A quintessentially American meal is celebrating a big birthday this year, but it is not meatloaf or Mom's apple pie.
It is the humble Happy Meal, introduced 25 years ago in a campaign to build loyalty among McDonald's youngest customers.
It is not the Happy Meal's culinary contributions that make it a national classic. Rather, the original kiddy meal wins a place in American gastronomy because it has consistently reflected so much of American culture, from the crowning of convenience to the troubling rise in marketing to kids to, most recently, the deep concern over nutrition and childhood obesity. That's a lot of weight for such a little bag.
McDonald's did not set out to create a cultural icon when, in 1977, a franchisee in St Louis asked his advertising agency to come with a bundled meal - with maybe a cheap toy thrown in - designed to appeal to children.
Two years later, the concept spread to branches across the US. It featured a burger, fries and a soft drink, all housed in a thin cardboard box made up to look like a circus wagon and decorated with games and puzzles.
It soon became a mealtime staple for harried families. It also symbolised the decline of the traditional family meal as parents and children spent fewer nights gathered together around the dining-room table.
Happy Meals, selling by the hundreds of millions every year, became an all-purpose juvenile pacifier. The earliest Happy Meal toys were decidedly lame - a plastic ID bracelet with stick-on letters, a puzzle lock, a Mr Spock secret compartment ring. But then came a 10-year exclusive deal with Disney. Characters from The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Lion King, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Monsters Inc, Lilo & Stitch and Finding Nemo were all miniaturised for Happy Meal bags.
The deal drove business into McDonald's, helped promote Disney's movies and taught advertisers a thing or two about the value of the pre-teen market.
For some children, the food was undoubtedly less important than the toy. The supremacy of the toy reached absurd proportions in 1997, when McDonald's started stashing Teenie Beanie Babies - pint-sized versions of the hugely popular beanbag animals - into Happy Meals.
On the orders of their children, adults were walking out of restaurants, extracting the plastic-wrapped toy and stuffing the meal into the nearest rubbish bin. McDonald's distributed 100 million Teenie Beanie Babies and the craze said volumes about US consumer tendencies. But it also exposed the thriving collectibles market for Happy Meal toys. Entire books have been written cataloguing the thousands of freebies McDonald's has produced, from the Flintstones' car to United Airlines jets (United was chosen because the airline offers Happy Meals on some flights).
The auction website eBay currently features more than 4,000 Happy Meal toys. But don't go rushing to hunt under your children's beds - few toys fetch more than a euro or two.
The evolution of the toys shows what a moving target the youth market is. The original toys did not hold children's interest for long, leading to the ubiquitous tie-ins with movies. But with a generation raised on video games, McDonald's has felt pressure to go high-tech. Last year, Happy Meals entered the Digital Age, offering a remarkable freebie: a hand-held, battery-operated electronic game from Sega.
Happy Meals also provide a textbook lesson in competition. McDonald's has ruled the children's market for 25 years, but the other fast-food restaurants have made inroads. McDonald's exclusive deal with Disney has locked it out of competing properties, allowing Burger King to pick up popular characters from shows including The Simpsons and SpongeBob SquarePants.
Children's meals have also sprouted at a range of other US fast-food chains, including Wendy's, KFC, Subway and Taco Bell.
McDonald's rings up more than $3 billion in Happy Meals every year and they have traditionally been a key earnings driver. But the company has been struggling to keep those numbers up. And the biggest challenge today comes not from its competitors but from its customers. Kids may still love Happy Meals but they typically need their parents to get them to the golden arches; and more and more parents are balking.
McDonald's recognised that it had two problems: parents found nothing on the menu that they wanted to eat, and they were not happy with what their kids were being served either. So the company has made dramatic menu changes to attract parents and fend off complaints that its food is making children fat.
Around the world, the company is introducing healthier Happy Meal options. These are aimed at both children and adults. To encourage parents to stand in line, McDonald's has heavily promoted its line of Premium Salads, and is experimenting with a "Go Active!" adult Happy Meal, which includes a salad and bottled water as well as a pedometer and fitness guide.
"Our goal," said Mr Larry Light, McDonald's global chief marketing officer, "is to make the Happy Meal experience even happier." - (LA Times-Washington Post Service)
