Fraggle rock, REAL lego sets, Neopets, halloween buckets, transforming fry guys, the Christmas train sets. None of those were gender divided. Now every happy meal is and the new toys kinda are terrible.

Real Lego sets--those were the days, my friends!! Wish they'd go back to those!

 

[smiths02]

Easy solution to this problem:

Happy Meals from here on out should only include a sad pack of crayons and a dumb coloring book. Thus, no kid will want the dang toy. It's gender neutral. Everybody ends up unhappy and mad. Problem solved.

Like Chick-fil-A and Wendy's. It's usually a book or something like that, my kids know McD's food does not taste as good but would rather have McDs toys than CFA or Wendy's. Zaxby's just gives terrible graham crackers that my kids won't eat instead of a toy.
(We do have to eat fast food one day a week, and we have lately been doing CFA because they have some grilled options and healthier side options, but my kids just don't want the kid's meals there anymore because it is always some book and we have hundreds of books at home already.)

 

[Brett Wyman]

This is a person who was basically inexperienced with Mcdonalds and somehow turned that into a clickbait gender neutral article. Congratulations to her. I always ask my kids, a BOY and a GIRL, which toy they want. I dont automatically order one boy and one girl. This is an article about nothing created to increase page views with a sensational headline for a mundane topic. My son usually does gravitate towards the action toys but my daughter goes back and forth and has been choosing Pokemon over Hello Kitty lately. Yes my kids eat fast food. Sorry to the article writer.

 

[NYCgrrl]

Has she never been a child that got a happy meal . . . anywhere???

Nope, no happy meals with or w/o a toy
Now they were more common when my youngest sister was a child. She actually threw a temper tantrum at a neighborhood Italian restaurant we went to since she wanted a Micky D burger. I think that's about the time I began to think she was truly odd.

 

[wgeo]

I know we're all just having fun discussing, but this is the weird thing about the internet/our world these days. Some person, who I'm just gonna be honest here, but based on the way she wrote the article comes across somewhat as a ditz. Well this person has some random opinions and writes an article to make money, puts a clickbait headline and gets it posted at a clickbaity website.

And now we discuss her opinions as "what's wrong with society". When really its just this one woman's experience/opinions. If I talked to her in person I would probably laugh it off and move on, but if you see something written as an article its automatically given more weight and considered to be an opinion held by many people. I'm just being blabbing but it cracks me up how we take all these opinion articles so seriously these days.

Anywho for the topic at hand - I'm a fan of gender neutral stuff, and equality and all that, but consider this a non issue. So many easy ways to deal with this situation that any parent should easily be able to navigate it without a second thought. I have a boy and a girl who happen to follow their gender stereotypes and growing up it didn't matter at all to either kid what each toy was labeled, they just asked for the one they wanted. (and were super super excited if there was an employee who was willing to go search for exact toy and not just give them a random one from the set)